Just three days after his January inauguration, President Trump signed an executive order that he had promised on the campaign trail, establishing a digital assets working group comprised of top administration figures that would usher in a new era for crypto in the U.S.
On Wednesday, the group—which includes Treasury Secretary Scott Bessent, AI and Crypto Czar David Sacks, and other leading officials—released a 166-page report detailing the administration’s new approach, which Trump pledged would be a departure from his predecessor, President Biden, who cracked down on the blockchain industry.
The report outlines different priority areas for the White House moving forward, from enacting rulemaking laid out in the Genius Act, a bill establishing regulation for stablecoins passed by Congress earlier in July, to modernizing anti-money laundering rules.
In a press briefing call on Wednesday, senior administration figures touted the report as the “most comprehensive product that’s ever been produced in regards to digital assets.” But as Congress debates an ambitious bill to create guardrails around cryptocurrencies and exchanges, and federal agencies deliberate on how to police the sector, the White House’s work is just beginning.
Search for clarity
While Trump has fully embraced the role of the crypto president, Wednesday’s report is not the first from the White House. The Biden administration released its own back in September 2022, just weeks before the collapse of Sam Bankman-Fried’s crypto exchange FTX.
The Biden report presaged a period of enforcement actions from agencies including the Justice Department, Securities and Exchange Commission, and Commodity Futures Trading Commission against top crypto companies, including Coinbase. In response, the blockchain industry mounted a campaign to elect pro-crypto politicians, replete with hundreds of millions of dollars in campaign donations.
It proved to be a success, with Trump promising a raft of crypto policies, including a strategic Bitcoin reserve, the pardon of Silk Road founder Ross Ulbricht, and crypto legislation. He has already fulfilled many of the pledges, with Wednesday’s report capping off a flurry of executive orders that he signed right after taking office. The composition of the working group, filled with pro-crypto officials, reflects the massive sea change from the Biden administration.
While a major win for the crypto industry, the report leaves still leaves open certain questions, including ones related to the future scope of the federal government’s crypto reserve. In the press call, one official said that the report is focused on a regulatory framework rather than the reserve, and said that more information should be coming soon.
The report also acknowledges the limitations posed by the reality that Congress has yet to pass a market structure bill, which would establish more comprehensive regulation for the issuance of cryptocurrencies, as well as the operation of exchanges like Coinbase. While the report encourages the SEC and CFTC to provide more clarity on key functions like registration, custody, and trading, many market participants will remain in limbo while Congress continues to debate legislation.
Though the Senate and House of Representatives were able to agree on a stablecoin bill, the looming market structure bill will likely remain more of a challenge. The senior Trump administration officials argued that the House version—the Clarity Act—has received bipartisan support, with the report pointing to the bill as a “guiding star” for market structure.
“They’ve built the proper foundation for getting this home,” the official added.
US President Donald Trump signs the GENIUS Act (Guiding and Establishing National Innovation for US Stablecoins Act), which codifies the use of stablecoins -- cryptocurrencies pegged to stable assets like the US dollar or US bonds -- in the East Room of the White House in Washington, DC, on July 18, 2025.
High Noon has issued a voluntary recall of its popular vodka seltzer after it was discovered that some cans had been erroneously labeled as Celsius energy drinks. The recall, announced on Tuesday and coordinated with the Food and Drug Administration, applies to two production lots of High Noon Beach Variety packs (12-pack/12 fluid ounce cans), with the seltzers mislabeled as CELSIUS® ASTRO VIBE™ Energy Drink, Sparkling Blue Razz Edition with a silver top. No illnesses or adverse events have been reported for this recall to date, the FDA said.
The two production lots were distributed to retailers in Florida, Michigan, New York, Ohio, Oklahoma, South Carolina, Virginia, and Wisconsin between July 21 and July 23, 2025. The affected High Noon Beach Variety packs are marked with the following lot codes: L CCC 17JL25 (14:00 to 23:59) and L CCC 18JL25 (00:00 to 03:00). Celsius-labeled cans with the lot code L CCB 02JL25 (2:55 to 3:11) are also included in the recall.
According to the FDA, the labeling error originated with a packaging supplier that services both the High Noon and Celsius brands. The supplier inadvertently shipped empty Celsius cans to High Noon, resulting in vodka seltzer being packaged into cans labeled for an energy drink product.
High Noon, which is produced by E&J Gallo Winery, stated, “We are working with the FDA, retailers, and distributors to proactively manage the recall to ensure the safety and well-being of our consumers.” The company emphasized that only a “small batch” of product was affected and continues to collaborate with regulatory agencies to trace and remove the mislabeled cans from shelves as quickly as possible.
A Gallo spokeswoman told Bloomberg attributed the issue to “a labeling error from our can supplier,” declining to provide the name of the packaging supplier. Although product recalls are common, mislabeled alcohol is quite rare. High Noon has seen explosive growth, growing from a launch in 2019 into the top-selling seltzer by 2022, dethroning the incumbent Tito’s.
For this story, Fortune used generative AI to help with an initial draft. An editor verified the accuracy of the information before publishing.
Investors looking to get into crypto have a few options. The simplest is to go out and buy some from an exchange like Coinbase or Binance. This method is fast, cheap and easy and lets you hold Bitcoin or Ethereum (or various other coins) directly. Another option is more of a bank shot approach: Buy stock in a publicly-traded company that is putting crypto on its balance sheet and hope that stock goes up.
Surprisingly, this second approach is one of the hottest trades in crypto right now and dozens of firms are clamoring to get in on the action. According to a site called Bitcoin Treasuries, there are now 160 firms around the world with Bitcoin on to their balance sheet, including 90 in the U.S. alone. Those include familiar names like GameStop, Block and Tesla as well as the Trump Media and Technology Group, which is controlled by the family of the President.
In theory, this trade doesn’t make a lot of sense. Sure, the value of a company’s assets help inform its share price but any change in the price of those assets should correlate directly.
If Nike for some reason decided to use its spare cash to buy a million bushels of corn, and the price of corn went up, its share price might increase to the same degree. But this wouldn’t mean an investor bullish on corn should buy Nike stock rather than corn—and, if anything, Nike shareholders would likely punish the firm for using its capital on something totally unrelated to its business.
For some reason, crypto is different. Firms that have piled crypto on to their balance sheets have seen a jump in their share price far out of proportion to the value of the crypto they added.
The most famous example is Strategy, formerly known as MicroStrategy, a once-obscure cybersecurity firm based in Virginia. Several years ago, the firm’s charismatic founder Michael Saylor turned away from Strategy’s core business to focus on acquiring Bitcoin, and today it owns an eye-popping stash worth around $74 billion. This pivot proved wildly successful and, as of late July, the firm’s market cap stood at $112 billion even though it’s dropped its cyber business altogether.
Little wonder that more CEOs are glomming on to the same tactic. After all, if you can achieve a huge spike in your firm’s share price simply by swapping one currency on your balance sheet for another, why not? To get a sense of how popular the tactic has become, here is a screenshot from Bitcoin Treasuries’ list of publicly-traded firms with the most Bitcoins (one Bitcoin is currently worth around $118,000):
A “meme effect”
While some of these firms were set up solely to invest in Bitcoin, many of them are operating firms whose core business involves something else. Mitchell Petersen, a finance professor at Northwestern University, likens the phenomenon to the internet stock bubble of the year 2000 when firms discovered they could boost their share price simply by adding “dotcom” to their name.
Petersen, however, is skeptical of the current trend of firms putting their spare cash into crypto. He points out that big companies like Apple and Microsoft do invest their cash as part of corporate finance operations, but that they do so as part of a broader liquidity strategy. That strategy involves earning a little extra yield by holding short-term assets like money market funds or corporate bonds, while also maintaining a rainy day fund for emergencies or opportunistic acquisitions.
Petersen added that reporting rules do not require firms to disclose the specifics of the “cash equivalents” in their financial statements, but that these almost always consist of safe, liquid assets. The only exception he can recall is mining firms that have occasionally used their cash to put gold on their balance sheet, and justified the move by claiming a special expertise in the direction of gold prices.
This same reasoning can be found in some of the firms above. Specifically, the firms that are engaged in Bitcoin mining and that are well-versed in the cyclical patterns of the crypto industry. Some investors may view it as worth it to pay a premium for their share price.
In the case of other publicly traded firms, though, it is hard to see a compelling reason to believe their Bitcoin purchases are based on any particular expertise. At the same time, the volatile nature of crypto markets means many of these firms could find themselves in a tough spot during an inevitable downturn.
This raises the question of whether the current trend of public firms buying crypto is sustainable. According to another expert on corporate finance, the answer is simple: It’s not sustainable.
“It’s a meme effect that has nothing to do with investment prowess or good corporate strategy,” says Darrell Duffie, a finance professor at Stanford University.
Duffie holds the view that firms should use their capital to invest in their core competencies rather than try to compete with hedge funds on speculative plays. He acknowledges that, in the case of Michael Saylor’s Strategy, the share price of the firm has performed extremely well—but says that, as more and more firms try a copycat approach, the market will eventually come to its senses.
“It’s a fad and it will go away and one day some other fad will take its place,” said Duffie.
The Federal Reserve kept interest rates unchanged at between 4.25% and 4.5% following the most recent Federal Open Market Committee meeting Wednesday. The Fed’s decision could be felt by President Trump as a rebuke after Trump continuously called for the Fed and Chairman Jerome Powell to cut rates.
