Jeremy here again, filling in for Andrew, who is at Fortune Brainstorm Tech in Deer Valley, Utah. The conference kicked off yesterday, and man, I’ve got serious FOMO.
Some highlights so far:
Lyft CEO David Risher told the audience that the company’s deal with California state lawmakers that paves the way for its drivers to unionize will actually save the company $200 million per year in insurance costs.
Jeffrey Katzenberg predicted that passing laws in the U.S. to protect children from online harms would be a slog, noting that it took 80 years to get seat belt laws passed in the U.S.
DoorDash CEO Tony Xu detailed why autonomous delivery—whether through self-driving cars, small robots, or drones—has still not happened despite the better of a decade spent on research and development.
But the big news in tech today, aside from what’s happening at Fortune Brainstorm Tech, of course, is anticipation around Apple’s big hardware reveal later today. iPhone fans—and Apple investors—have great expectations. Will Apple live up to them? Bea Nolan has a rundown below of what we might see unveiled. One thing analysts are cautioning we probably won’t see: a lot of those native AI features Apple has been promising iPhone users for more than a year now.
Always leave ‘em wanting more may be good showbiz advice, but it might not do Apple’s share price any favors.
—Jeremy Kahn
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New iPhone, who dis?
Apple says its hardware reveals later today will be “Awe dropping.”
Photo Illustration by Thomas Fuller/SOPA Images/LightRocket via Getty Images
Apple is set to unveil its latest iPhone in an “awe-dropping” event later today.
The company is hosting its annual product launch in Cupertino where it’s slated to launch major hardware refreshes across its lineup and debut the brand new iPhone 17 family. The company is also expected to launch updates to the iPad Pro, Vision Pro headset, Apple TV, and HomePod mini and reveal the iPhone 17 Air, set to be the thinnest iPhone to date.
Apple has been navigating a complex political environment, and some analysts expect the tech giant to raise prices on the Pro models as the company deals with a challenging tariff environment.
Analysts have also cautioned against expecting a major AI announcement during the event.
“Apple has already shared that a major Siri and Apple Intelligence revamp will only happen in 2026 and, timing-wise, it’s unlikely a major strategic investment in an AI firm would coincide with Apple’s keynote next week,” Forrester’s Thomas Husson noted.
Instead, he said Apple is more likely to spotlight its new A19 Pro chip, which features a more powerful Neural Engine for on-device AI tasks like conversational models, advanced photo editing, and personalized suggestions. A fresh AI partnership with Google’s Gemini could also surface, building on last year’s tie-up with ChatGPT.
The show kicks off at 10 a.m. PT.
—Beatrice Nolan
OpenAI is starting to panic about its corporate restructuring plans
OpenAI is scrambling to salvage its corporate restructuring after facing unexpected opposition, according to an exclusive Wall Street Journal report. The company is even considering the “nuclear option” of leaving California entirely, though a spokesperson denied any plans to relocate. The stakes couldn’t be higher: about $19 billion in funding—nearly half of what OpenAI raised in the past year—depends on investors getting traditional equity in a new for-profit structure.
Currently, OpenAI issues “profit participation units” instead of traditional stock, but investors want real equity. If the restructuring collapses, those investors can pull their money—a potentially catastrophic blow for a company planning to burn through $115 billion by 2029. OpenAI now faces a coalition of dozens of nonprofits, labor unions, and philanthropies opposing the move, plus a legal challenge from Elon Musk. Meta has been lobbying to block the deal too, the Journal reports.
Both California and Delaware attorneys general are investigating the restructuring, with concerns about recent suicides linked to ChatGPT interactions complicating approval. Regulators are questioning whether OpenAI has abandoned its original public benefit mission for revenue. The AGs could sue or demand hefty settlements as conditions for approval.
OpenAI executives didn’t anticipate this backlash, according to the Journal, and are now scrambling to save the deal, hiring advisers with ties to Governor Newsom while pledging $50 million to community organizations. —Jeremy Kahn
Meta suppressed child safety research, whistleblowers say
Two former and two current Meta employees have submitted documents to Congress alleging that Meta curtailed research into children’s safety, according to a report from The Washington Post.
The employees allege that after Frances Haugen’s 2021 leaks, Meta quietly limited how staff could study sensitive issues like youth well-being, race, and harassment. They allege Meta’s lawyers advised researchers to avoid collecting data on minors and even urged them to run sensitive studies under attorney-client privilege.
One researcher says he was ordered to delete an interview in which a teen described his 10-year-old brother being sexually propositioned in Horizon Worlds. Meta told news outlets the deletion was required under privacy law, citing rules that ban collecting information from children under 13 without verified parental consent.
Meta has denied the rest of the claims, saying the allegations were “stitched together. The company also said it had approved nearly 180 Reality Labs-related studies on social issues, including youth safety and well-being, since 2022.
