Raphael Stevens

Krispy Kreme is pausing its nationwide rollout with McDonald’s after sales slowed below its projections.
Krispy Kreme shares have shed more than 70% of their value over the last year.
The two restaurant companies are working together to boost demand and simplify operations.

Justin Sullivan | Getty Images News | Getty Images

Krispy Kreme stock plunged 24% on Thursday after the doughnut chain said it is “reassessing” its rollout with McDonald’s and pulled its full-year outlook in part due to economic “softness.”
Krispy Kreme is not planning to launch its doughnuts in any additional McDonald’s locations in the second quarter, suspending a nationwide rollout. As of March 30, more than 2,400 of the burger chain’s roughly 13,500 domestic locations carried Krispy Kreme doughnuts.

“I remain confident in the long-term national opportunity, but we need to work together with them to identify levers to improve sales,” Krispy Kreme CEO Josh Charlesworth said.
Over the last year, Krispy Kreme shares have shed more than 70% of their value, dragging the company’s market value down to less than $600 million.
Truist downgraded the stock on Thursday from buy to hold.
“We are shocked by the speed at which the story fell apart,” Truist analyst Bill Chappell wrote. “… We no longer have high conviction in management’s previously stated strategy and execution of these initiatives, and it will likely take several quarters before we or investors can regain confidence.”
The two restaurant companies announced more than a year ago that Krispy Kreme doughnuts would be sold in all McDonald’s U.S. locations by the end of 2026. The rollout began roughly six months ago.

While the beginning phases were promising, sales fell below projections, Krispy Kreme executives said on Thursday.
As consumers worry about the broader economy and a potential recession, they have been pulling back their spending at restaurants. McDonald’s reported a 3.6% decline in its U.S. same-store sales for the first quarter. McDonald’s CEO Chris Kempczinski said that the fast-food industry’s traffic fell as middle- and low-income diners visited restaurants less frequently.
For Krispy Kreme, profitability appears to be the key reason for slowing the rollout with McDonald’s.
“However, we are seeing that after the initial marketing launch demand dropped below our expectations requiring intervention to deliver sustainable, profitable growth,” Charlesworth told analysts on the company’s conference call.
“We are partnering with McDonald’s to increase sales by stimulating higher demand and cutting costs by simplifying operations,” he added. “At the same time, we are reassessing our deployment schedule together with McDonald’s as we work to achieve a profitable business model for all parties.”
Krispy Kreme reported a net loss of $33 million for the quarter ended March 30.
To supply all of McDonald’s U.S. restaurants, Krispy Kreme was investing in expanding capacity quickly, which weighed on profits. In the last year, the company has reported three quarters of net losses.
The company uses a “hub and spoke” model that lets it make and distribute its treats efficiently. Production hubs, which are either stores or doughnut factories, send off freshly made doughnuts every day to retail locations such as grocery stores and gas stations. Krispy Kreme is looking to prune its unprofitable locations, which could affect up to 10% of its U.S. network.
Krispy Kreme also pulled its 2025 outlook, citing “macroeconomic softness” and uncertainty around the schedule for the McDonald’s partnership. More

Microsoft billionaire Bill Gates announced that he will give away “virtually all” of his wealth over the next 20 years.
His charitable commitment to causes like battling malaria follows dire cuts to U.S. foreign aid.
Gates took aim at Elon Musk and DOGE for the cuts, which cannot be covered by philanthropists, he said.

Bill Gates arrives for a press conference to launch the Global Polio Eradication Initiative at the European Commission’s Berlaymont headquarters in Brussels on October 11, 2023.
Simon Wohlfahrt | Afp | Getty Images

Billionaire Bill Gates announced on Thursday that he will double his charitable giving to $200 billion over the next 20 years.
In a blog post, the Microsoft co-founder wrote that he was motivated by the many challenges facing the world, such as children’s health and climate change, as well as the late Andrew Carnegie’s admonishment of wealth hoarding.

