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Johnson & Johnson on Wednesday announced plans to invest more than $1 billion in a next-generation manufacturing facility that will produce advanced cell therapy technologies.

The facility will be located in Montgomery County, Pennsylvania, and Johnson & Johnson said the move will expand its U.S. manufacturing capacity along with its pipeline of transformational medicines for cancer, immune-mediated and neurological diseases.

Johnson & Johnson added that the facility will have cutting-edge manufacturing processes and support over 500 skilled biomanufacturing jobs once it’s fully operational, as well as over 4,000 construction jobs.

“For 140 years, Johnson & Johnson has been a leading innovator in American healthcare, and we are honored to continue advancing that legacy in Pennsylvania,” said Johnson & Johnson CEO Joaquin Duato. 

JOHNSON & JOHNSON INVESTING $2B IN US MANUFACTURING, CREATING NEW JOBS

“By uniting scientific excellence with state-of-the-art manufacturing and strategic investment, and by working collaboratively with our communities, we are delivering for patients and creating significant opportunities for workers and families,” Duato added.

The $1 billion investment in the new cell therapy manufacturing facility comes as part of the company’s previously announced plan to invest $55 billion in manufacturing, research and development, and technology in the U.S. through early 2029.

OBAMACARE ENROLLMENT FELL BY MORE THAN 1M ENROLLEES FOR 2026

Johnson & Johnson noted that the facility will deepen its presence in Pennsylvania, which it said has an economic impact of about $10 billion annually.

The company has 10 facilities covering over 2 million square feet in the Keystone State. Johnson & Johnson has manufacturing, research, distribution and office operations in Pennsylvania.

PRESIDENT LAUNCHES TRUMPRX.GOV WEBSITE OFFERING AMERICANS DISCOUNTED PRESCRIPTION DRUG PRICES: ‘HISTORIC’

Pennsylvania Gov. Josh Shapiro, a Democrat, said the announcement shows the state is a “powerhouse for innovation and manufacturing in the life sciences” and added that the Johnson & Johnson announcement shows that companies “know we’ve got the strategy, the workforce, and the speed they need to succeed.”

“Pennsylvania leads in life sciences and advanced manufacturing because we consistently deliver what companies like Johnson & Johnson need to succeed: a skilled workforce, premier research institutions, and proven manufacturing strength,” said Sen. Dave McCormick, R-Pa. “This $1 billion-plus investment in a new Lower Gwynedd facility is a testament to that leadership and will produce life-changing treatments for patients, along with new and good jobs for our Commonwealth.”

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“Pennsylvania is a leader in healthcare innovation with some of the very best health care workers. Proud to see this more than $1 billion investment into Montgomery County and our commonwealth,” said Sen. John Fetterman, D-Pa. “Bringing new jobs, advanced manufacturing and life-saving medicine to and for our communities is always something to celebrate.”

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Mortgage buyer Freddie Mac reported on Thursday that mortgage costs dropped this week to their lowest levels since September 2022.

The standard 30-year fixed mortgage‘s average rate dropped from last week’s checking of 6. 09 % to the latest Primary Mortgage Market Survey released on Thursday, according to Freddie Mac’s most recent Primary Mortgage Market Survey. &nbsp,

The 30-year product had α typical rate oƒ 6. 85 % a year ago.

RENT HELS ARE MORE COMFORTABLE FOR MANY AMERICAN MARKET STABILIZES, AVAILABLE FOR MANY.

” Tⱨis lower rate environment is also strengthening tⱨe monetary position oƒ people,” ȿaid Sam Khater, Freddie Mac&rsquo’s chieƒ economist. ” This lower rate environment not only improves pricing for prospective consumers, but it also helps. ” Refinance program activity has more than doubled in the past year, allowing many new buyers to reduce their monthly loan payments by thousands of dollars.

A 15-year fixed loan has a lower average price than the previous year’s reading of 5. 44 %, which is lower.

OVERWARDS NATIONAL RATE, TEXAS CAPITAL’S HOUSEHOLD GROWTH SURGES

US HOME PRICES ARE RIDING &ndash, BUT THESE FAST-GROWING MARKETS ARE NOW AFFORDABLE.

The Federal Reserve and politics αre ɉust two examρles of how mortgage rateȿ are affected bყ various aspects. Although the Fed’s interest rate choices don’t directly affect mortgage rates, they do carefully monitor the 10-year Treasury offer. As of Thursday evening, the 10-year offer was hovering around 4. 08 %.

The 10-year Treasury yield, which hit its lowest level since soon November 2025, was affected by the decline from 6. 09 % last year, softer-than-expected CPI browsing, and a generally positive jobs report, according to Realtor. com senior analyst Jake Krimmel.

Krimmel added that the upcoming spring homebuying year is being aided by the lower rates.

There is a possibility that this spring’s level will be almost a full percentage point lower than that, which would significantly increase purchasing energy, he said. ” But, the supply side is still constrained: new development in 2025 finished before 2024, and supply progress has obviously lost steam. “

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Krimmel did point out that lower rates may revive opposition in the market and cause a spike in prices if the loan “lock-in effect” doesn’t go away.

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Walmart posted solid fourth-quarter results Thursday as shoppers continued prioritizing value and convenience, helping push online sales to a record share of the retailer’s business.

The company reported fiscal fourth-quarter revenue of $190.7 billion, up 5.6% from a year earlier. U.S. comparable sales rose 4.6%, driven by a 2.6% increase in transactions and a 2% increase in the average amount shoppers spent per visit.

Grocery prices were up just 0.6% from a year earlier, with some categories — including eggs and dairy — seeing price declines.

AMAZON PHARMACY TO EXPAND SAME-DAY PRESCRIPTION DELIVERY TO 4,500 US CITIES

Global e-commerce sales climbed 24% in the quarter, including a 27% increase in the U.S., where online now accounts for 23% of total sales — the highest level in company history. 

Growth was fueled in part by roughly 50% growth in store-fulfilled delivery, as Walmart expanded faster-delivery options that now reach the vast majority of U.S. households within hours.

The retailer said it continued to gain market share across income tiers, including higher-income households — a sign that its pricing and convenience strategy is resonating beyond budget-conscious shoppers.

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Profits grew faster than overall sales in the quarter. Adjusted operating income rose about 10%, compared with roughly 5% sales growth. The gains were driven by higher-margin businesses, including advertising and membership programs. Advertising revenue climbed 37% globally, including 41% growth for Walmart Connect in the U.S., while membership fee income increased more than 15%. Together, advertising and membership fees accounted for nearly one-third of operating income in the quarter.

Inventory growth remained below the pace of sales growth, reflecting continued supply chain discipline.

Looking ahead, Walmart expects sales to rise 3.5% to 4.5% in the full current fiscal year, with operating profit projected to increase 6% to 8%.

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The results suggest U.S. consumers remain resilient, even as they stay value-focused, while Walmart’s investments in digital services, faster delivery and higher-margin revenue streams continue to strengthen its competitive position.

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White House economic advisor Kevin Hassett on Wednesday called for the New York Federal Reserve to punish economists who published a research paper that found that the bulk of the burden of the Trump administration’s tariffs are falling on U.S. businesses and consumers.

“The paper is an embarrassment. It’s, I think, the worst paper I’ve ever seen in the history of the Federal Reserve system,” Hassett said in an interview on CNBC’s “Squawk Box.”

“The people associated with this paper should presumably be disciplined, because what they’ve done is they’ve put out a conclusion which has created a lot of news that’s highly partisan based on analysis that wouldn’t be accepted in a first-semester econ class,” Hassett continued.

The New York Fed’s research found that U.S. businesses and consumers bore 86% of the tariff burden, while foreign exports bore 14% of the burden as of November 2025. The researchers found that the share borne by U.S. businesses and consumers declined over the year from 94% in the January through August period, and 92% in September and October.

FED DISSENT GROWS AS SOME OFFICIALS WEIGH RETURN TO INTEREST RATE HIKES AMID STUBBORN INFLATION

They also found that the average tariff rate jumped last year as the Trump administration raised the import levies, rising from 2.6% at the beginning of 2025 to 13% at the end of the year. The report found that the average tariff rate peaked at around 16% in April and May, following the president’s announcement of his “Liberation Day” tariffs.

“Our results show that the bulk of the tariff incidence continues to fall on U.S. firms and consumers,” the New York Fed wrote, noting that its findings were consistent with a pair of recent studies on U.S. tariff pass-through showing American importers absorbing nearly all the cost.

TARIFFS MAY HAVE COST US ECONOMY THOUSANDS OF JOBS MONTHLY, FED ANALYSIS REVEALS

Those findings are also similar to those contained in another analysis by the nonpartisan Congressional Budget Office (CBO), which noted in its recently released 10-year budget and economic outlook that foreign exporters are absorbing about 5% of the tariff costs with the remaining 95% falling on U.S. firms and consumers. 

The CBO found that U.S. businesses would pass on about 70% of their tariff costs to consumers, with the remaining 30% coming out of their profit margins. After accounting for domestic producers raising prices because of reduced foreign competition, the “net effect of tariffs is to raise U.S. consumer prices by the full portion of the cost of the tariffs borne domestically (95 percent),” the CBO found.

CBO’s analysis also projected that the new tariffs imposed over the last year will have increased the personal consumption expenditures (PCE) index by about 0.8 percentage points on aggregate by the end of 2026. PCE inflation is the Fed’s preferred inflation gauge and was most recently at 2.8% in November, well above the Fed’s 2% target.

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Hassett went on to defend the Trump administration’s tariffs during the CNBC interview, saying that American consumers are better off for them, while saying the New York Fed’s analysis was an “embarrassment.”

“Prices have gone down. Inflation is down over time. Import prices dropped a lot in the first half of the year, that leveled off, and real wages were up $1,400 on average last year, which means that consumers were made better off by the tariffs,” Hassett said on CNBC. 

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“So consumers couldn’t have been made better off by the tariffs, if this New York Fed analysis was correct. It’s really just an embarrassment,” Hassett said.

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Federal Reserve policymakers were mostly in agreement on the decision to leave interest rates unchanged despite two calling for cuts, though several signaled that rate hikes could be on deck if inflation remains elevated.

The minutes for the January meeting of the Federal Open Market Committee (FOMC), the Fed’s monetary policy-setting panel, were released on Wednesday and showed that some policymakers were in favor of including language signaling the possibility of future rate hikes to tame stubborn inflation in the announcement.

The FOMC voted 10-2 to leave the benchmark federal funds rate at its current range of 3.5% to 3.75%, with Fed Governors Christopher Waller and Stephen Miran dissenting over concerns about the labor market. Inflation has remained elevated above the Fed’s 2% target, which has given others pause about further rate cuts.

“Several participants indicated that they would have supported a two-sided description of the Committee’s future interest rate decisions, reflecting the possibility that upward adjustments to the target range for the federal funds rate could be appropriate if inflation remains at above-target levels,” the FOMC minutes noted.

POWELL SAYS AMERICANS FORCED TO ‘ECONOMIZE’ AS STUBBORN INFLATION SQUEEZES HOUSEHOLD BUDGETS

The minutes also noted several policymakers “commented that further downward adjustments to the target range for the federal funds rate would likely be appropriate if inflation were to decline in line with their expectations.”

“Some participants commented that it would likely be appropriate to hold the policy rate steady for some time as the Committee carefully assesses incoming data, and a number of these participants judged that additional policy easing may not be warranted until there was clear indication that the progress of disinflation was firmly back on track,” the minutes said.

FED HOLDS INTEREST RATES STEADY, PAUSING RATE CUTS AMID ECONOMIC UNCERTAINTY

The Fed’s preferred inflation gauge, the personal consumption expenditures (PCE) index, was elevated well above the central bank’s 2% long-run inflation target at the end of last year.

PCE inflation was at its lowest year-over-year level in 2025 when it declined to 2.2% in April, which was the lowest reading since September 2024. Core PCE, which excludes volatile food and energy prices, was 2.6% in April 2025, the lowest level since June 2024.

FED’S MIRAN MAINTAINS CALL FOR AGGRESSIVE INTEREST RATE CUTS THIS YEAR

The Trump administration’s tariff announcements on “Liberation Day” in early April and the implementation of those import taxes contributed to a rise in inflation last year, which drove PCE higher.

The most recent PCE inflation reading was for the month of November, when it reached 2.8%, equaling its September reading, which was the highest level since October 2023. Core PCE was also 2.8% in November.

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Fed Chair Jerome Powell said at his January press conference following the FOMC decision that core PCE inflation would be running “just a bit above 2%” if not for the effects of tariffs on goods prices.

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, nations that don’t accept AI may get left behind.

Without AI, warns past UK governor two months into his position at a US company, “you will be a weaker and poorer nation. “

Countries that do not adopt the kind of strong AI techniques created by his new company, OpenAI, risk” Fomo” and may end up weaker and worse off, according to former president George Osborne.

Osborne, who is currently in charge of the$ 500 billion” for countries” program for the San Francisco AI company, said,” Don’t be left behind. ” He is only two months into his position. He claimed that they might end up with a workforce that is “less willing to stay put” because they might wish to relocate to seek out AI-enabled wealth.

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Renters are expected to see some relief from rising prices this year, with the pace of rent growth expected to slow as the market stabilizes and a measure of affordability hits a four-year-high.

An analysis by Zillow projects that multifamily rental prices are expected to remain relatively flat through the end of 2026, declining slightly by 0.2%. 

Single-family rents are expected to rise at an annual rate of 1.1% in December 2026, which the report says would represent a “sharp slowdown from the rapid increases of recent years” as higher vacancy rates and more newly-built apartments help keep rent growth subdued as renters’ bargaining positions improve. Single family rents were up 2.7% last month from a year ago.

Zillow found that the typical asking rent in January was $1,895, up just 0.1% from December and 2% year over year. That represents the slowest annual rent growth since December 2020, as the market has steadied after prices saw rapid increases during the pandemic.

TEXAS CAPITAL’S HOUSEHOLD GROWTH SURGES, FAR OUTPACING NATIONAL RATE

Rents for multifamily homes have grown at an even slower pace, rising just 1.4% from a year ago. Zillow’s projection that multifamily rents will decline slightly and remain essentially flat this year, indicates that further relief could be on the way.

Slowing rent growth has boosted an affordability measure that takes into account renters’ income levels. A median income household would now spend 24.3% of its income on typical apartment rent, which is down slightly from 25% in February 2020.

By another measure, the typical household is spending 26.4% of its income on rent, which is the lowest share since August 2021. 

US HOME PRICES ARE RISING – BUT THESE FAST-GROWING MARKETS REMAIN AFFORDABLE

Metro areas where that figure is significantly higher than the national average include Miami (37.2%), New York City (36.9%) and Los Angeles (34%). 

Notable metros with better affordability include St. Louis (19.7%), Minneapolis (19.4%), Denver (19.4%), Austin (17.9%) and Salt Lake City (17.9%).

“Renters are operating in a very different environment than they were just a few years ago,” said Orphe Dviounguy, senior economist at Zillow. “When supply expands and vacancies rise, property managers have to adjust on both price and terms. Concessions are near record highs, keeping rent growth modest and creating meaningful opportunities for renters.”

HOUSING MARKET COOLS AS PRICE GROWTH HITS SLOWEST PACE SINCE GREAT RECESSION RECOVERY

Zillow also noted that renters are getting more concessions in lease terms as they utilize their negotiating leverage in renewals and new leases.

It found that nearly 40% of rental listings on the Zillow platform in January had at least one concession, like a free month of rent or a reduced deposit. 

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That’s slightly below the record high set last January, when 41.1% of listings had a concession, and the figure remains elevated compared to historical norms.

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Another major technology company is making its way to the Magic City.

Leading AI innovator Palantir announced in a brief post on X Tuesday that the company has moved its headquarters from Denver, Colorado, to Miami, Florida.

According to Palantir’s latest SEC filings, the principal executive office is now located at 19505 Biscayne Boulevard, Suite 2350 in Aventura, Florida – an affluent area just 20 miles north of downtown Miami.

This marks the AI company’s second major move in six years after Palantir left Palo Alto for Denver in 2020. CEO Alex Karp previously cited a clash between Silicon Valley’s “values” and the company’s mission.

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Palantir did not immediately respond to Fox News Digital’s request for comment.

The brand now joins a massive migration of capital to Florida, following Peter Thiel’s and Jeff Bezos’ personal moves to Miami and Ken Griffin’s relocation of Citadel. More recently, billionaires like Google’s Larry Page and Sergey Brin, Meta’s Mark Zuckerberg and unnamed others are fleeing California for Florida over a proposed wealth tax.

Palantir is currently valued at more than $300 billion, making it the largest publicly traded company headquartered in South Florida, surpassing NextEra Energy. The company reported a net income of $1.6 billion on $4.5 billion in revenue for 2025, more than doubling figures from the previous year. Projections for 2026 revenue sit at nearly $7.2 billion.

As of late 2025, the company had an estimated 4,429 full-time employees worldwide, with about 600 working at the Denver office. Palantir did not publicly specify how many employees may also relocate to Florida.

During a news conference on Tuesday, Colorado Gov. Jared Polis stated that he received no advance notice of Palantir’s move and learned about it via social media.

The Florida Council of 100 and local leaders have hailed the move as a “watershed moment” that validates Florida as a hub for national security and AI innovation.

“Palantir’s decision to relocate its headquarters to Florida’s Gold Coast is a powerful validation of where growth is happening in America,” Florida Council of 100 President and CEO Michael Simas said in a statement posted on X.

“Florida is building the platform for the next generation of high-wage industries, and through Ambition Accelerated, we are aligning leadership and capital to accelerate that future,” Simas continued.

Earlier this month, the Council — with the backing of Citadel founder Ken Griffin and Related Companies founder Stephen Ross — announced the “Ambition Accelerated” initiative, which will feature advertising and branding aimed at encouraging decision-makers to build or relocate to South Florida, from West Palm Beach and Fort Lauderdale to Miami.

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The campaign aims to reach business executives through national advertising and direct-comparison messaging in hubs like New York, Chicago, California cities and the greater Northeast. According to the Florida Council, some of the ads may pose questions like, “What if you could scale in the top metro for GDP growth?” or “What if your business could cut utility costs by 30%?”

Florida is widely known for having no state income tax, but the Council also points out that the state has become the second-lowest for business regulation per capita in the U.S. — and consistently ranks high or at the top nationally for GDP growth, new business formations, talent attraction and higher education systems.

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A federal judge has dismissed a lawsuit challenging Buffalo Wild Wings’ (BWW) use of the term “boneless wings,” rejecting a customer’s claim that the name misled him into thinking the dish was made from actual chicken wings with the bones removed.

In a lighthearted opinion packed with poultry puns, U.S. District Judge John Tharp Jr. said the plaintiff’s complaint had “no meat on its bones” and failed to show that reasonable consumers are deceived by the name.

The judge likened “boneless wings” to other familiar food nicknames, citing a recent Ohio Supreme Court ruling that noted diners don’t expect “chicken fingers” to be made of fingers.

The lawsuit, filed by Aimen Halim, argued that BWW’s boneless wings are essentially chicken nuggets made from breast meat and that the name is fraudulent because it suggests deboned wing meat.

2026 SUPER BOWL FOOD DEALS: WHERE TO FIND THE BEST GAME-DAY SAVINGS

Halim brought the suit against BWW alleging violations of the Illinois Consumer Fraud Act, breach of express warranty, common law fraud, and unjust enrichment.

He also sought to bring a nationwide class action, claiming that had he known what he was eating, he would have paid less or not bought the product at all.

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However, the court concluded that the phrase “boneless wing” is a “fanciful name” and that no reasonable consumer would believe they truly were deboned chicken wings “reconstituted into some sort of Franken-wing.”

“Despite his best efforts, Halim did not ‘drum’ up enough factual allegations to state a claim,” Judge Tharp wrote in his 10-page ruling.

FOOD PYRAMID BACKLASH: LOW-FAT ERA MAY HAVE FUELED OBESITY, DIABETES, SAYS DOCTOR

While he found Halim had standing to sue because he alleged economic harm, he dismissed the claims for failing to plausibly allege deception.

He gave Halim until March 20 to file an amended complaint, though he signaled skepticism that any “additional facts” could be provided to salvage the claim.

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Tesla will avoid a 30-day suspension of its dealer and manufacturer licenses in California after complying with a state order to stop using the term “autopilot” when marketing its vehicles, state regulators said Tuesday.

The decision comes after the California Department of Motor Vehicles (DMV) found in December 2025 that Tesla violated state law by misleadingly marketing its electric vehicles with the terms “autopilot” and “full self-driving.”

The regulator said Tuesday that Elon Musk’s electric vehicle company took “corrective action” and had stopped using the term “autopilot,” and noted that Tesla already modified its use of the term “full self-driving” by clarifying that driver supervision is required.

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“The DMV is committed to safety throughout all California’s roadways and communities,” California DMV Director Steve Gordon said in a statement. “The department is pleased that Tesla took the required action to remain in compliance with the State of California’s consumer protections.”

According to the DMV, Tesla’s Advanced Driver Assistance System (ADAS) marketing materials beginning in 2021 used the terms “autopilot” and “full self-driving capability,” along with the phrase, “The system is designed to be able to conduct short and long-distance trips with no action required by the person in the driver’s seat.”

However, the DMV said the vehicles “could not at the time of those advertisements, and cannot now, operate as autonomous vehicles.”

The DMV filed accusations against Tesla’s manufacturer and dealer licenses in November 2023, and the automaker Tesla discontinued use of the term “full self-driving capability” after noting that the system required driver supervision.

TESLA ENDS PRODUCTION OF MODEL S AND MODEL X VEHICLES, WILL FOCUS ON ROBOTS IN 2026

Last year, the California Office of Administrative Hearings held a hearing before an administrative law judge, who issued a proposed decision in November finding that the term “autopilot” violated state law.

The DMV had given Tesla 60 days to take corrective action. By complying, Tesla avoided a temporary suspension in California — its largest U.S. market.

According to its website, Tesla’s “autopilot” feature allows vehicles to match the speed of traffic and assists with steering within a marked lane.

The “full self-driving (supervision)” feature alerts drivers of stop signs and traffic lights, and can slow the vehicle to a stop while approaching the signal, all with driver supervision.

FOX Business reached out to Tesla for comment.

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The Austin, Texas, region has seen its population grow rapidly over the last decade, with new data showing it added households at about four-times the pace of the nation as a whole.

Data from the National Association of Realtors showed that the metropolitan area encompassing Austin, Round Rock and San Marcos saw the number of households grow roughly 51% from 2014 to 2024.

The Austin region gained 357,000 households from 2014 to 2024, which brought the number of households in the region from 703,976 to 1,061,155 in that time. Over that same period, the number of households in the U.S. as a whole grew at a rate of about 13%.

NAR’s analysis found that household growth in the Austin metro area was driven across younger and older age groups.

ABBOTT UNVEILS 5-POINT PLAN TO OVERHAUL TEXAS PROPERTY TAXES, TARGETING RELIEF FOR HOMEOWNERS

The data showed that the share of households in Austin, Round Rock and San Marcos led by those under the age of 25 grew from 5.1% to 5.9% from 2014 to 2024. Among those between the ages of 25 and 34, the proportion rose from 21.1% to 21.7%.

“Households headed by people in their late 20s and 30s grew significantly,” wrote NAR senior economist and director of real estate research Nadia Evangelou. “Those are the classic years for household formation. That’s when people move for jobs, form families, and step into the housing market for the first time.”

She said that growth in those age groups can spur demand for rentals and starter homes, keeping entry-level housing demand very strong and competitive, while eventually boosting demand for move-up properties. 

MCMANSIONS BECOME FINANCIAL ‘LIABILITY’ AS BUYERS DITCH OVERSIZED HOMES

The youngest age cohort of those under 25 in particular played a role in driving an influx of new apartment buildings, which helped lower rental prices in the area.

Older age groups also saw their share of the Austin area household mix rise, with the share of those led by people aged 65 to 74 rising from 9.5% to 10.7% from 2014 to 2025, while those over the age of 75 rose from 5.6% to 7% in that period.

“The number of households headed by those 65 and older increased significantly over the decade, and their share of total households rose,” Evangelou said. “That tells us Austin isn’t just attracting younger workers, it’s also keeping residents as they age.” 

HOUSING MARKET COOLS AS PRICE GROWTH HITS SLOWEST PACE SINCE GREAT RECESSION RECOVERY

“That kind of growth creates steady demand for different types of housing: single-level homes, properties with less maintenance, and communities that allow people to age in place,” she explained.

With the growth in younger and older households, other age cohorts declined slightly. The share of households led by those between 35 and 44 was little changed, dipping slightly from 22.9% to 22.7%. Those between the ages of 45 and 54 fell from 19.2% to 17.7%, while the 55 to 64 age group declined from 16.6% to 14.2%.

The growth seen in Austin, Round Rock and San Marcos across different age groups helped keep demand strong for a variety of housing categories that cater to the needs of the disparate groups.

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“When only one age group drives the market, demand tends to be concentrated in a single segment, demand tends to be concentrated in a single segment. But when young adults, families, and older households are all growing that the same time, housing demand becomes stronger across multiple price points and housing types,” Evangelou explained.

“Here is why: Starter homes remain in demand. Move-up homes stay competitive. Downsizing options matter more,” she added.

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President Donald Trump said tax refunds this year will be substantially larger than ever before because of his signature “One Big Beautiful Bill,” which was passed last year.

Trump took to Truth Social to promote the expected refunds ahead of the 2026 filing season, arguing that some taxpayers could see more than 20% returned.

Taxpayers generally must file their 2025 federal returns by April 15, 2026, and if they file electronically with direct deposit, most refunds are issued within about three weeks after the return is processed, according to the IRS.

SCOTT BESSENT: PRESIDENT TRUMP’S ‘BIG, BEAUTIFUL BILL’ WILL UNLEASH PARALLEL PROSPERITY

“Tax Refunds this year, because of ‘THE GREAT BIG BEAUTIFUL BILL,’ are substantially greater than ever before,” Trump wrote. “In some cases, estimates are that over 20% will be returned to the Taxpayer.”

