Source: Fast Company, Jeff Beer
Photo: Stock Pro/Adobe Stock, izusek/Getty Images, Lucas Davies/Unsplash, Vera Kuttelvaserova/Adobe Stock

Creators seem ascendant, but don’t kid yourself: Brands and AI have the power. How new metrics and marketplaces are defining a creator economy optimized for marketers and machines.

Up until about 40,000 years ago, there were two closely related but distinct human species on this planet. The Neanderthals, who lived mostly in Europe and Western Asia, and Homo sapiens, who originated in Africa.

The two separate species overlapped for more than 200,000 years, but eventually the Neanderthal faded away. What happened? There was no single event, but rather a gradual shift that saw Homo sapiens dominate thanks to factors like living in larger social groups, better dietary flexibility, and faster innovation in things like tools, fishing and hunting tactics, and more. Today, 95% of the human genome can be traced back to Homo sapien lineage.

The Homo sapiens clearly won.

Look, I’m no anthropologist, but there’s a clear analog in our modern media ecosystem: Influencers are the Neanderthals, and creators are the Homo sapiens. While influencers still offer marketers a transactional relationship for broad reach, creators are more authoritative media partners delivering a deeper connection to their fan communities. They’re the same genus, but one has proven superior to the other, with creators emerging as a more modern species for brand communications.

Earlier this summer, at the Cannes Lions Festival of Creativity, creators were the undisputed stars. Meetings, panels, and parties were backed with the whole creator spectrum, from studio giants like Mr. Beast and Dhar Mann, to waves of smaller, more niche creators like avant-garde make-up artist Cindy Chen. There was as much buzz about the rise of the creator as there was excitement for all things AI—and that’s saying a lot.

That buzz has started to translate into action, though, and it doesn’t bode well for influencers. Rocket Companies spent about $1 billion on marketing and advertising in 2025. The mortgage and real estate company (owner of both Rocket and Redfin) had been consistently working with both influencers and creators, but CMO Jonathan Mildenhall says the difference in value is stark, and the strategy has changed.

“I was seeing the rise of creators, and I was seeing the boring predictability of influencers,” says Mildenhall. “And about this time last year, I pulled my team together and I said, ‘I don’t want to work with influencers anymore. I don’t want to work with shiny, happy people who are hawking products the whole time that don’t have authority, true authority, on their content and all the products that they’re endorsing.”

The influencer bubble has popped.

Like the good ol’ Neanderthal, there may be some traces of influencer DNA left, but we’re entering the era of the creator. According to the industry sources I spoke to, creators are the future of how brands want to find, engage, and capitalize on new audiences.

ABOUT THE AUTHOR

Jeff Beer is a senior staff editor at Fast Company, and has been covering marketing, advertising, and how brands impact culture since 2006. . His coverage varies from in-depth features and interviews, to industry analysis and cultural commentary.

https://www.fastcompany.com/91576953/the-influencer-bubble-is-finally-popping

Source: Independent, Jasmine Fernández
Photo: Walmart Walmart and Alphabet-owned Wing are expanding their drone delivery operations to Florida, reaching more than 50,000 homes, apartments and local businesses in the Greater Orlando area (Wing)

Drones traveling up to 60 mph lower packages via tether directly to customers’ doors

Central Florida residents can now receive retail items in less than 30 minutes through a new drone delivery operation launched by Walmart and Alphabet-owned Wing in the Greater Orlando area.

The service currently operates out of Walmart stores in Apopka and Clermont, reaching more than 50,000 homes, apartments and local businesses.

“We measure success in minutes saved and life made a little easier in Central Florida,” Heather Rivera, Wing’s chief business officer, said in a company news release. “Whether it’s helping a family grab a quick lunch without loading everyone into the car, or delivering sunscreen to a visitor at their vacation rental, we want drone delivery to be a simple, seamless part of daily routines.”

Drones involved in the program travel at speeds of up to 60 mph and lower packages to the ground using a tether mechanism. The aircraft can carry payloads of up to 2.5 pounds, with plans to increase that capacity to five pounds.

Walmart plans to add three additional Central Florida locations to the system in the coming weeks, covering stores in Ocoee, Haines City and a second location in Clermont.

The launch forms part of a broader national agreement between Walmart and Wing that aims to cover more than 270 store locations nationwide by 2027, as reported by Retail Dive. Future target markets include Philadelphia, Phoenix, San Diego, Salt Lake City, Memphis, New Orleans and the San Francisco Bay Area.

Greg Cathey, senior vice president of e-commerce fulfillment transformation at Walmart, said in a June news release that the service helped meet growing consumer demand for fast, convenient delivery of daily essentials.

“Customers expect their orders on their terms, delivered with speed and ease,” Cathey said. “Expanding into new markets with Wing allows us to provide an innovative delivery option for customers, utilizing our vast store network to make everyday shopping and fulfilling last-minute needs just a little bit easier.”