A Senate subcommittee is set to review the whistleblowers’ claims this week.
—Beatrice Nolan
Anthropic’s $1.5B settlement hits a roadblock
The judge overseeing Anthropic’s proposed settlement with authors has blasted the agreement as “nowhere close to complete.”
Judge William Alsup said at a Monday hearing that he felt “misled” by the settlement proposal and had “an uneasy feeling about hangers on with all this money on the table.” He cited concerns about class lawyers striking a deal behind the scenes that will later be forced “down the throat of authors.”
The motion to approve the deal was denied, and a post-hearing order stated that approval is postponed until more information is provided. Attorneys will now have to return with a revised settlement proposal. As part of this, the judge directed the parties to create a form requiring all copyright owners to opt in to the settlement; if any owner opts out, that work will be excluded.
Judge Alsup set a September 15 deadline for submitting a final list of works, which currently stands at just under 500,000.
The $1.5 billion settlement had already been touted as one of the largest copyright deals in U.S. history, and experts say it could establish a benchmark for similar cases.
SpaceX is preparing to sell insider shares in a transaction that would value Elon Musk’s rocket and satellite maker at as much as $800 billion, people familiar with the matter said, reclaiming the title of the world’s most valuable private company.
The details, discussed by SpaceX’s board of directors on Thursday at its Starbase hub in Texas, could change based on interest from insider sellers and buyers or other factors, said some of the people, who asked not to be identified as the information isn’t public. SpaceX is also exploring a possible initial public offering as soon as late next year, one of the people said.
Another person briefed on the matter said that the price under discussion for the sale of some employees and investors’ shares is higher than $400 apiece, which would value SpaceX at between $750 billion and $800 billion. The company wouldn’t raise any funds though this planned sale, though a successful offering at such levels would catapult it past the record of $500 billion valuation achieved by OpenAI in October.
Elon Musk on Saturday denied that SpaceX is raising money at a $800 billion valuation without addressing Bloomberg’s reporting on the planned offering of insiders’ shares.
“SpaceX has been cash flow positive for many years and does periodic stock buybacks twice a year to provide liquidity for employees and investors,” Musk said in a post on his social media platform X.
The share sale price under discussion would be a substantial increase from the $212 a share set in July, when the company raised money and sold shares at a valuation of $400 billion. The Wall Street Journal and Financial Times earlier reported the $800 billion valuation target.
News of SpaceX’s valuation sent shares of EchoStar Corp., a satellite TV and wireless company, up as much as 18%. Last month, EchoStar had agreed to sell spectrum licenses to SpaceX for $2.6 billion, adding to an earlier agreement to sell about $17 billion in wireless spectrum to Musk’s company.
The world’s most prolific rocket launcher, SpaceX dominates the space industry with its Falcon 9 rocket that lifts satellites and people to orbit.
SpaceX is also the industry leader in providing internet services from low-Earth orbit through Starlink, a system of more than 9,000 satellites that is far ahead of competitors including Amazon.com Inc.’s Amazon Leo.
Elite Group
SpaceX is among an elite group of companies that have the ability to raise funds at $100 billion-plus valuations while delaying or denying they have any plan to go public.
An IPO of the company at an $800 billion value would vault SpaceX into another rarefied group — the 20 largest public companies, a few notches below Musk’s Tesla Inc.
If SpaceX sold 5% of the company at that valuation, it would have to sell $40 billion of stock — making it the biggest IPO of all time, well above Saudi Aramco’s $29 billion listing in 2019. The firm sold just 1.5% of the company in that offering, a much smaller slice than the majority of publicly traded firms make available.
A listing would also subject SpaceX to the volatility of being a public company, versus private firms whose valuations are closely guarded secrets. Space and defense company IPOs have had a mixed reception in 2025. Karman Holdings Inc.’s stock has nearly tripled since its debut, while Firefly Aerospace Inc. and Voyager Technologies Inc. have plunged by double-digit percentages since their debuts.
SpaceX executives have repeatedly floated the idea of spinning off SpaceX’s Starlink business into a separate, publicly traded company — a concept President Gwynne Shotwell first suggested in 2020.
However, Musk cast doubt on the prospect publicly over the years and Chief Financial Officer Bret Johnsen said in 2024 that a Starlink IPO would be something that would take place more likely “in the years to come.”
The Information, citing people familiar with the discussions, separately reported on Friday that SpaceX has told investors and financial institution representatives that it’s aiming for an IPO of the entire company in the second half of next year.
A so-called tender or secondary offering, through which employees and some early shareholders can sell shares, provides investors in closely held companies such as SpaceX a way to generate liquidity.