The Federal Reserve maintained rates on Wednesday, holding up against the pressure of President Donald Trump and his recently escalated rhetoric.
The Fed, while it brought down rates several times last fall, has stayed the course following the past four Federal Open Market Committee meetings. On Wednesday, the Fed did the same, holding interest rates between 4.25% and 4.5%, down from their peak over the past two years but still higher than pre-COVID levels of between 1.5% and 1.75%. In its decision, the Fed cited low unemployment and a solid labor market in its decision to hold rates steady.
Wednesday’s decision included two dissenting votes from the majority, Fed governors Michelle Bowman and Christopher Waller. It is the first time in more than 30 years that two governors have dissented in a single meeting.
The U.S. economy has maintained some resilience despite analyst warnings about impending financial turmoil partly caused by Trump’s tariffs. The unemployment rate fell slightly to 4.1% in June and has remained basically stable over the past 12 months. Meanwhile, annualized second quarter GDP growth increased 3%, bouncing back from the 0.5% contraction in the first quarter.
This combination of stable unemployment and a return to GDP growth likely played into the Fed’s preference for keeping rates unchanged, despite recent skepticism over data published by the Bureau of Labor Statistics, said Luke Tilley, a former Philadelphia fed adviser and chief economist at Wilmington Trust.
“When they see the unemployment rate remaining low, when GDP has bounced back to a positive, when they don’t see any imminent problems, then they’re really reluctant to start cutting, or even say that they’re going to be cutting, because it’s much harder to unring that bell once they say markets are sort of off to the races,” Tilley told Fortune.
At the same time, the most recent GDP number shows weakness when stripped down to the core components of consumer spending and business investment, Van Hesser, chief strategist at the Kroll Bond Rating Agency, told Fortune. Core inflation, which excludes volatile food and energy prices, also increased to 2.9% in June, up from 2.8% the prior month.
While concerns about unemployment have been at the forefront for the Fed in recent months, potential signs of lagging growth are bringing more equilibrium than before to the Fed’s dual mandate, said Hesser.
Trump’s tariff policies are likely to weigh on consumers and businesses in the second half of the year, and the Fed is likely waiting for more data to assess these effects. Still, Hesser said despite Wednesday’s rate cuts, he believes the Fed will cut rates later in the year, possibly at its last meeting of the year in December.
“I would expect to hear some commentary today acknowledging that the risks of inflation and the risks of to the labor market, which is really growth, are coming into better balance, and so it kind of sets up for what we’ve expected, which is, fourth quarter rate cuts—two cuts of 50 basis points,” he said.
As the Trump administration continues to negotiate trade deals with its allies, including, most recently, with the EU, the threat of tariffs and their effects on inflation has worried market onlookers. On Wednesday, Trump said he would impose a 25% tariff on imports from India because of the country’s high tariffs on U.S. goods. Trump also claimed India buys much of its military equipment and energy from Russia, which warranted an unspecified “penalty.”
Since before he was elected President in November, Trump has continuously criticized Powell and the Fed for not dropping interest rates as fast as he would like. Trump has ramped up his rhetoric recently by repeatedly wishing for Powell to resign and insulting him as “Mr. Late” and “one of my worst appointees,” among others. The president has also seized upon a previously scheduled remodel of the Federal Reserve’s headquarters in Washington D.C. to publicly shame Powell and hint at his possible dismissal.
Starbucks CEO Brian Niccol is closing a convenience that was explicitly targeted toward Gen Z’s taste for “frictionless” experiences: their mobile-only “pickup” stores. The move signals a deliberate shift away from the high-speed, tech-driven model that defined much of the chain’s recent expansion. The coffee giant will convert or close approximately 80 to 90 of these mobile order-only locations nationwide by the end of 2026, Niccol said on Tuesday’s earnings call with analysts, marking the end of a six-year experiment that catered to on-the-go customers who seemed to prefer mobile ordering to lingering over a latte.
Announcing the closures, Niccol was direct about the rationale on Starbucks’ Tuesday call with analysts. “We found this format to be overly transactional and lacking the warmth and human connection that defines our brand,” he said.
Built primarily in urban centers, airports, and hospitals, these stores were designed to maximize convenience—no cash registers, limited or zero seating, and an efficient grab-and-go experience orchestrated through the Starbucks app. Starbucks wants to bring back the warm coffeehouse.
The move comes amid a period of challenge and transition for Starbucks. Sales at stores that have been open for at least one year have declined for six straight quarters, with North American sales have dropped by 2% most recently. Analysts point to customer fatigue with impersonal, tech-centric transactions and “soulless” atmospheres, especially as competitors offer new forms of hospitality and engagement. It’s also a tricky needle to thread, as Starbucks disclosed in its earnings that 31% of all transactions are mobile, making it a critical part of the business.
The company remains committed, according to Niccol, to enhancing digital and mobile experiences through technical upgrades to the Starbucks app and its Rewards program, set for rollout in 2026. But Starbucks’ other actions are suggesting that these experiences shouldn’t feel mobile.
Niccol, who took over as CEO in September 2024, has staked his turnaround strategy on restoring the brand’s emotional resonance, echoing former CEO Howard Schultz’s recognition that consumers needed a “third space” that wasn’t home or work. Niccol argued on the call that customer-value perceptions are near two-year highs, and they’re driven by gains among Gen Z and millennials, who make up over half of Starbucks’ customer base. It shows that younger consumers wanted more warmth than previously thought.
Uplift through green aprons
Starbucks has a program under way to “uplift” its coffee houses, which involves investing $150,000 per store to upgrade seating, lighting, and atmosphere in more standard locations. The chain’s new prototype stores—already being piloted in New York City—reintroduce cozy chairs, power outlets, and large tables, fostering a more communal and linger-friendly environment. Niccol said some mobile-only stores will get converted to this new setup, where it makes sense.
“We plan to complete an evaluation of our North American portfolio by the end of this fiscal year to ensure we have the right coffee houses in the right locations to drive profitability and deliver the Starbucks experience,” Niccol said on the earnings call.
Starbucks is also piloting smaller-format stores with limited seating to blend convenience with a sense of place—another sign the brand isn’t abandoning quick service, but is instead recalibrating its approach. As the company prepares to sunset its transactional pickup model, Starbucks is doubling down on its legacy: coffee shops as community anchors, not just efficiency engines. The era of the “app-only” Starbucks is ending, as the company bets that its future lies in connection, not just convenience.
These investments are part of Niccol’s $500 million “Green Apron Service” initiative, intended to restore “hospitality” to the center of its business. It involves a revamped barista dress code featuring, yes, the green apron, but also emphasizes personalized service. Starbucks believes this is what Gen Z really wants, not a frictionless mobile order that barely involves interacting with a human. There is other evidence that Gen Z craves more human connection, with 91% telling the Harris Poll they want more of a balance between remote and office work.
Starbucks COO Mike Grams spoke with CNBC earlier this week and also offered thoughts on how the company views Gen Z. He argued in favor of an approach the company describes as “hospitality” and, when asked about evolving “social cues,” he described how Starbucks is working to lean into a more subjective experience. “Connection is different things to different people,” he said, arguing that Starbucks baristas are well positioned “to understand what each individual customer wants in that moment in time.” In other words, Starbucks is risking a collision with the “Gen Z stare,” because it’s working to make sure that the human connection is front and center in its business.
When reached for comment, Starbucks referred Fortune to the earnings report and Niccol’s comments on the analyst call.
For this story, Fortune used generative AI to help with an initial draft. An editor verified the accuracy of the information before publishing.
Delian Alliance Industries, founded by former Apple engineer Dimitrios Kottas, announced Tuesday it’s raised $14 million in Series A funding to accelerate production of its affordable and autonomous defense systems. Kottas, who spent five years working in Apple’s secretive robotics lab, said he applied many learnings from his time in Silicon Valley to his four-year-old defense startup.
Dimitrios Kottas spent years at Apple working in its secretive “Special Projects Group” (SPG), working on autonomous systems for robots—and, for many years, was the team most closely associated with Project Titan, Apple’s since-canceled car project. But a few months after leaving Apple in 2021, he began work on Delian Alliance Industries, a defense startup designed “to protect Europe and its allies.”
On Tuesday, Kottas wrote a blog post announcing Delian had raised $14 million in a Series A funding round, led by Air Street Capital and Marathon Venture Capital, to “accelerate the production” of affordable and autonomous systems that “defend against invasion and incursion at nation scale.”
“We started Delian with a pilot of a single surveillance tower, but after just a few years we are now pursuing multiple nationwide deployments for our autonomous surveillance networks,” Kottas told Fortune. “Beyond this, we’re also helping allies to strike threats, as well as sense them. Our product lineup ranges from autonomous detection to autonomous one way effectors”
Rather than partnering with other defense companies and startups, Delian is borrowing a page from Apple, as well as Tesla, in that it’s choosing vertical integration as its key strategy around production. It makes its own hardware—targeting systems, surveillance towers, drones, and more— as well as the software and systems, which are all “designed to be low cost, deployed in mass, and sovereign,” according to the company’s website.
“Why do we pursue vertical integration? Speed,” Kottas told Fortune. “Look at the speed that Tesla moved versus its European competitors who sub-contracted out everything to hundreds of different suppliers. By bringing everything under one roof we can move at the speed we need to equip our allies in the face of a rapidly changing geopolitical landscape.”
