Early Nvidia Investor Mark Stevens Gives $200M to USC for A.I. Push
Mark Stevens, a venture capitalist and early Nvidia investor, and his wife, Mary, are donating a staggering $200 million to the University of Southern California to accelerate A.I. research and education across the institution. The gift will help the 145-year-old university position itself as a “trailblazer” in A.I., according to Stevens, a USC alumnus. The…
Every airline is Spirit Airlines now
Some analysts predict that the closure of Spirit Airlines will push other airlines’ fares up. | Giorgio Vera/AFP via Getty Images This story appeared in Today, Explained, a daily newsletter that helps you understand the most compelling news and stories of the day. Subscribe here. Anyone booking on Spirit Airlines kind of knew they were taking their flight…
Corporate Governance in the Age of Geopolitics
A new operating landscape is here. If there are corporate boards that have not, as of spring 2026, recognized that geopolitics and geoeconomics have entered the boardroom and are completely overhauling the interiors, they may already be costing shareholders far more value than they create. Recent developments make this shift difficult to ignore. The Chinese…
Apple’s Tim Cook Shares His Advice for Incoming CEO John Ternus
When former Apple CEO Steve Jobs passed the reins to Tim Cook in 2011, he left him a simple piece of advice: “Never ask what I would do. Just do the right thing.” Fifteen years later, that advice appears to have paid off. Under Cook, Apple’s market cap has climbed more than 1,000 percent, while…
Fintech’s Next Growth Constraint Is Liquidity
Liquidity has become the defining test of whether cross-border finance can scale. In the final quarter of 2025, Visa began testing new funding models to move money across borders without relying as heavily on prefunded accounts. More recently, Mastercard moved to acquire stablecoin infrastructure firm BVNK in a deal that points in the same direction….
Cybersecurity’s A.I. Problem Isn’t Technology. It’s Human.
Artificial intelligence is not new to cybersecurity. The sector is one of A.I.’s earliest adopters. For years, defensive cybersecurity has relied on machine learning to identify anomalies, detect patterns and respond to threats with speed and precision beyond any human capability. What is new is the speed, scale and accessibility of A.I., and the way…
Mark Zuckerberg Signals Leaner Future While Meta Doubles Down on A.I. Spending
Meta’s upcoming 10 percent staff layoff is just the beginning. A reduced workforce could be the new normal as Mark Zuckerberg shifts spending toward A.I. rather than human employees. “We are seeing more and more examples where one or two people are building something in a week that would have previously taken dozens of people…
The Real Stakes Behind Elon Musk’s Showdown with Sam Altman
With the trial underway for Elon Musk’s lawsuit against OpenAI CEO Sam Altman and president Greg Brockman, judges and jurors are weighing a central question: Can a company that began as a nonprofit later evolve into a for-profit enterprise without violating its original mission? Musk, an OpenAI co-founder and the owner of its rival, xAI,…
Spotify’s First Quarter Under New Co-CEOs Highlights Growth Strain
Spotify’s latest earnings underscored a new challenge for the Swedish streaming giant: sustaining growth. While the company topped Wall Street expectations for the first quarter—the first fiscal period under new co-CEOs Alex Norström and Gustav Söderström—its sales outlook forecast fell short of analyst estimates, sending shares down roughly 12 percent today (April 28). As the…
Revisiting the AGI Timeline: The Disruption That’s Already Here and What Comes Next
In early 2025, a team of five researchers from the AI Futures Project published AI 2027: a scenario document tracing how technological progress, governance choices and geopolitical dynamics would interact and compound over the next several years. The final report concluded that by 2027, it would be plausible for A.I. systems to surpass human cognitive…



