TheChek News Flow

“The forgotten Goliath” of the big banks is serious about shedding its reputation as an underachiever. CEO Brian Moynihan’s future may depend on it.

Key Points

Bank of America needs to up its game—and the banking giant is likely to unveil a blueprint for doing just that at its first investor day in nearly 15 years. It’s time to consider making a deposit in BofA stock.

Bank of America will be holding an all-day investor event in Boston this coming Wednesday, and it will give investors a chance to hear from longtime CEO Brian Moynihan, newly appointed co-presidents Dean Athanasia and Jim DeMare, and other members of the leadership team.

The focus probably will be on growth and returns. While BofA stock has risen 21% this year, it lags behind rival JPMorgan Chase, which has gained 29%—a reflection, in part, of its lower returns, as measured by return on tangible common equity, or ROTCE. Moynihan looks set to outline how he hopes to close the gap on that key metric. The bank is likely to set a ROTCE target in the 16% to 18% range, up from the 14% so far this year and closer to JPMorgan’s 21% return.

It’s a challenging task, but with one of the better earnings stories among top banks, the least-risky loan portfolio, and initiatives to boost returns, the bank has a good shot at hitting that target.

“I expect higher growth, returns, and earnings,” says Mike Mayo, the banking analyst at Wells Fargo Securities, who expects earnings growth of 13% next year to $4.35 a share before it rises as high as $6 a share in coming years. “The question is not if, but when.” He recently boosted his price target on Bank of America stock to $62 from $60, up 17% from a recent $53.

Bank of America has a lot going for it. The company has one of the best franchises in banking, including the No. 2 consumer bank behind JPMorgan, a top five investment bank, and a leading wealth management arm led by Merrill Lynch. It’s also a banking technology leader with the best virtual financial assistant in Erica, which has two million interactions a day with banking customers.

The bank has also left a lot on the table. It’s useful to compare it with JPMorgan, since the two companies have a similar business mix involving consumer banking, wealth management, commercial banking, investment banking, and trading. Since 2019, BofA’s earnings are up by a third based on 2025 projections, while JPMorgan’s have nearly doubled.

What’s the problem? Mayo thinks the bank has been too timid, something that is reflected in the Federal Reserve’s stress tests, with Bank of America showing the lowest losses relative to Citigroup, JPMorgan, and Wells Fargo in a downturn, thanks to the high credit quality of the bank’s $1.2 trillion loan portfolio. But if Moynihan’s mantra has been “responsible growth,” Mayo thinks it should pivot to “more growth” while maintaining appropriate safeguards.

BofA’s credit-card loan portfolio, for instance, has been little changed over the past decade while JPMorgan and Capital One Financial have nearly doubled theirs. BofA hasn’t chased co-branded credit-card deals as much as rivals.

Its wealth management business has also lost some of its luster. Merrill Lynch used to be the dominant retail brokerage platform, but the business that was once known as the “Thundering Herd” for its bullish stance on America isn’t making as much noise currently. Morgan Stanley now is the industry champ based on revenue, profits, and margins.

Over the past five years, Bank of America’s wealth management revenue growth averaged 4% a year, against 8% for Morgan Stanley. Revenue growth did pick up to 8% this year. BofA’s margins of 24% so far in 2025 were below Morgan Stanley’s 29%. Morgan Stanley also has a better alternative-asset platform.

It hasn’t helped investor sentiment that Berkshire Hathaway has steadily reduced its big stake in BofA by 40% since July 2024 to about 605 million shares, which are now worth over $30 billion. Berkshire CEO Warren Buffett hasn’t said why he has reduced the stake, but he has soured on banks generally in the past five years, eliminating once-sizable holdings in Wells Fargo, Goldman Sachs Group, JPMorgan, and Citigroup.

Bank of America has also faced investor scrutiny over its poor decision to invest $500 billion in 2% U.S. agency mortgage securities at a historic low in rates, mostly in 2020 and 2021. That move has led to paper losses that stood at $71 billion on Sept. 30 and dampened the bank’s interest margin as rates rose. Mayo calls that “one of the worst mistakes under Moynihan’s tenure,” but, thankfully for the bank, accounting rules don’t require the loss to be recognized in its capital position.

The good news is that the mortgage securities portfolio is slowly maturing, and that allows the bank to reinvest about $10 billion per quarter at yields that are two to three percentage points higher, helping to bolster its interest margin. The bank sees higher net interest income and margins in 2026.

Some of the bank’s efforts have already started to pay off, with its third-quarter report showing a 31% gain in earnings to $1.06 a share. Bank of America pays a 2% dividend yield, in line with peers, and supplements that with about $20 billion annually in stock buybacks, for a total yield—dividends plus buybacks—of 7%. Mayo sees the possibility of even more share repurchases in the next two years.

The investor day is also a chance for Moynihan, 66, to argue for more time as the head of the company. He wants to stay until the end of the decade, emulating JPMorgan CEO Jamie Dimon, 69, who plans to remain at the helm for a few more years. Dimon deserves to stay, given the bank’s superior performance and his industry stature; Moynihan’s bid is less convincing, in light of the bank’s mediocre showing. BofA stock has lagged behind shares of Citigroup, Goldman Sachs, JPMorgan, Morgan Stanley, and Wells Fargo over the past five years.