Kottas, who graduated from the University of Minnesota after years of studying computer science and researching machine learning, said Silicon Valley also taught him about the importance of embracing “moonshot” projects, which are ambitious ideas that may result in revolutionary, rather than evolutionary, change. Some of its prototypes reflect this concept, including explosive-laden high-speed boats that launch out of concealed locations to deter attacks by air or by sea. (Kottas told The Financial Times Delian is focused on “the maritime domain,” as airborne drones are a “very saturated market.”)
“Our adversaries are arming themselves with emerging technologies at a rapid industrial scale,” Kottas wrote in a company blog post. “We’re in a race against time and should measure deployments in days, not decades. We’ve proven our systems in mission critical environments and will now ramp up production internationally.”
Delian, which has offices in Athens and London, says it’s built to integrate with “Europe’s evolving defense priorities.” The EU is having a defense boom right now: Ever since President Trump signaled that Europe is no longer a security priority for the U.S., several EU countries have accelerated their own investments as they attempt to reduce their dependency on U.S. support.
At the NATO summit in June, all 32 member countries committed to raising security-related spending to 5% of GDP by 2035; separately, 18 EU countries have applied for billions of euros from The Security Action for Europe (SAFE) fund, which is a new $173 billion defense program aimed at providing cheap loans for member countries so they can buy military equipment together. As you might imagine, defense companies and startups like Delian are reaping the benefits of these policy shifts.
To ensure Booz Allen Hamilton’s global workforce of more than 35,000 can guard against deepfakes and avoid potential financial fraud, the consulting firm’s chief technology officer, Bill Vass, embraced an unconventional approach.
He created a deepfake video of himself.
This week, Vass will promote a 30-second deepfake video where “he” briefly speaks to the camera to show Booz Allen employees and other workers how easy it is to create fake audio and video content. Vass contends that generative AI technology has gotten so advanced that a popular refrain, “believe none of what you hear and half of what you see,” isn’t cynical enough.
“You’re at a point with AI and these deepfakes where you are not going to be able to believe any video you see or audio you hear,” Vass says. The deepfake video of Vass will be promoted internally at Booz Allen so that employees “better understand the capabilities and how strong a deepfake can be,” he adds.
Booz Allen has previously trained workers to spot deepfakes by showing videos of celebrities, who tend to be easy targets given the vast prominence of their likeness in the public domain. But there are also hours upon hours of video and audio of Vass uploaded to YouTube, and it only takes a couple of minutes of content for criminals to make a deepfake that can trick workers.
The stunt deepfake video of Vass was created by Booz Allen in partnership with Reality Defender, a deepfake detection company that sells tools to identify AI-generated content within seconds to clients including IBM, Visa, and Comcast. Last year, Reality Defender expanded its Series A funding round, raising $33 million in total capital (from investors including Booz Allen’s venture capital arm) to further develop the startup’s technologies.
Vendors like Reality Defender are betting that processes for authenticating audio and video interactions will become as essential as other cybersecurity tactics like multi-factor authentication, a two-step verification process, and zero-trust authentication, which requires continuous verification of identity.
Alex Lisle, who became CTO at Reality Defender last week, says there is a growing list of risks CEOs and other C-suite executives must confront when it comes to deepfakes. While much of the attention is on social engineering cyberattacks that prey on workers, cybercriminals can also use AI to craft audio files where a CFO “announces” manipulated earnings results, which could move the stock. AI videos can be generated that depict a CEO issuing a fake public statement that could hurt a brand’s reputation.
“Unlike other emerging cybercriminal threats, which require an incredible amount of technical knowledge and foresight, this doesn’t,” Lisle says. Deepfakes, he adds, can be done with “off-the-shelf software and a basic knowledge of technology.”
Top executives at WPP, Accenture, and Ferrari have been targeted by deepfakes, though in the corporate world, the banking sector is a favored target. Half of finance professionals in the U.S. and U.K. have reported that they’ve experienced an attempted deepfake scanning attack. Accounting giant Deloitte has estimated that generative AI-enabled fraud losses could reach $40 billion by 2027, a compound annual growth rate of 32% from 2023’s level.
The cautionary tale that security executives frequently cite is a Hong Kong incident where a financial worker was fooled into paying $25 million to fraudsters that used a deepfake video call to impersonate the company’s chief financial officer. To avoid these types of scams, chief information security officers and other technologists have been investing in defensive systems and better employee training to detect attacks.
Vass, who joined Booz Allen in 2024 after previously serving as VP of engineering at Amazon Web Services, says social engineering attacks would even trip up employees at the Pentagon, where he worked as a senior executive in the office of the CIO in the late 1990s. The Department of Defense would hire external parties to attempt attacks, and Vass says it always amazed him how many times those teams would succeed, even after all of the training.
He recalls another incident at a startup he led, where a former employee sent a deepfake email that was purportedly sent from Vass, while also pretending to loop in the CFO. The note was sent to the procurement office, and a worker ended up processing a fake $25,000 invoice payment.
Generative AI, Vass adds, will only make cases like these all that more common. “People are going to have to learn to change their psyche to be more skeptical.”
John Kell
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Eventbrite CEO Julia Hartz ditched her cushy TV career working on hit shows likeFriends, Jackass, and The Shield to bootstrap the ticketing platform with her two cofounders, scaling it from a windowless phone closet. She exclusively tells Fortune they shelled out less than $250,000 to get the company up and running, reasoning that “if it’s a disaster, we’ll just be broke.” But the Gen Xer’s nail-biting sacrifice paid off, as Eventbrite now boasts a $225 million valuation and serves 89 million monthly users.
Most people would jump at the idea of working on hit TV shows like Friends, Jackass, and The Shield, but Eventbrite CEO Julia Hartz left it all behind to pursue her passion of bringing people together.
Just five years into her rising TV career—where she’d climbed the ranks to junior executive at FX—Hartz tossed the towel in on her 9-to-5 to launch Eventbrite in 2006, bootstrapping the company entirely with her husband and fellow cofounder Renaud Visage.
The pitch was: “Come work on something that doesn’t exist. We’ll use our own money to fund it, and if it’s a disaster, we’ll just be broke,’” Hartz tells Fortune.
Eventbrite is now estimated to be worth $225 million, and offers events ranging from wrestling classes, to comedy shows, to cheese raves with Queer Eyestar Antoni Porowski.
But it all started when Hartz and her husband—serial entrepreneur and early PayPal investor Kevin Hartz—assembled a dream team to get Eventbrite off the ground. They recruited fellow cofounder Visage to come on board as chief technology officer, and the trio of entrepreneurs decided to chuck $250,000 of their own money to get Eventbrite running, moving to San Francisco.
Hartz had to sacrifice her job to put all her energy into Eventbrite, skirting the route other entrepreneurs have gone down: juggling a full-time job while scaling a company on the side. Instead, she found it best to wipe her slate clean and leave her TV career behind to pursue Eventbrite. It was a professional gamble that paid off in the long run.
“I’ve seen entrepreneurs do that, and I think that that’s a clever way to gain validation and product market fit, without putting yourself in such a perilous state,” Hartz says. “I did not do that.”
Inspiration struck during her 9-to-5 job in TV working on Friends and The Shield
Hartz started working at just the age of 14—pouring coffees in cafes, and driving kids to after-school activities—and hasn’t taken her foot off the gas since.
While attending Pepperdine University, she worked as an intern on the set of hit TV-show Friends, later scoring an internship at MTV in the series development department. It was a “magical” experience that eventually landed her a job at the station—once she graduated, Hartz went straight into developing shows including Jackass, The Shield, and Rescue Me across MTV and FX. Part of her job entailed researching fandom events, and suddenly, something clicked.
“I remember going to this fandom event that was insanely niche, and feeling the energy of the people in the room, it just stuck with me,” Hartz says. “It was this palpable, kinetic energy…When we started Eventbrite, I was thinking about that all along: ‘How do we enable the people who gather others around these niche passion areas and create this magic?’”
While most couples may wring their hands at the idea of putting their finances on the line to launch a company together, Hartz’s partner was enthusiastic about going all-in on a light bulb moment.
In fact, the Gen X CEO’s nearly 20-year success may have never panned out if it wasn’t for her husband Kevin—who’s success investing in the then little-known startup called PayPal—persuaded her to take the leap into entrepreneurship.
“It’s only serial entrepreneurs who can convince someone of that,” Hartz says. “We made it on less than a quarter of a million dollars…I’m really, really proud of it.”
Scaling a business idea into a $225 million ticketing giant
Once Hartz made the decision to leave TV forever, she packed her things into boxes, and drove up the coast of California to settle in her company’s new headquarters: San Francisco. The Silicon Valley hub had the tech connections and industry access to help get things off the ground. So just like that, she set up shop in Potrero Hill, the “warehouse district”.
“I was moving saw horses and plywood into a windowless phone closet on Monday, in this warehouse district in San Francisco, going in my head, ‘Wait, what if he’s crazy?’ Well, it’s a little late for that,” Hartz says. “I’ve been working since I was 14 with no break. So it was really important to me that I be working on day one.”
Eventbrite was able to get things off the ground thanks in part to perfect timing; in the mid-2000s, social media platforms were looking to bring together its users in real life. Facebook made Eventbrite one of its first connect partners, solidifying a huge new customer base looking for community events to partake in.