Wing selected the Orlando area as its first Florida market because of its expanding population base and high volume of visitors.

The move marks a return to drone logistics in the state for Walmart. The retailer previously offered drone fulfillment in the Orlando and Tampa areas through a partnership with DroneUp starting in 2022. That arrangement ended in late 2024, as reported by Axios, and Wing is taking over fulfillment at two of the locations previously serviced by DroneUp.

https://www.the-independent.com/us/money/walmart-drone-delivery-trial-florida

Source: The Atlantic, David A. Graham
Photo: Generated by AI

House Speaker Mike Johnson doesn’t want to get involved in the Max Miller scandal—or anything else that might seem like part of his basic duties as a leader.

This morning, House Speaker Mike Johnson finally broke his silence on the scandal engulfing Representative Max Miller of Ohio. Well, sort of—Johnson didn’t have much to say.

“I haven’t spoken to Max about this in the last few days. Of course, I will,” he told Politico. Johnson said that Miller, a fellow Republican, was taking the allegations seriously (despite evidence to the contrary) and that a House Ethics Committee process should “play out.” (Miller requested the investigation this week, an apparent stalling tactic.) Johnson added, “There’s all sorts of domestic events going on with 435 members of Congress all the time. It’s not my business to get engaged in it.”

This raises the question of what Johnson does think the speaker’s business is. One might imagine that the Miller situation would concern Johnson for several reasons. Johnson positions himself as a staunch social conservative and defender of morality; Miller has been accused of domestic abuse against his ex-wife and toddler daughter, and of illegal drug use. (Miller has denied the abuse allegations and said that although he has used illegal drugs in the past, he no longer does.) For his caucus, it’s a big distraction from any midterm messaging that the Republican Party might wish to do in the last 100 days before elections. The scandal also puts another GOP seat in play in November; Miller said on CNN last night that Donald Trump had told him that it would be a “tough” race to win. If Miller drops out by Monday afternoon, Republicans in Ohio can replace him on the ballot, but it’s not clear how quickly the Ethics Committee process will move.

If Johnson doesn’t think that his job includes protecting the moral reputation of the House, his small and endangered House majority, or the prospects of the Republican Party more broadly, he must have some other idea about his role. What that might be is mysterious.

Passing legislation would seem like an obvious answer, but the 119th Congress has been one of the least productive in history. Legislators have succeeded in enacting just 104 laws since January 2025. That’s the lowest number by far since at least 1947—only the 274 laws passed last Congress even come close. This is especially remarkable because Republicans hold control over both chambers. Legislative leaders have also yielded some of their power over budgets, one of their most basic duties, to the White House. Even worse, 2025 saw the longest complete shutdown of the federal government in history, as legislators failed to fund the government for 43 days.

Some of the blame for this unproductivity belongs to the Senate, where the GOP edge is narrow and where rules mean that a Democratic minority can more easily block legislation. But senators are at least filling their time with other official duties, such as confirming presidential appointments, that the House doesn’t have. Another basic congressional duty is oversight of the executive branch, but the House has done little to investigate or shed light on what the administration is doing, much less hold it to account. In May, Johnson called a recess rather than hold a vote condemning Trump’s war in Iran, after it became clear that the nonbinding measure would pass. (The House has since passed a similar resolution.)

Johnson isn’t setting some sort of broader agenda for the legislature either. That, too, has been left to Trump, who seems to have been interested in only two bills: the One Big Beautiful Bill Act, passed last year, and the SAVE America Act, currently and perhaps permanently bottled up in the Senate. Johnson’s deference to Trump has reportedly led the president to joke in private that he has “two jobs: being president and being speaker.”

That’s rather demeaning for Johnson, but given how Trump dominates the House, one might expect that Johnson would pay close attention to what the president says and does. Yet Johnson has a consistent pattern of pleading ignorance when asked about controversial statements or actions by Trump or his administration. In a characteristic example, Johnson dodged a question in October about cuts to funding for special education: “I’ve been so busy on this; I’ve not had a chance to dig into the details.” Busy on what, precisely?

In fairness to Johnson, he’s working in a difficult environment with just a seven-seat majority, a rebellious right flank, and a mercurial president. But he does have some power when he wants to use it—as became apparent this week. On Monday, the House Ethics Committee found that Representative Chuck Edwards of North Carolina, a Republican, had “engaged in persistent unprofessional and inappropriate conduct towards two young female staffers” and had likely “violated House rules related to sexual harassment and hostile workplaces.” (Edwards denied that any of his conduct had been intended as a sexual or romantic advance.) Yesterday, CNN reported that House leaders were pressuring Edwards to drop his reelection bid. Early this morning, Edwards did just that.

