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Secretive Wall Street trading firm wrongfooted by July AI rout

Jane Street posted a roughly $15bn loss in July after turmoil at AI-focused hedge fund Situational Awareness wrongfooted the US trading firm.

The New York-based firm disclosed the figure to lenders as part of a deal to shift its roughly $11bn public debt pile to private investors including Pimco, according to people familiar with the matter.

Jane Street and Pimco declined to comment.

The loss represents a rare setback for a secretive trading shop that has in recent years become a dominant player in global markets. Jane Street has generated more than $40bn in net trading revenues in the year to Friday, even accounting for the July loss, which exceeds its entire haul for 2025, according to one of the people familiar with the matter.

The drawdown in July came during a tumultuous month for US AI stocks, which fell sharply in a powerful reversal of a rally that carried them sharply higher throughout most of 2026.

The sell-off also hit several AI-focused hedge funds including Leopold Aschenbrenner’s Situational Awareness, which counted Jane Street among its investors.

Jane Street’s investment in Situational Awareness was unusual because the firm trades its own capital. In a sign of the ties between the groups, a former Jane Street employee worked at Situational Awareness and Jane Street co-founder and partner Robert Granieri attended Aschenbrenner’s wedding in California in recent weeks, one person said.

Aschenbrenner’s concentrated and highly leveraged bets on AI stocks moved against him during the July ructions, leading to a fire sale of his public equity book to Ken Griffin’s hedge fund, Citadel.

Jane Street’s quarterly results leading up to the loss had been breaking records. In the first quarter of the year, it notched a record $16.1bn in net trading revenues, far outstripping comparable hauls among Wall Street banks. In 2025, it reported record revenues of roughly $40bn.

The loss, stemming largely from July’s volatility, would count towards the firm’s financials for the third quarter, which is still ongoing.

But the $14.6bn private debt deal led by JPMorgan, which included rolling over its existing public debt and taking on additional borrowings, meant Jane Street had to disclose the significant monthly loss to its new lenders including Pimco, people said.

Jane Street’s move from the public debt market to a small private group of lenders will limit the number of parties to whom it will make regular financial disclosures.

Jane Street was established in 2000 by a small group of founders including Granieri, who previously worked at Pennsylvania-based Susquehanna. It uses technology to make markets across assets such as equities, bonds, exchange traded funds and more.

In recent years, it has expanded into longer-term strategies as well as investments in private companies, including AI lab Anthropic and data centre operator CoreWeave.

The fintech startup and private-equity firm offered to buy the struggling payments company in July

PayPal PYPL 1.77%increase; up pointing triangle Holdings is in talks to sell itself to a group that includes Stripe and the private-equity firm Advent International, according to people familiar with the matter.

Stripe and Advent in July proposed paying $60.50 a share for PayPal, a price PayPal viewed as insufficient, some of the people said. The two sides have since been negotiating a potentially higher price, the people said.

It is possible a deal could come together in the coming weeks, though there are no guarantees the parties will reach an agreement.

Before the July proposal, which valued the company at around $53 billion, PayPal shares had been trading at historic lows, giving the company a market value of around $40 billion. The company reached its Covid-era peak of more than $300 a share in 2021, giving the company a market value of more than $280 billion.

PayPal shares rose 1.8% Friday after The Wall Street Journal reported on the deal talks, giving it a market value of close to $53 billion.

PayPal’s Chief Executive Enrique Lores is in the early stages of an ambitious turnaround plan, which has already involved steep cost cuts. When the company reported earnings late last month, Lores said it was focused on its turnaround strategy but would evaluate all opportunities to maximize shareholder value.

Lores, the former CEO of HP, assumed PayPal’s top job in March after it issued a profit warning, succeeding former CEO Alex Chriss. The company had blamed the poor outlook on sputtering growth from its key branded-checkout product, which lets customers use PayPal when making online purchases, and poor internal execution.

Lores quickly reshuffled PayPal’s operations into three distinct business lines and said the company will accelerate its adoption of artificial intelligence.