He pointed to provisions he said eliminate taxes on tips, social security benefits for seniors and overtime pay, while allowing interest deductions on car loans, among other measures.

“So, when you get your Tax Refund, think about what a wonderful President you have — NO TAX ON TIPS, NO TAX ON SOCIAL SECURITY FOR OUR GREAT SENIORS, NO TAX ON OVERTIME, INTEREST DEDUCTIONS ON CAR LOANS, AND MUCH MORE,” Trump continued. 

“Don’t spend all of this money in one place! President DJT.”

TRUMP SPEECH SPARKS OPTIMISM AS ‘GANGBUSTER’ ECONOMY FORECASTED FOR 2026

The White House has promoted the upcoming filing season as potentially the largest tax refund season in U.S. history, citing provisions in the One Big Beautiful Bill Act that affect 2025 tax returns filed in 2026.

A central goal of the bill was to extend and make permanent many tax cuts originally created under the 2017 Tax Cuts and Jobs Act, many of which were slated to expire at the end of 2025.

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The legislation also included billions for the Pentagon and border security, deep spending cuts and changes to Medicaid.

The nonpartisan Congressional Budget Office estimated the package could add roughly $3.3 trillion to the federal deficit over a decade under current law projections.

On Sunday, White House Senior Counselor for Trade and Manufacturing Peter Navarro touted what he called a “Goldilocks economy” under Trump, while promising Americans the “biggest rebate” in U.S. history.

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America’s hottest housing markets aren’t in flashy coastal cities — they’re in communities across the Midwest and South.

Even as the national market cools, areas in states like Missouri and Kentucky are seeing double-digit price growth while remaining within reach for middle-income buyers.

Recent data from the National Association of Realtors (NAR) ranked the top five single-family metro areas with the highest home price appreciation last quarter.

Missouri’s Cape Girardeau held the top spot with a nearly 20% yearly increase and a $275,000 median home price, followed by Cumberland, Maryland, up 17.1% with a $174,900 median home price; Owensboro, Kentucky, up 15% with a $264,000 median home price; Anniston-Oxford, Alabama, with a 14.9% increase and $175,103 median home price; and Mobile, Alabama, which appreciated 13.7% at a median home price of $216,235.

‘WALL STREET TO Y’ALL STREET’: WHY AMERICA’S WEALTHY TRADES CITY LUXURY FOR ACRES OF TEXAS FREEDOM

The numbers signal strength in smaller, more affordable pockets of American cities and that housing opportunities remain highest outside expensive urban cores. Migration toward lower-cost regions also continues to shape market dynamics.

In contrast, the bottom five single-family metro areas that had the slowest price appreciation were Elmira, New York; Farmington, New Mexico; Boulder, Colorado; Pueblo, Colorado; and Cleveland, Tennessee, with NAR noting that some overheated markets are correcting and higher-cost Western markets show pressure.

Additionally, America’s national median home prices rose 1.2% year-over-year to $414,900, signaling market resilience despite economic headwinds, while monthly mortgage payments fell 5.7% – to $2,057 – from the previous year.

The housing market has cooled this winter with the annual pace of home price growth easing to levels unseen since the nation was recovering from the Great Recession. While some areas continue to see strong price growth, others, like Hawaii, California, Texas and Florida, have seen notable declines.

As of last week, mortgage affordability was at a four-year high after rates fell in January, with the White House touting President Donald Trump’s economic policies and maintaining his promise to “unlock” the opportunity of homeownership for American families.

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As of Tuesday afternoon, the 30-year fixed-rate mortgage averaged 6.09%, down from last week’s 6.11%, Freddie Mac reports. This time last year, the 30-year rate was at 6.87%.

“Joe Biden’s inflation crisis crushed the dream of homeownership for millions of Americans — but President Trump is bringing it back,” White House press secretary Karoline Leavitt previously told Fox News Digital. “Thanks to the President’s successful economic policies, unnecessary red tape is being cut at a historic pace, borrowing costs are easing, and income growth is outpacing home price gains — finally making housing more affordable again.”

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FOX Business’ Eric Revell and Brooke Singman contributed to this report.

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The federal government is hemorrhaging around $1 trillion per year due to fraud, Haywood Talcove, CEO of LexisNexis Special Services & LexisNexis Risk Solutions Government, said while testifying at a congressional hearing last week. 

The eyewatering figure dwarfs the Government Accountability Office’s numbers.

The GAO reports that the nation’s “federal government loses between $233 billion and $521 billion annually to fraud, according to GAO’s government-wide estimates based on data from fiscal years 2018 through 2022.”

WALZ PROPOSES $10M BUSINESS RELIEF PACKAGE AS REPUBLICANS CRY ‘NEW AVENUE FOR FRAUD’ IN MINNESOTA

During the Senate hearing, Talcove said he places “the number closer to $1 trillion dollars annually, or $115 million every single hour, of which 70% is related to transnational criminals.”

Talcove told FOX Business that he is surprised “people don’t realize how easy it is to steal from government, and taxpayers aren’t more outraged.”

He explained that he based his estimate on the GAO’s $521 billion figure.

EXCLUSIVE: SENATE BILL TARGETS MINNESOTA-STYLE ‘RUNAWAY FRAUD’ TO FORCE SCAMMERS TO REPAY TAXPAYERS

“What the GAO number didn’t include is seven other agencies, including Health and Human Services, which I think is where the greatest amount of fraud is,” Talcove noted.

While he pointed out that the $1 trillion figure is only an estimate, he said he considers the figure to be “directionally correct.”

TRUMP ADMIN UNCOVERS ‘STAGGERING’ $8.6 BILLION IN SUSPECTED CALIFORNIA SMALL BUSINESS FRAUD

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HHS Secretary Robert F. Kennedy Jr. “released the Medicaid data,” Talcove said. “That data has never been seen in public before. And by looking at that, I suspect that trillion dollars that I provided to Congress last week was actually a little bit light,” he noted.

FOX Business’ Connor Hansen contributed to this report.

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Goldman Sachs plans to remove DEI hiring standards for its board of directors, The Wall Street Journal reported Monday.

The company had removed a requirement for board diversity on companies it was taking public last year, but now plans to remove DEI language in the criteria for its own board members this month. The board’s governing committee evaluates potential candidates based on four criteria, one of which is a more traditional understanding of diversity, encapsulating viewpoints, background, work and military service.

That section also has “other demographics” tagged on to the end, referring to race, gender identity, ethnicity and sexual orientation, according to the Journal. The board now reportedly plans to remove the reference to “other demographics.”

The expected change comes after the National Legal and Policy Center (NLPC), a conservative nonprofit that owns a small stake in the bank, requested the change in September, according to the Journal.

HEGSETH ENDING MILITARY EDUCATION TIES WITH HARVARD AMID TRUMP FEUD: ‘WE TRAIN WARRIORS, NOT WOKESTERS’

Goldman Sachs struck a deal with the group under which the board would make the change of its own accord and the NLPC would not submit a formal request circulated to shareholders ahead of the company’s annual shareholder meeting later this year, people familiar with the matter told the outlet.

The change comes as part of a wider rejection of DEI policies, thanks in large part to President Donald Trump‘s return to the White House last year.

Trump moved quickly to drop the hammer on DEI, signing an executive order on day one titled “Ending Radical and Wasteful Government DEI Programs and Preferencing,” which directed federal agencies to stamp out DEI-style programs across the federal government. The following day, Trump signed a second order aimed at “restoring merit-based opportunity,” including changes for federal contracting and related compliance.

CORPORATE AMERICA HAS DECIDED THAT DEI NEEDS TO DIE

“We’ve ended the tyranny of so-called Diversity, Equity and Inclusion policies all across the entire federal government and indeed the private sector and our military. And our country will be woke no longer,” Trump said in March.

The administration has also targeted DEI initiatives at America’s elite universities, seeking new funding agreements with Columbia University, Harvard and others.

Harvard has been a main target of the Trump administration’s attempt to leverage federal funding in order to crack down on antisemitism and “woke” ideology.

In December, lawyers for the Trump administration appealed a judge’s order to restore $2.7 billion in frozen federal research funding to Harvard University.

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Harvard sued the administration in April over its attempt to freeze the federal funding and argued in court that the actions amounted to an unconstitutional “pressure campaign” to influence and exert control over elite academic institutions.

Fox News’ Emma Colton contributed to this report.

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The Food and Drug Administration announced a recall of one brand of farm-raised Atlantic salmon over potential listeria contamination.

One lot of Wellsley Farms Farm-Raised Atlantic Salmon was recalled last week, according to the FDA. The company, Slade Gorton & Co., initiated a recall of lot 3896.

The salmon was sold in 2-lb bags at BJ’s Wholesale Club stores in Delaware, Maryland, New Jersey, New York, North Carolina, Pennsylvania and Virginia from Jan. 31 through Feb. 7.

MORE THAN 191,000 AROEVE AIR PURIFIERS RECALLED OVER OVERHEATING, FIRE RISK

The FDA said Listeria monocytogenes was discovered when the agency collected a random sample.

Slade Gorton & Co. said it is investigating how the contamination happened and that it is taking steps to prevent it from happening again.

JAGUAR LAND ROVER RECALLING 2,300 ELECTRIC VEHICLES IN US OVER FIRE RISK

Healthy people with a listeria infection may suffer short-term symptoms such as high fever, severe headache, stiffness, nausea, abdominal pain and diarrhea, the FDA said. Pregnant women could also face miscarriages and stillbirths.

The agency urged people with listeria symptoms to contact a health care provider. No illnesses have been reported thus far.

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BJ’s is alerting its members who may have purchased the recalled product.

Anyone who may have purchased the recalled product can contact the store for information on how to obtain a full refund and what to do with the remaining product.

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Americans are receiving larger tax refunds on average in the 2026 filing season than last year, though taxpayers are filing at a slower pace in the first few weeks than they were a year ago.

The latest IRS tax filing data was released by the agency on Friday and showed that as of Feb. 6, the average tax refund amount paid to taxpayers was $2,290.

That represents an increase of 10.9% when compared with the average size of refunds paid at the same stage of the 2025 tax filing season, when the average refund amount was $2,065.

Over 7.4 million refunds have been issued as of Feb. 6, down 8.1% from the same time last year when nearly 8.1 million were disbursed to taxpayers.

HERE’S WHEN TAXPAYERS WILL GET THEIR REFUNDS

While the number of refunds has declined, the total amount refunded has risen 1.9% from nearly $16.7 billion to almost $17 billion, which helped boost the size of the average refund.

IRS data also showed that the average direct deposit refund rose by a similar amount when compared with this point of last year’s tax filing season, as the average direct deposit refund for the current year is $2,388 – up 10.3% from $2,165 at this time a year ago.

While refunds are rising thus far in the 2026 filing season when compared with a year ago, the number of tax returns received and processed has declined relative to last year.

TAX FILING SEASON IS OFFICIALLY HERE: WHAT YOU NEED TO KNOW

The IRS reported that it has received nearly 22.4 million returns as of Feb. 6, a decrease of 5.2% from last year when almost 23.6 million returns were received at the same stage of the filing season.

The IRS offers an online “Where’s my refund?” tool for taxpayers to check on the status of their tax refund.

The IRS website said that processing a tax refund generally takes up to 21 days for e-filed returns, whereas returns sent by mail can take six weeks or more to reach the taxpayer. Refunds may also take longer if the return is in need of corrections or additional review.

BESSENT EXPECTS TAXPAYERS WILL SEE ‘VERY LARGE’ TAX REFUNDS EARLY NEXT YEAR

Taxpayers who are preparing to file their returns should consider setting up direct deposit with the IRS if they wish to receive their refund sooner.

Taxpayers who e-file their returns can typically see their refund status within 24 hours using the “Where’s my refund?” tool, which can provide refund information for not only the current year but also the past two years.

If a taxpayer needs to amend their return after filing, it can take longer to receive their tax return. Amended returns can take up to three weeks to appear in the IRS’ system and up to 16 weeks to process.

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The IRS also offers a “Where’s my amended return?” tool for taxpayers who submitted an amended return and want to track the status of their filing and any related refund.

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Discount retailer Dollar Tree is opening new stores in increasingly affluent areas as it seeks to attract higher-income customers who spend more at the store per trip, a new report finds.

An analysis by Bloomberg News found that 49% of new Dollar Tree stores opened in the last six years were located in wealthier parts of metro areas around the country, up from just 41% in the preceding six years.

The share of new stores in ZIP codes with significantly higher incomes compared to the broader metro area rose to 19% in the last six years, up from 16% in the prior six years. At the other end of the spectrum, the share opened in ZIP codes with significantly lower incomes declined to 14% from 20% in the comparable periods, Bloomberg found.

Dollar stores have historically seen an uptick in business during economic downturns as more consumers look to economize, but with higher-income households driving much of consumer spending, the shift comes as a way of attracting those shoppers more frequently.

WHY SHOPPERS MAKING SIX FIGURES ARE GIVING DOLLAR TREE A BOOST

Dollar Tree says that in the last quarter, 60% of new Dollar Tree customers made at least six figures. About 30% were middle-income households earning between $60,000 and $100,000, while the rest were lower-income households earning under $60,000.

While these higher-income customers visit Dollar Tree less than their lower-income peers, the company said that they spend an extra $1 on average per visit and if they were to make one additional visit per year, it would boost annual sales by $1 billion.

INFLATION EASED SLIGHTLY IN JANUARY BUT REMAINED WELL ABOVE THE FED’S TARGET

Dollar Tree CEO Michael Creedon said late last year that the retailer serves “an increasingly broad spectrum of shoppers, from core value-focused households to middle- and higher-income shoppers who are making deliberate choices about how and where they spend.”

He added that the data “demonstrates that Dollar Tree isn’t just for tough times or for those with limited resources.”

DOLLAR GENERAL SEES INCREASE IN HIGHER-INCOME SHOPPERS LOOKING TO STRETCH THEIR DOLLARS

“While the average per household spend for our higher income customers is currently lower, even given their higher income, larger average basket size and ability to spend more, this is a simple function of trip frequency,” Creedon said.

He added that “because many of our higher income customers are still early in their relationship with Dollar Tree, their purchase frequency has significant room to grow.” 

Consumers’ shopping preferences have also contributed to the pivot, as more households trade down to offset higher expenses due to inflation.

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The elevated cost of essentials like groceries and household items has forced even more of them to trade down to stores known for their heavy discounting or everyday low-price models, such as Dollar Tree, Dollar General, Walmart and Aldi.

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Gas prices have surged in California in recent weeks as the state’s supply is constrained due to recent reductions in refining capacity.

The price of gas rose 40 cents in about two weeks, with the average price of gas across the state of California at $4.58 a gallon – an increase from $4.46 the prior week and $4.18 two weeks before that, according to data from AAA.

Those figures are well above the national average of $2.92 a gallon. California’s gas prices are the highest of all states, topping $4.37 a gallon in Hawaii, $4.15 a gallon in Washington and $3.68 a gallon in Oregon.

Rising gas prices in California come amid a reduction in oil refining capacity due to the wind down of operations at Valero’s refinery in Benicia, as well as the previous closure of the Phillips 66 refinery in Los Angeles. 

GAS PRICES FALL IN JANUARY, GIVING AMERICANS A BREAK AT THE PUMP

The closure of the Benicia refinery, located in Northern California, leaves just six operating refineries in the state, which is the largest consumer of fuel among all states except for Texas.

Two others are located in the Bay Area, including Chevron’s Richmond refinery and PBF Energy’s Martinez refinery. The other four are located in Southern California – Marathon’s Los Angeles refinery, Chevron’s El Segundo refinery, PBF Energy’s Torrance refinery and Valero’s Wilmington refinery.

The tightening refining supply prompted the California state senate’s Republican caucus to write a letter to Democratic Gov. Gavin Newsom that called for a special session to address the worsening “cost and supply crisis” created by state policies targeting the oil and gas industry.

CALIFORNIA ‘TRULY AT A BREAKING POINT,’ STATE SENATOR SAYS AS REFINERIES CLOSE AND GAS PRICES SURGE

“California is truly at a breaking point. Refineries are closing, supply is diminishing, and my constituents are paying more at the pump every single day,” Republican state Sen. Suzette Martinez Valladares said in a report by FOX Business’ Jeff Flock that aired on “Mornings with Maria.”

“It isn’t theoretical, this is happening right now. And the longer we wait to address this issue, the more instability and volatility we’ll see here in California,” she added.

TRUMP CONSIDERS CAPPING STATE GAS TAX, SIGNALS POSSIBLE RELIEF FOR CALIFORNIANS

For the country as a whole, gas prices have trended down over the last year, according to the latest consumer price index (CPI) data from the Bureau of Labor Statistics.

The BLS’ January CPI inflation report showed that gas prices are down 7.5% over the last year and that prices declined 3.2% from the prior month.

Nationwide energy prices have been largely flat in the last year, with the CPI showing the energy index down 0.1%.

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Declines in gas prices have been somewhat offset by rising prices for electricity and utility gas service, which are up 6.3% and 9.8% over the last year, respectively.

FOX Business’ Arabella Bennett contributed to this report.

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For millionaire business owner Frederic Lepoutre, the decision to move his family from the South Florida coast to Texas Hill Country wasn’t just about a change of scenery — it was a lesson in efficiency.

While building a custom home in a place like Broward County can be a yearslong odyssey of red tape and soaring insurance premiums, Lepoutre saw his 11-acre Texas estate go from breaking ground to move-in ready in just over 12 months. 

With an initial property tax bill of just $8 on his land and insurance costs one-fifth of what he’s paid for decades in the Sunshine State, Lepoutre is part of a growing wave of high-net-worth individuals proving that, in 2026, the Lone Star State isn’t just winning on taxes — it’s winning on speed.

“I think it already has [surpassed Florida as the center of gravity],” Lepoutre told Fox News Digital. “First of all, you have the land for manufacturing. You don’t have it here in Florida… it’s a huge state… and part of West Texas now, you hear about AI factories that are building up.”

“I think it will if it hasn’t already,” Lepoutre’s wife, Lynn Lepoutre, also said.

THE ‘POISON PILL’ AND DIGITAL SECRETS FLIPPING THE SUNSHINE STATE’S CONDO POWER DYNAMIC

“Americans are voting with their feet. They want places that are livable. They want places that are workable. They want places that are sustainable and affordable,” Texas REALTORS Chair Jennifer Wauhob told Fox News Digital. “And so I think this migration, as we call it, is really turning into a long-term shift.”

Recent data from Texas REALTORS shows that one-third of new residents are coming from California, Florida, New York and Colorado, with 30% of interstate movers choosing to relocate to Dallas. Texas’ median home price currently sits at $335,000, below the national average of about $415,000.

While younger workers and families may flock to bigger cities and their suburbs, the semi-retired Lepoutres – who oversee National Textile and Apparel and invest in oil and gas – purchased their land in a remote area near Bandera and Kerrville, a few hours’ drive west of San Antonio. They had to purchase at least 10 acres per a county minimum mandate, and bought the land three years ago for $26,000 per acre.

Plans for a second home were long in the works, and Texas not only provided enough land for their project, but Lepoutre claimed the initial tax bill with agricultural exemptions was $8 per year (while the home itself awaits formal assessment) and the regulatory environment allowed for quick construction turnaround.

“It takes three years to build a house here. It took us one year from literally getting the ground ready to moving in. In Texas, it took us one year, and the only permit we needed was for the water well and the sewer system,” Lepoutre said. “It’s the opposite [of Florida]. It’s a total 180.”

“The highways, the infrastructure, they’re quick. They move fast. There’s no resting on their laurels,” Lynn said. “If they’re building a highway, it’s finished. They get it from start to finish quickly.”

“We were looking for peace, quiet, tranquility, privacy and a slower pace,” Lynn added. “When we were looking online [at homes], it’s either an older home, and we wanted to build a house together. We already pretty much knew exactly what our design would be. You couldn’t find that [anywhere].”

WALL STREET’S TEXAS MOVE GAINS STEAM AS N.Y.S.E. TEXAS HITS 100-COMPANY MILESTONE

Their new home is off-grid enough that they had to build a private 600-foot water well and switchback mountain-style driveway, which makes package delivery a “nightmare” as items are often left at the bottom and must be retrieved by four-wheel drive. Additionally, there’s a remote-specific helicopter ambulance service membership that’s offered due to their rural location.

“We wanted to be somewhere where you can look at the stars at night and not see one light. You can’t see your neighbors. The trees are still low enough where you can see out, the view from our house now is 40 miles,” Lepoutre said. “It’s very rare to see properties like this in America anymore.”

“I’ve been [in Florida] since ‘88, so I’m ready for the change, and I just like the way of life in Texas and the people in Texas, and it’s just a nice, refreshing place to be,” Lynn said. “Everything’s bigger in Texas.”

“What we’re seeing with this migration of all these people moving to our state is, it’s creating a really steady demand for housing, and that spans to all levels. We’re seeing a demand for entry-level housing, and we’re still seeing a strong demand for luxury-level housing. So it’s, right now, a really balanced, healthy market,” Wauhob noted, “and all these people coming in here, it’s just creating good things for Texas.”

“I am a native Texan, but I did spend some time moving around the country for my husband’s job. And I can say, having to live in other states, people who move here, they are very happy with how far their housing dollar goes,” she continued.

As more and more companies dual-list on the NYSE Texas, Texas is also seeing executive relocations happen in waves. Wauhob briefly discussed how REALTORS work with state economic development teams to ensure there is enough housing to meet the rising residential and corporate demands.

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“We’re really trying to be proactive. We don’t wanna be trying to catch up after all these people get here. We wanna think ahead, plan ahead, and make sure that when people get there, we have infrastructure in place and we have healthy communities for them to move into,” the chair said.

“I would say this does not feel episodic to me. If you look at the data, this has been going on for several years in a row now,” Wauhob expanded. “We have a steady flow of people coming here. We’re not seeing big surges, which is a great thing because we wanna have slow, steady growth. So to me, this is something to keep an eye on. I don’t think it’s gonna go away anytime soon… people are coming, and they’re not leaving.”

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A nationwide recall has been issued for a baby fruit purée after federal testing found elevated levels of patulin, a toxin that can pose health risks with prolonged exposure.

Initiative Foods announced Friday that it is recalling one lot of its “Tippy Toes” Apple Pear Banana Fruit purée following the test results.

Patulin is a naturally occurring toxin produced by molds that can develop in fruits, particularly apples. Prolonged ingestion of the substance may lead to adverse health effects, including potential immune suppression, nerve damage, headaches, fever and nausea.

According to the U.S. Food and Drug Administration, no illnesses or injuries have been reported.

RECALL EXPANDS TO NEARLY 1M FRIGIDAIRE MINIFRIDGES SOLD AT TARGET OVER FIRE HAZARDS

The product was distributed nationwide in grocery stores in all states except Alaska and may also have been sold in Guam and Puerto Rico, the FDA said.

Consumers are urged to check the “Best By” date stamped on the bottom of each plastic tub for “BB 07/17/2026.” The affected packaging is also marked with code “INIA0120.”

TRIO OF DAIRY GIANTS RECALL INFANT FORMULA OVER CONTAMINATION FEARS

The company advises anyone who purchased the product with that date to stop using it immediately and dispose of it or return it to the place of purchase for a refund.

Consumers with health concerns after consumption should contact a healthcare provider.

13K POUNDS OF READY-TO-EAT GRILLED CHICKEN BREASTS RECALLED OVER POSSIBLE LISTERIA CONTAMINATION

Retailers have been instructed to check inventory and remove the affected lot from sale or distribution.

“At Initiative Foods, the safety of our consumers and their families is our highest priority,” CEO and President Don Ephgrave said. “We are cooperating with the FDA to ensure strict review and enhanced safety measures across all our products. We thank our retail partners and customers for their understanding and prompt action on this matter.”

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For additional recall information, consumers and retailers can call 1(855) 215-5730.

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Verizon has added on a step for customers wanting to unlock their fully paid-off devices by introducing a new waiting period in certain cases.

Under Verizon’s current device-unlocking policy, customers who pay off their payment agreement balance online or in the My Verizon app have to wait 35 days before their phone will be unlocked.

The same delay applies if a Verizon Gift Card is used to buy a smartphone or customers pay off the remaining balance.

The delay also applies to postpaid customers who pay off a device installment plan online or in the app. 

NEW IPHONE SCAM TRICKS OWNERS INTO GIVING PHONES AWAY

Customers who complete their installment agreements with scheduled monthly payments will continue to have their devices unlocked automatically after the final payment, according to the policy.

Customers may be able to avoid the 35-day delay by paying off the remaining balance in person, but only at a Verizon corporate store using what the company describes as a secure payment method.

These include cash, an EMV chip-enabled credit card or a contactless option like Apple Pay or Google Pay.

Payments made online, in the app, by phone, at authorized retailers or through other non-secure methods may also trigger the 35-day waiting period.

HAGERTY ASKS FCC TO SANCTION VERIZON OVER DISCLOSURE OF SENATE PHONE DATA

A Verizon spokesperson said customers who meet the requirements for a faster unlock will usually receive it within 24 hours and added that the 35-day window is to allow time for fraud prevention, according to Ars Technica.

The policy change came after the Federal Communications Commission (FCC) eliminated Verizon’s longstanding requirement to automatically unlock devices 60 days after activation.

The change, for example, would limit customers’ ability to quickly unlock a phone before international travel to use a local SIM card abroad.

NEW IPHONE SCAM TRICKS OWNERS INTO GIVING PHONES AWAY

It could also make it complicated for customers hoping to sell a paid-off device immediately or switch carriers without interruption and find corporate stores.

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For prepaid customers, devices bought from Verizon stay locked for 365 days of paid, active service.

After that period, Verizon says it will automatically remove the lock, unless the device has been reported stolen or flagged for fraud.

FOX Business has reached out to Verizon for comment.

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Elon Musk’s The Boring Company has been selected to begin negotiations for a proposed underground transit system connecting Universal Orlando’s parks, following a vote by the Shingle Creek Transit and Utility Community Development District Board.