Moynihan’s efforts may depend on how well his investor day plan is received—and executed. He needs to turn the bank’s performance from good to great to match peers, and there is the near-term risk that investors sell the stock on the investor day news since Wall Street is already anticipating good news. Still, at just 12.5 times 12-month forward earnings—below JPMorgan, Wells Fargo, Goldman Sachs, and Morgan Stanley—there’s room for the stock to run if Moynihan gets it right.

Mayo calls Bank of America the “forgotten Goliath” among the country’s top banks. Moynihan has the chance to shed that label, deliver for investors, and keep the top job until 2030.

If you’ve lost the plot to the long-running tech drama “Tesla,” I have show notes. You’ll want to get caught up ahead of next week’s twist—and by “twist,” I don’t mean a surprise but rather a wringing, in this case of a company by its shareholders. On Thursday, they’ll probably vote to award CEO Elon Musk an unprecedented $1 trillion incentive package. Or is it a robo ransom? Here’s what to know:

Tesla isn’t just a 23-year-old car maker whose production and profits peaked two years ago. It’s also, as it says, a “physical AI” company—an early contender in two artificial-intelligence businesses that are as theoretically massive as they are barely existent. The first is operating robotic taxis. The second is deploying humanoid helpers to homes and businesses. These account for almost none of Tesla’s current income, and most of its stock market value.

If it seems like the Tesla show has gone quiet recently, it’s because its star, Elon Musk, has stepped out of the Washington, D.C., spotlight. Last spring, he was head of the Department of Government Efficiency, which found heaps of taxpayer savings, or barely any, depending on whose accounting you use. But he was neglecting Tesla, investors complained, and his smashmouth move into anti-left politics had rankled some leaf lovers who buy electric vehicles.

It was a “code red situation,” wrote Wedbush Securities analyst Dan Ives, a Tesla super-bull, on April 20. “Tesla’s stock has been crushed” amid “potentially 15%-20% permanent demand destruction” due to “brand damage Musk has created with DOGE.” Tesla’s market value had been cut nearly by half in months, to $777 billion, below the ranks of the Magnificent Seven tech world-beaters. At the market’s No. 10 spot, Tesla was sandwiched humiliatingly between an Arkansas mass merchant known for price rollbacks and an Indiana maker of obesity shots, and was a few spots behind a Nebraska investment conglomerate with stakes in reinsurance, wood flooring, and peanut brittle.

Then, Musk left DOGE and got out of politics. Mostly. There was a summer spat where Musk tweeted that he got President Donald Trump re-elected, and in a now-deleted post, claimed vaguely and without evidence that the president was mentioned in unreleased Jeffrey Epstein “files.” Musk was upset by the president’s budget bill, which eliminated tax perks for electric-vehicle buyers. The episode passed, and so did the bill, yet Tesla’s market value has plumped back up to $1.5 trillion. It would already be back in the Mag 7 if not for Broadcom recently Kramering into the group. Business conditions for Tesla are...better? Maybe worse. It’s difficult to say. Third-quarter financial results were solid, but that was owed to an EV buying rush ahead of the September tax credit expiration. For October, JD Power predicts a 43% EV sales decline.

No matter. Tesla bulls and bears alike agree that car making today has little to do with the stock value. BofA Securities puts its contribution at 12%, plus another 17% for full self-driving, or FSD, a subscription service that for now provides “more active guidance and assisted driving under your active supervision.” Solar panels and related batteries account for 6% of Tesla’s value, BofA reckons. The rest comes from Robotaxis, 45%, and Optimus humanoid robots, 19%.

The bull case for Tesla, set forth recently by Rob Wertheimer at Melius Research, who initiated coverage in mid-October at Buy, is that Musk is masterful at moving fast, including into AI data centers, and Tesla’s expertise in “touching the physical world” separates it from other AI giants. It will “wreck multitrillion-dollar industries,” starting with cars. Valuation is “guesswork,” and Wertheimer’s guess is $520 a share, versus a recent $440.

The bear or neutral case is simply that it will be a long wait until the new businesses make money. FSD still isn’t working as intended, and as long as that’s the case, the Robotaxi business is likely to remain “in park,” writes William Stein at Truist Securities, who rates the stock at Hold. He assigns Tesla’s Robotaxi business a valuation of $172 billion, which he notes is only modestly below the market value of Uber, even though Uber, which partners with autonomous-driving companies including Waymo, is more active in robo-taxi service today. Stein values the stock at $406.

It’s possible to envision marvelous things for Tesla and still be ho-hum on the stock. BofA recently tweaked its model of cash flows out to 2040 to reflect, among other things, a 40% long-term U.S. market share for Optimus, up from a prior 30%, with a penetration rate of 40% for manufacturing, and 20% for households. Count me in. I plan to use my unit mostly for high fives, and ask only for an AI Mel Blanc voice option that recalls Twiki from the old Buck Rogers in the 25th Century series. But even with BofA’s ambitious market assumptions, it hiked its price target to a level that implies only 7% stock upside, and kept its rating at Neutral.

At Tesla’s annual meeting on Nov. 6, shareholders will vote on stock bonuses for Musk that would take his stake from 13% to 25% if he hits ambitious goals. These include taking Tesla’s market value over $8.5 trillion in a decade. For comparison, today’s market leader, Nvidia, is worth $5 trillion. There are also operational milestones, from robot deliveries to earnings levels.

