The Verge’s latest insights into the ideas shaping the future of work, finance, and innovation. Here you’ll find scoops, analysis, and reporting across some of the most influential companies in the world. Our coverage also includes interviews with innovators and policy makers at the frontiers of business and technology on Editor-in-Chief Nilay Patel’s Decoder; a behind-the-curtain look at Silicon Valley with Alex Heath’s Command Line; and exclusive reporting on Microsoft’s strategy in Tom Warren’s Notepad.
A Nevada judge has issued a temporary restraining order, saying the company can’t operate without first getting a gaming license. This is an escalation of a turf war between the states and the CFTC over who regulates prediction markets.
And the headline of the essay in which this happens asks if he should be burned at the stake. Father Paolo Benanti, the Papal AI advisor, doesn’t seem too pleased about Thiel’s Antichrist lectures, which Thiel has brazenly brought to Rome. “La Silicon Valley s’était lancée dans un coup d’État permanent.” I don’t think you need to know French to get the gist of that. one, but linked below is a summary of the essay. Make auto-da-fe great again??
[Universal Life Church Monastery]
To take on Netflix and YouTube, Paramount has to break the Warner Bros. curse.
Ellis says he was offered money to use a prediction market’s odds to write “a couple of stories each week,” and it was enough money that it was hard to turn down.“Taking money from a Polymarket to hype their gambling odds on a TV show is ethically the same as taking money from a network to write positive things about their programming.,” he wrote.
The CFTC insists it’s the sole authority on prediction markets — but can the agency police insider trading?
According to the Arizona attorney general, Kalshi is illegally operating a gambling business. It’s the first criminal case against the prediction market, which told Reuters that “States like Arizona want to individually regulate a nationwide financial exchange, and are trying every trick in the book to do it.” The case is part of an ongoing dispute between states and the CFTC about who has jurisdiction over Kalshi and similar companies.
How Yahoo escaped its Verizon death spiral and became profitable again.
Narayen told investors today that AI-first products “should be our next billion-dollar business,” and that he will leave the role he’s held since 2007 once the board names a successor. He’s overseen its Creative Cloud rollout, big bets on the future of AI, and its abandoned $20 billion attempt to acquire Figma.
Narayen:
The next era of creativity is being written right now — shaped by AI, by new workflows and by entirely new forms of expression. Adobe has never waited for the future to arrive. We’ve anticipated it. We’ve built it. And we’ve led it.
Fortune has a report on how Epstein got into Gates’ inner circle, and then leveraged a bridge player rumored to be Gates’ ex-girlfriend against him: “The richest man in the world is so cheap, his former bridge girl and toy, lives on a friends sofa,” Epstein wrote. Epstein wanted Gates to manage a “donor-advised fund” to reduce his taxes.
We just published our new Decoder interview with Chris Cocks, the head of Hasbro. I asked him directly about how he thinks about author J.K. Rowling’s politics and what it’s done to the Harry Potter fandom, following Hasbro’s major Harry Potter merchandising agreement announced just last month. Here’s what Chris had to say.
The Financial Times reports Palmer Luckey’s ModRetro is in talks to raise funds at a $1 billion valuation, which sounds like a lot for a retro gaming company.
The report also claims that Anduril, his other business selling drones and autonomous weapons to the military, happens to be at the same time in talks with investors for a new funding round valuing it at $60 billion. Interesting.
Fresh off another round of controversial bets, accusations of insider trading, and general profiting off human suffering, the two biggest prediction markets are seeking fresh funds. According to the Wall Street Journal, both companies are trying to lure investors at a valuation of $20 billion, nearly twice last year’s.
[The Wall Street Journal]
In 2017, while Reid Hoffman was publicly expressing outrage at pervasive sexual harassment in Silicon Valley, he was privately emailing the sex criminal. In 2018, they discussed Coinbase investments. There sure are a lot of these guys, huh? Wonder why.
“I am hesitant to foist being public on SpaceX, especially given the long term nature of our mission.”
The outlet will provide Kalshi with elections-related data — namely, vote counts and race calls — that will be available on the predictions market platform. The AP licenses its elections data to many sources (including other news outlets). What’s notable is that Kalshi and other predictions markets are increasingly blurring the line between actual news and a thing a guy online decided to put money on.
I suspect a bunch of Kalshi users are about to learn about the percentage of votes counted the hard way.
Jeremy Wacksman on affordability, AI in listings, and the future of real estate.
The $34.5 billion deal to combine two of the biggest US cable providers can now go ahead after appeasing Brendan Carr by pledging to drop DEI policies.
[Federal Communications Commission]
In an interview with Bloomberg, he explained why he backed out of the deal and said Netflix pursued Warner because it was a unique opportunity. “We definitely wanted this asset. We didn’t need it,” he said, praising its “incredible IP” and long history. But he was clear the plan was to just move on:
Is there a world in which you guys go after another studio in the next 6 to 12 months?
Unlikely. We are builders, not buyers. All that is still true.
So how are you going to use that $2.8 billion?
Just keep investing in the business.
A four-day clock for Netflix to respond just started, but here are the details of the offer that include a starting price of $31 per share and other assurances, like:
“…a $7 billion regulatory termination fee payable by PSKY in the event the transaction does not close due to regulatory matters, payment by PSKY of the $2.8 billion termination fee that WBD would be required to pay to Netflix to terminate the existing Netflix merger agreement, an obligation of Larry J. Ellison and an associated trust to contribute additional equity funding”
Tom Warren joins Decoder to discuss what Phil Spencer’s departure means for the future of Xbox.
Warner Bros. Discovery is telling shareholders it’s “continuing to engage” with Paramount after receiving its latest offer yesterday.
The new bid offers $31 per share, “a daily ticking fee equal to $0.25 per quarter beginning after September 30, 2026,” plus $7 billion from Paramount if regulators block the deal, and $2.8 billion to pay Netflix’s termination fee, among other details. If the board likes this bid better, it says Netflix will have four days to respond.
On Monday afternoon, Uber announced it’s buying the parking spot reservation app for an undisclosed amount, saying it plans to add parking benefits to Uber One and build in-app reservation into its main app, bringing car owners into Uber’s ecosystem.
The two also note the potential for fleet services (like parking robotaxis?), and vehicle charging.
The Netflix boss is apparently not too worried about Trump’s meddling in his company’s attempt to purchase Warner Bros. He told BBC Today that Netflix’s offer left Hollywood with five major studios instead of four, and Trump, “likes to do a lot of things on social media.”
However, on Monday afternoon, Bloomberg reported Paramount Skydance has submitted another competing offer, improving on its previous $30 per share bid.
“If your best idea for what AI can do in the workspace is ‘replace a hundred human beings with a server rack doing the same thing’, you’ve got no business calling yourself a techno-optimist.” Let’s gooooo!
[Back of Mind, Dan Davies]
