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As conference tournaments get started, the NCAA Men’s Basketball Tournament bubble looks crowded. Which teams are fighting it out for the final at-large spots this week?

The mortgage business will often make money from something customers hate, which is friction. A frustrating and time-consuming mortgage application and approval process involves plenty of paperwork and a massive amount of regulation. It is no surprise that people rate it as equivalent to filing their annual taxes.Better Home & Finance (BETR) says its new Tinman app inside ChatGPT can help immensely in this regard, cutting the time needed for parts of mortgage underwriting from weeks to seconds.For borrowers, the value proposition is simple. Reducing users’ stress will lead them to reward Better leading to a better stock price — simple value proposition and simple math.However, it raises another important question for investors: whether underwriting speed is becoming easier to buy, and whether that will impact margins at Rocket Companies (RKT) and UWM Holdings (UWMC).The mortgage industry, for several years, has repeated like a broken record that it is working toward customer ease and convenience. But home loans continue to frustrate applicants, offering products in consumer finance that are often hard to recommend.That’s why Better Home & Finance’s new OpenAI partnership is something to watch. It matters more than your usual fintech launch. It is not just another AI feature; it is an attempt to transform a massive source of mortgage friction into software.Better says lending teams using Tinman in ChatGPT can underwrite mortgage and home-equity loans in as little as 47 seconds. That’s not all; the median time is 2 minutes and 24 seconds, versus what it calls a 21-day industry average.The target audience of the app is wide. Banks, brokers, fintechs, and loan officers are on the radar. It’s not just consumers casually shopping for rates.That makes this not just a product story, but also a market structure story.Borrowers may get a faster, less stressful loan process.Smaller lenders may get access to better automation.Public mortgage stocks may face new pressure on moats and margin durability.In a situation where mortgage rates continue to hover around 6% and the Mortgage Bankers Association expects single-family originations to reach $2.2 trillion in 2026, cutting the time and cost of underwriting can have some solid real-world implications.Better Home & Finance is trying to sell infrastructure, not just loansBetter’s pitch makes greater sense when you look at its numbers. The company is still much smaller in scale than Rocket Companies and UWM Holdings.In the third quarter of 2025, Better reported about $44 million in revenue, a net loss of roughly $39 million, an adjusted EBITDA loss of about $25 million, and funded loan volume of about $1.2 billion.Related: J.P. Morgan predicts what’s next for mortgage rates, housing marketThat tells you a lot about what management is trying to do here and why it’s leaning so hard into Tinman as a platform story.Better says the system has been trained on:More than $110 billion in funded loansMore than 12 million recorded customer callsMore than 5 billion pages of documentationUnderwriting criteria from more than 45 institutional buyersData tied to more than 80% of the U.S. mortgage marketThat language is mainly about infrastructure. It’s not just a digital mortgage app.Better also renewed a $175 million warehouse facility on improved terms, in addition to reaffirming guidance that monthly origination volume should surpass $1 billion by May 2026.Management also forecasts that it wants to reach adjusted EBITDA profitability by the end of the third quarter of 2026.Better’s strategy is clear:Use AI to reduce underwriting time.Sell that speed to banks, brokers, and fintechs.Become a technology layer, instead of depending only on direct lending.These are important points because they roughly translate to the company not needing to rely on large lenders. Instead, it needs to focus on making mortgage speed easier to rent.

Better Home & Finance just fired a warning shot at mortgage competitors Rocket and UWM.Photo by SimpleImages on Getty Images

