Forbes Daily Briefing

Forbes

The Forbes Daily Briefing shares the best of Forbes reporting on wealth, business, entrepreneurship, leadership and more. Tune in every day, seven days a week, to hear a new story. The Daily Briefing is edited, produced and hosted by Kieran Meadows.

  1. The Payday From These 3 Companies Would Outstrip A Decade Of VC Returns

    11 HR AGO

    The Payday From These 3 Companies Would Outstrip A Decade Of VC Returns

    When ride-hailing app Uber listed on the New York Stock Exchange in May 2019, it reset the scales for all venture capitalists. In one of the all-time largest initial public offerings in the United States, the company raised $8.1 billion on a $82 billion valuation.  Early backers like venture fund Benchmark, Google Ventures and Lowercase Capital held stakes worth over $12 billion at the time of the float. But the numbers for that deal — one of the best of the last era of startups — now look quaint.  That’s because the valuation of just three startups, SpaceX, OpenAI and Anthropic, have exploded over the last year. Elon’s space giant is now tipped to go public at a valuation of over $1.5 trillion as soon as June following its merger with xAI in February, which valued the combined business at $1.25 trillion. OpenAI and Anthropic are now valued at $852 billion and $380 billion respectively, with Anthropic reportedly in talks to at least match its archrival’s valuation in a new fundraise. Learn more about your ad choices. Visit megaphone.fm/adchoices

    7 min
  2. This $1.3 Billion Startup Records Employees’ Work To Train AI

    1 DAY AGO

    This $1.3 Billion Startup Records Employees’ Work To Train AI

    Every company these days wants to figure out how to automate people’s work with AI. Turns out, AI can also help with that. Founded in 2019, San Francisco- based startup Scribe makes a browser extension that sits on employees’ laptops, recording their screens and silently watching them work. Along with giving businesses insight into the steps involved in repetitive tasks, Scribe’s AI software can then automatically generate step-by-step guides and tutorials that clearly explain how different teams operate, complete with annotated screenshots and click instructions.  That’s also perfect for teaching AI agents how people work: what to do, which tools to use and how to handle different tasks on their own. “Companies are realizing we need to make our organizations legible to humans and agents,” says CEO and cofounder Jennifer Smith.  Today 80,000 customers including LinkedIn, HubSpot and T-Mobile use Scribe’s guides to train new employees on complex workflows and zero-in on inefficiencies, helping them save time and money. (Teaching agents, rather than humans, is still nascent.) By Rashi Shrivastava, Writer Learn more about your ad choices. Visit megaphone.fm/adchoices

    7 min
  3. This Serial Entrepreneur Wants The FDA To Approve His AI Doctor

    2 DAYS AGO

    This Serial Entrepreneur Wants The FDA To Approve His AI Doctor

    Martin Varsavsky has trouble keeping track of all the ventures he’s started. There are more than a dozen of them, including a handful that became worth more than $1 billion. But Certuma, which launched quietly this winter, may be his biggest idea yet: He plans to build the first FDA-approved AI doctor. “What’s happening now is everyone you know, and probably you yourself, are checking your medical problems with AI. But then what happens when you want action? The AI, after giving you a wonderful, accurate diagnosis of what’s wrong with you, says, ‘I am not a doctor,’” Varsavsky tells Forbes. He ticks off all the questions it might answer this way, from getting a prescription to scheduling imaging. “I want to fix the ‘I am not a doctor’ problem by building AI that is recognized by the FDA and recognized by the states.” AI doctors could help solve an important problem, much like telemedicine did during the Covid-19 pandemic. There simply aren’t enough physicians to serve all the people who need them, especially in rural areas. The shortage is only getting worse. More than 100 million people in the United States face barriers to accessing primary care.Meanwhile, some 46% of counties don’t have a cardiologist; in rural counties, that number rises to 86%. By Amy Feldman, Senior Editor Learn more about your ad choices. Visit megaphone.fm/adchoices

    7 min
  4. Sometimes You Don’t Want A GPU: Groq Cofounder Explains Whirlwind Deal With Nvidia

    3 DAYS AGO

    Sometimes You Don’t Want A GPU: Groq Cofounder Explains Whirlwind Deal With Nvidia

    Last winter, Groq cofounder and CEO Jonathan Ross walked into a meeting with Nvidia CEO Jensen Huang with a pitch for the companies’ tech to work together. He now describes the synergy with a logistics analogy: stop building AI data centers as if every workload wants the same hardware. Training is bulk hauling; inference is last-mile delivery. GPUs can do both, but using the 18-wheeler even when you just need a van can be a lot slower. So: Nvidia’s general-purpose GPUs are the big trucks. Groq’s specialized chips—LPUs, or language processing units, designed to run models fast—are the smaller vans. “If you were building out a logistics network for the entire United States, and I told you your two options were all 18-wheelers or just delivery vans, which one would you pick?” Ross said. “The best answer is both.”  Ross wasn’t just pitching a worldview. He wanted Nvidia’s permission to buy around 100,000 Blackwell chips, likely worth billions. Huang grilled him on the technical details, and then the meeting ended.  When Huang called back three days later, Ross expected a discussion about his GPU purchase order. Instead, the Nvidia CEO cut to the chase. “We should probably move really fast,” Ross recalled him saying. Learn more about your ad choices. Visit megaphone.fm/adchoices