By attempting to remain distant from the Miller scandal, Johnson is allowing Miller to claim, as he did in an interview last night, that “Speaker Mike Johnson, everyone else—they’re standing behind me.” Johnson’s reluctance to become involved in a messy, lurid story like this one is understandable, but it’s also one of the burdens that falls on leaders. By declining to bear it, Johnson may help ensure that he doesn’t have to worry about the duties of the speaker when the new Congress opens next January.

Source: MSN (Crypto On The Street), Bibhu Pattnaik
Photo: McKay Research

Pick any investor who watched Donald Trump walk back into the White House on January 20, 2025 and decided to put money into the three most talked-about assets surrounding that moment.

Bitcoin, the asset Trump had openly embraced. Gold, the safe haven that has anchored portfolios for centuries. And the TRUMP memecoin, the token bearing the president’s name that had launched three days earlier and was already being called the trade of the inauguration.

Here is what $1,000 in each one looks like today, August 3, 2026.

Bitcoin: Down 40%

Bitcoin opened inauguration day at approximately $102,000. A $1,000 investment bought roughly 0.0098 BTC. Today, with Bitcoin trading near $62,000, that position is worth approximately $607, a loss of 40%.

The irony is hard to miss. Trump entered office as the most openly crypto-friendly president in American history. He signed the GENIUS Act. He established a Strategic Bitcoin Reserve.

He called the U.S. the crypto capital of the world. And Bitcoin still lost 40% of its value on his watch.

What makes the Bitcoin loss particularly striking is the context surrounding it. This was not a hostile administration. Trump’s team established the first ever Strategic Bitcoin Reserve in March 2025, halting all government Bitcoin sales and signaling long-term institutional commitment at the sovereign level.

The policy environment was the most favorable in Bitcoin’s history. And yet the price fell from where it stood on the day that all of that became official. The lesson is not that Bitcoin is broken.

It is that even the best policy tailwind cannot override a global liquidity squeeze, a hawkish Fed, and overleveraged positions unwinding at scale.

Gold: Up 22%

Gold was trading at approximately $2,697 per ounce on January 20, 2025. A $1,000 investment bought 0.371 ounces.

At today’s gold price of approximately $3,300, that position is worth $1,224, a gain of 22%. The same presidency that was supposed to supercharge crypto turned out to be gold’s best friend.

Tariff wars, US-Iran military strikes, persistent inflation, and a Fed locked into a hawkish position all sent money into gold every time uncertainty spiked.

The metal hit an all-time high above $3,500 earlier this year. Nobody on inauguration day was putting their money into gold to ride a Trump presidency. They should have.

What makes gold’s performance particularly uncomfortable for the crypto community is that it did not require any catalyst beyond the macro environment that Trump’s own policies created.

Gold does not have a halving cycle. It does not have ETF inflows to track or whale wallets to monitor. It simply rises when trust in financial institutions erodes and when inflation stays elevated longer than central banks predicted.

Trump coin: Down 97%

The TRUMP memecoin was trading at approximately $45.47 on January 20, 2025, already down sharply from its $74.27 all-time high hit two days earlier.

A $1,000 investment at inauguration prices bought roughly 22 coins. At today’s price of $1.47, those coins are worth approximately $32.

A loss of 97%. Nearly the entire investment gone. While Trump himself disclosed over $1.4 billion in crypto income in his 2025 financial filings, largely from TRUMP coin royalties, the investors who bought on inauguration day are sitting on one of the worst-performing positions of the entire cycle.

The investors who bought at $45 on inauguration day were not making a financial decision. They were making a political one. And the market, as it always does, treated the two very differently.

The scorecard

Three assets. Same $1,000. Same start date. Gold: $1,224. Bitcoin: $607. Trump Coin: $32.

The most crypto-friendly administration in history produced one winner, and it was the asset that has been around for thousands of years and does not have a ticker symbol.

https://www.msn.com/en-us/money/general/if-you-invested-1-000-in-gold-bitcoin-and-trump-on-inauguration-day-here-is-what-each-is-worth-today

Source: Silicon Bay Partners’ staff with assistance from ChatGPT
Photo: Pacific Standard

Immigration enforcement is one of the federal government’s most powerful responsibilities—and one of its most consequential. When that authority is exercised improperly, the consequences can be devastating. Over the years, the U.S. government has paid millions of dollars to resolve lawsuits stemming from wrongful immigration detentions, unlawful arrests, and constitutional violations involving U.S. Immigration and Customs Enforcement (ICE).

While ICE is tasked with enforcing the nation’s immigration laws, mistakes have repeatedly led to American citizens, lawful permanent residents, and other legally authorized individuals being detained for days, weeks, and sometimes months. In many cases, those wrongfully held have alleged that immigration officials ignored evidence of their legal status, failed to conduct adequate investigations, or violated basic constitutional protections.