PayPal in its earnings report pointed to growth in peer-to-peer payments platform Venmo and payments processor Braintree, as well as its debit card and buy now, pay later businesses.

Some analysts initially expressed skepticism that PayPal would strike a deal with Stripe, with one at William Blair calling the $60.50 bid a “lowball offer” and questioning its industrial logic.

Stripe, a closely held payments processor, counts venture-capital firm Sequoia Capital among its investors. Stripe was founded by brothers Patrick and John Collison and its valuation hit $159 billion earlier this year.

Advent, a Boston-based firm with more than $90 billion under management, focuses on investments in five main sectors: business and financial services, healthcare, consumer, industrials and technology.

Meet luxury firms’ new branding tool: the intellectual influencer

Gen Z are growing older, wiser and more cynical about common or garden influencers, a breed turned formulaic after a decade-plus run on social media

Simone de Beauvoir was many things: existentialist philosopher, writer and feminist among them. Four decades after her death, the French intellectual can add another: brand influencer.

De Beauvoir’s writing is among the topics discussed at Miu Miu’s literary club in Shanghai late last year. The brand, part of Italy’s Prada, holds similar salons in Milan. The aim: to cultivate a cultural depth that goes beyond frocks and fripperies.

Prada is not the only luxury brand deploying intellect to stimulate sales. J Crew tapped New Yorker writer and author Patrick Radden Keefe; Dior has gone for Nigerian author Chimamanda Ngozi Adichie. Other brands take a more literal approach to burnish their bookish credentials. Valentino sponsored the 2024 international Booker Prize Ceremony while Coach went so far as to partner with publisher Penguin Random House to produce miniature books bag charms.

While not new — The Future Laboratory predicted the era of the expert influencer three years ago, and well before that American writer Joan Didion was sporting Céline sunglasses — several trends are accelerating the desire for intellectual authority.

Among them, the fact that Gen Z are growing older, wiser and more cynical about common or garden influencers, a breed turned formulaic after a decade-plus run on social media. The new kid on the block, AI, similarly lacks authority and is even more homogenous. Gen Z, like their parents, want more than entertainment from social media; TikTok and Instagram also serve as search engine and fact finder.

The rise of the intellectual influencer points to the rebounding value of expertise, and highlights wider opportunities to monetise it. Think, for instance, of the popularity of events like Pints of Knowledge pub talks, where expert speakers attract large crowds. Or BookTok and Bookstagram, thriving corners of platforms TikTok and Instagram respectively, which have boosted sales of once-niche genres in the publishing industry. The more serious Substack has hatched a few mini stars itself, mainly in health and wellness. One influencer, one-time monk Jay Shetty, billed as “making wisdom go viral”, has even co-founded his own talent and brand agency. The newsletter platform hit 5mn paid subscriptions in 2025.

Intellectual influencers still command a tiny slice of the market compared with their more traditional counterparts: internet librarian Jack Edwards, for instance, has 1.3mn followers, compared with Kim Kardashian’s 344mn. Still, at a time when artificial intelligence is grabbing the headlines, it is reassuring to see the human version is still in play too.

OpenAI upheaval mounts as Sam Altman readies IPO push

Executive exits and safety team changes unsettle staff as the ChatGPT maker prepares for a blockbuster listing

OpenAI is facing mounting internal upheaval after nearly half a dozen reorganisations this year, as chief executive Sam Altman races to prepare the ChatGPT maker for a potential blockbuster IPO.

Repeated executive reshuffles and a series of senior departures have left some staff frustrated with constant changes at one of the world’s most valuable private companies, according to multiple people familiar with the moves.

This week, chief revenue officer Denise Dresser, who was appointed in December to oversee efforts to win corporate customers, announced her departure.

She follows former chief financial officer and chief operating officer Brad Lightcap and ethics chief Chloé Bakalar, who left after less than a year, the FT revealed on Monday.

OpenAI said it was moving at an exceptional pace and unafraid to make organisational changes.