The plan will pass. Betting markets say so, along with key investors. Ives at Wedbush says he has a better chance of starting for the Yankees than the measure failing. If you don’t follow New York sports, a Jets or Giants reference there would have left some ambiguity, but a Yankees one means that Musk will get his ransom. I mean performance plan.

Greater voting control is a deal breaker for Tesla’s robot future, Musk made clear on the company’s third-quarter earnings call. “If I go ahead and build this enormous robot army, can I just be ousted at some point in the future?” he asked. Without Musk and his robots, Tesla’s valuation could collapse to that of today’s cash-producing businesses—a catastrophic outcome. With Musk in place and chasing his record payday, grumpy valuation math can give way for now to open-ended optimism about Tesla’s robo future.

The Persian Gulf monarchies aren’t traditionally known for moving fast and breaking things, at least in the advanced technology sphere. That may change.

A May visit from U.S. President Donald Trump put the oil-rich region on the map for the global artificial-intelligence frenzy, with typically exorbitant numbers flying about. The United Arab Emirates, home to the burgeoning commercial/financial centers of Dubai and Abu Dhabi, targeted $500 billion for its own Stargate AI complex, on top of promising $1.4 trillion in U.S. investments.

Policy followed pledges, sort of, a few weeks ago, as the U.S. Commerce Department reportedly cleared the export of 500,000 cutting-edge Nvidia microchips to the U.A.E., formerly blocked on national security grounds.

A familiar cast of Silicon Valley/Wall Street A-listers cheered from the sidelines. The U.A.E.’s leap forward would be rooted in “democratic values, open markets, and trusted partnerships,” OpenAI enthused in a statement. Private-equity power Blackstone signed a $3 billion deal Oct. 28 with newly minted Saudi Arabian state vehicle Humain to build data centers in the Kingdom.

What could go wrong?

The U.A.E. and Saudi can boast some comparative advantage in the competition for data centers: cheap energy, deep capital pockets, and “stable” governments that don’t need to worry about environmental or community pushback.

“That’s a relatively compelling combination,” says Robert Mogielnicki, senior resident scholar at the Arab Gulf States Institute.

The U.A.E., which jumped far ahead of its larger neighbor by appointing the world’s first AI minister in 2017, showed some nerd chops in September: Researchers from its AI University released K2 Think, a well-received budget alternative to ChatGPT.

The political moment is ripe, too, says Matt Gertken, geopolitical strategist at BCA Research. The Trump administration’s drive to lock the world into the U.S. “AI stack” is eroding concerns that cutting-edge chips might leak to China or other adversaries. Neighboring Iran’s capacity for mischief looks severely weakened by Israeli-U.S. attacks this summer. “There’s a great geopolitical backdrop for the U.S. and Arab Gulf states to work together,” Gertken says.

Middle East geography could prove a benefit for once, as emphasis shifts to the Middle part. The Gulf is “within a 2,000-mile radius of half the world’s population,” OpenAI’s release points out. U.A.E. and Saudi data centers may prove particularly well placed to meet demand from crowded, energy-strapped India, Gertken notes.

Still, “the ambitious bilateral agreements that emerged around Trump’s trip have not progressed as quickly as anticipated,” Mogielnicki says. Leaked details indicate that those Nvidia superchips will only be entrusted to U.S. companies, like Oracle, working in the U.A.E. The Emiratis and Saudis are pushing for direct sales. “I see this Nvidia approval as a test case,” says Simon Henderson, director of Gulf and energy policy at the Washington Institute.

It’s unclear, in the best case, whether stand-alone data centers can pay for themselves without the “upstream” software and services that seem destined to be controlled from California, Gertken says. “There will probably be a huge gap in profit compared with the cost of construction,” he predicts.

Security threats aren’t exactly a thing of the past in the Gulf either, Henderson adds. “Why would you build a very expensive facility that could be a pile of rubble tomorrow?” he asks rhetorically.

That isn’t the kind of risk that the high-rollers of Big Tech are used to.

Meta signed three deals this week to procure nearly 1 gigawatt of solar power as it races to power its lofty AI ambitions.

The trio of agreements brings Meta’s total solar purchases to over 3 gigawatts of capacity this year. Solar is cheap and quick to build, and as a result, it has become a go-to power source for tech companies as their data center fleets multiply in size.

Meta yesterday announced two agreements in Louisiana that see it buying the environmental attributes of a combined 385 megawatts of electricity. Both projects are expected to be completed two years from now.

They follow on the heels of a larger deal announced Monday in which Meta bought 600 megawatts from a massive solar farm near Lubbock, Texas. The project will also start commercial operations in 2027.

While the Texas power plant won’t connect directly to Meta data centers, it will feed into the local grid, offsetting use by the facilities.

The Louisiana deals, though, involve purchasing of certificates that allow Meta to offset its carbon-intensive sources of power.

Such environmental attribute certificates (EACs), sometimes called renewable energy certificates, have been criticized by experts for obscuring the true carbon footprint of tech companies’ operations, which have ballooned as AI has driven up electricity use.

EACs were introduced years ago when renewables were costly relative to fossil fuel generators. They let anyone buy the electricity, but also gave companies an option to pay extra to offset their own emissions — and offset the higher costs of renewable power. They helped encourage developers to build more renewable projects.

But the cost of new solar and wind has dropped dramatically since then, with renewables undercutting new fossil power and sometimes existing coal and natural gas power plants. EACs don’t provide the same incentive as before, and experts question how much additional renewable power they stimulate.