Several high-profile cases have resulted in substantial financial settlements. Individuals have received compensation after being mistakenly arrested despite presenting valid identification or proof of citizenship. Others were detained because of database errors, mistaken identities, or failures to update immigration records. In some cases, people lost jobs, housing, educational opportunities, or suffered lasting emotional trauma while being held.

The settlements are often negotiated without any admission of wrongdoing by the government. Federal agencies frequently choose to settle civil claims to avoid lengthy litigation and the uncertainty of trial. Nevertheless, the payouts represent taxpayer dollars and underscore the financial cost of government errors alongside the human toll experienced by those affected.

Civil rights organizations have argued that these cases expose systemic problems within immigration enforcement, including inadequate verification procedures, poor information sharing among agencies, and insufficient safeguards designed to prevent the detention of U.S. citizens and legally authorized immigrants. They contend that stronger oversight, better training, and improved recordkeeping could reduce wrongful detentions while preserving effective immigration enforcement.

Government officials, meanwhile, maintain that immigration enforcement is an enormous operational challenge involving millions of encounters, complex legal questions, and rapidly changing information. They point out that the overwhelming majority of enforcement actions proceed without incident, while acknowledging that errors must be corrected when they occur.

The financial consequences extend beyond individual settlements. Taxpayers also bear the costs of defending lawsuits, conducting investigations, and implementing court-ordered reforms. In some jurisdictions, legal challenges have prompted changes to detention policies, identity verification procedures, and cooperation agreements between federal immigration authorities and local law enforcement agencies.

The debate over immigration enforcement is unlikely to end anytime soon. Supporters argue that strong enforcement remains essential to national security and the rule of law. Critics counter that even a relatively small number of wrongful detentions can erode public trust, damage lives, and raise serious constitutional concerns.

One point draws little disagreement: when government mistakes deprive someone of their liberty, the consequences are measured in more than dollars. Financial settlements may compensate for lost wages, legal expenses, and emotional distress, but they cannot fully restore the time, opportunities, or peace of mind that many wrongfully detained individuals have lost. As immigration policy continues to evolve, the challenge for policymakers will be balancing effective enforcement with the protections guaranteed under the Constitution, ensuring that mistakes become increasingly rare—and accountability remains more than just a line item in the federal budget.

Source: Silicon Bay Partners’ staff with assistance from ChatGPT
Photo: ChatGPT

When COVID-19 swept across the globe in 2020, millions of employees traded office cubicles for kitchen tables, spare bedrooms, and makeshift home offices. Dining rooms became conference rooms, living rooms doubled as workspaces, and video calls offered glimpses into coworkers’ lives through barking dogs, curious toddlers, and shelves of family photos. As governments issued stay-at-home orders and businesses scrambled to adapt, remote work transformed overnight from a workplace perk into an economic necessity.

Despite the uncertainty and isolation, many companies discovered that productivity didn’t collapse as some had feared. Employees saved hours each week by eliminating commutes, enjoyed greater flexibility in managing work and family responsibilities, and embraced collaboration through platforms like Zoom, Microsoft Teams, and Slack. While the experience wasn’t without challenges—burnout, loneliness, and the blurring of work-life boundaries became common complaints—the pandemic permanently reshaped attitudes about where work could be done, proving that for millions of jobs, success wasn’t tied to a corporate office but to the people doing the work.

While many large employers have announced return-to-office policies, remote work hasn’t disappeared. Instead, it has settled into a “new normal.” The share of fully remote workers has declined from its pandemic peak, but hybrid work has remained common, leaving roughly one in five American workers doing at least some of their work from home.

In her article entitled 6 ‘Easy Ways to Move More While Working from Home’, Time contributor Jennifer Heimlich offers some advice on how to navigate this ‘new normal’.

At most desk jobs, you’ll be sitting down for the majority of the day. But remote work creates a particularly sedentary environment. There’s no need to walk from your front door to the car or train station. There are no aisles of cubicles to maneuver on your bathroom break or colleagues to stand around with at the water cooler. “We’re just sitting there in front of the screen by ourselves,” says Mary Jayne Rogers, an exercise physiologist based in Albuquerque, who’s on the certification advisory board of the American Council on Exercise.

This immobility has real downsides. “Prolonged sitting can increase the risk of heart disease and high blood pressure, even if you’re otherwise active,” says Amy Bantham, past president of the Physical Activity Alliance. It also makes our fascia—the connective tissue that supports every structure, from our muscles and bones to our nerves and organs—stiffen up, causing ripple effects throughout the body that can impact our heart, lungs, gut, and even our brain, she says.

While giving yourself some adult recess during the workday might seem indulgent, it can actually make you more productive. Even a little activity can help you focus, improve your mood and energy levels, and relieve stress. “You will feel better almost immediately,” Bantham says.

Fortunately, remote work means there’s no one around to give you side-eye for doing jumping jacks between emails. Here are a few simple ways to move more when you’re working from home.

