Category: 3. Business

Bitcoin’s rally to an all-time high Thursday was short lived, as disappointing economic data and limited government interest threw cold water on the white-hot cryptocurrency.

The price of bitcoin reached a record of $124,436 early in the day following a 2.6% gain Wednesday, but by late afternoon it was down more than 4%. The Trump Administration has fueled optimism for the crypto market, as the president has indicated he would reduce regulation and establish a digital asset stockpile similar to the U.S. gold reserves.

Nonetheless, the U.S. does not plan to buy more crypto for its bitcoin reserve, which holds between $15 billion and $20 billion in assets, Treasury Secretary Scott Bessent said Thursday.

FIRST UP

Intel had a years-long downturn as it failed to keep up with its competitors in the AI race.

NurPhoto via Getty Images

Intel shares skyrocketed shortly before the close of trading Thursday as Bloomberg reported the Trump Administration may take a stake in the chipmaker to help the struggling firm strengthen its domestic manufacturing. Trump recently met with CEO Lip-Bu Tan despite calling for his ouster last week, and the company’s stock ended the day with a more than 7% gain, its highest level since March.

Earlier this week, Paramount signed a blockbuster seven-year deal for the streaming rights to UFC for a staggering $7.7 billion. Considering how Paramount has struggled with profitability for years, it’s reasonable to wonder how the newly merged company plans to recoup that value. But new owner and CEO David Ellison—son of world’s second richest person, Oracle founder Larry Ellison—has made it clear his intention is to reverse that losing trend. And with the addition of UFC, suddenly Paramount is a real player in the sports media landscape and streaming wars.

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BUSINESS + FINANCE

In a shift from Tuesday’s positive inflation news, wholesale prices increased more than expected in July, according to the Bureau of Labor Statistics. The price of services drove an increase of 0.9% when only 0.2% had been anticipated, and stocks ended the day mostly flat after initially slipping on the news.

WEALTH + ENTREPRENEURSHIP

Nike co-founder Phil Knight

Getty Images

Nike cofounder Phil Knight became the latest billionaire to give a record-setting amount to an educational institution, as he and his wife Penny gifted $2 billion to the Oregon Health & Science University’s Knight Cancer Institute. The largest-ever university donation will roughly double the cancer center’s size, according to the Wall Street Journal, and allow the institute to “transform the way we care for patients while continuing to develop innovative treatments,” says its former CEO Dr. Brian Druker.

SPORTS + ENTERTAINMENT

As 12-time NBA all-star Chris Paul plans for his final season, he’s following in the footsteps of basketball stars like Michael Jordan and Magic Johnson by launching a new business venture, The Chris Paul Collective. The entity will house all of his businesses and investments, including his minor equity stake in the most valuable franchise in the NWSL, Angel City FC, which Forbes values at $280 million.

TRENDS + EXPLAINERS

Members of the National Guard outside Union Station in Washington, DC.

Getty Images

President Donald Trump has indicated he would replicate his controversial decision to deploy the National Guard and take control of city police in Washington D.C. in other Democrat-led cities, but in reality, he would face far more legal limitations. The president does not have power to influence local police forces in other cities, though Trump would potentially be able to deploy the military through invoking the Insurrection Act. And a lawsuit over Trump’s use of the National Guard in Los Angeles could determine how much power local and state officials have to challenge his moves.

As the Trump administration moves to reduce federal regulations, states run by Democrats are rushing to fill the gap. The latest example came earlier this week, when New York Attorney General Letitia James announced a lawsuit against the company behind popular money transfer app Zelle, alleging it let fraud proliferate on Zelle for several years and didn’t do enough to stop it, costing consumers “hundreds of millions of dollars.”

DAILY COVER STORY

Meet The Mastermind Behind The $1.9 Billion Poppi Deal

Rohan Oza played a key role in the Poppi deal

Ryan West for Forbes

Shark Tank veteran Rohan Oza has been searching for the perfect soft drink for the past 20 years.

Oza, cofounder of Los Angeles-based private equity firm Cavu Consumer Partners, was the chairman of prebiotic soda Poppi and its single largest individual shareholder when Pepsi acquired it in May for $1.9 billion. It’s Oza’s biggest exit yet, but it’s far from his first, having played a key role in some of the largest beverage acquisitions of the past two decades, including Vitaminwater and Smartwater.

