If Pope Leo XIV had a seat on Tesla’s board, Elon Musk’s $1 trillion pay package would have been dead on arrival.

The 70-year-old pontiff slammed the widening income gap between the working class and the wealthy—specifically calling out the Tesla CEO as an egregious example of executive excess.

“CEOs that 60 years ago might have been making four to six times more than what the workers are receiving, the last figure I saw, it’s 600 times more than what average workers are receiving,” he told Catholic news site Crux in a September 2025 interview. “The news that Elon Musk is going to be the first trillionaire in the world: What does that mean and what’s that about?”

If that is the only thing that has value anymore, then we’re in big trouble,” he continued.

The Pope’s critique came in September 2025 as Tesla’s board approved a $1 trillion pay package for Musk—contingent on his ability to grow the electric vehicle company by eightfold over the next decade.

While Pope Leo is entitled to an over $400,000 yearly salary, on par with U.S. presidents and university chancellors, his concerns reflect broader anxiety about executive compensation. Among the 100 S&P 500 corporations with the lowest median worker pay, the average CEO compensation hit $17.2 million in 2024 as compared to an average median worker pay of $35,570, according to the Institute for Policy Studies. That’s a ratio of 632 to 1.

Billionaires’ wealth is booming—but their philanthropic giving isn’t

While everyday workers continue to struggle with inflation, wage stagnation, and a tightening job market, the wealth of the ultrarich soars. Billionaire wealth increased three times faster in 2024 than it did in 2023, according to Oxfam. And over the last decade, the top 1% increased their wealth by nearly $34 trillion—enough to eliminate annual poverty 22 times over at the highest poverty line.

Last year, Larry Ellison broke the record for the biggest one-day increase ever recorded in the history of Bloomberg’s Billionaire Index—with his net worth soaring $89 billion thanks to his tech firm Oracle’s rapid growth. At time of publication, Ellison’s net worth sits at $230 billion.

At the same time, many billionaires are behind on their pledges to give away their money through The Giving Pledge—the commitment launched in 2010 by Warren Buffett as well as Bill Gates and Melinda French Gates to give away at least 50% of their wealth to philanthropy during their lifetimes or in their wills.

Among the 256 signers, just nine have followed through with the pact; and even among those who donate, it’s largely given to intermediaries, according to the Institute for Policy Studies. Of an estimated $206 billion donated by the original 2010 Pledgers, roughly 80%, or $164 billion, has gone into private foundations.

And while The Giving Pledge told Fortune the IPS report “paints a misleading picture of the impact and intent of Giving Pledge signatories and the spirit and intent of the Giving Pledge,” the organization admitted there remain important questions that aim to “encourage greater giving.”

A version of this story originally published on Fortune.com on September 15, 2025.

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This story was originally featured on Fortune.com

Any time one airline seeks to buy rival, the proposed transaction attracts anti-trust scrutiny and political controversy practically unmatched in any other realm of M&A. And due to its scale in an already highly-concentrated sector, and potential to raise fares, limit choice, and curb the frequency of service to dozens of smaller markets, this mother of all unions would face far fiercer than usual opposition on multiple fronts. Hence, it’s a long shot. But the industry insiders Fortune interviewed swear that it’s by no means impossible. The reason: The Trump Administration’s attraction to grand gestures—you can call it broad exercises in industrial policy—that remake wide swaths of the economy over (and may sideline the usual top goals such as ensuring strong competition).

Here are five burning questions this potential mega-merger raises.

How did United’s unusual quest come about?

The week of April 13, Reuters revealed, apparently for the first time, a White House meeting held on February 25th to discuss the over half-a-billion dollar re-development project planned for Dulles International Airport near Washington, D.C. Reuters reported that President Trump hosted United Airlines CEO Scott Kirby at the confab. United’s the dominant carrier at Dulles, claiming an 82% market share. Fortune has further learned from people familiar with the talks that Susie Wiles, the President’s chief of staff, was instrumental in organizing the discussion. According to these sources, Wiles is strongly committed to the sweeping Dulles revamp that includes a new United concourse and would like to see Trump receive recognition for the new Dulles. “The president won’t rename Ronald Reagan Washington National for himself!” quips an industry insider. Texas governor Greg Abbott also attended, say people Fortune spoke to. Both airlines are crucial to the Lone Star State’s economy: American is headquartered in Ft. Worth, and United dominates George W. Bush Intercontinental in Houston.

According to the Reuters piece and other accounts, Kirby floated the joining of forces concept directly to the President. Kirby contended that the combination would achieve the giant scale required to better battle international airlines that, he’s noted in the past, are often heavily subsidized by their governments, handing them an unfair edge. In a September 2025 interview, Kirby observed that foreign-flagged carriers supply two-thirds of seats on flights headed abroad from U.S. airports. Yet around 60% of the passengers are U.S. citizens. Kirby reportedly emphasized to Trump that by attracting a larger proportion of international traffic, this super-carrier would hike American competitiveness and reduce our overall trade deficit. Neither Reuters nor other news organizations reported that Trump expressed a pro or con view on the Kirby idea.

