U.S. President Donald Trump named Todd Blanche, his former personal attorney and deputy attorney general, as the interim top prosecutor.
BUSINESS
This company wants to be the Uber of private jets
While the high cost of private aviation will always have it remain an extravagance that can be accessed by a very small portion of the population, the use of private jets has been up significantly even as the war in Iran skyrocketed the global price of oil this spring.According to the latest data from aviation industry tracker WingX, the number of private jet flights around the world was up 11% during the week ending on March 29. That number was, at 57,313 departures, up 13% for flights departing from North America as a growing number of travelers sought out the ultimate luxury of being able to bypass airport lines and charter a flight to a destination of their choosing.While seemingly controversial given the fact that jet fuel prices are currently at highs unseen since 2022, analysts attribute rising private jet use to the widespread flight cancelations and travel disruptions that left those who normally would not fly private to seek out that route.How do you order a private jet? This boutique charter company hopes to change thatIndividual rides on a private plane have traditionally been ordered by proposing flight and passenger details to a broker.Regular private private flyers will typically start out by ordering a few flights and, if finding doing so again and again, move on to a jet card membership or fractional ownership of a private jet which gives them access to a certain number of flight hours on a company’s planes.Related: Mandarin Oriental is betting big on Egyptian travelDepending on the size and type of aircraft used, flight time in the U.S. typically averages between $1,500 and $15,000 per hour to what will usually amount to approximately $30,000 for a private cross-country trip in the U.S. Due to the high costs and specifics of each case, this is still usually done by phone as the broker works out the details of what the customer wants and proposes prices.Established in 1995 by aviation entrepreneur Greg Raiff, Elevate Jet recently marked 30 years of offering private flights to sports teams and high net worth individuals with a new app in which travelers can order a ride on a private jet like they would an Uber or other ride-haling service: entering the destinations and dates and choosing from the company’s fleet of planes like the Falcon 7X, Challenger 650 and Gulfstream G200/G650The app then provides details about different time options, any additional surcharges in the form of airport taxes and necessary fuel stops as well as additional options for transporting pets or a larger-than-standard amount of luggage.
Elevate Jet was established in 1996 as a charter airline company.Elevate Jet
“A private jet is a time machine”: Elevate JetThe regions covered are the same as those included in Elevate Jet’s jet card: the mainland United States and Mexico, the Caribbean and Central America as well as some select destinations in Europe.”Travelers that regularly fly private know that a private jet is a time machine,” Raiff said of the app. “They save valuable time on every flight but why save time on a private jet just to waste that time talking for hours? It doesn’t make sense.”More Travel News:Airline to launch unusual new flight to Cayman Islands from the U.S.Here is where you should go for those last days of ski seasonUnexpected country is most luxurious travel destination for 2026U.S. government issues strange warning on Ireland travelThe app is meant to introduce what, in the industry, is often referred to as the “frugal wealthy” to private travel. While some will eventually find that a jet card or fractional ownership makes for a better use of funds, Elevate Jet is hoping that the convenience of an app will serve as an entry point for some travelers.Related:
Olivia Rodrigo’s New Album Title Breaks A Longstanding Tradition
The pop rock princess seems to be pursuing a departure from her former branding in multiple ways, including her titles.
