A federal commission moved Wednesday to formalize rules allowing prediction markets to offer the equivalent of sports betting nationwide — with some specific types of trades disallowed.
Why it matters: Prediction markets like Kalshi and Polymarket have been surging in popularity, allowing users to risk money on sports, politics, news, financial markets and entertainment.
MONACO — Winning an F1™ race and running a giant company require the same thing: picking the best people, according to race-expert panelists at an Axios Live and The Race Media event.
Why it matters: Formula One™ used to just be about fast cars. Now it's become an ultimate training ground, as business leaders launch partnerships to learn how the elite racing teams handle pressure and build winning cultures.
"The pattern recognition of what it takes to be excellent is exactly the same," said Harvey Schwartz, CEO of the Carlyle Group.
Axios' Sara Fischer and The Race Media's Darren Cox moderated conversations with Schwartz, Oracle Red Bull Racing team principal Laurent Mekies, Ford Motor Company global head of racing Mark Rushbrook, and F1™ analyst and Oracle Red Bull Racing ambassador David Coulthard. The June 5 event was sponsored by the Carlyle Group.
Catch up quick: The Carlyle Group, one of the world's largest investment firms, and four-time world champion Oracle Red Bull Racing spoke publicly about their partnership for the first time.
What they're saying: Sports and businesses share a key characteristic, Mekies and Schwartz said — they rely on input from people within the organization to gain a competitive edge.
"Fundamentally, we are a data business with an incredibly crucial layer of human intelligence on top," Mekies said.
"It's a people business," Schwartz said. "Which is clearly why this partnership with Laurent works."
Coulthard said racing teaches you how to look closely at your mistakes so you can fix them and get better.
By the numbers: Mekies said it takes 2,000 people to build and race two Formula One™ cars. Schwartz said F1™ now has over 800 million fans worldwide.
Ford came back to F1™ after 22 years away because the sport "is very popular right now, and it appears it's going to be strong for a long time," Rushbrook said.
The bottom line: Schwartz predicted Red Bull will win the Drivers' and Constructors' championships for the next five years — and said that's why the Carlyle Group wanted in.
OpenAI has banned China-linked accounts that used ChatGPT to draft social media influence campaigns targeting U.S. debates over tariffs and AI data centers, the company said Wednesday.
Why it matters: The campaigns don't appear to have been effective, but they show how pro-China actors are testing AI tools to amplify existing political and economic divisions in the U.S.
"VCs behaving badly" has been the theme of tech Twitter over the past week, with founders sharing stories that ranged from amusing to ethically challenged.
Why it matters: This discourse reflects a deep shift in the startup ecosystem over the past couple decades — the move to "founder friendly" investing, even potentially at the expense of fiduciary duty to limited partners.
Apollo and Blackstone announced that they've partnered with Broadcom to launch an AI infrastructure platform backed by an initial $35 billion loan.
Why it matters: It's further commoditization of compute, which could challenge SpaceX's long-term growth prospects.
It's also one of the largest private credit deals ever.
Zoom in: The financing is expected to be syndicated, and will help Anthropic lease Google chips that Broadcom helped develop — all via Fluidstack data centers.
Overall, the platform is designed to enable more than 20 gigawatts of compute capacity through 2028.
Go deeper, via PitchBook: "Holding the hardware in the SPV keeps it off Anthropic's balance sheet — useful for a company preparing to list on a market where companies with high debt loads are often punished by investors. ... The use of off-balance-sheet financing has also set alarm bells ringing among regulators."
Inflation surged to its highest rate in over three years, catapulted by rising energy costs that are increasingly squeezing American households.
The silver lining: The pain is not bleeding through to inflation in other goods and services.
Why it matters: At least for now, this does not look like the broad-based inflation that defined the post-pandemic surge. Instead, consumers are absorbing the fallout from the Iran war mostly through higher gasoline and energy bills.
Two of the world's most important central banks appear poised to raise interest rates in the coming days, as policymakers look to get ahead of the energy price surge translating into broader inflation.
Driving the news: The European Central Bank's policy committee meets Thursday and is expected to raise its main deposit rate to 2.25%, from 2%, which would be its first rate increase in three years.
Inflationhit the highest rate in over three years in May, as the economic fallout from the Iran conflict ripples through the U.S. economy.
Why it matters: Inflationary pressures tied to the war keep building, squeezing household budgets and raising the risk that interest rates stay higher for longer.
Over the last few months, stocks have gotten very touchy about rising Treasury yields, with relatively modest increases associated with large stock market moves.
Why it matters: If Wednesday's Consumer Price Index report shows higher-than-expected inflation — and Treasury yields rise sharply in response — look out below.