Then 2008 came, and thousands of workers from all across the U.S. were being laid off in droves during the financial crisis. Hartz said “the world collapsed” in those dire years, and people were desperate for community while facing hardship. It was a tough era for corporate American workers, but was an opportunity for Eventbrite to bring them together. Over the next decade the business would amass a total of $373 million in equity funding through 11 fundraising rounds, according to Pitchbook, attracting investors like Tiger Global Management, Sequoia Capital and Square.
The ticketing platform has since amassed a fanbase in nearly 180 countries—in 2024 alone, it had distributed 83 million paid tickets for over 4.7 million events. With 89 million monthly users, people are scoring seats at events ranging from a sunset Bach concert in Central Park to a house music cruise on the Hudson river.
Eventbrite CEO and cofounder Julia Hartz launched the company in a windowless closet with her two cofounders for less than $250,000, after leaving her career behind working on Friends, Jackass, and The Shield.
Mercedes-Benz and Microsoft have collaborated to allow drivers in the new CLA model to record themselves with its in-car camera during Teams meetings. A video stream of the meeting visible to the driver on the car’s central display turns off once they’re in motion, though they can still contribute to the meeting through other new features like “an expanded chat function for reading and writing messages, and the integration of voice control for text input,” a spokesperson told Fortune.
Mercedes-Benz and Microsoft have teamed up to bring you more meetings. Now, with “in-car productivity” you can join a Teams meeting while you drive to and from work.
The German automaker said its 2026 luxury sedan CLA model includes an in-car camera that allows Microsoft Teams meeting participants to see drivers that are streaming while on the road. The feature marks the latest attempt from Mercedes-Benz to offer “an even more efficient way to work within the vehicle,” according to the carmaker’s announcement. The $60 billion carmaker aims to revolutionize its in-house developed multimedia operating system that powers the central display screen in the new model.
A Mercedes-Benz spokesperson declined to comment on the price range of the new CLA model and said the company will officially announce pricing closer to launch. MotorTrend estimates these cars to be priced between $44,000 and $78,000. Kelly Blue Book expects the 2026 Mercedes-Benz CLA to start at around $50,000.
The CLA is the first model of a completely new family of vehicles to utilize the technology, a Mercedes-Benz spokesperson told Fortune. The Meetings app for Teams was already available in previous car models—but the in-car camera used to display drivers in meetings is the first of its kind. The camera is built into the screen, above the central display. However, when the car is in motion, drivers can’t see the meeting but colleagues and bosses can see the driver. After pressing the gas, the driver sees a speaker’s contact icon, as if they were just in a hands-free phone call. The feature differs from Tesla’s in-car Zoom meeting feature, which requires the car to be in park for the video feature to display the driver.
The automaker will start the process of integrating the update of the Meetings app this summer for cars with the fourth-generation Mercedes-Benz User Experience (MBUX) initially in Europe and later this year in the U.S., according to the spokesperson. Vehicles with the third-generation MBUX will also receive these features soon.
To be sure, the video stream projected on the central display turns off automatically, as soon as the vehicle is in motion, to “minimize distraction and maximize safety,” the spokesperson said. This prevents drivers from viewing slides, shared screens or other participants of the meeting.
Yet, the safety feature doesn’t stop them from being able to listen and contribute to a meeting, like any other hands-free phone call.
The updated Meetings app comes with features including quick access to favorite contacts, the ability to jump directly from the calendar into a Teams meeting, an expanded chat function for reading and writing messages, and the integration of voice control for text input, the Mercedes-Benz spokesperson said.
The National Transportation Safety Board says crash data and research indicate personal electronic devices, such as cell phones and tablets, are one of the greatest contributors to driver distraction, and calls distracted driving a “public health problem.”
“Hands-free is not risk free,” the NTSB said, adding that hands-free use of devices do not reduce driver distraction, but rather contribute to “cognitive distraction.”
The National Highway Traffic Safety Administration recognizes three categories of distracted driving: visual, manual, and cognitive distraction. Cell phones and navigation devices are “often the culprit when it comes to distracted driving,” according to the NHTSA. In 2023, 3,275 people were killed in distraction-affected crashes, according to the federal agency.
The built-in camera is used for other functions including tracking the driver’s eye movement, “to prevent the driver from distraction when the co-driver is watching video streaming content or gaming while on the move,” the spokesperson said.
No state has implemented the NTSB’s recommendation for a ban on the use of all personal electronic devices while driving except in case of emergency.
“Given the Mercedes-Benz’s commitment on safety, the use of the camera abides by the laws of each country and has been approved for use on the move,” the spokesperson said.
July 30, 2026: A Mercedes-Benz spokesperson told Fortune the pricing has not yet been announced yet for the all-new CLA and declined to provide a price range.
Gen Z can get a one-way ticket to the millionaires’ club sooner than they may think, according to multimillionaire venture capitalist and Shark Tank star Rashaun Williams. It all comes down to three simple steps: establishing an emergency fund, maxing out retirement accounts, and keeping investments simple, he exclusively tells Fortune.
Dreams of a comfortable retirement feel increasingly out of reach for young people—especially as even boomers, who spent decades saving, are now being forced back into the workforce. For Gen Z, it’s easy to feel hopeless and turn to bad financial habits like doom spending as a coping mechanism.
But the possibility of Gen Z retiring as millionaires may not be as complicated as the generation thinks it is. With proper financial planning, Gen Z can easily have seven figures to their name, according to Rashaun Williams, a multimillionaire venture capitalist returning as a guest judge on Shark Tank this upcoming season.
The secret, he tells Fortune, relies on just following three simple steps: establishing an emergency fund, maxing out retirement accounts, and keeping investments simple.
The ‘Shark Tank’ investor’s 3 steps for Gen Z wanting to become millionaires: 1. Create an emergency fund
The path toward million-dollar wealth can’t begin without planning for the unexpected, such as a job loss or medical emergency. Williams says an emergency fund should start with saving up three months worth of expenses into your savings account.
“Make sure you have enough cash for a rainy day, so you’re not pulling from your 401(k) prematurely,” Williams tells Fortune.
For those who want to be a little extra careful—or are unlucky enough to have life throw wrenches their way—many financial institutions, like Wells Fargo, suggest that up to six months’ worth of expenses could be worth it.
2. Maxing out your 401(k) and Roth IRA
Saving money using tax-advantaged accounts, like a 401(k) or Roth IRA, remains one of the most efficient ways to grow your wealth. Williams says Gen Z should try to put as much money within their budgets into retirement accounts.
“If you just do that from 25 to 50 years old, you’re going to retire a millionaire,” Williams says. “…Just by maxing out your 401(k), it grows tax deferred, and it goes in tax-free. There’s no better return than to get your returns without taxes.”
The standard 401(k) limit for employee salary deferrals is about $23,500 in 2025. The maximum amount you can contribute each year to a Roth IRA is $7,000 for those under 50 (though your income must be below a certain adjusted income threshold).
Fidelity recommends individuals save at least 15% of their annual income for retirement—something that can be a tough ask for those Gen Z early in their career.
But, it’s a number that fellow Shark Tank star Kevin O’Leary has echoed: “Take 15% of your salary each week, or every two weeks when you get paid, and put it into an investment account, and never touch it until you turn 65,” O’Leary told Us Weekly in 2023. “That’s how you will retire a multimillionaire.”
In reality, the average savings rate is about 14.1%, according to Fidelity. Taking advantage of any employer match program is also important.
3. Keep investments simple
While there are many ways to invest money—including seemingly fun opportunities like individual stocks or cryptocurrencies—Williams encourages people to keep their choices simple. He specifically called out S&P 500 indexes as one of the best places to invest, with a long history of sustained growth. After all, it delivered an average return of about 10% over the last century, helping usher an unprecedented level of millionaires and billionaires.
“You don’t have to get cute, you don’t need international, you don’t need bonds. You’re not 90 years old. Just do S&P,” Williams tells Fortune.
4. A bonus tip for Gen Z wanting to become millionaires before retirement
For many young people, becoming a millionaire is more than just a retirement dream—it’s an aspiration they want to hit as soon as possible. And while for some, hitting financial goals will mean temporarily saying goodbye to expensive lattes or a vacation to Europe, one of the best ways to build wealth is to simply create your own venture.
“Start something that you can invest in, that you can grow, and start your own business,” said multimillionaire Shark Tank investor Robert Herjavec. “It’s the only path to wealth.”
Gen Z is watching boomers unretire and doom spending their money in despair—but seven-figure wealth is entirely achievable, the multimillionaire ‘Shark Tank’ star Rashaun Williams tells Fortune.
Meta CEO Mark Zuckerberg released a new Instagram video on Tuesday morning, laying out the vision behind the company’s new AI initiative: Meta Superintelligence Labs. The goal, he said, is to build “personal superintelligence for everyone.”
Zuckerberg acknowledged that AI is rapidly advancing and that we’re beginning to see “glimpses of AI systems improving themselves.” Superintelligence (a vague term that typically refers to AI that vastly surpasses human capabilities in virtually all domains, including scientific creativity, general wisdom, and social skills) is now “in sight,” he added, which begs what he called a big open question: What should we direct superintelligence toward?
While rival AI companies focus on scientific or economic breakthroughs, Zuckerberg explained, his vision is decidedly micro, aimed at the individual, not at society writ large. He wants to build a personalized AI that helps you “achieve your goals, create what you want to see in the world, be a better friend, and grow to become the person that you aspire to be.”
It’s a pitch that, unsurprisingly, aligns with what Meta has always built: consumer-facing experiences designed to keep people engaged—and sell more ads.