Asked about the proposed prospect of a United acquisition of American at a briefing on April 15, press secretary Karoline Leavitt stated that “It’s not anything we have a position on or are commenting on. I know the idea has been proposed by private industry but it’s not something the President or White House have an opinion on or are weighing in on at this time.”

How do soaring fuel prices play a role in United/American merger interests?

From 2005 to 2016, the U.S. airline industry endured a consolidation wave that reduced the number of major players from nine to the current Big Four, American, United, Delta and Southwest, the group that now controls 80% of the domestic market. In many of those deals, a jump in the price of jet fuel proved the tipping point forcing weaker carriers into the arms of stronger rivals, including America West’s takeover of U.S. Airways (2005), Delta’s acquisition of Northwest (2008), and Southwest’s purchase of AirTran (2011). Since the start of the Iran conflict on February 28, the price of jet fuel has jumped from $100 a barrel to nearly $200. That spike and especially the likelihood that after the conflict ends, costs will remain well above the pre-war level, is hitting the weaklings far harder than than the thriving warriors, especially the two biggest profit makers, Delta and United.

Of course, the leap triggered by the damage to oil infrastructure in the Middle East and closure of the Strait of Hormuz happened after the White House session on Dulles International. But American’s fragile financial state makes it highly vulnerable to any oil shock: In 2025, it earned just $111 million on $55 billion in revenues, and the interest expense on its crushing $37 billion in debt pretty much erased its operating income. By comparison, United posted $3.5 billion in profits on $59 billion in sales, numbers that give it lots of cushion to withstand all rough weather. Like Delta, United’s thrived by luring premium customers, especially the business crowd that pays extra to reserve at the last minute, while American’s struggled in attracting that highly lucrative tier.

Once again, a leap in fuel costs––they represent between 20% and 30% of operating expenses––promises to unleash a new wave of buying that further narrows the roster. As Delta CEO Ed Bastian said on Delta’s Q1 earnings call, “Over my career, I’ve seen many periods of disruption in this industry. And time and time again, high fuel prices have been the most powerful catalyst for change, separating the winners and forcing weaker players to rationalize, consolidate, or be eliminated.” American, the largest airline in the world, is also one of the most vulnerable to the force that more than any other, has reshaped the industry.

How would routes be affected if American merged with United?

A deal would create a colossus potentially wielding much greater power, in far more markets, than any airline ever. As of today, one of the two carriers hold market shares of 44% or more in eleven of the nation’s 50 largest airports. American’s captured 44% in Phoenix, 66% in Miami, 72% in Philadelphia, and 86% in Dallas-Ft. Worth, while United towers at 50% in Denver, 55% in San Francisco, and 75% in Houston. Locking arms would lift their slice of the passenger pies in the New York and Chicago airports, and in LAX, respectively to 45%, 70% and 46%. They’d also rise to number one from lesser status in Honolulu, Ft. Myers, West Palm Beach, Pittsburgh and San Antonio.

A recent report from Raymond James observes that today, American and United respectively command 70% or more of traffic respectively on 35% and 27% of their routes. Prior to any divestitures, United-American would reach or exceed that “highly concentrated” benchmark on around two-thirds of their city pairs.

The rub for passengers and regulators: Airlines make the most money when they’re either a monopoly carrier on a route, or face just one other competitor. Mike Fitzgerald, an analyst for Cowen & Co., projects that the pro-forma carrier would have no fewer than 287 of those metro-to-metro connections. What’s good for United could be a downer for travelers, and traditionally, anything that shrinks the list of rivals linking the same two metros from a longer roster to just one or two raises red flags for regulators.

Let’s get real: How likely is the deal to happen?

The Trump approach to airline consolidation represents a sharp departure from the Biden template. The previous administration quashed JetBlue’s purchase of Spirit in 2024—Spirit then went, and remains bankrupt––and successfully sued to nix a joint venture between American and JetBlue called the Northeast Alliance. By comparison, under the Trump regime Allegiant in mid-March gained antitrust approval for its acquisition of Sun Country after a quick review. The posture of Transportation Secretary Sean Duffy is particularly revealing. In a recent interview on CNBC, Duffy stated that he “sees room” for airline mergers. He also declared that the President “loves big deals,” suggesting that the POTUS might get a kick from green-lighting a biggie in this fabled, super-high-profile sphere.

Still, a United purchase of American would unleash strong opposition from state attorneys-generals who’d fear that their residents would suffer shrunken schedules and pricier tickets. Unions might also rebel since it’s notoriously hard to integrate seniority lists for the likes of pilots and flight attendants. Most of all, even though the Trump Administration favors a lighter regulatory touch, the near-monopoly clout the combination would exert on so many routes might prove a no-go for its DOJ.