Create your own commute

During the time you’d otherwise spend commuting, Bantham suggests taking a walk. She runs her own consulting business from home and likes to go for a stroll and call a friend before work. Similarly, Lindsey Bomgren, a personal trainer based in Minneapolis, gets in her steps each morning while using her phone’s talk-to-text app to draft emails and write herself notes. “I can start my day out walking, wrapping my head around my to-do list,” she says.

Then, at the end of the day, Bomgren makes a point to do active errands around the house before her kids get home. “I’ll run up and down the stairs three times just to get laundry in, clean up, set out stuff for dinner,” she says. This gets her moving and helps her transition from work mode to mom mode.

Find ways to move while you work

Over the past few years, walking pads have become a popular way to boost your step count while at a computer. Some people, like Divya Balakrishnan, a yoga instructor in New York City, find the slow, rhythmic movement helps them stay focused and less stressed. “When something comes up, I’m a little bit more stable and able to handle it,” she says. Under-desk bikes and mini steppers are other options.

Another strategy is to use phone calls to go for a walk outside, pace the room, or simply stand up. “Even just standing extends your hip flexors, engages your glutes, engages your core,” Bomgren says.

If nothing else, Rogers suggests changing your posture throughout the day by shifting forward then back in your chair or moving how you place your legs underneath you. Even bouncing your feet can increase circulation and move the joints a little. “The more you can keep things flowing, the more energy you’re going to have at the end of the day,” she says.

Have an exercise snack

Taking a five-minute walk every hour has been shown to help offset the harms of sitting. Bantham says any quick movement break is worthwhile. “If you have two minutes between meetings, use those two minutes because it all counts,” she says.

That could look like a quick set of jump squats or crunches. It could mean running up and down the stairs as fast as you can. Or, for something even simpler, Rogers recommends standing up and sitting down 10 times.

Even gentle movement can help balance out hours of sitting, but if you’re using these “exercise snacks” in place of traditional workouts, Bomgren recommends making them hard enough to fatigue your muscles or become breathless. “You have to create enough external stress that it actually challenges you,” she says. She suggests aiming for about an eight or nine out of 10 difficulty level. If you push hard enough, research shows that short bursts of high-intensity movement can improve your cardiometabolic health and reduce your risk of several chronic diseases.

Schedule a lunchtime workout

One benefit of working from home is having a shower and a change of clothes handy. If you have the flexibility to do an online workout video or go for a run during your lunch hour, your afternoon might benefit. “It’s like starting all over for the second half of the day so you’ve got less of that 4 p.m. lag where you feel like, ‘I need some coffee,’” Rogers says. Getting active shortly after lunch can also help regulate your blood sugar.

Stack habits

It’s easy to get caught up in emails and video meetings before realizing you haven’t budged in hours. To avoid this, Bomgren recommends pairing movement with things you do regularly during the workday. Maybe that’s getting in 10 push-ups anytime you fetch a cup of coffee or stretching whenever you switch tasks.

Bantham says some of her clients intentionally schedule meetings to end five minutes before the top of the hour. That’s a natural chance to get up for a bathroom break and do some arm circles or calf raises—whatever your body is craving—before settling back down for the next call.

Don’t feel like you need to sweat

Rogers emphasizes that moving your body during the workday doesn’t need to be “exercise.” Even simple movements can encourage healthy blood flow and keep fascia from stiffening up. For instance, Balakrishnan suggests counteracting our hunched-over-the-keyboard posture with stretches that expand the chest (by reaching your arms overhead and back so your shoulders roll open), twist the spine (by grabbing one knee with the opposite hand), and open the hips (by laying one ankle across the opposite knee and reaching the chest forward). “You can do all of these from your chair, which makes it very hard to find an excuse to not do it,” she says. Although this won’t replace a workout, it can help break up sedentary hours.

The key is to find movements you enjoy enough to do consistently. “If you absolutely hate squats, don’t choose squats to be the thing that you do between meetings,” Bantham says. Instead, try a mini dance party to your favorite song, or release tension with a few deep breaths and neck rolls. It all helps. “Any activity is better than no activity,” Bantham says.

Source: The Information, Martin Peers
Photo: ChatGPT

Question: How is the 24-year-old SpaceX like a young startup? It’s burning twice as much cash as it brings in as revenue! That’s one takeaway from SpaceX’s first earnings report as a public company, in which the company revealed it burned $16 billion in the second quarter, on $7.8 billion in revenue. That’s thanks to a whopping $18.4 billion in capital expenditures, mostly due to SpaceX’s AI data center expansion.

And like a young startup, SpaceX has big ambitions. On the company’s earnings call with analysts, CEO Elon Musk claimed it was now expecting to hit $1 trillion in revenue by 2030, a year earlier than it had projected before its IPO, and there was a chance it could hit that threshold by 2029. That’s a big claim, considering that first-half revenue was only $12.5 billion. True, finance chief Bret Johnsen said SpaceX’s annualized revenue rate would hit $100 billion by the end of this year. But ARR is one month’s revenue multiplied by 12. It’s not a real metric (and Musk emphasized that the $1 trillion projection was revenue, not ARR).