In Zuckerberg’s telling, AI won’t upend the social order or redefine civilization—it’ll accelerate existing trends. In looking at previous technological revolutions, such as the mechanization of agriculture, which allowed far fewer farmers to produce all the food the world needs, Zuckerberg said that “Most people have decided to use their newfound productivity to spend more time on creativity, culture, relationships, and just enjoying life. I expect superintelligence to accelerate this trend even more.”
To Zuckerberg, that means a future of AI-infused personal devices—specifically, augmented-reality glasses that can “see what we see, hear what we hear, and interact with us throughout the day.” Meta already makes a version of such glasses in conjunction with Ray Ban. The next phase of computing, in his view, isn’t about unlocking scientific frontiers—it’s about helping people connect, create, and wear Meta hardware.
It’s hard not to compare Zuckerberg’s parochial vision to the kind of big-picture thinking that once defined Silicon Valley. When Apple founder Steve Jobs described the computer as “a bicycle for the mind,” he offered a metaphor that felt profound—technology as a tool for human advancement. Zuckerberg, by contrast, imagines superintelligence as a pair of Ray-Bans that help you…be a better friend?
Even among today’s AI leaders, this mission seems strangely small. OpenAI CEO Sam Altman talks about human flourishing (whatever that means) and rearchitecting society. Google DeepMind’s Demis Hassabis wants to unlock the secrets of the universe. Anthropic CEO Dario Amodei believes AI could be the most important tool in human history—if it doesn’t destroy us first. Zuckerberg? It sounds like he just wants you to make better Reels.
This creates a striking disconnect. Zuckerberg has committed staggering resources to Meta’s superintelligence effort: a $14.3 billion deal with Scale AI to bring its founder, Alexandr Wang, to lead the initiative; hundreds of millions in offers to lure top researchers from OpenAI, Google, Apple, and Anthropic; and tens of billions more in annual infrastructure spending to power the massive data centers behind Meta’s AI push. The scale of the investment suggests world-changing ambition. The actual pitch—personal AI in smart glasses—doesn’t quite measure up. Shouldn’t Meta at least nod to, say, curing cancer?
To be fair, superintelligence is still such an abstract idea that even the grandest promises about helping humanity can sound hollow or amorphous. Still, don’t even the best-paid researchers need to be inspired by the mission?
In an accompanying blog post, Zuckerberg acknowledged the risks of superintelligence, saying it will “raise novel safety concerns” and that Meta will have to be “rigorous about mitigating these risks.” He also framed the coming years in stark terms: “The rest of this decade seems likely to be the decisive period for determining the path this technology will take, and whether superintelligence will be a tool for personal empowerment or a force focused on replacing large swaths of society,” he wrote.
However, one might hope a vision for superintelligence would go beyond personal empowerment towards broader societal good. It’s clear that Meta has the resources, and the will, to build the infrastructure for the future of AI and superintelligence. Whether it can build a meaningful reason for it remains an open question.
Mark Zuckerberg, chief executive officer of Meta Platforms Inc., wears Orion augmented reality (AR) glasses during the Meta Connect event in Menlo Park, California, US, on Wednesday, Sept. 25, 2024. Photographer: David Paul Morris/Bloomberg via Getty Images
John Hess, CEO of the Hess Corp., has struck a deal to keep the gas company’s toy line in the family following its buyout by Chevron. Hess will also join the Chevron board of directors. The Hess trucks have been a holiday offering since 1964.
The Hess gas-station chain’s acquisition by Chevron may have wrapped up earlier this month, but when it comes to the Hess toy trucks that are a regular presence each holiday season, those are going to stay in the hands of the family.
John Hess, CEO of the Hess Corp, plans to buy back the toy-truck business from Chevron. The price has yet to be determined, but the deal is expected to close next year.
News of the return of Hess trucks to the Hess family came in a filing with the SEC on Wednesday. John Hess was also appointed to the Chevron board, the company announced in that filing.
Hess and the toy trucks have been linked together for decades—and they’re popular enough that when the merger was Chevron was announced, Mike Wirth, the CEO of that company, felt the need to announce the truck sales would continue when the merger closed.
It’s not just trucks. All Hess-themed toys, which have included helicopters, rescue vehicles, airplanes and even space shuttles, will revert to the Hess family. Hess also has struck a deal to retain the trademarks associated with his family name.
Independent appraisers will determine the value of the toy business, the filing said.
Hess toys have been sold since 1964 and have a rabid fan based. Some collectors have spend as much as $2,500 for past models.
Hess celebrates the 50th anniversary of the Hess Toy Truck with a first-ever Mobile Museum at the Hess Express on Wednesday, Nov. 5, 2014 in Rotterdam, N.Y.
No company has made as big a bet on AI agents as Salesforce. In fact, Salesforce founder and CEO Marc Benioff almost changed the company’s name to “Agentforce” to reflect just how much its future depends on AI doing tasks for workers. And Benioff has not been afraid to eat his own dog…um, drink his own champagne. He calls Salesforce “customer zero” for its own products. AI agents now successfully resolve 85% of Salesforce’s customer service inquiries and qualify its own sales leads 40% faster than before the advent of AI.
Overall, Benioff says these AI agents are so effective that they are now doing 30% to 50% of all the work within Salesforce itself. As a result, Benioff has announced that Salesforce won’t be hiring any additional software engineers, customer service agents, or lawyers. But the company is hiring sales people and “customer success” employees. Why? Because it turns out that building AI agents effectively still requires a good deal of learning and support—so Benioff wants to make sure there’s more Salesforce folks out helping customers adopt the AI tech.
It’s just one example of why Benioff told Fortune that he doesn’t agree with prominent AI startup CEOs, such as Anthropic’s Dario Amodei, who have predicted AI will result in a huge displacement of white collar workers. Benioff says there will still be plenty of jobs for humans, but exactly what they are may shift. Earlier this month, Fortune sat down with Salesforce founder and CEO Marc Benioff while he was visiting London. What follows is our conversation, edited for length and clarity. Fortune: You’ve said that agents are now doing 30%-50% of work within Salesforce. What does that actually look like internally?
Benioff: I’m looking at every single function and asking: how do we become an agentic enterprise?
Support is a great example. We’ve now done over a million conversations between customers and agents, and at the same time, there’s been about a million conversations between humans and customers. This has only been going on for six to nine months, and we’ve reduced our support cost by 17% so far.
The second piece is sales. We have so many leads that we can’t follow up on them all. Sales people basically cherry pick what leads they want to call back. Thousands of leads, tens of thousands of leads, hundreds of thousands of leads have never been called back. But in the agentic world, there’s no excuse for that. Every lead can be followed up on.
Fortune: With these efficiency gains, what is happening to the people who worked in customer support? Are they being transitioned to other roles, or are you shrinking the workforce?
Benioff: I’m constantly moving people around and reshaping the company. There’s a lot of scary narratives being planted by executives saying we’re getting big AI layoffs. But the thing about the AI we have—it’s not 100% accurate because it’s built on word models. Without our data set, these models are maybe 50% or 60% accurate. When you add in our data set, we’re getting 90% accuracy, but it’s not 100%. So you need the human in the loop. The humans are not going away. We’re being augmented by these technologies. We’re getting more productivity.
Fortune: You mentioned you’re not hiring engineers, support people, or even lawyers this year—only salespeople. What does this mean for younger people trying to enter these fields?
Benioff: We haven’t seen negative impacts play out. I think there are people doing a disservice to the psyche of business by saying things that may not be true. What I’m seeing is a lot more small and medium businesses, a lot more mid-market companies. There’s going to potentially be a lot more employment because everybody is augmented and has the ability to do more.
I think there’s going to be an explosion of small and medium businesses because they can do more, it’s easier to start one, you can create value more easily. We’re definitely seeing this in our business.
Fortune: How are you managing the transition internally when people need to move to new positions due to these efficiency gains?
Benioff: I don’t think it’s super complicated. We run something called Trailhead that we make available to customers and employees—you can get trained on all our products. We encourage all employees to do that, get certified, get badges, get trained. That gives them more mobility in the organization.
People need to be more flexible in their thinking. We encourage people to have a beginner’s mind. We tell them: with a beginner’s mind, you have every possibility. With an expert’s mind, you have a few. Which one is your choice? We have plenty of options. There’s nothing but opportunity. You can see all the open jobs we post externally and internally.
Fortune: There’s concern about AI leading to mass layoffs across the economy. Do you see that happening?
Benioff: I keep looking around, talking to CEOs, asking: what AI are they using for these big layoffs? I think AI augments people, but I don’t know if it necessarily replaces them. Even in radiology departments where AI can read scans, it’s not 100% accurate. The AI can read the scan, but it might get it wrong.
The reason is because a lot of this is still built on word models. Maybe there’s a future AI model that will be more accurate, but that’s not where we are right now. This is about humans and AI working together. I feel like I have a partner. But it doesn’t always get it right.
Fortune: Some worry that companies will create more of their own bespoke software using AI, potentially threatening traditional SaaS companies like Salesforce.
Benioff: It’s always been true that companies can DIY, but only certain companies can. Small and medium companies are not going to DIY because they don’t have big IT departments. But when you’re talking to a company like Barclays with 15,000 engineers, that’s where development teams have always looked at us as a potential competitor.
Apps will become more dynamic, where you’ll have the ability to dynamically generate apps. I’m seeing opportunities in that area, but we’re not at that point yet. Nobody can give me an example where someone has dynamically built an enterprise app out of AI. You can define an app in English now, which is exciting, but it’s still going to be built on a platform like ours with the same framework requirements.