    7 min
  5. Why An Unsustainable Bubble Is Growing Inside Fintech

    4 DAYS AGO

    Why An Unsustainable Bubble Is Growing Inside Fintech

    The financial technology industry has become a world of haves and have-nots. Take San Francisco payments company Stripe, which helps millions of merchants accept credit cards, process stablecoin transactions and manage billing tasks. In 2025, it brought in $6.9 billion of net revenue and $1.2 billion of earnings before factoring in interest, tax, depreciation and amortization expenses, according to a person familiar with its finances. Revenues were up more than 30% from 2024. That’s world-class scale and growth, but its recent valuation of $159 billion, which has afforded each of the Collison brothers a $17.5 billion fortune, means its private backers think it’s worth nearly five times Adyen, a Dutch fintech and close competitor. Unlike Stripe, Adyen is publicly traded. It processed $1.6 trillion in payments last year compared with Stripe’s $1.9 trillion. Stripe loyalists will point out that it has more business lines than Adyen and is growing faster off of a larger base. But the chances that Stripe could maintain a $159 billion valuation if it went public today are slim. Public investors value e-commerce platform Shopify at $165 billion, and it grew nearly as fast as Stripe last year and had more than double the profits. A Stripe spokesperson declined to comment. Learn more about your ad choices. Visit megaphone.fm/adchoices

    6 min
  6. Three Dudes Run The Biggest AI Romantic Fantasy Site For Women

    5 DAYS AGO

    Three Dudes Run The Biggest AI Romantic Fantasy Site For Women

    After moving to a new city in North Carolina in 2024, Cookie (a pseudonym) felt the weight of a new city. Their husband was traveling a lot for work, and as a stay-at-home parent with a now 4-year-old daughter, the days were “very draining”. Since Cookie didn’t know anybody in their new town, they turned to Janitor AI, a social chatbot site known for its unbounded, often explicit, fantasy roleplay. It was a “nice release,” Cookie told Forbes. Cookie grew up around fantasy and romance novels—their mother kept a collection—and Janitor AI became an easy way to escape the drudgery of the day-to-day. By the time their daughter is down for a nap or tucked in for the night, Cookie is creating "slow burn" romance characters with detailed and often explicit prompts. There’s Charlie, a nudist werewolf roommate; Marcus, a seven-foot ghoul with a taste for dive bars; Greenwood, Colorado, a fictional town where humans live alongside supernatural “demihumans.” Beneath Greenwood’s romance and monster lore is a civic rot: a glossy new church masking an organ-harvesting operation, with seedy bars serving as bait. Cookie is one of Janitor AI’s 2.5 million daily, die-hard users. The platform claims more than 15 million total users and with 100 million monthly visitors, and it's the tenth most popular consumer AI app, according to Similarweb, a digital market intelligence company. By Anna Tong, Forbes Staff Learn more about your ad choices. Visit megaphone.fm/adchoices

    7 min
  7. The WNBA’s Most Valuable Teams 2026

    6 DAYS AGO

    The WNBA’s Most Valuable Teams 2026

    The WNBA tips off its 30th season on Friday, but across those three decades, it has never experienced anything like the Golden State Valkyries, on the court or off it. Last year, the Valkyries became the first expansion franchise in league history to reach the playoffs in its inaugural season and sold out all 22 of their home games to set a league record with average attendance of 18,064. By the end of the regular season, Golden State had generated $78 million in revenue, not only breaking another WNBA record but also surpassing more than half of the clubsin a more mature men’s league, MLS. As the team enters its second season, the Valkyries have raised prices yet managed to expand their season-ticket base by 2,000 seats, to 12,000, proving that there is still room to run—and helping them race to the top of the WNBA’s most valuable teams, worth an estimated $780 million. The Valkyries are not the only ones on a financial fast break, however. The 2025 WNBA season also saw the three next-best revenue totals in league history—the Indiana Fever’s $58 million, the New York Liberty’s $43 million and the Las Vegas Aces’ $34 million, according to Forbes estimates—and no team is now worth less than $250 million. By Brett Knight, Assistant Managing Editor Learn more about your ad choices. Visit megaphone.fm/adchoices

    7 min
  8. Inside The Pawn Shop For The Ultra-Rich

    10 MAY

    Inside The Pawn Shop For The Ultra-Rich

    Inside a climate-controlled room at lender Luxury Asset Capital’s Manhattan office, rows of Hermès handbags line the shelves: Mini Kellys in exotic skins worth roughly $75,000 each, diamond-encrusted Birkin bags and other limited-edition pieces that are worth six figures. Nearby, a first edition of The Catcher in the Rye (which can sell for as much as $50,000) sits alongside contemporary artwork, including a Yoshitomo Nara drawing, worth more than $200,000. Down the hall, safes hold scores of Rolex watches, diamonds and gold jewelry, all meticulously tagged and sealed.  And none of it is for sale. The items are all collateral—pledged by ultra-wealthy borrowers seeking quick cash. Denver-based Luxury Asset Capital runs its operation with the basic mechanics of a neighborhood pawn shop and the discretion of a Swiss bank. Borrowers pledge their watches, jewelry, handbags and fine art in exchange for short-term, nonrecourse loans—often funded within a day.  One borrower who manages a large hedge fund hocked his wife’s eight-carat diamond ring—worth upwards of $600,000—after receiving a large margin call (the loan was eventually repaid and the ring was returned. Another client once brought in an Emmy award as collateral. By Sergei Klebnikov, Forbes Staff Learn more about your ad choices. Visit megaphone.fm/adchoices

    7 min
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About

The Forbes Daily Briefing shares the best of Forbes reporting on wealth, business, entrepreneurship, leadership and more. Tune in every day, seven days a week, to hear a new story. The Daily Briefing is edited, produced and hosted by Kieran Meadows.

Information

  • Channel
    Forbes
  • Creator
    Forbes
  • Years Active
    2024 - 2026
  • Episodes
    13
  • Rating
    Clean
  • Copyright
    © Forbes Media LLC

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