“People will say a lot of things about me when I die, but I am determined that ‘he died rich’ will not be one of them,” Gates wrote. “There are too many urgent problems to solve for me to hold onto resources that could be used to help people.”
Gates is currently the world’s fifth richest person with a $168 billion fortune, according to the Bloomberg Billionaires Index. The $200 billion commitment assumes his charitable foundation’s endowment will grow through investments.
The Gates Foundation, founded by Gates and his ex-wife, Melinda French Gates, in 2000, has already given away more than $100 billion. After Bill Gates has given away “virtually all” of his wealth, the foundation will close at the end of 2045, he said.
Gates is one of few billionaires to publicly step up their charitable giving as nonprofits and universities reel from federal funding cuts. Despite his increase in giving, he said philanthropists cannot cover the multibillion-dollar foreign aid cuts by the U.S. and other wealthy countries.
“The United States, United Kingdom, France, and other countries around the world are cutting their aid budgets by tens of billions of dollars. And no philanthropic organization—even one the size of the Gates Foundation—can make up the gulf in funding that’s emerging right now,” he wrote. “It’s unclear whether the world’s richest countries will continue to stand up for its poorest people.”

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In an interview with the Financial Times, Gates criticized Elon Musk for his role in cutting U.S. foreign aid. In February, Musk’s so-called Department of Governmental Efficiency effectively shut down the U.S. Agency for International Development. The federal agency disbursed $42.5 billion in 2023, according to government data, that provided lifesaving assistance, including health care, clean water and food across the globe.
“The picture of the world’s richest man killing the world’s poorest children is not a pretty one,” Gates told the Financial Times.
In early March, the agency estimated that the cuts would have dire consequences, including 1 million children with severe acute malnutrition going untreated and up to 166,000 additional deaths from malaria.
Gates, his then-wife and Warren Buffett founded the Giving Pledge in 2010 as a commitment for the world’s richest people to give away more than half their wealth in their lifetime or wills. French Gates has since stepped down from the Gates Foundation but has her own philanthropic organization.
Musk has signed the Giving Pledge. Gates told the New York Times that he doesn’t know whether Musk will follow through.
“The Giving Pledge — an unusual aspect of it that you can wait until you die and still fulfill it. So who knows? He could go on to be a great philanthropist,” he said before pointing to Musk’s involvement in the foreign aid cuts.
Musk has given away less than 1% of his wealth, according to Forbes. The publication estimates his out-the-door giving — gifts that have been paid, not just pledged or parked in a foundation — at $620 million over his lifetime through 2023. More

Restaurant Brands International missed first-quarter earnings and revenue estimates.
Same-store sales fell at Burger King, Popeyes and Tim Hortons.

A Burger King restaurant is seen on October 25, 2024 in New York City. 
Michael M. Santiago | Getty Images

Restaurant Brands International on Thursday reported quarterly earnings and revenue that missed analysts’ expectations as same-store sales of Popeyes, Burger King and Tim Hortons declined.
But the restaurant company is seeing sales turn around already.

“As we come into [the second quarter], that momentum has improved meaningfully, so we’re seeing some better absolute results as we get into the second quarter that give us confidence in how we’re going to navigate the rest of the year,” CEO Josh Kobza told CNBC.
Shares of the company were roughly flat in premarket trading.
Here’s what Restaurant Brands reported compared with what Wall Street was expecting, based on a survey of analysts by LSEG:

Earnings per share: 75 cents adjusted vs. 78 cents expected
Revenue: $2.11 billion vs. $2.13 billion expected

Restaurant Brands reported first-quarter net income attributable to shareholders of $159 million, or 49 cents per share, down from $230 million, or 72 cents per share, a year earlier.
Excluding transaction costs related to its acquisition of Burger King China and other items, the company earned 75 cents per share.