On a 2018 episode of ABC’s Shark Tank, Oza took a 25% stake in the Austin, Texas-based beverage brand founded by husband-and-wife entrepreneurs Stephen and Allison Ellsworth for $400,000.

Then Oza changed everything. He rebranded Mother Beverage, as the Ellsworths had named it, as Poppi. The liquid went from an apple cider vinegar drink to a prebiotic soda, and the packaging changed from glass to cans. The bran­ding morphed from farmer’s-market artisanal to bright, Millennial-friendly colors.

Leading up to Pepsi’s acquisition at a 3.3-times-revenue multiple, Forbes estimates that Oza owned about 21% of Poppi and Cavu owned another 37%. That netted him some $250 million (post-tax) directly from the sale and another roughly $50 million through Cavu. Those proceeds—in addition to exits reinvested and his 50% stake in Cavu—add up to an estimated net worth of roughly $500 million.

Such success, says Oza, an immigrant from Zambia who came to the U.S. in 1995, represents his own American Dream. “There’s no consumer audience in the world that is willing to embrace new brands as rapidly as Americans are,” Oza says. “I came here with a dream. It’s full circle.”

WHY IT MATTERS

“The quest for the next hit drink is a tale as old as time, and when it comes to modernizing soda today as demand for healthier options soars, Rohan Oza is the one to watch,” says Forbes staff writer Chloe Sorvino.

MORE How Surfside Became The Fastest-Growing Alcohol Brand In America

FACTS + COMMENTS

Taylor Swift announced details about her upcoming album The Life of a Showgirl on Wednesday, drawing over a million viewers to the New Heights podcast on YouTube where the billionaire pop star discussed the record. The show is co-hosted by her boyfriend, Kansas City Chiefs tight end Travis Kelce, and his brother, former Philadelphia Eagles center Jason Kelce:

1.2 million: The number of concurrent viewers the podcast garnered

12: The number of songs on the album, including a title track featuring fellow pop star Sabrina Carpenter

Over 6 million: How many copies sold of Swift’s last album, The Tortured Poets Department, one of her most commercially successful records

STRATEGY + SUCCESS

Using AI tools like ChatGPT at work can be a great way to boost productivity, but it also comes with risks that are critical for employees to understand. Start by looking into your company’s AI policy, and if one doesn’t exist, ask for guidance. Be sure to double-check any AI-generated work and add your personal voice or insights so you don’t sound too generic. And never enter your company’s proprietary information into public AI tools.

VIDEO

QUIZ

The IRS rolled out technology designed to help taxpayers at its Taxpayer Assistance Centers back in 2011, but a recent audit found only 55% were operational. What kind of technology was it?

A. An AI tax chatbot

B. A self-service kiosk

C. iPads with frequently asked questions

D. Robots to issue taxpayer ID numbers

Check your answer.

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Thanks for reading! This edition of Forbes Daily was edited by Sarah Whitmire and Chris Dobstaff.

A quick left hook, a front kick to the chest, a few criss-cross jabs, and the crowd cheers. But it is not kickboxing prowess that concludes the match. It is an attempted roundhouse kick that squarely misses its target, sending the kickboxer from a top university team tumbling to the floor.

While traditional kickboxing comes with the risk of blood, sweat and serious head injuries, the competitors in Friday’s match at the inaugural World Humanoid Robot Games in Beijing faced a different set of challenges. Balance, battery life and a sense of philosophical purpose being among them.

The kickboxers, pint-sized humanoid robots entered by teams from leading Chinese technological universities, are part of a jamboree of humanoid events taking place at China’s latest technology event. After spectators in the 12,000-seater National Speed Skating Oval, built for the 2022 Winter Olympics, stood for the Chinese national anthem on Friday morning, the government-backed games began.

“I came here out of curiosity,” said Hong Yun, a 58-year-old retired engineer, sat in the front row. Seeing the robots race was “much more exciting than seeing real humans”, Hong added.

The games put on display China’s prowess in humanoid robotics, a technological field that has been pushed to the forefront of the country’s artificial intelligence industry. The hype machine is in full swing.

As well as kickboxing, humanoids participated in athletics, football and dance competitions. One robot had to drop out of the 1500-metre because its head flew off partway round the course. “Keeping [the head] balanced while in movement is the biggest challenge for us,” said Wang Ziyi, a 19-year-old student from Beijing Union University, who was part of the team that entered the robot.

