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Billionaire Mark Cuban reads around 700 emails every day in his quest for near inbox zero—and prefers that to ‘boring’ meetings

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Email was once seen as the next frontier of communication that’s fast, accessible, and free to use. But now that inboxes are being flooded with hundreds of emails daily, many people find answering them to be an overwhelming chore. Not Mark Cuban. 

The billionaire entrepreneur spends all day dipping in and out of his inbox—he even likes sifting through hundreds of emails a day, more than in-person meetings. 

“I receive around 700 emails a day and use three phones (two Android and one iPhone) to manage everything,” Cuban wrote to Business Insider, ironically over email. I’d rather get 700 to 1,000 emails than sit in long, boring meetings.”

Cuban told Business Insider that his day is “boring,” emailing in spurts around his morning decaf coffee and cookie, shower, and taking his daughter to school. He then gets in a workout session at Life Time Fitness before taking a second shower and returning to his inbox.

“I read and respond to emails. I work out. I read and respond to emails. I do a couple Zooms. Then I read and respond to emails. Then I eat dinner. Then I read and respond to emails.”

People may expect the iconic ex-Shark Tank investor to have an assistant run his email for him—but he’s adamant on doing it all himself, reasoning it’ll only “slow things down.” But he isn’t simply hacking away at unread emails with a strategy; Cuban has forged a calculated plan throughout the years to whittle down his messages efficiently. 

Using his favorite communication method, Fortune reached out to Cuban for comment via email. 

Mark Cuban’s productive email set-up: AI replies, and no days off

Cuban is an email lover, preferring the line of communication over Slack, texting, and calling. The serial investor told Business Insider it’s his favorite because emails can be searched decades later, as he has messages going back to the 1990s. He began sending out emails in the 1980s on CompuServe—the company that acquired Cuban’s MicroSolutions business for $6 billion—and still has a bunch of those folders with his former employees’ addresses. 

The 66-year-old businessman also sees the communications format as more productive. Handling business dealings, employee communications, and press requests “asynchronously” from all across the country and world. Emailing makes it easier to get things done on his timeline—plus, everyone has it in their back pocket.

“There’s also really no limit to the type or format of the content. I can include it in emails or attach whatever,” Cuban wrote. “Everyone has email. In 2025, I don’t know anyone who doesn’t…It’s fast. Particularly now, with Google’s auto replies.”

But there’s also a method to Cuban’s emailing madness, other than simply checking his inbox and responding to emails repeatedly throughout the day. 

For 10% to 20% of his emails, Cuban said he uses one of Gmail’s recommended responses, saving him some time and brain power. He allows AI to write his autoreplies occasionally, or uses the tool as a “typing hack” to save time in writing long responses, but noted that he’s “typically going to add some flavor somewhere.” 

He also uses folders to keep his inbox organized, as he’s had too many emails over the years. 

While Cuban said that he never wants to hit inbox zero because he purposefully keeps some emails unread as reminders, he aims to keep these to under 20 messages. On occasion, he can get that number down to under 10.

It’s an ambitious goal that requires a constant clean-up of his inbox and means Cuban almost never takes a break from his email—only stepping away for a day or longer during an “extraordinary event,” like attending special events for his family. 

“I have a hard time disconnecting,” Cuban wrote. “It’s faster to just get it out of the way.”



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New contract shows Palantir working on tech platform for another federal agency that works with ICE

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Palantir, the artificial intelligence and data analytics company, has quietly started working on a tech platform for a federal immigration agency that has referred dozens of individuals to U.S. Immigration and Customs Enforcement for potential enforcement since September.

The U.S. Citizenship and Immigration Services agency—which handles services including citizenship applications, family immigration, adoptions, and work permits for non-citizens—started the contract with Palantir at the end of October, and is paying the data analytics company to implement “Phase 0” of a “vetting of wedding-based schemes,” or “VOWS” platform, according to the federal contract, which was posted to the U.S. government website and reviewed by Fortune.

The contract is small—less than $100,000—and details of what exactly the new platform entails are thin. The contract itself offers few details, apart from the general description of the platform (“vetting of wedding-based schemes”) and an estimate that the completion of the contract would be Dec. 9.Palantir declined to comment on the contract or nature of the work, and USCIS did not respond to requests for comment for this story.

