Manufacturing has multiple futures: automated, AI-enabled and more resilient. The winners will be those that build the people and career paths to run them.
BUSINESS
Hasbro Stock Jumps 10% As It Convinces Wall Street To Believe In Magic
Hasbro CEO Chris Cocks spent much of the earnings call today explaining why Magic:The Gathering is a safe, long-term bet.
Mark Cuban has strong words on income and inequality
Juan Hernandez joined SpaceX in 2015 as a welder making $28 an hour. The company offered him $10,000 in stock alongside his wages. He accepted without giving it much thought. He’d never been offered equity at any job before and didn’t really know what to do with it.When SpaceX went public this year at a $1.77 trillion valuation, Hernandez’s 6,500 shares were worth just over $1 million, according to CBS News. He now works at Blue Origin. He’s teaching his kids how to invest. Mark Cuban saw that story and said it should be the rule, not the exception.What Mark Cuban said about company stock and income inequality”I would like to see it so that every single CEO, founder, entrepreneur does what I did, which was to give equity to every single employee,” Cuban said on the “What It Takes” podcast. “The way you’re going to reduce income inequality for anybody who works with somebody is making sure they get shares of stock, and then they benefit.”He’s not just theorizing. Cuban gave equity to all 330 employees at Broadcast.com before Yahoo bought it for $5.7 billion in 1999. About 300 of them became millionaires. He did the same at his first company, MicroSolutions. He’s made, in his own words, at least a thousand millionaires in his career, and says he plans to keep that number climbing.The SpaceX IPO gave him fresh ammunition for the argument. More than 4,400 current and former SpaceX employees became millionaires when the company listed this year. About 400 of them hold stakes above $100 million. Most of them aren’t executives. They’re welders, machinists, technicians, and factory workers who built the rockets with their hands and accepted stock grants when they joined.Why income inequality in America makes Cuban’s argument urgent right nowThe numbers aren’t subtle. S&P 500 CEOs made 285 times the median pay of their workers in 2024, up from 268 times the year before, according to the AFL-CIO. The average CEO took home $18.9 million, up $1.4 million from the prior year. The people who work for those CEOs didn’t see anything like that.More Economy:Massive AI spending has unexpected effect on U.S. inflationWhite House sends warning to nations relying on the StraitPepsiCo CEO warns on gas prices, consumer spendingThe reason is not complicated. Stock options, equity grants, and performance bonuses go to the people at the top. The janitor gets a wage. The welder clocking in at $28 an hour gets a wage. They build the thing, but they don’t own any of it. That’s the gap Cuban keeps pointing at.Cuban’s argument is that this doesn’t have to be the default. SpaceX proved it isn’t. The question is why more companies haven’t copied the model.Mark Cuban’s specific plan for how to incentivize employee stock ownershipCuban isn’t just making a moral case. He’s outlined a specific mechanism for how to actually get more companies to do this. His idea is to use the tax code. If a CEO gives the same percentage of stock they receive in equity to every employee, the company pays a lower corporate tax rate than the current 21%.”So if the CEO gets $100,000 worth of stock because they make $1 million in cash, and the janitor makes $50,000, then they deserve the same percentage in stock, and that will change the game,” Cuban said.The percentage model is the key part of his pitch. Nobody is saying the janitor gets the same dollar amount as the CEO. The janitor gets the same percentage. If the CEO makes $1 million in cash and gets 10% of that in stock, the janitor making $50,000 gets 10% of that in stock, too. Different numbers, same rule. That’s the idea.