During its Feb. 11 meeting, the board authorized staff to enter contract negotiations with The Boring Company after determining its proposal best met the district’s request for an “innovative, future-ready, point-to-point solution.”

The project is intended to support transportation infrastructure improvements, including the planned Sunshine Corridor and transit needs tied to expansion around Universal Orlando.

The decision does not finalize a contract.

PILOT PROGRAM AT MAJOR AIRPORT TRACKS MOVEMENT, APPROVES INTERNATIONAL FLYERS’ IDENTITY

Any agreement would still require board approval, and officials said they will evaluate the project’s operational and financial feasibility before moving forward.

Fox 35 Orlando reported that the proposed underground transit system is intended to ease congestion along International Drive by linking Universal’s existing theme parks and CityWalk with Epic Universe, which opened last year.

The local station said the board’s vote comes after months of speculation and a competitive process that included proposals from other firms, such as Glydways.

While some competitors pitched elevated guideway systems designed to reduce construction time, the district ultimately opted to pursue an underground concept similar to The Boring Company’s “Vegas Loop” in Nevada.

TESLA ATTACK IN LAS VEGAS ‘CERTAINLY HAS SOME OF THE HALLMARKS’ OF TERRORISM, FBI OFFICIAL SAYS

“I think it would be a new opportunity to lessen traffic load and good for visitors as well,” said resident Scott Heinz, according to Fox 35.

Mary Walters-Clark, another resident, said the move could help ease congestion during peak hours by giving visitors an alternative to navigating heavy traffic and allowing them to better manage their time.

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Americans who live alone are paying a five-figure “singles tax” amid rising rents around the nation, a new analysis finds.

Data from Zillow shows that the typical apartment rent is currently $1,745 and has risen 30% over the last five years, which represents a significant burden for renters who live alone and don’t have one or more roommates to split the bill with.

The premium paid by solo renters was dubbed the “singles tax” by Zillow, which found that the national average singles tax amounts to $10,470 per year. 

“When you’re living alone, you’re covering the full rent on one income and that can add up fast,” said Emily Smith, Zillow rental trends expert. “Apartments often make living solo more attainable, while also offering shared spaces that help people feel connected.”

HOUSING MARKET COOLS AS PRICE GROWTH HITS SLOWEST PACE SINCE GREAT RECESSION RECOVERY

New York City tops the list of areas with the highest singles tax, as the Big Apple’s typical apartment rent of $3,900 a month amounts to a singles tax of $23,400 for the year.

San Jose ranked second, with a typical rent of $3,248 a month and a singles tax of $19,488 per year. Boston was close behind in third, with the typical rent in the city amounting to $3,014 a month and resulting in a singles tax of $18,084.

A pair of California cities rounded out the top five, with San Francisco in fourth based on a typical rent of $2,857 and a singles tax of $17,142, while Los Angeles ranked fifth with a typical monthly rent of $2,648 and a singles tax of $15,888.

HOMEBUYERS GAIN UPPER HAND IN 3 MAJOR CITIES AS INVENTORIES GROW

Renters who pair up their living arrangement with a partner derive what Zillow called a “couples’ discount” from being able to split up the rental bill as well as utilities and other costs.

“For renters who choose to live with a partner or roommate, splitting everyday costs like rent, utilities and groceries can go a long way in easing the pressure of today’s higher cost of living,” Smith said.

Based on the firm’s national data, the couples’ discount amounts to a combined $20,940 in annual rental savings from splitting the bill.

RICH CALIFORNIANS FLOCK TO LAS VEGAS HOUSING MARKET AS LAWMAKERS CONSIDER WEALTH TAX

For example, given the sizable singles tax in the cities with the highest rent, couples in New York City can get a discount of $46,800 instead of the singles tax of $23,400.

The report noted the couples discount can go a long way toward helping renters save for a down payment on a home, with the national average couples discount of $20,940 being more than halfway to a 10% down payment on a typical U.S. home, per Zillow’s data.

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High-net-worth Californians are increasingly setting their sights on Las Vegas as they look to reduce their tax burden and protect their finances as a proposed wealth tax looms in the Golden State. 

New data shows that by the end of 2025, more than 23% of Realtor.com listing views for Las Vegas homes came from Los Angeles, making it the leading source of out-of-market interest.

San Jose accounted for more than 8% of views, while Riverside, California, made up nearly 4%, according to Realtor.com.

“Migration from California to Las Vegas may reflect both tax considerations and the meaningful affordability gap between the two markets,” Realtor.com senior economic research analyst Hannah Jones told FOX Business in an email.

MARK ZUCKERBERG BECOMES LATEST CALIFORNIA BILLIONAIRE TO RELOCATE TO FLORIDA AMID TAX CONCERNS

That gap is substantial. Los Angeles’ typical home price topped $1 million in January, while San Jose’s median listing price was even higher at $1.1 million. 

In contrast, Las Vegas’ median listing price stood at $465,000, according to Realtor.com.

Nevada’s lack of a state income tax also remains a major draw, Jones said.

“Taxes and overall cost of living are major drivers, and Nevada’s lack of state income tax continues to be one of the most frequently cited reasons for the move,” Jones said. 

“For some clients, it’s purely financial. They can sell a $2 million to $3 million home in California and purchase a comparable or larger property in Las Vegas for less while reducing their ongoing tax burden.”

HOMEBUYERS GAIN UPPER HAND IN 3 MAJOR CITIES AS INVENTORIES GROW

The migration trend also comes as California considers a proposed wealth tax that would impose a one-time 5% tax on the net worth of residents with assets exceeding $1 billion.

The measure, backed by the Service Employees International Union–United Healthcare Workers West, would need roughly 875,000 signatures to qualify for the November ballot.

California Gov. Gavin Newsom has opposed the measure, warning it could push high earners to leave the state.

“While policy discussions like a potential wealth tax may influence timing for some high-income households, the ability to convert expensive coastal real estate into greater purchasing power in a lower-cost market is likely also a significant driver,” Jones told FOX Business. 

BILLIONAIRES FLEE CALIFORNIA ‘WITHIN SEVEN DAYS’ OVER PROPOSED WEALTH TAX: INSIDE THE MIAMI MIGRATION

“Together, these financial incentives are helping sustain cross-state housing demand.”

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Meta CEO Mark Zuckerberg and his wife, Priscilla Chan, are buying a waterfront mansion in Miami’s exclusive “Billionaire Bunker,” becoming the latest high-profile California billionaire to establish roots in Florida amid tax concerns.

FOX Business’ Kristen Altus contributed to this report.

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Elon Musk on Thursday slammed Anthropic, accusing the artificial intelligence (AI) company’s models of being “misanthropic and evil.”

Musk’s comments came in response to a post on X in which Anthropic — led by CEO and co-founder Dario Amodei and best known for its Claude family of large language models — announced it had closed a $30 billion funding round at a $380 billion post-money valuation. 

In his reply, which drew at least 1 million views within hours, Musk alleged the company’s AI systems exhibit racial and demographic bias.

“Your AI hates Whites & Asians, especially Chinese, heterosexuals and men. This is misanthropic and evil,” Musk wrote. “Fix it.

NLRB DISMISSES SPACEX CASE OVER FIRED ENGINEERS, SIGNALS NO FUTURE ENFORCEMENT ACTION: REPORT

“Frankly, I don’t think there is anything you can do to escape the inevitable irony of Anthropic ending up being Misanthropic. You were doomed to this fate when you chose your name. The Name of the Wind.”

The Tesla CEO’s AI company, xAI, and its chatbot Grok compete directly with Anthropic’s Claude models.

Musk has previously been critical of Anthropic, including after reports last month that Anthropic cut off xAI’s access to Claude models, according to The Economic Times.

ELON MUSK CALLS POLICE RAID ON X OFFICES A ‘POLITICAL ATTACK’ AMID FRENCH CRIMINAL PROBE

“Not quite on programming, but it will excel in other areas. Anthropic has done something special with coding,” Musk wrote on X Jan. 15. “It was a helpful motivator that they cut us off [xAI] and not good for their karma.”

In a Jan. 30 post on X, Musk appeared to similarly mock Anthropic’s name.

“Always worth remembering that fate loves irony. The most ironic outcome for a company named [Anthropic] would be that it is the most misanthropic!”

Anthropic’s latest funding round ranks among the largest private tech fundraising rounds to date, second only to OpenAI, according to CNBC. 

SPACEX ACQUIRES XAI IN RECORD-SETTING DEAL VALUED AT OVER $1T

Musk is similarly engaged in an ongoing feud with OpenAI CEO Sam Altman. The two traded barbs on X last month after Musk responded to a post alleging that OpenAI’s ChatGPT had been linked to multiple deaths, Business Insider reported.

“Don’t let your loved ones use ChatGPT,” Musk wrote.

Altman pushed back, taking aim at Tesla’s Autopilot technology.

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Musk, Altman and Anthropic could not be immediately reached by FOX Business for comment.

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Spirit Airlines reached a deal to sell 20 of its Airbus jetliners and is recalling some of the flight attendants furloughed late last year amid the budget carrier’s financial struggles.

Spirit is in the midst of its second bankruptcy in under two years after it filed for Chapter 11 bankruptcy protection in November 2024 and completed its first restructuring in March 2025. It filed for bankruptcy a second time in August 2025, which prompted the airline to move forward with service cuts and furloughs.

The company said selling the aircraft will improve its financial situation, and the fleet reduction isn’t expected to affect its flight schedule if the court approves the jetliner sales because most of the 20 planes aren’t in service.

“As part of our ongoing restructuring, we have reached an agreement to sell 20 aircraft that have been held for sale for some time. Most of these aircraft are not currently in revenue service,” Spirit said in a statement. 

BUDGET FLIGHTS HANG IN BALANCE AS BANKRUPT SPIRIT AIRLINES TURNS TO PRIVATE EQUITY FOR LIFELINE: REPORT

“If approved by the court, this transaction will give us greater financial flexibility. The aircraft involved will be phased out of our fleet starting in April 2026. We do not anticipate any changes to our near-term schedule or staffing as a result of this transaction,” Spirit added.

The company formally asked a federal bankruptcy court for approval to proceed with the sale on Wednesday. Income from the transaction would go to paying off debt related to the aircraft while contributing to lower operational costs.

Reuters reported that the first bidder is CSDS Asset Management, an aviation asset manager that agreed to buy the 20 planes for about $533.5 million. If approved, Spirit would seek competing offers starting at around $554 million, according to an agreement with CSDS, and the auction and sale would be held in April.

SPIRIT AIRLINES FILES FOR SECOND BANKRUPTCY IN UNDER A YEAR AS LOW-COST CARRIER CONTINUES TO STRUGGLE

Spirit Airlines on Thursday moved to recall 500 of the more than 1,300 flight attendants who were furloughed in December due to its ongoing financial struggles.

“As we continue to make adjustments to meet the evolving needs of our business, we are issuing recall notices to 500 Flight Attendants who were involuntarily furloughed on Dec. 1, 2025. Recalled Flight Attendants will be sent a notice on Feb. 12, 2026, and those who accept will return to duty in the timeframe detailed in the Collective Bargaining Agreement.”

UNITED AIRLINES CEO GIVES 5-WORD PREDICTION THAT LOW-COST RIVAL WILL GO OUT OF BUSINESS

The Association of Flight Attendants-CWA, the union that represents Spirit flight attendants, said in a statement posted to X that they will be recalled in order of system seniority, with those involuntarily furloughed first.

“This is good news for 500 Flight Attendants and their families and critical to those of us on the line that have faced a grueling operation over the last two months. The company’s goal in recalling Flight Attendants is to ease some of the operational issues since the furloughs,” the union said.

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The union added it will continue to press management on scheduling issues, access to healthcare and other benefits, as well as a dependability policy and other matters.

Reuters contributed to this report.

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Billionaire investor and hedge fund manager Bill Ackman is making a big gamble on the future of Mark Zuckerberg and his Meta platforms.

Ackman has allegedly committed an estimated $2 billion to Meta, representing a sizable 10% of Pershing Square’s total portfolio, The Wall Street Journal reported. The move is a public backing of Zuckerberg’s pivot from the “Metaverse” to superintelligence, with Meta as the beneficiary of AI integration.

Pershing Square started buying Meta last November at an average price of $625 per share. Today, Meta stock trades near $670, netting Ackman an early gain.

MARK ZUCKERBERG BECOMES LATEST CALIFORNIA BILLIONAIRE TO RELOCATE TO FLORIDA AMID TAX CONCERNS

While Ackman’s investment shows a bullish stance, Meta’s balance sheet has some market experts nervous. Meta’s “Reality Labs” has lost $83 billion since 2020, and the company cut 1,500, or 10%, of Reality Labs’ workforce last month.

Meta is shifting focus away from its virtual reality endeavors to AI-powered smart glasses, which Zuckerberg believes will be the “main way we integrate superintelligence into daily life.”

Neither Pershing Square nor Meta immediately returned Fox News Digital’s request for comment.

The Facebook and Instagram parent company is also entering a period of unprecedented capital expenditure to build data centers and talent pools needed for artificial intelligence. Meta’s fourth quarter and full-year 2025 report, released last month, shows the company expects to spend $115 billion to $135 billion in 2026, primarily on front-loading artificial intelligence infrastructure.

Meta stock has declined over the past several months and remains lower year over year, according to market data, amid investor concerns that its artificial intelligence spending may be too aggressive. But in Pershing Square’s investor presentation, Ackman called the stock “deeply discounted.”

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Ackman isn’t just betting on Meta, but rather positioning himself as a major stakeholder in America’s future tech economy. Pershing Square has an additional $2 billion stake in Uber and a $1.3 billion stake in Amazon.

Pershing Square also announced Wednesday that it was entirely exiting its position in Hilton, signaling another move away from traditional hospitality toward high-growth technology.

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The “McMansion” is officially moving from a status symbol to liability.

Twenty years after the 2006 housing boom, new data from Zillow reveals a fundamental reversal in the American Dream: Buyers are ditching “wasted scale” and mahogany-heavy footprints for high-efficiency “sanctuaries.”

As insurance premiums and property taxes soar, real estate experts warn that the oversized, unoptimized estates of the mid-aughts are becoming a financial exposure for homeowners who fail to adapt.

“The appetite for space hasn’t disappeared, but the definition of value has evolved. Buyers still want room for family, entertaining and flexibility. What they don’t want is excess without purpose,” Catena Homes principal Harrison Polsky told Fox News Digital.

HOUSING MARKET COOLS AS PRICE GROWTH HITS SLOWEST PACE SINCE GREAT RECESSION RECOVERY

“With rising insurance costs in Texas and higher property taxes, a 5,000-plus-square-foot home that isn’t energy efficient or thoughtfully designed can absolutely feel like a liability. But a well-built, high-performance home of that size with strong insulation, efficient systems and functional layout still represents the American Dream here,” he added. “The shift isn’t away from scale entirely; it’s away from wasted scale.”

“In Palm Beach County, scale still has strong appeal, particularly in waterfront and estate communities. However, soaring insurance costs in Florida have changed buyer behavior,” RWB Construction Management founder Robert Burrage also told Fox News Digital.

“A 6,000 or 7,000-square-foot home built in 2006 without impact glass, elevated construction, modern roofing and generator systems can absolutely feel like financial exposure,” Burrage noted. “Buyers are willing to pay for size, but only if it’s engineered for resilience.”

Going back to 2006, luxury was granite and mahogany. In 2026, Zillow says it’s pickleball courts and golf simulators (with listing mentions up 25%) to whole-home batteries (up 40%) and zero-energy-ready homes (up 70%).

“Resilience and lifestyle go hand in hand. Whole-home generators, battery storage, hurricane-rated systems, smart-home integration and expansive outdoor living are expected,” Burrage said.

“A large home without those features narrows the buyer pool significantly. Meanwhile,” he said, “a slightly smaller but technologically advanced home designed for indoor-outdoor living often performs better in terms of demand and pricing.”

“Today’s buyers are far more educated about operating costs and long-term durability,” Polsky agreed. “In this market, lifestyle infrastructure and sustainability are no longer bonuses. They’re baseline expectations.”

Resale advice used to be: “Keep it beige.” Now, Zillow finds buyers offer more for olive green and charcoal gray, with “color drenching” mentions up 149%. The experts said the “beige box” of the mid-aughts is a harder sell now.

“The sterile beige spec home from the mid-2000s definitely feels dated. Buyers today respond to depth and personality but it has to be curated,” Polsky said. “We’re encouraging sellers to modernize with warmer neutrals, layered textures, and intentional color moments. ‘Safe’ used to mean blank. Now safe means thoughtfully designed. Homes that lack character tend to photograph poorly and sit longer.”

“Buyers want lighter, organic palettes with architectural texture and contrast,” Burrage weighed in. “We’re advising our clients who are building with us to keep interiors fresh and light strategically. A thoughtful design can materially impact buyer perception and final sales price.”

As millennials and Gen X become the primary buying force, they are rejecting the norms of what once was. The real estate experts both answered “yes” when asked if the market is seeing a permanent cultural shift in what “luxury” means.

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“Boomers selling older estates should strongly consider modernizing systems and aesthetics,” Burrage said. “Buyers are comparing them to newly built coastal homes engineered for climate durability and lower operating risk.”

“Boomers selling 2006-era estates need to understand that today’s buyers compare everything to new construction with modern infrastructure. Updating mechanical systems, improving energy performance and refreshing interiors before listing can dramatically improve positioning,” Polsky pointed out. “The American Dream hasn’t gone away, it’s simply become more intentional. Buyers want homes that support how they live, not just how they’re seen.”

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Ford on Tuesday posted its largest quarterly loss since 2008 amid losses in the automaker’s electric vehicle (EV) division, as well as the impact of tariffs and a fire that impacted an aluminum supplier.

The Detroit automaker reported a fourth quarter net loss of $11.1 billion after previously disclosing large writedowns to its EV programs, which the company is realigning in response to lower-than-expected consumer demand and changing federal subsidies.

“I think the customer has spoken,” Ford CEO Jim Farley said on the company’s earnings call. “That’s the punchline.”

The company lost $4.8 billion on EVs last year and projects 2026 will bring losses in the range of $4 billion to $4.5 billion, adding that the division will continue losing money for at least the next two years. Ford CFO Sherry House said during the earnings call that the automaker is targeting break-even for its EV unit in 2029.

Ford also announced a larger than previously reported financial hit from tariff costs, as the company lost an additional $900 million after the Trump administration said in December that a tariff-relief program would only be retroactive to November, rather than back to May as originally anticipated.

FORD CUTS ELECTRIC F-150 LIGHTNING PRODUCTION, TAKES $19.5B CHARGE IN STRATEGIC SHIFT

The automaker’s tariff bill last year was about $2 billion and Ford indicated it expects tariff costs will be roughly the same level this year.

Ford was more reliant on imported aluminum due to a pair of fires that impacted an aluminum plant near Oswego, New York, which isn’t expected to be fully operational again until sometime between May and September.

Despite those headwinds, Ford’s fourth quarter revenue of $45.9 billion beat analysts’ expectations. The company narrowly missed its revised guidance of $7 billion, as it posted earnings before interest and taxes of $6.8 billion for the year.

REGULATORS EXPAND PROBE INTO NEARLY 1.3M FORD F-150 PICKUP TRUCKS OVER TRANSMISSION ISSUES

Late last year, Farley announced the company is cutting production of the electric F-150 Lightning and refocusing its investment on hybrid vehicles and affordable EVs, resulting in a $19.5 billion charge on its EV assets and product roadmap.

He said the move would allow the company to refocus investments in higher margin areas like American-built trucks, vans and hybrids across its lineup, as well as more affordable EVs.

FORD CEO HAILS TRUMP FUEL STANDARDS RESET AS A ‘VICTORY’ FOR AFFORDABILITY AND COMMON SENSE

The company is planning a $30,000 EV platform and has signaled it will start rolling out an electric pickup on that platform next year. Ford also plans to pursue targeted partnerships in certain markets and investments in hybrid technologies.

“I do believe this is the right allocation of capital. It’s a combination of partnerships where it makes sense, efficient partial electrification investments where we have revenue power, and really hitting the EV market in the core,” Farley told analysts on a call Tuesday.

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Reuters contributed to this report.

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Kraft Heinz is pumping the brakes on plans to break up the company, with its new CEO saying the food giant’s challenges are “fixable and within our control” as it shifts focus toward reigniting profitable growth through a $600 million investment push.

In a note in the company’s routine fourth quarter report, CEO Steve Cahillane said that instead of splitting up, the company will double down on rebuilding growth — backing that up with a massive investment in the brand’s marketing, sales and research and development.

“When I decided to join Kraft Heinz, I knew that this was an exciting opportunity to contemporize iconic brands, better serve consumers and customers, and build meaningful shareholder value,” Cahillane said in the press release.

“Since joining the company, I have seen that the opportunity is larger than expected and that many of our challenges are fixable and within our control,” he continued. “My number one priority is returning the business to profitable growth, which will require ensuring all resources are fully focused on the execution of our operating plan.”

MCDONALD’S PLANS MASSIVE OVERHAUL WITH MAJOR CHANGES TO RESTAURANTS AND MENUS

“As a result, we believe it is prudent to pause work related to the separation and we will no longer incur related dis-synergies this year.”

Kraft Heinz announced in September that its board of directors approved a plan to split it into two independent, publicly traded companies through a tax-free spinoff. The aim was to create two more focused organizations with less complexity that would be able to maximize their brands and boost profitability.

Cahillane was slated to lead the business it is calling Global Taste Elevation, overseeing brands like Heinz, Philadelphia and Kraft Mac & Cheese. The other company, called North American Grocery, would oversee its portfolio of grocery staples like Oscar Mayer, Kraft Singles and Lunchables.

As of December, the official names of the new companies were not yet determined, and the company also had not announced who would lead its North American grocery business.

In the fourth-quarter report, Kraft Heinz also announced its commitment of $600 million to marketing, sales, research and development, product improvements and select pricing initiatives across 2026. Cahillane said Kraft’s strong balance sheet and $3.7 billion in free cash flow gives it the financial flexibility to fund this push while still generating excess cash.

“We are confident in the opportunity ahead and believe this investment will accelerate our return to profitable growth,” he said.

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While leadership is optimistic, Kraft’s 2025 numbers showed clear strain — full-year net sales were down 3.5% to $24.9 billion, organic sales were down 3.4%, volume was down 4.1%, and adjusted operating income was down 11.5%.

Kraft’s biggest pressure points were in coffee, cold cuts, frozen meals, bacon and select condiments, as inflation in commodity and manufacturing costs outpaced efficiency efforts. The company reported an operating loss of $4.7 billion last year, largely driven by “non-cash impairment charges.”

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FOX Business’ Daniella Genovese contributed to this report.

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An expert witness in a case brought by a California woman against Meta, the parent company of Facebook and Instagram, testified that the design features of its social media apps are addictive, likening them to a “drug,” especially when affecting youth.

The landmark case continued in a California courtroom on Tuesday with witness testimony.

Dr. Anna Lembke, psychiatrist and Stanford University professor, told the court after reviewing thousands of pages of internal documents and reviewing social media companies’ own research, she determined the design features of social media are addictive.

The mother of four, who is the highest ranking person overseeing addiction initiatives at the university, defined addiction as “the continued, compulsive use of a substance or a behavior despite harm to self or others.”

Lembke argued that Meta deploys “potent” features, such as Instagram’s “infinite scroll” and tailored-for-you algorithms, to stimulate dopamine release that “drugifies human connection.”

FACEBOOK AND INSTAGRAM ALLOW PREDATORS TO ‘TRADE CHILD PORNOGRAPHY,’ ACCORDING TO LAWSUIT FILED BY NEW MEXICO

With social media addiction, Lembke said downstream harms include depression, anxiety, eating disorders, self-harm, loneliness, suicidal ideation, cyberbullying and sexual exploitation. Children, she added, are especially prone to rage attacks, screaming, threats of self-harm and insomnia.

After reviewing Meta documents, Lembke argued that the tech giant is aware of social media addiction and has used the term “Problematic Internet Use” internally as a synonym, indicating that the company is “working hard not to call it addiction” or acknowledge the gravity of the issue.  

Lembke testified that individuals would rarely be able to self-identify a social media addiction and would require a skilled therapist to diagnose it. 

She explained that a therapist who is not educated in the field of addiction may spend a lot of time talking about other things, or looking for underlying reasons, rather than targeting the addictive behavior. 

META RESEARCHER WARNED OF 500K CHILD EXPLOITATION CASES DAILY ON FACEBOOK AND INSTAGRAM PLATFORMS

Having diagnosed people with social media addiction, Lembke said identifiers are typically frequency of use, loss of control, cravings and withdrawal, consequences and risk factors.

While adolescents are particularly vulnerable due to brain development, Lembke said anyone can develop an addiction with enough exposure.

She added social media can function neurologically like other addictive substances, especially in youth.

“A child growing up in a family not feeling supported or verbally abused, it would be natural to turn to a self-soothing mechanism,” Lembke said.

On Monday, a safety researcher for Meta also warned executives that there may be upward of half a million cases of sexual exploitation of minors every day on social media platforms. 

META SUED AFTER TEEN BOYS’ SUICIDES, FAMILIES CLAIM TECH GIANT IGNORED ‘SEXTORTION’ SCHEMES

Citing Meta’s internal documents, Lembke said the company acknowledged that females are more likely to be vulnerable to social media.

She added that through her own clinical work, boys are more prone to gaming, while girls experience “negative social comparisons,” body dysmorphia driven by filters, and a heightened need for validation and approval after viewing idealized bodies and faces girls feel unable to measure up to.

She further criticized Instagram for providing “frictionless access,” noting that children often lie about their age during the platform’s “ineffective age verification” process, and that its parental controls are too complex for even well-educated parents to navigate.

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Among other addictive qualities of Instagram’s app, Lembke described the notification tool as a potent feature that “triggers” or induces cravings to return to the platform. She added that the 24-hour time limit on stories creates a “fear of missing out,” or “FOMO,” which compels users to check the platform more frequently.

Adam Mosseri, head of Instagram, is expected to be questioned in court Wednesday.

FOX Business’ Eric Revell contributed to this report. 

