Plus: The WNBA’s Most Valuable Teams 2025 |
Good morning,
The alliance between the world’s richest man and President Donald Trump broke down Thursday in typical reality show fashion: a messy blowup.Elon Musk and Trump traded barbs Thursday, after Musk amped up his criticism this week of Trump’s sweeping policy bill. Musk, who donated more than $250 million to help elect Trump, accused the president of “ingratitude,” suggesting he would have lost the election without him. Trump threatened to remove Musk’s government contracts, and Musk later backed a user’s suggestion that Trump be impeached. All the fighting isn’t helping Tesla, which was already struggling due to Musk’s polarizing political actions. The EV-maker’s stock plunged 14% by the end of the day, and the feud could create even bigger problems for Tesla if Trump turns up the heat on federal investigations into the company. Musk signaled he was open to a truce, and White House officials reportedly scheduled a call with him.
Let’s get into the headlines, |
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Hedge fund billionaire and GOP donor Ken Griffin voted for President Donald Trump in the 2024 election, but during the Forbes Iconoclast Summit Thursday, the Citadel founder slammed the president’s tariff policies and the GOP’s signature spending bill. Griffin, who Forbes estimates has a net worth of $44.3 billion, criticized the legislation for increasing the ballooning federal debt, and warned tariffs have “taken their toll already on our economy.”
Boeing has been making steady progress toward righting its commercial airliner business under new CEO Kelly Ortberg, and the spectacular collapse of the relationship between Trump and Elon Musk could provide a lift for its struggling space division. The blowup could have a payoff for Boeing in three areas: its struggling Starliner crew capsule program; the embattled Artemis moon landing program, for which Boeing produces giant rockets; and potentially United Launch Alliance, its rocket joint venture with Lockheed Martin. |
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|  | | The Indiana Fever's Caitlin Clark Michael Conroy/Associated Press |
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| Optimism for the WNBA’s future is much bigger than the hype surrounding Indiana Fever superstar Caitlin Clark. During the 2024 regular season, league-wide attendance reached 2.4 million—up 48% year-over-year—and more than 54 million unique viewers tuned in to national telecasts. Still, beyond a handful of transactions involving tiny slivers of teams, there hasn’t been much data to suggest how the momentum is translating to franchise valuations. That is about to change. The New York Liberty recently sold a significant minority share—a percentage in the “mid-teens,” according to a person with knowledge of the deal—at a $450 million valuation, and the Connecticut Sun are currently on the market, seeking either a new limited partner or a control sale. In the meantime, Forbes’ is publishing its first-ever ranking of the WNBA’s most valuable teams, with the Liberty on top at $400 million—a price that nods to the recent stake sale but also acknowledges that any majority deal that separated the team from its current ownership would likely come at a discount because the franchise would no longer control its home arena, Brooklyn’s Barclays Center. The Atlanta Dream set the league’s floor at $190 million, and the average for the WNBA’s existing 12 teams sits at $272 million. That value is 14.4 times average revenue—far exceeding the multiple in the National Women’s Soccer League (8.8x) as well as in men’s leagues including the NBA (11.7x), MLS (9.3x) and the NFL (9x). But these prices don’t reflect the WNBA as it exists today. Rather, they are bets on the potential of the league, and an expectation that it is reaching a tipping point. |
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| “The WNBA will face a significant hurdle this off-season with the negotiation of a new collective bargaining agreement as players seek major raises, but investors are focused on a bright future that starts with the league’s new national media deals, which are set to pay roughly $200 million a year starting in 2026,” says Forbes assistant managing editor Brett Knight. “Meanwhile, the Golden State Valkyries, three weeks into their inaugural season, have booked jaw-dropping sponsorship and ticket sales that outpace some clubs in MLS, a more established men’s league. The financial reality of women’s basketball is changing incredibly quickly.” |
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| Trump’s tariffs are intended to bring jobs back to the U.S. and benefit small businesses, but a new report from the National Federation of Independent Business shows they’ve resulted in uncertainty and decelerated hiring. Just 34% of small businesses said they had unfilled job openings, a decline from nearly 50% two years ago, and in a concerning sign, only 12% expect to create new jobs in the next three months. |
