Business

As reported by The Information and Axios reporter Sara Fischer, CEO Barbara Peng emailed staff on Thursday announcing Business Insider is “scaling back on categories that once performed well on other platforms” and mostly exiting its search-reliant Commerce business in an apparent acknowledgement of Google Zero, despite Sundar Pichai’s rebuttals.

The Information reports that three years ago, Musk offered Apple an 18-month exclusive connection via SpaceX in return for $5 billion up front, and $1 billion per year after that to support satellite-connected iPhone features. If Apple didn’t take it within 72 hours, he threatened to announce a competing feature.

In the midst of Donald Trump’s tariff chaos, prices are rising at retailers like Walmart, Amazon, and Home Depot, according to data provided to The Verge by Bright Data, which tracks prices week over week. As of May 11th, for example, 21.5 percent of the 1.5 million tracked Amazon products had increased in price. Check out an interactive chart here.

“We’re constantly adjusting pricing,” Target CEO Brian Cornell said during an earnings call on Wednesday, as reported by CNBC. “Some are going up, some will be reduced, but that’s an ongoing effort that takes place each and every day.”

The New York Times walked through one business owner’s tariff bill, breaking out all the taxes that stack on top of each other. On April 27th when the shipment arrived in the US, the total cost of tariffs was $34,389. Today, the tariff rate would be $12,954 now that Trump has slashed rates. His frequent tariff changes mean everyone is in a constant state of uncertainty.

Match Group, which owns Match.com and other big dating apps, announced its quarterly earnings today and announced a workforce reduction that new CEO Spencer Rascoff said will reduce “around 1 in 5 managers overall.” Based on its 2024 filing, Bloomberg says that’s about 325 jobs.

OpenAI board member Fidji Simo will transition from her Instacart role over the next few months to join OpenAI later this year, where Sam Altman says she will “focus on enabling our ‘traditional’ company functions to scale.”

Beginning May 2nd, prices on vehicles such as the Mustang Mach-E EV could jump as much as $2,000, which Ford says will arrive in US dealer lots by late June. The news comes after Ford declared the Trump administration’s tariffs are adding about $2.5 billion of costs for the company in 2025.

Drop-shipping packages straight from China to shoppers’ homes was kind of the whole point of retailers like Temu. In response to Donald Trump’s tariffs, Temu now tells Wired that it’s switching to a “local fulfillment model” where orders come from US warehouses. With the de minimis exception officially dead (at least for now), it’s no surprise that retailers are scrambling — especially sites like Temu, whose wide product offerings depended on the exception.

The increase in AI tools, deepfake technology, and fully remote jobs following the covid pandemic has enabled a new kind of scam: workers who take jobs with US and European companies under false identities and send their salaries to the North Korean government.

Monthly active users have increased 10 percent year-over-year to 678 million, up from 615 million, while subscribers jumped by 12 percent to 268 million. CEO Daniel Ek says “the short term may bring some noise” amid wider economic concerns, but that the platform’s freemium model will reassure customers to stick with Spotify “even when things feel more uncertain.”

While products shipping from Temu’s US warehouses are currently spared from import surcharges, Bloomberg found that bestselling items coming over from China are displaying taxes that greatly exceed product value — and US consumers will be paying the additional costs.

During Semafor’s World Economy Summit, Sarandos said the company still has “enormous room to grow:”