But here’s the roadblock that may be decisive, and it has nothing to do with the opposition of regulators, AGs or unions. Duffy has cautioned that a major merger would require that the airlines “peel off some of their assets,” meaning axe gates and landing slots at airports where they hold extremely strong positions. Those requirements would clear the runways for competitors, including low-cost carriers, can ramp the competitive heat. That’s a big negative for United: The obligation to sacrifice many lucrative routes would undermine a lot of the potential benefits of the deal. The acquirer would also need to assume all of American’s massive debt. Yet United wouldn’t be getting full value due to all the carveouts at airports where competition is lowest and its profits potentially the highest. Plus, past cases show that it’s time consuming and expensive to combine reservation and computer systems, and fleets and workforces. So big expenses come up-front, and the benefits of consolidation––which may be minimal considering what’s “peeled off”–may be minimal.

So by conventional standards, the odds are long. On the other hand, the industry’s seldom seen a more daring swashbuckler than Scott Kirby. He’s done it twice before, and he recognizes that if it doesn’t happen under fellow wheeler-dealer Trump, it will never happen. News of Kirby’s proposal to Trump at the White House was a big surprise. A United and American flying under the same flag is probably a surprise too far.

Is Carl Icahn waiting in the wings?

Until all the speculation over United-American erupted, the takeover talk centered around JetBlue. In early 2024, legendary investors Carl Icahn took a 10% stake in the airline, and subsequently won two board seats. The Icahn blueprint typically revolves around buying into troubled targets on the cheap, then putting them in play. Now, JetBlue has reportedly hung out a “for sale” sign. Media reports say the Queens-based carrier’s hired advisers to pitch Alaska Airlines, Southwest and United. At age 90, the wily Icahn must know that the chances that Kirby wins American are long. But the mere size and scariness of that whale may make a United, or another airline’s, bid for JetBlue look harmless by comparison, especially since the Trump Administration’s already shown leniency on the Allegiant takeover of Sun Country.

No one’s talking about Icahn in the scenario making all the noise. But when the condensation trail clears, it could be this seasoned warrior behind the scenes who helps orchestrate the next big sale—a sale that’s part of still another fuel-shock-driven upheaval where the weak performers will need shelter. Who ends up with whom is a game to flummox even the greatest oddsmakers.

This story was originally featured on Fortune.com

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This story was originally featured on Fortune.com

“The IPO is important for us to attract the most talented engineers to join us, to buy more GPUs, and to collect more data,” Victor Huang, Manycore’s chair and one of its cofounders, told Fortune ahead of the trading debut.

Manycore shares closed at 18.60 Hong Kong dollars ($2.38), 144% above the offer price of 7.62 Hong Kong dollars.

The Hangzhou-based startup is a bet on “spatial intelligence,” moving beyond the word- and language-based work of large language models like OpenAI’s GPT and DeepSeek’s V3 to instead create AI models that can autonomously work in the real world.

These programs, also called “world models,” are key to operations like robotics and autonomous driving, where machinery has to react to external stimuli, like how a robotaxi needs to slow down in response to changing traffic conditions. 

Huang described spatial intelligence as similar to a person or animal’s innate ability to understand the world around them. “When you enter a room, you can understand where you are and what’s in front of you. And if you want to take a seat, you can understand which seat is empty,” he explained.

“People are now trying to apply AI in the physical dimension,” Jixun Foo, senior managing partner at the Singapore-based venture capital firm Granite Asia, and an early backer of Manycore, said. He pointed out that viral videos of humanoid robots dancing, while impressive, are often carrying out pre-programmed routines. “If you want a different performance you have to program it again. You can’t just tell the robot to do this or that action.”

Graham Uden for Fortune

Some of AI’s biggest names are also working on “world models.” Both ImageNet creator Fei-Fei Li and former Meta chief scientist Yann LeCun see these models as the next step in AI development. 

LeCun has argued that video data can help train world models, but Manycore and Huang instead think the startup’s vast repository of 3D assets will be a more useful data set. “I don’t believe that if you have enough video, you can train the rules of the physical world,” Huang said.

Instead, “we’d accumulated a huge amount of 3D data, almost 500 million assets from the real world. We had the training data, so we believed we could make the best physical AI in the world,” he argued. 

China’s AI sector has released many of its models on an open-source basis, which has helped to boost the reputation of its AI startups and won converts in the global tech sector, including in Silicon Valley. “People try Chinese AI. It’s free. It’s open-source. And when they try it, it’s great,” Huang explained. Manycore has already released several open-source models, including SpatialLM, a spatial language model that can understand and generate 3D environments, and SpatialGen.