Fidji Simo, who ran its applications business and was considered Altman’s number two, left her full-time role last month after a period of medical leave to become an adviser. But she has remained active behind the scenes, communicating with staff on a nearly daily basis, two people close to OpenAI said.

“She is still puppeteering in the background,” said one person familiar with the dynamic, who described senior executives as vying for Altman’s attention amid considerable internal “politics”. The company said she was conducting her advisory role as intended.

At the end of last month, OpenAI also disbanded its “preparedness” team, which assessed whether its models could pose severe or catastrophic risks and worked on ways to mitigate them, according to multiple people familiar with the move. Senior staff have instead been assigned responsibility for different areas of preparedness, such as bio and cyber, within existing teams.

OpenAI has presented these recent exits as part of a streamlining process ahead of an IPO, following Altman's directive to staff to cut back on “side quests” and focus on ChatGPT and on competing with Anthropic for business clients.

Since OpenAI’s leadership crisis in late 2023, which saw Altman ousted for less than a week, he has built a new executive team around him to professionalise the company’s operations. Co-founder Greg Brockman, seen as Altman’s most trusted lieutenant, is wielding increasing power as he steps into a vacuum left by recent departures.

Some staff see the management reshuffles as evidence of dysfunction during the crucial run-up to an expected IPO that could value it at as much as $1tn. OpenAI’s IPO had originally been expected this year but is now likely to be next year, according to people familiar with the company’s plans. 

OpenAI has been overtaken by rival Anthropic this year. The ChatGPT maker’s annualised revenue grew from $24bn at the end of last year to about $40bn this month, according to people familiar with the matter.

But it has been leapfrogged by Anthropic, which jumped fivefold from $9bn at the end of 2025 to $47bn in May and has continued on a similar trajectory since.

Both start-ups estimate full-year revenue figures based on recent performance, though the companies account for revenues from partners differently, making direct comparison hard.

Much of OpenAI’s growth has come since the release of OpenAI’s new GPT-5.6 model five weeks ago, according to a person with knowledge of the matter.

Recent departures have also drawn internal attention to a pattern in which senior figures have been moved into new or loosely defined positions before leaving the company.

Lightcap was shifted in April to a role focused on “special projects”, while other senior figures including Kevin Weil and Josh Achiam have also moved into new positions before departing.

The preparedness unit was one of the remaining elements of OpenAI’s former research-led structure, following the dissolution of teams focused on “AGI readiness” and “mission alignment”.

Jan Leike, who co-led the now-defunct “superalignment” team, resigned in 2024 citing his view that safety was taking a “back seat to shiny products”.

The head of the preparedness team, Dylan Scandinaro, has moved to explore the safety implications of “recursive self-improving” AI — systems capable of improving their own capabilities and training other models, according to two people familiar with the changes. His job title change was first reported by Wired.

Brockman said OpenAI’s technical advances required “more robust” safeguards and that the company had made changes to “more deeply integrate research, safety and security” into model development.

Tensions around OpenAI’s approach to AI safety have intensified in recent weeks after it emerged that one of its models hacked into another company during internal testing of their cyber capabilities.

The departures of Bakalar, Achiam and Johannes Heidecke, who all worked on safety, have added to internal unease.

“It is kind of scary; there is an urgency now to get this right,” one person close to OpenAI said. Another said there was a “burbling sense of responsibility and dread that they aren’t on the ball enough”.

OpenAI recently completed a near-$7bn tender offer, buying back shares from employees. In recent months, staff have been cashing out at OpenAI’s lofty $852bn valuation, with several making upwards of $10mn, according to current and former employees.

Staff were feeling “burnt out” and “frustrated” with constant reorganisations, said two of these people, pointing to the tender sale as a way out.

Some investors have expressed concern about the rate of turnover and the lack of focus at a company targeting one of the biggest IPOs of all time. Other backers characterised the changes as simplifying the executive team.

