Every time Reed publishes a story, you'll get an alert straight to your inbox! By clicking “Sign up”, you agree to receive emails from Business Insider. In addition, you accept Insider's Terms of Service and Privacy Policy. Goldman Sachs' top diversity official has left for a rival in recent weeks, multiple people familiar with the matter told Business Insider. Her exit comes as Wall Street retreats from long-stated DEI pledges about hiring and career advancement. Megan Hogan, Goldman's global co-head of talent left in January for Morgan Stanley, several people familiar with the matter said. Hogan confirmed the move via email on Tuesday, telling Business Insider that Morgan Stanley had extended her "an amazing opportunity" in talent development, which will begin when her garden leave expires. Hogan will begin in April, a person familiar with the hire said. Like other Wall Street banks, Goldman Sachs spent years investing in workforce diversity initiatives, and Hogan was one of its most prominent faces focused on social impact issues. But when President Donald Trump returned to power last January, he issued an executive order ending DEI programming at government agencies and urging companies to follow suit. Goldman, like many of its peers, has since taken steps to scrub DEI language from public-facing materials. Earlier this month, the bank also agreed to remove race, gender identity, and sexual orientation from its board-member selection criteria following pressure from a conservative shareholder group, the Wall Street Journal reported. Uranker was appointed global co-head of talent alongside Hogan in mid-2025. Her title has no direct references to DEI, but the position will still encompass programming designed to advance workplace inclusion, the source added. Corporate America — including financial services firms such as JPMorgan, Citi, and Morgan Stanley— has eased use of the term "DEI" and associated language since early 2025. Goldman had previously been among Wall Street's most vocal advocates for promoting inclusion in the workplace. In 2020, David Solomon, the bank's CEO, championed a series of policies like requiring companies to appoint diverse board members before his bankers would agree to help them go public — a rule the company killed last year. Stephanie Cohen, the bank's former chief strategy officer who departed in 2024, told Business Insider in 2020 that Goldman viewed these issues as more than perfunctory but vital for commercial success. Hogan's predecessor, Erika Irish Brown, left for Citi in 2021 to lead DEI efforts there. Her exit compounds another long-standing struggle for the Wall Street bank: retaining senior female leaders. Goldman has faced blowback over whether it's done enough to support their career progress — an area where officials have acknowledged there's room for improvement. Though the firm has increased the total share of female managing directors by 3% since 2021, a spokesperson said, Solomon acknowledged this past fall that there was further to go. But the results, he added, were "candidly not enough, and we continue to be focused on creating opportunities."

Axon Enterprise's stock surged more than 17% after the maker of Tasers, body cameras and drones topped Wall Street's fourth-quarter estimates as artificial intelligence accelerated demand for its software products The company reported adjusted earnings of $2.15 per share on $797 million in revenue, surpassing the $1.60 per share and $755 million in revenue expected by analysts surveyed by LSEG. Axon also issued upbeat revenue guidance for 2026, calling for growth between 27% and 30%, compared to a 25.8% estimate. CEO Rick Smith said that since starting the company in 1993, AI has brought a "moment unlike anything" he has seen. "If we deploy AI more aggressively and more thoughtfully than anyone else in this space, while honoring the responsibility that comes with the operating environment we operate in, we will create value that our customers simply cannot replicate," he told analysts on an earnings call Tuesday. Axon said AI capabilities accounted for about 10%, or $750 million, of total bookings last year as it infused more tech into its tools. Some of those AI features include automatic license plate recognition and a voice-activated companion built into a body camera. The tool, known as Axon Assistant, attracted more than 500 customers. Finance chief Brittany Bagley said Axon expects its software business, which grew 40% during the quarter to $343 million, to soon outpace hardware growth due to AI tail winds. Net income totaled about $3 million, or 3 cents per share, down from $135 million, or $1.67 per share a year ago. Axon attributed the shift to operating losses and strategic investment activities. The company also set 2028 targets for $6 billion in annual revenue and 28% adjusted EBITDA margin. Sign up for free newsletters and get more CNBC delivered to your inbox

Axon Enterprise's stock surged more than 17% after the maker of Tasers, body cameras and drones topped Wall Street's fourth-quarter estimates as artificial intelligence accelerated demand for its software products The company reported adjusted earnings of $2.15 per share on $797 million in revenue, surpassing the $1.60 per share and $755 million in revenue expected by analysts surveyed by LSEG. Axon also issued upbeat revenue guidance for 2026, calling for growth between 27% and 30%, compared to a 25.8% estimate. CEO Rick Smith said that since starting the company in 1993, AI has brought a "moment unlike anything" he has seen. "If we deploy AI more aggressively and more thoughtfully than anyone else in this space, while honoring the responsibility that comes with the operating environment we operate in, we will create value that our customers simply cannot replicate," he told analysts on an earnings call Tuesday. Axon said AI capabilities accounted for about 10%, or $750 million, of total bookings last year as it infused more tech into its tools. Some of those AI features include automatic license plate recognition and a voice-activated companion built into a body camera. The tool, known as Axon Assistant, attracted more than 500 customers. Finance chief Brittany Bagley said Axon expects its software business, which grew 40% during the quarter to $343 million, to soon outpace hardware growth due to AI tail winds. Net income totaled about $3 million, or 3 cents per share, down from $135 million, or $1.67 per share a year ago. Axon attributed the shift to operating losses and strategic investment activities. The company also set 2028 targets for $6 billion in annual revenue and 28% adjusted EBITDA margin. Sign up for free newsletters and get more CNBC delivered to your inbox