If companies truly want to offset their new energy use from AI, they should be encouraging developers to build new renewable capacity, experts argue.

Anthropic has since grown to generate nearly $7 billion in annualized revenue, boosted by demand for models that help with coding, and sports a private valuation of $183 billion. The two companies are in a heated race to develop cutting-edge models and recruit top talent. They also sometimes oppose each other on policy issues, such as AI regulation.

OpenAI’s fortunes—and the public profile of Altman—have climbed even higher. It was recently valued by investors at $500 billion and reached $12 billion in annualized revenue in July. This week, it completed a complicated corporate restructuring that paves the way to an eventual public offering. The OpenAI nonprofit, whose mission is to ensure that powerful AI benefits humanity, continues to control the for-profit company.

Musk argues that OpenAI violated its charitable duties to reach that stature. The Tesla CEO—who has also started a rival AI lab, xAI—donated an initial $44 million to OpenAI starting in 2015, when it was set up as a nonprofit research lab. Musk alleges OpenAI defrauded him by operating as a for-profit company. OpenAI has denied these claims and initiated a countersuit.

During the interview in San Francisco with Sutskever, which lasted nearly 10 hours on October 1, lawyers for Musk and OpenAI questioned Sutskever about Altman’s firing, as well as his views on artificial general intelligence—AI with human-level intelligence—and why he left OpenAI.

‘Pattern of Lying’

Sutskever’s disclosures also give a detailed account of the high level of animus and distrust that had grown among OpenAI’s top staff in the year after the launch of ChatGPT. The AI chatbot made the research lab an overnight sensation, attracting a landmark $10 billion investment from Microsoft in early 2023 and setting off a frenzy among founders and investors to back startups that used large language models developed by OpenAI.

Sutskever was part of the board that decided to fire Altman over what its members initially termed a failure to be “consistently candid.”

He helped initiate the decision by sending an email to the independent board members at the time—Toner, tech entrepreneur Tasha McCauley and Quora CEO Adam D’Angelo—containing two memos that documented what Sutskever saw as concerning behavior from Altman and OpenAI co-founder and president Greg Brockman.

“Sam exhibits a consistent pattern of lying, undermining his execs, and pitting his execs against one another,” Sutskever’s memo on Altman read, a lawyer for Musk said in the deposition. In response to the memo, the lawyer asked,“What action did you think was appropriate?”

“Termination,” Sutskever replied.

Sutskever’s memo to other board members included headings on “Pitting People Against Each Other,” “Daniela Versus Mira” and “Dario Versus Greg, Ilya.”

Sutsekver said he didn’t send the memo to the entire board, which at the time included Altman, “because I felt that, had he become aware of these discussions, he would just find a way to make them disappear.”

Some details of the concerns Sutskever and others had with Altman were earlier reported by The Wall Street Journal.

An OpenAI spokesperson said in a statement that “these claims were fully examined during the board’s independent review, which unanimously concluded Sam and Greg are the right leaders for OpenAI. They’ve consistently shown resilience and deep commitment to our mission and the people who make it real.”

Sutskever said he had become alarmed by Altman partly from conversations Sutskever had with Mira Murati, then OpenAI’s chief technology officer. For a short time after Altman’s ouster, Murati became interim CEO of OpenAI.

“Sam was pushed out from YC for similar behaviors. He was creating chaos, starting lots of new projects, pitting people against each other, and thus was not managing YC well,” Sutskever’s memo read, according to OpenAI’s attorney.

Sutskever said this history of Altman’s time at Y Combinator, the prestigious startup accelerator Altman ran as president from 2014 to 2019, was recounted to him by Murati. Y Combinator co-founder Paul Graham has denied that the accelerator fired Altman.

A year ago, Murati abruptly left OpenAI to found Thinking Machines Lab, a startup making customized AI that was valued earlier this year at $10 billion. She said in a statement on X last year that she had provided individual board members with feedback about Altman in response to their questions, which he was already aware of, but that “does not in any way mean that I am responsible for or supported the old board’s actions.”

A representative for Murati declined to comment.

A lawyer for OpenAI also read select headings from Sutskever’s memo about Altman, such as “Subtle Retaliation in Response to Mira’s Feedback,” “Pitting People Against Each Other,” “Daniela Versus Mira” and “Dario Versus Greg, Ilya.” Sutskever said Murati had told him that Altman pitted Daniela Amodei against Murati when both worked at OpenAI. The context of the dispute wasn’t clear.

Sutskever’s memo also recounted his own personal problems with Altman. Dario Amodei had wanted to run all of OpenAI’s research and to have Brockman fired, according to the memo. “I was faulting Sam for not accepting or rejecting Dario’s conditions,” Sutskever explained.

He also said Altman told him as well as senior researcher Jakub Pachoki, now OpenAI’s chief scientist, “conflicting things about the way the company would be run.”

Sutskever said he compiled the 52-page memo prior to Altman’s ouster, including screenshots of communication between Altman and other executives, that recounted instances of Altman’s alleged deceptions, because some board members had asked Sutskever for documentation.

For instance, the memo recounted that Altman had told Murati that another executive had said the GPT-4 Turbo model did not need approval from OpenAI’s Deployment Safety Board, a joint body with Microsoft that decides whether models are safe enough to release.

OpenAI released the model in November 2023. An OpenAI spokesperson said the safety board had approved the model.