Arcee’s new, open source Trinity-Large-Thinking is the rare, powerful U.S.-made AI model that enterprises can download and customize
The baton of open source AI models has been passed on between several companies over the years since ChatGPT debuted in late 2022, from Meta with its Llama family to Chinese labs like Qwen and z.ai. But lately, Chinese companies have started pivoting back towards proprietary models even as some U.S. labs like Cursor and Nvidia release their own variants of the Chinese models, leaving a question mark about who will originate this branch of technology going forward. One answer: Arcee, a San Francisco based lab, which this week released AI Trinity-Large-Thinking—a 399-billion parameter text-only reasoning model released under the uncompromisingly open Apache 2.0 license, allowing for full customizability and commercial usage by anyone from indie developers to large enterprises. The release represents more than just a new set of weights on AI code sharing community Hugging Face; it is a strategic bet that “American Open Weights” can provide a sovereign alternative to the increasingly closed or restricted frontier models of 2025. This move arrives precisely as enterprises express growing discomfort with relying on Chinese-based architectures for critical infrastructure, creating a demand for a domestic champion that Arcee intends to fill.As Clément Delangue, co-founder and CEO of Hugging Face, told VentureBeat in a direct message on X: “The strength of the US has always been its startups so maybe they’re the ones we should count on to lead in open-source AI. Arcee shows that it’s possible!” Genesis of a 30-person frontier labTo understand the weight of the Trinity release, one must understand the lab that built it. Based in San Francisco, Arcee AI is a lean team of only 30 people. While competitors like OpenAI and Google operate with thousands of engineers and multibillion-dollar compute budgets, Arcee has defined itself through what CTO Lucas Atkins calls “engineering through constraint”.The company first made waves in 2024 after securing a $24 million Series A led by Emergence Capital, bringing its total capital to just under $50 million. In early 2026, the team took a massive risk: they committed $20 million—nearly half their total funding—to a single 33-day training run for Trinity Large. Utilizing a cluster of 2048 NVIDIA B300 Blackwell GPUs, which provided twice the speed of the previous Hopper generation, Arcee bet the company’s future on the belief that developers needed a frontier model they could truly own. This “back the company” bet was a masterclass in capital efficiency, proving that a small, focused team could stand up a full pipeline and stabilize training without endless reserves.Engineering through extreme architectural constraintTrinity-Large-Thinking is noteworthy for the extreme sparsity of its attention mechanism. While the model houses 400 billion total parameters, its Mixture-of-Experts architecture means that only 1.56%, or 13 billion parameters, are active for any given token. This allows the model to possess the deep knowledge of a massive system while maintaining the inference speed and operational efficiency of a much smaller one—performing roughly 2 to 3 times faster than its peers on the same hardware. Training such a sparse model presented significant stability challenges. To prevent a few experts from becoming “winners” while others remained untrained “dead weight,” Arcee developed SMEBU, or Soft-clamped Momentum Expert Bias Updates. This mechanism ensures that experts are specialized and routed evenly across a general web corpus. The architecture also incorporates a hybrid approach, alternating local and global sliding window attention layers in a 3:1 ratio to maintain performance in long-context scenarios.The data curriculum and synthetic reasoningArcee’s partnership with fellow startup DatologyAI provided a curriculum of over 10 trillion curated tokens. However, the training corpus for the full-scale model was expanded to 20 trillion tokens, split evenly between curated web data and high-quality synthetic data. Unlike typical imitation-based synthetic data where a smaller model simply learns to mimic a larger one, DatologyAI utilized techniques to synthetically rewrite raw web text—such as Wikipedia articles or blogs—to condense the information. This process helped the model learn to reason over concepts and information rather than merely memorizing exact token strings. To ensure regulatory compliance, tremendous effort was invested in excluding copyrighted books and materials with unclear licensing, attracting enterprise customers who are wary of intellectual property risks associated with mainstream LLMs. This data-first approach allowed the model to scale cleanly while significantly improving performance on complex tasks like mathematics and multi-step agent tool use.The pivot from yappy chatbots to reasoning agentsThe defining feature of this official release is the transition from a standard “instruct” model to a “reasoning” model.By implementing a “thinking” phase prior to generating a response—similar to the internal loops found in the earlier Trinity-Mini—Arcee has addressed the primary criticism of its January “Preview” release. Early users of the Preview model had noted that it sometimes struggled with multi-step instructions in complex