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| WEALTH + ENTREPRENEURSHIP |
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| In the first-ever stablecoin IPO, Circle debuted Thursday on the New York Stock Exchange, leading shares to surge as much as 235% and making its CEO Jeremy Allaire a billionaire. It’s arguably crypto’s most significant public market event since Coinbase went public in 2021, as stablecoins are increasingly drawing the attention of financial giants and tech firms. |
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| Chris Wade, the founder of cyber startup Corellium, received a pardon from President Donald Trump, and now he’s selling his company for $200 million to Cellebrite, one of the largest providers of phone forensics tools. The merger promises to give law enforcement unprecedented tooling for extracting data from seized electronics, and Wade, who avoided prison time by doing undercover work for the Department of Justice, will become Cellebrite’s chief technology officer. |
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President Donald Trump has few qualms about using power to turn a profit, writes Forbes’ Dan Alexander, and when it comes to crypto, he’s cashing in. He had already made about $1 billion, according to Forbes’ calculations, and there are hundreds of millions—perhaps even billions—more to come.
A federal judge temporarily blocked President Donald Trump’s order to ban the entry of Harvard’s international students into the U.S., the latest legal blow to the president’s bid to crack down on the university's ability to enroll students from abroad. In a filing, Harvard argued that the presidential proclamation was not intended to protect the “interests of the United States” but rather an effort by Trump to “pursue a government vendetta” against the Ivy League school. There were more than 6,700 international students enrolled at Harvard during the 2024-25 academic year, per the university. |
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Larry Jackson, the 44-year-old CEO of $400 million music startup Gamma, is releasing Mariah Carey’s 16th album, and Carey is counting on him to help break the Beatles’ record of No. 1 hits. The superstar singer’s new single, “Type Dangerous,” is out today, and if it reaches No. 1, the Queen of Christmas would share the throne with the Fab Four—and could surpass them. “She’s been a part of the machine for her entire career,” Jackson says. “It’s about unfinished business and it’s about independence.”
President Donald Trump’s travel ban makes an exception for international athletes traveling to the U.S. for sporting events, but it’s at the discretion of Secretary of State Marco Rubio, who has yet to provide a full list of events that qualify. Sports tourism generated $114.4 billion in the U.S. in 2024, and there are several major events set to take place in the near future, including this summer’s FIFA Club World Cup and the 2028 Summer Olympics in Los Angeles. |
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| President Donald Trump said on Truth Social that he spoke with Chinese President Xi Jinping Thursday, and while he offered few details, he described the conversation as “very good.” The president has been angling for a call with Xi for months, after sharply reducing the tariff rate he imposed on China earlier this year, but has also taken other actions targeting the country—including revoking visas for Chinese students in the U.S. |
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$10 billion | The amount Mexico’s government asked the companies to pay in damages for allegedly “deliberately aid[ing] and abett[ing] the unlawful sale of firearms” to Mexico’s drug cartels | |
| 2005 | The year the Protection of Lawful Commerce in Arms Act was passed, which protected firearms companies from being sued for criminal activities that involve their products | |
| ‘[T]he manufacturers do not directly supply any dealers,’ | Justice Elena Kagan wrote in the court’s opinion on the limits of the Mexican government’s case |
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| Small businesses are the backbone of the U.S. economy, but starting and running one isn’t easy. Forbes’ new Small Business Toolkit aims to help you beat the odds, from filing and paying taxes, managing workers and benefits, acquiring small business loans and more. Our aim is to help you navigate the uncertainty of the Trump era, including information about tariffs and the shifting lending rules at the Small Business Administration. |
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