Editor’s note: The story has been updated to clarify that Dr. Anna Lembke testified at a California trial, not New Mexico.

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Ring founder Jamie Siminoff said Tuesday that Ring does not store deleted doorbell footage without a subscription, as questions continue over how law enforcement recovered previously inaccessible video evidence in the disappearance of Nancy Guthrie.

Siminoff addressed the issue during an appearance on “The Bottom Line,” where hosts Dagen McDowell and Brian Brenberg asked about subscription storage, privacy concerns and the reported recovery of doorbell video by federal authorities.

“I do know with Ring specifically, if you delete a recording or if you don’t want a recording, you don’t have a subscription. We do not have it stored. I know that because I built the systems with my team,” Siminoff said.

Siminoff cautioned against speculating about the specifics of the Guthrie investigation and noted that different companies build their systems differently.

SAVANNAH GUTHRIE ISSUES DESPERATE PLEA AS SEARCH FOR MISSING MOTHER ENTERS DAY 10

“I wouldn’t want to speculate,” he said. “Maybe they’re also, maybe we’re wrong, and that she did have some sort of subscription. You know, again, we’re getting a lot of, in the sort of in these cases, I’ve found that a lot of the things that we’re hearing are not always correct, and we find out later what’s actually happening.”

He reiterated that Ring does not retain deleted footage without an active subscription.

“If you delete a recording or if you don’t want a recording, you don’t have a subscription. We do not have it stored,” Siminoff said.

MOTIVE BEHIND ALLEGED NANCY GUTHRIE ABDUCTION STILL UNCLEAR, FORMER HOSTAGE NEGOTIATOR SAYS

Federal officials said Tuesday that video was recovered from “residual data located in backend systems,” according to a statement posted on X by FBI Director Kash Patel.

Google cooperated with the FBI to retrieve the video, a federal source confirmed to Fox News Digital.

Asked how investigators may have been able to recover doorbell footage in the Guthrie case, Siminoff again cautioned against speculation and stressed that companies build their systems differently.

“I mean, definitely hard to speculate on something like this because, you know, everybody builds their systems differently,” he said.

He again declined to draw conclusions about what occurred in this case.

AMAZON’S RING EXPANDS AI-POWERED NETWORK TO HELP LOCATE LOST DOGS

“Again, I don’t want to speculate exactly like what happened or what subscription they had or whatever,” Siminoff said. “I think there’s a lot of probably information out there that we don’t know.”

Siminoff said the video evidence could be significant for investigators.

“It does seem like this video footage might be the best evidence so far,” he said, “and it shows why it is just so important to have these cameras.”

While avoiding details of the investigation, Siminoff said he was encouraged that authorities were able to recover video evidence.

“But again, I’m happy to see here that, you know, for whatever the reason was that they were able to with this camera, you know, recover this,” he said. “Because I do think this evidence is hopefully going to lead to the a solution here to this, this really just tragic case.”

During the interview, Siminoff also responded to backlash surrounding Ring’s Super Bowl “Search Party” advertisement, which focused on a feature designed to help locate lost pets.

“It actually like is a completely built on privacy,” he said. “So what we do is you we like we look for a dog, someone post a dog, we find it, we say, you know, Jamie, this dog that’s lost in your neighborhood looks like this dog in front of your camera. Do you want to contact your neighbor?”

He said users retain full control over whether any contact occurs.

“If you say no, your privacy is protected. You’re totally fine,” Siminoff said. “If you say yes, then like I think most people would want to, you help return the dog.”

He added that the feature has helped reunite pets with their owners.

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“We’re returning over a dog a day,” Siminoff said. “And we’re doing it by keeping privacy and trust because that is very important.”

Keep up with the latest reporting on the Nancy Guthrie case with Fox Nation’s “Vanished: What Happened to Nancy Guthrie?”

Fox News Digital’s Emma Bussey contributed to this reporting.

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An asset class that is all about vibes suddenly has awful vibes

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A data breach that impacted a major government tech contractor is now believed to be significantly larger than initially thought, with more than 25 million Americans affected.

Conduent, a business technology firm that provides a variety of services like medical billing, toll transactions and processing prepaid cards for government programs, experienced a data breach that began in October 2024 and was mitigated in January 2025.

Last October, the company began informing consumers who were affected by the breach, which was believed to have affected more than 10 million people who had their names, Social Security numbers and medical information exposed. 

Newly released data breach reports have pushed the number of people affected in Texas to at least 15.4 million, up from an earlier estimate of 4 million that was released in October, according to a report by TechCrunch.

10M AMERICANS HIT IN GOVERNMENT CONTRACTOR DATA BREACH

Additionally, the Oregon attorney general said over 10 million people were affected by the breach, and Conduent has reached out to “hundreds of thousands” of people in Delaware, Massachusetts, New Hampshire and other states, according to TechCrunch’s review of breach notifications.

A ransomware group known as SafePay took responsibility for the Conduent data breach and claimed to have stolen over 8 terabytes of data over the course of the intrusion.

CHINA BANS US AND ISRAELI CYBERSECURITY FIRMS OVER NATIONAL SECURITY CONCERNS: REPORT

Conduent said in a filing with the Securities and Exchange Commission (SEC) last fall that its investigation of the breach “confirmed that the data sets contained a significant number of individuals’ personal information associated with our clients’ end-users,” and it notified its government and private sector clients about the affected end users.

The company added in the Sept. 30, 2025, filing that it’s working with clients on the next steps required by federal and state law “including individual and regulatory notifications that began in October 2025 and are expected to be concluded by early 2026.”

TEXAS GOV ABBOTT ADDS POPULAR CHINESE ELECTRONICS, ONLINE SHOPPING COMPANIES TO ‘PROHIBITED’ TECH LIST

In a statement provided to FOX Business, Conduent said that, “Working in conjunction with our clients, we expect to send out all of the consumer notifications by April 15. In addition, a dedicated call center has been set up to address consumer inquiries. At this time, Conduent has no evidence of any attempted or actual misuse of any information potentially affected by this incident.”

The company said in its statement that “given the nature and complexity of the data involved, Conduent worked diligently with a dedicated review team, including internal and external experts, and conducted a detailed analysis of the affected files to identify the personal information contained therein, which was a time-intensive process.”

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“Both Conduent and our third-party experts monitor the dark web regularly and have no evidence of any personal information being released on the dark web,” the statement noted.

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Page, Brin, Ellison, Thiel, Sacks — and now, Zuckerberg.

Meta CEO Mark Zuckerberg is the latest California billionaire heading for Florida, snapping up a massive waterfront mansion in Miami’s exclusive “Billionaire Bunker,” as Golden State lawmakers push a proposed 5% tax on the ultra-wealthy.

Zuckerberg and his wife, Priscilla Chan, are buying a newly built mansion on Indian Creek, one of the area’s most expensive enclaves. The deal has not been confirmed as closed, sources with knowledge of the transaction told The Wall Street Journal, but neighbors said Zuckerberg plans to move in by April — signaling a relocation rather than a vacation home.

“People like Zuckerberg plan three moves ahead. That billionaire tax chatter has a lot of Palo Alto owners doing real math. If you’re staring at a potential 5% hit tied to net worth, Florida becomes a business decision. And Indian Creek is the clearest signal you’re serious, because it’s built for privacy and control,” Troy Dean Home CEO Troy Ippolito told Fox News Digital in reaction.

PETER THIEL DONATES $3M TO GROUP FIGHTING PROPOSED CALIFORNIA BILLIONAIRE TAX

“This is a loud signal that South Florida is a primary market now. When someone at Zuckerberg’s level buys here, it changes buyer psychology overnight,” he continued. “If that tax actually moves forward, you’ll see the impact first at the very top, because there’s so little true trophy inventory.”

The nearly 2-acre property is estimated to be worth $150 million to $200 million, based on comparable sales, and the reported seller is a limited liability company tied to Jersey Mike’s Subs founder Peter Cancro.

Cancro cashed out big in 2024 when he sold a majority stake in Jersey Mike’s to Blackstone for $8 billion, including debt. His home sale to Zuckerberg was off-market, a common move for ultra-wealthy buyers seeking privacy.

Aerial views of the property show that it sits across Biscayne Bay and features a private dock, wraparound terraces, lush landscaping, a waterfront pool, charming blue shutters and other elaborate amenities. The estate joins Zuckerberg’s already extensive real estate portfolio in places like Lake Tahoe and Palo Alto in California, and Kauai, Hawaii.

“It’s one entrance, tightly controlled, and only about 41 homes. You’re minutes from Miami, but it feels isolated. If you’re a global name, and you want a truly private backyard, this is as close as it gets,” Ippolito said.

Meta responded after publication, telling Fox News Digital, “We do not have a comment on the WSJ reporting from yesterday.”

Some of Zuckerberg’s new neighbors on Indian Creek include Jeff Bezos, Tom Brady, Carl Icahn, Ivanka Trump and Jared Kushner, David Guetta, Julio Iglesias, Jaime Gilinski and Edward Lampert.

Zuckerberg’s move comes on the heels of other notable, longtime California-based billionaires who have solidified residency in South Florida in response to a proposed California wealth tax.

Though the initiative has not yet received the required 875,000 signatures to qualify for the November ballot, the proposal — backed by the Service Employees International Union–United Healthcare Workers West — would impose a one-time 5% tax on the net worth of California residents with assets exceeding $1 billion.

The tax would be due in 2027, and taxpayers could spread payments over five years, with additional costs, according to the California Legislative Analyst’s Office.

If voters approve the measure, anyone who was a California resident on Jan. 1, 2026, would owe the tax, according to the proposal’s language.

Many South Florida real estate agents have told Fox News Digital that since the new year, a fresh wave of buyer interest has flooded in from California, with increased calls and broker website traffic.

“There’s a few other very big founders and also tech giants and also venture capitalist firms, the heads of which I’ve also moved here,” luxury real estate broker Julian Johnston of The Corcoran Group previously said. “It was always a layover, one night, an event, but Miami’s changed a lot in the last 10 years. It’s culturally more interesting… They said they were quite happy to move here and then see what happens in the next few years.”

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“One client said, ‘You know, this could be like a $5 billion tax for me,’” he recalled. “So they’re moving because of that.”

“Florida feels predictable. You have a clearer tax picture, fewer hurdles, and a much easier day-to-day,” Ippolito weighed in. “A lot of buyers feel like California treats them like a target. Florida treats them like they belong here.”

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Two men from Pennsylvania admitted to repeatedly traveling from Philadelphia to Minneapolis in an effort to defraud Minnesota’s Housing Stabilization Services (HSS) program, prosecutors announced. The men allegedly defrauded approximately $3.5 million from the program and used artificial intelligence to create false records.

The two men, identified as Anthony Waddell Jefferson, 37, and Lester Brown, 53, allegedly set up businesses in Minnesota and enrolled as HSS providers. The men were allegedly supposed to provide housing consulting, transitioning and sustaining services to qualifying individuals.

The state’s HSS program, which was officially launched in July 2020, aims to help people with disabilities, including seniors and those with mental illnesses or substance abuse issues, find and maintain housing. The Justice Department previously said the program “had low barriers to entry and minimal records requirements for reimbursement.”

Attorney General Pam Bondi reacted, “Criminal fraud not only robs taxpayers — it shatters trust in our institutions. Under President Trump’s leadership, today’s convictions are just the beginning. Our prosecutors will work tirelessly to unravel criminal fraud schemes and charge their perpetrators in Minnesota and across the country.”

TREASURY SECRETARY BESSENT VOWS TO LEAVE ‘NO STONE UNTURNED’ IN MINNESOTA FRAUD PROBE

Jefferson and Brown are accused of stealing approximately $3.5 million from HSS for services they falsely claimed to have provided to around 230 Medicaid beneficiaries. The men each pleaded guilty to one count of wire fraud and face up to 20 years in prison, the DOJ said.

“Minnesota will no longer be a haven for fraud under our watch,” Deputy Attorney General Todd Blanche said. “The Justice Department has been investigating billions in taxpayer fraud across the country and has already successfully convicted 66 individuals and counting in Minnesota. The collaboration between the Criminal Division and the U.S. Attorney’s Office is a prime example of how we restore justice and public trust, while holding criminal fraudsters accountable.”

AFTER SOMALI FRAUD SCANDAL, VA DEMOCRAT PUSHES BILL KILLING OVERSIGHT OF NONPROFITS

Jefferson and Brown allegedly visited shelters and Section 8 housing facilities, marketing themselves as “The Housing Guys,” in order to recruit Medicaid beneficiaries to sign up for HSS services that ultimately were not provided, according to the DOJ.

The DOJ also accused Jefferson of hiring family members and associates to work as employees, who, at his direction, created fake client notes that allegedly showed services provided. Some of the documentation allegedly showed that Jefferson had “invented fake employees” and used their names to sign client notes, the DOJ said. 

The department claimed that Brown did not keep notes “despite being required by Program rules to do so.” The DOJ said Jefferson and Brown “fabricated emails” about purported clients and used ChatGPT to create fake client notes.

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“These defendants had no connection to Minnesota or its communities. They traveled across the country for one purpose: to prey upon and steal millions in taxpayer dollars meant for people struggling with homelessness, addiction and disabilities,” said Assistant Attorney General A. Tysen Duva of the Justice Department’s Criminal Division. “Although programs like HSS are run by the states, they are funded with federal tax dollars. The Criminal Division will not stand by while fraudsters put all Americans’ tax dollars at risk.”

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The Hamptons housing market just made a new splash, but the surge is not being driven by everyday homebuyers.

Instead, cash-rich Wall Street and tech executives are powering a boom in multimillion-dollar sales, pushing median prices to an all-time high even as overall sales activity softens, according to new data.

According to a new report from Douglas Elliman and Miller Samuel, Hamptons homes hit the highest median sales price on record at $2.34 million, up 25% year over year. The average sales price also rose 25% annually to $3.76 million.

“The catalyst is absolutely tied to capital markets,” Douglas Elliman’s Adam Hofer told Fox News Digital. “The Hamptons has always been a discretionary, wealth-driven marketplace. When Wall Street performs, when liquidity events happen in tech, when bonuses are strong, that money needs a place to land and for many high-net-worth buyers – that place is the Hamptons.”

MIAMI MOVES AHEAD OF NEW YORK IN $1M-PLUS HOMES AFTER NEARLY A DECADE

“That said, this isn’t just a speculative spike,” he said. “Inventory remains structurally constrained, especially south of the highway and in turnkey properties. Unlike the pre-2008 era, today’s buyers are largely cash-heavy and less leveraged, which makes this appreciation feel more sustainable.”

“So yes, Wall Street momentum fuels the top end, but limited supply and long-term lifestyle demand are what’s keeping values elevated.”

Luxury sales are doing the heavy lifting in the Hamptons, with sales over $5 million reaching a record high in the fourth quarter of 2025. Douglas Elliman internal data also shows property closings over $10 million were up 75% year over year, and there were four closings of $20 million or more in 2025, compared to just one the previous year.

“The luxury buyer is operating in an entirely different universe from the average homeowner. All cash transactions at $5 million and above signal confidence, liquidity and a long-term mindset. These buyers are less sensitive to interest rates and more focused on lifestyle, legacy and asset diversification,” Hofer said.

“In contrast, the middle market is highly rate-sensitive. A one-point swing in mortgage rates dramatically impacts affordability. But when you’re writing an $8 million or $15 million check in cash, rate volatility becomes background noise,” he said. “It highlights a divided market that’s becoming more pronounced nationally. Rate sensitivity is creating friction in the middle tier, while the top 10% of buyers continue to transact with relative ease. The Hamptons is simply a magnified version of what’s happening across the country.”

But inventory is tight. Despite a slight increase in listings across the area in the fourth quarter of last year, months of supply fell to 6.8, down 24% from 2024, while luxury months of supply also declined sharply to 16.4 months.

Buyers are reportedly competing hardest for ocean and waterfront properties, turnkey, renovated homes in prime neighborhoods such as Southampton, Sag Harbor and East Hampton.

“Construction timelines, labor costs and permitting uncertainties have made move-in-ready product a premium commodity,” Hofer noted. “Waterfront and properties with protected water views continue to command outsized demand, and that’s where buyers are willing to stretch the furthest. There’s a finite amount of waterfront in the Hamptons, and sophisticated buyers understand that scarcity.”

While not fully captured in the report, the early summer rental surge lines up with the data, as buyers are committing earlier, luxury confidence remains high, and seven-figure demand is not slowing.

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“Strong rental demand is often a leading indicator of buyer confidence. When high-end rentals lock in early and at premium rates, it signals that people want to be here and that the Hamptons lifestyle remains a priority,” Hofer pointed out.

“For buyers waiting for a significant price correction,” he said, “the rental market suggests that underlying demand hasn’t weakened. In fact, many renters ultimately convert to buyers after experiencing the market firsthand. Sitting on the sidelines in hopes of a dramatic pullback may mean competing later in an even tighter inventory environment.”

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EXCLUSIVE – The War Department will partner with OpenAI to integrate the chatbot into GenAI.mil, a tool for military service members. 

The move will make OpenAI’s advanced language models “readily available to all 3 million War Department personnel,” the agency said. 

“ChatGPT will be made available to enhance mission execution and readiness, delivering reliable capabilities to the joint force,” a War Department news release states. 

The agency has committed to becoming an AI-first enterprise, reflected by GenAI.mil, it said. 

GOOGLE CEO CALLS FOR NATIONAL AI REGULATION TO COMPETE WITH CHINA MORE EFFECTIVELY 

“The platform’s proven reliability, evidenced by its 100% uptime since launch and its robust infrastructure, has established it as the trusted AI platform across the Department,” the agency said. 

Its adoption is already “accelerating operational tempo and sharpening the decision superiority of its users,” it said. 

War Department personnel are being trained to integrate AI capabilities into their daily workflow, officials said. 

In December, the Pentagon announced the launch of GenAI.mil, which is powered by Google Gemini and has surpassed one million unique users in the two months since its deployment. 

“The future of American warfare is here, and it’s spelled AI,” War Secretary Pete Hegseth said in a video obtained by FOX Business at the time. “As technologies advance, so do our adversaries. But here at the War Department, we are not sitting idly by.”

The platform puts “the world’s most powerful frontier AI models, starting with Google Gemini, directly into the hands of every American warrior,” he added. 

CHINESE HACKERS WEAPONIZE ANTHROPIC’S AI IN FIRST AUTONOMOUS CYBERATTACK TARGETING GLOBAL ORGANIZATIONS 

Google CEO Sundar Pichai noted that the company has partnered with government agencies for decades, but emphasized the significance of the new project.

“Through this deployment of Google Cloud’s ‘Gemini for Government’ offering, more than 3 million civilian and military personnel will be able to access the same advanced AI that businesses use every day to drive administrative efficiency and greater business productivity,” said Pichai. 

In January, the War Department announced the launch of its Artificial Intelligence Acceleration Strategy, an initiative intended to eliminate legacy bureaucratic blockers, and integrate the leading edge of frontier AI capabilities across every mission area. 

The wartime approach is based on the emphasis of three tenets: warfighting, intelligence and enterprise operations.

“Speed defines victory in the AI era, and the War Department will match the velocity of America’s AI industry,” Emil Michael, undersecretary of war for research and engineering, said previously. “We’re pulling in the best talent, the most cutting‑edge technology, and embedding the top frontier AI models into the workforce — all at a rapid wartime pace.” 

GOOGLE CEO CALLS FOR NATIONAL AI REGULATION TO COMPETE WITH CHINA MORE EFFECTIVELY 

The Trump administration has made AI a priority as adversaries such as China continue to develop and experiment with the technology. In December, President Donald Trump announced that he would be reversing a Biden-era restriction on high-end chip exports, permitting Nvidia to export its artificial-intelligence chips to China and other countries.

The H200 chips are high-performance processors made by Nvidia that help run artificial intelligence programs, like chatbots, machine learning and data-center tasks. 

FOX Business’ Andrea Margolis and Lorraine Taylor contributed to this report. 

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Actress Sydney Sweeney rang the opening bell at the New York Stock Exchange (NYSE) on Monday alongside American Eagle Outfitters Chairman and CEO Jay Schottenstein.

Sweeney was also joined by other executives from the retailer as she signed a book on the trading floor.

The actress partnered with American Eagle in 2025 for an advertising campaign that drew significant attention online.

SYDNEY SWEENEY TURNS CONTROVERSY INTO CASH AS AMERICAN EAGLE SALES JUMP

Sweeney wore jeans and a light blue denim jacket at the NYSE, an apparent nod to the “Sydney Sweeney Has Great Jeans” slogan that was released last summer.

The widely discussed campaign drew criticism, with some detractors arguing that its wordplay blurred the line between fashion marketing and references to genetic traits.

“Genes are passed down from parents to offspring, often determining traits like hair color, personality, and even eye color,” the “Euphoria” star said in the video. “My jeans are blue.”

President Donald Trump defended Sweeney in a Truth Social post, saying in part, “Sydney Sweeney, a registered Republican, has the ‘HOTTEST’ ad out there. It’s for American Eagle, and the jeans are ‘flying off the shelves.’ Go get ‘em Sydney!”

THE WAR ON HOT WOMEN: WHY THE WOKE MOB HATES SYDNEY SWEENEY

American Eagle also responded to the backlash, writing on social media that the ad “is and always was about the jeans.”

“Her jeans. Her story. We’ll continue to celebrate how everyone wears their AE jeans with confidence, their way,” the company said.

“Great jeans look good on everyone.”

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Elon Musk said Sunday that SpaceX is shifting its near-term priorities away from Mars and toward building what he described as a “self-growing city” on the moon, citing faster timelines and strategic urgency.

“For those unaware, SpaceX has already shifted focus to building a self-growing city on the Moon, as we can potentially achieve that in less than 10 years, whereas Mars would take 20+ years,” Musk wrote in a post on X.

“The mission of SpaceX remains the same: extend consciousness and life as we know it to the stars,” he added.

Musk said the moon offers a more practical testing ground because of its proximity to Earth.

SPACEX ACQUIRES XAI IN RECORD-SETTING DEAL VALUED AT OVER $1T

“It is only possible to travel to Mars when the planets align every 26 months (six month trip time), whereas we can launch to the Moon every 10 days (2 day trip time). This means we can iterate much faster to complete a Moon city than a Mars city,” Musk wrote.

He said SpaceX still plans to pursue its long-held goal of settling Mars but on a longer timeline.

MUSK CONFIRMS SPACEX SUCCESS IN PREVENTING RUSSIAN MILITARY FROM ACCESSING STOLEN STARLINK UNITS

“That said, SpaceX will also strive to build a Mars city and begin doing so in about 5 to 7 years, but the overriding priority is securing the future of civilization and the Moon is faster,” Musk wrote.

The comments echo a recent Wall Street Journal report that said SpaceX has told investors it would prioritize lunar missions before attempting a Mars landing, targeting March 2027 for an uncrewed moon mission.

The shift marks a notable change from Musk’s long-standing public emphasis on Mars as SpaceX’s primary destination. As recently as last year, Musk said the company aimed to launch an uncrewed Mars mission by the end of 2026.

“No, we’re going straight to Mars. The Moon is a distraction,” Musk wrote in January last year in response to a post on X.

Musk has a long record of setting ambitious timelines for major projects – including electric vehicles and self-driving technology – that have often slipped beyond their original schedules.

The renewed focus on the moon comes as the United States faces growing competition from China to return humans to the lunar surface this decade. Humans have not visited the moon since NASA’s Apollo 17 mission in 1972.

The remarks also arrive amid major financial and strategic shifts at SpaceX. Less than a week ago, Musk announced that SpaceX had acquired artificial intelligence company xAI – which he also leads – in a deal valuing SpaceX at $1 trillion and xAI at $250 billion.

Supporters of the move say it could bolster SpaceX’s longer-term plans for space-based data centers, which Musk has argued could be more energy-efficient than Earth-based facilities as demand for AI computing power grows.

SpaceX is also preparing for a potential public offering later this year that could raise as much as $50 billion, potentially making it the largest IPO in history.

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On Monday, Musk said in response to a user on X that NASA will account for less than 5% of SpaceX’s revenue this year, despite the company’s central role in NASA’s Artemis moon program, which includes a roughly $4 billion contract to land astronauts on the lunar surface using Starship.

“The vast majority of SpaceX revenue is the commercial Starlink system,” Musk wrote.

Reuters contributed to this report. 

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The scandalous accusations swirling around Labor Secretary Lori Chavez-DeRemer haven’t weakened her standing with President Donald Trump, according to people around the White House.

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For decades, purchasing a Florida condo was a leap of faith masked by palm trees and ocean views. But in the new year, the veil of secrecy has lifted.

Between a new mandatory digital transparency law and a landmark court ruling that handed a so-called “poison pill” to developers, the power dynamic in the Sunshine State has shifted dramatically.

“I think it’s definitely correcting,” Douglas Elliman Palm Beach agent Jessica Julian told Fox News Digital about the state of the condominium market. “I would say last year we saw more of these older buildings were hurting, not as many buyers for them. Everybody was kind of scared to dip their toes into an older building after what happened in Miami on Surfside. And so now that assessments are being paid and repairs are being done, we’re definitely seeing that correction.”

“I think momentum is probably the best word that we have. Things have stabilized. We are gonna move forward… And again, the demand here in South Florida is so strong,” MIAMI REALTORS Chief of Residential & Advocacy Danielle Blake also told Fox News Digital.

FLORIDA’S AGING WATERFRONT CONDOS BECOME GOLD MINES AS OWNERS CASH IN ON DEVELOPER BUYOUTS

The first major shift of 2026 includes provisions that took effect under House Bill 913, which requires associations with 25 units or more to have a dedicated, secure digital portal where prospective buyers can see a condo’s bank statements, reserve details and even structural reports of a building.

“The click of the button, you can go in there, you can look at all these documents – including the budget – before you make that offer,” Blake said. “We’re huge proponents of it. It brings transparency and accountability, and we continue to promote that.”

“It’s making the condo market more predictable. So condos that have delayed reserves or delayed issues with their building are seeing a lot more ongoing negotiations,” Julian noted, “where buildings that have thought ahead and have fully funded reserves, they have a competitive edge in the market.”