Still, in recent weeks, some tech companies, like Alibaba and Knowledge Atlas, better known as Z.ai, have started to release models on a proprietary basis, at least in the initial stages, as monetizing AI work has proved tricky for Chinese companies.

But Foo thinks a company like Manycore can preserve its edge even if it open-sources its models. “For Manycore, it’s not just about their model, but also the data set they have built. That dataset is unique to them, right? If you have a competitive edge that you can hold on to, then you can open-source something,” Foo said.

The first of the ‘Little Dragons’ to go public

Manycore, founded in 2011, is one of the “Six Little Dragons,” an informal group of six tech and AI startups based in Hangzhou, now one of China’s leading AI hubs. Manycore is the first of the “dragons” to tap public markets; Unitree, the buzzy robotics manufacturer, will list on Shanghai’s stock exchange later this year.

The company got its start as a design software business, building Kujiale, a platform that lets users create 3D renders of interior spaces, and its international counterpart Coohom, which now serves customers in more than 200 countries. IDG Capital and Hillhouse Investment are among its previous backers.

Huang was an engineer on Nvidia’s CUDA team before returning to China to build a business around rendering. “The economy in the U.S. wasn’t doing well at the time, but in China, real estate was booming,” he recalled.

That work helped convince Foo, who spent time at HP, to back the company. “I used to use a lot of 3D software when I was designing HP printers,” Foo explained. “And I thought this was pretty cool: I was using it for mechanical products, and now they are doing it for a physical world.”

According to its IPO prospectus, Manycore generated 820 million Chinese yuan ($120 million) in revenue last year, growing by 8.6% from the previous year. It also earned a slim operating profit of 18.6 million yuan ($2.7 million), even as it posted an overall net loss of 428 million yuan ($62.8 million). 

China’s real estate market is still in the throes of a prolonged slump, which Foo admits is a “headwind” for Manycore. Still, the company is expanding into international markets. “What gives me comfort is the resilience of the team. They stuck in there, and they figured things out.”

Design companies have been hit hard in recent months; shares in Adobe and Figma have plunged as AI providers like OpenAI and Anthropic work design tools into their models. Some design startups are reinventing themselves as AI companies: Canva on Thursday launched a new suite of agentic offerings that allow users to automate much of the design process. 

A Hong Kong boom

This isn’t Manycore’s first attempt at public markets. The company was on track for a U.S. listing in 2021, before withdrawing its application after Beijing regulators scrutinized Didi Global’s U.S. IPO and forced the ride-hailing giant to delist, unnerving other Chinese companies considering U.S. listings. 

“Nowadays, the Hong Kong market is the best for a Chinese AI company,” Huang says. 

Manycore is just the latest AI IPO to hit Hong Kong’s market this year. AI and AI-related companies have led to a surge in debuts in the Chinese city, with listings raising almost $14 billion in the first quarter of the year. Some shares have surged by eye-popping amounts: MiniMax and Knowledge Atlas, two AI model developers, have risen by around 450% and 650% respectively since their early January IPOs.

More IPOs are on the way. Victory Giant, which makes printed circuit boards, hopes to raise $2.2 billion in its IPO; its shares will debut on April 21. Other startups reportedly considering IPOs are Kimi developer Moonshot AI and smart glasses manufacturer Rokid.

Bonnie Chan, CEO of Hong Kong Exchanges and Clearing, pushed back at this week’s HSBC Global Investment Summit against the characterisation of the market as simply a conduit for Chinese capital. “When people say that Hong Kong’s stock exchange is just hosting Chinese companies, it’s not doing those companies justice,” she said, noting that around 40% of companies that listed in Hong Kong last year generated more than half their revenue from non-Chinese sources. “I call them Chinese MNCs. They’re very international.”

China’s AI sector has been under fresh scrutiny from global investors since early last year, when DeepSeek—another of Hangzhou’s “Little Dragons”—released its powerful and surprisingly efficient models, changing the conversation about Chinese innovation.

Physical AI, in particular, is emerging as a Chinese strength. The country’s dense manufacturing ecosystem can produce robots, sensors, and advanced components at a cost below rivals in other countries. Heavy investment in the electrical grid also allows China to rapidly expand the data centres needed to train large models. “It’s not just a race on the foundational model,” Foo said. “It’s a race on the infrastructure. It’s a race on compute. It’s a race on energy.”

But Foo and Granite Asia, which was born from the Asia operations of former VC giant GGV Capital, aren’t entirely focused on the Chinese market. “We are more pan-Asian,” he explained. Earlier this year, Granite Asia partnered with DBS to launch a new $110 million fund to give the Southeast Asian bank’s customers “early access” to IPO-stage companies in the region.

“Our strategy is to be able to invest in companies early. We want to help them grow and scale outside of their home market,” Foo says. “We have a good pipeline of companies going IPO.”

Update, April 17, 2026: This article has been updated with Manycore’s first-day share performance.