environments and could be “underwhelming” for agentic tasks.The “Thinking” update effectively bridges this gap, enabling what Arcee calls “long-horizon agents” that can maintain coherence across multi-turn tool calls without getting “sloppy”. This reasoning process enables better context coherence and cleaner instruction following under constraint. This has direct implications for Maestro Reasoning, a 32B-parameter derivative of Trinity already being used in audit-focused industries to provide transparent “thought-to-answer” traces. The goal was to move beyond “yappy” or inefficient chatbots toward reliable, cheap, high-quality agents that stay stable across long-running loops.Geopolitics and the case for American open weightsThe significance of Arcee’s Apache 2.0 commitment is amplified by the retreat of its primary competitors from the open-weight frontier. Throughout 2025, Chinese research labs like Alibaba’s Qwen and z.ai (aka Zhupai) set the pace for high-efficiency MoE architectures. However, as we enter 2026, those labs have begun to shift toward proprietary enterprise platforms and specialized subscriptions, signaling a move away from pure community growth. The fragmentation of these once-prolific teams, such as the departure of key technical leads from Alibaba’s Qwen lab, has left a void at the high end of the open-weight market. In the United States, the movement has faced its own crisis. Meta’s Llama division notably retreated from the frontier landscape following the mixed reception of Llama 4 in April 2025, which faced reports of quality issues and benchmark manipulation.For developers who relied on the Llama 3 era of dominance, the lack of a current 400B+ open model created an urgent need for an alternative that Arcee has risen to fill.Benchmarks and how Arcee’s Trinity-Large-Thinking stacks up to other U.S. frontier open source AI model offeringsTrinity-Large-Thinking’s performance on agent-specific evaluations establishes it as a legitimate frontier contender. On PinchBench, a critical metric for evaluating model capability on autonomous agentic tasks, Trinity achieved a score of 91.9, placing it just behind the proprietary market leader, Claude Opus 4.6 (93.3). This competitiveness is mirrored in IFBench, where Trinity’s score of 52.3 sits in a near-dead heat with Opus 4.6’s 53.1, indicating that the reasoning-first “Thinking” update has successfully addressed the instruction-following hurdles that challenged the model’s earlier preview phase.The model’s broader technical reasoning capabilities also place it at the high end of the current open-source market. It recorded a 96.3 on AIME25, matching the high-tier Kimi-K2.5 and outstripping other major competitors like GLM-5 (93.3) and MiniMax-M2.7 (80.0). While high-end coding benchmarks like SWE-bench Verified still show a lead for top-tier closed-source models—with Trinity scoring 63.2 against Opus 4.6’s 75.6—the massive delta in cost-per-token positions Trinity as the more viable sovereign infrastructure layer for enterprises looking to deploy these capabilities at production scale.When it comes to other U.S. open source frontier model offerings, OpenAI’s gpt-oss tops out at 120 billion parameters, but there’s also Google with Gemma (Gemma 4 was just released this week) and IBM’s Granite family is also worth a mention, despite having lower benchmarks. Nvidia’s Nemotron family is also notable, but is fine-tuned and post-trained Qwen variants.BenchmarkArcee Trinity-Largegpt-oss-120B (High)IBM Granite 4.0Google Gemma 4GPQA-D76.3%80.1%74.8%84.3%Tau2-Airline88.0%65.8%*68.3%76.9%PinchBench91.9%69.0% (IFBench)89.1%93.3%AIME2596.3%97.9%88.5%89.2%MMLU-Pro83.4%90.0% (MMLU)81.2%85.2%So how is an enterprise supposed to choose between all these?Arcee Trinity-Large-Thinking is the premier choice for organizations building autonomous agents; its sparse 400B architecture excels at “thinking” through multi-step logic, complex math, and long-horizon tool use. By activating only a fraction of its parameters, it provides a high-speed reasoning engine for developers who need GPT-4o-level planning capabilities within a cost-effective, open-source framework. Conversely, gpt-oss-120B serves as the optimal middle ground for enterprises that require high-reasoning performance but prioritize lower operational costs and deployment flexibility. Because it activates only 5.1B parameters per forward pass, it is uniquely suited for technical workloads like competitive code generation and advanced mathematical modeling that must run on limited hardware, such as a single H100 GPU. Its configurable reasoning effort—offering “Low,” “Medium,” and “High” modes—makes it the best fit for production environments where latency and accuracy must be balanced dynamically across different tasks.For broader, high-throughput applications, Google Gemma 4 and IBM Granite 4.0 serve as the primary backbones. Gemma 4 offers the highest “intelligence density” for general knowledge and scientific accuracy, making it the most versatile option for R&D and high-speed chat interfaces. Meanwhile, IBM Granite 4.0 is engineered for the “all-day” enterprise workload, utilizing a hybrid architecture that eliminates context bottlenecks for massive document processing. For businesses concerned with legal compliance and hardware efficiency, Granite remains the most reliable foundation for large-scale RAG and