Companies with employee ownership stakes tend to see higher productivity and lower turnover.Natalie/Getty Images
What the research says about employee stock ownership and wealth inequalityThe Harvard Business School did the math on this in 2021. If all private firms in the U.S. became 30% employee-owned, household wealth in the country would effectively double. The top 1% of wealth holders would see their net wealth drop by roughly 14% as a result, according to Harvard Business School research.The benefits go beyond wealth distribution. Companies with employee ownership stakes tend to see higher productivity and lower turnover. A Rutgers University study found that companies offering employees ownership stakes of at least 5% had a higher likelihood of survival than those without it, because workers with equity have more reason to care whether the business does well.”When you align everyone’s incentives with a common goal, everyone will work harder to achieve that goal,” said Ethan Rouen, a Harvard Business School professor, in an interview about the research. “When you have an equity stake, all of a sudden you have a claim on the upside, and so that incentivizes you to work harder to increase that upside.”What Mark Cuban’s employee ownership model means for workers, businessesCuban is not the only billionaire making this argument. Elon Musk told Texas Governor Greg Abbott that his philosophy has always been that everyone at the company should receive stock so they can participate in the upside. That philosophy is now visible in the form of 4,400 SpaceX millionaires.Cuban’s other major project, Cost Plus Drugs, follows the same principle of cutting out the middlemen and distributing the benefits more broadly. Where Cost Plus goes after pharmaceutical middlemen to make drugs cheaper, the employee equity model goes after the structural gap in how compensation is designed to funnel upside to the top.Whether the tax incentive mechanism he’s describing gets traction in Washington is a separate question. But the SpaceX IPO just gave the argument the most concrete real-world example yet. A welder who joined a company in 2015 for $28 an hour, who never expected to own anything more than his tools, is now a millionaire. Cuban’s point is that Hernandez shouldn’t be a feel-good story. He should be the norm.Related: Mark Cuban has strong words on AI companies and job losses
Walmart’s bestselling vintage-inspired slide sandals are only $17
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 deal’90s fashion has made a strong return, with clean silhouettes and effortless styling replacing last season’s trends. Strappy sandals and thin slides have been making a comeback once again, pairing easily with everything from relaxed denim to flowy dresses and matching sets. The simple designs capture a laid-back aesthetic that defined the decade while also fitting naturally into today’s wardrobes. For anyone embracing the revival of ’90s-inspired fashion, a versatile pair of slide sandals is an easy way to add that timeless look to everyday outfits while adding a fun, vintage look to any fit. The Madden NYC Slide Sandals blend a relaxed summer style with a polished look that offer an easy option for tons of outfits. For just $17 at Walmart, these can be your new go-to summer shoes, offering an easy option for fancy dinners while on vacation or a trip to the grocery store on the weekends. Shoppers save 43% on this stylish footwear..Madden NYC Slide Sandals, $17 (was $30) at Walmart
Courtesy of Walmart
Shop at WalmartWhy do shoppers love it?The textured, woven Raffia upper gives the sandals a fun look that feels refined without feeling overdone, or you can also choose flat bone white or textured Multicolored, each with a gold adornment on the top of the strap. They feature a padded polyurethane insole that provides cushioning while the thing profile adds a sleek look. The thermoplastic rubber outsole moves with your foot and offers durability for rough city streets while still offering traction on smooth shopping store floors. It features a flat heel and a medium-width fit that offer an easygoing feel for everything from sightseeing on vacation to grabbing a coffee with friends. They also add a neat vintage vibe with the square toe and heel that are reminiscent of the ’90s and early 2000s, offering a fresh take on a classic look. Related: Amazon’s $27 cloud sandals feel ‘like walking on air’Convenience makes these slides even better. The slip-on design means there’s no need to fuss with buckles, shoelaces, or straps, making them easy to slip on as you head outside or toss off after a long day on your feet. The lightweight design and slim profile also makes them a smart addition to a travel bag, taking up little space while also giving you a stylish option for a variety of activities. Whether you’re heading to the beach or just looking for an easy, everyday sandal, the versatility makes them easy to reach for.Details to knowSizes: Choose from sizes six through 11.Colors: This sandal is available in Bone white, Multicolored, or Raffia. Versatility: These sandals are easy to pack down and look great with a multitude of outfit styles.One shopper said, “These are an amazing designer look for less. These are inspired by a nearly $900 designer pair. Very neutral, great summer shoe. Versatile, comfortable, and fits true to size. I highly recommend them.””These shoes are absolutely adorable. I love wearing them. They’re very well made as well. They are surprisingly cushiony for how thin they are, so they are very comfortable to walk in,” said another shopper.Shop more dealsMadden NYC Strappy Slides, $17 (was $28) at WalmartMadden NYC Lucite Thong Wedge Sandals, $19 (was $32) at WalmartMadden Girl Floral Wedge Sandals, $49 (was $69) at WalmartThese Madden NYC Slide Sandals are a classy and versatile option for almost any occasion. They’re easy to dress up, dress down, and pack for easy traveling. At just $17, they’re also a steal right now at Walmart.