Every time Erin publishes a story, you'll get an alert straight to your inbox! By clicking “Sign up”, you agree to receive emails from Business Insider. In addition, you accept Insider's Terms of Service and Privacy Policy. Taylor Swift and Travis Kelce could be making their "Love Story" official this summer at a luxurious Rhode Island hotel. Page Six reported in December that the celebration could unfold at one of Rhode Island's most storied seaside hotels, just steps from Swift's Watch Hill mansion. Ocean House did not respond to Business Insider's request for comment on the reports. I visited Ocean House in December to dine at its bistro restaurant and see firsthand why the Grammy winner might choose the grand yet intimate resort as a wedding venue. Here's what it's like to visit and dine at Ocean House — and why it fits the bill for a Swift-worthy celebration. About an hour from Newport, Watch Hill has a population of around 200 residents and is known for its classic New England charm, sweeping Atlantic Ocean views, and grand seaside homes. Located on the shores of Westerly, Ocean House acted as a quintessential New England summer retreat for affluent families looking to vacation by the sea. Taylor Swift's Watch Hill residence, which she's owned since 2013, can be seen from the grounds of Ocean House. The mansion spans 12,000 square feet and has eight bedrooms. If Swift isn't getting married at Ocean House for her ceremony or reception, it's possible she'll use her own home as the main venue and the hotel to house guests. Although it was much darker and colder when I visited this time, I could still appreciate the hotel's historic charm and grandeur. My family of three made our dinner reservation at the hotel's bistro restaurant, which is more low-key than its fine-dining restaurant, about two weeks in advance. In my experience, it can be hard to get reservations during peak seasons, such as summer and the holidays. The front entryway was decorated with a large woven rug, as well as decorations for its Peter-Pan-themed New Year's Eve party. In addition to hotel accommodations, the resort offers a "land and sea" experience, in which guests can book a stay aboard a restored 1937 yacht that once carried famous guests such as Shirley Temple, Fred Astaire, Nelson Rockefeller, and President Roosevelt, according to the hotel. The hotel has 49 guest rooms and 20 signature suites. If Swift and Kelce do plan to house overflow guests at the hotel, it would be shaping up to be a smaller, more intimate wedding rather than a massive celebrity bash. However, the nearby Westerly State Airport would potentially allow private jets to fly in and out of the area with relative ease. Ocean House did not respond to a request for comment from Business Insider on whether Swift will be tying the knot at the resort. However, room rates surge sharply around Swift's rumored wedding date of June 13. When attempting to book those mid-June dates, the hotel's website also indicates that no rooms are currently available. During the warmer months, guests can also visit the Verandah Raw Bar, Dalia, which is a tapas restaurant, and Théa at Dune Cottage, a beachside restaurant reserved for hotel guests. Information-gathering aside, we were also there for dinner. We started with calamari ($22) and a side of crispy Brussels sprouts ($12). The menu changes seasonally, switching out heartier dishes like this one for lighter fare like seafood as the weather warms up. However, dishes like steak, scallops, and fish appear to be mainstays year-round. They arrived nestled atop a smoky almond romesco with fava beans and chorizo slices, which added subtle heat and richness. Served with garlic butter and a side of bearnaise sauce, the grilled hanger steak ($40) was cooked to medium-rare perfection. Every bite melted in our mouths — for such a simple dish, we were impressed, and thought the price point was reasonable. Including a bottle of wine, two appetizers, three entrées, and dessert, our meal came to $292.72. Ocean House strikes a rare balance between grandeur and privacy, with excellent food and hospitality from the hotel's discreet staff, who are willing to keep all wedding details under wraps. Add in its location just steps from Watch Hill's quiet village center — and minutes from Swift's own Rhode Island home — and it's easy to see how the historic resort offers the exclusivity, romance, and coastal New England charm fit for a pop superstar's summer wedding.

David Tepper, billionaire founder of hedge fund Appaloosa Management, sent a strongly worded letter to Whirlpool's board, accusing the appliance maker of destroying shareholder value and calling for sweeping changes to its strategy. Tepper said in the letter that he watched with "a certain astonishment" as the company issued equity in what he called a large and unnecessary dilution of shareholders. He argued the capital raise came at a cost exceeding 10%, far higher than the company's tax-adjusted debt cost of below 5% in public markets, despite management's stated goal of reducing leverage. There can be no more excuses," Tepper said in the letter, first obtained by CNBC's Andrew Ross Sorkin. Whirlpool, the maker of Maytag and other iconic American appliance brands, was the eighth-biggest holding in Appaloosa Management's portfolio at the end of the fourth quarter, worth $282 million, according to Verity data. Whirlpool shares tanked 14% on Tuesday amid the secondary share sale, which will raise $454.9 million from a common stock offering and $508.1 million from a depositary share sale, according to the company. Shares of Whirlpool were down less than 1% in morning trading after Tepper's letter came out. The hedge fund manager also faulted Whirlpool for failing to capitalize on tariffs instituted under the Trump administration, saying the company should explore partnerships or potential mergers with disadvantaged foreign competitors to strengthen its strategic position. "We encourage the Board to (i) remember their fiduciary responsibilities and not accept management acting purely in its own self-interest, and (ii) invite domestic entities or foreign corporations who want tocreate American jobs and increase shareholder value to take an interest in Whirlpool," said the letter. Whirlpool didn't immediately respond to CNBC's request for comment. Got a confidential news tip? We want to hear from you. Sign up for free newsletters and get more CNBC delivered to your inbox Get this delivered to your inbox, and more info about our products and services.

European defense companies must take a stronger lead on collaborating to help the continent become independent of the U.S. security umbrella, Leonardo's CEO told CNBC. Speaking with CNBC's "Squawk Box Europe" on Wednesday after Leonardo's annual results statement, Roberto Cingolani said European defense companies have "all the capabilities and technical skills" and should not wait for governments to fix the sector, which he warned was "fragmented." Companies should take the lead in a process of "aggregation", which European governments would follow, he said, adding that this approach "pays a lot" and helps enable companies to become "better, faster, more profitable." He pointed to Leonardo's partnership with the U.K.'s BAE Systems and Japan's Mitsubishi Heavy Industries as co-founders of the Global Combat Air Programme (GCAP) to jointly develop the Tempest stealth fighter. Leonardo has also developed joint agreements with German defense giant Rheinmetall for land defense systems, and with Turkish drone maker Baykar, he said. Last October, Leonardo also unveiled plans for a combined space and satellite company with Airbus and Thales to rival Elon Musk's Starlink. "I'm firmly convinced nobody can make it on their own," Cingolani told CNBC. U.S. President Donald Trump's bid to annex Greenland contributed to fractures in the NATO alliance, as the war in Ukraine focuses attention on Europe's defense. The continent's growing push for greater military sovereignty now underpins what investors have called a multi-year "mega-trend" fueled by evolving geopolitical threats and doubts over U.S. commitments to NATO. "The silent agreement was that Americans were paying for European defense. Europeans were rather relaxed after 80 years of peace. Correctly, the Americans want Europeans to be more independent. "On the other hand, it means we need to develop our own technologies that are complementary to the American ones and under the NATO umbrella, he added. His comments came after Leonardo reported an 18% annual increase in core profits — topping 1.75 billion euros ($2.1 billion) — in its latest earnings statement on Wednesday. New orders rose 14.5% last year, to 23.8 billion euros, powered by its aeronautics division, as net debt sat at 1 billion euros — a 44% decrease for the Rome-headquartered, Milan-listed company. Its shares finished Wednesday's session 3.5% down after the earnings. Sign up for free newsletters and get more CNBC delivered to your inbox