But the contract is notable, nonetheless, as it marks the beginning of a new relationship between USCIS and Palantir, which has had longstanding contracts with ICE, another agency of the Department of Homeland Security, since at least 2011. The description of the contract suggests that the “VOWS” platform may very well be focused on marriage fraud and related to USCIS’ recent stated effort to drill down on duplicity in applications for marriage and family-based petitions, employment authorizations, and parole-related requests.

USCIS has been outspoken about its recent collaboration with ICE. Over nine days in September, USCIS announced that it worked with ICE and the Federal Bureau of Investigation to conduct what it called “Operation Twin Shield” in the Minneapolis-St. Paul area, where immigration officials investigated potential cases of fraud in immigration benefit applications the agency had received. The agency reported that its officers referred 42 cases to ICE over the period. In a statement published to the USCIS website shortly after the operation, USCIS director Joseph Edlow said his agency was “declaring an all-out war on immigration fraud” and that it would “relentlessly pursue everyone involved in undermining the integrity of our immigration system and laws.” 

“Under President Trump, we will leave no stone unturned,” he said.

Earlier this year, USCIS rolled out updates to its policy requirements for marriage-based green cards, which have included more details of relationship evidence and stricter interview requirements.

While Palantir has always been a controversial company—and one that tends to lean into that reputation no less—the new contract with USCIS is likely to lead to more public scrutiny. Backlash over Palantir’s contracts with ICE have intensified this year amid the Trump Administration’s crackdown on immigration and aggressive tactics used by ICE to detain immigrants that have gone viral on social media. Not to mention, Palantir inked a $30 million contract with ICE earlier this year to pilot a system that will track individuals who have elected to self-deport and help ICE with targeting and enforcement prioritization. There has been pushback from current and former employees of the company alike over contracts the company has with ICE and Israel.

In a recent interview at the New York Times DealBook Summit, Karp was asked on stage about Palantir’s work with ICE and later what Karp thought, from a moral standpoint, about families getting separated by ICE. “Of course I don’t like that, right? No one likes that. No American. This is the fairest, least bigoted, most open-minded culture in the world,” Karp said. But he said he cared about two issues politically: immigration and “re-establishing the deterrent capacity of America without being a colonialist neocon view. On those two issues, this president has performed.”



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CoreWeave CEO: Despite see-sawing stock, IPO was ‘incredibly successful’ amid challenges of tariff timing

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CoreWeave has been rocked by dizzying stock swings—with its stock currently trading 52% below its post-IPO high—and a frequent target of market commentators, but CEO Michael Intrator says the company’s move to the public markets has been “incredibly successful. And he takes the public’s mixed reaction in stride, given the novelty of CoreWeave’s “neocloud” business which competes with established cloud providers like Amazon AWS and Google Cloud.

“When you introduce new models, introduce a new way of doing business, disrupt what has been a static environment, it’s going to take some people some time,” Intrator said Tuesday at Fortune’s Brainstorm AI conference in San Francisco. But, he added, more people are beginning to understand the CoreWeave’s business model.

“We came out into one of the most challenging environments,” Intrator said of CoreWeave’s March IPO, which occurred very close to President Trump’s “Liberation Day” tariffs in April. “In spite of the incredible headwinds, we’re able to launch a successful IPO.”

CoreWeave, which priced its IPO at $40 per share, has experienced frequent severe up-and-down price swings in the eight months since its public market debut. At its closing price of $90.66 on Tuesday, the stock remains well above its IPO price.

As Fortune reported last month, CoreWeave’s rapid rise has been fueled by an aggressive, debt-heavy strategy to stand up data centers at unprecedented speed for AI customers. And for now, the bet is still paying off. In its third-quarter results released in November, the company said its revenue backlog nearly doubled in a single quarter—to $55.6 billion from $30 billion—reflecting long-term commitments from marquee clients including Meta, OpenAI, and French AI startup Poolside. Both earnings and revenue came in ahead of Wall Street expectations.

But the numbers were not all celebratory. CoreWeave disclosed a further increase in the debt it has taken on to finance its expansion, and it revised its full-year revenue outlook downward—suggesting that, even with historic demand in the pipeline.

With media headlines calling CoreWeave a “ticking time bomb,” with critics calling out insider stock sales, circular financing accusations and an overreliance on Nvidia, Intrator was asked whether he felt CoreWeave was misunderstood.

