History as written to soothe the bagholders.
Current Disney CEO Bob Iger didn’t make Bob Chapek’s short-lived takeover any easier, according to this revealing report from CNBC.
Isn’t it funny how all these tech and science men have ties to Epstein? I wonder why! Anyway, Epstein invested with Thiel’s Valar Ventures — and that investment hasn’t previously been disclosed. Guess what that means? “There’s a good chance much of the windfall will not go to any of the roughly 200 victims whom the disgraced financier abused when they were teenagers or young women.”
Deadline reports on another round of mass layoffs at Disney, affecting hundreds of people. “...across divisions of Disney Entertainment, including marketing for both film and television as well as television publicity, casting and development,” as well as corporate financing.
This latest round comes just weeks after 200 employees were laid off in the TV and ABC News divisions.
The head of Airbnb on his company’s new redesign and the quest to sell you much more than travel.
As reported by The Information and Axios reporter Sara Fischer, CEO Barbara Peng emailed staff on Thursday announcing Business Insider is “scaling back on categories that once performed well on other platforms” and mostly exiting its search-reliant Commerce business in an apparent acknowledgement of Google Zero, despite Sundar Pichai’s rebuttals.
Now it’s shrinking, noting “70 percent of our business has some degree of traffic sensitivity,” while going all-in on AI with a push to use Enterprise ChatGPT, gen-AI site search, an AI paywall, and other products.
[theinformation.com]
Journalist Megan Greenwell’s new book Bad Company explores the ways private equity has transformed American business.
The Information reports that three years ago, Musk offered Apple an 18-month exclusive connection via SpaceX in return for $5 billion up front, and $1 billion per year after that to support satellite-connected iPhone features. If Apple didn’t take it within 72 hours, he threatened to announce a competing feature.
Apple went forward with Globalstar (the report also mentions a canceled “Project Eagle” effort with Boeing that would’ve delivered full-blown internet service), and before the iPhone 14 launched, Starlink announced a deal with T-Mobile. Later that year, Musk and Cook met at Apple HQ to discuss Twitter’s App Store presence, “among other things.”
[theinformation.com]
In the midst of Donald Trump’s tariff chaos, prices are rising at retailers like Walmart, Amazon, and Home Depot, according to data provided to The Verge by Bright Data, which tracks prices week over week. As of May 11th, for example, 21.5 percent of the 1.5 million tracked Amazon products had increased in price. Check out an interactive chart here.
“We’re constantly adjusting pricing,” Target CEO Brian Cornell said during an earnings call on Wednesday, as reported by CNBC. “Some are going up, some will be reduced, but that’s an ongoing effort that takes place each and every day.”
Last week, Walmart’s CFO directly linked tariffs with the potential for price increases, sparking a warning from Trump, who told the retailer to “eat the tariffs.”
Gerrit Kazmaier on what AI can really do and the quest to make enterprise software suck less.
The New York Times walked through one business owner’s tariff bill, breaking out all the taxes that stack on top of each other. On April 27th when the shipment arrived in the US, the total cost of tariffs was $34,389. Today, the tariff rate would be $12,954 now that Trump has slashed rates. His frequent tariff changes mean everyone is in a constant state of uncertainty.
[nytimes.com]
Warner Bros. Discovery did the right thing today — people mostly hated when HBO was cut from “HBO Max.”
Match Group, which owns Match.com and other big dating apps, announced its quarterly earnings today and announced a workforce reduction that new CEO Spencer Rascoff said will reduce “around 1 in 5 managers overall.” Based on its 2024 filing, Bloomberg says that’s about 325 jobs.
The company said recent developments have included rolling out a new AI-powered recommendation system for Hinge that “has driven a 15 percent increase in matches and contact exchanges.” Meanwhile, new “AI-enabled Discovery, Double Date, and The Game Game” launches for Tinder are targeting Gen Z users with “more social, low-pressure experiences.”
[ir.mtch.com]
President Paul Bascobert on distribution, press freedom, and the value of facts.
OpenAI board member Fidji Simo will transition from her Instacart role over the next few months to join OpenAI later this year, where Sam Altman says she will “focus on enabling our ‘traditional’ company functions to scale.”
Beginning May 2nd, prices on vehicles such as the Mustang Mach-E EV could jump as much as $2,000, which Ford says will arrive in US dealer lots by late June. The news comes after Ford declared the Trump administration’s tariffs are adding about $2.5 billion of costs for the company in 2025.
Drop-shipping packages straight from China to shoppers’ homes was kind of the whole point of retailers like Temu. In response to Donald Trump’s tariffs, Temu now tells Wired that it’s switching to a “local fulfillment model” where orders come from US warehouses. With the de minimis exception officially dead (at least for now), it’s no surprise that retailers are scrambling — especially sites like Temu, whose wide product offerings depended on the exception.
The increase in AI tools, deepfake technology, and fully remote jobs following the covid pandemic has enabled a new kind of scam: workers who take jobs with US and European companies under false identities and send their salaries to the North Korean government.
The US government estimates that teams of pretenders can earn up to $3 million each year, and workers can go undetected at companies for many months.
Monthly active users have increased 10 percent year-over-year to 678 million, up from 615 million, while subscribers jumped by 12 percent to 268 million. CEO Daniel Ek says “the short term may bring some noise” amid wider economic concerns, but that the platform’s freemium model will reassure customers to stick with Spotify “even when things feel more uncertain.”
Protecting broadband access is out — fighting diversity and the free press are in.