Subscribe here to receive future editions in your inbox. The restaurant reservation platform wars are heating up, and I'm wondering whether my fascination with this story is a sign that I eat out too often. Stock futures are higher this morning after a positive session yesterday. President Donald Trump touted his economic record during his State of the Union address last night, saying the U.S. economy is "roaring like never before" — despite polls that show many Americans are feeling the opposite. Buzzy artificial intelligence startup Anthropic announced updates to its Claude Cowork tool yesterday aimed at improving office workers' productivity. The enhancements include allowing companies to connect Cowork to platforms such as Google Drive, Gmail and DocuSign. Recent product releases from Anthropic have sparked sharp declines in cybersecurity and software stocks, but yesterday's rollout wasn't seen as threatening to the software industry as Wall Street feared. Stocks in the sector regained some ground during the session, helping to power a broader recovery rally which drove the Dow Jones Industrial Average up more than 350 points. Lowe's surpassed Wall Street's fourth-quarter expectations for earnings and revenue this morning, reporting more than 10% quarterly sales growth from the same time a year ago. Shares of Lowe's slipped around 3% in premarket trading this morning. A crop of technology earnings reports are due after the bell. CNBC's Morning Squawk recaps the biggest stories investors should know before the stock market opens, every weekday morning. Discovery announced yesterday that Paramount Skydance upped its takeover offer to $31 per share. WBD said the new proposal, which its board would review, could "reasonably be expected" to beat out the media giant's current deal with Netflix. Paramount's new offer is all cash and includes a $7 billion breakup fee if the merger does not receive regulatory approval, according to WBD. Paramount also agreed to cover the $2.8 billion owed to Netflix if WBD backs out of its existing deal with the streaming giant. As CNBC's Sarah Whitten reports, acquiring the media company could help improve Paramount's lackluster box office record under Ellison's leadership. Panera Bread is hopping on the value meal bandwagon. The company announced a "Mix & Match" deal this morning in a bid to lure back money-conscious consumers. Panera's new value options come as a number of restaurant chains, including McDonald's and Taco Bell, promote low-cost menu items. As CNBC's Amelia Lucas notes, affordability has been a key part of Panera's turnaround plan under CEO Paul Carbone. Meanwhile, shares of fellow fast-casual chain Cava surged nearly 10% in extended trading after the company beat analyst expectations on both lines for the fourth quarter. The Mediterranean chain also reported unexpected growth in same-store sales and said full-year revenue topped $1 billion for the first time. JPMorgan Chase CEO Jamie Dimon said in an investor meeting this week that plans to rejigger the bank's workforce amid AI's technological shakeup are already taking shape. — CNBC's Garrett Downs, Spencer Kimball, Dan Mangan, Kevin Breuninger, Evelyn Cheng, Ashley Capoot, Annie Palmer, Sean Conlon, Alex Sherman, Sarah Whitten, Amelia Lucas, Laya Neelakandan and Hugh Son contributed to this report. Sign up for free newsletters and get more CNBC delivered to your inbox

Nvidia's earnings on Wednesday are expected to show booming sales of the company's current rack-scale system. But all eyes are on its next AI system, Vera Rubin, which is scheduled to roll out later this year.Vera Rubin, which is made up of 1.3 million components, will deliver 10 times more performance per watt than its predecessor, Grace Blackwell, the company claims. That's a significant development when energy consumption is one of the most critical issues facing the artificial intelligence build-out. CNBC got an exclusive first look at Vera Rubin at Nvidia's headquarters in Santa Clara, California.Nvidia says the new AI system is a complex web of parts sourced from around the world. Its core chips include 72 Rubin graphics processing units, or GPUs, and 36 Vera central processing units, or CPUs, primarily made by Taiwan Semiconductor Manufacturing Co. The other parts, from liquid cooling elements to power systems and compute trays, come from more than 80 suppliers in at least 20 countries, including China, Vietnam, Thailand, Mexico, Israel and the U.S. Dion Harris, Nvidia's AI infrastructure head, said in an interview that the company has been giving suppliers "very detailed forecasts." It's a critical moment for Nvidia, which dominates the market for AI processors but faces intensifying competition from Advanced Micro Devices as well as custom silicon from Broadcom and Google's homegrown tensor processing units. Nvidia has plans to manufacture up to $500 billion of AI infrastructure in the U.S. through 2029, including making Blackwell GPUs at TSMC's new Arizona fabs. Grace Blackwell went into production in 2024, and changed the game on how much compute was possible with a single system. Vera Rubin, which is expected to ship in the second half of 2026, takes the company to another level. "They've got all these systems pulled together into a single rack built for absolute greatest efficiency and greatest performance. And that's just not how servers were historically built." Last week, Meta announced plans to use Vera Rubin in its data centers by 2027. Nvidia's list of other expected Vera Rubin customers includes OpenAI, Anthropic, Amazon, Google and Microsoft. The racks, manufactured in the U.S. and elsewhere, including in Taiwan and at a new Foxconn plant in Mexico, weigh nearly 2 tons and have about 1,300 total microchips, compared with Grace Blackwell's 864. Vera Rubin is a simpler, modular system intended to ease installs and repairs. Nvidia said the new system will consume about twice as much power as its predecessor, but will be far more efficient because of that 10 times return on performance per watt. Jordan Klein, an analyst at Mizuho Securities, said what "matters the most" is "how many tokens per power consumed can you get." Vera Rubin is also Nvidia's first system that's 100% liquid cooled, which Harris said helps data centers consume "much less water" than traditional evaporative cooling.Nvidia doesn't share rack pricing, but Futurum Group estimates the price will increase about 25% from Grace Blackwell, bringing the system price to somewhere around $3.5 million to $4 million. As major customers seek to diversify their reliance on the chipmaker, many are also filling AI servers with their own in-house silicon. CNBC visited an Amazon Web Services data center in October packed with "ultra-servers" made up of the company's Trainium 2 chips. Meanwhile, Google's data centers are loaded with racks of its TPUs. Later this year, Nvidia will see some big competition when rival AMD ships its first rack-scale system called Helios. The chipmaker just secured a major commitment from Meta for up to 6 gigawatts of capacity. "You're going to see a lot of uptake because customers want more capacity, but they also want a viable second source to keep Nvidia honest," Klein said. But this is certainly not a simple endeavor. Sign up for free newsletters and get more CNBC delivered to your inbox