“Look, we built a company that is challenging one of the most stable businesses that exist—that cloud business, these three massive players,” he said, referring to AWS, Microsoft Azure and Google Cloud.  I feel like it’s incumbent on CoreWeave to introduce a new business model on how the cloud is going to be built and run. And that’s what we’re doing.” 

He repeatedly framed CoreWeave not as a GPU reseller or traditional data-center operator but as a company purpose-built from scratch to deliver high-performance, parallelized computing for AI workloads. That focus, he said, means designing proprietary software that orchestrates GPUs, building and colocating its own infrastructure, and moving “up the stack” through acquisitions such as Weights & Biases and OpenPipe.

Intrator also defended the company’s debt strategy, saying CoreWeave is effectively inventing a new financing model for AI infrastructure. He pointed to the company’s ability to repurpose power sources, rapidly deploy capacity, and finance large-scale clusters as proof it is solving problems incumbents never had to face.

“When I look back at history of the company, it took us a year with with a company investor like Fidelity, before they were like, ‘Oh, I get it,’” he said. “So look, we’ve been public for eight months. I couldn’t be prouder of what the company has accomplished.” 



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UK launches $965 million plan to get unemployed Gen Z into AI, hospitality, and engineering

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Some Gen Zers have been desperately trying to break into the job market, sending out thousands of applications, standing on Wall Street with a sign begging for a job, and waitressing at industry conferences to stealthily hand out their résumés. There’s also a growing camp of disillusioned young adults who have completely checked out of education, employment, and training: NEETs. Now, one country is trying to tackle the youth unemployment crisis with a nearly $1 billion plan.

Earlier this week, the U.K. government announced a $965 million investment to create more apprenticeships and place 50,000 young people into roles.

In partnership with regional leaders, the three-year initiative will equip young hopefuls with the skills training needed for local job opportunities. A $186 million chunk of the eye-watering funding will be used for a pilot in which mayors will connect the Gen Zers, especially NEETs, with nearby employers. And to ease the financial burden on some companies, the plan will also cover the full cost of apprenticeships for talent under 25 years old at small and medium-size businesses.

U.K. Gen Zers will have access to more apprenticeship roles in high-demand industries like hospitality and retail. But the government is still paying close attention to the critical skills young professionals need in the age of AI; new short courses in engineering, digital skills, and AI will also start rolling out starting April 2026. This apprenticeship push by the U.K. is all part of Prime Minister Keir Starmer’s master plan to get two-thirds of young people active in higher-level learning and apprenticeships, after a sharp drop in 2017.

“For too long, success has been measured by how many young people go to university. That narrow view has held back opportunity and created barriers we need to break,” Starmer said. “It’s time to change the way apprenticeships are viewed and to put them on an equal footing with university.”

Gen Zers are struggling with unemployment in the U.K. and abroad

The U.K.’s ambitious billion-dollar strategy is a welcome one, as youth unemployment rates have surged all around the world.

During the first half of last year, more than 16%, or almost 460,000 of 18- to 24-year-old U.K. men, were NEETs—the highest rate in over a decade. On a global scale, about a fifth of people between ages 15 and 24 in 2023 were NEET-status. And for those actively on the job-hunt, options are scarce. In 2023 and 2024, more than 1.2 million applications were submitted for just under 17,000 open graduate roles in the U.K., according to the Institute of Student Employers (ISE). 

It marked the highest number of applications per job ever recorded since the ISE started collecting data in 1991.

But across the pond, the situation doesn’t look any better: In 2022, there were roughly 4.3 million jobless Gen Z NEETs in the United States. And as of September this year, 9.4% of men and 9% of women ages 20 to 24 were jobless—more than two times higher than the general 4.4% unemployment rate, according to a FRED analysis of U.S. Bureau of Labor Statistics data. 

What’s more, U.S. officials caution the problem could get even worse. U.S. Sen. Mark Warner (D-Va.) warned that joblessness among recent college graduates could skyrocket to as high as 25% in the next two to three years, thanks to AI. 

Similar to the U.K. government, Warner proposed a job retraining program—and the issue goes beyond party lines. In partnership with Josh Hawley (R-Mo.), they introduced a bill that would require businesses and federal agencies to report any AI-related job disruption to the Department of Labor, with results to be published to the public. 



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