Musk also claimed that SpaceX’s Starlink could deliver most of the internet connectivity in the world in “less than 10 years,” while his No. 2, Gwynne Shotwell, claimed that SpaceX’s Starlink mobile service—to launch at the end of 2027—would “acquire quite a few” of the customers of the major cellphone providers in the U.S. Whoa! So not only does SpaceX have enormous ambitions to dominate broadband internet, it aims to compete directly with major cellular providers. And that’s all in addition to its huge AI ambitions and its desire to launch data centers in space and travel to far-off planets. Investors seem underwhelmed (or perhaps overwhelmed?) by all these big claims: SpaceX stock fell 6.5% in after-hours trading.

The investor reaction makes sense. Investors have come to hate big tech companies’ massive outlays on capex for AI, even though those companies are funding that capex from massive profits on other businesses. And SpaceX is spending more on capex, relative to what its businesses generate in cash, than any big tech firm. SpaceX’s only real profit center is its Starlink internet business, but that makes nowhere near enough to fund all the company’s ambitions (Starlink made just $1.65 billion in second-quarter operating income, for instance).

SpaceX will undoubtedly get a lift from the various deals it has done to rent out its computing capacity and from its pending acquisition of AI firm Cursor. But becoming a major competitor in mobile and building more AI capacity won’t come cheap. The returns are questionable, both in AI and telecom. Remember that the big telecom providers have to spend a fortune on spectrum and equipment, and they’re all fighting over a market with little growth. Musk has sky-high ambitions. Watching him try to fulfill them promises to be a lot of fun.

Bandwidth Constraints

AI has created massive demand for electricity and chips, driving up the prices of both, which has in turn lifted the costs of smartphones and computers. Elon Musk on Tuesday pointed out that the demand for bandwidth to transmit data will also soar as a result of AI.

“With the advent of AI and humanoid robotics and vehicle robotics and just a massive number of robots, the appetite of bandwidth will be much greater than it has been in the past,” he told analysts.

In other words, all those robots and self-driving cars and AI-enabled devices will be communicating constantly, straining the capacity of broadband providers, which are now mostly cable companies and cell firms. Musk says Starlink will save the day, providing the bandwidth to meet all those demands.

In Other News

• Italian conglomerate Bending Spoons agreed to buy once high-flying productivity startup Airtable for $1.285 billion, a steep haircut to its last valuation of $11 billion in 2021 (more here).

• Spotify reported 14% higher revenue, driven by 9% growth in the number of paying subscribers, while the music streaming service’s ad business continued to lag.

• The Trump administration is planning to ban U.S. imports of data center components from China, Reuters reported.

• Major personal computer makers including HP, Asus and Acer have started using small numbers of chips from Chinese memory maker ChangXin Memory Technologies, Nikkei Asia reported.

• Polymarket is in early talks to raise about $1 billion at a more than $20 billion valuation, Bloomberg reported.

• OpenAI gave a full-throated response to Apple’s lawsuit filed last month alleging theft of trade secrets. In a blog post on Tuesday, OpenAI called the lawsuit “careless, aggressive and oddly personal.”

• AMD reported 50% higher revenue of $11.536 billion for the second quarter, driven by stronger demand from data centers for its chips. But the company projected slightly slower growth of 41% for the third quarter. AMD shares fell 8.6% in after-hours trading.

Welcome to The Weekly Spill—Silicon Bay Partners’ regularly scheduled download of thoughts, takes, and the occasional side-eye at the world as it actually is (not just as it’s pitched in a deck). Each week, we sift through the noise across current events, politics, startups, and financial markets to bring you what matters—and what’s just pretending to.

We aim to keep things light, even when the topics aren’t. That means a bit of satire where it’s earned, a bit of skepticism where it’s called for, and a commitment to staying grounded in facts even when opinions sneak in through the side door. We won’t always be non-judgmental—but we will always try to be clear-eyed.

Think of this as your informed, occasionally irreverent briefing for the week ahead. Read it for insight, stay for perspective, and feel free to disagree—that’s o.k. too. Fair warning: Sometimes we spill more than once a week!

From Trickle to Tsunami: Spain’s Migration Reckoning

A migrant surge tests Spain’s open policies. It is also angering the rest of Europe. For several days a stream of migrants swam from Morocco into Spanish territory. Then on July 30th and into the early hours of the next day, the stream turned to an uncontrollable flood. In all, Spanish officials think more than 50,000 entered Ceuta, a small Spanish exclave on the North African coast, which has a permanent population of just 84,000. Overwhelmed, Spanish police waved them through and even offered water and sandwiches to some of them.

