Jensen Huang said manufacturers will need a second factory to implement artificial intelligence into product offerings during a keynote address at Nvidia’s annual GTC conference. This is true in the automotive industry, said Huang, but it will also impact every industry across the board. While Nvidia GPUs remain a vital part of autonomous success in vehicles like Waymo and full self-driving plans at Tesla, Nvidia announced it had embarked on a an expanded partnership with General Motors.
During the Nvidia GTC keynote address, CEO Jensen Huang said manufacturers interested in implementing artificial intelligence into their product lines will soon need two factories, including one solely for AI.
“Every industry, every company that has factories will have two factories in the future,” Huang said during the address on Tuesday. “The factory for what they build and the factory for the mathematics; the factory for the AI.”
“Factories for cars, factories for AIs for cars. Factories for smart speakers, factories for AIs for the smart speakers.”
While Huang claimed that this new normal will span every industry that plans to incorporate AI, Huang also announced the chip maker’s latest move into the automotive industry includes a partnership with General Motors.
“We’re looking forward to building with GM AI in all three areas,” Huang said. “AI for manufacturing, so they can revolutionize the way they manufacture; AI for enterprise, so they can revolutionize the way they work to design cars and simulate cars, and then also AI for in the car.”
Nvidia builds three types of computers for the automotive industry: the training computer, the simulation computer, and the self-driving car function known as the robotics computer.
While the price tag of the deal is unknown, the Detroit-based car maker has used Nvidia’s GPUs before to train AI models, but this deal expands Nvidia’s footprint within the company.
Nvidia also works with Waymo and Tesla, supplying them chips for their self-driving car initiatives, and the chipmaker has partnerships with major car brands like Toyota, Mercedes-Benz, JLR, Volvo, and Hyundai, according to its website.
“We work with the car industry however the car industry would like us to work with them,” Huang said. Aside from the automotive news Huang’s keynote address was accompanied by a slew of announcements, including the chip maker’s timeline with Blackwell Ultra later this year, Vera Rubin in 2026, and Feynman in 2027.
More than a dozen billionaires have made major donations to colleges that host the nation’s elite basketball programs. Among them are Nike’s founder, a Walmart heiress, and the owner of the Dallas Cowboys. Several of the powerhouse teams bankrolled by billionaires are favored to win in the first March Madness round starting Thursday.
Considering the sports entertainment industry is estimated to be worth $2 trillion, it’s no surprise America’s ultrawealthy are eager to throw money at the nation’s storied college athletics programs.
There is a healthy list of more than a dozen billionaires who are bankrolling the schools in this year’s March Madness tournament. Some of these high-net-worth individuals are household names, while others have amassed their fortunes away from the spotlight.
Some of the most recognizable names making major donations to March Madness schools include Nike founder Phil Knight, Walmart heir Nancy Walton Laurie, and Dallas Cowboys owner Jerry Jones. This trio alone is worth a whopping $62.2 billion.
But there are more than a dozen other high-profile CEOs and executives who have invested big bucks into March Madness schools, either because it’s their alma mater or they have a geographic or family connection to the team. And it pays to have a strong basketball team. In fiscal 2023, the NCAA reported a record $1.29 billion in revenue—largely from the survive-and-advance March Madness tournament. Plus, the tournament is expected to award hundreds of millions of dollars to participating schools.
Fortune has compiled a sampling of billionaire donors to schools participating in the March Madness tournament this year. Note, this list is not exhaustive.
Phil Knight
Knight was once a college athlete himself—a runner on the University of Oregon’s track team in the 1950s while he earned his bachelor’s degree in accounting. The 87-year-old Nike founder has shared his $33.5 billion fortune with his alma mater, making several major donations over the years to the school’s academic and athletic programs. In all, his donations to Oregon have totaled more than $1 billion.
Knight made two separate $500 million donations to Oregon for science-related academics and in 2007 he and his wife announced a $100 million gift to found the UO Athletics Legacy Fund to help support all athletic programs at the university.
Oregon will face off with Liberty University on Friday at 10:10 p.m. EST and are favored to win.
Nancy Walton Laurie
Walton Laurie is an heiress of the family that created Walmart, the world’s largest retailer with more than $680 billion in fiscal 2025 revenue. Apart from the Walton family, her personal net worth is currently estimated at $12.5 billion.
Walton Laurie, the youngest daughter of Walmart cofounder Bud Walton, donated $25 million with her husband Bill Laurie in 2001 for a new basketball arena at the University of Missouri. The arena was originally named Paige Sports Arena after their daughter.
