• Microsoft's Build developer conference kicked off Monday with a slew of agentic AI updates.
• Microsoft's CTO said there's been an "explosion" of people using agents over the last year, with daily active users doubling.
• The keynote included new agentic features in GitHub, Microsoft 365 Copilot, and appearances from Sam Altman and Elon Musk.

It was all about agentic AI at Microsoft's big developer event on Monday.

"The thing that we've seen over the past year is just sort of an explosion of agents," Microsoft CTO and executive vice president of AI, Kevin Scott, said during the company's Build conference.

Scott added that the number of daily active users of the various AI agents that Microsoft has visibility into "more than doubled" since Microsoft's Build event last year.

CEOs and executives across the tech industry have heralded 2025 as the year of agentic AI, and the Microsoft executive took some time to define what Microsoft means by the term.

Scott described the AI agents Microsoft is building as "a thing that a human being is able to delegate tasks to." AI agents are still in their early days, and Scott said there's still a bit of a "capability overhang with reasoning" at the moment, but they will continue to improve. As that happens over the next year, he said AI agents will get more powerful and cheaper to operate.

'The next big step forward'

Microsoft made a slew of announcements about AI updates and partnerships related to agentic AI during its opening keynote at Build.

Microsoft CEO Satya Nadella said that the company is working to create a host of tools to help build an open, "agentic web" at scale, including cloud computing tools available through its Microsoft Azure platform. The company demoed multiple new AI features available in Windows, Office, Azure, and other platforms throughout the keynote.

Showcasing Microsoft's new Azure SRE agent for site reliability engineering, which will be embedded in GitHub Copilot, Nadella said agents are all about having a reliable AI "peer" that you can delegate complex tasks to and trust to help remove "pain points" for developers, such as getting woken up in the middle of the night to deal with a website issue.

"This is the next big step forward, which is a full coding agent, built right into GitHub, taking Copilot from being a pair programmer to a peer programmer," Nadella said. "You can assign issues to Copilot, bug fixes, new features, code maintenance, and it'll complete these tasks autonomously."

Microsoft also flexed its reach with virtual appearances from a who's who of AI CEOs, including OpenAI CEO Sam Altman, Tesla and xAI CEO Elon Musk, and Nvidia CEO Jensen Huang.

Altman made a live appearance virtually to talk about the evolution of agentic AI and the recent launch of Codex, the AI startup's new agent designed to assist programmers with writing code, fixing bugs, and running tests. Altman described Codex as "true software engineering task delegation."

"We've been talking about someday we'd get to a real agentic coding experience, and it's kind of wild to me that it's finally here," Altman said. "I think this is one of the biggest changes to programming that I've ever seen."

"This idea that you now have a real virtual teammate that you can assign work to, that you can say, 'Hey, go off and do some of the stuff you were just doing and increasingly more advanced things,' you know at some point saying, 'I've got a big idea, go off and work for a couple of days and do it,'" the OpenAI CEO added.

The productivity gains can also be significant, Altman said.

"It was amazing to watch over the last few months as we were working on Codex internally — you know there's always a few people who are the early adopters — and how quickly the people who were just using Codex all day changed their workflow and just the incredible amount they were able to do relative to someone else was quite interesting," he said.

Microsoft announced plans to expand the AI models available through Azure to integrate xAI's Grok 3 and Grok 3 Mini. In a pre-recorded clip, Musk, who once interned at Microsoft, talked with Nadella about his first experiences using Microsoft software as well as Grok's capabilities.

Microsoft also introduced "Copilot Tuning" to create agents using company data. The announcement confirmed Business Insider's reporting from last week that Microsoft was planning to debut a new Copilot designed to "rapidly channel an organization's knowledge into a Copilot that can 'talk,' 'think,' and 'work' like the tenant itself," according to an internal memo. That project was previously called Tenant Copilot internally, the company has since confirmed.

In Satya Nadella's closing comments, the Microsoft CEO said the company is trying to apply AI across the "full stack" of software development and agentic web products, including Microsoft 365 Teams, Copilot Studio, and more.

"Ultimately, though, all of this is about creating opportunity to fuel your ambition," the Microsoft CEO said, pointing to a father who used Foundry to speed the diagnosis of a rare disease affecting his son and a startup in South America that created an app to gamify wellness.

• Sen. Elizabeth Warren of Massachusetts is railing against a major stablecoin bill in Congress.
• Warren argued that the legislation, if passed, will "accelerate Trump's corruption."
• The Massachusetts senator has been a frequent critic of the administration on regulatory matters.

