Axios

Stripe has promoted chief revenue officer Eileen O'Mara to vice chair — effectively making her the payment giant's top exec besides the founding Collison brothers.

Why it matters: O'Mara will becme the company's envoy to government leaders, regulators and top clients — a new role that's akin to what Dina Powell McCormick now does with Meta.

AppsFlyer has raised more than $1 billion in Series E funding at a $2.7 billion post-money valuation, Axios has learned from sources familiar with the financing.

Why it matters: The investment is from four of the world's top advertising platforms, which are betting on the need for independent measurement as AI reshapes digital advertising.

Nvidia's vision for humanoid robots is becoming increasingly clear as the AI giant rolls out what it calls a "comprehensive safety system" designed to ensure that the technology can be deployed alongside humans.

Why it matters: Humanoid developers say the technology could revolutionize the world — but for now it's not ready to handle significant tasks at scale.

• Humanoids are expected to generate $200 billion in revenue by 2035, according to Barclays' estimates.

Penske Media Corp. has acquired Vox Media's digital brands, including The Verge, Eater, SB Nation, Popsugar, The Dodo, Punch and Thrillist.

Why it matters: This is the end of Vox, which once was at the vanguard of new media and valued by venture capitalists at $1.2 billion.

The Senate is expected to vote Monday on a bipartisan bill that includes limits on private equity ownership of single-family homes.

Catch up quick: President Trump first floated the PE piece in January, and the Senate language prevents large institutions from buying any single-family homes.

CANNES, France — The New York Times is confident in its AI legal fights and believes the law is on its side, president and CEO Meredith Kopit Levien told Axios.

• When asked what the Times' plan was should it lose, Levien said the company has worked hard in recent years "to build resilience" to the changing forces of tech.

Why it matters: Few news companies have the resources to sue the tech giants in precedent-setting cases that will likely define intellectual property rights in the AI era.

If a quieter Federal Reserve means yippier bond markets, stocks could be in for a ride, too.

Why it matters: In recent months, the stock market has grown especially sensitive to changes in yields on U.S. government bonds — referred to as "rates" on Wall Street — which are themselves influenced by the policy of the U.S. central bank.

Driving the news: New Fed chairman Kevin Warsh's emerging effort to ratchet back the Fed's yearslong approach to communication known as "forward guidance," which our Macro colleagues recently spotlighted.

• The Fed essentially used forward guidance to give traders and investors a lot of information about what policymakers there were thinking about the economy and how they expected to react to possible developments.
• Warsh believes that effort went too far, saying in Wednesday's news conference that "when all the financial markets are doing is reflecting back what we've said, then we're taking the most important source of information and we're being blind to it."

Yes, but: Analysts think that without forward guidance, bond markets will likely see sharper moves, otherwise known as volatility.

What they're saying: "Warsh is more clearly putting his imprimatur on the Committee's communications, and reduced forward guidance risks volatility rising over time," JPMorgan analysts wrote Wednesday.

The bottom line: If the current relationship between stocks and bonds holds, that volatility will spread to the stock market as well.

Microsoft is considering using a Chinese AI model inside your office software — amplifying how your AI strategy is both a security and a cost calculation now.

Why it matters: Unlike closed models such as Anthropic's Claude or OpenAI's ChatGPT, open-source AI is free to download, cheaper to run, and dominated by China.

Only a small fraction of data center opponents actually live near one, according to new polling by a consulting firm that counsels leading AI labs and tech startups.

Why it matters: The findings by Milltown Partners, shared first with Axios, highlight how data centers have become a stand-in for broader anger at an AI future many Americans don't want but fear they'll have to pay for.