Nvidia, Micron just got hit by an AI model from Beijing
Every market boom eventually runs into the same problem, and it rarely shows up where investors expect it.You ride a simple story — in this case, artificial intelligence needs endless chips and data centers — straight up the chart until the numbers stop feeling real.Then something jolts the narrative, not by breaking the old leaders, but by proving they aren’t alone anymore.Right now, that jolt is coming from Beijing.Chinese startup Moonshot AI just introduced Kimi K3, an open‑weight artificial intelligence model built with roughly two point eight trillion parameters, a scale that rivals the largest systems in the world.Independent benchmarks cited by outlets such as the BBC say Kimi K3 performs in the same neighborhood as top models from OpenAI and Anthropic on many reasoning and coding tasks.Kimi K3 is not about stealing Nvidia’s customers overnight. Still, my take is that it attacks the assumption that U.S. companies will always enjoy a comfortable technological lead, and that is exactly where the market decided to hit the brakes.Chip investors just got a wake‑up callNvidia’s stock, along with Micron Technology and other chipmakers, slid as traders digested the idea that a Chinese lab could make top‑tier artificial intelligence models cheaper and more accessible, The Wall Street Journal reported.The PHLX Semiconductor Index fell about 10% in the week of Kimi K3’s launch, its steepest weekly drop since April 2025, as investors dumped AI‑linked names, The Journal reported.More Artificial Intelligence:Nebius lands $1 billion Al deal as major risk looms.IBM’s historic crash exposes Al spending trapNetflix quietly reveals what Al did to 300 of its programsTech stocks broadly sold off, with the Nasdaq down roughly one point four percent, but chipmakers took the brunt because their valuations are built directly on artificial intelligence demand.David Sacks and Bill Ackman have been warning that China’s new model narrows America’s lead in artificial intelligence and heightens policy and national‑security risks around data centers and cloud infrastructure, according to Benzinga.Their argument is simple, and it matters. If you own these stocks or work in the sector, cheaper high‑end models from China could force corporations and governments to rethink how much they spend on Western chips and cloud capacity.
China’s Moonshot AI unveiled Kimi K3, a huge open model that closes the gap with U.S. leaders.VCG / Getty Images
What is the Kimi K3 AI model?Kimi K3 is Moonshot AI’s latest flagship model, built as an open‑weight system that developers can download, inspect, and modify, unlike the closed models most U.S. users rely on.The model clocks in at around 2.8 trillion parameters, making it the largest open system yet disclosed from China and placing it firmly in the same size class as elite Western models, according to the BBC.Artificial Analysis and other benchmarking firms have found that Kimi K3 competes closely with leading reasoning models, ranking near the top on tasks like web interface engineering and complex coding.Related: Intel and Google deepen AI ties for chip designOn paper, this does two things investors care about.First, it proves that China’s labs can match or nearly match state‑of‑the‑art performance in core commercial tasks such as software development and data analysis.Second, by making such a system open and, in some configurations, cheaper than Western closed alternatives, it threatens the idea that only Silicon Valley giants can deliver cutting‑edge artificial intelligence at scale.At‑a‑glance numbers behind the Kimi K3 shockKimi K3’s parameter count is about 2.8 trillion, according to BBC and Inc.Weekly drop in PHLX Semiconductor Index, roughly 10%, The Wall Street Journal reported.Nasdaq declined on the main sell-off day, around 1.4%, The New York Times confirmed.Nvidia and other chipmakers’ intraday moves were between 2% and 4% percent down.When I compare those numbers against how fast Nvidia and its peers ran up this year, I believe that this is less a crash and more a sentiment reset around how durable the AI spending story really is.Why Kimi K3 matters for your walletIf you own Nvidia or Micron, you are basically betting that artificial intelligence workloads keep growing faster than anyone can build cheap alternatives.Kimi K3 does not demolish that thesis, but it introduces real competition in what used to be a one‑way narrative.TheStreet has covered how investors hope strong Nvidia earnings can give the broader rally more life, and how analysts are still raising price targets ahead of big quarters, but days like this show that the path will not be smooth.Cheaper or open models from China could push some companies to experiment with lower‑cost infrastructure or shift workloads, which would chip away at the premium multiples that data‑center suppliers enjoy.For workers, especially in tech and cloud‑related roles, this is a reminder that if artificial intelligence becomes more globally commoditized, the pricing power and hiring power concentrated in a few U.S. giants could spread out, or in some areas, shrink.For your kid growing up into this market, the story might not be about one or two American companies owning the future, but about whether they can stay ahead of a crowded field where China, and other countries, release powerful tools for anyone to build on.How to think about Nvidia and Micron nowShort‑term, this kind of shock tends to pass once investors see hard earnings data.Part of the volatility in chip stocks has been driven by