Rocket and UWM still control the bigger mortgage economicsDoes that mean the incumbents are suddenly vulnerable? Well, there is nuance to the argument. Rocket and UWM still operate at a far larger scale, so I do not foresee them getting downed anytime soon.Rocket closed $130.4 billion of mortgage originations in 2025 and posted a 2.83% gain-on-sale margin. It also ended the year with a $2.1 trillion servicing portfolio covering 9.5 million loans, producing about $5 billion in annualized recurring cash flow.UWM originated $163.4 billion in 2025, reporting $3.2 billion in revenue, $244 million in net income, and a 116-basis-point gain margin.More Real Estate:Why selling a home to your child for a dollar can backfireCommercial Real Estate Outlook 2026: Analysts See Signs of RecoveryRedfin says mortgage rates, profits are hitting real estate nowBoth these sets of figures clearly show why Better does not pose a threat to the market share, at least for now. But what they do illustrate, and this is the tricky part, is where the real investor debate lies.The key question is not about who is biggest. It is this:Can smaller lenders access faster underwriting through software?If they can, does execution speed become less of a moat?If speed gets commoditized, do gain-on-sale margins come under pressure?That is the real financial implication. And more importantly, the larger market players are not taking any of this lying down. They are still standing and making some innovative moves.Rocketkicked off fully digital purchase pre-approvals through a chat interface with no loan-officer intervention needed. It also says its AI-powered communications platform takes care of:800,000 chatsMore than 1.8 million texts2 million outbound callsMore than 5 million documents a monthUWM is also enhancing and increasing its own AI tools for the broker channel, while focusing on servicing, partnerships, and platform scale.Think of it as an AI arms race, not a quick one-two punch.Better Home & Finance underwriting innovation matters for borrowers, investorsI do not need to spell it out: You readers are smart, and the setup is straightforward.For borrowers, the appeal is significant, as Better does not promise lower home prices or magically cheaper mortgage rates. It is promising a process with:Less waitingFewer handoffsFewer document requestsLess uncertainty around approval timingIf that happens, the change will mark a culture shift.For investors, the stakes are more structural.If mortgage underwriting starts to look more like software and less like a labor-heavy specialty function, several things become more important:Margin durabilityFulfillment costsCycle timesPull-through ratesCustomer retentionRecaptureThe cleanest takeaway for me is that you have to frame Better’s OpenAI partnership in an effective manner. The tie-up does not make it the king of mortgages. However, what it does is force the industry to sit up and take notice. It also asks the industry a tough question: If underwriting speed becomes easier to distribute, who still gets paid for complexity?That could be good news for borrowers, but a more complicated story for mortgage stocks.Related: Zillow predicts key real estate, housing market change

Gas prices have climbed after U.S. and Israeli strikes on Iran, which sent global oil prices sharply higher, according to reporting from Reuters and The Associated Press.AA tracks gas prices each week in the U.S. “The national average for a gallon of regular gasoline jumped nearly 27 cents since last week to $3.25. The conflict in the Middle East has sent crude oil prices higher to the mid $70/barrel range. The recent increase puts the national average at the same price as it was in early April of 2025,” according to data from AAA.Gas prices do traditionally climb in spring, but this jump is higher than normal.”Springtime typically sees higher gas prices as gasoline demand rises and summer-blend gasoline production begins. The last time the national average made a similar weekly jump was back in March of 2022, during the start of the Russia/Ukraine conflict,” the national automobile service shared.Gas prices don’t just impact what we pay at the pump; they also impact many supply chains and the cost of goods. That can drive prices higher for many items.Costco shares good news and a dire warningCostco CFO Gary Millerchip was bullish on the dimming impact of inflation during the warehouse club’s second-quarter earnings call.”While egg price deflation is expected to continue to be a headwind to sales in food and sundries for the foreseeable future, we’re seeing significant unit and market share growth in eggs because of our strong value proposition. Overall inflation decreased slightly in Q2 as we saw lower inflation in foods and sundries and fresh, led by deflation in produce, eggs and dairy,” he shared.The news, however, was not all upbeat. “This was partially offset by slightly higher inflation in nonfoods,” he added.Millerchip also shared a warning based on the current military action in Iran.”The supply chain was also relatively stable in Q2, and our merchants feel good about our current inventory position heading into the spring. That said, as we look at the rest of the fiscal year, the situation in the Middle East could impact fuel costs and shipping schedules if there is instability in the region for a sustained period of time,” he shared.Gas prices will continue to rise”Given current market conditions, the national average price of gasoline could climb toward $3.50 to $3.70 per gallon in the coming days if oil continues rising and supply disruptions persist,” GasBuddy analyst Patrick De ​Haan told Reuters.The United States has lessened its dependence upon foreign oil, but it’s still impacted by global demand.”The U.S. has weaned itself off of its dependence on Middle Eastern crude, but obviously Asian refineries, and to a lesser extent, European refineries have not,” Denton Cinquegrana, chief oil ​analyst with OPIS told Reuters. “That’s what you’re seeing happen in the spot market, because the demand for U.S. exports rises, and so the price rises.”That’s likely to push gas prices over $4 per gallon by the weekend, according to The Wall Street Journal.A former adviser to President Barack Obama and Joe Biden said the situation could cause “the biggest energy shortage in history.””The average price of gasoline in the U.S. is barreling toward $3.50 a gallon, and American drivers can expect to pay $4 a gallon by the weekend, Amos Hochstein, a former energy advisor to the Biden and Obama administrations, said on CNBC’s “Squawk Box” on March 9.