Fortune: What’s your take on the current state of AI accuracy and capabilities?
Benioff: We need to be more real about what we have. We have this concept of intelligence coming out of these tokens, but it’s not that accurate. Users might have a model help them write a story, summarize it, edit it, translate it to Spanish or Arabic. And they’re like, “Oh, this is cool.” But at the end of the day, you’re still going to have to check it.
Every AI needs its own fact checker, and those fact checkers are humans, not AIs, because AIs can’t fact check because they don’t have that level of accuracy. The human has to stay in the loop.
Fortune: How do you see AI transforming different sectors?
Benioff: In healthcare, we don’t have enough doctors in small towns. There’s a company that spun out of Salesforce called Artera that has FDA certification for prostate cancer diagnosis and treatment plans. In our small town [where Benioff lives in Hawaii], we don’t have urologists or oncologists, so this can augment capability. It’s not a substitute for having specialists, but it can help.
In education, kids are using tools like Grammarly to write papers. But it’s not an excuse for teachers not to look at the Grammarly history to make sure kids are really learning. Education can be augmented, healthcare can be augmented.
But the burger shop, pizza shop, supermarket, dry cleaner, farmers market—a lot of the core of small towns probably won’t change that much. We’re probably not going to have any robotaxis around. No one’s going to get around to mapping our town for a while. This vision that we were sold that we’re just going to flip a switch and suddenly cars will start driving themselves, it turns out that wasn’t true. And I think that’s a good metaphor for what is going on in the AI industry more broadly. This is about humans and AI working together, not wholesale replacement of human beings.
Fortune: Tell me more about how you see that partnership between human and AI working?
Benioff: I think we are all augmented in our ability to do our jobs. I feel like I have a partner, right? So, for example, every year I sit down to write the Salesforce business plan—and we use this process we call V2MOM [Vision, Values, Methods, Obstacles, and Measures.] I always sit to do that with a Salesforce executive and now I also work with AI, as a Trinity. And I will say, okay, here’s my whole plan, give me a grade on it. And the AI will say ‘B plus’ But why is it not ‘A’? And it says, ‘Well, you left this out, right? You left that out.’ I’m like, ‘I did leave that out!’ It’s right. It’s very good, actually, at finding things that you’ve left out. So it’s good at finding gaps in your consciousness. I’ve been very impressed with that and it has altered my thinking a couple of times. But it’s you working with the system. AndI think that is a very empowering message for people and for enterprises. This is going to help your employees to be more productive and go forward faster. But it is not a wholesale replacement of human beings. Or if that opportunity exists, somebody needs to explain it to me, because, as the CEO of a 75,000 person company, I can’t figure it out.
Fortune: How does this change the way organizations are structured?
Benioff: It allows you to increase your span of control, reduce your layers [of management]. But people keep talking about how robots are going to wholesale replace departments. Where are these robots? Because I don’t see it. Sure, there are some robots out there—we’re going to have some at Dreamforce this year, walking around—but it is going to be very constrained, and it’s going to be somewhat limited, and it’s more about a vision for what’s possible over the long term. But let’s talk about where we are right now. And where we are right now is that every company can be an agentic enterprise but we have to keep the human in the loop.
Salesforce founder and CEO Marc Benioff has bet his whole company on AI agents. The tech makes people much more productive, he says, but isn't reliable enough to fully automate away jobs.
Apple’s annual Worldwide Developers Conference (WWDC) in June left some of Wall Street’s most prominent voices feeling oddly nostalgic—and not in a good way. According to Dan Ives, a top tech analyst at Wedbush Securities known for his prescient, albeit oft-times bullish, calls on Silicon Valley’s giants, was bearish about Apple. The atmosphere at this year’s WWDC, he wrote in a July 30 research note, “felt like an episode out of ‘Back to the Future’”—especially when it came to Apple’s treatment of artificial intelligence.
While fellow tech titans are racing to put AI front and center, Apple’s WWDC presentation was notable for its near silence on the subject. “Barely no mention of AI,” Ives remarked in his latest report, calling it “the elephant in the room.” He noted this was a stark contrast to the fever pitch seen at rival developer events. Analysts, investors, and developers tuned in with expectations of a grand reveal that would clarify Apple’s ambitions for the “AI Revolution.” Instead, they watched as the company leaned on traditional strengths—hardware updates and a strong services story—leaving the future of Siri and Apple’s broader AI roadmap conspicuously vague.
This omission has become a growing concern for analysts like Ives, who believe Apple is at a crossroads. “It’s becoming crystal clear that any innovation around AI at Apple is not coming from inside the walls of Apple Park,” he wrote, referencing the company’s famed Cupertino headquarters. While Apple has historically prided itself on building transformative technology in-house, Ives argues those days may be over.
Time for an acquisition?
“The time has come” for a big acquisition, he wrote, singling out Perplexity as a “no brainer” acquisition target—even if it costs upwards of $40 billion. According to Ives, such a move could instantly supercharge Apple’s lagging AI platform and help reposition Siri as the “next AI gateway for consumers.”
To date, Apple’s biggest acquisition remains Beats, a $3 billion deal in 2014—an order of magnitude smaller than the types of deals transforming the AI sector today. Apple’s traditionally cautious approach to M&A, Ives suggests, may be holding it back at a time when speed is everything. “AI technology on the enterprise and consumer landscape is happening at such a rapid pace Apple will not be able to catch up with an internally built solution,” he warned. The stakes, Ives estimates, are high: A successful AI monetization strategy could add as much as $75 per share to Apple’s valuation. “We believe [CEO Tim] Cook needs to rip the band-aid off and finally do an M&A deal,” he wrote.
The muted AI narrative at WWDC comes during a broader period of transition for Apple. While demand for iPhones—a bellwether for the company—remains globally robust, with particular improvement in China after a year of tough competition, the company faces mounting headwinds. Trade tensions, evolving supply chain risks, and increasing pressure from lower-priced rivals in Asia have stressed Apple’s core markets.
For now, analysts are keeping faith with Apple’s near-term performance. Wedbush maintains its “Outperform” rating, with a 12-month price target of $270 per share, citing expected growth driven by the upcoming iPhone 17 and continued strength in services. The stock was trading at $211.27 at the time of writing. But Ives is steadfast: the next chapter—centered on AI—will define Apple’s future.
To be clear, Cook has had a legendary run after succeeding Steve Jobs in 2011. Over the ensuing 14 years, Cook has led Apple through a period of extraordinary shareholder value creation—transforming a $300 billion company into a $3.2 trillion titan. Under his stewardship, Apple refined its operational efficiency, reinvigorated its services division, and delivered massive profits through established hits like the iPhone, AirPods, and Apple Watch. But as Fortune‘s Geoff Colvin reported, “suddenly his weaknesses are on display in the AI era.”
A chorus of analysts has joined Ives in arguing that Cook’s operational excellence and supply-chain mastery may not be enough to win the future, as the AI era upends the tech industry’s priorities. The first half of 2025, furthermore, has been bruising. The company’s stock is down about 16%, while rivals like Microsoft and Alphabet have soared on aggressive bets in generative AI. Apple’s “Apple Intelligence” initiative, which was supposed to position Siri and other features at the forefront of consumer AI, has failed to capture investor or developer enthusiasm. Meanwhile, key AI executives have left: Apple’s top AI executive Ruoming Pang recently defected to Meta, just weeks after another top Apple AI scientist, Tom Gunter, resigned. Simultaneously, Chief Operating Officer Jeff Williams—a long-touted Cook successor—is set to retire, forcing a broader management overhaul.
These departures have intensified debate about Apple’s innovation pipeline. Critics argue that under Cook, Apple has not delivered any genuinely transformative new product since the Jobs era, with most recent hits—like AirPods or the Apple Watch—refining rather than redefining product categories. The risk, analysts warn, is existential: If smart devices shift into new AI-centric paradigms and Apple fails to respond forcefully, the company’s platform risks obsolescence.
Research firm LightShed Partners rocked investors and the tech press in July by calling for a regime change. Analysts Walter Piecyk and Joe Galone insisted Apple needs a product-focused CEO, not one centered on logistics. They warned Apple’s lack of compelling innovation in AI and the relatively stagnant progression of Siri could irreversibly erode its competitive edge as Google, Microsoft, and OpenAI press forward.
Cook’s defenders argue Apple has a unique position: its platform lock-in gives it time to execute a measured AI response. And historically the company has rarely been first-mover—its success derives from perfecting existing technologies, not inventing them. Nevertheless, with AI’s foundational impact compared to the internet or electricity, allowing the competition to set the pace could be dangerous.
Ives is still backing Cook, with reservations. “Patience is wearing thin among investors and importantly developers,” he warned. The coming months, particularly as Apple’s product cycle heats up in September and beyond, may prove pivotal—not just for the company’s balance sheet. Ives said Wedbush believes Cook will be Apple CEO for another five years, at least, but there are mounting challenges, from the “tariff iPhone quagmire,” with Apple’s manufacturing operations in China directly exposed to trade uncertainty, to President Donald Trump’s displeasure with India as an alternate supply chain solution, to “missing the AI foundational strategy.” He concluded, “this chapter will define Cook’s legacy.”
“It’s time for Cook and Cupertino to face the new reality of this quickly morphing AI-driven tech landscape,” Ives wrote. “Because if they do not change, it will be a historic strategic black eye for Apple in our view.”
