Author: Editor

After a banner first half of the year for many big-name, tech-focused hedge funds, July’s been a sobering stretch.Popular artificial-intelligence-linked stocks like SanDisk, Bloom Energy, and CoreWeave tanked in mid-July amid jitters in Asian markets. Mega-cap stocks like Google and Meta faced minor sell-offs as they continue to increase spending on AI and compute capabilities, with nearly all of the companies’ free cash being allocated to the trend. Large chipmakers such as TSMC and Micron were dragged down.As the industry was waiting until the first week of August to see just how bad July had been, a massive market event…

Tom Holland stars as Peter Parker, aka Spider-Man in Sony and Marvel’s “Spider-Man: Brand New Day.”SonySpider-Man is already webbing up a massive box-office haul.Sony and Marvel’s “Spider-Man: Brand New Day” secured $72 million in preview ticket sales, the highest collection for any domestic film in Hollywood history. The previous record holder was 2019’s “Avengers: Endgame,” which tallied $60 million ahead of its opening weekend.”The demand for ‘Spider-Man: Brand New Day’ is nothing short of astonishing,” said Paul Dergarabedian, head of marketplace trends at Rentrak. “For a film to earn more than $70 million in pre-shows is unprecedented, and it reflects massive enthusiasm…

This as-told-to essay is based on a conversation with Jennifer Lemcke, CEO of Weed Man. It has been edited for length and clarity.I was not happy when my dad decided to purchase a Weed Man lawn care franchise. At the time, I was in 10th grade. It was difficult to accept that we were moving from our home near Toronto to Ottawa, just to pull weeds. To this day, my dad swears there was a family meeting about it, but I don’t think there was.Despite my reluctance, I made friends in Ottawa and settled in quickly. I’ve always been very…

More and more families are choosing to move to semi-rural communities and developments outside the suburbs, according to 2025 Census data. My family almost did, too.In 2019, we bought an off-grid house on 40 acres in northern New Mexico. Then, in 2021, our son was born, and after a traumatic postpartum experience, we decided to move back to the St. Louis area, where my wife is from.At first, we thought we wanted land and space. We figured that even an acre or two would allow us to stretch out and feel close to nature, all while enjoying the benefits of…

Scott Cunningham has a fondness for Ferraris. Judging by what else he collects, he also has an affinity for Porsches, superbikes, electric guitars, and wine.For years, he admired his collection from home.Once his children were grown, and he and his wife downsized from a house with a four-car garage to a townhouse with a one-and-a-half-car garage. Suddenly, Cunningham needed a place to put his stuff.”I had a couple of track cars, a couple of sports cars, and a couple of motorcycles,” Cunningham told Business Insider.He tried storing them in regular business parks, but the space never felt like it was…

From railroad hubs and river towns to hard-fought votes and alleged bribes, America’s state capitals took wildly different paths to power.Today, in 17 states, the capital is also the most populous city. Phoenix, the nation’s most populous state capital, has more than 1.6 million residents, while Montpelier, Vermont, has fewer than 8,000, according to the latest Census estimates.But population was often far from the deciding factor when designating a state capital. Many were selected hundreds of years ago, when some of today’s cities were little more than stretches of undeveloped land.Some were simply designated as state capitals by legislative or…

The Washington Post’s opinion editor is leaving after about a year.Adam O’Neal was hired as part of owner Jeff Bezos’s push to champion “personal liberties and free markets” in the opinion section. O’Neal had been a correspondent at The Economist. A replacement hasn’t been named.Bezos unveiled the changes to the Post’s opinion page in a note to staff in early 2025.”We are going to be writing every day in support and defense of two pillars: personal liberties and free markets,” Bezos wrote at the time. “We’ll cover other topics too of course, but viewpoints opposing those pillars will be left…

The FIFA World Cup Trophy is displayed at MetLife Stadium ahead of the FIFA World Cup Final on July 15, 2026, in East Rutherford, New Jersey.Jordan Bank – Fifa | Fifa | Getty ImagesGlobal soccer may be finding the limits to private equity’s stampede into sports. A plan by FIFA to sell a minority stake in a new subsidiary — FIFA Forward Enterprises, or FFE — that would control the business side of the World Cup has faced swift backlash. UEFA, the governing organization of European soccer, and Concacaf, the organization controlling North American soccer, have both rejected the proposal…

Clean up on aisle Phia.The shopping startup cofounded by Bill Gates’ 23-year-old daughter, Phoebe, is doing damage control after a bombshell Bloomberg report revealed it had been earning commissions on sales it didn’t help drive.Phia is working with at least one affiliate network, Impact.com, to refund affected parties and correct attributions, an email viewed by Business Insider shows.A Phia spokesperson confirmed that the company has offered transaction reversals to brands.Phia’s basic premise is that it can help shoppers find discounts on clothes and other items. The startup makes money by taking a cut of the sales it drives to brands,…

Leopold AschenbrennerPhoto: Josh EdelsonTwo years ago, Leopold Aschenbrenner argued he was one of few people in the world who saw the future clearly.In a sprawling, 165-page essay that became required reading in Silicon Valley, the former OpenAI researcher positioned himself as a kind of prophet for the coming age of artificial super intelligence.But this week, the limits of Aschenbrenner’s vision were on display when the AI-themed hedge fund he runs — named Situational Awareness, also the title of his viral June 2024 manifesto — ran into the harsh reality of tumbling semiconductor stocks and Wall Street margin calls.At its peak…