Net sales climbed 21% to $2.11 billion, fueled by higher revenue from Popeyes and Firehouse Subs.
Restaurant Brands posted overall same-store sales growth of 0.1%. Excluding last year’s leap day, its same-store sales would have risen about 1%, according to Kobza.
However, the company’s three largest brands saw same-store sales decline during the quarter and missed Wall Street’s expectations. Other fast-food companies have reported a rough start to the year as weather and a more cautious consumer weighed on demand for their burgers and nuggets.
Tim Hortons, which accounts for more than 40% of Restaurant Brands’ total quarterly revenue, reported that its same-store sales fell 0.1%, missing StreetAccount estimates of same-store sales growth of 1.4%. A year earlier, the Canadian coffee chain reported same-store sales growth of 6.9%.
Tim Hortons has “picked up a lot of speed” in the second quarter, Kobza said. On Monday, the chain launched a new breakfast meal in collaboration with actor — and Canadian — Ryan Reynolds.
Burger King’s same-store sales shrank 1.3%, steeper than estimates of a 0.9% decline. The chain’s U.S. business, which has been in turnaround mode for more than two years, saw same-store sales fall 1.1%.
Popeyes saw its same-store sales slide 4%, the biggest drop of the quarter. Wall Street was anticipating same-store sales declines of just 1.8% for the fried chicken chain. Last year, Popeyes aired its first-ever Super Bowl commercial, helping to lift its quarterly same-store sales growth to 5.7%; the chain didn’t return to advertising in the big game this year.
Demand was stronger outside of the U.S. and Canada. Restaurant Brands’ international segment saw same-store sales growth of 2.6%.
The company reiterated its forecast for 2025, anticipating that it will spend between $400 million and $450 million on consolidated capital expenditures, tenant inducements and other incentives. Restaurant Brands also said that it still expects to reach its long-term algorithm, which projects 3% same-store sales growth and 8% organic adjusted operating income growth on average between 2024 and 2028.

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Family offices are dialing back their direct investments amid economic uncertainty and tariff woes.
However, these private investment firms of the ultra-rich are still betting on AI startups, according to private wealth intelligence platform Fintrx.
SandboxAQ CEO Jack Hidary told CNBC why family offices, including those of Ray Dalio and Jim Breyer, are keen on AI.

Jack Hidary, CEO of SandboxAQ
Courtesy of SandboxAQ

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.
Private investment firms of the ultra-rich, rattled by President Donald Trump’s tariffs, continued to scale back deal-making in April.

Last month, single-family offices made 40 direct investments, down 31% month to month, according to data provided exclusively to CNBC by Fintrx, a private wealth intelligence platform. April’s tally also represents a 47% year-over-year decline.
However, artificial intelligence-related startups are still garnering attention from family offices, accounting for half of last month’s direct deals. In early April, quantitative AI firm SandboxAQ finalized its Series E round of $450 million after upsizing the fundraise twice due to investor demand, CEO Jack Hidary told CNBC.
SandboxAQ raised some $300 million last December from investors including a host of billionaires and their family offices, such as venture capitalist Jim Breyer, Salesforce CEO Marc Benioff and Two Sigma co-founder David Siegel. The round was extended this spring, raising an additional $150 million from Bridgewater founder Ray Dalio’s family office and a cohort including Google and Nvidia, an existing partner of SandboxAQ.
The Palo Alto, California-based firm, which spun off from Alphabet in 2022, is chaired by former Google CEO Eric Schmidt and counts his family office, Hillspire, as a backer.
“These are very value-added family offices because they know the world of tech well. They know the world of finance well,” Hidary said. “These are experienced executives and entrepreneurs who lend a hand in advising us and are active in doing so.”

SandboxAQ uses AI and quantum technology to make large-scale predictions and statistical analysis that it markets to a variety of industries, like companies doing drug discovery, cybersecurity, navigation or financial modeling. Its technology analyzes large numerical datasets to make predictive AI models.
Hidary, a serial tech entrepreneur, said professionally managed family offices and large institutions have developed a greater appetite in the past six or seven years for deep-tech startups that cater to businesses.
“They used to see deep tech as something they didn’t touch. It’s not their purview. They didn’t make their money, you know, doing that,” he said. “But now it turns out they understand that actually it’s lower risk to invest in deep moat companies.”
“What they realize, after years of investing in consumer-oriented tech — tech that helps you manage your pet’s food or something like that — it sounds great. It builds up a lot of users quickly, but it’s easily commoditized,” he said.