Higher gas prices lead to less money spent on other purchases.Shutterstock

Higher gas prices hurt consumers”In that sense, the rise in gas prices acts like a tax on a family’s household budget, and they respond by cutting back on other spending,” Chris Varvares, senior managing director and co-founder of Macroeconomic Advisers, told Fox News. “The end result is when we look at gasoline consumption, it doesn’t change very much, but other consumption as we measure it goes down. And overall consumer spending is recorded as having declined.”Costco will try to offset that by lowering prices wherever possible. The warehouse club will also leverage its Kirkland Signature brand to keep prices down.”Kirkland Signature remains a top focus to deliver great value for our members, with KS items typically offering 15% to 20% value compared to the national brand alternative with equal or better quality. In Q2, we launched approximately 30 new KS items, including crispy wings, blackened salmon, and various apparel items,” Millerchip said.He also pledged to continue working to lower prices wherever possible.”As Ron [CEO Ron Vachris] mentioned earlier, our goal is to be the first to lower prices where we see opportunities to do so,” he added. Related: Costco takes big step to fix one of members’ biggest complaints

TheStreet aims to feature only the best products and services. If you buy something via one of our links, we may earn a commission.Why we love this dealSleeping well is one of the main things we can do for ourselves that can set how we feel for the whole day. Not getting good sleep makes it difficult to get through the day. Doing daily tasks, finishing work, and even having fun with friends can all be impacted by poor sleep quality. Creating a relaxing sleeping space that makes you look forward to getting in bed every night can help improve your sleep quality, and we’ve found a super soft quilt set that can help create a cozy sleeping space for you and your loved ones.The Ir Imperial Rooms 3-Piece Microfiber Quilt Set includes a quilt and two pillow shams that not only help make your bed look more put together, but also offer comfort throughout the night. At just $24 for the full/queen-size set and only $18 for a 3-piece king-size set, this deal is a steal. Ir Imperial Rooms 3-Piece Scalloped Microfiber Quilt Set, $24 (was $35) at Walmart

Courtesy of Walmart

Why do shoppers love it?This microfiber bed set offers a super cozy option that’s soft to the touch. The polyester material holds up to machine washing and holds up week after week. It is also wrinkle-resistant and doesn’t shrink in the wash. Polyester microfiber is a great option as it’s cost-effective, but also holds up to daily wear and tear and can last a long time. The 80 grams-per-square-meter (GSM) fabric has a classic chevron pattern throughout the set and scalloped detailing along the edges, adding texture to the room. Related: Amazon is selling a narrow storage cabinet with 9 adjustable shelves for $70This set includes a quilt and two shams that can each be used to sleep on or to use for decoration. The quilt is lightweight but offers all-season warmth, and you can use it by itself during hot summer months, or place it on top of your winter comforter to add more warmth during cold nights. It’s available in a multitude of colors, with sale colors including gray, Emerald green, Ochre, and more. Choose from multiple sizes, with the gray king-size being the best price at just $19, and the gray full/queen-size on sale for just $24.Details to knowSizes: The full/queen and King sizes are on sale, but they also offer twin and California king sizes. Color: The gray color is the best price, but other sale colors include Emerald green, Charcoal, and Ochre. Material: The polyester microfiber material holds up to regular use, is wrinkle-resistant, and machine washable.With over 700 5-star ratings, this set is sure to be a great addition to your home. One review said, “There was nothing to dislike, it was just as described. It also passed the washing test. The result was a non-shrinking, very soft bedspread.” Another buyer said, “I think I picked the right bedspread and shams. I love the color, and the quality of the material is great. I also like the weight of it.”Shop more dealsIr Imperial Rooms 2-Pack Fitted King-Size Sheets, $19 (was $27) at WalmartExclusivo Mezcla Microfiber Floral Quilt Set, $30 (was $64) at WalmartSormag Duvet Cover, $25 (was $57) at WalmartIf you need an affordable quilt set that can hold up to use and remain soft and comfortable, the Ir Imperial Rooms 3-Piece Microfiber Quilt Set is a great choice. The polyester microfiber offers ultimate softness and can withstand machine washing and daily use. This set is just $18 for the king-size and $24 for the full/queen-size right now at Walmart. 