The court has ordered Sutskever to provide further details of his own financial stake in OpenAI and to produce the dossier he compiled on Brockman. That memo focused on Brockman’s alleged bullying, according to The Wall Street Journal.

Wealthy individual investors are willing to pay nearly double the $30.5 billion valuation institutions got in Anduril’s last fundraising.

Defense tech company Anduril expects to burn through $800 million to $900 million in cash this year in an aggressive bid to win giant Pentagon contracts. Investors big and small are unperturbed, lining up to back the fast-growing seller of drones, missiles and border surveillance towers.

The company appears to be the most coveted stock in the private markets, with small investors on the secondary market willing to pay nearly double what institutions most recently paid. That’s a far higher premium than small investors are paying for shares of other popular private companies such as SpaceX or OpenAI. Demand for Anduril shares has soared in recent weeks as executives did the rounds of popular podcasts and discussed the company’s fast revenue growth.

New, big investors have also bought in recently. GV, the independent venture capital arm of Alphabet, took a more than $30 million indirect stake in Anduril earlier this year on the secondary market, a person familiar with the matter said. Alphabet, GV’s sole limited partner, earlier this year scrapped a pledge to not “pursue” AI technologies that cause harm, like weapons. A GV spokesperson declined to comment.

Early investor Founders Fund told its limited partners earlier this year it had invested a total of nearly $2 billion in the company over the years, a stake now worth about $6 billion. The firm led a funding round in June that valued Anduril at $30.5 billion.

David You, a small investor who invests his family’s wealth, put more than $1 million into an indirect stake in Anduril via the secondary market earlier this year at a price that was roughly 60% above what institutional investors had paid just months earlier. He’s paying hundreds of thousands of dollars in fees to get in the door. Secondary market deals typically let small investors buy into private companies through special purpose vehicles, rather than buying shares directly from the company.

“Someone told me Anduril is Tesla plus Palantir,” he said. “I fully agree.” He added that he also thought Anduril “has more potential than SpaceX.”

The company appears to be made for the current moment. Anduril has connections with President Donald Trump’s administration, an America-first marketing message and a meme-lord billionaire co-founder, Palmer Luckey. Revenue is expected to double this year, company executives have said.

The company’s cash burn this year will help fund its first major weapons manufacturing facility and the development of an autonomous fighter jet, among other projects.

Anduril’s backers have encouraged the heavy investments because they increase the likelihood that the company will win larger long-term contracts from the Pentagon over bigger, more entrenched defense contractors like Lockheed Martin and Northrop Grumman, leading to profits over time. Anduril often shuns government subsidies to help develop new products, using its balance sheet instead. That’s an expensive approach.

Chip Walter, a former Northrop Grumman executive who is now a managing partner at Anduril investor Marlinspike Partners, said the goal is to win big government contracts, known as programs of record, which are formal initiatives that last several years. “Getting on a program of record is not easy, but if you do, the revenue tends to be very sticky,” he said.

A lingering question is when regular investors will be able to buy the stock on the public markets instead of through secondaries. Josh Wolfe, co-founder of Lux Capital, an early Anduril investor, said on an investment panel last week he thought Anduril would go public “within the next year.”

“I think it’ll be a $50 billion–plus [initial public offering] on $3 billion of top-line revenue with high growth,” Wolfe said. That market cap would make Anduril about two-thirds as valuable as Northrop Grumman and General Dynamics, even though Anduril would have less than 10% of their respective annual revenues.

“We’re not in a rush and don’t need the distraction,” Anduril CEO Brian Schimpf told The Information earlier this month. A Lux spokesperson said Wolfe has no specific knowledge of the company’s IPO plans or revenue targets.

Wealthy individuals and funds have been willing to pay nearly double Anduril’s most recent $30.5 billion valuation in the secondary market for shares, said Javier Avalos, CEO of Caplight, which tracks the secondary market. That compares to a premium of 14% for OpenAI, while small investors can get shares of SpaceX at roughly the same price the big guys got in the last funding round, according to Caplight.

Demand for Anduril’s shares has jumped recently. “Over the past two weeks, buyer willingness to pay has increased,” Avalos said. He added that investors are clamoring for stakes because “there is currently no supply in the market.”

Anduril, for its part, said it doesn’t allow such secondary sales outside formal tender offers it runs. “Anyone claiming they can offer Anduril secondary shares is probably misrepresenting the facts and may be defrauding buyers, to say nothing of charging layers of egregious fees,” Anduril’s chief operating officer, Matt Grimm, said in a statement to The Information.

The demand also seems impervious to potential negative impacts of the prolonged government shutdown, which Schimpf said earlier this month would also stall its progress. (The first test flight for its Air Force fighter jet, Fury, was delayed from a mid-October plan.)

Some of the recent enthusiasm for Anduril may be traced to its efforts to raise its profile. In August, it became the lead sponsor of a San Diego NASCAR race, as well as of Ohio State athletics. Co-founder Trae Stephens appeared on the popular Shawn Ryan podcast, while Luckey sat with Joe Rogan.

You, the Anduril retail investor, said he decided on his investment in Anduril after doing heavy research. He didn’t know about the company’s cash burn, but he thought it was more important to focus on its revenue growth.

“I’m really confident,” he said. He was working on a deal to buy another $600,000 worth of SPV stakes at more than $100 a share, a price that implies an Anduril valuation of more than $70 billion.