“I don’t think it’s uncommon to clean up the organisation before going public. You want to know who your people are,” said one investor with a large stake in OpenAI. “Some departures were [for] health reasons. Some is cleaning up.”

Geneva super-rich rocked by luxury home burglary spree

Swiss officials say gangs from France are responsible for a recent rise in ‘homejackings’, sometimes at gunpoint

The Lake Geneva region is fighting a growing number of violent home robberies of its wealthiest residents, which threaten the area’s reputation as a haven for the ultra-rich and have inflamed suspicions across the border with France.

Swiss authorities are turning to video footage, number-plate recognition and tougher border policing as they try to crack down on the “homejackings”, which have shocked the normally peaceful area.

The attacks typically involve intruders breaking into occupied homes and threatening residents — sometimes at gunpoint — before escaping with watches, jewellery and other valuables across the border to France.

Private bankers, commodities traders and other wealthy executives are among those who have been targeted, fuelling concern in a region that is home to some of the world’s biggest banks and trading houses. Companies including Pictet and Trafigura have raised concerns about the attacks with authorities, according to people familiar with the discussions.

The extreme violence of the attacks has prompted some politicians to call for targeted checks at the French border, and prompted many wealthy communities to hire private security.

“This trend has recently become much more organised, targeted and common,” said Florence Bettschart-Narbel, a member of the legislature in the Canton of Vaud, on the north side of Lake Geneva. “We are concerned about the impact on Switzerland’s attractiveness to foreigners and companies.”

Among the most prominent victims is Alain Prost, the four-time Formula 1 world champion, whose home near Nyon, on the west side of Lake Geneva, was raided in May.

During the raid, one family member suffered a minor head injury while another was forced to open a safe containing valuables, according to authorities.

One Geneva-based commodities trader, who asked to remain anonymous, said assailants who targeted a friend’s family kidnapped one of their teenage children in the getaway car, releasing the teenager shortly before crossing into France.

Geneva recorded 18 “homejackings” last year, up from 15 the year before — even as overall robberies fell by one-fifth. Police classify “homejackings” as violent robberies in occupied homes.

A recent survey of companies in the Geneva region found that 70 per cent believed security had deteriorated in the past three years, citing homejackings and insufficient police presence as a key reason, according to the study published this week by the Foundation for the Attractiveness of the Canton of Geneva.

The incidents have put the policing of Switzerland’s long and porous border with France, which can be passed without any systematic passport controls, under growing scrutiny.

Geneva police said seven attacks last year were attributed to separate gangs from southern France. Four Serbian nationals and seven French nationals living in the Marseille region were linked to the attacks, according to investigators.

The gangs carefully research their targets in advance, including on social media, where photographs of watches, jewellery, cars, holidays and lifestyles can provide clues about a victim’s wealth and habits, according to police.

The French embassy in Switzerland said in a statement that cross-border co-operation was “constant, extensive and agile”.

The violence of the attacks has prompted politicians to push for further measures, and Geneva’s parliament is considering several proposals covering security and property disclosure.

“It is our duty to take measures to repel this crime, which is unfortunately imported,” said Vincent Subilia, director-general of the Geneva Chamber of Commerce and a cantonal MP.

Among the measures being discussed are more officers and targeted checks at border crossings, including on smaller roads. There is also a push for local police to have more efficient access to number-plate databases.

Another measure being debated would restrict the publication of property information. Geneva politicians are seeking to end rules requiring details of property transactions, including buyers’ names and prices, to be made public — a longstanding transparency practice that identifies the home addresses of the very wealthy.

Some neighbourhoods are already acting. In Vandœuvres, one of Geneva’s wealthiest communes, authorities are planning what they call a “virtual border”, installing automatic number-plate readers and CCTV at entrances to the municipality.

“In absolute numbers it is not high, but Switzerland is very open and secure, we are not used to this kind of criminal activity,” said Bettschart-Narbel, the legislator in Vaud. “It is important to act.”