Sen. Elizabeth Warren of Massachusetts will take to the Senate floor on Monday to push back against a major stablecoin bill, arguing that the legislation could instead benefit President Donald Trump and his family's cryptocurrency business ventures.

Warren, a former Democratic presidential candidate and the ranking member of the Senate Banking Committee, is on the opposing side of the so-called GENIUS Act, a bill intended to regulate stablecoins — a type of currency whose value is tied to another asset.

"The GENIUS Act will accelerate Trump's corruption by supercharging the size of the stablecoin market and the reach and profitability of USD1," the lawmaker will say in a Senate speech. "For the first time in American history, it also makes our president — Donald Trump — the regulator of his own financial product."

"Congress should not be making it even easier for him to line his pockets with even more shady crypto cash," the remarks continue to say. "If Congress does not fix this issue here, today, then it will be aiding and abetting his corruption every time President Trump's stablecoin is used to finance a corrupt deal."

The stablecoin bill once had a bipartisan veneer, with Democrats joining Republicans in backing the legislation. But the bill has fallen out of favor with Democrats in the wake of Trump's crypto ventures, including the launch of his own meme coin in January and an upcoming dinner for his coin's top 220 investors.

The top 25 holders of the meme coin are set to attend a reception and a VIP White House tour.

In Warren's remarks, she also contends that the legislation could "directly lead to the next financial meltdown."

Before her 2012 election to the Senate, Warren conceived of the Consumer Financial Protection Bureau, the independent consumer protection agency that the White House DOGE office has sought to dismantle since the beginning of the year.

• US special operations is using artificial intelligence to reduce the cognitive load on operators.
• This includes not just combat operations but also paperwork, manual tasks, and data.
• Various types of AI are already being employed and expanded.

From warfighting to paperwork, US Special Operations Forces are interested in getting in on AI to simplify the work.

The goal for these elite forces, much like it is for regular people working office jobs and using AI to sort data or compile information, is to lessen the overall cognitive load, or mental effort, required for whatever a task may be. A lot of different types of artificial intelligence are being used, and it's only growing.

AI has many potential applications for the US military, from autonomous features in uncrewed systems to AI-enabled targeting to enhanced situational awareness. The Department of Defense is eager to implement this technology to prepare US forces for a high-end technological conflict chock full of data and information.

Future wars could be fought in an environment where decision-making may need to happen quicker than humans alone can do, and that's where military officials see the benefit of AI and human-machine teaming.

With AI, "we can reduce the cognitive burden of our operators," Col. Rhea Pritchett, the program executive officer of SOF Digital Applications, said at SOF Week in Tampa, Florida, earlier this month. Instead of worrying about other things, operators "will take that precious time to critically think about actions that they need to take next to achieve the effect that they want."

AI can sift through massive amounts of data quickly to focus on necessary information in a combat scenario and it can aid in mission planning and command and control functions.

This technology can also be used in battlespace awareness tools "to identify the position or location information of objects, people, and terrain — enhancing operator analysis and decision-making capabilities," Pritchett added over email.

These kinds of capabilities are already being developed.

But there are other functions of AI in SOF, and they aren't unlike the way civilians use ChatGPT or other AI-driven platforms for their jobs and personal lives.

That includes paperwork: situational reports, concepts for operations, and forecasting supplies. The tasks that might take an operator a long time to complete and draw their focus away from other aspects of the job.

Back-end work, as Ben Van Roo, CEO and cofounder of Legion Intelligence Inc, put it, could also be aided by artificial intelligence. Such work could include better search functions for analyzing DoD doctrine and understanding elements of specific locations, commands, or job positions.

One prime example could be using AI tools when entering a new position to quickly get up to speed on the work. When military personnel receive orders for their next job, it can be a lot of work to learn not only the ins and outs of the position itself but also the larger bureaucracy, geographic information, and historical and political context, what their predecessor did, types of weapons and capabilities present, and so on.

That is a bit different than how AI in the military is regularly perceived. "People tend to jump to Terminator," Van Roo said. "Actually, the great majority of it right now is just, people can barely even do their jobs with all these archaic systems."

While there are many possibilities for AI technology in warfighting systems, such as the AI-enabled drones that are demonstrating just how effective this technology can make an uncrewed fighting platform or the AI algorithms being taught to fly fighter jets, there's much that can be done to improve the mundane.

AI has the potential to address some of the headaches and help reform some older technological policies, effectively streamlining the processes. It might even have an application in assessing details for contracts and programs.