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Family offices are often quicker to make investment decisions than traditional institutional investors, but some want to have deep technical knowledge before they hand over funds, Hidary said.
For instance, Breyer met with Hidary four or five times to discuss relevant chapters of two books authored by Hidary. As for Dalio, his investment followed years of discussions with Hidary that initially started in Abu Dhabi, United Arab Emirates, about the impact of AI on the economy.
In initial conversations with investors, Hidary says he assesses whether they have the patience for a long horizon.
“You don’t want a family office that’s here to just flip a burger, right? And that would not be a good fit for us,” he said. “We’re looking to build a global company in the top echelon of tech companies. And I think people are attracted to that ambition. They’re attracted to that focus, but it’s not for every family office.” More

Morad Fareed created FC Mother, a community platform pairing expectant and new mothers with a support network.
The organization aims to turn global football clubs into platforms to improve public health, a broader concept.
The organization is kicking off what it’s calling the “World Cup of Healing” — a competition that measures health outcomes of the participating women, grouped by their reported soccer fandom. 

Mother’s Day on Sunday marks the launch of an innovative program to improve maternal health by harnessing the power of soccer fandom.
The World Health Organization says maternal mortality is unacceptably high. More than 700 women died every day in 2023 from preventable causes related to pregnancy and childbirth, according to a WHO fact sheet released last month.

It’s a challenge that doctors, public health authorities and community workers have been trying to tackle.
Former professional soccer player Morad Fareed thinks he can make progress improving maternal health through a love of sports.
Fareed’s created FC Mother, a community platform pairing expectant and new mothers with a support network. The organization aims to turn global football clubs into platforms to improve public health, a broader concept he calls “H-sports,” or healing sports.  
“What we did was unify the world of maternal health and use football as a vehicle to distribute it, to celebrate it, and to gamify it,” said Fareed.
The organization is kicking off what it’s calling the “World Cup of Healing” — a competition that measures health outcomes of the participating women, grouped by their reported soccer fandom. 

Mothers access services and connections via the FC Mother platform and then answer regular survey questions that assess their wellbeing. Improvements fuel team progress.
FC Mother has some notable buy-in from researchers at Harvard Medical School and Harvard’s School of Public Health as well as team doctors from Real Madrid, Manchester United and Arsenal FC. 

FC Mother is tapping into football’s vast social infrastructure, community, and competitive spirit to transform maternal health.

The initial competition launches on Sunday and runs for 60 days through the FIFA Club World Cup Final in July. This trial run pits three football clubs in Brazil and their associated fanbases of mothers against three in the United States: Mothers of San Diego FC, Mothers of Gotham FC, and Mothers of Omaha Union.
FC Mother ranked the 48 World Cup countries by maternal health outcomes based on data from the Institute for Health Metrics and Evaluation at the University of Washington. The institute’s Global Burden of Disease report puts the United States at 44th place, lower than any other developed country in the world among that cohort based on life-years lost due to poor maternal health outcomes. Brazil ranks 46th.
Team USA in the inaugural health outcomes competition is coached by Jennie Joseph the founder of Commonsense Childbirth, who was named as a woman of the year in 2022 by Time magazine for her national work as a midwife focusing on improving maternal mortality.  
Fareed’s goal is to gamify community maternal health via football and prove that it can increase quality-adjusted life-years (QUALYs) for both mothers and children. 
A QUALY is one year of life in perfect health, a metric that’s being used by major public health organizations. It’s measured with a survey that asks respondents to self-report mental and emotional health, pain levels and other health domains.  
While FC Mother leaves the medical treatment of pregnancy to clinicians, Fareed points to research that illustrates perinatal mental health and robust social support can generate as many as 10 additional higher-quality-of-life years for mothers and their offspring. 
“The social determinants of health are the next frontier of maternal health and public health in general,” said Fareed. “It’s not your doctor who you’re going to call. It’s the community around you. It’s the day-to-day interactions you have living your life that drive stress levels, mental wellbeing, emotional wellbeing.”
Just like any other sport, FC Mother’s leaderboard features the stats of the competing teams, but it also offers opportunities for the users to access immediate support from other moms. Those features are available via the FC Mother App or through Meta’s WhatsApp.
But FC Mother isn’t a charity. Fareed intends it to be a for-profit venture. He believes corporations, professional sports, family offices and donor-advised funds will be interested in investing in a platform that delivers health improvements for a fraction of the current costs of medical intervention.
FC Mother hopes the kickoff competition will provide proof-of-concept and convince 40 football clubs to participate in a he maternal health outcomes competition during the World Cup in 2026.  
— CNBC’s Jessica Golden contributed to this report. More