Category: Semafor

Liz’s view When we broke the story of Microsoft’s $10 billion investment in OpenAI in January 2023, I said two things that now seem pretty stupid. First, I asked my colleague Reed Albergotti what OpenAI was. Second, I confidently said on CNBC that people should think of the deal more ...

Lululemon’s shares dropped 11% Thursday after the athleisure brand picked Heidi O’Neill as its new CEO, an indication the market knows what everyone in the retail business already did. O’Neill was passed over in 2024 to run Nike (Elliott Hill came out of retirement for the gig) after a quarter ...

Oman and Saudi Arabia can expect a windfall from higher oil prices due to the Iran war, according to Goldman Sachs. Oil revenues for the two countries have risen as crude prices have surged due to the effective closure of the Strait of Hormuz; with all its ports outside the ...

Florida might redraw its congressional maps to add red seats after Virginia voters cleared the way this week for a Democratic gerrymander. But some in the state’s Republican delegation are warning they won’t be able to squeeze that many more seats out. Rep. Kat Cammack, R-Fla., said they could add ...

Americans have grown more pessimistic about the US economy in the weeks since the US-Israel war with Iran began, underscoring a key challenge for the White House as it looks to blunt the impact of rising gas prices and other goods. Gallup’s Economic Confidence Index dropped 11 points since March, ...

A robot beat elite human players at table tennis, a landmark victory in a competitive sport. Sony Ace defeated top amateurs in three matches out of five, although it lost twice against pros. It follows a running robot beating the human half-marathon record, albeit in a highly controlled environment. Ace ...

The Scene For years, booking the Gulf’s most coveted hotels meant months of planning or very deep pockets. Prewar, spending a night at the St. Regis Saadiyat in Abu Dhabi over the weekend was more than $2,000. A villa at Shebara, the futuristic overwater resort on Saudi Arabia’s Red Sea ...

Big Oil is making money but losing sleep. Sure, high oil prices are nice; we’ll find out next week exactly how nice when the majors report first-quarter earnings. But what goes up must eventually come down. And even though US oil executives and insiders are worried that energy market disruption ...

China appears to be stuck in a deflationary trap, with even the pressures sparked by the Iran war failing to boost prices. Beijing has long struggled to drive domestic consumption, while brutal competition in many industries has pushed producers to cut prices, triggering a vicious cycle in which people hold ...

Russia is expanding its military presence across West Africa, aiming to fill a vacuum left by the breaking of ties between the region and the US and Europe. An investigation by The Sentry showed that Moscow was using its shadow fleet to transport heavy equipment to its African allies, bypassing ...