SpaceX is working to develop its new Starship vehicle, advertised as the most powerful rocket ever developed to loft huge numbers of Starlink satellites as well as carry cargo and people to moon and, eventually, Mars.
The National Park Service will offer free admission to U.S. residents on President Donald Trump’s birthday next year — which also happens to be Flag Day — but is eliminating the benefit for Martin Luther King Jr. Day and Juneteenth.
The new list of free admission days for Americans is the latest example of the Trump administration downplaying America’s civil rights history while also promoting the president’s image, name and legacy.
Last year, the list of free days included Martin Luther King Jr Day and Juneteenth — which is June 19 — but not June 14, Trump’s birthday.
The new free-admission policy takes effect Jan. 1 and was one of several changes announced by the Park Service late last month, including higher admission fees for international visitors.
The other days of free park admission in 2026 are Presidents Day, Memorial Day, Independence Day, Constitution Day, Veterans Day, President Theodore Roosevelt’s birthday (Oct. 27) and the anniversary of the creation of the Park Service (Aug. 25).
Eliminating Martin Luther King Jr. Day and Juneteenth, which commemorates the day in 1865 when the last enslaved Americans were emancipated, removes two of the nation’s most prominent civil rights holidays.
Some civil rights leaders voiced opposition to the change after news about it began spreading over the weekend.
“The raw & rank racism here stinks to high heaven,” Harvard Kennedy School professor Cornell William Brooks, a former president of the NAACP, wrote on social media about the new policy.
Kristen Brengel, a spokesperson for the National Parks Conservation Association, said that while presidential administrations have tweaked the free days in the past, the elimination of Martin Luther King Jr. Day is particularly concerning. For one, the day has become a popular day of service for community groups that use the free day to perform volunteer projects at parks.
That will now be much more expensive, said Brengel, whose organization is a nonprofit that advocates for the park system.
“Not only does it recognize an American hero, it’s also a day when people go into parks to clean them up,” Brengel said. “Martin Luther King Jr. deserves a day of recognition … For some reason, Black history has repeatedly been targeted by this administration, and it shouldn’t be.”
Some Democratic lawmakers also weighed in to object to the new policy.
“The President didn’t just add his own birthday to the list, he removed both of these holidays that mark Black Americans’ struggle for civil rights and freedom,” said Democratic Sen. Catherine Cortez Masto of Nevada. “Our country deserves better.”
A spokesperson for the National Park Service did not immediately respond to questions on Saturday seeking information about the reasons behind the changes.
JPMorgan Chase & Co. Chief Executive Officer Jamie Dimon called out slow bureaucracy in Europe in a warning that a “weak” continent poses a major economic risk to the US.
“Europe has a real problem,” Dimon said Saturday at the Reagan National Defense Forum. “They do some wonderful things on their safety nets. But they’ve driven business out, they’ve driven investment out, they’ve driven innovation out. It’s kind of coming back.”
While he praised some European leaders who he said were aware of the issues, he cautioned politics is “really hard.”
Dimon, leader of the biggest US bank, has long said that the risk of a fragmented Europe is among the major challenges facing the world. In his letter to shareholders released earlier this year, he said that Europe has “some serious issues to fix.”
On Saturday, he praised the creation of the euro and Europe’s push for peace. But he warned that a reduction in military efforts and challenges trying to reach agreement within the European Union are threatening the continent.
“If they fragment, then you can say that America first will not be around anymore,” Dimon said. “It will hurt us more than anybody else because they are a major ally in every single way, including common values, which are really important.”
He said the US should help.
“We need a long-term strategy to help them become strong,” Dimon said. “A weak Europe is bad for us.”
The administration of President Donald Trump issued a new national security strategy that directed US interests toward the Western Hemisphere and protection of the homeland while dismissing Europe as a continent headed toward “civilizational erasure.”
JPMorgan has been ramping up its push to spur more investments in the national defense sector. In October, the bank announced that it would funnel $1.5 trillion into industries that bolster US economic security and resiliency over the next 10 years — as much as $500 billion more than what it would’ve provided anyway.
Dimon said in the statement that it’s “painfully clear that the United States has allowed itself to become too reliant on unreliable sources of critical minerals, products and manufacturing.”
Investment banker Jay Horine oversees the effort, which Dimon called “100% commercial.” It will focus on four areas: supply chain and advanced manufacturing; defense and aerospace; energy independence and resilience; and frontier and strategic technologies.
The bank will also invest as much as $10 billion of its own capital to help certain companies expand, innovate or accelerate strategic manufacturing.
Separately on Saturday, Dimon praised Trump for finding ways to roll back bureaucracy in the government.
“There is no question that this administration is trying to bring an axe to some of the bureaucracy that held back America,” Dimon said. “That is a good thing and we can do it and still keep the world safe, for safe food and safe banks and all the stuff like that.”