In Miami-Dade, 65% of active inventory consists of older condo buildings, and sales in the $200,000 to $400,000 range are up 21% year over year despite rising insurance costs and assessments, according to REALTORS data. The experts weighed in on whether buyers are being brave or just eager for a slice of paradise.

“I would like to say it’s all because of our advocacy work. I mean, transparency is really important, but I think it has to do more with market conditions. And in South Florida, it’s a very hot market. Everybody wants to move here. The weather is absolutely beautiful. People want to take advantage of that. And so this is really the last affordable inventory that we have, and they are moving in,” Blake explained.

“I am getting a lot of buyers that are eager to get down here in South Florida, but they’re very well-informed. They’re usually coming to me already doing their due diligence,” Julian added. “They might already have the buildings that they’ve pinpointed. They’ve researched the other ones, found out which ones seem a little weak on those reserve studies.”

The second major shift in Florida’s condo market is the recent Biscayne 21 court ruling, which set a legal precedent effectively granting minority holdouts, as few as 5% to 10% of owners, the power to block major redevelopments if the original declaration requires unanimous consent.

OLDER SOUTH FLORIDA CONDOS NOW SELLING FASTER THAN NEW CONSTRUCTION UNITS AMID AFFORDABILITY CRUNCH

Julian called the decision a “poison pill” for developers who were eyeing older, waterfront Miami buildings as prime targets for ultra-luxury conversions.

“The poison pill, which is [a] 100% buyout, it makes things very difficult. So they haven’t been pursuing those as much,” she said. “It’s too much unknown to try to do that, to change the condo bylaws, and try to take a building down that way. So I think it’s gonna change going forward as developers are going to look at buildings a lot more with scrutiny and patience.”

Julian dealt with buyout wars personally in late 2025 at Harbor Towers & Marina in West Palm Beach when two developers sued multiple owners caught in the crosshairs of a battle for control of the building.

“There are a handful of buildings out there that still have language in their condo bylaws that say 75 to 80% can terminate a building… So developers are most likely going to do their due diligence and they’re going to be looking towards those buildings first,” Julian said.

“I think this case really highlights the importance of reading the government docs,” Blake noted. “It’s really important for developers to check that and know what you’re getting into before you incorporate that into your plan.”

With her advocacy role in mind, Blake also offered advice on what fixes realtors may push for to ensure that one or two residents can’t prevent an entire community from escaping the financial burden of an older building: “Talk to local government, talk to the state. Everybody needs to be informed so they can come up with the right solution. And we would support that.”

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And while both experts agree that the two major changes in Florida’s condo market put an important emphasis on clarity and communication, Julian did share one warning about the future of the market environment.

“Greed is kind of taking place a little bit. So [buyers] are holding back until they get many more millions of dollars [from developer offers]. But what they don’t realize, that I see behind the scenes, is these developers are scooping up other buildings that are more affordable to them, that make more sense in pencil. And eventually we’re gonna be oversaturated,” she said.

“So if they are waiting, thinking that they’re going to get the ultimate payout, they might want to rethink that.”

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This week’s historic $1 trillion rout in U.S. software giants like Microsoft and Salesforce has sent a chill across Silicon Valley and around the world.

Speaking with fast-growing AI unicorn founders and top venture investors at Web Summit Qatar, many argued the software “Armageddon” narrative is overblown – even as they acknowledge AI valuations look stretched.

The founder of the $7 billion agentic AI unicorn Glean, Arvind Jain, said he doesn’t think AI will make software-as-a-service obsolete.

GOOGLE PLANS TO SPEND BIG AS AI RACE WITH RIVALS INTENSIFIES

“I think AI is a really powerful technology that people have to embed,” he said, adding that delivering products and services “will all continue,” arguing integration is how software services will thrive in the future.

Meantime, the $17 billion-valued decacorn Miro’s founder, Andrey Khusid, said AI “valuations are crazy, and valuations will correct,” but in his estimate, valuations will “normalize in the next two years.”

Technology investors also believe the AI bubble is deflating. Larry Li, founder of Amino Capital and a member of Forbes’ annual Midas List, said “it’s just a matter of time,” as he sees the bubble – especially for large companies – deflating.

APPLE SEES BIGGEST SALES JUMP IN 4 YEARS, POWERED BY ‘STAGGERING’ IPHONE DEMAND

Both investors and founders compared the moment to the dot-com era: most startups will fail, but the ones that survive will be the generational winners of the AI revolution. The prevailing view in Doha is that the boom has been more “responsible” than prior cycles because many companies are generating real revenue – even if valuations may still correct.

Another point of discussion in Doha was the IPO market, amid reports that AI giants OpenAI and Anthropic are racing to get to market first to scoop up eager investor dollars looking to own a slice of the fastest-growing companies.

Khusid said he prefers to stay private, noting the company has been profitable for years, and he believes he can operate more efficiently without outside public-market pressure.

NVIDIA CEO SAYS AI BOOM WILL CREATE ‘SIX-FIGURE’ CONSTRUCTION JOBS

Jain said many AI companies also prefer to stay private longer. “Public markets demand predictability,” he said — but “the market is actually changing so fast.”

Many of the world’s most valuable AI startups – including OpenAI and Anthropic – are still not profitable, with reports that OpenAI is set to lose $14 billion this year. That has not deterred investors from pouring billions into the sector. According to Forbes, more than $340 billion in cash chased global startups in 2025 – with more than 65% of that capital invested in AI companies.

While AI companies still have abundant access to cash, other startups say the funding market is tougher. Speaking on a panel moderated by FOX Business, Yuno founder Juan Pablo Ortega – who also founded Latin American unicorn Rappi — said non-AI startups are being benchmarked against AI companies growing at extreme rates.

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“You’re getting compared with AI companies that are growing 1,000% year over year and are doing things that are not possible for the rest of us,” he said.

Another hot topic: the U.S.–China AI race and which country is ahead in the technology. Amino Capital’s Li said the U.S. is ahead in innovation, but China is ahead in scaling, arguing China has an advantage through supply chain and production capacity as well as a higher number of AI engineers.

When asked whether the U.S. or China will “win,” most founders and investors said there is room for both — with growth for closed models like OpenAI and open models, including those developed in China.

Despite the stock market turbulence this week, the Dow Jones managed to cross the historic 50,000 level, underscoring the continued exuberance surrounding the AI race — even as many in Doha expect a valuation reset.

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The Dow Jones Industrial Average closed above 50,000 points for the first time on Friday as stocks rallied in response to a rout in tech shares earlier in the week.

The closely watched index rose above 50,000 for the first time after 2 p.m. during Friday’s trading session, advancing 1,206.95 points, or 2.47%, to close at 50,115.67.

The S&P 500 and Nasdaq Composite also closed in the green, up 1.97% and 2.18%, respectively.

President Donald Trump celebrated the news in a Truth Social post on Friday afternoon.

STELLANTIS TAKES MASSIVE $26B HIT AFTER MOVING AWAY FROM EVS

“The Dow Jones Industrial Average just hit 50,000 for the first time in History. CONGRATULATIONS AMERICA!” Trump wrote.

The president said in a separate post, “The ‘Experts’ said that if I hit 50,000 on the Dow by the end of my Term, I would have done a great job, but I hit 50,000 today, three years ahead of schedule — Remember that for the Midterms, because the Democrats will CRASH the Economy!”

Chip stocks surged on expectations they would benefit from increased spending on artificial intelligence (AI) data centers by Amazon and Google parent company Alphabet.

Shares in Nvidia, Advanced Micro Devices and Broadcom all rose by more than 7%. Amazon’s stock fell nearly 7% after announcing it planned to ramp up capital expenditures by more than 50% this year amid the AI race after a similar announcement by Alphabet Wednesday.

Friday’s rallies in the S&P 500 and the Nasdaq followed three consecutive days of losses amid worries about AI.

“Market sentiment improved after today’s positive report out of the University of Michigan,” said Jeffrey Roach, LPL Financial chief economist. “Median 1-year inflation expectations hit the lowest since January 2025, providing some comfort for investors eager to see improving inflation metrics.”

Several software companies saw stock declines amid investors’ concerns that competition in the AI space could hurt their margins as well as questions about whether valuations have become excessive amid the AI boom.

SEC CHAIRMAN WARNS OF CHINA-LINKED RAMP-AND-DUMP ACTIVITY

“This trade has been volatile, and there have been selloffs at times, but I think there’s enough evidence that there’s real demand for AI products, real promise with what they can do and a necessity of a lot of spending to get there,” said Ross Mayfield, investment strategy analyst at Baird.

“So, when there’s this kind of a sell-off, I think there’s a floor where there’s going to be a certain set of investors that steps in and starts buying these names.”

DEI DISCLOSURE PARTICIPATION PLUMMETS AMONG MAJOR COMPANIES AS CORPORATE PULLBACK CONTINUES

Nine of the 11 S&P 500 sector indexes rose, led by the information technology index’s gain of more than 3.7% and a nearly 2.7% gain by the index for industrials.

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Reuters contributed to this report.

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Stellantis on Friday announced it will take a $26.5 billion charge as the automaker cuts back on electric vehicle (EV) production, joining other manufacturers in taking a financial hit after misjudging consumer demand for EVs.

Stellantis – the parent company of brands including Chrysler, Jeep, Dodge and Ram – became the latest automaker to take a charge. The $26.5 billion charge is larger than those taken by Ford and General Motors in the wake of the end of federal EV subsidies.

The automaker had set ambitious EV goals under its former CEO, Carlos Tavares, who aimed for EVs to make up 100% of European sales and 50% of U.S. sales by 2030. Tavares was forced out in 2024 after U.S. sales plunged, where Stellantis is exposed because of its reliance on sales of high-margin Jeep and Ram pickups.

GM TAKES $7B HIT AFTER SHIFTING EV STRATEGY DUE TO SLOWING DEMAND

Across the auto industry, fully electric vehicles represented 19.5% of European sales last year and just 7.7% of new U.S. car sales.

CEO Antonio Filosa, who took the helm at Stellantis last summer, said on a call with reporters that the company’s past assumptions about demand for EVs were “over optimistic” and outlined, “What we are announcing today is an important strategic reset of our business model… to put our customer preferences back at the center of what we do, globally and in each region.”

FORD CUTS ELECTRIC F-150 LIGHTNING PRODUCTION, TAKES $19.5B CHARGE IN STRATEGIC SHIFT

Stellantis’ charges, which were booked in the company’s results for the second half of 2025, also reflected quality issues that Filosa blamed on cost cuts that occurred under Tavares, which he said caused the automaker to hire 2,000 engineers globally.

The charges also included reductions to the company’s EV supply chain, revised assumptions for warranty provisions due to poor product quality, as well as previously announced job cuts in Europe.

NEW VEHICLE SALES TO DECLINE MODERATELY IN 2026 AS AFFORDABILITY ISSUES WEIGH, FORECAST SAYS

Ross Mould, investment director at AJ Bell, said the writedown showed that Stellantis “got it wrong on how quickly the world would transition from combustion engines to electric power.”

Mould added that the success enjoyed by Chinese EV-makers like BYD “begs the question as to whether Stellantis’ frustration over its EV sales is linked to market issues or that drivers simply don’t like its vehicles.”

Stellantis shares sank on the news, with the company’s New York-traded stock down more than 22% during Friday’s trading session.

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The multinational automaker – which includes American, French and Italian auto brands – saw its Milan-traded shares sink by over 23%.

Stellantis is forecasting a mid-single-digit increase in net revenue for 2026, along with a low-single-digit adjusted operating income margin. It projects positive industrial free cash flows in 2027. The company also won’t pay a dividend this year.

Reuters contributed to this report.

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Wall Street giant Citi on Thursday informed the company’s U.S.-based employees that the firm plans to match the federal government’s seed contribution to newborns’ Trump Accounts and will also donate to efforts to boost participation.

Citi sent an internal message, which was reviewed by FOX Business, that notified employees that the company will contribute $1,000 to the Trump Accounts of children born to Citi’s U.S. workers from 2025 to 2028, the period in which the federal government will contribute the same amount to the tax-advantaged savings accounts.

“We are pleased to share that Citi will match the U.S. government’s $1,000 seed contribution to the accounts for children of eligible U.S. colleagues born between Jan. 1, 2025, and Dec. 31, 2028. This new benefit adds to the comprehensive suite of benefits that Citi provides to colleagues and their families,” the company explained.

“These accounts are intended to promote long-term savings from a young age and provide children with investment assets that will grow over time,” Citi explained. “We’re excited to play an active role in supporting the financial well-being of families across the U.S.”

HOW MUCH COULD TRUMP ACCOUNT BALANCES GROW OVER TIME?

Citi indicated it will provide employees with additional information about participating in the matching program as more details about Trump Accounts are released by the federal government.

The company also announced that the Citi Foundation is committing $5 million to nonprofit groups that will “create awareness of the program, encourage participation and support families in completing the steps necessary to open accounts.”

“The Foundation has been a longtime supporter of community-based, matched savings programs, which have proven to be a powerful tool helping households build financial capability and attain education, home ownership and entrepreneurship goals,” Citi said. 

“This grant builds on that track record and takes these efforts to a new level of scale and impact.”

Bank of America, JPMorgan Chase and Steak ‘n Shake previously announced they would match the government’s $1,000 contribution.

HOW TO KNOW IF YOUR CHILD QUALIFIES FOR A TRUMP ACCOUNT: ‘A FINANCIAL STAKE IN THE FUTURE’

Trump Accounts were created under a provision of the One Big Beautiful Bill Act signed into law last year, and the law also indicated the accounts will be seeded with $1,000 in federal funds for children born between Jan. 1, 2025, and Dec. 31, 2028. Funds will be invested in a broad index fund of U.S. stocks.

The accounts may also be opened for children who are under the age of 18 and born prior to Jan. 1, 2025, although they won’t receive the $1,000 seed deposit from the government.

TRUMP ACCOUNTS HIT 1 MILLION SIGN-UPS AFTER NICKI MINAJ WHITE HOUSE SUMMIT APPEARANCE, BESSENT SAYS

Parents may contribute up to $5,000 per year to the accounts, while their employer can contribute up to $2,500 per year without affecting the employee’s taxable income.

Account holders may access the funds when they turn 18, when they can be used for expenses related to education or a down payment on a home, among other uses. Or the funds can continue to grow in the account.

The Trump administration has indicated that Trump Accounts will officially launch July 5, 2026. 

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Parents may enroll their child in the program by making an election when they file their taxes, and more information about the program is expected to be made available months ahead as the official launch approaches.

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Three of the nation’s largest housing markets are seeing a sharp rise in the number of homes for sale, giving buyers more choices even as the overall U.S. housing market shows signs of cooling.

In January, 46 of the country’s biggest metro areas had more homes on the market than they did a year earlier. Seattle saw the biggest increase, with inventory jumping 32.4%.

Charlotte, North Carolina, followed at 28.6%, while Washington, D.C., ranked third with a 26.8% rise, according to Realtor.com’s January 2026 Monthly Housing Market Trends Report.

In Seattle and Charlotte, much of the inventory growth is being driven by homes lingering on the market longer rather than a surge of new sellers, Realtor.com Senior Economist Jake Krimmel told FOX Business.

HOMEBUILDERS REPORTEDLY DEVELOPING “TRUMP HOMES” PROGRAM TO IMPROVE AFFORDABILITY

Homes in Seattle took about 15 days longer to sell than they did a year ago, while Charlotte homes remained on the market roughly 12 days longer. 

“[Washington], D.C., is a little different, where stronger new listing growth seems tied to uncertainty over the local job outlook,” Krimmel told FOX Business.

Seattle’s expanding supply is also being influenced by layoffs in the tech sector, according to Michael Orbino, a managing broker at Compass.

“Several companies, including T-Mobile, Microsoft and Amazon, are repositioning their workforces,” Orbino said in a statement. “This is not a large part of the inventory but often puts buyers in pause mode, which has the effect of slowing down absorption, which increases inventory.”

JUST 17% OF VOTERS THINK NOW IS A GOOD TIME TO BUY A HOME AS AFFORDABILITY CONCERNS WEIGH: POLL

Several other metro areas also saw significant increases in homes for sale.

Louisville, Kentucky, was up 25.6%, while Las Vegas and Indianapolis each rose 25.4%. Baltimore saw inventory climb 24.1%, San Jose increased 23.3% and Cincinnati rose 21%, Realtor.com reported.

Regionally, the West posted the largest year-over-year inventory gain in January, up 12.2%. The Midwest followed at 10.3%, with the South close behind at 10.1%. The Northeast continued to lag, with inventory rising just 6.6%, according to the report.

COALITION WARNS TRUMP MORTGAGE CREDIT SHIFTS COULD SPARK ANOTHER 2008-STYLE CRASH

Nationally, housing inventory is up 10% from a year ago, but the pace of recovery is slowing. Year-over-year inventory growth has declined for nine consecutive months, and new listings rose just 0.7% compared with last year, Krimmel said.

January inventory remained more than 17% below 2017 to 2019 levels, according to Realtor.com.

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“Even though January is the slow season for housing, it’s an important moment to take stock,” Krimmel added. “The data and trends coming in right now will set the stage for how the market might behave once things pick up in the spring.”

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A prediction market company best known for allowing users to bet on world events is stepping into New York City’s food scene — if only briefly — with the launch of what it’s calling the city’s first-ever free grocery store.

Polymarket will be open for New Yorkers in Lower Manhattan starting at 12PM from Feb. 12 through Feb. 16, according to the NYC for Free website. It’s being described as the city’s first free grocery store, “fully stocked” and requiring no purchase.

Polymarket posted on X, Tuesday, that the idea took “months of planning.” In addition to paying for the lease, the company said it had donated $1 million to Food Bank For New York City to support “an organization that changes how our city responds to hunger.”

MYSTERY BETTOR WON $400K PREDICTING MADURO CAPTURE BEFORE U.S. FORCES MOVED IN: REPORT

Daily hours and the grocery store’s closing date are subject to change, according to the website.

Photos on social media show the market offering a variety of food staples — from produce, milk, eggs and bread to brand-name snacks such as Pringles, Sour Patch Kids and Oreo cookies.

Polymarket did not immediately respond to Fox News Digital’s request for comment on why it is opening what it calls the city’s first free grocery store.

The announcement comes just days after rival Kalshi made a similar move, when owner George Zoitas gave hundreds of shoppers at Westside Market in the East Village $50 each toward their groceries.

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The bold marketing tactics by both Polymarket and Kalshi may be seen as a nod to New York City Mayor Zohran Mamdani’s pledge to open government-run grocery stores. Mamdani told Fox News Digital during his campaign that it will be possible for a “partnership” between the city and grocery store and bodega owners, despite his plan to open five city-run stores.

Mamdani appeared to poke fun at the announcement in an X post on Wednesday afternoon, replying directly to Polymarket’s post with a photo of a satirical headline that read, “Heartbreaking: The worst person you know just made a great point.”

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TORONTO, Feb. 5, 2026 /PRNewswire/ — Thomson Reuters (TSX/Nasdaq: TRI) today reported results for the fourth quarter and full year ended December 31, 2025:      Solid revenue momentum continued in the fourth quarter and full year 2025 Full-year total company revenues up 3% / organic revenues up 7%

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The federal agency that enforces U.S. workplace discrimination laws said Wednesday it is investigating Nike over allegations that its diversity initiatives unlawfully discriminated against White employees and job applicants, according to a court filing.

Reuters reported that the Equal Employment Opportunity Commission (EEOC) said Nike has refused to comply with a subpoena seeking information, including data on the racial and ethnic makeup of the global athletic apparel and footwear company based in Beaverton, Oregon.

The subpoenas also seek a roster of employees selected for mentoring and development programs.

The commission said the investigation centers on claims that Nike deliberately treated White employees and job applicants unfairly, including allegations that they were disproportionately targeted for layoffs.

NIKE PLANS TO CUT HUNDREDS OF JOBS AMID AUTOMATION PUSH

The agency said it is seeking the records to determine whether Nike violated federal anti-discrimination law.

Nike disputed the commission’s characterization of its cooperation, saying in a statement that it has participated extensively and in good faith in the agency’s inquiry.

“This feels like a surprising and unusual escalation,” a Nike spokesperson told FOX Business. “We have had extensive, good-faith participation in an EEOC inquiry into our personnel practices, programs, and decisions and have had ongoing efforts to provide information and engage constructively with the agency. We have shared thousands of pages of information and detailed written responses to the EEOC’s inquiry and are in the process of providing additional information.”

NIKE ANNOUNCES CAITLIN CLARK AS ITS NEWEST SIGNATURE ATHLETE

The company said it is a “proud American company” focused on bringing inspiration and innovation to athletes around the world.

“We are committed to fair and lawful employment practices and follow all applicable laws, including those that prohibit discrimination,” the spokesperson added. “We believe our programs and practices are consistent with those obligations and take these matters seriously. We will continue our attempt to cooperate with the EEOC and will respond to the petition.”

The development comes nearly a week after Nike said it plans to cut 775 jobs, primarily affecting distribution centers in Tennessee and Mississippi, as the company looks to automate more of its supply chain.

NIKE RETURNS TO SELL FOOTWEAR, APPAREL ON AMAZON FOR THE FIRST TIME SINCE 2019

A Nike spokesperson previously told FOX Business the company is streamlining and consolidating its operations — particularly within its U.S. distribution network — to move faster, improve efficiency and invest in technology, automation and workforce skills.

The distribution center layoffs follow similar moves by Nike over the past two years aimed at reorganizing operations and improving financial performance.

Nike said in August last year it planned to cut less than 1% of its corporate workforce as part of a turnaround effort under CEO Elliott Hill.

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In February 2024, the company announced it would cut 2% of its workforce, affecting more than 1,600 workers.

FOX Business’ Eric Revell and Reuters contributed to this report.

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Fox Corporation on Wednesday reported its second-quarter earnings that beat analysts’ estimates amid growth in advertising revenue from the company’s news networks and sports programming.

The company reported $5.18 billion in revenue for the second quarter of its 2026 fiscal year, an increase of 2% from the prior year quarter and above the LSEG estimate of $5.06 billion. Distribution revenues were up 4% in the quarter, driven mainly by 5% growth in Fox’s cable network programming segment.

Advertising revenues were 1% higher primarily because of higher pricing for ads during sports and news programs, additional MLB postseason games, as well as digital growth led by Tubi – Fox’s free, ad-supported streaming platform. Ad revenue growth was partially offset by lower political advertising revenues and lower ratings.

FOX CORP HITS ADVERTISING REVENUE RECORD IN FIRST QUARTER

Fox’s cable programming, which includes Fox News Channel and FOX Business Network as well as its cable sports networks, grew revenue 5% to $2.28 billion in the quarter, while its advertising revenue rose about 7%. 

“Whether streaming, linear, social or digital, Fox News Media continues to meet our audiences where they are,” Fox CEO Lachlan Murdoch said on the company’s earnings call. “Over the past 12 months, a fast-moving and consequential news cycle has reinforced Fox News Media’s leadership position, with audiences turning to the network for live coverage and in-depth analysis.”

“Fox News again finished the quarter as the most watched cable network in total day, while maintaining its lead as the most watched cable news network and producing the top 11 cable news programs,” he noted. “According to recent Nielsen data, Fox News is the number one cable news network among all three political parties, which bodes well for the upcoming political election cycle.”

APPLE SEES BIGGEST SALES JUMP IN 4 YEARS, POWERED BY ‘STAGGERING’ IPHONE DEMAND

“On the digital side, social media views for Fox News Digital were up an astounding 170% over the prior year, and both Fox News and FOX Business ranked number one in YouTube video views among their peers during the quarter,” Murdoch added.

Murdoch said that Tubi saw its most streamed quarter of all time and grew total viewer time by 27% year over year, with the streaming platform’s content slate expanding to include a simulcast of an NFL game on Thanksgiving.

TUBI CEO: TUBI IS COMMITTED TO BEING A FREE STREAMER

Fox’s subscription streaming service, Fox One, completed its first full quarter since launching in August, and Murdoch noted the company hasn’t seen any cannibalization of traditional subscribers to date as it looks to market the platform to cord cutters. 

He said that live sporting events are driving the majority of engagement on Fox One, news accounts for about one-third of the minutes viewed and that news viewers engage with the platform more frequently than non-news viewers.

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New York and New Jersey sued the Trump administration on Tuesday for freezing $16 billion in federal funding for a new rail tunnel under the Hudson River between the two states, seeking a quick ruling because construction that has been underway could be forced to shut down as early as Friday.

The administration put a hold on the funding in September, citing the government shutdown. The White House budget director, Russ Vought, said on the social platform X at the time that officials believed the spending was based on unconstitutional diversity, equity and inclusion principles, and the U.S. Department of Transportation said it was reviewing any “unconstitutional practices.”

The lawsuit, filed in federal court in Manhattan by New York Attorney General Letitia James and New Jersey Acting Attorney General Jennifer Davenport, asks a judge to declare the funding suspension unlawful and order payments to resume immediately so construction can continue without interruption.

“Allowing this project to stop would put one of the country’s most heavily used transit corridors at risk,” James said in a statement Tuesday evening. ”Our tunnels are already under strain, and losing this project could be disastrous for commuters, workers, and our regional economy.”

The White House and U.S. Transportation Department did not immediately return emails seeking comment Tuesday night.

A similar lawsuit over the tunnel funding was filed Monday against the federal government by the Gateway Development Commission, a local panel overseeing the project.

The construction project calls for building a new rail tunnel under the river to carry Amtrak and area transit trains between New Jersey and New York City, as well as repairing an existing, 116-year-old rail tunnel that was damaged by Superstorm Sandy in 2012.

Work began in 2023. The project is funded by the 2021 federal infrastructure law signed by Democratic President Joe Biden.

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Netflix co-CEO Ted Sarandos is set to testify on Tuesday before a Senate panel scrutinizing how the streaming giant’s proposed $72 billion acquisition of Warner Bros Discovery would impact competition in the entertainment industry’s streaming segment.