Ever since a troupe of humanoid dancing robots took the stage at the 2025 Spring Festival Gala, a televised lunar new year’s celebration viewed nearly 17bn times online, Beijing has been enthusiastically pushing the adoption of “embodied AI” – an industry that was singled out in this year’s government work report in March.

The social-media-friendly events reflect a more serious geopolitical reality: an intensifying US-China technological competition that could reshape the frontiers of AI.

The technology has become a lightning rod for relations between the two countries. And while the US still has the lead on frontier research, owing in part to Washington’s restrictions on the export of cutting-edge chips to China, Beijing is going all-in on real life applications, such as robotics.

Several cities, including Beijing and Shanghai, have established 10bn yuan (£1bn) robotics industry funds. In January, the state-owned Bank of China announced plans for a 1tn yuan of financial support to the AI industry over the next five years.

“If there is an area where [Beijing] thinks that China is ahead, or could be positioned as a world leader, then they really want to draw attention to that area,” said Dr Kyle Chan, a researcher at Princeton University.

There is something strangely ominous about seeing jerky, human-like robots with two arms, two legs, and blank heads being dragged out of the ring to be recharged by their human handlers.

When it comes to humanoids, the Chinese industry has many advantages. Although US companies such as Tesla and Boston Dynamics are still seen as the overall market leaders, several Chinese firms such as UBTech and Unitree Robotics – which supplied the boxing robots in Friday’s games – are catching up.

Tesla relies on China for many of the parts needed to build the company’s physical humanoids. The US investment bank Morgan Stanley estimates that China-based supply chains produce robots at a third of the cost of non-China suppliers. “It appears to be very difficult to entirely decouple from China in this space,” wrote Sheng Zhong, the bank’s head of China industrials research, in a recent note.

As well as generating positive publicity on social media, China views humanoids as being part of the solution to the problems created by the country’s ageing population and shrinking workforce. A recent article in People’s Daily, a mouthpiece of the Chinese Communist party, said robots could offer practical and emotional support for older people. “The vision of robot-assisted elderly care is not far away,” it said. Humanoid robots could also take the place of employees on factory lines as China tries to retrain and redeploy its workforce into more hi-tech jobs.

But for all the hype, there is a big gap between humanoids stumbling over footballs and reliably handling daily tasks. Safely interacting with vulnerable humans would be another leap. “The home is probably one of the last places you’ll ever find a humanoid robot because of safety,” said Chan. “My general view on the whole humanoid explosion … is honestly a bit of scepticism.”

Two of the biggest barriers to the technology being useful outside of PR stunts are the complexity of the human-built environment and the hands needed to navigate it.

While other forms of AI, such as large language models, can be trained using reams of digital data, there are much smaller datasets available for training an algorithm on how to walk through crowded restaurants or up and down flights of stairs. Although China’s efforts to get robots out into the real world can help companies to harvest more data, it is still a big bottleneck in the industry, Chan said.

Dr Jonathan Aitken, a robotics teacher at the University of Sheffield, agreed. “The state of AI is nowhere near seeing humanoids operating out of uncontrolled environments,” he said.

And while robots jumping and kicking looks impressive, mundane daily tasks such as handling a kitchen knife or folding laundry requires dexterous hands, a skill technology companies have yet to crack. A human hand has about 27 “degrees of freedom” – ie, independent movements through space. Tesla’s Optimus humanoid, one of the most advanced models on the market, has 22.

Still, China has beat the odds before when it comes to turbocharged advances. Just 10 years ago, the country exported fewer than 375,00 cars a year. Now China is the world’s biggest automobile supplier, shipping nearly 6m vehicles annually. The European Union has increased tariffs on Chinese-built electric vehicles in an attempt to stem the flow.

In China, the political and public will is firmly behind the humanoids. Zhan Guangtao came to the humanoid games with her two daughters on Friday, after her elder child’s school gave them free tickets. “It’s good to have my children in touch with the world’s most advanced robotics,” Zhan said. “Exposing them to hi-tech will broaden their horizons.”