"The potential to relieve the cognitive load is extremely high," Van Roo said.

AI could provide assistance with what some operators might consider the more time-consuming tasks of their job and take a form similar to an AI assistant designed to take notes, gather and review key client data, transcribe meetings, and outline important takeaways.

AI systems are already being used in SOF, Pritchett told BI, including generative machine learning, large language models, natural language processing, and computer vision.

The rise of AI in militaries has been met with skepticism and ethical concerns from experts and officials about its implementation, especially in combat scenarios.

The Pentagon has maintained that its policy on AI will keep a human in the loop for decision-making, though some observers have argued that doing so might not always be possible in a high-speed, data-driven future fight. Some have also cautioned that the technology may end up developing at a much quicker pace than Washington and the Pentagon can regulate it.

• I used my mom's connections to land a summer internship, which led to a full-time job.
• I suffered from impostor syndrome, worried I only got the job because of my mom.
• But my mom only made the introduction; I got the job because of my accomplishments.

When I was considering my summer plans in early 2021, I knew I had to land a great internship as a college student. I debated whether to reach out to the one person I knew who had the most connections. Ultimately, I knew she would help me land the summer internship I needed. So, I asked my mom for help.

My mother has always been my inspiration as a successful businesswoman. She has held many positions in C-suite and executive roles, oftentimes being the only woman with a seat at the table. She is now an entrepreneur and business owner with connections in many industries.

I knew she would have someone I could connect with to find a job related to my field of study: public health. But once I landed the job, I experienced impostor syndrome.

Using my mom's connections helped me

Before I turned to my mother for help, I was plagued with whether I should ask for it. Did it take away from my own success by asking her? Was I earning what I had worked hard for, or just benefiting from her hard work?

Once I was able to get past the mental hurdle and ask for help, my job search quickly began to fall into place.

In my initial application, I listed my mother as a reference, as she worked very closely with the company. I didn't reference our relationship during the interview process or during work. I only brought it up when it was relevant to the conversation, but for the most part, people knew I was there for the same reasons as anyone else: to learn, to contribute, and to gain relevant experience for my intended career.

Even though the connection was made for me, the interview, conversations, and chance to position myself for a summer internship were all on me. I landed my first professional job, which led to a second internship the following summer with a different team at the same company. After those two internships, I scored a full-time role after graduation.

I struggled with impostor syndrome

At first, I struggled with impostor syndrome, thinking I had landed the job only because of my connections. I worried I hadn't actually earned the positions I was given, especially that first internship.

However, my mom repeatedly reminds me that she only made the introduction; the rest was my own doing.

My career trajectory would look very different if I didn't have that initial introduction. I feel that I utilized all of the resources available to me, but that doesn't take away from the accomplishment.

Using your network is an important step in searching for job opportunities

More recently, I have used connections to explore different ways to use a law degree. I had just finished my first year of law school and was panicking over whether I truly wanted to be a practicing attorney.

By speaking to some of my mom's contacts who had gone to law school and gone into different fields, I saw all the different ways that I could apply my law degree beyond being a practicing attorney.

I still use connections from family and friends wherever possible. The job market is hard, and I think everyone should use their network from family, neighbors, and even professors as a tool to get their foot in the door.

• Walmart's announcement that it will raise prices due to tariffs has other retailers "delighted."
• The news gives retailers cover to raise their own prices, experts told BI.
• Trump's criticism of Walmart sends a warning about discussing price hikes.

Consumers may not be psyched about Walmart's announcement that it's going to raise prices because of President Donald Trump's tariffs, but other retailers are likely breathing a sigh of relief.

Retail analysts told Business Insider that Walmart did other companies a favor with the news, giving them more freedom to raise their own price tags.

"What they are doing is providing air cover for the tens of thousands of retailers — extra-large, large, medium, and small — all of whom are faced with exactly the same issue, and all of whom are going to be raising their prices," said Mark Cohen, a professor at Columbia Business School and the former director of retail studies. Other retailers are, he said, "delighted" about the benchmark Walmart set.

Retailers across the board are contending with rising costs, the experts told BI, but Walmart "leads the market on price," according to the cofounder of the blog Omni Talk Retail, Chris Walton. The country's biggest retailer said shoppers will probably start to see prices tick up at the end of this month and more drastically in June, and those BI spoke to agreed with that timeline.

GlobalRetail analyst Neil Saunders wrote in an email that Walmart's honesty about price hikes might open the door for other retailers to have "open dialogues." Yet the honesty didn't come without consequences — Trump bashed the company in a Truth Social post, saying Walmart should, '"EAT THE TARIFFS,' and not charge valued customers ANYTHING. I'll be watching."

