Financial Mindset

Sergey Brin gave away more than $1.1 billion worth of Alphabet Inc. stock this week, with most of the money going to a nonprofit the Google co-founder created. The donation was disclosed Friday  in a regulatory filing , which didn’t specify who had received the more than 3.5 million shares. According to a spokesperson for Brin’s family office, roughly $1 billion in stock is going to Catalyst4, which the billionaire started in 2021 with the dual purpose of supporting research into central nervous system diseases and climate-change solutions. Brin is also giving about $90 million to his family foundation, the spokesperson said, as well as $45 million to the Michael J. Fox Foundation, which supports research into Parkinson’s disease. In May, Brin had previously doled out Alphabet shares  worth $700 million  to the same three charities. Brin, 52, is the world’s fourth richest person, with a $255.5 billion fortune, according to the Bloomberg Billionaires Index. His net wo...

The mere hope of maybe becoming a homeowner someday is such a potent motivator that it affects how people work, consume and invest, but many Americans are writing off that dream, researchers said. According to a paper published earlier this month from Northwestern University’s Seung Hyeong Lee and the University of Chicago’s Younggeun Yoo, younger generations are not just delaying homeownership—they are increasingly giving up on it. That’s as the housing affordability crisis has put ownership out of reach for millions. The median house price was 5.81 times the median household income in 2022, up from a ratio of 4.52 in 2010 and 3.57 in 1984. And that doesn’t include related costs that have grown like insurance. Once homeownership looks impossible, behavior shifts away from working towards saving enough for a down payment, Lee and Yoo warn. On the flip side, renters who hold on to dreams of owning a home tend to be more careful with their money and keep hustling at work, putting the...

High up on the slopes of the west Maui mountains, the Plantation Course at Kapalua Resort provides golfers with expansive ocean views. The course is so renowned that  The Sentry , a $20 million signature event for the PGA Tour, had been held there nearly every year for more than a quarter-century. “You have to see it to believe it,” said Ann Miller, a former longtime Honolulu newspaper golf writer. “You’re looking at other islands, you’re looking at whales. … Every view is beautiful.” Its world-class status also depends on keeping the course green. But with water woes in west Maui — facing drought and still reeling from a  deadly 2023 wildfire  that ravaged the  historic town of Lahaina  — keeping the course green enough for The Sentry became difficult. Ultimately, as the Plantation’s fairways and greens grew brown, the PGA Tour canceled the season opener, a blow that cost what officials estimate to be $50 million economic impact on the area. A two-month cl...

If you could design your ideal baby, what would you choose? A lover of naps who sleeps through the night? A mind for math and an affinity for the viola? For the founders of fertility tech startup Herasight, this is not a hypothetical.  Herasight founder Michael Christensen is 6-foot-6, and even in a world where taller men are perceived as stronger and more competent, it’s a bit much. He wants his future children to be shorter and more comfortable on commercial planes.  “It’s annoying to be super tall,” he said. “Nothing is made for you.”  Chief science officer Tobias Wolfram has already banked frozen embryos with his partner in preparation for their future family. His great-grandparents lived past 100 with no cancer or serious health problems, suggesting a family tendency toward healthy aging. But there’s depression on his side of the family.  “I’d really like to make sure that’s not passed down,” he said. Wolfram has waited five years for Herasight’s technology...

When examining the flow of wealth in the coming decades, privately wealthy individuals rest in a very healthy position. Their assets have increased in value, their portfolios have performed well, and many are looking to the generations above them for a significant windfall of cash set to come from inheritance. Governments, with their eye-watering debt burdens and expensive borrowing costs, are eyeing that wealth—and they want in. Policymakers have leveraged private wealth in the past to pay their way, UBS chief economist Paul Donovan recently told media at a roundtable discussing the economic outlook for 2026—but the question is whether they will use a carrot or a stick to drum up revenue from individuals. As such, some may prove more popular than others. Donovan said last week: “Governments have long mobilized private wealth to support public finances. There are several approaches. One is to influence market behavior—encouraging individuals to buy government bonds through incentive...

China’s powerful economic-planning agency warned of the risks of a bubble forming in the country’s humanoid robotics industry, issuing a rare official expression of concern about a pivotal sphere of technology. The National Development and Reform Commission, which sets economic strategy and shifts in policy, called attention Thursday to the proliferation of remarkably similar robots from more than 150 companies in the same field. The country must prevent that flood from overwhelming the market and squeezing out real research and development initiatives, agency spokeswoman Li Chao told reporters in Beijing on Thursday. The call for vigilance reflects Beijing’s unease over excess investment rolling into a sector it bills as one of the biggest catalysts for the economy. That recalls past over-spending in sectors from bike-sharing to semiconductors, many of which ended in shakeups that eradicated smaller players. Shares in industry leader UBTech Robotics Corp., which could benefit from c...

A fire that  broke out  at a Hong Kong apartment building and soon engulfed seven towers has killed at least 94 people, with hundreds still missing. Although  rescue operations are still underway  and total casualties are yet to be tallied, it’s already one of the city’s worst ever residential fire disasters.  The blaze began at around 3 p.m. on Nov. 26 at the Wang Fuk Court complex in Hong Kong’s suburban Tai Po district. By around 2 a.m., it had largely been brought under control, although fires were still seen burning in some units several hours later. A “red” warning—signaling extreme fire risk due to weather—had been in place for Hong Kong since Monday, although authorities said the fire spread far more intensely and faster than would normally be expected. Attention has  turned to the materials  used in renovation work at the towers, including plastic sheeting and the traditional bamboo scaffolding that’s commonly used for Hong Kong construction...