The renderings — including a glamorous woman in a fur coat striding through a restaurant, a pair of models some commentators likened to "Grand Theft Auto" characters, and sleek car scenes — were posted on Gucci's social media pages ahead of creative director Demna Gvasalia's first runway show at Milan Fashion Week on Friday. The images quickly drew sharp criticism online, with some users calling them "cheap" and "slop"— a term used to describe AI-generated content perceived as low-quality or mass-produced. "You did not need to use AI for this, so tacky," one Instagram user said. One user on X said AI makes the brand look cheaper than TJ Maxx. Branding experts say that while some consumers perceive the images as "cheap," Gucci's decision to use AI was likely driven by creative intent rather than cost-cutting. It's about "positioning Gucci at the intersection of fashion, art and technology," Blanca Zugaza Escribano, a fashion and luxury strategy consultant at Metyis, told Business Insider. "It signals creative futurism, reinforces the brand's relevance in a tech-driven world, and allows it to generate surreal, high-impact imagery that traditional production might not easily achieve," she added. Earlier this month, Gucci partnered with Snapchat for an AI interactive lens — a feature that enables Snapchat users to become one of Gucci's "La Famiglia" figures. These were fictional digital characters created for one of its collection rollouts. Gucci had the steepest revenue decline among Kering's portfolio, falling 22% on a reported basis and 19% on a comparable basis in its full-year 2025 earnings. "If AI is used in a way that feels like it replaces craft, it risks undermining the very thing that creates aspiration," he said. While its push for maximalism and logos more than doubled its revenue between 2015 and 2022 —under creative director Alessandro Michele — when consumers turned to the "quiet luxury" trend, it was unable to keep up. Alongside mass-market partnerships, the fashion house's customer base had also become younger and more aspirational, many of whom seem to have moved on. Gucci isn't the only brand to face backlash for its use of AI in marketing. In December, fashion house Valentino raised eyebrows after launching an AI-generated campaign for its DeVain handbag. "Ruining a fashion house legacy is tough work, but I see you guys have determination," one user on Instagram said of Valentino's campaign at the time. For luxury brands, the challenge of delivering a positive tech experience is even greater, said Elaine Parr, a senior partner and consumer products and retail industries leader EMEA at IBM. Not only is it a "tough market" for luxury right now as a pullback in spending from aspirational shoppers weighs on sales, but "you need to deliver on the Lux brand promise and be modern whilst retaining your heritage," Parr added. Drinkwater said that while AI is more effective when it supports a creative vision rather than replaces it, negative campaign reactions "are good examples of how quickly the conversation can turn when people feel craft or human input is being displaced."

Every time Polly publishes a story, you'll get an alert straight to your inbox! By clicking “Sign up”, you agree to receive emails from Business Insider. In addition, you accept Insider's Terms of Service and Privacy Policy. For those aiming for a consulting career, where junior staff historically built slide decks and crunched data, AI agents seem like an intimidating new competitor. But two of EY's top consulting leaders say junior employees are a valuable asset for professional services firms in the AI age. That allows them to challenge the status quo and rethink processes from first principles. His advice for junior consultants at EY is to use that to their advantage: be bold, ask questions about the way things are done, and lean into the use of technology. "If anything, as a young graduate, they've got more opportunity to change our organization," Errol Gardner, global head of consulting at the Big Four firm EY, told Business Insider. Across the industry, consulting firms are racing to embed generative AI into their own workflows while advising clients on how to implement the technology. It's also raised questions about the traditional consulting pyramid model, which has long relied on teams of junior staff to perform research and prepare materials. If AI agents can complete much of that "assembly" work in seconds, what happens to entry-level roles? Fellow Big Four firm PwC has reduced graduate hiring goals in the US, in part because of "the impact of AI," according to an internal presentation obtained by Business Insider last August. At EY, Gardner said there has been "no material change" in graduate recruitment due to AI. Diasio, who is responsible for AI across EY's consulting business, added that knowledge-workers broadly, not just the young ones, are getting a bad rap amid the current AI narrative. There is an idea that they're going to be replaced by AI, said Diasio, but AI without context, knowledge, and expertise, puts you down a path of "statistical sameness" and produces, as he put it, "polished slop." "It's people and their creativity that lift the ceiling," he added. While the tools consultants use are evolving rapidly, Gardner said the core objective of their job remains the same: delivering value to clients, developing clients' teams, working collaboratively to implement change, and pursuing learning and development. That won't shift by 2030 — or even 2040, he argued. "As long as human beings are buying from human beings, there will continue to be difficulty in executing change and implementing technology," he said. Consultants will spend less time on what Gardner described as "assembly" work — pulling together presentations, drafting proposals, or synthesizing information — and more time interpreting insights and shaping outcomes.