Representatives for the White House directed BI to Press Secretary Karoline Leavitt's comments on Monday about Walmart, when she confirmed that Trump will be "watching" the company and said he "has always maintained that Chinese producers will be absorbing the cost of these tariffs."

Walmart did not immediately respond to a request for comment from BI.

Trump's reaction will likely influence how other retailers manage their own pricing conversations, the experts said.

"Retailers will have learned they need to be very careful — and it's very tricky — on how they articulate that so as to not wind up on a Truth Social post," Michael Baker, a senior analyst at D.A. Davidson, told BI. "That does add a layer of complication."

He anticipates executives will figure out how to more delicately discuss tariffs on coming earnings calls so as not to anger the president. Walton told BI that other retailers may try to avoid talking about rising costs publicly, and instead let shelf prices speak for themselves.

"President Trump has sent a warning shot that he doesn't like companies talking about price increases related to tariffs," Saunders wrote. "That may make some retailers more hesitant to draw a link, but I don't think it will stop them putting up prices. They will need to financially."

The president has issued not-so-subtle warnings about price hikes before, like when he sharply criticized Amazon for its reported plans to publicize how much tariffs were contributing to rising costs. Amazon said it had no plans to do so on its main site at the time, but experts told BI that the swift reaction sent a "warning signal to other companies" nonetheless.

Though Walmart may be one of the first big box retailers to publicize looming price hikes, it's better positioned to deal with the new tariffs than some competitors. Both Saunders and Baker said the company's scale gives it the ability to offset some of the tariff impact.

• Sen. Bernie Sanders took another swipe at Shari Redstone.
• The former Democratic presidential hopeful was responding to the latest shake-up at CBS News.
• On Monday, CBS News CEO Wendy McMahon announced her resignation.

Sen. Bernie Sanders on Monday intensified his pressure campaign on Paramount Global's controlling shareholder, Shari Redstone, following another major shake-up at CBS News.

CBS News CEO Wendy McMahon on Monday announced that she was stepping down, another bombshell development as its parent company, Paramount, potentially explores a settlement of President Donald Trump's suit against the company and "60 Minutes."

"I say to Shari Redstone: Enough is enough," Sanders wrote on X. "Do not capitulate to Trump's attack on a free press. Do not settle Trump's bogus lawsuit against 60 Minutes."

McMahon wrote in a message to staff that was obtained by Business Insider that it was time for her to "move on and for this organization to move forward with new leadership."

"The past few months have been challenging," she said in the message. "It's become clear that the company and I do not agree on the path forward."

Paramount declined further comment to Business Insider.

Sanders, an independent from Vermont, has led his colleagues in pressuring Paramount as the company seeks FCC approval of its merger with SkyDance. He and others have expressed skepticism over Paramount's turnabout from fighting Trump's lawsuit against CBS.

Trump sued CBS for $10 billion for what he claimed was deceptive editing of "60 Minutes'" interview with then-Vice President Kamala Harris ahead of the 2024 election. Trump later amended his claim to $20 billion in damages and added Paramount to the suit.

First Amendment organizations have dismissed Trump's claims, saying that "60 Minutes" was well within its journalistic rights. In April, The New York Times reported that Paramount's board was discussing a potential settlement.

No deal has yet to be reached.

On May 7, Sanders and eight Senate Democrats wrote to Redstone urging her to "make it clear to President Trump today that Paramount will not surrender to his attack on the First Amendment."

Last month, Bill Owens, the longtime executive producer of "60 Minutes," also bowed out. Scott Pelley, one of the show's longtime correspondents, later expressed his displeasure with the situation on air.

"Stories we've pursued for 57 years are often controversial — lately, the Israel-Gaza war and the Trump administration. Bill made sure they were accurate and fair — he was tough that way," Pelley said during the first "60 Minutes" broadcast that followed Owens' departure. "But our parent company, Paramount, is trying to complete a merger. The Trump administration must approve it. Paramount began to supervise our content in new ways. None of our stories has been blocked, but Bill felt he lost the independence that honest journalism requires."

• Lawyer Erik Bolog is a beneficiary of a $10 million "gift" from Claudia Engelhorn, a pharma heir.
• Engelhorn has said the gift was "alcohol induced," while Bolog says it was legitimate.
• Engelhorn is suing Bolog and his ex-firm. The firm says it's caught in the middle.