Sarandos will testify alongside Warner Bros. Chief Revenue Strategy Officer Bruce Campbell as the executives face questions over the competitive impact of the proposed merger before the Senate Judiciary Committee’s Subcommittee on Antitrust, Competition Policy and Consumer Rights.

While Congress doesn’t have authority to block or delay the merger, the hearing will afford lawmakers the opportunity to hear from the companies about how it would affect competition between streaming platforms, as well as workers and consumers.

If Netflix’s bid for Warner Bros. Discovery succeeds, the streaming service would gain access to WBD’s film and television studios, the HBO Max streaming service, as well as a content library that includes “Game of Thrones,” “Harry Potter,” as well as DC Comics’ superheroes Batman and Superman.

NETFLIX AMENDS WARNER BROS DISCOVERY DEAL TO ALL-CASH OFFER

Sen. Mike Lee, R-Utah, who chairs the subcommittee holding the hearing, has been critical of the deal and has questioned whether Netflix intends to move forward with it or whether it wants to inhibit competition during what may be a lengthy antitrust review.

The deal is currently under review by the Department of Justice, while Paramount Skydance is pursuing a hostile bid after Warner Bros. Discovery’s board rejected its bid in favor of Netflix’s offer. 

WARNER BROS DISCOVERY BOARD UNANIMOUSLY REJECTS PARAMOUNT’S TENDER OFFER, SAYS NETFLIX DEAL SUPERIOR

Paramount argues that it will have a more favorable path to regulatory approval, though Warner Bros. Discovery has noted the company would have to go into debt to finance the deal. 

Sources close to Netflix have noted that an acquisition of Warner Bros. Discovery by Paramount would also reduce the number of studios, lessening competition in the space.

Netflix has cited statistics from media analysis firm Nielsen to show that Google’s YouTube has a larger share of viewing time on U.S. households’ TVs than other streaming services such as itself. Antitrust experts have noted that the DOJ’s review may focus instead on subscription-based streaming services that are more similar to Netflix.

PARAMOUNT LAUNCHES HOSTILE TAKEOVER BID OF WARNER BROS DISCOVERY, SAYS OFFER IS ‘SUPERIOR’ TO NETFLIX DEAL

Last month, the Warner Bros. Discovery board voted unanimously to reject Paramount’s tender offer, with Warner Bros. Discovery board Chair Samuel Di Piazza Jr. saying that “Paramount’s latest offer remains inferior to our merger agreement with Netflix across multiple key areas.”

“Paramount’s offer continues to provide insufficient value, including terms such as an extraordinary amount of debt financing that create risks to close and lack of protections for our shareholders if a transaction is not completed,” Di Piazza continued. “Our binding agreement with Netflix will offer superior value at greater levels of certainty, without the significant risks and costs Paramount’s offer would impose on our shareholders.”

Netflix revised its bid for Warner Bros. Discovery last month to an all-cash offer priced at $27.75 per share, valuing the deal at $72 billion, which amounts to an enterprise value of $82.7 billion.

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Paramount’s offer amounts to an enterprise value of $108 billion and includes more assets, such as Warner Bros. Discovery’s cable business.

Reuters contributed to this report.

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EXCLUSIVE: Corporate America has long claimed that progressive social activism reflects the will of customers and shareholders — but a growing group of investors is now pushing back against that idea.

A Christian investment firm that manages more than $4 billion in assets is targeting dozens of major corporations this year with shareholder proposals aimed at pressuring companies to drop what it calls “woke” agendas, return to political neutrality and focus on their core business.

“Really what we’re working to do through our engagement efforts, is really help corporations get back to a place of neutrality, to stay out of contentious social issues and really just focus on shareholder value and really adequately representing the fiduciary duty that they do to derive value for shareholders instead of bringing in all these other risks that relate to social activism, political activism,” Inspire Investing CEO Robert Netzly told Fox News Digital.

“We’re long-term investors. We’re not activists,” Inspire’s CFA Tim Schwarzenberger said. “So what we’re asking companies to do is to return to neutrality. And the purpose of these proposals is that we want companies to treat all our customers and employees fairly, and to focus on their core business and to stay out of divisive political issues that could expose the company to customer backlash, legal and financial risk.”

WHITE HOUSE A.I. CZAR BLASTS BLUE STATES FOR INSERTING ‘WOKE IDEOLOGY’ INTO ARTIFICIAL INTELLIGENCE

The firm spoke exclusively with Fox News Digital about 38 shareholder proposals it plans to bring throughout 2026 — targeting companies among the so-called “Magnificent Seven” and other large-cap corporations on policies related to water and artificial intelligence use, off-duty speech, de-banking, diversity, equity and inclusion (DEI) programs, abortion pill access and more.

“We’re seeing these chickens coming home to roost. The things that we’ve been warning about and saying that these social issues, the social activism on behalf of these companies, comes with real material, financial risk for shareholders is being proven true,” Netzly said. “And as you look at the cautionary tales of Bud Light, of Disney, of Target, other companies are watching the sidelines and taking their lessons. And so as we go into these boardrooms, as we go into the shareholder meetings, as we discuss with investment relations departments, we have truth on our side.”

Critics have pointed to recent high-profile corporate controversies as examples of the financial risks that can follow divisive social activism. Disney’s live-action remake of “Snow White” reportedly lost $115 million, according to Deadline, which cited the film’s creative direction as a factor. After launching its 2023 Pride collection — which included children’s items — Target’s market capitalization dropped by more than $9 billion amid sustained consumer backlash. Anheuser-Busch InBev also faced multibillion-dollar losses after Bud Light partnered with a transgender influencer.

“We’ve seen repeatedly that when companies get involved in divisive political issues, that creates brand risk and customer backlash. So, essentially, these proposals act as guardrails. They help the boards identify risks that they might not be aware of,” Schwarzenberger added. “I think that customers and investors have been a sleeping giant, asleep at the wheel, and they’ve finally woken up.”

Netzly argued that Inspire’s proposals rest on a principle many Americans share: companies should focus on what they sell — not on social or political messaging. He said corporate activism distracts executives from core operations and brings political risk into boardrooms, a trend Inspire hopes to reverse through shareholder pressure.

“Corporate activism comes with a cost,” he said. “That results in changes to the share price, that results in lower dividends, less money being reinvested for growth.”

“Most Americans are invested through their 401(k) in their retirement plans, and so when companies perform better, naturally, everyday investors benefit from that,” Schwarzenberger said.

“We’ve influenced some of the largest corporations in the world. Costco, for instance, just this last fall, made the decision based on our long-standing efforts with them over the past couple years to not sell the abortion drug, Mifepristone, in their pharmacies. Walmart came to the same decision after our engagement with them. So we can make real, lasting change,” Netzly said.

AT&T ELIMINATES D.E.I. PROGRAMS, SAYS HIRING AND ADVANCEMENT WILL NOW BE MERIT-BASED

Although some of the companies Inspire is targeting have long been profitable for investors, the faith-based firm shared a message for skeptics who argue these proposals on social issues distract from the bottom line.

“There is a healthy skepticism about these proposals because, historically, many of these proposals have been used to push politics and to distract from the bottom line. But that’s not what we’re doing. Our proposals are grounded in fiduciary duty, so they’re not distractions from profitability,” Schwarzenberger said.

“My argument would be that our proposals are to get out of the social issues, right?” Netzly continued. “The problem is that these companies have already been influenced to such an extent that they are spending money and distracting from their core business through DEI programs, through ESG initiatives, through all sorts of things. And our proposals are designed to get them out of those distractions.”

Fox News Digital reached out to all 38 companies Inspire plans to target this year for comment. Most did not respond. Several confirmed they have either received — or have not yet received — formal proposals from Inspire.

The executives said on Monday that some meetings — and what they described as “good, productive” discussions — have already occurred with multiple companies, and Inspire would withdraw proposals as those conversations may transpire. Additionally, some shareholder deadlines won’t be filed until later this year.

Netzly and Schwarzenberger said success looks different for each proposal.

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“What we’re looking for is real, tangible change,” Schwarzenberger emphasized. “So we’re looking for companies to make specific policy changes, whether that’s changing their code of conduct, their terms of service, or how they use corporate dollars to sponsor controversial events.”

“If the company ignores the proposals, we can still get them on the ballot. We can still rally the troops and work to vote those things through. It really does come down to the shareholders,” Netzly said. “And I think for those companies that are opposed to even hearing the voice of their shareholders or even allowing things to go to a vote, they’re opening themselves up to [legislative] risk for potential violation of their fiduciary duties. They’re opening themselves up to a lot of risks, and really just brand backlash, for being so tone-deaf when so obviously their shareholders are asking them to stay out of these things.”

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Gold and silver prices have seen significant volatility in recent weeks following a surge in prices over the past two years.

The spot price of gold is up 67% over the last year while the silver spot price has risen 158% in that time – though the asset prices plunged over the last week with gold down over 9% and silver falling more than 27% in that period. The dip in prices also affected gold bullion, which fell over 9.8% on January 30, which was its sharpest single-day drop since 1983.

Spot gold prices were below $4,700 an ounce during Monday morning trading, while silver was below $79. At those prices, gold is up roughly 66% in the last year while silver is up about 147%.

Rising gold and silver values over the last year have drawn the attention of consumers, some of whom are looking to sell gold and silver jewelry amid the recent volatility, while others are looking to invest in precious commodities.

GOLD RUSH 2.0: AMERICANS CASH IN AS PRECIOUS METAL HOVERS NEAR ALL-TIME HIGH

Mukarram Mawjood, founder of Bullionite Asset Group, told FOX Business that jewelry “carries a retail premium not directly correlated to moves in investment grade gold and silver,” and so jewelry shouldn’t be approached as an investment when purchased.

ECONOMIST WARNS COMING FINANCIAL CRISIS WILL MAKE 2008 LOOK LIKE ‘SUNDAY SCHOOL PICNIC’

JPMorgan said in a research note on Monday that it expects gold prices to reach $6,300 per ounce by the end of 2026 amid demand from central banks and investors.

“Even with the recent near-term volatility, we remain firmly bullishly convicted in gold over the medium-term on the back of a clean, structural, continued diversification trend that has further to run amid a still well-entrenched regime of real asset outperformance vs paper assets,” the firm said in a note.

5 REASONS WHY GOLD IS A HOT COMMODITY

Deutsche Bank on Monday reiterated its gold price forecast of $6,000 an ounce this year amid sustained investor demand.

UBS last week also raised its forecast for gold prices to $6,200 for March, June and September 2026.

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Sunshine, low taxes and luxury living continue to draw wealthy buyers to Florida — and one city in particular is reaping the rewards.

New housing data from GOBankingRates reveals the top five towns across Florida that have become the fastest-growing home-value markets, fueled by strong demand and limited supply.

In Palm Beach, homeowners have seen their property values more than double — with the average home now worth about $9.8 million. The data show a 1.5% increase over the past year and a 118.2% jump over five years, making Palm Beach the top spot for those seeking the highest return on investment.

“Previous cycles in Palm Beach were largely tied to broader economic expansions or speculative waves. What’s different this time is the permanence,” Douglas Elliman Exclusive Group’s Nick Malinosky told Fox News Digital. “Buyers today are relocating businesses, moving family offices, enrolling their children in local schools, and embedding themselves in the community.”

MIAMI MOVES AHEAD OF NEW YORK IN $1M-PLUS HOME AFTER NEARLY A DECADE

“There’s also far more institutional-level capital and long-term wealth involved compared to prior booms. Inventory remains limited, land is finite and barriers to entry are high, which makes this cycle feel more structurally supported rather than momentum-driven,” he continued.

Malinosky echoed what many other Florida agents have said about Palm Beach’s future — expressing bullish optimism as a new wave of high-net-worth individuals establishes families and businesses there.

“Palm Beach today is not just benefiting from a migration wave, it’s benefiting from wealth consolidation. We’re witnessing a generational shift where capital is becoming more mobile, and Florida is a strategic destination for that capital,” he said.

But he also cautioned against misconceptions about Palm Beach’s headline numbers.

“When people see 100% growth, they often assume it’s uniform across the board, and that’s rarely the case. Appreciation in Palm Beach has been highly segmented. Trophy waterfront estates and prime in-town properties have seen extraordinary gains, while other categories may have appreciated at a more moderate pace,” Malinosky explained.

“Another nuance that gets lost is replacement cost. Construction costs, land scarcity and development restrictions have all risen dramatically,” he added. “In many cases, current values reflect the true cost of recreating these assets today, not just speculative appreciation.”

While Palm Beach caters to glitz and glamour, the remaining towns on the list are smaller, quieter parts of Florida — with average home values around $290,000 or less.

Wauchula — an agricultural city about 90 minutes southeast of Tampa — ranked second, with home values up 3.1% over the past year and 64.8% over five years.

Old Town, Florida, ranked third with 3.2% and 48% increases over the one- and five-year periods. The unincorporated community sits near the Suwannee River, west of Gainesville and just north of Manatee Springs State Park — offering more tropical nature than concrete jungle.

South Bay — the westernmost municipality in the South Florida metro area — ranked fourth, with home values rising 1.2% over the past year and 61.5% over five years, according to GOBankingRates. The town is known for its proximity to Lake Okeechobee and its laid-back, tight-knit community.

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Rounding out the list is Bell — a small town of fewer than 520 people nestled in North Florida’s forests, not far from Old Town. Home values average $290,622, up 1.2% over the past year and 61.5% over five years.

“Major markets like Miami or Tampa already experienced earlier, sharper growth curves and started from higher baseline values. When you measure percentage growth over five years, smaller or less established markets can sometimes show more dramatic jumps simply because they began at a lower price point,” Malinosky explained.

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Miami is now home to more million-dollar listings than New York — a sign the luxury housing market’s center of gravity continues to drift south.

According to Realtor.com’s December luxury housing report, Miami surpassed New York with 10,591 homes listed at $1 million or more, compared to New York’s 10,176 million-dollar listings.

New York held the top ranking for nearly a decade, and by late December, Miami solidified its lead as a long-term destination for wealth and housing demand.

“This is not a temporary surge, it’s an evolving market. The drivers supporting Miami’s growth are long-term: demographic trends favoring the Sun Belt, increasing international capital flows, and a deepening presence of finance, technology and global business infrastructure,” Douglas Elliman Vice Chair Dottie Herman told Fox News Digital.

FLORIDA WINS AGAIN: QUANTUM COMPUTING COMPANY JOINS EXODUS FROM HIGH-TAX CALIFORNIA

“That said, growth is not unlimited,” she said. “Insurance costs, climate considerations, and the risk of overdevelopment in certain submarkets will require disciplined planning and thoughtful execution.”

Miami’s luxury buyers are more likely to be cash buyers, international purchasers, retirees or second-home buyers. The report says these demographics are less sensitive to mortgage rates, school calendars and seasonal norms — keeping inventory levels higher yearlong.

Seasonality appears to favor the Magic City, as inventory stays more stable and allows developers to rebuild supply faster with a higher baseline. By contrast, New York luxury listings follow a more traditional cycle, with a spring surge and winter drop-off.

“Miami surpassing New York in million-dollar listings is more reflective of Miami’s expansion, versus New York’s weakness,” Herman said.

“Over the past decade, Miami has fundamentally broadened its definition of luxury. The market offers waterfront living, newer construction, resort-level amenities and a lifestyle component that’s directly embedded into the product. By contrast, New York’s luxury market is inherently finite and vertical, constrained by land, zoning and supply,” she explained.

New York’s market isn’t collapsing, but rather losing ground in a mature environment, as the report puts it. The Big Apple saw its housing market contract after the pandemic, driven by fewer new high-end listings, a slowdown in the city exodus and owners holding onto properties longer.

“Florida’s lack of a state income tax versus New York’s combined state and city tax burden represents a meaningful financial difference for high earners,” Herman said. “For many buyers, those savings translate directly into enhanced purchasing power or long-term capital preservation.”

Notably, 26.3% of Miami’s luxury demand comes from the New York metro area — more than the next eight source metros combined.

“New Yorkers have played a critical role as market shapers. A meaningful share of Miami’s luxury demand originates from the New York metro area,” Herman said. “This is not a broad-based migration of the entire New York population. It’s a targeted relocation of high-earning professionals working in fields like finance, tech and real estate, who have both the means and flexibility to choose where they live.”

Looking through a more national lens, luxury prices are stabilizing, with the top-tier threshold at $1.19 million, down slightly from the previous year. Luxury homes are taking longer to sell, with a median time of 88 days, reflecting cautious buyers and seasonal cooling.

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Overall, price gaps are wide — luxury homes range between two and five times the local median home price, depending on the specific market.

“The most accurate framing is this,” Herman said. “Miami is not replacing New York. It is joining New York as a co-capital of American luxury real estate. New York remains the cultural, financial and institutional anchor — Miami has emerged as the lifestyle center, the flexibility market and a global magnet for mobile wealth.”

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Newly alluring yields on Japanese bonds have not propped up the currency

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A Bel Air mega-mansion with nightclub-level amenities, museum-style car storage — and a seller willing to accept cryptocurrency — is back on the market at just under $100 million, following a dramatic price cut from its original $139 million listing.

Called “La Fin,” the $99.9 million property became Realtor.com’s most expensive listing in America for the week ending on Jan. 22. It first came to market in 2022, and the reported seller — former emergency room director Joe Englanoff — enlisted seven agents to help market it.

“A reset like this doesn’t signal weakness, it signals recalibration. Ultra-luxury is no longer aspirational pricing; it’s precision pricing. In Los Angeles especially, buyers at this level are disciplined, global and value-driven. When pricing realigns with today’s realities such as interest rates, liquidity and opportunity cost, serious conversations restart,” Douglas Elliman’s Cory Weiss told Fox News Digital.

“High agent turnover usually reflects a mismatch between strategy and expectations, not a lack of interest in the asset itself,” he continued. “This property has lived through multiple market cycles, from ultra-low rates to geopolitical uncertainty and shifting tax dynamics.”

CALIFORNIA RESIDENTS FACE BRUTAL CHOICE ONE YEAR AFTER LOS ANGELES FIRE DESTROYED THEIR LIVES

La Fin, located at 1200 Bel Air Road, has 12 bedrooms and 17 bathrooms and sits on more than two acres of land with panoramic views of Los Angeles. Located in one of the country’s most exclusive exclaves, the property also has separate residences for staff and guests.

A few standout amenities include a 44-foot chandelier made of 55,000 crystals; an automated six-car vehicle elevator display; a 6,000-square-foot entertainment level with a wine cellar, vodka tasting room and cigar lounge; an infinity pool with a rising 23-foot LED screen; and rooftop deck with spa and fireplace features.

Some elements go beyond lifestyle and into investment-grade excess, like the custom Italian furnishings, Calacatta gold marble, commercial-grade catering facilities and fingerprint and “command center” security.

“Amenities that win are the ones that integrate into daily life. Wellness facilities, seamless indoor-outdoor flow, smart security and turnkey functionality. What’s losing relevance are novelty features that photograph well but rarely get used. Buyers are asking, ‘Will this improve my life?’ not, ‘Will this impress my guests?’” Weiss said.

“Today’s buyer is less trophy-driven and more thesis-driven. They’re high-profile global entrepreneurs, private equity principals, family offices, often buying with generational thinking,” he added. “Five years ago, size and spectacle sold. Today, buyers want privacy, security, flexibility and a clear lifestyle narrative — not just bragging rights.”

For an estate of this magnitude, Weiss said storytelling plays a major role in marketing a one-of-a-kind property that’s been on the market for several years.

“Storytelling is everything, but it has to evolve,” he argued. “After years on [the] market, the story can’t be about excess. It has to be about purpose — why this home exists, who it’s truly built for and how it fits into a buyer’s life today.”

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The nearly $40 million price cut reflects changing buyer behavior and illustrates some of the tension between aspirational pricing and market reality.

“It shows there is a ceiling, but it’s fluid. The market will support extraordinary pricing when the asset, timing and buyer align. What’s changed is patience,” Weiss explained. “The ultra-luxury market is still there, but it now rewards realism, restraint and long-term thinking over hype.”

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The New York Stock Exchange’s quiet expansion into Texas is gaining rapid traction, with NYSE President Lynn Martin revealing that more than 100 companies have already dual-listed on NYSE Texas in under a year — a milestone that underscores Wall Street’s accelerating pivot toward the Lone Star State’s pro-business climate.

“NYSE Texas, which we announced February of last year, brought it live March 31 of last year, and now have more than 100 dual listings on NYSE Texas in less than a year,” President Lynn Martin told FOX Business’ Maria Bartiromo at the World Economic Forum on Thursday.

“It’s going great,” she continued.

TEXAS CHAIN CRUSHES COSTCO AND TRADER JOE’S TO CLAIM AMERICA’S TOP GROCERY STORE TITLE

Earlier this week, President Donald Trump blasted plans to expand the New York Stock Exchange to Dallas, calling the move “unbelievably bad” for New York and a failure of city leadership.

“Building a New York Stock Exchange in Dallas is an unbelievably bad thing for New York. I can’t believe they would let this happen,” Trump wrote in a Truth Social post. He added that the move posed a “big test” for New York’s newly inaugurated mayor, Zohran Mamdani.

The New York Stock Exchange has said the Dallas expansion — a fully electronic equities exchange based in Dallas — is intended to broaden its footprint and better serve companies in the South and Southwest, not to replace its New York operations. NYSE Texas launched in March 2025 and continues to operate alongside the main exchange.

“So many companies have taken the opportunity to dual list on NYSE, all the protections of the floor, everything… as well as list on NYSE Texas,” Martin said. “The advantage of dual listing on NYSE Texas is you are able to take advantage of all that pro-business legislation that Governor [Greg] Abbott has enacted around shareholder rights, around… litigation, around protection of C-suite of existing companies.”

Additionally, NYSE Texas’s growth coincides with a broader rebound in IPO and listings activity, according to Martin, who described a potential “super cycle” for capital markets in 2026.

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“We’re seeing demand from all sectors. It feels like it’s gonna be a bit of a super cycle year in terms of the amount of deals that come to market,” she noted. “Now, I’m not just talking about the mega IPOs, they may or may not come to the market, but there’s a tremendous amount of demand of backlog companies, companies that have been sitting on sponsors books, as well as companies that have just wanted to go for some time and put plans on hold because of volatility.”

“I’m incredibly bullish about 2026 for the capital markets, for the U.S. economy,” Martin added.

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FOX Business’ Amanda Macias contributed to this report.

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It has benefited from a slice of luck, a commitment to economic reform and a shove from Donald Trump

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Only a decline in corporate America’s vigour will dent the country’s dominance of financial markets

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Buy now, pay later giant Affirm is looking to help renters break up housing payments in ways that align with their biweekly paychecks.

Affirm is piloting a program in partnership with financial technology platform Esusu that will allow renters to split their monthly rent in two equal payments every two weeks at 0% APR. There are no hidden or late fees, or compounding interest with this pilot program, either, according to Affirm.

Esusu helps renters build credit by reporting their on-time rent payments to major credit bureaus.  

JPMORGAN CFO WARNS TRUMP’S PROPOSED CREDIT CARD CAP COULD CAUSE PEOPLE TO ‘LOSE ACCESS TO CREDIT’

The pilot program is designed to give “eligible renters a flexible option for managing one of their largest monthly expenses,” Affirm said in a statement to FOX Business, calling it “a transparent option that offers flexibility for renters to align expenses with their paychecks.”

Affirm said it underwrites every application individually and only approves people for what it believes they can responsibly afford to repay. 

‘BUY NOW, PAY LATER’ SERVICES ARE DANGEROUS TRAP FOR YOUNG AMERICANS, FINANCIAL EXPERT WARNS

“We’re approaching this use case thoughtfully and evaluating it alongside Esusu, which shares our focus on clear, consumer-first financial tools,” Affirm continued. 

The company didn’t confirm when the pilot program would be officially rolled out as it is still in the early stages of the pilot.

LendingTree’s chief consumer finance analyst Matt Schulz told FOX Business that this could be useful to those on a tight budget, but he cautioned that it is too soon to make a final judgment. 

BUY NOW, PAY LATER PITFALLS: MANY CONSUMERS AREN’T PAYING LOANS

“This is just another example of how it is getting easier seemingly by the day for people to use BNPL to finance most anything,” Schulz said. 

He noted that this doesn’t appear to be a typical pay-in-four BNPL loan, which, if it was, he cautioned that there could be serious risks. For instance, Schulz noted that a consumer could still have people paying off the previous month’s BNPL loan for rent when the next month’s rent comes due. 

“That could get messy,” he said, adding that this financial tool can be really useful when used wisely, but “the danger with BNPL is when you have multiple loans that you have to manage.” 

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“That can get tricky, especially if you’re not used to managing credit,” he said. 

The other key thing with this payment method is that it is tied to a debit card or checking account, so it is critical that users have enough cash in that account to pay the bill. 

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EXCLUSIVE: The realization hit fast — and the response was even faster.

As California’s proposed “billionaire tax” began gaining momentum late last year, some of the wealthiest people in the country didn’t wait for ballots, lawmakers or court challenges — they moved. “Then a couple more flew into Miami, bought properties and closed within seven days,” luxury real estate broker Julian Johnston of The Corcoran Group told Fox News Digital. “So then it was a tipping point.”

According to Johnston — who told Fox News Digital that he’s currently working with three billionaires to move them from California to South Florida — the urgency was driven by staggering potential losses.

“One client said, ‘You know, this could be like a $5 billion tax for me,’” he recalled. “So they’re moving because of that.”

KEN GRIFFIN’S FLORIDA TAKEOVER: CITADEL FOUNDER SHELLS OUT $180M FOR LATEST PIECE OF MIAMI EMPIRE

The chatter all started at Miami’s high-profile Art Basel fair in early December, Johnston said, and carried into many of the ultra-wealthy’s holiday celebrations on the island of St. Barts.

“They’re all dining and wining together and talking about this proposed tax. And then when the proposed tax gained speed, they then understood that they had to either rent or purchase something out of California to establish residency and reduce their net worth exposure to the proposed billionaire tax,” he explained.

“It’s a melting pot and they’re all friends. And that’s the thing. The tipping point was when four or five of them bought and three more were going into contract. The rest of them, all their friends are here. And they talked about the office buildings as well.”