How Tim Cook Evaded Disaster at Apple This Year

The CEO was facing risks from Trump’s tariffs, Google litigation and the AI craze. He turned to his playbook and now the iPhone maker is worth $4 trillion.

It took two quarters for Tim Cook to save Apple AAPL -0.38%decrease; red down pointing triangle from what was almost a disastrous year.

President Trump’s on-again, off-again tariffs risked massively increasing the company’s costs. A pending court ruling imperiled Apple’s lucrative Google contract. Plus, the company was seen as lagging on artificial intelligence.

Facing so much uncertainty, Apple tumbled to a market capitalization of $2.6 trillion in April and lost its title as the world’s most valuable company.

Six months later, Cook pushed Apple’s market value above $4 trillion for the first time. That’s more than 10 times what the company was worth when Cook took over as chief executive from Steve Jobs 14 years ago.

During Cook’s years at the helm, Apple hasn’t unveiled a revolutionary technology or introduced a new product that will reshape people’s lives the way the iPhone did. Instead, Cook, who turns 65 on Saturday, has won over shareholders by doing just enough to protect and grow the business, a conservative strategy that has been on display this year with clever political and legal maneuvering and enticing new iPhones.

Scariest to Apple investors had been the threat of tariffs and Trump’s direct criticism of Apple’s supply chain. Apple remains largely reliant on huge manufacturing operations built up in China over more than 20 years, a supply chain Cook himself built when he was head of Apple’s operations.

With most iPhones still made there, investors panicked on “Liberation Day” in April when Trump announced massive import tariffs. Apple’s stock cratered more than 20% in the days that followed.

Cook was already in position to avoid the worst from a U.S. trade war with China. He had been shifting the final assembly of more iPhones to India for several years, so he was able to reroute more India-assembled phones to the U.S. to dodge the tariffs on China.

That didn’t please Trump. “We’re not interested in you building in India. India can take care of themselves,” Trump said in May, referring to Apple.

But Apple’s supply chain is never coming back to the U.S., not in any substantial way, current and former employees say. Among other advantages, Asia has pools of both skilled and cheap labor that aren’t available domestically.

During Trump’s first term, Cook learned he can win over the president by giving him a good headline. In 2018, Apple promised to invest $350 billion in the U.S. over five years—primarily spending the company was already planning to make, say people familiar with the calculations.

In 2019, facing potential tariffs on China, Cook personally lobbied Trump, explaining how such levies would increase iPhone prices and help foreign rivals. Then Apple reversed its decision to move production of its Mac Pro computer to China from Texas, and Cook led Trump on a tour of the Austin factory. “Today I opened a major Apple manufacturing plant in Texas,” Trump boasted. Actually, the factory had been open since 2013, and it made a niche product. Cook didn’t correct Trump.

The strategy worked. Trump scaled back tariff threats during his first term, giving exceptions to electronics like the iPhone.

So Cook deployed the strategy again. In August, Cook said he was increasing Apple’s promised U.S. investments to $600 billion over four years. He made the announcement next to Trump in the Oval Office, as he gave him a plaque with a base of gold.

Again, Cook gave up little, making promises primarily on already planned investment, said the people familiar with the figures. Investments include making AI servers in Texas and offering manufacturing training for U.S. businesses in Detroit. Specific figures Apple announced were a $2.5 billion commitment to make iPhone cover glass in Kentucky with longtime supplier Corning, and a $500 million partnership to produce rare-earth magnets in the U.S.

What Cook isn’t doing is committing to make Apple’s popular products in the U.S.

After the U.S. investment pledge, Trump announced Apple would be exempt from a tariff on imported electronics, leaving the company subject to only a smaller China tariff, which Trump agreed to cut in half on Thursday.

That’s not the only blow Cook avoided this summer. During the penalty phase of an antitrust trial against Google, a judge held in his hands the ability to cancel payments Google makes to Apple for placement as the default search engine in Apple’s Safari web browser.

Such a move would have cost Apple dearly. The contract generates more than $20 billion of revenue a year for Apple, nearly all of which falls to the bottom line, accounting for roughly a fifth of the company’s operating profit, analysts estimate.

Cook sent lieutenant Eddy Cue to testify. Apple’s senior vice president in charge of services told the judge he “lost a lot of sleep thinking about” the possible disappearance of the Google contract and testified that technology shifts are so powerful they can take down even the most massive companies. The subtext: The judge didn’t need to impose harsh penalties; the market would take care of itself.

The judge gave Google a slap on the wrist and said the competitive dynamics of the marketplace were changing already, largely because of AI. Notably he said prohibiting search-distribution payments would harm companies such as Apple. As one analyst said at the time: “Apple didn’t just dodge a bullet; they dodged a missile.”

Just after Labor Day, Cook welcomed hundreds to Apple’s spaceship campus to unveil his newest generation of iPhones. A new, thinner smartphone dubbed the iPhone Air was the star of the show. But its weaker camera, single speaker, smaller battery and high price tag have combined to make the device less popular with customers.

Nothing stood out as a game changer; perhaps the biggest cheer among those in attendance was for a camera sensor that enables landscape photos without turning a phone to the side.

Even so, Apple delivered just enough new features across the rest of its iPhone 17 lineup that many customers are upgrading. On Thursday, Apple projected up to 12% revenue growth in the holiday quarter, double Wall Street’s estimate, thanks to strong iPhone sales.

