Raphael Stevens

Delta CEO Ed Bastian told employees that they would get two passes for travel anywhere the airline serves.
Delta struggled to recover from the botched CrowdStrike software update that sparked an outage of Windows systems around the world.
The more than 5,000 cancellations and reimbursements to customers cost Delta some $500 million, Bastian told CNBC earlier this week, and it plans to sue for damages.

Ed Bastian, CEO of Delta Air Lines, speaks during a keynote at CES 2020 in Las Vegas on Jan. 7, 2020.
Bridget Bennett | Bloomberg | Getty Images

Delta Air Lines CEO Ed Bastian on Friday offered employees two free travel passes to thank staff members who were caught in massive disruptions last month sparked by a botched CrowdStrike software update that stranded thousands of customers and crew.
Delta had more trouble than competitors in recovering from the outages that took thousands of Windows machines offline around the world, affecting industries from health care to banking.

The carrier canceled more than 5,000 flights between July 19 and July 24, more than it did in all of 2019, according to FlightAware. Bastian said earlier this week that the incident cost the company about $500 million, a sum that is equal to about 40% of Delta’s second-quarter profit. A crew-tracking platform was a contributor to the cancellations and disruptions, the airline has said.
Delta told CNBC’s “Squawk Box” on Wednesday that the airline had to manually reset 40,000 servers.
The disruption “has been a humbling moment for our company,” Bastian said in his note on Friday, which was seen by CNBC. “I know it’s been extremely difficult, and I’m deeply sorry for what you have endured. An operational disruption of this length and magnitude is simply unacceptable — you and our customers deserve better.”
Upward of 4,000 Delta flight attendants picked up more than 6,100 trips during the disruptions, receiving extra pay, according to another Delta staff memo on Friday.
“Your efforts throughout have been nothing short of heroic,” Bastian told staff.

The two “positive space” passes Bastian offered employees are confirmed seats like a customer would have, different from the free standby flying airline employees often do if there are available seats.
The Delta organizing committee of the Association of Flight Attendants-CWA, which is in the middle of a campaign to unionize Delta’s flight attendants, said the offer of passes “just isn’t going to cut it.” The organizing committee, in a written statement, said airline management routinely makes “meager adjustments to keep the operation running without making changes significant enough to prevent a future meltdown.”
Delta’s operation has since stabilized but the flight cancellations and delays stranded thousands and scarred Delta’s high reliability standings. Its executives frequently point out Delta’s successful work to win over both leisure and corporate customers who are willing to pay more to fly the carrier, marketing itself as a premium airline.
A Delta spokesman earlier this week said the airline has processed “thousands” of refunds and reimbursement requests. 
The U.S. Department of Transportation is investigating Delta’s disruptions, Transportation Secretary Pete Buttigieg said last week. Similar disruptions at other carriers, such as the massive 2022 holiday meltdown at Southwest Airlines after winter storms, have highlighted how technology issues can severely disrupt air travel.
Bastian said Delta plans to pursue legal action against CrowdStrike and Microsoft “to recover our losses caused by the outage” and that it has hired law firm Boies Schiller Flexner.
Microsoft declined to comment. CrowdStrike said it has “no knowledge of a lawsuit and have no further comment.” 

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All of the investments made this year by Bezos’ family office — called Bezos Expeditions — have been in artificial intelligence, according to data provided to CNBC by FINTRX, a private wealth intelligence platform.
Bezos Expeditions has always tilted heavily toward tech.
Fully 70% of the family office’s investments are in technology, according to FINTRX.
According to the UBS Global Family Office Report, AI is now the favorite investment category for family offices.

Jeff Bezos at the Allen & Company Sun Valley Conference in Sun Valley, Idaho, on July 10, 2024.
David Grogan | CNBC

A version of this article first appeared in CNBC’s Inside Wealth newsletter with Robert Frank, a weekly guide to the high net worth investor and consumer. Sign up to receive future editions, straight to your inbox.
Jeff Bezos has been making headlines for his big-ticket purchases — from a $165 million estate in Los Angeles and a $177 million property on Miami’s Indian Creek to his $500 million yacht.