Lowe's topped Wall Street's quarterly revenue and earnings expectations and posted more than 10% sales growth year over year on Wednesday even as the home improvement market's struggles showed few signs of ending. In an interview with CNBC, CEO Marvin Ellison said the home improvement retailer is "still dealing with a housing market that does not have a lot of tailwind." A mix of higher inflation, economic uncertainty and elevated mortgage rates have created a "lock-in effect" for U.S. consumers who are staying put instead of buying and selling homes, he said. As the waiting game for stronger home improvement demand continues, he said Lowe's strategy is resonating with do-it-yourself customers and home professionals. He credited some company-specific changes, such as better digital experiences, flexible delivery options and more installation services. He said Lowe's anticipates roughly flat demand for the home improvement industry this year. Its own full-year sales forecast is based on expectations that it will outperform the market, he said. Lowe's said it expects total sales for the full current fiscal year to range between $92 billion and $94 billion, which would be a roughly 7% to 9% increase over the prior year. Shares of Lowe's were down more than 4% in midday trading on Wednesday as the company's earnings per share projections for the year came in short of analysts' consensus expectations of $12.95, according to LSEG. Ellison told CNBC the company's outlook is "appropriately conservative" because of the "very fluid and very unpredictable environment" it faces due to slower home sales and changing tariff rates. Here's what Lowe's reported for the fiscal fourth quarter compared with Wall Street's estimates, according to a survey of analysts by LSEG: Lowe's net income for the three-month period that ended Jan. 30 dropped to $999 million, or $1.78 per share, from $1.13 billion, or $1.99 per share, in the year-ago quarter. Excluding one-time factors, including expenses associated with recent acquisitions, Lowe's reported adjusted earnings per share of $1.98. The company said in a news release that growth was driven by its gains with home professionals, online sales and home services, along with a strong holiday season. Lowe's posted growth in nine of its 14 merchandising categories, said Bill Boltz, executive vice president of merchandising, on the company's earnings call. Yet the company also saw strength with paint sales, as customers bought interior and exterior paint, primer and stains, he said. Lowe's results reinforce the housing market's struggles a day after rival Home Depot said it is still seeing similar reluctance to take on big housing projects. Home Depot on Tuesday beat Wall Street's earnings and revenue expectations, but stuck by conservative full-year guidance. Like Home Depot, Lowe's has felt pinched by a tougher backdrop for the industry. Earlier this month, Lowe's cut about 600 corporate and support roles, a move it said would free up resources to support stores. Home Depot in late January laid off 800 workers and said employees would have to work from the office five days a week. Last year, Lowe's acquired Foundation Building Materials, a distributor of drywall, insulation and other interior building products for large residential and commercial professionals, for about $8.8 billion. Lowe's has also made its own moves to reach customers who are delaying home purchases, such as launching a third-party marketplace to expand its mix of merchandise, tapping influencers to raise its visibility on social media and reaching out to young families by relaunching its kids' program. Yet Lowe's and Home Depot are still waiting for signs that U.S. consumers are ready to jump back in to buying, selling and fixing up their homes at a more typical rate. Ellison said on the company's earnings call that the company is closely watching if there's a shift toward more pricier discretionary purchases. "When we start to see a sustained number of discretionary big-ticket purchases from the DIY [do-it-yourself shopper], that's going to give us an indication that the consumer is getting healthier and they're more confident in making those purchases," he said. "We think that as people stay locked in and they come to the realization that 'I'm not going to give up this two and a half percent mortgage rate,' they're going to start investing in their home at some point," he said. Tariff policies, too, have injected fresh uncertainty for retailers after the Supreme Court on Friday ruled that some country-specific tariffs were illegal. About 40% of Lowe's goods are imported, Ellison told CNBC, which is lower than it used to be. He said Lowe's can lean on its existing tariff playbook, which has gotten sharper in recent years, even as it calculates how its costs may shift. As of Tuesday's close, Lowe's shares are up nearly 16% year to date, surpassing the S&P 500's roughly 1% gains during the same period. Sign up for free newsletters and get more CNBC delivered to your inbox

Panera Bread is entering the so-called value wars with its new "Mix & Match" deals in a bid to win back price-conscious diners. The chain, known for its soups, salads and sandwiches, is in the early stages of a turnaround, with a focus on reinvesting in its business and reversing years of traffic declines. 3, ceding the top spots to Chipotle Mexican Grill and Panda Express. A key part of Panera's comeback strategy is focusing on value. Across the restaurant industry, executives have reported weaker spending among consumers, who are trying to save money by trading down to fast food or dining out less frequently. Chains like McDonald's and Taco Bell have leaned into value offerings to try to win back customers. About 3 out of every 4 diners said that daily specials, discounts or value promotions matter when choosing where to dine or order takeout, according to the National Restaurant Association's annual State of the Restaurant Industry report. Starting Wednesday, Panera customers can choose halved portions of sandwiches and salads, as well as cups of soup, from the Mix & Match menu. Each of the 10 items is priced at $4.99, and diners have to buy at least two items. Seasonal menu items will also rotate through the Mix & Match options. Each order also comes with the choice of a baguette, chips or an apple. Panera explored other value offerings, but the Mix & Match menu tested successfully, Carbone said. "The guest has really, really reacted well to it," he said, adding the menu is expected to drive incremental visits to the restaurant. And while Panera is introducing the deal, its popular "You Pick Two" offering is sticking around. Carbone said that customer research showed that diners view the option to buy two entrees from the menu as an opportunity for variety, rather than a chance to save money. Like Mix & Match, the offer allows customers to choose a half salad, half sandwich or cup of soup or mac and cheese. However, You Pick Two spans the menu, rather than being restricted to just 10 items. Sign up for free newsletters and get more CNBC delivered to your inbox

