Ignore for a moment Donald Trump’s shakedown of Nvidia, in which he has allowed the world’s most valuable firm to resume limited exports of its artificial-intelligence (AI) chips to China in return for giving a 15% cut of the proceeds to Uncle Sam. Think instead of the argument about whether it is wise to let China have access to one of America’s most coveted technologies. More
Sarah Gwilliam is neither a software engineer nor, she confesses, does she “speak AI”. But after her father died recently she got the spark of an idea for creating a generative artificial-intelligence startup that would help others like her handle their grief and sort out their late loved ones’ affairs. Call it wedding planning for funerals. More
Delaware’s chancery court stands between Elon Musk and investors willingly offering him a fortune. In 2018, when Tesla was worth around $50bn, the carmaker’s shareholders approved a plan to link Mr Musk’s pay to the value of the company. By January 2024, when the court ruled that the pay package was illegal, the carmaker and Mr Musk’s stock options were worth more than $600bn and $50bn respectively. Tesla’s board of directors had not been transparent about how Mr Musk’s pay was set, the judge said. That summer Tesla’s shareholders voted to reincorporate the company in Texas and reapprove the compensation package. The court killed it again in winter. More
“Always be hustlin’, ” was the credo of Travis Kalanick, co-founder and former boss of Uber. That mindset helped turn the company into the world’s largest ride-hailing platform, with operations in more than 70 countries and 10,000 cities. Its name has now become a commonly used verb. But while Uber hustled, investors had to be patient. Although founded 16 years ago, it first turned an annual operating profit only in 2023. Disrupting personal transport while fighting legal battles over flouted regulations and weathering sexual-harassment scandals proved tremendously costly. More
It was a rare day of good news for Britain’s beleaguered oil giant. On August 5th BP not only announced a quarterly profit of $2.4bn on its preferred measure, a third higher than analysts had expected. It also unveiled an enormous oil discovery, dubbed Bumerangue, some 400km off the coast of Rio de Janeiro. It is the company’s largest find in 25 years. More
THE success of the Golden Arches rests on three simple, sturdy foundations: a menu of reliably decent grub, at a decent price, shored up by catchy marketing. Ever since it went public in 1965, McDonald’s has done best whenever it stuck to this original blueprint. When one or more of these pillars crumbles, the fast-food fortress looks shaky. A quarter of a century ago this led to a near-collapse. Overly rapid expansion in the number of outlets and, at the same time, of products on offer made it harder for burger-flippers to keep up, hurting reliability. A price war with Burger King turned downright indecent. And the ads were stale, too. The result was acid reflux for investors. Between late 1999 and early 2003 the company shed two-thirds of its market value. More
You might expect America’s most valuable airline to earn its keep flying passengers. But you would be mistaken. In the second quarter of the year Delta Air Lines notched up an operating profit of $2.1bn, comfortably ahead of its domestic rivals. Buried in the financial statements, however, was a more revealing figure. Had Delta relied solely on revenue from passengers, it would have operated at a loss. More
There are few more frequent visitors to the executive suites of America’s biggest companies than the strategy whisperers at McKinsey, BCG and Bain. It helps that the corner office is often occupied by one of their alumni. Among the chief executives of America’s 500 most valuable companies, 36 spent time at one of the three prestigious consultancies, according to Altrata, a data provider, up from 25 in 2018. Household names from Alphabet and Coca-Cola to Citigroup and Visa are run by former consultants. But are they any good at the top job? More