Additional research by Lillian Yang

The Pakistani Rupee (PKR) appreciated by 16 paisa against the US Dollar (USD) on Friday in the interbank trading and closed at Rs. 282.06 against the previous day’s closing of Rs. 282.22.

The price of the Euro decreased by Rs. 0.87 to close at Rs. 329.58 against the last day’s closing of Rs. 330.45, according to the State Bank of Pakistan (SBP).

The Japanese yen went up by 01 paisa and closed at Rs. 1.92, while the exchange rate of the British Pound witnessed an increase of 07 paisa to close at Rs. 382.36 against the last day’s closing of Rs. 382.29.

The exchange rates of the Emirates Dirham and the Saudi Riyal decreased by 04 and 03 paisa and closed at Rs. 76.79 and Rs. 75.17, respectively.

Sold-out event will draw 8,000 attendees, 110 partners and 3,000+ leading organizations from 65 countries, cementing Fal.Con as the industry’s most influential cybersecurity conference

AUSTIN, Texas – August 15, 2025 – CrowdStrike (NASDAQ: CRWD) today announced record-breaking momentum for its flagship conference Fal.Con, which has sold out faster than ever and is poised to deliver unprecedented growth across every key metric. From September 15 – 18, more than 8,000 attendees from over 65 countries and 25 industries will converge at the MGM Grand in Las Vegas. The event will host a record 110 partner sponsors and more than 3,000 leading organizations, positioning Fal.Con as the global stage for cybersecurity in the Agentic AI era.

“Fal.Con has become the premier industry conference for cybersecurity,” said Jennifer Johnson, chief marketing officer at CrowdStrike. “We’re not hosting a summit, we’re leading a movement. The world’s most influential leaders come to Fal.Con to advance cybersecurity into the AI era, build alliances, and harness the power of the Falcon platform to secure the organizations, economies and technologies shaping our future.”

Now in its ninth year, Fal.Con will unite the world’s top defenders, executives, and innovators to accelerate breakthroughs, forge industry-shaping partnerships, and set the strategic cybersecurity agenda for the year ahead. Under the 2025 theme “Leading Cybersecurity into the Agentic AI Era,” attendees will experience visionary keynotes from CrowdStrike executives. As part of the 300+ session catalog, the program will feature 150+ customer and partner-led sessions from global leaders such as Charter Communications, Land O’Lakes, Mars Inc., Northwestern Mutual, St. Jude Children’s Research Hospital, University of Michigan, Vail Resorts, and WeightWatchers.

Fal.Con One, the conference’s exclusive CxO program, will also convene 200+ leaders from the world’s most innovative organizations for high-impact, closed-door discussions on the future of cybersecurity, the transformative role of AI, and strategies to outpace adversaries. 

Fal.Con 2025 will also showcase the unmatched strength of CrowdStrike’s global partner ecosystem, welcoming more than 110 partner sponsors from across the cybersecurity landscape, the most in the conference’s history. Premier sponsors AWS, Dell, and Intel will be joined by Diamond sponsors ExtraHop, Google Cloud, Okta, Rubrik, and Zscaler.

Attendees can also register for full-day CrowdStrike University training courses to elevate their skills, sharpen their expertise, and advance their impact as defenders.

The event begins on Monday, September 15, with CrowdStrike’s annual Global Partner Summit, where more than 1,000 partner participants will unite to accelerate innovation, expand go-to-market opportunities, and drive joint success with the Falcon platform.

Join the Action at Fal.Con

Register to live stream the keynotes and access 80+ sessions on-demand following the event. Start planning now: Build your digital Fal.Con 2025 agenda here.

About CrowdStrike

CrowdStrike (NASDAQ: CRWD), a global cybersecurity leader, has redefined modern security with the world’s most advanced cloud-native platform for protecting critical areas of enterprise risk – endpoints and cloud workloads, identity and data.

Powered by the CrowdStrike Security Cloud and world-class AI, the CrowdStrike Falcon® platform leverages real-time indicators of attack, threat intelligence, evolving adversary tradecraft and enriched telemetry from across the enterprise to deliver hyper-accurate detections, automated protection and remediation, elite threat hunting and prioritized observability of vulnerabilities.

Purpose-built in the cloud with a single lightweight-agent architecture, the Falcon platform delivers rapid and scalable deployment, superior protection and performance, reduced complexity and immediate time-to-value.

CrowdStrike: We stop breaches.