traders locking in profits ahead of major quarterly reports from Nvidia and other megacap technology names, The Journal noted.If those numbers show that demand for U.S. chips and cloud capacity is still growing, the Kimi K3 headlines may fade into the background, at least until the next competitive threat emerges.Long‑term, though, you should be asking different questions about your exposure to AI‑linked names.Do you own them because you believe they can stay ahead of global competition, including open systems from Beijing, or because you assume their lead is guaranteed by politics and hype?If it is the latter, this week is a warning to rethink that assumption.I would treat this sell-off as an opportunity to revisit whether your portfolio is overly concentrated in a single story (i.e., artificial intelligence needs endless Western chips). It’s clear that AI technology itself is becoming cheaper, more open, and more evenly distributed around the world.Related: Nvidia’s latest Rubin deal points to a bigger growth market
Evals are the new PRD, Expedia’s AI chief tells VB Transform 2026
“The new PRD are the evals,” Xavi Amatriain, Expedia Group’s first chief AI and data officer, told the VB Transform 2026 audience last week in Menlo Park. “So basically, you encode what you want the product to do through your evals, which might include red teaming evals and all kinds of other things, which already have a bunch of security requirements. So, you already embed that into the PRD and the product design document before you even start coding.”He pushed it further. “With AI-assisted or AI-generated code, that’s gonna be the future. It’s like all your thinking is gonna go into the evals.”Amatriain served as VP of AI and Compute Enablement at Google across the platforms powering Gemini and Google Search before his December 2025 appointment at Expedia. He’s mentored talent who went on to found Perplexity and Scale AI. VentureBeat’s VB Pulse research on the evaluation gap reinforced the stakes. Sixty-six percent of the 157 enterprises surveyed already permit some production deployment without human review or are building toward it within the next 12 months, yet only 5% fully trust the automated evaluations that would make that decision. Half have shipped an agent that passed internal evals but then failed with a real customer.Don’t let guardrails get in the way of feedback“The more guardrails and artificial business rules and sort of rules that you put into the system, the worse off,” Amatriain said. “Not only because they’re brittle, but also because they actually mess up with the feedback loop. You are actually biasing the user and the feedback you get from the user, and then you’re learning that in the wrong way.” He called guardrails “a necessary evil” and said the goal is to minimize their impact over time.Not everyone at Transform agreed. Other speakers argued during the event that the highest-risk actions still demand very firm guardrails.Expedia governs AI through three layers instead. Principles come first, communicated broadly. “I like to encode at a very high level how I expect decisions to be made, because in a large organization you’re gonna have a lot of distributed decision making,” Amatriain said. “And sometimes, if you’re lucky enough, those principles might be embedded in your culture. But most of the time, my experience has been they’re not.” The processes and tools that enforce them follow. “Principles look really nice on a picture on some wall, but you need to then give them teeth,” he said. Automation sits on top of both.In practice, this plays out through what Expedia calls agent release toll gates, checkpoints calibrated to risk. “Governance needs to correlate to the risk,” Amatriain said. “And if you have something that is low risk, you don’t need too much governance to get in the way. But if there’s a lot of risk, then you need more governance. That can be encoded.” The toll gates tie evaluation rounds, red teaming, and security review to each agent’s risk level, and the checks shift from recommended to required as the stakes climb. Specialized agents over monolithic intelligence“Even when I was at Google, I was like, I don’t believe in AGI as sort of like a singleton and a unified sort of like single model,” Amatriain told the audience. “I think it’s much better to think of it as composition, sort of like having specialized agents that are very good at some task and then composing the system out of those specialized agents.”Expedia’s architecture starts at the component level. Tools compose into skills, skills assemble into sub-agents, and sub-agents get orchestrated into the full agentic system. “You need to have those principles that are unified that talk about things like what is the tone that we’re using, how are we addressing the user, how are we passing context, memory,” he said. “All of that needs to be thoroughly designed.” He framed this as a systemic design problem. “It’s not about the model, it’s not about a specific solution, it’s about how you’re designing the system.”Amatriain argued that scoping each agent narrowly also makes the system easier to secure, since teams can evaluate and lock down individual agents in isolation before composing them.When the user must keep the final clickTravel pricing changes in real time, flight availability shifts minute to minute, and hotel reviews routinely contradict what suppliers claim. Amatriain described a system that blends retrieval-augmented generation with direct API tool calls, choosing the approach based on latency. “If the user asks you a question like, how much does a four star hotel usually cost in Chicago in July, you don’t expect the agent to take two minutes to answer that question,” he said. “You expect an immediate answer because that answer can be cached and it doesn’t need real-time information.” A pet-friendly four-star near Lake Michigan with a pool might justify a 30-second reasoning window.