Yet, Bezos’ biggest recent buying binge may be in artificial intelligence, through his family office.
All of the investments made this year by Bezos’ family office — called Bezos Expeditions — have been in artificial intelligence, according to exclusive data provided to CNBC by FINTRX, a private wealth intelligence platform. While the amounts he invested are not disclosed, Bezos Expeditions participated in funding rounds totaling more than $1 billion.
In January, the Amazon founder and executive chairman invested in the $73.6 million Series B round of Perplexity AI, an AI-powered search engine company. He also invested in a $63 million follow-on round in April. The value of Bezos Expeditions’ January investment likely doubled by April, since the company says its valuation soared to between $2.5 billion and $3 billion.
In February, Bezos Expeditions invested in Figure AI, the humanoid-robot company that also counts Nvidia and Microsoft as investors. The venture round totaled $675 million.
In July, he invested in a $300 million Series A round of Skild AI, which is focused on making AI systems for machines and robotics devices.

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Bezos Expeditions has always tilted heavily toward tech. Fully 70% of his family office investments are in technology, according to FINTRX. The next-biggest category is consumer goods, at 16%, followed by financial services and manufacturing, both at 13%. But now, his primary focus seems to be AI.
In a podcast interview in January, Bezos said AI tools are “not inventions, but discoveries” that will have profound effects on technology and change. “These powerful tools are much more likely to help us and save us even than they are to unbalance, hurt us and destroy us,” he said.

Bezos has plenty of company among family offices. According to the UBS Global Family Office Report, AI is now the favorite investment category for family offices. More than three-quarters, or 78%, of family offices surveyed plan to invest in AI in the next two to three years — the most for any category.
Amazon has also been ploughing money into AI. The company plans to invest more than $100 billion in data centers over the next decade and invested $4 billion in Anthropic, the AI safety and research firm.
Bezos recently filed a stock-sale plan to unload another $5 billion worth of Amazon shares this year, after selling $8 billion worth earlier this year. With more than $13 billion in cash, Bezos will now have even more money to bet on the AI boom.

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NASA management has been discussing this week whether it should return the agency’s astronauts on board Boeing’s misfiring Starliner capsule or send back the spacecraft empty.
SpaceX’s Crew Dragon spacecraft would serve as the likely alternative to return the crew from the ISS.
For its part, Boeing remains confident that Starliner can return the astronauts safely, and no decision has been made yet.
But the concerns reveal that there is less confidence internally on Starliner than the agency has publicly disclosed.

Boeing spacecraft Starliner is seen from the window of SpaceX’s Dragon capsule “Endeavour” on July 3, 2024 while docked with the International Space Station during the crew flight test.

NASA management has been in deep discussion this week about whether to return the agency’s astronauts on board Boeing’s misfiring Starliner capsule or to go with the alternative of using a SpaceX craft to rescue the crew.
The agency’s concern with Starliner — which flew NASA astronauts Butch Wilmore and Suni Williams to the International Space Station in early June — comes from not having identified a root cause for why multiple of the spacecraft’s thrusters failed during docking, a person familiar with the situation told CNBC.

NASA this week has been discussing the possibility of returning Starliner empty and instead using SpaceX’s Crew Dragon spacecraft to return its astronauts. There is no consensus among those responsible for making the decision, that person said, calling the outcome of NASA’s ongoing discussions unpredictable given the variety of factors involved.
The Starliner capsule “Calypso” has now been in space 59 days and counting. The mission is intended to serve as the final step toward proving Boeing’s long-delayed spacecraft is safe to fly lengthy crew missions to-and-from the ISS.
The Boeing crew flight was initially planned to last a minimum of nine days. But it has been extended several times while the company and NASA conduct testing both back on the ground and in space in an attempt to understand the thruster problem.
While NASA and Boeing leadership have publicly characterized the extensions as a data-gathering exercise, the concerns raised in recent days reveal that there is less confidence internally on whether Starliner is safe to return the astronauts than the agency has disclosed.