This story was originally featured on Fortune.com

It was 2015, and Grede had built her own entertainment and talent agency, Independent Talent Brand, which saw her jetting between London and L.A. “I knew every manager, agent, publicist, lawyer in Hollywood, that was my job,” Grede recalls in an exclusive interview with Fortune. 

It put her in a perfect position to pitch her new idea: a radically inclusive denim brand tailored for women who’d been overlooked by mainstream fashion. In her mind, she’d already picked the perfect partner for the brand: Khloé Kardashian, who “embodied that idea right from the beginning.” The star had often been honest about her experience as the curvy sister. 

But here’s the catch: Grede hadn’t run a fashion business before, and the two had never worked together. Instead of waiting for an introduction, she boldly called the family matriarch and “momager,” Jenner herself. 

“I had an idea, and I formed the partnership in my mind,” the now 43-year-old self-made millionaire says. “The difference between me and someone else is that I made the phone call, I took the meeting, and I made it happen.

“I have no impostor syndrome and no delusions of who gets to run a business,” Grede adds. “I just thought, ‘If not me, then who?’”

Jenner asked Grede when she’d next be flying to L.A. to discuss the partnership face-to-face. At the time, Grede was only flying that way once a quarter, but she quickly lied and said she was heading there the next week. So that’s exactly what she did—and the rest is history. 

When Good American denim dropped a year later, it made $1 million on day one, making it the biggest denim launch in apparel history. And since then, she’s gone on to sit on the board of the Obama Foundation and become the first Black female investor on Shark Tank. Most recently, she’s teamed up with tennis champion Coco Gauff for a mentorship campaign with UPS.

Today, Grede says, she’s always advising founders to copy her, be more bold, and put themselves out on a limb: “An idea in your head is just an idea in your head. A lot of people talk and speak about things a lot—sometimes you just got to do.”

Emma Grede says she’s always been ‘audacious’

Grede’s confidence isn’t luck—or even something she developed alongside the billion-dollar success of her businesses. It’s a trait she was just born with. “I’ve got a lot of audacity, and I think that you need that to get to where you want to go,” the East Londoner tells Fortune.

In her late teens, for example, Grede had aspirations of working in Britain’s equivalent of Broadway. When the theater bosses ignored her handwritten notes asking for work experience, she stormed in there in person.

“I remember pounding the pavement in the West End,” she recalls. “I just thought because I didn’t get any answers, that maybe they weren’t getting my letters. So I took to hand-delivering letters.”

Even when she was holding down a day job, she’d boldly ask customers with enviable careers for work experience—and it would work.

“When I was working in a clothes shop, I would talk to everyone. I’d be like, ‘Where do you work? What would you do?’ If a stylist came in on a Friday and was doing a shoot on the weekend, I’d be assisting them on the weekend. I did that multiple times.”

She says she would actively put herself into “situations,” versus passively waiting for opportunities to come to her. After finding out where customers worked, she would follow up with: “Do you need some help? Can I come?”

Grede’s advice for jobless Gen Z: Kill your darlings

Millions of Gen Zers are currently unemployed—or rather, NEETs, not in employment, education, or training. 

Grede, meanwhile, has been working since the start of high school.

“I have had a job since I was 12,” she says. “I started delivering newspapers, then I worked in a deli, then I worked in about four different clothing shops, then I spent a year and a half doing work experience in every small designer and PR agency in London. Then I worked for Quintessentially, then I went to Inca Productions, where I worked for a fashion show production company. And I changed my job after about three years there. So I went from being an event producer to running the sponsorship department, and then I started my own company.”

Essentially, each experience led to the next. She treated every role—no matter how unglamorous—as a way to collect skills, contacts, and credibility that stacked into her next move. Thanks to a habit of speaking up and standing out, she squeezed real, résumé-worthy experience out of even the most unassuming jobs.

Of course, even Grede experienced her fair share of noes along the way: “I got very, very, very comfortable with rejection. If I think about how many things didn’t work out for me, there are a lot more than the things that seemingly on paper did work out.”

But she dusted herself off and tried again. It’s why her advice for those struggling to break in is to look at every experience as a step forward—even if it’s not the dream role yet. 

“I would think about the idea of transferable skills,” she advises Gen Z job seekers. “We all set ourselves up to think about exactly what we might want to do. And the reality is that you can learn pretty interchangeable skills anywhere.” 

Growing up, Grede was fixed on the idea of working in fashion. “I could have got a lot of those skills in an advertising agency or working in another creative industry,” she explains. Gaining experience at an art gallery or boutique and then working your way up the ladder is much easier than pining for a job at a fashion house straight out of college. You just have to put aside your ego and prioritize building momentum over perfection.

“I’d do anything to get yourself going in forward motion,” Grede explains. 