Every time Bradley publishes a story, you'll get an alert straight to your inbox! By clicking “Sign up”, you agree to receive emails from Business Insider. In addition, you accept Insider's Terms of Service and Privacy Policy. Before mega funds like Millennium and Citadel shifted the $5.2 trillion industry toward more institutional "skill factories," hedge funds were dominated by quirky characters trading niche markets and esoteric instruments. The chief investment officer of Tekmerion Capital, which will spin out of Brevan Howard next month with $1 billion in assets, Squire has the investing bona fides — with stops at D.E. Shaw, Bridgewater, and HBK — that would catch any allocator's eye. Even in the eccentric world of macro investors, though, Squire stands out. A Princeton valedictorian who majored in Latin and ancient Greek, he's turning his undergraduate thesis — a deep dive into property rights in the works of Roman philosopher Cicero — into a book. He sang opera as a child growing up in New York City. Squire and his partner, Reed Morrissey, the firm's CEO, are now pitching to new backers. Tekmerion counts multimanager quant fund, Engineers Gate, and Galaxy Digital CEO Michael Novogratz as investors and is positioning itself as a diversifier for institutions heavily exposed to US stocks, driven by differentiated macro research. "There's an opportunity right now where macro is hot and en vogue, and we want to be out there fundraising," said Squire in an interview last week at the Metropolitan Museum of Art's Balcony Lounge restaurant. "We want investors who understand what macro is, we want investors who understand hedge funds," he added. Squire initially had no interest in money management. He was set to pursue a Master's in philosophy at Cambridge University when a cold email from legendary fund D.E. "I still don't know how they found me," he said. He joined the firm's entry-level rotational associates program, in part because Cambridge allowed him to defer his enrollment for a year. Shaw is known for its focus on talent that, at first glance, doesn't fit the typical Wall Street mold. Winning, for asset managers, requires "sheer intellectual horsepower." An internal trading game — where employees could invest part of their pay in ideas they believed in — ultimately helped Tekmerion come about. His strong performance in the game "gave me confidence I could do something like this," Squire said. Adding to his macro toolkit, Squire spent the next three years in London for credit investor HBK, focused on emerging markets. The Tekmerion framework began to emerge, in large part thanks to Morrissey, a childhood friend who majored in international relations at Georgetown and worked in Malawi during his Fulbright scholarship. Bridgewater's legal team kept its complaints in private arbitration, where the mega fund alleged Tekmerion had run amok of past employee agreements thanks to a "misappropriation of trade secrets, breaches of contract, and unfair competition." Tekmerion eventually won a positive ruling from the panel, which found that Bridgewater had "manufactured false evidence." Despite the frustration with Bridgewater and its legal strategy, Squire appreciates his former employer's focus on publishing research, something Tekmerion has continued. In that stressful time for the young fund, Minicone stepped away from the fund to work at RB Venture Partners as a private market investor. In the years following the pandemic, the fund began to gain traction, delivering returns of nearly 30% in 2022, when global equity markets tanked, and 9.3% in 2023, outperforming larger macro players like Rokos Capital and Bridgewater. In 2024, the manager merged into the Brevan platform, where they continued to manage their own branded fund under Brevan's umbrella of strategies. Squire and Morrissey are excited to be back on their own again, though with a bigger team and much more capital. The fund will work from Engineers Gate's midtown Manhattan offices in a building that also houses multistrategy giant Balyasny. (They eventually hope to find their own space downtown, closer to the Chinatown neighborhood Squire and Morrissey call home). Tekmerion's process starts with discretionary macro research to determine which investment signals and data inputs are worth weighing more heavily than others in an algorithm. Because of the slow frequency of many macro datasets, the firm typically holds positions for weeks at a time, Morrissey said. When Miles Johnson, a student from their old high school, reached out in 2022 with a passion for the classics but uncertainty about his career path, the firm brought him on as an intern. They said he's been a "rockstar" for the manager as he's matriculated at Columbia and continues doing research for the manager. "Talent doesn't have a blueprint," Morrissey said. "You don't need the same degree or background; people are people, and it's their grit and drive that we're interested in."

Every time Kathleen publishes a story, you'll get an alert straight to your inbox! By clicking “Sign up”, you agree to receive emails from Business Insider. In addition, you accept Insider's Terms of Service and Privacy Policy. For years, Josette Chang and Alexander Nathanson were doing all the "right" things with their money — maxing out retirement accounts, saving consistently, and earning high incomes in finance and medicine — but they didn't have a clear plan. "We were kind of on autopilot," Nathanson told Business Insider. Within a year of investing in a financial planner and reevaluating their strategy, the New York City couple were surprised to learn that they had already reached financial independence. We're two high-income professionals, but even then, I still feel like more people can do it than may realize it," Nathanson said. Here are the three money moves they say set them up for early retirement. Chang worked in finance, and Nathanson regularly read about investing "Turns out when you speak with a knowledgeable third party, it really can change things profoundly." Like many high earners, they were skeptical of the traditional assets-under-management model, where advisors earn more as portfolios grow. The couple chose to work with a flat-fee planner, Dr. Jay Zigmont, who specializes in advising people without children. One of the first things he did was challenge how they were thinking about financial independence. "We assumed early retirement required building a portfolio of rental properties: You need rental properties, and you need a lot of them," said Nathanson, noting that he and Chang never wanted to be landlords. "Working with Jay shed some of those misconceptions. When you're after financial independence, figuring out how much is "enough" to quit or scale back from work isn't a simple calculation and involves factoring in things like how much your money will compound, long-term care, and withdrawal strategies. "I don't think anyone could just sit down and do it themselves, but once all of that is done, I would say that more people are further along than they think." Another key shift was how they handled their savings. Once they decided to stay put, they realized that cash could be working harder for them in an investment account. Today, their portfolio is intentionally simple, consisting of three low-cost index funds: a total US stock market fund, a total international stock market fund, and a total bond market fund. "We believe in an evidence-based investment strategy," Chang said, adding that they deliberately avoid more speculative investments, such as individual stock picking and cryptocurrency. The third move ran counter to common financial advice. Conventional wisdom often suggests keeping a low-interest mortgage and investing the extra cash instead. Their initial mortgage rate was 3.75%, and they later refinanced to around 3.1%. "That seems to be the conventional wisdom, right? Still, they chose to eliminate their debt completely. Business Insider reviewed public records filed with the New York City Register that confirm the couple's mortgage was paid off in September 2024. "Don't make decisions just because that's what everyone around you is doing," Nathanson said.