document analysis.Ownership as a feature for regulated industriesIn this climate, Arcee’s choice of the Apache 2.0 license is a deliberate act of differentiation. Unlike the restrictive community licenses used by some competitors, Apache 2.0 allows enterprises to truly own their intelligence stack without the “black box” biases of a general-purpose chat model. “Developers and Enterprises need models they can inspect, post-train, host, distill, and own,” Lucas Atkins noted in the launch announcement. This ownership is critical for the “bitter lesson” of training small models: you usually need to train a massive frontier model first to generate the high-quality synthetic data and logits required to build efficient student models.Furthermore, Arcee has released Trinity-Large-TrueBase, a raw 10-trillion-token checkpoint. TrueBase offers a rare, “unspoiled” look at foundational intelligence before instruction tuning and reinforcement learning are applied. For researchers in highly regulated industries like finance and defense, TrueBase allows for authentic audits and custom alignments starting from a clean slate.Community verdict and the future of distillationThe response from the developer community has been largely positive, reflecting the desire for more open weights, U.S.-made mdoels. On X, researchers highlighted the disruption, noting that the “insanely cheap” prices for a model of this size would be a boon for the agentic community. On open AI model inference website OpenRouter, Trinity-Large-Preview established itself as the #1 most used open model in the U.S., serving over 80.6 billion tokens on peak days like March 1, 2026. The proximity of Trinity-Large-Thinking to Claude Opus 4.6 on PinchBench—at 91.9 versus 93.3—is particularly striking when compared to the cost. At $0.90 per million output tokens, Trinity is approximately 96% cheaper than Opus 4.6, which costs $25 per million output tokens. Arcee’s strategy is now focused on bringing these pretraining and post-training lessons back down the stack. Much of the work that went into Trinity Large will now flow into the Mini and Nano models, refreshing the company’s compact line with the distillation of frontier-level reasoning. As global labs pivot toward proprietary lock-in, Arcee has positioned Trinity as a sovereign infrastructure layer that developers can finally control and adapt for long-horizon agentic workflows.
IRS adds Palantir tech to find tax cheats
The IRS is reportedly going to get a lot smarter in spotting tax cheats, thanks to Palantir (PLTR). According to a Wired report, the tax agency is testing new software by the data analytics giant that’s tailored to identify the “highest-value” cases for audits, collections, and even criminal investigations.That represents a pivotal shift in the IRS’s reliance on outdated systems that have struggled to connect the dots in the past.For context, the IRS’s tax gap projection forecasted that taxpayers underpaid by an eye-popping $696 billion in tax year 2022.Over the years, the agency has operated across a tangled web of over 100 different systems, along with a myriad of audit-selection methods. That mess has made it incredibly tough to spot tax cheats efficiently, allowing some cases to slip through the cracks.However, Palantir’s new tool, called SNAP, aims to correct that by pulling in messy, unstructured data and underscoring patterns that human auditors might miss.Palantir spent the past couple of months staying impossible to ignore.The Iran war pushed AI warfare back in the center of the debate, and Palantir’s Maven system hogged all the spotlight, with Reuters reporting that the Pentagon wants to turn Maven into a program of record.On the commercial end, Palantir continued racking up wins, growing its partnership with Bain, and teamed up with Nvidia (NVDA) on a sovereign AI operating system.Most recently, it renewed and expanded its partnership with Stellantis (STLA) for another 5 years, including expanded use of its Foundry and AIP offerings. As of the time of writing, Palantir stock is trading at $146.49, according to Yahoo Finance, and despite all those wins, the tech giant shed more than 4% in value in the past month.Nevertheless, Palantir ranks among the biggest winners in the stock market over the past several years. If you’d thrown in $10,000 into Palantir stock five years ago, you would have compounded that investment to $62,900 today based on a 529% gain, per Seeking Alpha.That essentially means you’d be sitting on nearly a $52,900 in profit, not counting any taxes or trading fees.If everything works out smoothly, it further expands Palantir’s burgeoning foothold in government and the stickiness of its platform in high-value enforcement.For perspective, as per Palantir’s full-year 2025 results, government and commercial sales came in at $2.40 billion and $2.07 billion, respectively (54% government and 46% commercial). Palantir stock returns vs. the S&P 500Over 1 week, Palantir stock returned -5.36% versus the S&P 500’s 0.29%.Over 1 month, Palantir stock returned 6.78% versus the S&P 500’s -4.41%.Over 6 months, Palantir stock returned -19.70% versus the S&P 500’s -1.69%.Year to date, Palantir stock returned -17.59% versus the S&P 500’s -3.95%.Over 1 year, Palantir stock returned 73.57% versus the S&P 500’s 17.17%.Over 3 years, Palantir stock returned 1,633.61% versus the S&P 500’s 60.01%.