Learn more: https://www.crowdstrike.com/

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Start a free trial today: https://www.crowdstrike.com/free-trial-guide/

© 2025 CrowdStrike, Inc. All rights reserved. CrowdStrike and CrowdStrike Falcon are marks owned by CrowdStrike, Inc. and are registered in the United States and other countries. CrowdStrike owns other trademarks and service marks and may use the brands of third parties to identify their products and services.

Media Contact:

Jake Schuster

CrowdStrike Corporate Communications

press@crowdstrike.com

The grocery chain Iceland is offering customers who shop a thief a £1 reward on their loyalty card.

The frozen food specialist said that anyone who spots a suspected shoplifter in its stores should inform the nearest Iceland employee who will verify the incident before adding the reward to the individual’s loyalty card for immediate use.

Richard Walker, the executive chair of the family-owned group, told Channel 5 News that thefts cost the retailer £20m and drained resources that could be spent on staff hours or lower prices. “Some people see it as a victimless crime, it is not,” he said.

He said retail crime was happening right across the UK and not just in tough urban areas: “The scourge of shoplifting on our high streets continues to plague the UK, and the problem is only worsening, with criminal activity spreading across, not just big cities, but our market towns and villages too.

“In order to combat any activity in Iceland stores, we’re encouraging our loyal customers to help sound the alarm, and if they do help to catch a shoplifter, we’ll top up their Bonus Card to spend in store.”

In April official figures showed that the number of shoplifting offences recorded by police in England and Wales has risen to the highest level on record, passing half a million offences in 2024.

Retailers say the figures from the Office for National Statistics “severely underestimate” the scale of the problem, which would amount to only two incidents for each shop a year.

The British Retail Consortium (BRC) has pointed to a rise in shoplifting by organised gangs stealing to order.

This week the policing minister, Dame Diana Johnson, warned the public against confronting shoplifters and suggested that retailers should not display expensive items such as alcohol at the front of stores.

Her comments followed a claim by the Conservative police and crime commissioner for Thames Valley, Matthew Barber, that people had a duty to stand up to shoplifters rather than relying solely on police officers.

Retailers say that shops have been seen as a soft target since a 2014 change in the law in England and Wales under which those stealing goods worth less than £200 are usually spared any prison term.

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Big chains have also been accused of contributing to the rise in crime by reducing staff numbers and using more self-service checkouts and handheld “scan and shop” devices in stores to keep costs down.

However, businesses say they have spent millions of pounds on improving security in recent years, including installing facial recognition and AI-aided cameras.

The government has set out legislation to help tackle shoplifting, including removing the £200 threshold for “low-level” theft.

The crime and policing bill, which is working its way through parliament, will also introduce a stand-alone offence of assaulting a retail worker. The government has promised funds to tackle organised gangs involved in shop theft.

Oracle (NYSE:ORCL) and Alphabet’s (NASDAQ:GOOGL) (NASDAQ:GOOG) Google Cloud on Thursday announced that they have deepened their partnership by integrating Google’s most advanced AI models, starting with Gemini 2.5, into the Oracle Cloud Infrastructure (OCI) Generative AI service.

The move lets Oracle customers build AI agents for multimodal understanding, advanced coding, productivity automation, research, and more directly within their Oracle environments.

Oracle will expand access to Google’s full Gemini lineup via Vertex AI, including video, image, speech, music generation models, and industry-specific solutions like MedLM.

Also Read: Oracle Cloud Layoffs Mirror Big Tech’s Cost Controls As AI Bills Climb

Plans include embedding Gemini options into Oracle Fusion Cloud Applications, enhancing workflows across finance, HR, supply chain, sales, service, and marketing. Customers can use existing Oracle Universal Credits to deploy Gemini models.

Google Cloud CEO Thomas Kurian said the integration makes it easier for Oracle clients to deploy powerful AI agents that support developers and streamline data integration.

Oracle Cloud Infrastructure president Clay Magouyrk emphasized the partnership’s focus on delivering secure, cost-effective, enterprise-ready AI to drive innovation and meet business goals.

Oracle stock gained 47% year-to-date, backed by the AI frenzy as Big Tech giants remain invested in their AI endeavours.

ORCL Price Action: Oracle stock is trading higher by 0.63% to $246.50 premarket at last check Friday.

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