“In England, we have that lovely saying, ‘killing your darlings,’ and sometimes you just have to kill your darlings. You have to do whatever you’ve got to do to move forward. It’s better to just think about forward motion as opposed to being so fixated on what you’d originally imagined things would be like.”

A version of this story originally published on Fortune.com on Sept. 23, 2025

Read more success interviews from Fortune’s Orianna Rosa Royle:

• L’Oréal exec cut her teeth at luxury brands Chanel and Kiehl’s. She says the secret to her success was always saying yes
• TodayTix CEO took over at 31. He tells aspirational Gen Zers to ditch the ‘fake it till you make it’ act if they actually want to be successful
• Scale AI’s 30-year-old billionaire founder still shops at Shein and pulls up to work in a Honda Civic: ‘Act broke, stay rich,’ Lucy Guo says
• Too Good to Go CEO’s big break came when she left her consulting career without a plan. She says losing $100,000 is ‘pretty cheap’ to pursue your dreams
• The millennial CEO behind Britain’s first compostable coffee pod unwinds by sitting in his infrared sauna after work

This story was originally featured on Fortune.com

“I am writing with concern over mounting allegations of dangerously lax anti-money laundering prevention by Binance,” said Blumenthal, in the letters sent to the Justice Department and the U.S. Treasury’s Financial Crimes Enforcement Network.

Spokespeople for the DOJ and FinCEN also did not immediately return requests for comment.

As part of a 2023 settlement with Binance over compliance shortcomings, the U.S. government installed two monitors, who separately report to the DOJ and FinCEN, to ensure the exchange put in place appropriate measures to overhaul its compliance program. The monitorships, which began in 2024, were part of a larger plea deal in which Binance paid a $4.3 billion fine related to its failure to impose proper money-laundering and sanctions oversight.

Binance has since sought to project an image of corporate responsibility, but recent reports over Iranian crypto flows have prompted Blumenthal—along with other Senate Democrats—to probe the crypto exchange and the Trump administration over whether the exchange’s internal operations match its public rhetoric. 

Amid the public back-and-forth, Binance’s two monitors, whose roles include flagging any misconduct, have remained quiet.

Frances McLeod, the Justice Department’s chosen monitor and a founding partner at the consulting firm Forensic Risk Alliance, did not immediately respond to a request for comment. Neither did Sharon Cohen Levin, FinCEN’s monitor and a partner at the law firm Sullivan & Cromwell.

Monitorship on pause?

Blumenthal’s questioning comes after multiple outlets reported that Binance fired internal investigators who had warned top executives that over $1 billion had flowed through the exchange to Iran-linked wallets. Binance has said that the firings of the investigators were unrelated to their findings on Iranian flows, and that the crypto exchange maintains a rigorous compliance program. Spokespeople for the crypto exchange did not immediately respond to a request for comment on Blumenthal’s inquiry into the status of its monitors.

The Senator’s letters also follow a 2025 report from Reuters that stated that the Justice Department had paused its corporate monitorships as part of an informal review. In March 2025, a judge granted the DOJ’s request to end the monitorship of Glencore, the international mining company caught up in a foreign bribery scheme. Later that year, the DOJ also scrapped the requirement for the airplane manufacturer Boeing to have its own independent monitor.

Critics of monitorships, or when governments ask independent third parties to oversee a company that’s run afoul of the law, argue that they’re costly burdens for corporations or just not effective. 

In 2013, a U.S. court imposed an antitrust monitor onto Apple after ruling that the tech giant engaged in a price-fixing conspiracy. Other marquee companies to receive monitors include Deutsche Bank, Volkswagen, and Walmart. 

This story was originally featured on Fortune.com

“The economy is constantly shifting and no single household, no single consumer, is experiencing things exactly the same way,” Taylor Bowley, an economist at the Bank of America Institute, told Fortune in an exclusive interview. “When people look at GDP for instance, those prints look pretty good, but then when we really dive deep into some of this by income, we’ve also seen childcare has been a topic that has been particularly prevalent for so many households, because from an economist’s term, childcare isn’t necessarily a necessity, but for so many families it totally is. That is not a discretionary item.”

The gap shows up clearly in how the CPI is constructed. The Bureau of Labor Statistics assigns each category a “relative importance” weight based on average household spending.

As of December 2025, the combined category of tuition, school fees, and childcare accounts for just 2.5 of the index. But most of that reflects college tuition (1.35), while daycare and preschool make up just under 0.7.

That puts childcare on par, in CPI terms, with categories like water and sewer services, shopping club memberships, or tools and hardware—an unlikely reflection of how central it is for many families.

This isn’t an error; it’s a feature of the system. The CPI is designed to reflect average spending across all households, including those without children. But for families who do pay for childcare, those costs can take up a far larger share of their budget—meaning price increases will hit them much harder than the headline inflation data suggests.

“We’ve seen that childcare in our data has continued to rise,” Bowley adds. “The cost of childcare obviously impacts labor force decisions, and that in turn impacts labor growth as a whole.”