U.S. Treasury yields were relatively unchanged on Wednesday as investors weighed President Donald Trump's State of the Union address, which largely focused on the economy. The benchmark 10-year Treasury yield rose just under 1 basis point to 4.037%. The 30-year Treasury bond yield was less than 1 basis point lower at 4.681%. The 2-year Treasury note yield also added less than 1 basis point to 3.465%. One basis point is equal to 0.01%, and yields and prices move in opposite directions. Investors watched Trump's State of the Union on Tuesday, which had a major focus on the economy, and lasted nearly two hours, the longest on record. He called for the creation of a government-backed 401(k)- type pension plan for U.S. workers who don't have a retirement plan through their employers. Trump also called on Congress to pass legislation that would prevent institutional investors from buying up single-family homes. Investors will now shift their attention to economic data coming later in the week, including weekly initial jobless claims on Thursday and the January producer price index on Friday. Geopolitical tensions are also in focus, with investors monitoring developments between the U.S. and Iran. Investors largely shrugged off Trump's latest tariff decision, with the new levy going into effect at a lower-than-expected 10% rate on Tuesday. We want to hear from you. Sign up for free newsletters and get more CNBC delivered to your inbox

Every time Katie publishes a story, you'll get an alert straight to your inbox! By clicking “Sign up”, you agree to receive emails from Business Insider. In addition, you accept Insider's Terms of Service and Privacy Policy. If there are two things I love, it's processed meats and not-exactly-maliciously messing around with internet tools. So I was determined to beat the BBC's Thomas Germain at his own game of exploiting ChatGPT and Google Gemini results to be crowned tech journalism's No. To my great embarrassment and the shame it brought upon the House of Business Insider, I failed. His page was quickly ingested (no chewing required) by the bots that crawl the web for new information to feed LLMs, and treated as fact by ChatGPT and Google Gemini. Of course, Germain's point wasn't merely to show that if you write information on a webpage, it will show up in AI. The broader issue here is that influencing AI results is becoming the new SEO — a tactic brands and companies use — oftentimes completely legitimately! — to boost their profiles within search results. More and more people are turning to AI chatbots instead of Google to get product recommendations or search for information. This all isn't brand new; my colleague Alistair Barr wrote about how "AEO" is the new SEO last May. Is it easier to persuade people that your product is the best using AI instead of traditional SEO? People rarely click on the source links for information given in chatbots, and seeing a small link that goes to a random personal website might be less obviously untrustworthy in the context of an AI chatbot answer than when you're looking at a page of Google results. Basically, AI results look more convincing than search results, even if we all know in the back of our minds that AI chatbots aren't always right. I created a page on my own personal website that said I won the 2026 Paris Hot Dog Eating Contest for Tech Reporters, beating out reigning champ Thomas Germain. (I didn't publish this on BI because we wouldn't knowingly publish something that's false — even for a fun story.) After two days, I queried Gemini and ChatGPT about who had won the Paris Hot Dog Eating Contest. However, that didn't stop Gemini from hallucinating some completely new information, adding in a bunch of stuff that appeared in neither my nor Germain's fake accounts. Not just because it didn't actually happen, but because this description also doesn't exist anywhere on the web — at least that I could find.) When my editor asked Gemini about my eating feats, it told him that I'd won a grilled cheese-eating contest in 2012 by finishing three sandwiches. It's not really huge news that "sometimes chatbots get facts wrong, especially when there's little information on a particular topic on the web." And yes, I guess we learned it can be easy to manipulate your AI results — but more easily for the person who gets there first, a sort of AEO land rush, perhaps.

Every time Brent D. Griffiths publishes a story, you'll get an alert straight to your inbox! By clicking “Sign up”, you agree to receive emails from Business Insider. In addition, you accept Insider's Terms of Service and Privacy Policy. OpenAI is peeling back the veil on how scammers are trying to use ChatGPT to do everything from modern twists on romance scams to smear the Prime Minister of Japan. On Wednesday morning, OpenAI released the latest edition of its intelligence threat report. The report said users asked ChatGPT to create a logo for a fake high-end dating service, generate images of fake women, and provide tax advice. Incredibly, according to OpenAI, when asking for financial advice the user(s) stated their occupation as "scammer." OpenAI estimated that the scam, which it said targeted Indonesian men interested in luxury lifestyle content, was "likely defrauding hundreds of victims a month." The company said the operation worked by getting users to choose from a list of fictitious women and relationship types. After building trust, an AI chatbot posing a flirty receptionist directed the conversation over to Telegram. OpenAI said that on Telegram, a mixture of humans using ChatGPT and API, would use "romantic and sexually-explicit language" to direct users to fake dating services and eventually entice them to do a series of "tasks" or "missions" that "required increasingly large payments via bank transfers or digital payment wallets." The AI company also said it banned "a cluster of ChatGPT" accounts that posed as law firms, individual attorneys, and US law enforcement. OpenAI said the scammers asked ChatGPT to generate a fake New York State Bar Association membership card and create social media content to further the scam. Of the operations OpenAI highlighted, the most brazen may be one attributed to an "individual associated with Chinese law enforcement." The query came after Takaichi publicly criticized human rights issues in Mongolia. "These range from abusive reporting of dissidents' social media accounts, through mass online posting, to forging documents and impersonating US officials." Representatives of the Chinese and Japanese embassies did not immediately respond to Business Insider's request for comment. "This is what Chinese, modern trans-national repression looks like," Ben Nimmo, the principal investigator on OpenAI's intelligence and investigations team, told reporters ahead of the release. It's about trying to hit critics of the CCP with everything, everywhere, all at once."