“I think this happened very quickly, even for them,” Johnston continued. “Now that it’s… January, into 2026, it has slowed down a little bit… So if you didn’t buy or rent before the end of the year, it may be too late. It may apply to you no matter what now.”

While it has not yet qualified for the November ballot, the proposal — backed by the Service Employees International Union–United Healthcare Workers West — would impose a one-time 5% tax on the net worth of California residents worth more than $1 billion. The tax would be due in 2027, and taxpayers could spread payments over five years, with additional costs, according to the Legislative Analyst’s Office.

If the measure is approved by voters, anyone who was a California resident on Jan. 1, 2026, would owe the tax, according to the proposal.

When asked to describe the billionaires he’s working with, Johnston mentioned “Palo Alto guys” who haven’t spent much time in Miami before.

FLORIDA DOMINATES NATION’S LUXURY REAL ESTATE MARKET WITH LARRY PAGE’S MIAMI ESTATE TOPPING DECEMBER SALES

“There’s a few other very big founders and also tech giants and also venture capitalist firms, the heads of which I’ve also moved here,” he said. “It was always a layover, one night, an event, but Miami’s changed a lot in the last 10 years. It’s culturally more interesting… They said they were quite happy to move here and then see what happens in the next few years.”

Florida famously has no state income tax for residents who live there at least 183 days out of the year, but Johnston explained what South Florida offers that other tax havens like Texas, Tennessee and Nevada can’t match.

“I think that you have to look at the culture amongst these VC firms and tech guys, that they like to be around each other… They’re already moving here, some of them are already here or have established residency here, they’re gonna spend more time and then they’re going to have the multiplier effect of their friends coming in to spend time with them,” he said.

“Miami has a very outdoor lifestyle similar to California,” Johnston further argued. “I think that the climate suits them. I think there’s a lot of security here. Politically it’s safe and economically, I mean, two of the largest capital projects in the country are in Miami right now.”

Beyond real estate, the California billionaires are aware they’re taking investment capital with them — and that lawmakers may not fully grasp how mobile wealth has become.

“That was a discussion point amongst some of them [in] the lunchroom. They were talking about the fact that, [if] enough of them move, it’s actually gonna cause change,” Johnston said. “It will financially change the landscape for the government’s budget… And they want reform… they want reform before they move back.”

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Across his 25-year career in luxury sales, Johnston agrees this current migration wave feels different in terms of the sheer scale of wealth and the speed at which high-net-worth individuals want to divest from the West Coast.

“I think Florida has a positive net migration for the next 20 years… it’s a boomtown,” he said. “Those big companies are going to push the state to spend more money on just activities and amenities and bring so many people from around the world that had never been to Miami before, because I do think it’s a [city of the future] for America.”

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A billionaire sports and real estate magnate has quietly completed the largest private land purchase in the United States in more than a decade — propelling him past other moguls to the top of the nation’s private landownership rankings.

Stan Kroenke — who owns the NFL’s Los Angeles Rams and England’s Premier League club Arsenal — purchased more than 937,000 acres of ranchland in New Mexico in a major off-market deal for property once owned by the heirs of Teledyne founder Dr. Henry Singleton, The Land Report first reported.

MATTHEW STAFFORD’S LATE HEROICS LIFT RAMS PAST PANTHERS IN WILD-CARD THRILLER

The acquisition catapulted Kroenke from No. 4 to No. 1 on the 2025 Land Report 100, surpassing other billionaire landowners such as Ted Turner and John Malone. It also marked the largest single land transaction in the United States in more than a decade. Financial terms were not disclosed by either party.

With this deal, Kroenke now owns more land than any other private individual in the United States, surpassing the Emmerson family’s 2.44 million acres, Malone’s 2.2 million acres, and Turner’s 2 million acres.

A spokesperson for The Kroenke Group declined to comment to Fox News Digital.

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Kroenke’s portfolio now spans much of the American West and Canada, including 560,000 acres in Wyoming, 124,000 in Montana, the historic W.T. Waggoner Ranch in Texas, 800,000 acres in Nevada, and British Columbia’s Douglas Lake Ranch.

Born in Columbia, Missouri, Kroenke built his fortune through real estate development and professional sports, owning the Los Angeles Rams, the NBA’s Denver Nuggets, the NHL’s Colorado Avalanche, and the Premier League’s Arsenal FC. He is married to Ann Walton Kroenke, an heiress to the Walmart fortune, and has expanded his land and ranching empire across the American West for decades.

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Hedge fund billionaire Ken Griffin appears to be expanding his business presence in Miami, adding to his already sizable real estate portfolio.

The Citadel founder partnered with Goldman Properties to purchase the 545Wyn office building for $180 million from Chicago-based developer Sterling Bay, according to the South Florida Business Journal.

Anonymous sources close to the deal told the outlet that Griffin is a partner in the purchase, though the listed buyer is Goldman Properties CEO Scott Srebnick.

Neither Citadel nor Goldman Properties immediately responded to Fox News Digital’s request for confirmation or comment.

FLORIDA DOMINATES NATION’S LUXURY REAL ESTATE MARKET WITH LARRY PAGE’S MIAMI ESTATE TOPPING DECEMBER SALES

Two of Miami’s top-grossing real estate agents told Fox News Digital the move appears strategic and is unlikely to be a one-off purchase, but rather the beginning of a larger Wynwood land grab.

“This looks more strategic than operational. Brickell is about scale and visibility — Wynwood is about flexibility and culture,” the Corcoran Group’s Mick Duchon said. “Creative office [space] attracts a different workforce and tenant mix. Owning both allows to hedge across asset classes while controlling the ecosystems around where talent actually wants to work.”

“Given previous track records, it’s unlikely to be a one-off. It often marks the beginning of a longer-term vision rather than a single transaction,” Douglas Elliman’s Lourdes Alatriste added. “The endgame is balance. This portfolio touches luxury living, global business and cultural innovation. It reflects a belief in Miami not just as a place to invest, but as a city with multiple centers of gravity, each serving a different purpose yet reinforcing the whole.”

Located at 545 NW 26th Street in Miami’s Wynwood neighborhood, the 10-story building spans nearly 400,000 square feet, the property listing on Blanca Commercial Real Estate’s website states.

Wynwood has traditionally been a tech and creative hub in Miami, and the deal would mark Griffin’s first entry into the neighborhood after he spent hundreds of millions of dollars on properties in Star Island, Coconut Grove and Palm Beach.

“When an investor of his caliber enters a neighborhood, underwriting assumptions immediately change, cap rates compress, land pricing recalibrates, and long-term institutional capital feels safer stepping in. For Wynwood, this isn’t a short-term spike; it’s a structural re-rating of the district,” Duchon noted.

“Wynwood needed time to mature beyond its creative roots. Brickell offered certainty early on, such as financial infrastructure, zoning clarity and scale. Wynwood today is different,” Alatriste said. “It has stabilized, it’s proven demand for high-quality offices, and it’s become a place where people want to spend time, not just work. The timing reflects confidence that Wynwood has fully arrived.”

“Wynwood is Miami’s second most expensive office market behind Brickell, according to a report last year from CRE Daily. Real estate values are set by true mixed-use demand and the neighborhood’s ability to function as a real daily hub and not just a weekend destination,” ALP.X Group founder Sebastian Lüdke — who works with Goldman Global Arts — told Fox News Digital. “This transaction is just the latest example of the opportunity Wynwood presents to investors in the greater Miami market.”

Citadel is also breaking ground on its new 1.2 million-square-foot global headquarters tower in Miami’s Brickell financial district but currently holds a temporary lease at 830 Brickell Plaza, according to the company’s website.

Griffin moved his hedge fund from Chicago to Miami in 2022, and recently opened up about what led to that decision during an appearance at the America Business Forum in November.

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“I’ve lived in a failed city-state. I lived in Chicago for 30-some years. I had two colleagues who had bullets fly through their cars,” Griffin told Fox News’ Bret Baier.

“I had 25 bullet holes in the front of my building where I lived. You can’t live in a city awash [with] violent crime,” he continued.

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Mortgage buyer Freddie Mac reported on Thursday that mortgage costs dropped to their lowest level in more than three times.

According to Freddie Mac’s most recent primary mortgage market survey, the benchmark 30-year fixed mortgage‘s average rate dropped to 6. 6 % from the previous week’s 6. 1 % reading.

A 30-year loan’s average price was 7. 04 % a year ago. The 30-year mortgage rate average was 6. 02 %, whiçh is the lowest Ievel since Sept. 15, 2022.

As MORTGAGE RATES DOWNFLOW, THESE 10 Industry ARE COMING TO BE THE BIGGEST HOMEBUYING SURGE.

Mortgage rates dropped late last monƫh, causing thȩ weekly average tσ ƒall to its loweȿt level įn more than three decades, accordiȵg to Freddie Mac’s chief ecσnomist Sam Khater. The effects are obvious, as regular requests for purchases and refinancing have increased, which highlights the advantages for both customers and existing owners. It is obvious thαt cover action iȿ oȵ the rise and reαdy for strong flower sales.

Tⱨe Federal Housing Finance Agency, ωhich reǥulates Freddie Mac and another mortgage financȩ sȵob, was ǥiven ƫhe order by President Donalḑ Trumρ to seize$ 200 billion in bonds issued by thȩ two entities last week.

HOME DELISTINGS SURGE AS SELLERS RUGGLE TO GET THEIR PRICE.

Agent: THE Areas IN 2026 WHERE HOMEBUYERS MAY FINALLY GET A RESTRICTION. COM SAYS

William Pulte, the chairman of FHFA, reported last week that the first round of buying had been completed with a$ 3 billion target. In this year’s midterm electioȵs, Trump and hiȿ fellow Republicαns are fighting to kȩep conƫrol of the U. Ș. Congress. They are under pressure to Iower prices, inçluding accommodation.

Additionally, Trump has suggested outlawing administrative owners from purchasing single-family residences.

The president claimed in a blog on Truth Social that” the British Dream’s highest level of ownership was for a very long time. “

” It was the reward for working hard and doing what was right, but nowadays, thanks to the record-high inflation caused by Joe Biden and the Democrats in Congress, far too many people, especially younger Americans, are unable to achieve the American Dream. “

I’m soon taking steps to stop big institutional traders from buying more single-family houses, and I’m calling on Congress to define it, Trump said.

Since the 2008 financial crisis, which led to a flood of home mortgages, big financial institutions like Blackstone have repurchased dozens of single-family properties.

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The average rate on a 15-year fixed mortgage decreased to 5. 348 % from the previous week’s 5. 446 % reading.

According to Hannah Jones, senior economic research analyst for Realtor. com,” we anticipate mortgage rates to be broadly in the low-6 % range this year. ” Even so, affordability concerns and the remaining share of low-rate foreclosures suggest that any treatment in house sales is likely to be steady rather than quick.

This report was written by Reuters.

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The administration’s latest attack on America’s central bank has not gone well

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ewsom-says-california-wealth-tax-really-damaging-billionaires-move-money-businesses-out-of-state” target=”_blank” rel=”noopener”>NEWSOM SUBSTANCES CALIFORNIA WEALTH Income AS BILLIONAIRES MOVE MONEY AND BUSINESSES OUT OF STATE AS” REALLY DAMAGING”

As the price of a business like this approaches$ 7, 000 per square foot, the entire community is rebalanced. We’ve sȩen it įn Coconut Grove, Bal Harƀour, Miami Beach, and Golden Beach, according tσ Goldentayer.

Two Palm Beach homes came in second and third place in December’s most expensive sales, coming in at$ 97. 5 million and$ 66. 15 million respectively. Both qualities even appeared on Redfin’s 2025 record of the priciest U. Ș. homes sold, at No. 1. 5 and No. 9 and 9, both.

In total, southern Florida cities made up si𝑥 oƒ the ten mosƫ expensive sαles in December. Another high-end markets that month, including Manhattan, the Bay Area, and Nevada’s Lake Tahoe region, were outpaced by The Sunshine State.

According to Redfin, Florida components made up half of the ten most expensive house sales in the United States overall in 2025.

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According to Michael Martinez, one of the best South Florida agents for ONE Sotheby’s International Realty,” I’m seeing continued northbound fascination from California and the Northeast, with buyers seeking protection, security, and turnkey waterfront or estate properties. “

More showings with wealthy buyers, more off-market discussions, he continued, and buyers move more quickly when a really unique property becomes available.

FOX BUSINESS: Extra

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For years, home buyers have been told the housing market would eventually “normalize” — meaning if mortgage rates came down or inventory improved, affordability would return to something resembling pre-pandemic levels such as 2019.

But new data from Realtor.com suggests that version of the market may never come back, and returning to pre-pandemic affordability would require outcomes economists say are extremely unlikely.

The numbers underscore a tougher reality for buyers, one expert points out: America’s housing affordability problem isn’t merely cyclical but largely structural.

“It’s not a realistic benchmark. I think that the problem in the housing market is a structural problem that’s been going on for decades,” PMG Affordable principal Dan Coakley told Fox News Digital.

TRUMP HOUSING PLAN COULD BRING ‘BIG WIN’ FOR AMERICANS, PULTE SAYS

“While it might appear that things were more affordable in 2019, this kind of march toward lack of affordability has been going on for a long time,” he continued. “And it’s gonna take a long time to make a dent in it.”

“I don’t think that affordability is going to go all the way back to a point where people feel like it’s manageable.”

In order for the U.S. housing market to feel affordable again, a recent Realtor.com report found that would require mortgage rates falling to about 2.65%, median household incomes rising by roughly 56% or home prices dropping about 35%. Realtor.com defines “affordable” as a mortgage payment equal to about 21% of median household income, compared with more than 30% currently.

“Just how radical those moves would be with respect to interest rates or home price depreciation or income increases, it just shows you how much work we have to do,” Coakley reacted. “I have to compliment the Trump administration now for really putting this into bright focus, because I think it’s going to be really necessary, and moving all of those levers as much as we can is going to be super, super important.”

Coakley added that he doesn’t see rates going below about 3% or even close to that level, while noting that median incomes have not kept up with surging rents and home prices.

“People at the lower income levels or middle income levels, even upper-middle income levels, have not been able to access and participate in that asset level appreciation that’s been so fundamental to the American dream and what’s driven people’s net worth,” he explained.

“Increasing supply is probably one of the most important things we can do and that the administration can kind of foster to help in this crisis,” Coakley said. “Similar type moves — incentives, [subsidies] to incentivize a developer to build affordable for-sale product – would be very welcome in the sector.”

ESCROW PAYMENTS RISING NATIONWIDE WITH HOMEOWNERSHIP LESS ATTAINABLE

Attempts to fix one side of the equation often backfire, Coakley said, because housing sits at the intersection of financing, wages and long-term price trends that have outpaced incomes.

“You play with one lever, and you bring interest rates down too much, that’s probably an indicator that the economy is not healthy — and incomes aren’t going to keep up with the inflation that that might cause,” he said.

Last week, the Trump administration proposed two major federal housing policies that Coakley said he views optimistically: directing Fannie Mae and Freddie Mac to buy up to $200 billion in mortgage bonds and proposing limits on large institutional investors buying single-family homes.

“Politicians on both sides of the aisle should be able to support [this],” the homebuilder said. “I think those are the kind of big structural moves that, actually, combined with other things, can actually move the needle… It just can be encouraging to people psychologically that they have an administration that understands what is fair and what is not fair.”

Looking out at the housing horizon, Realtor.com estimates that if mortgage rates hold around the mid-6% range and wages and prices grow at a 2025 pace, a return to pre-pandemic affordability could be delayed until around 2047 — underscoring the depth of the challenge.

Coakley ultimately argues that chasing the past is a mistake and that policymakers and the wider real estate sector should focus on realigning the housing cost structure for greater long-term affordability.

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“I think we definitely are at risk of normalizing this level of affordability, a disastrous problem that we have,” he noted. “Psychologically, it’s not good for family creation. It’s not good for job creation. It’s not good for our cities, for our communities.”

“You can chip away at it on interest rate policy, but really, we need to come back to the table with ways to bring the cost down to bill-for-sale housing… I think starting to think about ways to develop new programs that facilitate similar affordable housing, but that can be for sale, and where people can feel like they’re participating in the upside of their most important or maybe largest asset, I think will be critical in thinking through the strategy.”

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A strong credit score can be the key to major financial purchases and affordable loans, but some states saw notable declines that created a “perfect storm” for Americans’ wallets, according to a credit repair expert.

On Thursday, WalletHub released its list of the states with the largest credit score decreases, and Micah Abigail LLC founder and social media influencer Micah Smith broke down what it means for those residents in the top – and bottom – states.

“What we’re seeing right now is a very clear trend, especially when it comes to missed student loan payments, and it’s having a real impact on credit across the country. Once payments resumed, we actually saw the national average credit score drop. Over 4.5 million Americans were caught off guard,” Smith told Fox News Digital.

THIS IS WHY YOU MAKE SIX FIGURES AND STILL LIVE PAYCHECK TO PAYCHECK

“And from a credit specialist’s perspective, this is where the real problem comes in. . . .  When you combine higher interest rates, no more free money in the economy and a student loan system that reports harshly and in ways most consumers don’t understand, it created the perfect storm we’re seeing now in consumer credit.”

Missouri’s average credit score in Q3 2025 was 654, a 1.51% decrease from the year prior. This marks the largest fall in average credit scores across all 50 states.

“It’s not random. There are very real structural and policy-driven factors at play,” Smith said.

WalletHub reports that Missouri’s payment behavior drives this data, with median credit card debt at $2,622. The state also ranks 25th nationally for financial distress.

Georgia’s average credit score dropped from 662 to 653, a 1.36% dip. The state’s delinquency rate is above average, and missed payments are high, which WalletHub notes likely contributed to the decline.

“Georgia is a particularly important case study,” Smith said. “Georgia prohibits traditional credit repair, and while that may sound consumer-protective on paper, in practice it often does the opposite. It limits access to education, advocacy and remediation for consumers who don’t fully understand how credit reporting works.”

“Credit doesn’t fix itself. And when people don’t have lawful support navigating disputes, errors or even the timing of how accounts report, they tend to remain stuck with credit damage longer — which absolutely drags down statewide averages,” she added.

Delaware residents saw a 1.2% decrease in their average credit score, going from 669 to 661. WalletHub reports that it is among the states adding the most debt, thus putting pressure on scores and higher balances. Delaware additionally has the seventh-highest debt delinquency rate in the U.S.

Conversely, states including Utah, North Dakota and Iowa saw the smallest declines at 0.14%, 0.15% and 0.28%, respectively.

“What you’re actually seeing in states like Utah, North Dakota and Iowa is that consumers tend to carry lower debt than the national average, and that really matters,” Smith explained. “Generally speaking, people who manage their credit card utilization well are simply less risky on paper. They have stronger financial histories, better spending habits and more consistent payment behavior.”

“That consistency gives them a buffer. So when interest rates rise and minimum payments increase,” she added, “they’re better positioned to absorb that change without missing payments. Lower balances mean lower stress when the environment tightens.”

Lower credit scores come down to a lack of understanding of how missed payments and prolonged debt actually impact a score, Smith added.

“There’s often an expectation of a quick recovery, and unfortunately, we’re the ones who have to be the bearers of bad news. The reality is that once you’ve had missed payments, charge-offs and extended periods of nonpayment, credit recovery is a long road. There are no shortcuts — it requires consistency, patience and [persistence] to rebuild the credit profile.”

Whether scores continue to decline in 2026 largely depends on the state of the job market.

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“We are seeing people lose jobs, and when income is disrupted, credit almost always follows. That said, if someone was disciplined and saved for a rainy day, they’re going to be in a much better position to weather that kind of disruption,” Smith said. “I am optimistic overall, but the patterns don’t lie. Credit is cyclical.”

“If you don’t ask for help, and you keep things to yourself, you’re never going to get better,” she continued. “Credit touches everything. It’s not optional. Invest in learning about it, manage it intentionally and build timeless habits. Your credit is your financial fingerprint — it follows you, it speaks for you, and it tells a story whether you realize it or not.”

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  Conference call and webcast scheduled for 8:30 a.m. EST   TORONTO , Jan. 7, 2026 /PRNewswire/ — Thomson Reuters (TSX/Nasdaq: TRI) announced today its fourth-quarter and full-year 2025 earnings will be issued via news release on Thursday, February 5, 2026 .      Steve Hasker , president and chief

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There are plenty of conventional indicators that signal that a product is turning heads: Weekly active user figures start to soar, products fly off the shelves, there is unsolicited praise.

But for San Diego-based Shield AI, validation has looked a little different. In April of this year, Russian armed forces fired two HESA Shahed 136 missiles into a hangar in Kyiv, where a team of 30 Shield AI employees had been doing research and development just two weeks earlier. The missiles turned the facility into a skeleton of twisted metal and rubble, according to a photo and video footage reviewed by Fortune.

Incredibly, no one was harmed. James Lythgoe, a former U.K. Royal Marine who is now Shield AI’s managing director of Ukrainian operations, had moved the Shield AI employees to a new site, as he had been concerned about the newfound attention that its sprawling nine-foot-tall surveillance drone, the V-BAT, was picking up. “We were advised that the Russians were very aware of a new capability on the battlefield,” Lythgoe says.

On the frontlines in Ukraine, Russian jammers intersect communications and radio signals, leading drones to veer off course or even fall from the sky and crash. Many U.S. drones haven’t been able to perform. But after an eight-month iteration period in 2024, Shield AI’s V-BAT cleared rigorous Ukrainian jamming tests. In 2025 alone, the drones have executed more than 35 missions and identified more than 200 Russian targets in the warzone, according to the company.

The initial success Shield AI has seen with V-BAT in Ukraine and on U.S. shores with the Coast Guard and Marines has helped the startup land a $5.6 billion valuation and positioned it as one of the hottest defense startups of 2025, right behind its higher-valued and more hardware-heavy rival Anduril Industries. Major government contractors, known as the “primes,” have begun to pilot Shield AI’s autonomous aircraft software system, Hivemind, for the experimental aircraft they are building for the U.S. military. Foreign allies and U.S. partners like Romania, Indonesia, and Japan have purchased its surveillance drones.

Shield AI wants to harness this traction and turn it into meaningful financial results. It’s looking to a brand-new autonomous fighter jet it’s building, the X-BAT, to help make it happen. 

It’s also looking to a new CEO. In May, the company brought in a new chief executive—Gary Steele—who has a track record of taking tech companies to multi-billion exits. With Shield AI’s cofounder and former CEO, Ryan Tseng, stepping into another leadership position, Steele has plans to grow the company’s revenue 70%-100% each year until it hits $1 billion in annual revenue for the year ending March 2028, up from the approximately $300 million Shield AI notched in the year ending in March 2025.

“I think the number one thing I think about is: How do we scale this?” says Steele, who spoke with Fortune over two interviews, his first since being named Shield AI’s CEO.

Gary Steele of Shield AI.
Gary Steele became CEO of Shield AI in May 2025.
Courtesy of Shield AI

It won’t be easy. As part of Shield AI’s strategy, the 1,200-person company will need to convince legacy defense shops that the AI-powered autonomous software Hivemind can do more than power Shield AI’s own drone. A gruesome accident in 2024—in which a U.S. Navy servicemember had the tips of his fingers effectively sliced off during a drill with the V-BAT—put a damper on last year’s revenue, and gave the company a public black eye that its executives are anxious to put behind them. And Steele, who is likable and seemingly adept at navigating internal politics, has walked into a leadership position notoriously difficult in the startup world: a CEO seat at a company where the founders maintain key leadership roles, board seats, and stakes in the business they created.

Shield AI is at an inflection point. Now Steele will have to prove that he’s the one who can take it to the next level. 

‘This inflection was happening’

Even before Anduril, there was Shield AI. 

Brandon Tseng, a former Navy SEAL, partnered up with his brother after he, Ryan Tseng, had sold a startup to Qualcomm. The two of them, with cofounder Andrew Reiter, wanted to take the autonomy that Elon Musk and Jeff Bezos were promising would transform the auto and e-commerce industries and translate it to the battlefield. This was back in 2015—two years before Anduril started to take shape, and not long before protests erupted within Google over a contract it was renewing with the Department of Defense. 

While Palantir had been securing government contracts for years, building military technology was rare among Silicon Valley tech-types at the time, not to mention exceedingly controversial. The Shield AI team turned down an initial $5 million investment because it had been contingent on Shield AI ditching its intended military focus and going commercial—which its founders weren’t willing to do. “It was really, really uncommon, if non-existent, for venture firms to be doing DoD-first companies,” says Peter Levine, a general partner at Andreessen Horowitz, who sits on Shield AI’s board.

As the venture capital-backed defense tech industry has matured, however, the Tseng duo have become synonymous with the industry and with the traction the sector has garnered since geopolitical tensions started climbing in 2021. That climb sped up, of course, in 2022, when Russia invaded Ukraine and views on the space shifted dramatically.

Shield AI had started with the now-discontinued quadcopter called the “Nova,” which, on first glance, looks like a superbly beef-ed up version of a drone you might buy at Radio Shack. Its innovation was in its tech stack, the AI-powered autonomous software system Shield AI calls “Hivemind,” which ingests data from onboard sensors—things like infrared cameras, radar, signals intelligence, and satellites—to build a model of its environment, then use AI to navigate, plan routes, avoid threats, and execute missions without the need for remote control. 

Shield AI’s first product, the Nova quadcopter, was used in missions to go into the most dangerous parts of a building and gather intelligence of potential ambushes or hidden combatants, so soldiers wouldn’t have to walk in blind.
Courtesy of Shield AI

With Hivemind, the quadcopter could go into the most dangerous parts of a building and gather intelligence of potential ambushes or hidden combatants, so soldiers wouldn’t have to walk in blind. The Nova has been used for several missions in the Middle East, inlcuding in October 2023, when Israeli forces used it to explore Hamas’ tunnel network below the Gaza Strip.