Consumers are well aware of this fact: In 2024, Pew Research asked nearly 9,000 people why they had chosen to, or did not, have children. The most popular reasoning was that either these people didn’t want to, or it just never happened. But 12% of respondents also said they couldn’t afford to raise a child.

The reality of childcare

Last year, Bowley reported that U.S. childcare costs were rising 1.5 times faster than overall inflation, up 5.2% year-over-year (YoY) in September.

Regional differences are also becoming more noticeable: New England was up 6.6%, for example, and the West North Central division surged 8.2% YoY as of September. Meanwhile, in the South, Nashville led major cities with a more than 6% increase from 2024 averages.

In the October note, Bowley highlighted that the share of households with more than one source of income making childcare payments each month is falling every year, most prominently among lower-income households. It stands to reason that paying for childcare has become so expensive that parents have little choice but for one of them to leave their jobs.

This “very much disproportionately impacts women,” Bowley added, “We’ve looked at how moms have traded in, to some extent, careers for childcare. One reason is that childcare has been, at least within CPI data, and very much so also within our own data, particularly sticky. It is still rising around 1.5 times the rate of overall inflation, which is a real pain point for a lot of families.”

This story was originally featured on Fortune.com

“In 30 years, we’re going to look back and say ‘oh, remember that period of time where those crazy software companies were selling seats for 90 to 95% margins?’” he said. “We’ll look back on that the same way we look back on mercantilism. ‘Remember when the East India Trading Company could move spice?’”

Ding—who went from growing up in a fishing village in China to spending years as a venture capital data junkie—has a unique vantage point on the so-called SaaSpocalypse. Ding is the CEO and cofounder of TextQL, a startup using AI agents to replace the laggard, consultant‑driven process of analytics with a speedy, plain language‑based interface. Data has long been at the center of the rise of enterprise software—and internal company data has always been difficult to wrangle in a way that AI is changing rapidly. 

On one hand, AI is about to clean up messy enterprise data, says Ding. On the other hand, that means more people than ever are going to be asking questions about that data. 

“Analytics is about to experience probably the most violent Jevons paradox anybody’s seen in a very long time,” said Ding, referencing the 161-year-old theory that more technological efficiency leads to more usage, not less. “Today, the cost of asking a question to seeing a chart that tells you what to do… is two weeks, a person, maybe $5,000–$10,000 of salary spent chasing those numbers down. With language models, with what we’ve built… you’re looking at an increase of five to six orders of magnitude, all‑in.”

Ding cofounded TextQL in 2022 with Mark Hay, and just closed $17 million in strategic investment led by Blackstone’s early-stage investment arm, Blackstone Innovations Investments, Fortune has exclusively learned. There’s a natural question here: Does Ding worry that what he’s doing with analytics can be easily replicated by the large AI labs? We’ve seen versions of this before, especially around coding: A few successful startups prove the market out, and OpenAI and Anthropic then swoop in with their own product (and the full force of their balance sheets). 

“I’m vaguely self‑aware that Anthropic wants to have this ecosystem of companies building within all the verticals,” said Ding. “And if a vertical grows fast enough, they want to run after it.”

In the short-term, Ding says he’s not worried, that he believes the challenges will only start when AI analytics produces its own $100 million ARR winner. In the meantime, his plan is to build in low‑liquidity markets like financial services and healthcare. Blackstone CTO John Stecher believes that, while the large labs remain “critical enablers,” they aren’t necessarily equipped to handle the enterprise data problem.

“The challenge enterprises are running into isn’t model capability; it is making AI work reliably, securely, and cost-effectively on real, messy internal data with the right security, governance, and cost controls,” Stecher wrote to Fortune. 

Ding brings up a good point, ultimately: That for all the talk around how data and AI are entwined, the foliage of the data jungle has proven much harder to slash through than people were anticipating even 18 months ago. But how we engage with asking questions of our data at work, inevitably, will look very different. 

“What does analytics look like in 150,000 years?” he said. “It probably looks like some entity, probably not human, that asks: ‘Of all the Dyson spheres currently orbiting around Alpha Centauri, how much copper alloy was mined from Titan?’ It’s analytics running autonomously.”

See you Monday,

Allie Garfinkle
X: @agarfinks
Email: alexandra.garfinkle@fortune.com

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This story was originally featured on Fortune.com

Good morning. Jamie Dimon of JPMorgan Chase says the economy is resilient but vulnerable to risks. Citigroup CEO Jane Fraser says her company is resilient and off to an “exceptionally strong start.” Over at Bank of America, Brian Moynihan says the U.S. consumer is resilient, despite soaring gas prices. And Wells Fargo chief Charlie Scharf is here to remind us that life is complicated.