The company has faced criticism for being slower to deliver flashy AI advancements while rivals make huge investments.

But the stock has been supported, in part, by $100 billion in annual share buybacks, and revenue continues to grow because of Cook’s focus on delivering products that have become ubiquitous in people’s lives. His motto has been be best, not first.

Many forget that the first-generation AirPods almost nine years ago were widely mocked as expensive Q-tips that were easily lost. They had been a challenging product to develop, and Cook stuck with them. Now they are a must-have iPhone accessory that generate billions of dollars in annual sales. So is the Apple Watch, which evolved from a somewhat marginal digital fashion statement into a widely used health and fitness device.

All the while, Cook has milked the iPhone ecosystem for more revenue each year, selling apps, subscriptions and App Store ads, and squeezing bigger payments from Google. All those services surpassed $100 billion in revenue this past fiscal year for the first time, at a higher profit margin than device sales. News Corp, owner of The Wall Street Journal, has a commercial agreement to supply news through Apple services.

The knock on Cook since the day he took over is that he isn’t a “product guy” like his predecessor. Jobs paid frequent visits to Apple’s design studio where future products were in development. Cook doesn’t stop by as much, preferring to focus on operations. Yet on his watch, Apple built its own semiconductor operation that designs some of the best chips in the world.

When Cook eventually steps down, some analysts want the company to appoint a more visionary, product-minded CEO who can better innovate in the age of AI. Neither he nor the company has suggested that is imminent, and he is widely expected to continue as executive chairman once he leaves the CEO post.

Egyptian president Sisi to inaugurate new mega-museum

Authorities to open much-anticipated Tutankhamun galleries in centrepiece of $1.2bn Grand Egyptian Museum

Egypt will inaugurate its Grand Egyptian Museum at a lavish ceremony hosted by President Abdel Fattah al-Sisi, officially opening the $1.2bn project it hopes will help attract millions of tourists to the country.

The vast GEM, which sits on the Pyramids plateau in Giza, is touted as the largest museum in the world dedicated to one civilisation.

Though much of it has already been opened, authorities will unveil on Saturday the centrepiece: the much-anticipated Tutankhamun galleries, displaying for the first time the entire collection of artefacts found in the tomb of the ancient Egyptian king who lived more than 3,000 years ago.

The formal inauguration, postponed from July because of wars in the region, will be attended by what officials say will be some 40 heads of state, and will include an ancient Egyptian-themed spectacle.

Similar celebrations of Egypt’s pharaonic heritage have been held under Sisi with the aim of shoring up tourism and burnishing the image of the country and its leader.

Sherif Fathi, Egypt’s tourism minister, has said he expects 5mn people to visit the GEM annually after its full opening.

Tourism is a main foreign currency earner and crucial for the economy of heavily indebted Egypt. Some 15.7mn tourists visited the country in 2024 and officials have said arrivals were on track to approach 18mn this year.

The Tutankhamun treasures are expected to be the biggest draw at the GEM, which houses tens of thousands of ancient Egyptian artefacts covering periods from prehistoric times until the end of the Roman era.

Since the discovery of his intact tomb in Luxor by Howard Carter in 1922, “the boy king” Tutankhamun has captured imaginations around the world, though little is known about his short reign of nine years and his mysterious death at 18.

Tutankhamun is believed to be a son of Akhenaten, the ancient Egyptian king who led a religious revolution introducing the worship of a single god, the sun disc Aten — an unpopular change that was reversed after his death.

The collection of 5,600 objects showcased at the GEM include pieces such as the king’s gold death mask, his gilded chariot, an intricately decorated throne and his jewellery.

“In the past, we just exhibited the most attractive pieces,” said Tarek Tawfik, a professor of Egyptology who was a former director-general at the GEM while it was still under construction. “What’s new here is that it will be a full experience allowing the visitor to understand the context which gave rise to the objects.”

The artefacts on display will cover themes such as the daily life of the king and his court, his royal descent and the concepts of rebirth and the afterlife, which were key to the belief system of the ancient Egyptians. There is also a section highlighting the story of the discovery of the tomb.

“The visitor will feel he is getting close to the king,” said Tawfik, who added that he developed the concept for the galleries.

Restorers had worked for years in the museum’s laboratory to clean and conserve the king’s relics in preparation for display, said Tawfik. They have restrung colourful beaded collars, restored gilded furniture and salvaged textiles and leather sandals worn by the king that had been left in store rooms for decades.

“The funerary items in the Tutankhamun halls are arranged in a way that they replicate the actual funeral procession of the king as if you are really attending it,” Tawfik said.

Some travellers prefer to borrow engines to use with their own customised jets

Private jet owners are cashing in on a supply chain crunch by leasing their engines to people facing long waits for their own aircraft to be repaired.

The aerospace industry has been plagued by labour and parts shortages since the Covid-19 pandemic, leading to protracted delays in deliveries of engines and aircraft for both private and commercial jets.

Wealth advisers and industry experts said some owners wanted to rent just the engine because they were attached to their customised jet interiors, which can include gold and marble bathroom fixtures and large cinema spaces.

Laura Uberoi, head of private wealth finance at law firm Addleshaw Goddard, said: “It’s the first time in my career I have seen families turning a profit on their private jets, which are usually a depreciating liability.”

To hire a mid-size jet engine for a couple of days would cost about $50,000, and the engine could be removed fairly quickly, even overnight.