For this story, Fortune used generative AI to help with an initial draft. An editor verified the accuracy of the information before publishing.
Apple could lose up to $12.5 billion in revenue if the DOJ forces Google to change how it pays for default search placement, according to JPMorgan. The DOJ is weighing remedies in an antitrust case against Google’s search business, and a decision is expected in August. While Apple isn’t directly involved in the case, its lucrative deal with Google is at stake. J.P.Morgan expects moderate remedies, but estimates Google’s worst-case exposure could reach $18 billion.
Apple could lose up to $12.5 billion in annual revenue if a federal judge forces Google to change the way it pays for its search engine agreements, according to a new note from JPMorgan.
The Department of Justice is demanding that corrective measures be imposed after its antitrust case against Google found the tech giant to be a monopolist in general search. The DOJ’s landmark case, which concluded in 2023, accused Google of maintaining that illegal monopoly by paying billions to device makers and browser developers, including Apple, to be their default search engine. Judge Amit Mehta found Google liable for anticompetitive conduct in general search but is still weighing appropriate remedies.
Both Apple and Google have submitted potential remedies for the case, and Judge Amit Mehta is expected to announce his judgment on them in early August. While Apple is not directly part of the DOJ’s antitrust suit against Google, the company could be deeply affected by the results due to its lucrative Traffic Acquisition Cost (TAC) agreement with Google.
Google reportedly pays Apple between $15 billion and $20 billion per year to ensure its search engine is the default on Apple devices.
The note calculates that the end of the agreement could cost Apple $12.5 billion annually, about 15% of Apple’s earnings per share, as a worst-case scenario. Analysts also suggested that a middle ground, namely that Google loses exclusivity to make deals with Apple but Apple finds alternative monetization or compensation from competitors, could be possible. The best-case scenario is that the judge only demands minor adjustments to Google’s practices, and TAC payments remain largely intact.
JPMorgan said in the note that the middle-ground scenario looked to be the most likely outcome of the case. They see a more moderate remedy as the most plausible path forward, which could include changes such as increased user choice screens (where users pick a search engine rather than defaulting to Google) or partial restrictions on Google’s default status across Apple devices.
While analysts note that the unlikely scenario of a full loss of TAC revenue would be painful, Apple has significant resources to absorb the impact or negotiate alternative deals. The company could also look to boost its own advertising and search monetization efforts if exclusivity is curtailed.
If Google loses its exclusivity with Apple, it could also leave the tech giant to strike up potential deals with competitors such as Microsoft or DuckDuckGo.
In a separate note addressing the potential impact of corrective remedies on Alphabet, analysts noted that “the ultimate impact to Google will also depend on how Apple—not technically a party to the suit—proceeds in search on Safari once the Google-DOJ case is resolved.”
While they estimated that the worst-case scenario could put Google at a potential revenue risk of $18 billion, analysts reiterated they expected the judge to impose moderate remedies rather than a full ban on default agreements, which would help Google maintain significant traffic.
Representatives for Apple did not immediately respond to a request for comment from Fortune.
Leading U.S. energy products exporter Enterprise Products Partners warned that the Trump administration continuing to “weaponize” fossil fuel shipments to China would only backfire against U.S. shippers.
Enterprise co-CEO Jim Teague issued his complaints during the July 28 earnings call about two months after the U.S. Commerce Department temporarily banned ethane exports to China as a trade agreement negotiating tool after China placed restrictions on the exports of certain rare earth metals to the U.S. Teague is frequently vocal about his right-leaning political allegiances and has personally donated to Trump.
Both countries in July lifted their restrictions as part of a trade truce while a longer-term trade agreement is negotiated, which remains pending.
“We’ve been clear about the risk of weaponizing U.S. energy exports,” Teague said in the earnings call. “These kinds of actions rarely hurt the intended target and often backfire, hurting our own industry more.”
China is by far the largest importer of American ethane—the most common building block for petrochemicals and plastics worldwide. The U.S. is the only major exporter of ethane, making China entirely dependent on America’s exports. Roughly half of all U.S. ethane exports go to China, and the cargoes are not easily redirected to other nations. Enterprise (No. 78 in the Fortune 500) is the leading ethane exporter from its Houston Ship Channel terminal.
“We are fortunate this administration understands the important importance of energy and global trade, even if the Commerce Department may need a little reminder,” Teague said. “Unfortunately, we could face similar challenges in the future.”
Specifically, the Commerce Department temporarily required Enterprise and other exporters to apply for special federal licenses to export ethane and butane to China for the stated reason of the “unacceptable risk” the natural gas liquids could be utilized for a “military end use.”
Enterprise Executive Vice President Tony Chovanec said the Commerce Department’s actions cost Enterprise at least one ethane customer that wasn’t from China.
“What it has done and where it’s been a problem, you really compromised the U.S. brand for reliable supply and energy security when you just cut off a counterparty like that,” Chovanec said of the Commerce Department’s actions. “It’s been disruptive but, in the short term, we were able to manage through it with our diverse contract mix.”
Apart from China, he said Enterprise ships ethane to Mexico, Brazil, Europe, India, Vietnam, and Thailand.
Seeking alternatives
In a new report, the East Daley Analytics firm said China may look to develop alternatives for U.S. ethane to avoid geopolitical disruptions. China could push Middle Eastern and European nations to further develop their own ethane exports to diversify supplies.
“In recent years, U.S. ethane was the quiet powerhouse of global petrochemicals—cheap, abundant, and presumably insulated from geopolitics. That assumption no longer holds,” East Daley stated. “The US-China trade war has exposed a critical truth: there is no global substitute for U.S. ethane at scale. What was once a stable feedstock is now caught in the crosscurrents of trade policy and long-cycle demand risk.”
In the meantime, Enterprise is only doubling down on its ethane and propane exports businesses, including expanding its Houston Ship Channel facilities.
Enterprise this month also just opened the first phase of its new Neches River Terminal ethane export hub in Texas near the Louisiana border. The facility will initially be able to ship 120,000 barrels of ethane a day. A second phase coming online in the first half of 2026 will more than double the exporting capacity to 300,000 barrels daily.
Typically produced as a byproduct along with oil or natural gas, U.S. natural gas liquids volumes more than doubled in a decade to over 7 million barrels a day, nearly 6 million barrels of which are ethane, propane, and butane, according to the U.S. Energy Information Administration (EIA). That spike triggered a U.S. petrochemical plant construction boom, as well as burgeoning export markets because domestic supplies now far exceed demand. The ethane is typically converted into the petrochemical ethylene, which is used to make products such as polyethylene, the world’s most common plastic.
“The appetite for U.S. ethane and ethylene remains strong in both Asia and Europe,” Teague said.
In a market landscape still fixated on fears of stagflation and modest recoveries, Bank of America is sounding a contrarian—and decidedly bullish—note.
According to new note from BofA Research analysts, the next phase for the U.S. economy and equities might not be a routine recovery, but an outright boom.
“Today a confluence of factors argue that the key tail risk that may not be priced in is not just a cyclical recovery, but a boom,” they said.
5 reasons for a boom
BofA analysts cited five pillars supporting this more bullish case.
First is political will, arguing that with U.S. midterm elections a few quarters away, policymakers have strong incentive for near-term, pro-growth initiatives.
Second is Washington’s “One Big Beautiful Bill Act” (OBBBA) targeting domestic manufacturing.
Third is the massive overseas jolt gathering, with Germany recently enacting the largest stimulus package in EU history, while global reflationary forces are building elsewhere.
Fourth, BofA sees a broad expansion of capital expenditures, with hyperscalers such as Amazon, Meta, Microsoft, and Alphabet set for nearly $700 billion in capital expenditures between 2025 and 2026. In addition, more non-U.S. companies plan to expand manufacturing capacity in the U.S., while municipalities are focused on updating aging infrastructure.
Fifth, BofA cited its proprietary “Regime Indicator,” a blend of macro signals including corporate revisions to earnings per share, GDP forecasts, and other emerging signals. It’s on the verge of flipping from a “Downturn” to a “Recovery”—a change that historically presages a rally in value stocks.
The dominant narrative in this indicator remains conservative, according to the BofA team, led by Savita Subramanian. In June, 70% of fund managers still predicted stagflation, with only 10% foreseeing a “boom” of above-trend growth and inflation. Yet, BofA argues, the catalyst for an upside breakout is real and imminent. If the Regime Indicator does indeed flip to “Recovery” in early August, historical precedent suggests a rapid rotation is likely.
So how healthy are these five factors actually looking?
Will there be enough spending?
Top economies have already pledged massive stimulus. In March, China unveiled plans to issue 1.3 trillion yuan ($179 billion) in special treasury bonds this year, plus 4.4 trillion yuan of local government special-purpose bonds.
Meanwhile, much of the EU’s stimulus still flowing from the earlier NextGenerationEU package is worth up to €806.9 billion (about $880 billion) through 2026. Major European economies have supplemented this with additional investments and, in some cases, targeted fiscal expansion.
Japan, South Korea, Canada, and Australia have adopted smaller-scale but still significant fiscal measures in 2025 to address sector-specific slowdowns, energy security, and household purchasing power. Most are focusing on targeted transfers, green investments, and industrial support.
Meanwhile, American companies have announced billions in new U.S. manufacturing, infrastructure, and technology investments since Trump took office, but these initiatives were announced before passage of the OBBBA.