Welcome to earnings season! Banks are typically first to report (thank you, regulators!), offering some insights into the economy and a taste of what’s to come. Fraser had a new story to tell, with strong revenue and a restructuring plan dubbed “Project Bora Bora” that she says is 90% complete. Dimon delivered a familiar tale that somehow manages to instill calm and panic at the same time. We know consumers are resilient and oil prices hurt. Dimon already warned stagflation could be “the skunk at the party” in his shareholder letter. Two other themes to watch from 10-Qs and earnings calls of the Big Four banks.

Last Days of Disco. Investors are trading like frenzied night-clubbers wondering if the party’s about to end. Oil prices are up. They’re down. Peace talks are on! No, they’re not. Who’s betting what in the prediction markets? What’s the Fed going to do? Wait: the new Fed chairman is invested in Polymarket? Sell! Buy! Fear. Greed. That volatility produced a lot of profits and trading revenue for the banks, not to mention record bonuses for the traders. But volatility can reflect both uncertainty and mounting risk.

Don’t panic over private credit. Yes, there’s a $265 billion meltdown. Yes, the Fed wants more details on banks’ exposure to the largely unregulated $1.8 trillion market in non-bank lending. The Big Four did collectively report more than $128 billion in exposure to private credit loans this quarter. But Bank of America reported having “structural insulation” from loss in a market they characterize as “largely a repricing of liquidity.”  Dimon, the man who warned us that “when you see one cockroach, there are probably more” a few months ago, is now “not particularly worried.” Citi, which has arguably just recovered from the 2008 financial crisis, is “constantly stress testing” and  comfortable” with its portfolio. Wells Fargo isn’t worried, either, and Treasury Secretary Scott Bessent doesn’t see a systemic problem. So relax, and go worry about that $39 trillion national debt instead.

Contact CEO Daily via Diane Brady at diane.brady@fortune.com

This story was originally featured on Fortune.com

Although Gen Zers are facing layoffs, hiring freezes, and AI anxiety at an unprecedented rate, landing a job at the HQs of Apple, Meta, and Alphabet “has always been a long shot,” Rogers warns. 

He would know: Rogers is one of the few British Silicon Valley CEOs. He started out in the small town of Grimsby—better known as the butt of a Sacha Baron Cohen movie than as a tech launchpad—and worked his way up to the top job in San Francisco via stints at Dell, Microsoft, Amazon Web Services, Salesforce, ServiceNow, and more.

“I don’t remember it being easy back in the day, honestly,” he exclusively tells Fortune of breaking into Silicon Valley. “For me, for example, it was never going to be possible that I’d go straight to the hottest tech company in the hottest role. I always felt like I was going to have to work my way in, and I was going to have to work through experiences elsewhere that I would shine at.”

And now that Rogers is in the prime position of hiring and shaping the Bay Area’s workforce, he says that’s still the case. Despite the explosion of AI creating more tech jobs, competition for those entry-level roles is just as hard. 

Asana CEO’s advice for Gen Z looking to land jobs in Silicon Valley

Ask Rogers for advice on the next generation trying to crack California’s tech scene, and he doesn’t have a quick hiring hack or an interview stunt.

Instead, he recommends quietly building a résumé that’s impossible to ignore—even if it takes years and detours through less prestigious companies. Or as he put it: “Maybe come into the side door instead of the front door.”

Rogers stresses that landing an entry-level job, internship or grad scheme in big tech right after graduating “is a long shot.” Not impossible, but unlikely. For most Gen Zers, he says, the best route in is to build credible experience somewhere that’ll teach you the tech skills the big names will eventually want.

“For those of us that don’t get through the front door, it’s okay,” he adds. “There are side doors along the way, and you’ve just got to build towards that.”

“There are incredible experiences that you can get, maybe in smaller companies, maybe in a slightly different region, maybe in a slightly adjacent category. After a stint there, you would be super valuable.”

The mindset hack that’ll eventually lead to Silicon Valley success—or rather, his version of the donut box

Rogers is proof that a rejection letter from your dream tech company isn’t the end. He too, had to work his way up the ranks through “side doors” to get to where he is today. “My story ends in Silicon Valley,” he says. “But in the interim, I did really important roles in Texas. I did really important roles in Seattle, etc.” 

By the time he finally made it to San Francisco, he’d stacked enough varied experience that he could pull from a deep toolkit—what he jokingly calls his “donut box” version of presenting himself to tech bosses.

Ultimately, if you chip away at building skills in your twenties, the salary and title will come later. It’s slower than a literal donut box stunt (or even shooting bosses’ cold emails, or wearing a placard sign asking for work), but far more reliable.

“I once received some advice from someone, and they said learning before earning,” he adds. “You should make sure that the learning phase of your career extends as long as possible before you even think about the earning phase.”

“What that really meant for me was there’s no shortcut to putting the building blocks in place that you’re going to need to be successful.”

This story was originally featured on Fortune.com