Financial Mindset

SpaceX is considering a dual-class share structure in its planned IPO this year, according to people familiar with the matter, mirroring a strategy its billionaire founder Elon Musk floated for Tesla Inc. A two-tier structure would give select shareholders stock with extra voting power that would allow them to dominate decision making. The move would allow insiders such as Musk to maintain control of the company even with a minority stake. The US rocket and satellite maker is also in the process of adding members to its board of directors, the people said, to help steer the initial public offering and drive Musk’s space ambitions beyond its core rocket and satellite business. SpaceX is seeking to hold an IPO later this year, in a deal that could raise as much as $50 billion to fund AI data centers in space and a factory on the moon. SpaceX recently  acquired  Musk’s xAI, moving the company beyond its core businesses into artificial intelligence. Read More:  Musk’s B...

On August 20, 2011, legendary venture capitalist Marc Andreessen published a blog post —and an accompanying essay in The Wall Street Journal —that would become the sacred texts of the Silicon Valley bull run. Titled “Why Software Is Eating The World,” he argued that the global economy was undergoing a “dramatic and broad technological and economic shift” and that software companies were poised to take over large swathes of the industry. Fifteen years later, in February 2026, Andreessen’s prophecy has been fulfilled in a manner that even the biggest bulls failed to predict. Software did indeed eat retail (Amazon), video (Netflix), music (Spotify), and telecommunications (Skype) just as Andreessen predicted, but the market got a $1 trillion shock in February because something was eating software itself. That something, of course, was artificial intelligence. Morgan Stanley’s software analysts, led by Keith Weiss, offered a “gut check” this week in a major research note, arguing that “A...

The Sam Altman-chaired Helion Energy fusion power developer announced a new milestone Feb. 13 achieving record plasma temperatures at 150 million degrees Celsius—10 times the core of the sun—as part of its immensely ambitious goal to bring power to the grid in Washington state in 2028. Startup developers of fusion energy—the so-called power of the stars in a jar —are racing to prove their technologies and bring clean, limitless electricity to the grid to meet the power needs of the AI boom. While Helion has the most aggressive timeline for first commercial power—under contract for Microsoft data centers—skeptics have questioned Helion’s start date, its unique technological approach versus competitors, and its relative lack of scientific updates until now. “While interstitial milestones are really important to show that the technology works and you can get regulatory approval, at the end of the day, it’s about deploying power plants at scale to support the growing power needs,” Helio...

By bringing cofounder  Aneel Bhusri back to the CEO job, Workday has turned to a classic Silicon Valley tradition to deal with the AI threat squeezing software company stocks: the return of the founder. Bhusri’s return to the top job at the human resources software company reflects the belief that only a founder with billions on the line and a personal legacy at stake has the unique vision and authority to steer the ship through difficult waters. And with majority voting control plus operational authority as CEO, Bhusri will have more power to make any difficult changes he sees necessary. A close look at Bhusri’s compensation package however suggests that it’s also an acknowledgement of just how bleak the investor prognosis is for software-as-a-service (SaaS) companies.  To lure Bhusri back to the CEO job he left two years ago, Workday is giving him a $138.8 million pay package comprised of cash and performance-based and restricted stock. More than half ...

TrumpRx, the president’s direct-to-patient (DTP) purchasing platform for pharmaceutical drugs, was launched late last week to a controversial reception. The New Republic called it a “ Big Fat Scam ,” but it is now up to the public to decide, with it making its first appearance as a supposed market restructurer.  For decades, the American government has played a powerful but disciplined role in healthcare markets. At first, it was a passive purchaser, then a coverage expander, and only recently has it become a price negotiator, albeit in a limited capacity. However, TrumpRx, which seeks for pharmaceutical companies to grant the U.S. “most favored nation” status, is a departure from these models and signals a continued shift toward government market interventionism. TrumpRx also emerges in a political environment where government intervention in drug pricing is no longer considered unacceptable. While the passage of the Inflation Reduction Act (IRA) marked a small first step towar...

Robinhood announced on Tuesday evening that a developers’ version of its custom built blockchain, known as Robinhood Chain, is now live. The move, announced at the Consensus event in Hong Kong, comes as the company accelerates its push into crypto-based financial services, including tokenized versions of popular stocks. Robinhood Chain, which the company teased last June , is currently in the so-called testnet phase. That means it is publicly visible but restricted to a limited number of partners and participants who can test its infrastructure, and introduce experimental features. In coming months, the “mainnet” version of Robinhood Chain will go live and be used to process customer transactions. “We now have Alchemy, LayerZero, Chainlink, and other big crypto players. But moving forward, when the mainnet is live, customers will be able to interact directly with it,” Robinhood’s SVP of Crypto, Johann Kerbrat, told Fortune . Kerbrat added that Robinhood Chain will support transactio...

Victoria’s Secret is betting that the generation raised on body positivity—not “heroin chic”—is ready to reclaim its famously glittering runway. Younger shoppers seem unabashed in their love of the spectacle and sparkle, the glamour of the lingerie, notes CEO Hillary Super . Formerly CEO of Anthropologie and competitor Savage X Fenty, she joined the company in the fall of 2024 after several ill-fated attempts to change the narrative surrounding the once hot brand. And though Victoria’s Secret had previously ditched its runway show, Super has re-energized it. The Gen Z customer watching the new version of the show today didn’t grow up with the body image trauma of the 2000s like millennials did. She was raised by a Gen X mom who tried not to pass on her own body issues, who wanted her daughter to be “strong and unbothered by all that noise,” Super notes. Gen Z can appreciate the fun of the Victoria’s Secret Angels without necessarily seeing them as aspirational—or triggering. That sh...