Mizzou plays Drake University at 7:35 p.m. EST on Thursday and are favored to win.
Jerry Jones
This University of Arkansas alum played for the Razorbacks football team in the 1960s and went on to become a successful oil businessman and the longtime owner of the Dallas Cowboys. The football dynasty is currently worth about $10 billion. Jones’ current estimated net worth is more than $16 billion.
In 2015, Jones donated $10.65 million to Arkansas’ athletic program, which he credited for his success in business.
“I would not be where I am today without those life lessons learned as a student-athlete at the University of Arkansas,” Jones said in a statement at the time.
Arkansas will play the Kansas Jayhawks on Thursday at 7:10 p.m. EST. Kansas is expected to beat Arkansas.
He also reportedly helped the University of Michigan fund a name, image, and likeness sports package to poach quarterback recruit Bryce Underwood from Louisiana State University to Michigan in November 2024.
While Ellison, 80, didn’t have a prior connection to the Wolverines, his 33-year-old wife, Jolin, is a Michigan alum.
The Wolverines play UC San Diego at 10 p.m. EST Thursday and are favored to win.
Daniel Gilbert
Gilbert cofounded mortgage behemoth Rocket Companies, which has a current market cap of nearly $30 billion. He’s worth an estimated $31.3 billion, making him the 57th-richest man in the world today. Gilbert also owns the NBA’s Cleveland Cavaliers.
He donated $15 million to Michigan State University in 2016 to be used toward the school’s basketball program. Both he and his wife, Jennifer, attended Michigan State, and said at the time the school had “played a large role in both of our lives.”
Michigan State faces off against Bryant University on Friday at 10 p.m. EST. The Michigan State Spartans are expected to win.
Sarah Blackburn was one of many who jumped in on the hype to get a full-body MRI. The test as a preventative screening tool has been gaining popularity in recent years. Many already healthy individuals take the scan hoping to be reassured that nothing is out of the ordinary. But Blackburn had quite the opposite experience.
“I had a full-body MRI just for fun. No symptoms whatsoever,” Blackburn says in a viral TikTok video about her experience earlier this year. “Now I am scheduled to have an organ removed in two weeks.”
Blackburn decided to take Prenuvo’s $2,500 full-body MRI in Houston—the fast-growing company has been expanding across the U.S. after launching in Vancouver in 2018. While the scan is not a replacement for recommended routine screenings like mammograms and pap smears at your doctor’s office, the company claims its 60-minute test is an early detection and preventive health tool, scanning for hundreds of conditions and “silent killers like aneurysms,” according to the site. But for many, it’s just more data to store away because often, there is nothing to act on, which was the case with me when, as part of a story, I underwent a Prenuvo full-body MRI last year.
“I was so excited to get my results. I don’t know what I thought we were going to find. Now, looking back, I was just so certain that this was going to give me peace of mind and that they were not going to find anything serious,” Blackburn says.
After the scan, people receive a report that outlines each organ of the body and any informational or important findings. “I was treating it like a spa day. I was so excited, and taking pictures in my little scrubs,” Blackburn shares on TikTok. “It did kind of feel like a spa day, until it didn’t.”
Four days after her scan around 8:30 p.m., Blackburn was alerted that her results were ready. She posted screenshots of the results in her video.
“I went into a full blown panic attack,” she says. Marked in red letters under the circulatory system category, the words “important finding” sat. She had a splenic artery aneurysm, according to the report.
The finding’s description noted that while “the majority of splenic artery aneurysms are incidental findings … if a splenic artery aneurysm ruptures, there is a one in three mortality rate.”
“It was a really dark and hard two months, where I was spiraling and freaking out and seeing a lot of doctors and pretty much treating my body like glass because I had no idea about this,” Blackburn shares. “I literally felt like a ticking time bomb was found inside my body.”
After months of deliberation, Blackburn decided to get her spleen removed, and tells People that she had, in fact, had a lesion on a 2020 ultrasound that she had never learned about. “Read your radiology reports,” Blackburn told People. “I did not read it. I just thought, ‘Okay, I’m going to get told everything that needs attention.’ But, that was not the case.” A follow-up CT scan after the Prenuvo results found two anyeurums in her splenic artery.
While in some cases the full-body scans can uncover an important finding, it can also cause undue anxiety about things that are still in the range of normal, Dr. Matthew Davenport, the William Martel Collegiate professor of radiology and service chief and vice chair in the Department of Radiology at Michigan Medicine, previously told Fortune.