Source: Seeking Alpha
How Palantir could change IRS auditsUsing Palantir’s robust software, the IRS is looking to finally address a problem that has plagued it for decades.”This fragmented landscape can lead to a number of undesirable outcomes including but not limited to duplication of effort and cost, poor understanding of gaps in the coverage, and suboptimal case selection,” the IRS said.To put it simply:Palantir’s tool is called SNAP. It helps the IRS streamline how it narrows down potential fraud cases.It is still only a pilot. SNAP is not a full-scale overhaul at this point.The bigger goal is modernization. SNAP will be designed to sit atop the IRS’s fragmented databases, helping auditors spot red flags they missed early on. SNAP could prove especially useful when tax filings come with messy supporting documents — ones such as disaster zone claims and Form 709 gift tax returns.Needless to say, this development gives Palantir an opening. If SNAP works, the tech giant could deepen an already fruitful relationship with an agency that has awarded it north of $200 million in contracts and payments since 2014. Also, that template could be applied overseas, opening up a whole new revenue stream.
The IRS is testing new technology that could change how it identifies audit targets.Photo by Michael M. Santiago on Getty Images
Palantir’s top government programsGotham: A core defense and intel platform that connects and spots patterns in data while supporting mission planningAIP: Its AI layer, tailor-made to allow agencies to run secure AI tools on sensitive internal informationApollo: The software delivery backbone pushing critical updates across classified, frontline environmentsProject Maven: The highly touted AI program that is linked to military image analysis, surveillance, and battlefield decision-makingTITAN: A U.S. Army battlefield intelligence system that converts sensor and satellite data into real-time insightsWall Street price targets for Palantir stockCiti: $235 (60.4% upside)Mizuho: $195 (33.1% upside)UBS: $180 (22.9% upside)Deutsche Bank: $200 (36.5% upside)Goldman Sachs: $182 (24.2% upside)Wall Street’s average price target is $185.25 (26.46% upside), with a high target of $260 (77.5% upside) and a low target of $70 (52.2% downside).