“The supplier might be saying, yeah, we have a great swimming pool, but then we also have the reviews from the travelers and we actually see there’s two reviews that say the swimming pool was not great or was not open after 6 p.m.,” Amatriain explained. A generic chatbot, he added, would only surface what a supplier self-reports, while Expedia cross-references against its own review corpus.“We don’t want the agent to book the hotel or to buy you a plane ticket for you,” Amatriain said. “That’s something that the user has to have the agency. And the agent can recommend, can suggest, can discuss with you, but you’re gonna have to hit that click. And that’s non-negotiable.” That constraint, he argued, is also a security decision. “Once you establish those design principles, you also don’t need the guardrail because otherwise you’re gonna have to put all those guardrails in after the fact.”The next attackers will be other AI systems“Security needs to be a principle that is shifted as left as possible and as part of the design itself,” Amatriain said in response to an audience question. “And usually when you need a guardrail is because you’ve not thought about it early on.”A second audience member pressed for lessons learned from production. Amatriain described a feedback loop where monitoring signals flow back into the eval suite. “You can almost automate the whole cycle,” he said. “But having that whole feedback loop from real signals, from your operating AI system, all the way into being reported and fixed as quickly as possible is going to become essential.”Amatriain’s toll gates are a bet that governance calibrated to risk can stay ahead of that feedback loop. VentureBeat’s separate June Pulse survey on agent security, drawn from 107 enterprises, shows how thin that margin is. More than half, 54 percent, have already had an agent security incident or near-miss. Fifty-nine percent plan to adopt, add, or replace agent security tooling within 12 months, and 29% plan to move this quarter. Incident rates climb with organization size, reaching 63% among enterprises with more than 1,000 employees versus 49% for companies with 101 to 1,000. And sandbox isolation, the one post-breach control that limits damage, drops from 35% adoption at the smaller companies to just 20 percent at the largest.Amatriain warned that threats will increasingly come from other AI systems. “You’re gonna get threats coming not only from humans but also from other external agentic systems that are really powerful, and they’re gonna be poking at everything you’re doing. And as soon as you detect something, it’s not only about the detection, but the time to fix becomes essential here.”
Nintendo Won’t Pass On Tariff Refunds—Arguing Consumers ‘Received Exactly What They Bargained And Paid For’
The video game giant previously blamed “market conditions” for price hikes.
World Cup 2030 Rights: What It Takes To Justify The Check
FIFA’s World Cup 2030 rights auction will test which platform can turn record demand, Spanish-language growth and off-peak U.S. hours into profit.
New Airbnb Perks To Know Before Your Next Trip
Airbnb is expanding beyond vacation rentals with new ways to book hotels, transportation, activities and travel services all in one place. The latest updates include boutique hotel bookings, car rentals, airport transfers, grocery delivery and thousands of new Airbnb Experiences. Here’s a look at the biggest new Airbnb perks and what to know before you book your next trip.
Airbnb Adds New Perks
Here are some of the biggest additions:
Boutique hotels: You can now book thousands of independent hotels through Airbnb in 20 cities, with a price-match guarantee and limited-time promotional Airbnb credits when you book with eligible hotel properties.
Travel add-ons: Arrange grocery delivery, airport transfers and luggage storage directly through the app.
Car rentals: Rent a car through Airbnb and earn a promotional credit on your first booking. More local experiences: Choose from 3,000+ new tours and activities led by local experts. One example of the platform’s new offerings is a tour of Notre Dame in Paris led by an architect involved with the Paris cathedral’s restoration (from $95 per guest).
Hotel-style services: Book personal chefs, massages, fitness trainers, catering and more — even if you’re not staying in an Airbnb.
Final Thoughts
Airbnb’s new features may simplify travel planning, but they don’t change the risks that can come with staying in a vacation rental. Clark Howard says every Airbnb guest should follow his Golden Rule for Vacation Rentals: Film both your check-in and your check-out. A slow, time-stamped video of each room documenting any existing damage — and the condition you left it in — can provide valuable evidence if a host later files an unwarranted damage claim. It’s a simple step that could save you hundreds of dollars and a major headache after your vacation.
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White House pushes Senate Democrats to take ‘historic’ crypto Clarity Act ethics deal
Without revealing any details about the actual agreement from President Trump on potential presidential restrictions, his White House is urging its acceptance.