Plus: Inside Amazon’s Aggressive Push To Get Cops Using AI Surveillance |
Good morning,
As cofounder of Spotify, Daniel Ek helped revive a flatlining music industry. Now, he’s going out on a high note.Ek, who has been Spotify’s CEO for nearly two decades, will transition to executive chair, while co-presidents Gustav Söderström and Alex Norström will serve as co-chief executives starting next year. The announcement on Tuesday led shares to decline 4%—but it has had plenty of success on the market lately, with shares surging 89% over the last year. Ek’s fortune has grown, too. He holds roughly 9% of Spotify’s shares, and Forbes estimates he’s now worth $10.3 billion.
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| The first government shutdown since 2019 began after midnight on Wednesday, a move that will disrupt federal services and cause government workers to be furloughed, after Congress failed to reach a last-minute funding agreement. The Congressional Budget Office said 750,000 workers could be furloughed daily in a shutdown, in a letter Tuesday to Sen. Joni Ernst, R-Iowa, while essential government employees will be asked to continue working without pay. The IRS says there will be no changes to its operations for the first five days of the shutdown, thanks to a reallocation of Inflation Reduction Act funds. President Donald Trump said Harvard University will pay $500 million to settle its dispute with the federal government, which is trying to freeze $2.2 billion in federal funds for the school over antisemitism allegations. The potential settlement comes weeks after the Trump administration’s funding freeze against Harvard was ruled unconstitutional by District Judge Allison Burroughs. |
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 | | Illustration by Macy Sinreich for Forbes; images by Travel_Motion, stevanovicigor, da-kuk via Getty Images |
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| Amazon has been peddling AI drone surveillance, gun detection and real-time crime center technology to local law enforcement agencies, public records reveal. Emails with police agencies up and down the West Coast show Amazon’s law enforcement and school safety team, led by a former police officer from Washington state, is aggressively courting new customers. At closed-door conferences and parties with local and federal law enforcement, Amazon has been promoting its own surveillance offerings and an expanding array of partner tools that run on its vast cloud infrastructure. They include car tracking from $7.5 billion startup Flock Safety and AI for piecing together massive datasets with billions of records on U.S. citizens from Lucidus Tech, now owned by Flock. Amazon Web Services spokesperson Aisha Johnson said the emails obtained by Forbes were just business as usual, noting the company is intent on providing public sector customers “with tools to protect the rights of citizens and comply with applicable laws.” |
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| It’s a model that’s working well for Amazon and its partners as they seek to grab a slice of the $11 billion police tech market. But privacy activists have long worried about Amazon’s work with law enforcement. “It’s dismaying to see one of the largest and most powerful companies pushing authoritarian surveillance tech in this way,” Jay Stanley, senior policy analyst at the ACLU, told Forbes. |
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| AI cloud computing firm CoreWeave will provide $14.2 billion worth of computing power to Meta, the latest multi-billion dollar AI deal. The Facebook owner said in April that it plans to double its spending on AI, though some investors are concerned about whether the AI boom is a bubble. Actors Julia Louis-Dreyfus and Jane Fonda and other activists are protesting against efforts to restart pumping from an oilfield off California’s Santa Barbara coast, the site of a big spill a decade ago. But numerous studies have found that pumping oil actually reduces natural seepage, and golf legend Phil Mickelson has said drilling would help clean up Santa Barbara beaches. |
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| Tech giants like Nvidia, Uber, Anthropic and Adobe are tapping the tools from startup Grafana Labs to monitor their systems for threats. The startup said Tuesday it hit the $400 million annualized revenue mark and completed a tender offer of up to $150 million. It’s now valued at $6 billion, as the need for what’s known as observability services has ballooned in the AI era. Carina Hong dropped out of Stanford University to start Axiom Math, an early-stage startup that aims to build a so-called “AI mathematician” that is capable of solving complex mathematical questions. The firm, valued at $300 million, has raised $64 million in seed funding, and recruited top talent from Meta. “Math is the perfect sandbox for building superintelligence,” Hong told Forbes. Startup Legora, which develops AI software to help lawyers save time on repetitive tasks, is in talks to raise funding at a $1.8 billion valuation. Just four months after the firm’s Series B, it is raising between $100 million to $150 million as the legal AI market heats up. |
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| President Donald Trump announced a direct-to-consumer website called “TrumpRx” offering prescription drugs at a discount from Pfizer, although the president provided few details on how the site would work. A Pfizer spokesperson told Forbes the company will be offering mostly primary care and a few specialty drugs on the site. |
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| Bitcoin has soared nearly 1,000% over five years, while gold merely doubled—but this year, the metal has outperformed the digital currency. Though gold’s edge could soon fade, in many ways, their appeal overlaps: they’re scarce, immune to central bank printing presses and attractive to investors who believe the days of fiat currency (money issued by governments) are numbered. |
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| Americans are increasingly pessimistic about the economy, according to survey results released Tuesday by the Conference Board. It’s the latest data showing consumers’ concerns about a declining job market and rising prices: |
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94.2 | The reading for the Conference Board’s confidence index, a measurement of consumers’ views on the economy, in September, the lowest since April | |
| About 26.9% | The share of consumers who said jobs were “plentiful,” the lowest level since February 2021 | |
| 7.2 million | The rise in available job openings in August, more than expected, the Bureau of Labor Statistics reported |
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| It’s normal to increase your quality of life as you earn more, but make sure not to fall into “lifestyle creep,” which can leave you with less money to invest in your future. Be intentional about spending money: Don’t lock into unsustainable fixed costs, or fall into a “keeping up with the Jones mentality.” And if your spending does go up, aim to increase your savings rate alongside it. |
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| GAMES | | QUIZ | | Major League Baseball reported its third straight year of attendance increases. Which of the following teams saw the largest year-over-year surge? | | A. | Philadelphia Phillies | | B. | |
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