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Ars Technica first reported NASA’s mixed opinion on Starliner’s situation. NASA previously noted that SpaceX serves as a backup but has sought to deemphasize that possibility, calling Boeing’s spacecraft the “primary option” for return.

For its part, Boeing says it has the “flight rationale” to return Starliner with the astronauts on board, meaning the company believes the spacecraft can return without too much risk.
“We remain confident in the Starliner spacecraft and its ability to return safely with crew. We are supporting NASA’s requests for additional data, analysis and data reviews to affirm the spacecraft’s safe undocking and landing capabilities,” a Boeing spokesperson said in a statement to CNBC on Friday.
If Starliner returns empty, the most likely alternative would be to bring the astronauts back using SpaceX’s Crew Dragon by removing two astronauts from the Crew-9 mission — currently planned to launch four people in the coming weeks. That would open up two seats for Wilmore and Williams.

Members of NASA’s Crew-9 stand by SpaceX’s Falcon 9 rocket. From left: NASA pilot Nick Hague,

NASA did not respond to CNBC’s request for comment on the ongoing Starliner discussions, but told Ars Technica in a statement that the agency “is evaluating all options for the return.”
“No decisions have been made and the agency will continue to provide updates on its planning,” NASA said.

Trusting the thrust

After testing this past weekend, NASA noted that 27 of Starliner’s 28 thrusters appear to be healthy. The thrusters, also known as its reaction control system, or RCS, engines, help the spacecraft move in orbit.
But from an engineering perspective, not having a root cause for why five of the thrusters failed on the flight to the ISS means that risk remains for more thrusters to malfunction during the return flight.
Boeing’s Mark Nappi, vice president of the Starliner program, said during a press conference on July 25 that testing of the thrusters has resulted in “very significant” findings that “are likely the root cause.” But despite that, the company has not identified the root cause yet.
“We’re going to continue to take that hardware apart so that we can finally prove this,” Nappi said at the time.
NASA now needs to decide if it’s willing to trust that the unknown issue with Starliner’s thrusters does not arise again, or even potentially cascade into other problems.

An unpredictable outcome

NASA’s lack of consensus arose when the Commercial Crew Program Control Board met earlier this week to discuss Starliner’s return. PCBs are a standard part of NASA’s decision-making process, dating back to the Space Shuttle era, and are an effort to make sure any risks can be elevated to the highest levels of the agency’s authority.
The PCB, chaired by Commercial Crew program manager Steve Stich, did not come to a decision on whether to move forward with a flight readiness review, the next major agency step toward establishing a date for Starliner to return. The next PCB meeting is expected in the coming days, with NASA noting in a blog post on Thursday that return planning will continue into next week.
If any members of the PCB dissent on the decision to return Starliner with crew, the decision would go up the chain of command until the dissent is addressed. As it stands, the discussions within the PCB do not have a predictable outcome as NASA personnel discuss the level of risk involved on returning crew with Starliner.

Making a choice

NASA often emphasizes that “astronaut safety remains the top priority” for the agency in making decisions about human spaceflight, an inherently risky endeavor.
But the choice NASA faces has further ramifications, which threaten Boeing’s involvement in the agency’s Commercial Crew Program. Already, Boeing’s Starliner losses total more than $1.5 billion due to repeated setbacks and years of delays in developing the spacecraft.
If NASA backs Boeing and returns Wilmore and Williams on Starliner, the agency is accepting a currently unquantifiable amount of risk. A major failure during the return, with the astronauts’ lives at stake, would put NASA leadership under pressure to end Boeing’s contract and involvement in the program.
If NASA decides to send Starliner back empty, it’s a vote of no confidence in Boeing that may lead the company to cut its losses and withdraw from the program.
Additionally, if NASA takes the SpaceX alternative and Starliner returns home without incident, the agency faces blowback from being seen as overreacting to a situation that it publicly declared for weeks was not a significant risk. More

USA women’s rugby sevens, water polo, and women’s track and field scored major investments around the 2024 Paris Olympics.
Flavor Flav, Alexis Ohanian and Michele Kang are among those contributing to lesser-known sports and women’s teams.
“Niche sports often don’t get the spotlight they deserve, but they are packed with incredible talent and heart,” Flavor Flav said in announcing his support for water polo.