Source: MarketBeat
Investor takeaway on Palantir stock Palantir’s current setup appears to be a stock that has its fair share of believers, but not one that’s giving investors an easy entry point.According to Seeking Alpha, Palantir stock trades behind every major moving average.It sits 2.75% under the 10-day, 0.95% below the 50-day, 10.23% under the 100-day, and 10.85% below the 200-day. More Palantir Palantir CEO delivers curt 8-word message to investorsVeteran analyst drops eye-popping price target on Palantir stockMorgan Stanley has a stark message for investors in Palantir stocksThat essentially means the stock is trying to find its footing in the short term, but the broader trend also needs a lot of work.On top of that, valuation remains the bigger issue. According to Seeking Alpha, Palantir is trading at 195 times trailing non-GAAP earnings and 110.64 times forward earnings, both comfortably exceeding sector norms.Moreover, its price-to-sales ratio of 77.45 is hard to ignore, more than 2,300% above sector medians. Even when pitted against its own five-year averages, several metrics still look remarkably stretched.Hence, existing investors believe that the bull case will continue to impress and that growth will remain elite; they’d want to continue holding and adding on dips. However, patience is warranted for new investors before a clear trend emerges.Related: Goldman Sachs sends surprise message to stock market investors
Amazon makes new move into credit cards
Here comes Amazon (AMZN) with another move beyond just carts. This time it’s targeting a crucial group: small businesses.The tech goliath just announced a new partnership with U.S. Bank and Mastercard to launch a fresh lineup of business credit cards this spring. It’s not just another product launch, but a signal of a bigger strategy shift.Amazon is steadily building a financial ecosystem designed to grow the number of business customers and increase their spending inside its platform.Amazon expands fintech push with new small business credit cardsAmazon (AMZN) is transitioning its small business credit card program to U.S. Bank and Mastercard, replacing its previous setup with a new, upgraded offering. The move marks the end of Amazon’s eight-year co-branded relationship with American Express for its business cards.The 31-year-old company announced on the last day of March that it will launch two new cards. The Prime Business Card that gets you 5% back on Amazon purchases as a Prime member. The second is the Amazon Business Card, offering 3% back for non-Prime users.Both cards will also offer:Rewards on purchases outside AmazonFlexible credit termsNo annual feesSpend management tools for businessesAfter $150,000 in annual spending, rewards shift to 1% back across categories.So why the change? According to Amazon executive Tai Koottatep, small businesses wanted better rewards and more control over cash flow. And this partnership aims to deliver exactly that.This isn’t just about perks, though. It’s about embedding Amazon deeper into how businesses operate day to day.Eimear Creaven, president, Global Partnerships, Mastercard, noted that, “Small businesses continue to be incredibly resilient, modernizing how they operate and navigating constant change.”
Photo by Matthias Balk/picture alliance via Getty Images
Amazon’s business growth shows why this move mattersAmazon’s small business ecosystem is already massive. And also growing fast.Amazon Business, launched in 2015, now generates over $35 billion in annualized sales. In a press release by Mastercard on 31 st March, 2026, they stated that Amazon continues to prioritize Amazon Business as a key growth driver. The platform sees strong adoption and favorable customer feedback. Amazon now serves over eight million organizations worldwide, excluding emerging markets. This includes 97 companies from the Fortune 100, 66 from the FTSE 100, and 38 from the DAX 40.More Retail:Walmart fires OpenAI in playbook-changing moveCostco CEO just gave members a new reason to renewBath & Body Works makes big change customers will notice right awayBut here is a question for you to entertain: What happens when those businesses also rely on Amazon for credit? In short, it creates a powerful loop. Businesses buy from Amazon, earn rewards on those purchases, and then reinvest the spending back into Amazon.And the timing is key. Amazon generated $716.9 billion in revenue over the past 12 months, growing 12.4% year-over-year. That’s in comparison to the $638.0 billion in 2024. Expanding into financial services could unlock even more growth without relying solely on retail.Meanwhile, U.S. Bank brings scale, serving over 1.4 million small business clients, while Mastercard provides global acceptance across hundreds of millions of locations.In short, this partnership combines:Amazon’s ecosystemU.S. Bank’s lending expertiseMastercard’s global payments networkAnd with no doubt, that’s a powerful and mega combination.Amazon also launched 1-hour and 3-hour deliveriesThe credit card launch is just one piece of a much bigger strategy. Amazon is aggressively expanding its services to make its platform more essential. Not just for consumers, but for businesses too. In