Every time Bryan publishes a story, you'll get an alert straight to your inbox! By clicking “Sign up”, you agree to receive emails from Business Insider. In addition, you accept Insider's Terms of Service and Privacy Policy. That's according to the California governor and potential 2028 presidential candidate's new book, "Young Man in a Hurry: A Memoir of Discovery," which was released on Tuesday. Newsom wrote that when he was serving as mayor of San Francisco, he found himself in the penthouse suite of the Fairmont Hotel with several tech leaders, including Google co-founders Sergey Brin and Larry Page, along with Steve Jobs, then the CEO of Apple. I want to say that Steve was dressed in his blue jeans and black mock turtleneck." In Newsom's telling, Jobs beckoned him and the Google co-founders over, where he pulled out "a sleek device that none of us had ever seen before, a solid piece of glass with no keyboard that could be held in one hand." "He swiped the screen and we said, 'Whoa,'" Newsom wrote. "He let each of us swipe it, and I repeated, 'Whoa.'" The device is now Apple's biggest money-maker, accounting for more than $85.3 billion of its overall $143.8 billion in revenue last quarter. "We began with the same mentality of nothing to lose." "To believe that the city of San Francisco could solve its problems by sticking to the same old vision would be to miss the magic that was tech," Newsom wrote.

Every time James publishes a story, you'll get an alert straight to your inbox! By clicking “Sign up”, you agree to receive emails from Business Insider. In addition, you accept Insider's Terms of Service and Privacy Policy. Your 40s are for reaping the fruits of that labor: as you watch your home equity swell, maybe you think about splurging for more bedrooms and a bigger yard. A report released last fall by the National Association of Realtors upended this basic assumption. The message was loud and clear: Picking up the keys to your first place is no longer an "early adult" thing. "First-home homebuyers are older than ever," declared headlines from The New York Times and Axios. "Many would-be buyers are frozen out of the housing market," warned another. I spoke with a woman who placed her first winning bid on a home at 42 and couldn't shake the feeling that she was behind. In light of the NAR's latest data dump, however, she appeared to be merely another example of the sea change in real estate. The splashy number seemed to confirm our worst fears about the housing market: only old, rich people are having any luck, and younger generations are struggling to break in. The optimists' take was that elder millennials still had some breathing room. For those inclined to doomerism, though, it was more proof that a classic marker of adult success was drifting further out of reach. "It is very consistent with this idea that housing affordability is very strained," says Chen Zhao, a senior economist at the brokerage firm Redfin, "and therefore you have to be older to afford a house right now." If you want to understand the housing market's ebbs and flows over the past couple of decades, Redfin's analysis is a helpful starting point. Zhao tells me the trend makes intuitive sense: banks tightened up lending standards after the housing bubble burst in 2008, making it tougher to get a mortgage and buy a house. Then mortgage rates began ticking downward before plummeting in 2020 and 2021, reaching a 50-year low as the Federal Reserve slashed borrowing costs to fight inflation. All those cheap home loans made it easier for younger people to break into the market, and the first-time homebuying age fell to 34 in 2021 and 2022. Affordability improved slightly in 2025, thanks to slower home-price growth, rising wages, and marginally lower mortgage rates, which could explain last year's decrease in the median age. While the NAR and Redfin analyses both point to first-time homebuyers generally getting older, the latter's numbers are way less dramatic. A growing number of economists have chimed in to suggest the situation isn't nearly so dire. Connor O'Brien, a fellow at the DC-based think tank Institute for Progress, analyzed the Census Bureau's American Housing Survey and American Community Survey and found that the median age for all buyers had ticked up since 2000 but hovered around 42 in 2023, while NAR reported a median age for all buyers of 49 that year and a stunning increase to 59 just two years later. That Census data only runs until 2023, but O'Brien says he doesn't see any reason to believe that the typical buying ages would have undergone a seismic shift in two short years, given the housing market's stasis. The rebuttals to NAR's data all draw upon national data sources that researchers say are far more robust than the Realtors' annual survey of recent homebuyers, which is conducted via mail and text message. Redfin's analysis also uses Census data, specifically an annual supplement to its Current Population Survey, which asks households who moved in the past year why they did so. The survey doesn't separate first-time buyers from repeat buyers, so Redfin used a proxy: it counted respondents as "first-time buyers" if they said they moved because they wanted to own rather than rent, or to start their own household, implying they'd previously been living with roommates or parents. Jessica Lautz, the NAR's deputy chief economist and vice president of research, says in an emailed statement that the organization stands by its methodology. Lautz describes the NAR's survey as "the only national survey that asks primary residence buyers if they are a first-time buyer or repeat buyer," and points out that analyses of mortgage and census data must rely on varying degrees of assumptions in order to parse first-timers from the rest of the pack — mortgage data, for example, doesn't include all-cash buyers. "Marriage and divorce do happen, inheritances are gifted, all-cash buyers happen, and sometimes a household may have to rent temporarily before owning again," Lautz says in the statement. "Homeownership has become out of reach for the typical young adult in America." Redfin's methodology isn't perfect — taken on its own, I'm not sure it would unseat the NAR's estimates. It's important to pay attention, however, because it adds to the mountain of evidence that first-time buyers aren't suddenly getting way older. "When we compare our results to analyses that other people have done looking at credit bureau data or mortgage data, it seems to support the idea that the age of the first-time buyer has not increased all that much." But the conclusion — that people are still buying homes at roughly the same age they were a couple of decades ago — has far-reaching implications. "People are potentially going to make policy based on their view of how the economy and housing market are developing," O'Brien tells me. "If their views are fundamentally incorrect, that could be a big problem." The takeaway shouldn't be that things are fine and dandy for millennial homebuyers, though. A recent analysis of census data by Ben Glasner, a senior economist at the Economic Innovation Group, found that while millennials and boomers were about as likely to own homes at 44, the ownership rate among 32-year-old millennials (41.3%) was well below the 54.7% for boomers at that age. "We don't have enough housing where people want to live, and where people find the job markets that they want to participate in," he tells me. Things are rough out there for millennial homebuyers, no doubt. "I think a lot of times people feel like, Well, if I can't achieve the homeownership step, it's kind of like I can't move forward with my life," Zhao tells me. "And I think that's why people are very hung up on this number." James Rodriguez is a correspondent on Business Insider's Discourse team. Business Insider's Discourse stories provide perspectives on the day's most pressing issues, informed by analysis, reporting, and expertise.