Many investments are phased and slated for completion over the next decade, and it’s unclear how much can come online soon enough to play a role in the boom that BofA Research is projecting. Some of them, such as OpenAI’s $500 billion Stargate project, are reportedly struggling to raise funding to match the big numbers initially announced.
For this story, Fortune used generative AI to help with an initial draft. An editor verified the accuracy of the information before publishing.
Are you a step-checker? Do you look at your phone, watch, or other activity tracker a few times a day, to see if you’ve hit the 10,000 steps mark yet? Do you feel guilty if your step count doesn’t ever get over, say, 7,000?
What if the 10,000-steps-per-day mark was just a publicity campaign from the 1960s that caught the public’s attention, and recent science indicates that 7,000 is the true mark that carries a health benefit with it? That is exactly the scenario that’s playing out.
The latest large-scale analysis, published in The Lancet Public Health and drawing from over 160,000 adults across 57 studies worldwide, challenges the fabled 10,000-step mark. Researchers not only concluded that walking 7,000 steps per day was in fact linked to dramatic improvements in longevity and protection against a wide array of diseases, but that going the extra 3,000 steps didn’t make that much of a difference after all.
Why 10,000 steps became ‘the goal’
For years, “10,000 steps” has been consecrated as the gold standard of daily fitness. But the origin of that benchmark wasn’t medical—it was marketing. Ahead of the 1964 Tokyo Olympics, a Japanese pedometer called the “manpo-kei,” which translates to “10,000-step meter,” launched a global fitness trend. That catchy round number stuck, becoming the default goal for millions using wearable trackers.
The 10,000 steps benchmark just seems to be one of those things that lodges in your head. PopularYouTubers and fitness influencers run “10,000 step challenges” encouraging followers to meet or exceed the daily target, often featuring “walk with me” workout sessions. It’s been granted official status by digital apps, with the number “10,000” now a default setting on devices such as Fitbit. Corporate wellness programs, social media challenges, and public health campaigns also routinely use the 10,000-step mark as a motivational goal and badge of accomplishment.
The bombshell findings
The new research poured cold water on the idea of 10,000 as a scientific minimum. Compared to the least active group (2,000 steps), those who managed 7,000 steps per day saw:
47% decreased risk of premature death
25% lower chance of cardiovascular disease
38% reduced risk of dementia
6% lower cancer risk
22% lower incidence of depressive symptoms
28% reduction in falls
14% lower risk of developing Type 2 diabetes
What’s more, these massive benefits approached a plateau with 7,000 steps; walking all the way to 10,000 steps per day generated only small additional reductions in risk for most conditions. For some diseases—like heart disease—benefits increased slightly beyond 7,000, but for many others, the curve flattened.
“Although 10,000 steps per day can still be a viable target for those who are more active,” according to the abstract, “7,000 steps per day is associated with clinically meaningful improvements in health outcomes and might be a more realistic and achievable target for some.” The authors add that the findings should be interpreted in light of limitations, such as the small number of studies available for most outcomes, a lack of age-specific analysis and potential biases at the individual study level.
‘More is better’—but only up to a point
Walking more remains beneficial, particularly for those who are mostly sedentary. The study found the greatest jump in health benefits when moving from very low step counts (~2,000) up to 7,000 daily. For the general adult population, 7,000 steps—about three miles—delivers the bulk of the effect. For adults over 60, benefits plateau a bit earlier, around 6,000–8,000 steps, while younger adults may see the curve level off closer to 8,000–10,000.
The researchers also revealed that the pace of walking was far less important: just getting in the steps, regardless of speed, provided the protective benefits.
Rethinking the fitness message
This research could prompt a shake-up in public health messaging, which has long promoted aspirational but somewhat arbitrary targets. Fitness professionals and wearable device makers now have fresh evidence to advise clients and consumers that a daily goal of 7,000 is both realistic and powerfully protective. Then again, 10,000 steps is catchy.
For this story, Fortune used generative AI to help with an initial draft. An editor verified the accuracy of the information before publishing.
529 accounts are tax-advantaged savings plans designed primarily for education expenses, and recent legislation has significantly broadened their uses. As of July 2025 and the passage of the One Big Beautiful Bill Act (OBBBA), 529 funds can now be used for a much wider range of educational pursuits and related expenses.
Key features and recent legislative changes (2025):
Expanded K–12 qualified expenses: 529 accounts were previously limited to K–12 tuition (up to $10,000 per year), but they can now be used for additional expenses such as books, online educational materials, testing fees (e.g., SAT/ACT), dual enrollment fees, tutoring by qualified professionals, and educational therapies for students with disabilities. The annual limit for all K–12 expenses will rise to $20,000 starting January 1, 2026.
Broader postsecondary and career use: In addition to traditional college and university costs, 529 funds may now pay for adult learners’ and career changers’ credential programs, including professional licenses, certificates (including registered apprenticeships), and continuing education courses in fields such as automotive repair or food safety. Recognized credentials include those covered by federal programs and military career advancement resources.
529-to-Roth IRA rollover: Under the SECURE 2.0 Act (effective since 2024), up to $35,000 in unused 529 funds can be rolled over into the beneficiary’s Roth IRA, subject to annual Roth contribution limits and other conditions (such as the 529 account being open for at least 15 years). This allows families to avoid penalties on unused funds if a beneficiary doesn’t need all 529 savings for education.
Additional changes and flexibility: 529 funds can also be applied to student loan repayments (up to certain limits), pay for K–12 and higher education expenses across public, private, or religious institutions, and support a broader set of personal education and development goals.
Implications:
529 accounts now serve not just as college savings plans, but as comprehensive education savings vehicles adaptable to a variety of academic and professional needs. This flexibility recognizes modern realities, such as students pursuing alternative postsecondary training paths and adults shifting careers.
These updates provide greater clarity and planning assurance for families, especially those saving for children who may take nontraditional education or career routes.
Caveats:
Rules regarding eligible expenses, contribution and rollover limits, and state-level nuances may still apply, so consulting a tax professional or financial advisor is highly recommended for those planning to leverage these new benefits.
The expansion’s implementation details (such as some effective dates and regulatory guidance) are still emerging as of July 2025.
In summary, 529 accounts have evolved into versatile, tax-advantaged savings vehicles for many forms of education and career development, with recent Congressional changes making them more broadly applicable and beneficial for American families and individuals.
For this story, Fortune used generative AI to help with an initial draft. An editor verified the accuracy of the information before publishing.
The U.S.-EU trade deal has been blasted as too lopsided in favor of President Donald Trump, as it sets tariffs higher than Europe wanted and pledges hundreds of billions of dollars to be spent in America. But according to an analyst at the Brookings Institution, that ignores a crucial geopolitical angle: The EU needs U.S. weapons to help Ukraine fight Russia.
The trade deal President Donald Trump announced Sunday with European Commission President Ursula von der Leyen didn’t go over well in some parts of Europe.
One French executive said Trump “humiliated us,” and French Prime Minister François Bayrou described the deal as “submission.” Economist Olivier Blanchard blasted it as “completely unequal” and a defeat for the EU.
That’s as the U.S. sets a 15% tariff rate for most EU products, less than the 30% Trump threatened but more than the 10% Europe sought. The EU also pledged to invest $600 billion in the U.S., buy $750 billion of American energy products, and load up on “vast amounts” of U.S. weapons.
But according to Robin Brooks, a senior fellow at the Brookings Institution, the deal isn’t a defeat if you look at it from a different point of view.
“Instead, it’s recognition of economic and geopolitical realities whereby the EU needs the U.S. more than the other way around,” he wrote in a Substack post. “At the end of the day, the EU needs U.S. weapons to keep Ukraine afloat into its struggle for survival against Russia. That just isn’t a setting where you escalate a trade conflict.”
In fact, Trump has warmed up considerably toward the European view on Ukraine, which has been fighting off Russia’s invasion for more than three years.
After expressing deep skepticism on U.S. support for Kyiv, berating Ukrainian President Volodymyr Zelensky in the White House, and temporarily cutting off military aid, Trump has helped reinforce Ukraine.
Earlier this month, he vowed to send more Patriot missile-defense systems to Ukraine and agreed to a plan where European nations buy American weapons, then transfer them to Ukraine.
Trump has also indicated he’s fed up with Russian President Vladimir Putin’s lack of progress in peace talks. And on Monday, Trump gave Moscow less than two weeks to reach a deal or else face steep sanctions.
Meanwhile, analysts at Macquarie also noted that after markets previously saw the U.S. abandoning its global security obligations, the recent deals with the EU, the U.K., and Japan signal an effort to heal those relationships.
“In the background has been a renewed commitment to U.S. geopolitical engagement, too, of course—a recommitment to Ukraine’s security, taking out Iran’s nuclear assets, etc.,” they said in a note.
To be sure, Europe has also committed to rearming its own military forces and has pledged massive spending increases, including money for homegrown defense contractors.
But that will take time, as NATO forces are already highly reliant on and integrated with American weapons systems.
In February, the Danish Defense Intelligence Service assessed the risk from Russia once its Ukraine war stops or freezes in place.
Russia could launch a local war against a bordering country within six months, a regional war in the Baltics within two years, and a large-scale attack on Europe within five years if the U.S. does not get involved, according to a translation of the report from Politico.
“Russia is likely to be more willing to use military force in a regional war against one or more European NATO countries if it perceives NATO as militarily weakened or politically divided,” the report said. “This is particularly true if Russia assesses that the U.S. cannot or will not support the European NATO countries in a war with Russia.”
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