Hot Coffee. Even Hotter CEO Pay.

What makes a CEO worth $31 million a year? You’ll have to ask Starbucks. It’s leader earns 1,794 times the typical Starbucks worker, according to Restaurant Dive. In his first year at the company, his $96 million compensation package was 6,666 times the median worker’s pay, a fact that was met with backlash across the internet.

The Best Parenting Hack Is Being Rich

Young kids shouldn’t have screen time, a new report warns. But who can afford to follow that advice? A news flash that won’t surprise anyone: Screen time is bad for young kids and is associated with less interaction between the parent and child, as well as delayed development, sleep issues, and eating problems.

Richer, highly educated parents—the kind who have the time and resources to read the news and incorporate the warnings of experts into their child-rearing—are already more likely to limit their kids’ screen time than less educated, lower-income parents are.

Shoddy Construction Or Just Another Coincidence?

Construction crews have spent weeks tearing up the White House South Lawn to build a massive granite helipad for Donald Trump’s Marine One helicopter.

Now, reports say the President has ordered contractors to redo the project after becoming frustrated that the lawn’s natural slope prevents the landing pad from sitting perfectly level with the horizon. Given the recent reflecting pool debacle, it’s hard to chalk this up to bad luck. At this point, “shoddy construction” seems like the far more convincing explanation.

Source: NPR, Bobby Allyn
Photo: President Donald Trump holds up a copy of his Truth Social post about Air Force One as he speaks with the media aboard Air Force One on July 8, 2026. The president’s media company is offering investors early access to his Truth Social feed for up to $100,000 a month, raising ethical and legal concerns. (Saul Loeb/AFP via Getty Images)

President Donald Trump holds up a copy of his Truth Social post about Air Force One as he speaks with the media aboard Air Force One on July 8, 2026. The president’s media company is offering investors early access to his Truth Social feed for up to $100,000 a month, raising ethical and legal concerns.

President Donald Trump holds up a copy of his Truth Social post about Air Force One as he speaks with the media aboard Air Force One on July 8, 2026. The president’s media company is offering investors early access to his Truth Social feed for up to $100,000 a month, raising ethical and legal concerns.

President Trump, his critics like to say, learned one major lesson during his first term: Never leave any money on the table.

But even for a president who raked in $2 billion, fueled mostly by his lucrative cryptocurrency ventures, the latest offering from his social media platform, Truth Social, stands out.

Trump Media & Technology Group is now shopping to traders and investors a premium version of Truth Social delivering early access to the feeds of high-profile users, including the president.

Starting Saturday, for a fee of up to $100,000 a month, trading firms can access “Truth API” to get a glimpse of the president’s often market-moving announcements about economic policy and global affairs before the rest of the world.

Trump’s media company says customers have already started signing up. Such an offering would give institutional investors a leg up in areas of finance like high-frequency trading, where an advantage of a few milliseconds can mean the difference of millions of dollars. But will the service be widely adopted across Wall Street?

“It’s insane,” said one Wall Street executive, who requested anonymity for fear of retaliation from the Trump administration. “I can say for myself and 200 of my friends in finance, we’re not getting anywhere near this. In another administration, this would be considered criminal.”

President Donald Trump in July signed the GENIUS Act, the country’s first major standalone cryptocurrency legislation. Trump has embraced the crypto industry, where his family now has several business ventures.

NPR reached out to 12 other major players in finance, brokers, hedge fund managers and other investors. None would speak publicly about the service, with some saying the risk of landing in Trump’s crosshairs was too high.

Renée Jones, a Boston College professor and former top official at the Securities and Exchange Commission, said the paid offering appears to run afoul of insider trading laws.

She pointed to federal securities laws prohibiting schemes in which non-public information is misused to give a trader an unfair advantage. The law states that sharing such information is a breach of “a duty or trust of confidence.”

“So if the president’s Truth Social posts are being monetized, and if some people get special access to them, that’s misappropriated information,” Jones said. “And by giving people his posts early, he is also violating his duty of trust and confidence.”

Offering specialized data access to paying customers is not unusual or illegal for social media companies. But given that Trump regularly announces or hints at official government policy via Truth Social, the paid service could quickly run into legal problems, according to Jones.

She pointed to the 2012 Stock Act, which prohibits members of Congress and the executive branch, including the president, from trading stocks based on privileged information.

“That said, I could imagine Trump’s lawyers arguing that because they announced it out in the open, it’s not deceitful, it’s not fraudulent,” Jones said.

Shannon Devine, a spokeswoman for Trump Media & Technology Group, said in a statement that offering an early preview of posts from the president and others does not amount to insider trading.

“Truth API offers customers the fastest way to ingest publicly available Truth Social data. Critics must have invented a new theory of ‘insider trading’ based on publicly available information,” Devine said.