mid-March, Amazon also launched 1-hour and 3-hour deliveries.Consider what else is happening:Faster delivery options, including the new 1-hour and 3-hour shippingExpansion of cloud services through AWSNew AI-driven logistics and inventory systemsThey recently rolled out ultra-fast delivery across more than 90,000 products, giving customers access to everyday essentials in as little as one hour in select locations.At the same time, Amazon continues to compete fiercely with rivals like Walmart and Target, which are also investing heavily in faster fulfillment.So here is where the credit cards fit in. They help tie everything together. By offering financing, rewards, and payment tools, Amazon can deepen customer loyalty while capturing more transaction data. A key advantage in today’s competitive retail landscape.What this means for you and Amazon stockAmazon stock remains a key topic for Wall Street almost every day.As per Macro trends, the company trades at a price-to-earnings ratio of around 27.7 and is viewed by some analysts as undervalued given its growth potential. Recent analyst moves reflect mixed, but generally optimistic sentiment.Tigress Financial raised its price target to $315JPMorgan lifted its target to $285Wolfe Research lowered its target to $245That range shows a key reality. Amazon’s future depends on execution across multiple fronts. That is retail, cloud, AI, and now financial services. The new credit card program could become an important growth driver, especially if adoption among small businesses accelerates.But now, investors will be watching closely to see if businesses will embrace Amazon as their financial partner, whether the company can scale this offering globally, and how much revenue this segment will eventually generate.One more thing you need to know about AmazonAmazon is building an ecosystem, not just selling products anymore.With its new small business credit cards, the company is taking another step toward becoming a one-stop platform for commerce, payments, and operations. In fact, it’s a strategic move that could highly deepen customer loyalty and unlock new revenue streams.Related: Morgan Stanley says it’s “time to buy” California-based tech giant
Fellowship For Women In Manufacturing Honors Former Labor Department Leader
The Emily Stover DeRocco Fellowship was established to empower female students at universities and community colleges seeking careers in manufacturing.
United Airlines Ups Checked Bag Fees By $10—Latest Airline Raising Costs
Airlines are navigating higher fuel costs amid the U.S. war with Iran.
Shadow bank Blue Owl caps private credit redemptions after investors try to pull $5.4 billion
Blue Owl Capital moved to limit withdrawals from two of its biggest private-credit funds after investors sought to redeem roughly $5.4 billion in the first quarter.Investors sought to pull roughly 22% of shares from Blue Owl Credit Income Corp., its flagship $36 billion private-credit fund, and 41% from a smaller, technology-focused vehicle.Blue Owl said it would honor only 5% of those requests in each fund.The two funds invest in private loans, or debt made outside of banks, that can take time to sell. That means when many investors want their money back at once, the manager may have to sell assets at a loss, creating a “fund run” similar to a bank run.The size of those requests was among the largest seen in the non-traded BDC, or business development company, market and sent Blue Owl shares down sharply. Other publicly traded alternative-asset managers also fell.Redemption caps slow withdrawals and give funds time to raise cash without dumping loans into a weak market.Private credit grew rapidly after the 2008 financial crisis as Dodd-Frank pushed banks to pull back from riskier lending. Asset managers stepped in, building a market that more than quadrupled to $1.6 trillion from $357 billion between 2016 and 2024.AI fears hit firstThe biggest pressure showed up in OTIC, Blue Owl’s $6.2 billion technology-focused fund. Investors have grown concerned that artificial intelligence could upend the software business models many of these loans are tied to.In the prior quarter, the fund had already faced elevated withdrawals. At the time, Blue Owl allowed investors to redeem 15.4% of shares, well above the usual 5% cap adopted by most firms.Related: Blue Owl Capital liquidity trap or shadow bank misinformation wave?The flagship fund also drew an unusually large wave of redemption requests.Blue Owl attributed the increasing amount of withdrawal requests to “heightened market concerns around AI-related disruption to software companies.”Redemption caps may buy timeBlue Owl’s flagship fund currently holds $11.3 billion in cash, credit lines and liquid assets. Under the 5% cap, it expects to pay out about $988 million this quarter while receiving $872 million in new investments, leaving net outflows of roughly $116 million.Blue Owl said that in the most recent quarter, 90% of investors chose not to redeem, and a small group made up most of the requests.“We continue to observe a meaningful disconnect between the public dialogue on private credit and the underlying trends in our portfolio,” the firm wrote in the letter to investors.Related: Moody’s warning on private credit is the loudest one yet