“Knowing is not always to your advantage if what you learn doesn’t have a clear pathway. Sometimes when you learn a piece of information, you can be misdirected as to the importance of it,” he told Fortune. “You can learn something about yourself, but it can actually increase your uncertainty.”
Often, people may go down unnecessary rabbit holes and additional testing, he adds.
But for Blackburn, the scan caused her to act—and was, in fact, incredibly useful for her health. “I will be starting the journey of life without a spleen, which I think is going to be okay. It’s going to be better than having to live in fear of having a ruptured aneurism,” she says in the video.
Still, she says she has mixed feelings about recommending the scans to others, especially those who have severe health anxiety.
“I feel grateful,” Blackburn says. “I am happy that I know about this and had the chance to decide what I wanted to do moving forward, but … for the people who already have existing health anxiety I truly don’t know if I can recommend it.”
Across the board, Federal Reserve officials’ forecasts for the U.S. economy worsened in its latest report summarizing their expectations. They expected growth to slow and inflation to rise save for one official, who expected GDP growth would incline between 2.4% and 2.5%.
The Federal Reserve has an optimist in its midst.
When the central bank released its latest round of economic projections on Wednesday, one Fed official had a decidedly more positive outlook for U.S. growth compared to their colleagues.
The unnamed official was an outlier among the rest of the Federal Open Market Committee, projecting U.S. GDP growth of between 2.4% to 2.5% over the next two years. No other committee member expected it to even reach 2%.
The report, officially known as the Summary of Economic Projections, but colloquially referred to as the “dot plot,” is a quarterly roundup of what Federal Reserve officials expect from the U.S. economy over the next several years. Investors and economists carefully monitor the dot plots when they’re released to assess any changes to the Fed’s outlook on the economy.
The most recent dot plot saw consensus forecasts among the Fed’s leadership fall compared to those from its previous version in December. In that report, 13 committee members had expected more than 2% GDP growth from 2025 to 2027. Six expected growth between 2% and 2.1%, and another six expected it to be a tick higher at 2.2% to 2.3%. One official back in December also expected 2.5%.
Because the dot plot is anonymous it’s not possible to say whether the same committee member from December had the same positive outlook this time around.
In general, expectations moved in a relatively bleak direction. Growth forecasts fell, while inflation and unemployment projections rose. “Officials saw a clear shift in risks towards weaker growth and higher inflation as well,” Deutsche Bank wrote in an analyst note after the Fed’s meeting.
The Fed’s median forecast for GDP growth dropped from from 2.1% to 1.7%, according to the March dot plot. When addressing that change, Federal Reserve chair Jerome Powell termed it a “meaningful decline in growth,” during a press conference Wednesday.
Though Powell reiterated—as he has throughout the year—that the economy remains on solid footing overall. The declines in growth projections were mostly due to high levels of uncertainty, he added.
Most of that uncertainty stems from two policy proposals from President Donald Trump: his on-again, off-again tariff policy, and his pledge to enact a hardline immigration policy. Both policies could hurt the economy by igniting a trade war and reducing the labor supply, respectively. So far, the Trump Administration has made dizzying moves on tariffs, a critical part of its unconventional trade policy. After implementing sweeping tariffs on China, the world’s second largest economy,Trump also instituted and then subsequently reversed tariffs on Mexico and Canada. A new round of tariffs is set to go into effect April 2, which has also done little to offer investors the clarity they seek.
The lack of details about the nature of the tariff policies makes it difficult to assess their impact beyond the broad strokes. “There’s so many things we don’t know,” Powell said Wednesday. “But we kind of know there are going to be tariffs and they tend to bring growth down, they tend to bring inflation up in the first instance.”
Forecasts from investors also matched the Fed’s consensus—but not that of its lone optimist.
“We have lowered our 2025 GDP forecast given a surge in policy uncertainty and have raised our core inflation forecast amid upward pressure on goods prices and anticipated impacts from tariffs,” Vanguard wrote to investors in an email Thursday morning.
The broad uncertainty about what policies would be implemented and how they would impact the economy has been one of the deciding factors in the Fed’s decision to pause interest rate cuts so far this year. On Wednesday, Federal Reserve chair Jerome Powell reiterated that the central bank was in no rush to change interest rates. He said the economy was on solid enough footing that the Fed could afford to wait for more clarity about the White House’s future policies.
That reality is shifting the balance of power within the government.
“We are facing a regime change from a monetary policy-dominant world to a fiscal policy dominant one,” wrote William Blair equity researcher Richard De Chazal.
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