Gravis Robotics, a Zurich-based startup that is turning heavyweight construction machines into autonomous robots, has raised $23 million to expand its operations in the U.K., U.S., and EU. The funding was led by IQ Capital and Zacua Ventures, with participation from Pear VC, Imad, Sunna Ventures, Armada Investment, and Holcim . Gravis plans to use the funds to build more machines and expand partnerships with construction firms. Founded in 2022, Gravis is trying to solve one of the construction industry’s key problems—a looming talent shortage. A large proportion of skilled machine operators are nearing retirement, and not enough younger workers are entering the field to replace them, co-founder and CEO Ryan Luke Johns told Fortune. “There’s a massive peak in demand for renewable, resilient infrastructure, which means we need more operators—and there just isn’t enough,” he said. “It’s not a sexy job. It’s not a job that any young person really wants to go into.” Across the U.K., Euro...

TORONTO (AP) —  Canadian Prime Minister Mark Carney  and the premier of Canada’s oil rich province of Alberta agreed Thursday to work toward building a pipeline to the Pacific Coast to diversify the country’s oil exports beyond the United States. The memorandum of understanding includes an adjustment of an oil tanker ban off parts of the British Columbia coast if a pipeline comes to fruition. Carney has set a goal for Canada to double its  non-U.S. exports  in the next decade, saying American tariffs are causing a chill in investment. Alberta Premier Danielle Smith said the agreement will lead to more than 1 million barrels per day for mainly Asian markets so “our province and our country are no longer dependent on just one customer to buy our most valuable resource.” Carney reiterated that as the U.S. transforms all of its trading relationships, many of Canada’s strengths – based on those close ties to America – have become its vulnerabilities. “Over 95% of all...

Looking for the perfect holiday gift? AI wants to help you. In the past few weeks, OpenAI, Perplexity, Google , Amazon , and Walmart have launched a flurry of AI-powered shopping features, hoping this year’s holiday rush will flow—at least in part—through their new tools.  Between 15% and 30% of online shoppers are expected use generative AI to shop for holiday gifts this year, according to a new survey from Bain.  But Fortune ’s testing of some of the platforms suggest that Santa doesn’t need to look for another job quite yet. While the offerings show flashes of magic, they may need a little more time before shoppers can rely on them for the real heavy lifting.  OpenAI’s Shopping Research is sleek, if not seamless Last week, in a penthouse venue overlooking lower Manhattan, more than a dozen journalists clustered around rows of monitors as OpenAI unveiled its latest offering, called Shopping Research. Powered by a new ChatGPT-5 mini model and available across Cha...

For the past several years, 75-year-old Miguel Laboy has smoked a joint with his coffee every morning. He tells himself he won’t start tomorrow the same way, but he usually does. “You know what bothers me? To have cannabis on my mind the first thing in the morning,” he said, sparking a blunt in his Brookline, Massachusetts, apartment. “I’d like to get up one day and not smoke. But you see how that’s going.” Since legalization and commercialization,  daily cannabis use  has become a defining — and often invisible — part of many people’s lives. High-potency vapes and concentrates now dominate the market, and doctors say they can blur the line between relief and dependence over time so that users don’t notice the shift. Across the country, people who turned to cannabis for help are finding it harder to put down. Overall, alcohol remains more widely used than cannabis. But starting in 2022, the number of daily cannabis users in the U.S. surpassed that of daily drinkers — a majo...

For the past several years, 75-year-old Miguel Laboy has smoked a joint with his coffee every morning. He tells himself he won’t start tomorrow the same way, but he usually does. “You know what bothers me? To have cannabis on my mind the first thing in the morning,” he said, sparking a blunt in his Brookline, Massachusetts, apartment. “I’d like to get up one day and not smoke. But you see how that’s going.” Since legalization and commercialization,  daily cannabis use  has become a defining — and often invisible — part of many people’s lives. High-potency vapes and concentrates now dominate the market, and doctors say they can blur the line between relief and dependence over time so that users don’t notice the shift. Across the country, people who turned to cannabis for help are finding it harder to put down. Overall, alcohol remains more widely used than cannabis. But starting in 2022, the number of daily cannabis users in the U.S. surpassed that of daily drinkers — a majo...

The Department of Government Efficiency plowed through federal spending and payrolls earlier this year, but it has since disappeared, with top officials now working in other federal offices, according to Reuters . DOGE, which was once led by Elon Musk, had previously made controversial cuts, such as its high-profile effort to slash foreign aid. By contrast, its end slipped under the radar and came with eight months still left on its charter, the report said. “That doesn’t exist,” Office of Personnel Management director Scott Kupor told Reuters when asked about DOGE’s status, adding that it’s no longer a “centralized entity.” OPM has assumed many of DOGE’s functions, according to Kupor and  documents   reviewed  by Reuters. “The truth is: DOGE may not have centralized leadership under @USDS . But, the principles of DOGE remain alive and well: de-regulation; eliminating fraud, waste and abuse; re-shaping the federal workforce; making efficiency a first-class citizen; et...

AI is expensive. Processors are expensive, data centers are expensive, power and water are expensive, data acquisition is expensive. Giants like the U.S. and China can bear these costs. But can other smaller regions—like Southeast Asia, home to the largest group of unconnected people in the world outside of Sub-Saharan Africa—keep up? Yet experts at the Fortune Innovation Forum in Kuala Lumpur, Malaysia, last week were hopeful that smaller countries could invest in AI that works for them, even as they pointed out many of the constraints that still held back investment.  “There’s an opportunity to really leverage what has come to be known as ‘small AI,’ which is much more targeted, potentially suitable for offline use, and doesn’t necessarily compete with some of the large innovations we’re seeing [come] out of larger countries,” Mahesh Uttamchandani, regional practice director for digital for East Asia, South Asia and the Pacific at the World Bank, said. Jon Omund Revhaug, Asia ...