“Typically people didn’t do that in private jets, the jets are in busy use,” but the practice has been increasing for the past five to eight years as the commercial incentive has made it worthwhile, Uberoi added.

Kevin Michaels, managing director of AeroDynamic Advisory, said there was “a well-known issue with small propulsion engine supply chain” which was delaying maintenance and repairs. Business aviation operators typically had small fleets and few stocked spare engines, he added.

“Turnaround times are averaging four to six months and sometimes eight to 10 months versus two to three months typical,” he said. “This adds to the demand for exchange engines.”

Pratt & Whitney, Rolls-Royce and Honeywell are the biggest makers of business jet engines.

Increased demand is worsening the situation. “The number of flights in business aviation is up more than 30 per cent compared to pre-Covid levels,” Michaels said. This had taken some aircraft manufacturers “by surprise” and “their supply chains are trying to catch up”.

Daniel Hall, senior valuation consultant at Cirium Ascend Consultancy, said business aviation was suffering from the same problem as commercial jets — supply chains, parts, facility capacity — but also “a dwindling supply of aviation maintenance professionals . . . a sector which young people are no longer entering”.

Strict transfer spending rules linked to income are forcing clubs to chase growth off the pitch

A global audience of hundreds of millions watched Real Madrid forward Kylian Mbappé spring past FC Barcelona’s defence and sweep the ball into the corner to open the scoring in last month’s El Clásico.

But any Madridistas inspired to mark Mbappé’s blistering start to the season by purchasing a replica shirt could be in for a bout of sticker shock.

A replica of the French forward’s Adidas-branded shirt, with his name on the back, retails for as much as £185 — or £200 for one with long sleeves and Champions League badges. 

The advent of the £200 shirt is seen by some industry executives as a byproduct of prevailing trends reshaping football finance.

Merchandise is an increasingly important growth driver for clubs, as the media rights market slows significantly — and with onerous new regulations linking transfer spending limits with revenues, generating growth off the pitch is crucial to stay competitive on it.

Revenues at the retail and licensing division of FC Barcelona — which charges fans £320 for a shirt with teenage star Lamine Yamal’s name in a limited edition font on the back — rose 55 per cent to €170mn last year.

Manchester United’s retail sales grew 16 per cent to £145mn last year, despite flat revenue overall. Meanwhile, Liverpool FC has built a retail network across Asia and the Middle East, opening its 22nd store last week in China’s Shenzhen.

Alongside the income from selling replica jerseys and other apparel and merchandise, top clubs can also earn tens of millions of pounds a year in sponsorship fees from the sportswear brands that produce their teams’ kits.

Those fees mean brands such as Nike and Adidas often lose money supplying the shirts, they reap the benefits of exposure gained by having their logo on a club’s kit.

“The reason you sponsor a club is to make money selling something else,” explains Gianluca Pavanello, chief executive of Italian sportswear brand Macron, which produces kits for teams including Premier League side Crystal Palace.

Pavanello said the cost of kit deals had soared over the past decade. Earlier this year Puma agreed a new 10-year deal to supply Manchester City kits worth about £100mn annually, up from £65mn previously.

When a new season rolls around most fans do not splurge on high-end replicas, choosing instead to buy so-called stadium edition replica shirts, which are made with more basic materials.

The average price of these shirts for Premier League clubs is £75, with children’s shirts ranging from £45 to £65.

Tom Beahon, co-founder of sportswear brand Castore, said a recent influx of investment into football clubs — including from institutional investors — had focused executives on “monetisation”.

“Kit deals are a part of this wider trend,” he said.

Sportswear executives say that fierce competition between kit makers is enabling top teams to drive up the value of their shirt deals, which results in brands raising prices for fans.

A shirt that retails for £70 will typically cost about £15-20 to manufacture, and be supplied to retailers at a wholesale price of £35, according to industry executives.

While clubs rake in royalties on shirts sold by third-party retailers, the margins for the sportswear brands are thin — typically between zero and 10 per cent, the executives added. Club executives stress their own retail businesses operate on tight margins too.

Adolfo Bara, head of football at sports marketing agency IMG, said only a small group of clubs had the global appeal to command high fees from brands. “The top clubs get a lot of money. The mid-tier get a little, and the lower tier get nothing,” he said.

Premium replica shirts cost more to produce but come with higher margins. The average price of a premium Premier League club shirt, with a player’s name printed on the back, is £132, according to data collected by the Financial Times. Bayern Munich, Paris Saint-Germain, Inter Milan and Manchester United all sell replica shirts priced at or more than £150.

The ability to sell deluxe shirts at higher prices is in part a reflection of an increasingly global fan base, especially for the English Premier League, which earns more from international broadcast rights than it does domestically.

Demand for shirts has also been boosted by football’s growing appeal in the world of fashion.

“We have something in this football business which we have never seen before — that football articles have become fashion,” said Adidas chief executive Bjørn Gulden at a recent industry conference. “People are starting to wear soccer shoes on the street — even with studs — which is kind of crazy.”

Clubs are trying to ride that wave. AC Milan released limited edition kits this year designed by Off-White, the fashion brand founded by the late Virgil Abloh, while Arsenal has previously produced collaborations with designer Stella McCartney.

Gulden said “the forecast for the next 12 months for soccer-inspired products is almost twice what it’s been”, adding that a lot of investment was being directed towards “selling football as a much bigger thing than only for the fan”.