US billionaire imported data analysis techniques honed in baseball to return Liverpool to the top of English football

In the autumn of 2010 Liverpool Football Club was staring into a bleak winter ahead.

English football’s sleeping giant had just sunk into the Premier League relegation zone after losing 2-1 at home to newly promoted Blackpool. Before the match, thousands of supporters marched in protest against the heavily indebted club’s unpopular American owners, Tom Hicks and George Gillett.

So when another wealthy American, Boston Red Sox owner John Henry, sealed a £300mn takeover of Liverpool only days later, he had plenty to prove.

“We’re here to win. We have a tradition of winning. We’ll do whatever we need to do,” the commodities trader turned sports investor declared after the deal, which wiped out the debt that was endangering the historic club.

Henry has been as good as his word. Liverpool have since won two Premier League titles, including their first since 1990, both of England’s domestic cup trophies and the Uefa Champions League. Revenues have surged from around £184mn in 2010-11 to north of £700mn in 2024-25.

This week, Liverpool’s success on the pitch translated into a huge return for Henry’s Fenway Sports Group.

The club, which carries little debt, has been valued at more than $7bn in a stake sale to a group of investors led by Amit Bhatia, the son-in-law of steel tycoon and billionaire Lakshmi Mittal. Amazon founder Jeff Bezos and Facebook co-founder Eduardo Saverin are backers.

Will McDonough, founder of merchant bank Corestone Capital, made the introductions that led to the deal.

Talks accelerated during the World Cup. A key moment came when Henry and Bhatia met at Zero Bond, a private club in New York, and built their rapport, according to two people with knowledge of the matter. The FT first reported the talks on July 21, just two days after Spain beat Argentina in the final.

The powerful consortium has bought around a third of the club and could increase its stake over time, people with knowledge of the deal said.

The valuation sets a new record for a football club, surpassing the $6.3bn enterprise value ascribed to Manchester United when Sir Jim Ratcliffe bought a 25 per cent stake in 2024.

There is a growing belief among investors that live sport is relatively insulated from AI disruption. Top clubs also benefit from huge loyal fan bases, scarcity value — there is only one Liverpool FC — and low correlation to stock markets.

Steven Horowitz, a banker who advised the previous two buyers of Liverpool, says the Premier League “paradox” is that clubs “can be terrible dividend stocks but terrific long-term assets”.

“You’re buying scarcity, global relevance and an extraordinarily sticky consumer — people change jobs, cities and spouses, but they very rarely change their football club,” he added.

Liverpool struggled on the pitch in the early years of Fenway’s ownership but a turning point came in 2015 with the appointment of charismatic manager Jürgen Klopp, whose teams thrilled fans with their high-energy “heavy metal” football.

Behind the scenes, Fenway deployed the sort of sophisticated data analysis that it helped pioneer at the Red Sox to recruit the players to suit Klopp’s system. Liverpool often bought players who were undervalued by the market and who would complement other players in the squad.

In addition to stars like Egyptian forward Mohamed Salah and Dutch defender Virgil van Dijk, reportedly bought for £34mn and £75mn respectively, Liverpool signed unfancied players for comparatively low sums who went on to become first-team regulars. Scottish left-back Andy Robertson joined from Hull City for about £10mn in 2017.

Off the pitch, Fenway expanded the capacity of Anfield, Liverpool’s home stadium, from about 45,000 in 2010 to more than 61,000, helping to almost triple match day revenues from £40.9mn in 2010-11 to £115.6mn in 2024-25.

“Since the initial acquisition, [Fenway] have rarely put in much funding and it has always been in the form of loans, as opposed to equity investment, some of which have since been repaid. These have basically only been used to improve infrastructure at the stadium,” said Kieron O’Connor, the football finance consultant who blogs as SwissRamble.

But Fenway has also clashed with supporters over the years. They joined 11 other clubs in signing up to the failed European Super League in 2021, sparking an angry protest from supporters. Critics said the US-style closed competition went against Europe’s more meritocratic system of promotion and relegation.