Target’s turnaround plan is finally taking shape
About three-quarters of Americans live within 10 miles of a Target. But despite that proximity, the big box store has been struggling to attract shoppers.In the second half of 2025, foot traffic at Target’s 2,000 U.S. locations declined in every month except October, recent Placer.ai data shows. That slow down in foot traffic led to a 1.7% decrease in net sales for the year, the company’s FY2025 earnings report revealed.We’ve covered Target’s decline pretty extensively here at TheStreet. Last month, Maurie Backman called it “one of the saddest retail stories in recent history.”But Target doesn’t see it that way.CEO Michael Fiddelke recently declared it “a new chapter at Target,” telling investors during Target’s Q4 FY2025 earnings call that the company has plans to become “the most delightful experience in retail.”Target’s “delightful” goalMore concretely, Target has said that its turnaround plan will address the foundational elements of a great shopping experience — convenience, speed, and price — with the hopes of making the customer experience a better one.“Delight is our standard,” Fiddelke told investors. “That means getting the basics right. Sharp pricing, strong in-stocks, wicked fast same-day delivery. Our bar is higher. We want to spark an emotional connection, so shopping isn’t a chore, it’s a joy.”Of course, the turnaround has had its skeptics. GlobalData Retail Managing Director Neil Saunders is among those doubters.“Visiting Target stores is less pleasurable and less fun than it used to be,” Saunders told CX Dive. “There is far too much friction, and the experience is sometimes unpleasant. That’s an issue as it lowers the probability of people making visits, reduces visit frequency, and weakens conversion and basket size when people are in stores.”The retailer says it’s aware of these issues and has outlined a game plan to remedy all of the complaints. However, in a company of Target’s size, major changes can be slow to roll out, and it can take even longer for customers to feel their effects.“Every retailer, and really every physical store location, has a culture,” Gartner Director Analyst Brad Jashinsky told CX Dive. “You can’t just throw people at the problem and solve it overnight.”Given that, many weren’t expecting Target’s return to happen anytime soon. But it appears they may have been wrong.
Target saw an uptick in foot traffic during the first weeks of 2026, signaling that its turnaround plan is starting to bear fruit.Sundry Photography/Shutterstock
Target’s traffic increaseFrom the week of January 26 to March 22, foot traffic at Target has been steadily increasing, new data from Placer.ai reveals. During its busiest week, March 2, foot traffic was up 10.3% year over year, suggesting that the retailer’s turnaround plan is starting to bear fruit.Target also saw more visits during this year’s Circle Days than it has for the past two years. Average daily visits during 2026’s event were 2.9% higher than those in 2024 and 5.9% higher than those in 2025. “Target’s early-2026 performance suggests its turnaround efforts are beginning to resonate, supported by investments in stores, staffing, and merchandising aimed at improving the in-store experience,” Placer.ai’s report said. “Encouraging traffic trends — including stronger performance during Circle Days despite already elevated baseline visits — point to renewed shopper engagement,” it continued. “If Target can sustain this momentum beyond promotional periods, it appears well-positioned for stabilization and modest growth in 2026.”A more shoppable storeTarget has been actively working to improve its in-store shopping experience, something that’s certainly helped drive foot traffic numbers. The retailer is “repositioning our assortment and our floor plans to bring newness to all 2,000 stores this year,” Fiddelke told investors on March’s call. More retail:Home Depot sees worrisome shift in consumer behaviorAldi shoppers get very good newsWalmart’s Sam’s Club is raising membership prices“In many ways, [our stores] are truly the heartbeat of our experience,” he continued. “Guests tell us they love the feeling of walking into a Target that’s clean, welcoming, and easy to shop.”“For millions of people, even in a digitally led world, stores are the single most tangible expression of our brand, and for decades they have set Target apart,” Chief Merchandising Officer Cara Sylvester added. “We’ve heard clearly from our guests and from many of you that our in-store experience has been inconsistent. Too often we’re cluttered, out of stock, or even transactional.”To that end, Target is allocating $1 billion for capital expenditures in 2026. A good portion of that money will go toward 130 full-store remodels and 30 new store openings, the largest store transformation of the last decade. “We are resetting our stores’ operating model this spring, organizing around three clear principles,” Sylvester said. “We’re scaling what works because when stores operate at a high level, that lifts everything up.”Related: Dollar General makes a big change that might upset customers