Players of Team United States celebrate following victory during the Women’s Rugby Sevens Bronze medal match between Team United States and Team Australia on day four of the Olympic Games Paris 2024 at Stade de France on July 30, 2024 in Paris, France. 
Michael Steele | Getty Images Sport | Getty Images

The 2024 Paris Olympics are attracting new funds for lesser-known sports and women’s teams, with USA women’s rugby sevens, water polo and women’s track and field scoring major contributions this year.
The USA women’s rugby sevens team earned a $4 million gift from investor Michele Kang earlier this week. Rapper and reality TV personality Flavor Flav threw his support behind water polo, and Alexis Ohanian, the husband of tennis superstar Serena Williams and the co-founder of Reddit, is investing in women’s track and field.

“Niche sports often don’t get the spotlight they deserve, but they are packed with incredible talent and heart,” Flavor Flav said in announcing his support for water polo in July.
Flavor Flav announced a five-year partnership with USA water polo, which includes funds for the 2024 USA women’s team as well as serving as the “official hype man” for both the men’s and women’s teams. The size of his contribution wasn’t disclosed.

Flavor Flav of United States of America during the Women’s Water polo Group B match between Greece and United States of America on Day 1 of the Olympic Games Paris 2024 at Aquatics Centre on July 27, 2024 in Paris, France. 
Defodi Images | Getty Images

He pledged to his support after player Maggie Steffens posted on Instagram that she and her teammates often have to work a second or third job in order to compete, given that water polo doesn’t garner as much attention as other sports.
The USA women’s water polo team has won gold for the past three Olympics, and Flavor Flav aims to elevate their visibility. The partnership includes his commitment to boosting USA water polo on social media, beyond cheering poolside.

Growing support

Kang’s contribution to women’s sevens rugby will span four years, providing resources for players and coaching staff ahead of the 2028 Summer Olympics in Los Angeles.

Kang, who founded Kynisca Sports for the advancement of women’s athletics globally, said that 2024 has been a “banner year” for women’s sports with record-breaking engagement. As sponsors and networks increasingly recognize the value of women’s sports, she said that now is the time to invest in them.

Team United States celebrate victory as they pose for a photo with the Bell after the Women’s Rugby Sevens Quarter Final match between Team Great Britain and Team United States on day three of the Olympic Games Paris 2024 at Stade de France on July 29, 2024 in Paris, France. 
Michael Steele | Getty Images Sport | Getty Images

The support comes after the women’s rugby sevens team won bronze, collecting the first Olympic medal for the United States in rugby sevens, among both the men’s and women’s teams. They also set a new record for a women’s rugby event, with 66,000 fans packed into Stade de France, according to World Rugby.
“This Eagles team, led by players like Ilona Maher and co-captains Lauren Doyle and Naya Tapper, has captivated millions of new fans, bringing unprecedented attention to the sport,” Kang said in the announcement.
Maher told CNBC this week that without a strong performance at the Games, the team may not have survived.
“Our coach said to us if we don’t win a medal, we might not have a program next year, and so that really stuck with me, those words, and so we delivered,” Maher said.

Beyond the Games

Ohanian already co-own’s a women’s soccer club, and he told CNBC’s “Squawk Box” this week that he aims to extend the popularity of women’s track and field beyond its Olympics peak.
He announced in April that his venture capital firm will host a competition in late September with the largest ever prize pool for a women’s track and field event. Ohanian is doubling the stakes of the Paris Games with a $30,000 top prize.
“Nothing about this is charity nor should it be charity,” Ohanian said. “This is about excellence, about celebrating it.”
— CNBC’s Jessica Golden, Kasey O’Brien and Nicolas Vega contributed to this report.
Disclosure: CNBC parent NBCUniversal owns NBC Sports and NBC Olympics. NBC Olympics is the U.S. broadcast rights holder to all Summer and Winter Games through 2032.

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