For future-focused e-commerce brands, the primary customer is rapidly changing from a person behind a screen to the AI agents that said human customer deploys on their behalf to research and, if projections are correct, purchase the product on their behalf. Investment banking and financial services giant Morgan Stanley, for instance, has published research suggesting 10-20% of the entire U.S. commerce spend could be agentic by 2030 — amounting to $190 billion to $385 billion.In response to this seismic shift, the four-year-old agentic AI e-commerce startup Azoma has unveiled the Agentic Merchant Protocol (AMP). This new framework is designed to provide high-volume retailers — such as grocery brands, electronics manufacturers, and fashion labels — with a “brand-friendly” anchor in an ecosystem increasingly dominated by autonomous shoppersThe idea is compelling and deceptively simple at its core: instead of the current status quo wherein merchants selling physical products online have to manually enter information about each product like SKUs and materials on different online marketplaces and product listing aggregators (e.g. Walmart, Amazon, Google Shopping, etc.) — brands can now just take all that information, put it into Azoma’s platform, and push it out everywhere it needs to go, including pages optimized for AI agents to search and retrieve the information for users, recommending them the products that fit their specific query. Using technology to end the ‘black box’ era of early agentic AI e-commerceModern AI integration typically relies on siloed systems like OpenAI’s ACP or Google’s UCP. While these protocols manage the technical handshakes required for discovery and payment, they offer minimal oversight regarding brand integrity. When an AI agent deployed by a customer “reasons” about their human consumer’s product query, it often synthesizes data from unverified corners of the web, such as Reddit or outdated affiliate sites, creating a “black box” effect where the brand’s intended messaging is lost.AMP functions as a high-level “system of record” that bridges these disparate platforms. It allows companies to centralize their product intelligence—including legal guardrails and brand books—into a single, machine-native format.”AMP breaks the foundations of traditional ecommerce,” states Max Sinclair, CEO of Azoma in a press release shared with VentureBeat ahead of the official announcement set for March 12 in London.”For decades, marketplaces like Amazon and Walmart acted as gatekeepers by controlling product detail pages, rankings, and distribution. Brands optimized a finite set of endpoints: PDPs, ads, search results. In an agentic world, those fixed pages no longer exist”.The Azoma platform is specifically engineered for high-volume retailers and manufacturers of physical goods, with a primary concentration on the Consumer Packaged Goods (CPG) and fast-moving consumer goods (FMCG) sectors. In an interview with VentureBeat, Sinclair explicitly distinguished the protocol’s utility from digital-only assets or services, noting that Azoma does not currently support NFTs, SaaS, or financial sectors like banking and insurance. Whether facilitating the automated reordering of household staples like dishwasher soap or providing the “reasoning” data for high-consideration purchases like specialized supplements and ski hardware, the protocol serves as the digital connective tissue for brands whose value is rooted in the physical world.Sovereignty in a multi-agent worldThe protocol has already seen rapid adoption by a coalition of consumer goods giants, including L’Oréal, Unilever, Mars, Beiersdorf, and Reckitt. For these organizations, maintaining a consistent identity across various AI surfaces is an urgent priority.”The fact that businesses like L’Oréal, Unilever, Mars & Beiersdorf have moved so quickly to adopt AMP tells you everything about the urgency they feel,” Sinclair remarked during a recent interview with VentureBeat. “These are companies that have spent decades building brand equity—they’re not about to hand control of how their products are represented to an AI black box”.The AMP suite provides several critical levers for technical leaders:Canonical Machine-Native Catalogues: Data structures designed specifically for LLM ingestion, enriched with persona-level signaling.Programmatic Open Web Distribution: Ensuring that the data agents find on the open web matches the brand’s official documentation.Agent-Agnostic Infrastructure: A design that prevents vendor lock-in by allowing brands to interface with any AI assistant or marketplace agent.Performance Visibility: Tools to measure how agents “weigh” specific product attributes and verify compliance across the ecosystem.Intelligence as a competitive moatBeyond simple data distribution, Azoma provides an end-to-end workflow designed to secure market share in an AI-first economy. The platform includes a proprietary “RegGuard™ Compliance” engine that automatically audits all generated content against strict brand guidelines and regulatory rules, such as FDA/DSHEA standards. This automated oversight is paired with advanced citation tracking, allowing brands to see exactly which sources—ranging from Reddit and Quora to Wikipedia and YouTube—AI agents are citing when they make a recommendation.This