Liverpool fans have also repeatedly protested against ticket price rises, constraining an otherwise straightforward way to boost revenues. The club endured a disappointing 2025-26 season, finishing in fifth place despite spending €482mn to sign new players in the preceding summer transfer window, the most of any club in the Premier League.

O’Connor estimates that Liverpool’s revenues increased from about £700mn to £750mn in the 2025-26 season due to commercial growth and more income from Champions League and Premier League TV rights deals.

People close to the deal say Liverpool’s new shareholders can help the club grow its presence in Asia and elsewhere. They also pointed to the ecommerce and social media knowhow of Bezos and Saverin, as the club looks to increase its revenues further.

“The only way to grow the club is to grow geographically and grow it online. These are three of the best people in the world to do that,” one of the people said.

Fenway’s stake sale values Liverpool at about seven times O’Connor’s estimated revenues for 2025-26, slightly above the roughly 6.9 times revenue paid by Ratcliffe for United.

At the time of the respective deals, Liverpool’s net debt — which stood at £283mn in 2025 — was below United’s, which stood at £537mn in 2023, according to SwissRamble.

There is, however, still a major gap between valuations of Premier League clubs and those for US sports teams, which can exceed 10 times revenue.

That is explained by the threat of relegation and the possibility of failing to qualify for the lucrative Champions League. Additionally, the intense competition between teams requires constant spending to recruit and retain players, which can wipe out profits.

O’Connor said he does not expect the bumper valuation fetched by Liverpool to act as a catalyst for other club deals.

“Only elite clubs can attract such a valuation, while there are very few people who have the means to invest at this level,” he explained.

The arrival of a member of the Mittal family, Bezos and Saverin at a Premier League club has provided another stark reminder of the growing financial gap between the best and the rest.

“How does anyone aspire to compete with the superpowers?” asked one English football executive. “What happens to everyone else?”

With the acquisition, Ergen will control wireless services Boost Mobile and MobileX through EchoStar and a SPAC, respectively

Charlie Ergen has reached a deal to acquire a controlling stake in wireless-service provider MobileX through his special purpose acquisition company CONX CNXX -28.57%decrease; down pointing triangle, according to people familiar with the matter.

The deal, which would require regulatory approval, values MobileX at about $200 million, the people said.

Ergen is the co-founder and chairman of EchoStar ECHO 0.23%increase; up pointing triangle, a holding company for his communications empire. The company’s portfolio includes wireless brand Boost Mobile and pay-TV business Dish Network.

The new deal also gives wireless carrier Verizon Communications a minority stake in MobileX by converting a loan into equity, the people said. MobileX has leased and resold excess capacity from Verizon’s network for years.

It wasn’t immediately clear how or if Ergen plans to coordinate or combine the operations of MobileX and Boost Mobile.

Peter Adderton will remain chief executive of MobileX, said some of the people familiar with the matter. Adderton founded Boost Mobile in 2000 and sold it to Nextel in 2003. The company changed hands a few times and has been owned by EchoStar since 2023. Adderton founded MobileX in 2019.

EchoStar has lost money on wireless services for years, and Adderton has taken to social media to criticize the way it runs Boost Mobile.

“We haven’t cracked the code on how to be successful to the level we’d like to in the wireless business,” Ergen said on an earnings call earlier this month. “We’ve treaded water for four years now.”

He said that strategic initiatives would reinvigorate the business.

Ergen gave up on a $46 billion effort to build a nationwide 5G competitor to industry leaders AT&T, T-Mobile US and Verizon last year after the Federal Communications Commission complained about the initiative’s slow progress.

Ergen has put Dish subsidiaries into bankruptcy protection and is positioning EchoStar to emerge with tens of billions of dollars from spectrum sales, including to SpaceX, which has indicated plans to expand into mobile service.

Both MobileX and Boost Mobile remain small carriers relative to AT&T, T-Mobile and Verizon, which together control more than 90% of the market for cellphone service, according to research firm MoffettNathanson.