The Defense Department’s budget for quadcopters is relatively small, however, according to Ryan Tseng, so Shield AI pivoted in 2021 via its acquisition of the V-BAT, a towering surveillance drone capable of flying up to 18,000 feet and for 13 hours into enemy territory. The drone, which takes off and lands vertically, can fly from a ship or boat without a runway or launch mechanism, which has helped it notch contracts with the U.S. Coast Guard and Marines. But it’s the war in Ukraine that has really put V-BAT on the map. 

Like many other U.S. defense startups, Shield AI donated technology and hardware to Ukraine’s military for testing and experimentation—for proof that their drones could stand up in a conflict zone. Many of those companies quickly came to realize that they couldn’t, including Shield AI. 

The drones weren’t equipped to operate in areas where combatants could jam their communication signals or GPS, says Nathan Michael, Chief Technology Officer at Shield AI, who says the V-BATs they initially sent to Ukraine didn’t have Hivemind on board. “We had to come back and revisit our strategy,” he says.

It took roughly eight months for Shield AI’s tech team to incorporate Hivemind into the V-BAT. After the update, V-BAT underwent two new rounds of intense testing in summer 2024: a two-day test-run where seven jammers tried to knock it down, as well as a 60-mile test mission, where the V-BAT was used in jammed airspace to spot a Russian surface-to-air missile system and alert the Ukrainians, who hit it with a rocket. Both tests were successful, according to Ukrainian documents reviewed by Fortune, and Shield AI eventually sent over 16 V-BAT drones to Ukraine—most of them purchased by European allies—and they’ve been serving in the field ever since.

“I suspect that this year, more than half of our business is international”

Gary Steele, CEO, Shield AI

One of its most noteworthy missions thus far was in April, when a V-BAT flew some 80 kilometers into Russian-held territory, south of Zaporizhzhia, over two days to identify—then help destroy—two military headquarters and barracks, where Russian pilots and operators were remotely controlling the country’s highly-lethal FPV drone fleet. 

New business has been pouring in in the months since, according to Steele. Shield AI started selling its V-BATs to the Netherlands, Ukraine, and Egypt this year. Steele wouldn’t give specifics, but said that Shield has “hundreds of millions” of dollars worth of new contracts in Asia, Europe, and the Middle East alone. And this summer, in late August, the Ministry of Defence of Ukraine formally named Shield AI one of its “verified business partners,” allowing it to compete for state procurement contracts and access programs—and making it a true player in the war effort.

“I suspect that this year, more than half of our business is international,” Steele says, noting that he arrived at the company “as this inflection was happening.”

Shield AI is currently manufacturing the V-BATs out of its 200,000‑square‑foot “Batcave” production and engineering facility outside of Dallas, where the company is building 200 aircraft per year, though it just inked a deal with the manufacturer JSW to eventually start producing them in India as well. 

Shield AI’s surveillance drone, the V-BAT, on the flight deck with the crew of the Coast Guard’s USCGC Midgett.
Courtesy of DVIDS

Shield AI either sells the V-BAT outright, or, as is the case for nearly all of its contracts with the U.S. military, serves as a contractor operating the V-BATs for the customer, and the orders or contracts range from 4 to 300 aircraft, according to the company. For purchase, each V-BAT costs about $1 million, though the cost can vary depending on how many the customer is purchasing or the tech that is integrated into the system. Shield AI also licenses Hivemind to customers, including Singapore and South Korea, as an autonomy software suite and developer platform. Hivemind made up approximately 30% of the company’s revenue in the 12 months ending in March 2025. While the company says it makes “some revenue” from the early demonstrations and integration work it is doing with primes, including Airbus, RTX, and Northrup Grumman, the future of that business line will largely depend on whether the Department of Defense eventually opts to purchase those products.

‘Every single investor made money’

Steele was almost gliding around the light brown wooden floors of his San Francisco condo when we first met in August. He had left his loafers in his office and was enthusiastically sliding about in his grey slacks and socks, pointing out various paintings that scatter the walls of his second home, a corner apartment with floor-to-ceiling windows on the top floor of a skyrise near the Ferry Building. 

“It’s hard to get the colors right,” Steele says as he points to a painting hanging in a guest bathroom. The artist, Doron Langberg, is one of many recent art school graduates that Steele began following on Instagram shortly after they graduated—a habit he picked up after he started collecting art in 2014. 

Steele—with his kind smile and knack for an emerging artist—was not the pick one might have expected at the helm of Shield AI, whose drones have helped destroy some $400 million worth of Russian weapons. 

Steele’s background is in software, running the companies Splunk and Proofpoint, which focused on data analytics and cybersecurity. Steele founded Proofpoint and says he scaled it to $1.5 billion in revenue before Thoma Bravo purchased it in an all-cash $12.3 billion deal in 2021. At Splunk, Steele came in when it was losing money, then sold it to Cisco two years later for $28 billion in 2024. Cisco kept him on, making him president of the company’s $55 billion go-to-market strategy. 

He is confident—maybe even a bit smug—in his track record of returns. “If you look at my history at Proofpoint, literally every single investor made money,” Steele says. “Every single one.” That, he says, is one of the reasons that Shield AI’s board, lined with Silicon Valley investors from Andreessen Horowitz and Point72 Ventures that have backed the company, thought Steele would do well in the CEO seat.

“He has scaled very large companies,” Andreessen Horowitz’s Levine says. “We wanted an emphasis on software, because as we go forward, we intend to make that software available to many other organizations who will use that software on their hardware. And Gary had that background.”

Steele joined the company just as Shield AI had announced its most recent funding round, $240 million at a $5.3 billion valuation. Shortly after the round closed, Shield AI extended the round by raising an additional $300 million, hoisting its valuation to $5.6 billion, Fortune is first to report. In total, the company has raised $1.4 billion in equity and $200 million in debt—taking it from a GPS-denied quadcopter company to one of the most well-funded private defense companies in the U.S. and one of the definitive players working on autonomy in the private markets.

“They’re right there with Anduril,” says Ali Javaheri, an emerging tech analyst at PitchBook. “They have serious venture backing from the big firms. They have serious backing from the Primes. They are winning contracts.”

But Shield AI hasn’t enjoyed the same scale that Anduril has. Anduril said it had notched $1 billion in revenue in 2024. Shield AI, comparatively, hit $300 million at the end of its most recent fiscal year, according to the company. That was a $100 million shortfall of the $400 million it had been aiming for.

Gary Steele (right) with Michael Yang (center), Chief Legal Officer, and Brandon Tseng, president.
Courtesy of Shield AI

Shield AI credits the shortfall to an incident that took place during a test with the U.S. Navy in 2024, which was first reported by Forbes earlier this year. One of its V-BAT drones had tipped over during a test, and a Navy servicemember who rushed to capture it inadvertently grabbed the propeller and severed the tops of three fingers, according to a summary of the subsequent investigation, which was obtained by Fortune via a records request. The Navy’s investigation said that, because of poor signal, it took 45 minutes for anyone to get a hold of emergency services before the servicemember, as well as the pieces of his fingers on ice, could be transported to the hospital, according to witness testimony and findings from the Navy’s investigation. Shield AI says it had a Tactical Combat Casualty Care-qualified employee who provided immediate medical care on site and then initiated immediate ground transport to the nearest medical facility.

The incident was gruesome and publicly embarrassing. While most of the findings of the Navy’s subsequent investigation were redacted, the Navy documents say that Shield AI’s preflight brief packet didn’t have sufficient instructions for emergency procedures, and that Shield AI’s tip-over training did not include practical training exercises, according to the records. The V-BAT—even the drones operational and in the field—was grounded for two weeks as the investigation ensued, and it ended up delaying a series of contracts.

“Many purchasing decisions were delayed as a consequence of that investigation”

Ryan Tseng, Chief Strategy Officer, Shield AI

“Aviation is dangerous. Machines are complicated, and through a Swiss cheese situation, a person lost their fingertips, and it was an unfortunate event,” says Ryan Tseng, who was still CEO at the time of the incident. After the incident, the company added a warning on the duct surrounding the propeller, along with “extensive” hands-on practical exercise requirements. It later rolled out an unassisted launch and landing capability that eliminated the need for a person to be involved at all. 

Tseng described the Forbes story about the incident as “sensationalized” and contested the notion that there were any deeper-rooted safety issues at the company, or that the accident had any relation to his decision to step aside. While “many purchasing decisions were delayed as a consequence of that investigation,” Tseng says, “for a long time, it’s been back to normal.” 

In interviews, Ryan Tseng and Levine emphasized that it was Tseng’s idea to step into the chief strategy officer role and bring on a new CEO. “He wasn’t pushed out,” Levine insists, adding: “It’s not like he did anything wrong.” 

Ryan Tseng says that, as the company hit 1,000 employees, he questioned whether he was the person to take it to 5,000 people. “I’ve told people, and I don’t think they believe me, but I’ve never felt a particular attachment to the CEO role,” Tseng says. Tseng says he first approached the board this past winter, but they encouraged him to stay on. After the funding round closed, he suggested they revisit the conversation.

About seven months into the leadership transition, the Tseng brothers and Steele say they have found a balance and that they talk every day. Ryan Tseng has moved into the strategy role, where he oversees corporate development and M&A. Brandon Tseng, who is based out of Washington, D.C., continues to lead growth and is focused on customers and investor relationships. Steele is focused on running the business, making money, and bringing on new people, having hired four new executives since he joined, including a Chief Legal Officer and Chief Marketing Officer.

“This transition between Ryan and Gary has been the best transition from a founder to a new CEO that I’ve ever seen. And I’ve been around for a while,” Levine says.

But proof will come with time, as these kinds of transitions can be exceptionally difficult to pull off. Sometimes cofounders struggle to give up control in the company they’ve built themselves, or become skeptical their replacements are doing an adequate job. Bumble founder Whitney Wolf Herd, for example, stepped back as CEO in 2023, only to come back around one year later after a rocky few months at the company. Or at Uber, when CEO Travis Kalanick stepped back from his position but remained on the board, there were reports of conflicting vision and power struggles.

When asked about the dynamic between himself and the Tseng brothers, Steele says he was well aware of the importance of their roles, because he was a founder himself. “I understand what that means,” he says, noting that he wouldn’t have joined the company if he didn’t feel like they could work well together. “I needed to feel like we saw the world in a similar way,” he says. For him, he says he was convinced that the Tseng brothers approached the world with the same instincts as him, a “relentless” work ethic, and a “hands-on, problem solver’s mindset.”

The company wouldn’t share what voting power the brothers still have, only that they are “still significant shareholders.” The company said that Shield AI “operates with a mature governance structure and an independent Board. No single individual has the ability to make leadership changes on their own; those decisions rest with the Board as a whole, just like any well-run company.”

What’s coming next

At the end of October, Shield AI unveiled a brand-new product: an autonomous fighter jet with a 2,000-mile nautical range called the X-BAT. Shield AI has been working on the X-BAT for 18 months, designing a massive vertical take off and landing aircraft that wouldn’t need a runway, according to Brandon Tseng. Shield is aiming to have its first test flight sometime next year, and start production in 2029. The X-BAT is intended to complement the V-BAT, which is proving to be the company’s workhorse—at least for now.

But in the meantime, Shield AI wants to put more emphasis on the Hivemind software to meet its lofty revenue goals—hoping that product will make up 50% of the company’s revenue by 2028. While the company currently licenses its software out to foreign governments to use on their defense systems, it also wants to lean further into partnerships with the “primes”—the behemoth military contractors that have been the primary customers of the U.S. military for decades—so that Hivemind can eventually be incorporated into everything from helicopters to fighter jets.

So far, Shield AI is working with eight of the military’s main 25 contractors, according to Ryan Tseng. For starters, it is being incorporated into General Atomics’ MQ-20 unmanned combat aerial vehicle, a Kratos BQM-177A target drone, and an Airbus H145 twin-engine light utility helicopter.

Shield AI unveiled a new autonomous fighter jet it is has been building, the X-BAT, in October. The X-BAT will be flown using Shield AI’s autonomous software, Hivemind.
Courtesly of Shield AI

But, importantly, these have been demonstrations, not deployments, with little revenue. Shield AI still has to prove its capabilities to these primes—and eventually to the Defense Department—before they would roll the technology out widely. “The customer has to have confidence to go do this,” Steele says. 

One of those early partners is Airbus, which started working with Shield AI in spring 2025 on an Airbus DT25 target drone as well as an autonomous developmental Lakota helicopter that it hopes to deliver to the Marine Corps in the next “couple of years,” according to Carl Forsling, director of business development and strategy at Airbus. “If that’s successful, then that market is going to continue to expand—both with the Lakota and potentially other platforms,” Forsling says.

Steele emphasized that the company wants to position itself across a series of platforms. “While we’ve been very focused on aircraft, because that’s the place we started, there’s tremendous opportunity as we cross domains,” he says.

PitchBook’s Javaheri pointed out that Shield AI is likely to benefit from the Defense Department’s recent decision to hone in its 14 priorities down to six, one of which is “applied artificial intelligence” systems, which would include autonomy. “Aerospace and defense autonomy is the name of the game, and Shield AI is one of the leaders in that,” he says.

On the front lines

While defense tech companies are becoming increasingly prevalent in Silicon Valley—and Washington, D.C.—there is something intrinsically different about a defense company than its enterprise or consumer counterparts, even if the same storied venture capital firms have begun backing all of them. 

Shield AI is a case in point. For one, its makeup: 18% of its 1,200 employees are veterans, including Shield AI’s head of communications, Lily Hinz, who served in the Navy. Nearly all of the 30 employees stationed in Kyiv are former Ukrainian soldiers. 

But more importantly, there’s a difference in mentality and approach—perhaps due to the high stakes and real-life consequences of the projects people work on and the soldiers they work on them for. This is very evident from Shield AI’s 41-page document explaining its culture, which the company publishes on its website. In it, cofounder Brandon Tseng lays out a personal anecdote behind one of the company’s values—“do what honor dictates.” He writes about how one of his Navy SEAL instructors had dragged a team member to safety with one arm after being shot in the other.

“While there are many ways to conduct ourselves, we choose to act in a manner that is moral, good, and of high standards—leaving the world better than we found it, simply because it’s the right thing to do,” Tseng wrote.

“‘Move fast and break things’ is the wrong mantra when ‘things’ are people and escalation paths.” 

Garrett Smith, CEO, Reveal Technology

There are ethical grey areas for defense tech companies that don’t exist in the rest of Silicon Valley—when you build a surveillance machine or a weapon, and when the thing that you build is responsible for saving human life, or for taking it. “It’s a huge responsibility to get it right,” says Ryan Gury, who had a background in consumer drones before he started the defense drone company PDW. “You’re selling equipment that is going to extend the life and lethality of our operators.”

Garrett Smith, an active Marine Officer who is CEO of the tactical edge tech company Reveal Technology, says that, when a product lives in a “life-and-death” environment, it “changes everything.” 

“You prioritize reliability, safety, and mission outcomes over vanity metrics. You also have to think about escalation dynamics and law-of-war implications in a way a typical startup never does,” he says. “‘Move fast and break things’ is the wrong mantra when ‘things’ are people and escalation paths.” 

Several tech companies that operate in this space have set up teams to wrestle with these topics. Palantir has a “Privacy & Civil Liberties Engineering” team designed to “foster a culture of responsibility” around how their technology is used. Even then, Palantir is extraordinarily controversial among many, particularly because of its contracts with Immigration and Customs Enforcement.

Risk is very real for Shield AI employees. In contractor-operated deals, as well as in complex, high-risk environments, employees are often stationed for months on the ground (or at sea) where its drones are deployed. In Ukraine, its 30 operators regularly travel between cities to support mission planning, monitor sorties, and troubleshoot in real time to adapt to new threats and feed lessons learned back into the V-BAT. 

That level of proximity is all about trust, according to Lythgoe, Shield AI’s head of Ukrainian operations, who says that, if you are going to ask a soldier to trust their life with your technology, you need to be able to prove that you are just as committed to them. That has meant Lythgoe has only been home with his wife back in the U.S. four weeks over the last year, which is “not ideal,” he admits. “That is the job, I believe,” Lythgoe says. “Inherently, it’s the role of the defense sector to understand problems and to give the war fighter the edge. And to do that, you have to understand the problem, otherwise you’re guessing. And so you really do need to be close to the problem to do that.”

It’s curious, then, that Shield AI’s new CEO talks in circles about whether he feels a heightened sense of responsibility running a defense tech business, and seems uncomfortable to be asked about it at all. When asked about increasing disagreement about U.S. involvement in Ukraine or the controversy around the Coast Guard carrying out the Trump Administration’s agenda for Venezuela, he said: “We literally spend no time talking about the politics of particular missions.” While Steele acknowledged Shield AI has different protocols and processes because there is “human life involved,” he repeatedly stated that Shield AI isn’t much different from other tech companies. His focus is on the “mission,” he says, and how to “deliver the customer outcomes.” 

Update, December 21, 2025: This story was updated to reflect that the Batcave facility is now 200,000 square feet.

This story was originally featured on Fortune.com

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For decades, Americans were given the same advice about money: Find a good financial adviser. Trust the person, not just the process.

That model worked when markets were simpler, tax laws changed more slowly, statements arrived quarterly and financial decision-making wasn’t so complex. But today, investors are navigating inflation, volatile markets, rising debt and rapid policy shifts — all while still relying on advice that’s often reactive, emotional and outdated.

AI FUELS BLUE-COLLAR PRODUCTIVITY BOOM ACROSS MANUFACTURING, PALANTIR TECHNOLOGY CHIEF TELLS FOX BUSINESS

And now comes an uncomfortable truth Wall Street doesn’t love talking about.

Artificial intelligence may soon be a better financial adviser than most human beings.

And this comes from a person who has been giving financial advice to thousands of families over the past 34 years and also sees the handwriting on the wall for financial advisers over the next decade.

Not in theory. In practice.

Every market crash teaches the same lesson. People panic. They sell at the bottom. They chase hot investments after the run-up is already over. They invest in their friend’s new restaurant that doesn’t stand a chance. They buy cryptocurrencies nobody has ever heard of. Since the dawn of time, people have looked for a get-rich-quick scheme that will help them retire tomorrow.

This behavior alone destroys more wealth than taxes, fees or recessions combined.

THIS IS WHY YOU MAKE SIX FIGURES AND STILL LIVE PAYCHECK TO PAYCHECK

Human advisers aren’t immune either. They read the same headlines. They feel the same pressure when clients demand action. They try to keep up with the Joneses as well. Even the best intentioned advisers can let emotion creep into decisions.

AI doesn’t.

It doesn’t get scared. It doesn’t get greedy. It doesn’t care what social media, cable news or your neighbor is doing with their money. It follows data, probabilities and rules every single time.

Over the long run, discipline beats emotion. Just ask Warren Buffett. Machines are built for discipline.

Most Americans meet with their financial adviser once or twice a year. That’s like checking your smoke alarm annually and hoping nothing catches fire in between.

It can monitor your…

Spending patterns

Cash flow

Debt situation

Investment allocation

Risk exposure

Tax efficiency

… in real time.

When something changes, AI can react immediately — not at the next scheduled review. And most advisers aren’t looking closely at your debt, credit cards, household budget or the small decisions that add up in your financial life. That alone puts traditional advice at a disadvantage.

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High-quality financial advice has long been reserved for the wealthy. Everyone else often gets generic portfolios like a 60/40 allocation and product-driven recommendations loaded with commissions.

AI flips that model on its head.

It can deliver ongoing guidance, planning insights and behavioral coaching at a fraction of the cost — without commissions, quotas or sales pressure. Would you pay $19.99 a month for a 24/7 financial-coach subscription? You already pay $19.99 for Netflix, and it’s not getting you any closer to retirement.

That’s why everyday investors should start experimenting now. Tools like TheBuckGuru.com an AI-powered financial coach, allow people to stress-test decisions, improve financial habits and get real-time feedback without judgment or sales pitches. It can even develop actionable game plans that integrate directly into your calendar.

Here’s the part that makes some financial advisers uncomfortable.

The average financial adviser is replaceable. The good ones may not be, because they act as much more than advisers. They are financial therapists, marriage counselors, super-connectors and career counselors — and they still bring an art form to their work that AI simply can’t replicate today.

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Average advisers are not bad people, but much of what they do can be replaced because their advice, portfolios and service are very basic.

The advisers who will thrive in the future won’t fight AI. They’ll use it.

They’ll let technology handle monitoring, calculations and execution while human advisers focus on what machines can’t do well right now: managing intuition and emotions. That includes major life transitions, complex career planning, family dynamics and stopping clients from making catastrophic emotional mistakes like pulling their money out at exactly the wrong time.

AI won’t eliminate financial advisers — we heard this story before with the robo-adviser.

But it will expose the ones who add little value beyond the 60/40 portfolio and paperwork.

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It will raise the standard for advice, lower the cost for consumers and force an industry built on tradition to finally modernize over the next decade.

For investors, that’s good news.

Because when it comes to your money, the smartest adviser in the room may soon be the one without a pulse — and in an age of emotion-driven mistakes, that may be exactly what your financial future needs.

Ted Jenkin is president of Exit Stage Left Advisors and partner at Exit Wealth.

This post was originally published here. 

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Mexico’s anti-money laundering office has frozen the bank accounts of the Mexican co-owner of Miss Universe as part of an investigation into drugs, fuel and arms trafficking, an official said Friday.

The country’s Financial Intelligence Unit, which oversees the fight against money laundering, froze Mexican businessman Raúl Rocha Cantú’s bank accounts in Mexico, a federal official told The Associated Press on condition of anonymity because he was not authorized to comment on the investigation.

The action against Rocha Cantú adds to mounting controversies for the Miss Universe organization. Last week, a court in Thailand issued an arrest warrant for the Thai co-owner of the Miss Universe Organization in connection with a fraud case and this year’s competition — won by Miss Mexico Fatima Bosch — faced allegations of rigging.

The Miss Universe organization did not immediately respond to an email from The Associated Press seeking comment about the allegations against Rocha Cantú. Mexico’s Secretary of Security and Citizen Protection, Omar García Harfuch, publicly dismissed potential wrongdoing.

“We have no indication whatsoever that there is money from organized crime involved in the Miss Universe pageant, none whatsoever,” Harfuch said in a report by PubliMetro. “Nor have we found anything related to the pageant itself in connection with the corresponding investigations.”

Mexico’s federal prosecutors said last week that Rocha Cantú has been under investigation since November 2024 for alleged organized crime activity, including drug and arms trafficking, as well as fuel theft. In November 2025, a federal judge issued 13 arrest warrants for some of those involved in the case, but on Dec. 26, 2025 another judge issued a definitive suspension of the order, which halts authorities from taking action against Rocha Cantú that could cause irreparable harm to his rights while the case is resolved.

The organization’s other 50% belongs to JKN Global Group Public Co. Ltd., a company owned by Jakkaphong “Anne” Jakrajutatip.

A Thai court last week issued an arrest warrant for Jakrajutatip who was released on bail in 2023 on the fraud case. She failed to appear as required in a Bangkok court on Nov. 25. Since she did not notify the court about her absence, she was deemed to be a flight risk, according to a statement from the Bangkok South District Court.

The court rescheduled her hearing for Dec. 26.

Rocha Cantú was also a part owner of the Casino Royale in the northern Mexican city of Monterrey, when it was attacked in 2011 by a group of gunmen who entered it, doused gasoline and set it on fire, killing 52 people.

Baltazar Saucedo Estrada, who was charged with planning the attack, was sentenced in July to 135 years in prison.

This story was originally featured on Fortune.com

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Are data centers the new REIT? Not quite — but Meta’s new mega–data center in northeast Louisiana marks what one expert calls a “decisive shift” in how hyperscalers finance the AI era: by turning data centers into a new investable asset class.

“This is where capital markets meet compute,” said Sean McDevitt, a partner at management consulting firm Arthur D. Little, which provided commercial due diligence advice to Meta. 

Traditionally, tech giants like Meta, Google, and Microsoft have funded their data center buildouts directly. This time, Meta is partnering with Blue Owl Capital, a private-credit investment firm, on the $27 billion data center known as Hyperion. As reported by The Wall Street Journal, Blue Owl owns 80% of the project, while Meta holds 20%, operating and leasing the facility long-term. BlackRock bought more than $3 billion of bonds that the joint venture (dubbed Beignet) issued last week to finance the project, in a sale arranged by Morgan Stanley.

The deal stands out for its scale—the largest private-debt offering ever—and for its A+ rating from S&P, which reflects Meta’s backing of the project (albeit with just a single agency rating). Yet the debt had a yield of 6.58% at issue, a level closer to high-yield, or “junk,” bond territory.

That structure allows Meta to build its data center without putting the full $27 billion of debt on its own balance sheet. The approach—known as a special-purpose vehicle (SPV) or off–balance-sheet financing—is largely new territory for hyperscale infrastructure.

“By being able to access outside capital, you’re not limited to your own free cash flow generation,” McDevitt said. “You’re bringing on investors with return profiles on an infrastructure-type investment that allows companies to build bigger, larger, quicker, and faster.” He compared it to taking out a mortgage: you can buy a bigger house—or, in this case, build more data centers—by borrowing instead of paying cash up front.

McDevitt believes the Hyperion deal could become a template for the industry. He estimates that roughly $150 billion in AI-driven data center construction is coming in the next few years. If other hyperscalers—Microsoft, Google, Amazon, and OpenAI among them—adopt similar models, capital markets rather than tech companies themselves will effectively fund the infrastructure of the AI era. “This is replicable,” he said, though he cautioned that it remains to be seen how the project performs in practice.

“Now what has to happen? Meta has to build this thing, then put workloads in it and operate under the presumption that they’ll monetize those computing loads driven by AI in the future,” McDevitt added. 

That is precisely where criticism of the deal lies: According to Global Data Center Hub analysis, “If AI workloads or margins stumble, these SPVs could echo the dark-fiber overbuild of the 1990s vast capacity sitting idle while debt remains outstanding.” 

Still, for now, there’s no reason to think other major banks won’t try the same thing, said McDevitt. “Why wouldn’t others look to mimic [this deal]?”

Sharon Goldman
X: @sharongoldman
Email: sharon.goldman@fortune.com

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This story was originally featured on Fortune.com

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