granular visibility has already yielded significant performance gains for early partners. The company reports that for the brand Ruroc, site traffic from ChatGPT has increased 14x, positioning them as the #1 recommended ski helmet brand in target geographies.Similarly, clients have seen their share of mentions within specific retail agents like Amazon Rufus increase by 5x, while optimized content has demonstrated conversion lifts of up to 32% in split-testing. By addressing technical “GEO blockers”—such as schema errors, crawlability gaps, and JavaScript-only content that traditional scrapers might miss—Azoma enables brands to transition from passive observation to active optimization of the AI conversation. For rapidly growing firms like Perfect Ted, this visibility contributed to a +532% year-over-year revenue increase.Fusing marketplace DNA with AI researchAzoma’s leadership team mirrors the intersection of high-scale retail and advanced computation. Sinclair spent six years at Amazon, where he spearheaded the customer browse experience for the Singapore launch and managed the expansion of Amazon Grocery throughout the European Union. This tenure at the world’s largest retailer highlighted the limitations of static listings in a dynamic, AI-driven market. “In the traditional e-commerce world… you’d write a product listing, publish it, and that would be that,” Sinclair observed. “In this new world, the product detail pages are generative… our customers lose all of the control”.The technical backbone of the protocol is led by CTO Timur Luguev, a Fulbright Scholar and ERCIM Fellow with over a decade in multimodal deep learning. Luguev views AMP as a way to indirectly influence the broader “online footprint” that informs AI reasoning. “We want to feed agents through, basically, indirectly, through open online footprint,” Luguev explained. “That’s the focus: basically first define this kind of a standard, so centralize this information about the product and the brand in one place, then syndicated across the open surfaces, and then quantify and measure the impact”.Licensing and market implicationsAzoma is positioning its protocol as a neutral alternative to the walled-garden approaches of major tech providers. While search engines prioritize the consumer’s user experience, AMP focuses exclusively on the merchant’s requirement for predictability and accuracy.FeaturePlatform Protocols (ACP/UCP)Azoma AMPPrimary FocusTransaction executionBrand control & multi-agent syndicationData ReachInternal ecosystem onlyCross-platform & Open WebBrand GovernanceNo / Partial oversightFull enterprise-defined controlIntegrationDeveloper-centric APIsMarketing & Commerce team-friendlyThis shift effectively replaces traditional Search Engine Optimization (SEO) with Agentic Commerce Optimization (ACO). Sinclair argues that this transition is driven by a shift in consumer trust. “You’re going to trust ChatGPT acting on over your data [more] than just putting into Google, ‘what mattress should I use’ and just clicking on whoever paid for that top link,” he says.Pricing structureAzoma’s commercial strategy is designed to bridge the gap between traditional enterprise software procurement and the performance-driven metrics of the AI era. Currently, the company utilizes a standard enterprise model, engaging with its global partners through annual contracts that typically fall within the six-to-seven-figure range. This structure is intended to align with the existing budgetary frameworks of large-scale organizations, providing the predictability required for multi-national department planning.However, the company’s long-term vision involves a fundamental pivot toward an outcome-based pricing model. By integrating directly into a brand’s data and revenue flows, Azoma can measure the specific financial impact of every syndicated intervention across the agentic ecosystem. “Our ambition is the future is kind of… taking a cut when they [agents] deliver value,” explained Sinclair. This goal would effectively transition the protocol from a SaaS expense into a performance-based asset, mirroring how modern advertising platforms operate by tying costs directly to incremental revenue growth.Outcome-based agentic e-commerceBeyond mere data distribution, Azoma is looking toward a model where revenue is tied directly to successful agentic interactions. While current enterprise clients typically engage via traditional six-to-seven-figure annual contracts, the company’s long-term goal is outcome-based pricing.”Our ambition is the future is kind of… taking a cut when they [agents] deliver value,” Sinclair stated. Luguev noted that by accessing a brand’s data flows, they can provide rigorous ROI forecasting. “We have access to our actions, and then we measure what actions actually made the biggest impact… provide them ability to forecast which campaigns which actions and where to syndicate based on this understanding”.As the market prepares for the official unveiling of the protocol at the Agentic Commerce Optimization event in London on March 12th, the message to the C-suite is clear: the “fixed” product page is dead. “When L’Oréal, Unilever and Mars move together in the same direction, the rest of the market pays attention,” Sinclair concluded.

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