In a letter sent Wednesday to the SEC by Sens. Elizabeth Warren of Massachusetts and Adam Schiff of California, the lawmakers called the service “an outrageous abuse of the President’s office for his personal benefit that undermines everyday investors and the integrity of our markets.” They asked the commission to launch an investigation.

The SEC declined to comment.

Trump Media & Technology Group spokeswoman Devine dismissed the letter as partisan wrangling.

“With no apparent sense of irony, certain politicians falsely accuse us of anti-free-market behavior while pressuring businesses into boycotting a product, all in a coordinated effort to harm a publicly traded company,” Devine said.

Trump is the largest shareholder of his media company through a trust controlled by his eldest son, Donald Trump Jr., regulatory filings show.

That means the Trump family’s wealth will grow as customers sign up for Truth API.

It’s the latest example of the president blurring the lines between public office and his business empire.

“Channeling nonpublic information to Trump’s media company for high-speed dissemination to his wealthy institutional investors is a step toward normalizing insider trading that undermines the integrity of U.S. markets and further erodes investor confidence,” said Virginia Canter, a former SEC lawyer who is now with Democracy Defenders Fund, a nonprofit that has been critical of the Trump administration.

Canter added that the product “disadvantages regular investors who unfortunately may be on the losing sides of those trades because they do not have the same access to information.”

The Wall Street executive who requested anonymity asked: “Should he be able to monetize the office of the presidency like this? I don’t think so. But will investment banks stick their neck out over it? Probably not.”

https://www.npr.org/2026/08/01/nx-s1-5912219/trump-truth-social-access-insider-trading

Source: The Information, Martin Peers
Photo: AI Image Created Under the Direction of Shannon Tokheim

Palantir is truly the Nvidia of AI software. On Monday, the company delivered another rip-roaring quarterly result, showing revenue up a blistering 93%, well ahead of what it had projected. The company has accelerated revenue growth every quarter for three years, from a 13% rate of expansion in the second quarter of 2023. In that time, Palantir’s top line has increased from $533 million a quarter to $1.9 billion. Palantir stock rose 11% in after-hours trading.

Its growth over the past three years isn’t quite as dazzling as that of Nvidia—whose stranglehold on the AI chip market lifted revenue to $216 billion in its most recent fiscal year from $27 billion three years earlier—but it’s pretty stunning nevertheless. What makes this particularly notable is that Palantir doesn’t develop its own large language models. It has figured out how to make a massive amount of money—Palantir’s operations generated $2.1 billion in cash in the first half of 2026, while capital expenditures were only $22 million—from software that works on top of other companies’ AI.

That’s something every other software company is aiming to do. Palantir is far ahead of the rest. As my colleague Laura Bratton described, Palantir offers “end-to-end software, helping customers link and organize data they store in systems such as Snowflake, Salesforce and SAP.” It develops AI agents and other apps to utilize that data, and its consultants help clients make AI work for them.

It likely helps that co-founder and CEO Alexander Karp is an iconoclastic showman whose proselytizing about the dangers posed by AI firms such as Anthropic and OpenAI doubles as marketing for Palantir’s services. Repeating a message he has lately sounded loudly, including on CNBC a month ago, he asserted in a letter accompanying earnings that “every organization in the world is awakening to the risks of handing the creators of the language models the keys to their institutions,” referring to the organizations’ data, which he says AI models aim to capture.

His message seems hyperbolic, but no matter—it’s helping Palantir thrive.

Snap Has a Good Day

Is Snap bouncing back? Maybe. The social media service popular with teens reported 19% higher revenues for the second quarter, sending the long-battered stock up 10% in after-hours trading.

But let’s not get too excited. Most of the growth came from Snap’s subscriptions and other revenue, which rocketed 85% to $316 million, or about 20% of the total. Advertising showed signs of life—it rose 9%, which is better than the 2.7% reported in the first quarter. But it’s well below what other digital media firms are reporting.

The bigger worry is that Snap’s engine, its user base, is still not growing where it matters most—the U.S. and Europe. The company’s North American daily active users stayed flat compared with the first quarter at 92 million (and that user count is 7% below where it was 12 months earlier). The European DAU count picked up to 98 million, compared with 97 million in the first quarter, but that’s still down 2% from a year ago. Snap’s user growth is coming mostly from other parts of the world, which are much smaller sources of revenue.

Until Snap can revive user growth in the U.S. in particular, its future will be clouded.

In Other News

• Chinese tech giant Alibaba Group made its new flagship model, Qwen3.8-Max, widely available on Monday through application programming interfaces at lower prices than its Chinese competitor Moonshot AI’s popular Kimi K3 model. Alibaba will also make the open-source model available for download next week.

• Shares of Microsoft closed 0.8% higher than where they finished in 2025, the first time all year the stock has been in the black, Koyfin data shows. Meanwhile, Amazon closed Monday with a market capitalization above $3 trillion for the first time ever.