Claudia Engelhorn, a daughter of a German pharmaceutical tycoon, claims she was duped into handing over $10 million to her former attorney Erik Bolog — and alleges that his former law firm looked the other way while he pocketed the cash.

The heir has been litigating for months against Bolog and the law firm, Whiteford, Taylor & Preston. The dispute is over the "gift" Bolog says she gave him as thanks for helping her win a $130 million case in Monégasque and Swiss courts during the pandemic.

Bolog's defense hinges on a three-page document signed by Engelhorn that says she insisted on making the gift and did so without consulting anyone. "You advised (begged) me to hire independent counsel," the document, which was included in court filings, says. "As you have learned over the past several years, I am not easily discouraged and once I have decided to do something, I do it."

Bolog said in court filings that the gift was legitimate and Engelhorn turned on him after he scolded her for what he said was "a racially hateful statement" that she made at a restaurant. He said she told a Black family "that it was nice that they were allowed to eat in restaurants."

One of Engelhorn's lawyers, Tony Williams, says the heir was "tricked" into signing the gift paperwork when Bolog gave it to her one morning while she was vacationing on Cape Cod in Massachusetts. He called the claim about her remark to a Black family "absolutely false."

In an email to Bolog that was included in court records, Engelhorn wrote: "You took an alcohol induced statement for your benefit." Bolog has claimed in court documents that her story shifted.

Williams also said in a meeting that Engelhorn was on the autism spectrum. "She's not a sophisticated investor," Williams told Business Insider. "She's a woman who has spent her life raising a family, and he should've known that. We did say, with her permission, that she's on the spectrum, and we know that she is, and he knew that."

"The whole thing's meshugganah," said Doug Gansler, one of Bolog's lawyers, using a Yiddish word for craziness. "She's a sophisticated businesswoman. She's not someone who doesn't know what she's doing or understand the value of money."

Engelhorn couldn't be reached for comment. Bolog didn't respond to a request for comment.

The existence of the case, which was filed in Baltimore in September, hasn't previously been reported.

Engelhorn's father, Curt Engelhorn, led a German pharmaceutical company that was sold to the healthcare giant Roche in 1997 for a reported $11 billion. Bolog says she's the "life trustee" of an entity called the Mannheim Trust that has paid her $1 million a year and lent her another $30 million.

Williams, meanwhile, said Bolog vastly overstated Engelhorn's fortune. He said the Mannheim Trust, which Bolog said held $500 million to benefit Engelhorn and others, had been divided among three of her children. Only the money from the Swiss case remains for Engelhorn, Williams said, and it's now "substantially less" than $130 million.

Bolog's former law firm, Whiteford, said it had nothing to do with his dealings. The firm said in a court filing it fired Bolog in May 2023 over issues including how he accounted for expenses. (Gansler denied wrongdoing by his client.)

In her lawsuit, Engelhorn said Whiteford bore some responsibility for Bolog's actions. She said billing records showed that other people at the firm were aware of and contributed to the deception.

The firm said in court filings that the other Whiteford lawyers who appeared to have helped draft the gift paperwork were under the impression that Engelhorn wanted to give a much smaller gift to a member of her staff. They say Bolog edited the documents to reroute the money to himself and his family, something Whiteford said it didn't learn about for two years.

The firm didn't respond to a request for comment.

Gansler is a former Maryland attorney general who's now at the white-shoe firm Cadwalader. Another lawyer for Engelhorn, Wes Henderson, is described on his website as "one of the most experienced and knowledgeable car accident attorneys in Crofton," a sleepy Maryland community of about 30,000 people. He also handles legal malpractice cases, the website says. He declined to comment.

Bolog has had various business interests over the years. His main pursuits have been contingency-fee injury lawsuits and a real estate firm called Tenacity that financed tenant acquisitions of their apartment buildings. In 2005, he was listed in Securities and Exchange Commission records as part of a bank's ownership group.

Gansler said Bolog recently moved to California to do plaintiff-side litigation there.

Bolog has had a colorful legal career. In the late 1990s, he helped a Maryland politician get off with a light sentence after she was accused of hiring a contract killer to whack her husband. The trial ended in a hung jury and she later pled no-contest, according to news reports. He was also among a group of lawyers hoping for a payout from a $120 million judgment against Iraq now pending in the US Supreme Court.

He has had gambling debts, though Gansler said he now has none and had no debt at the time he received Engelhorn's gift. In 2019, Harrah's Philadelphia Casino claimed in a lawsuit that Bolog owed $34,000 for a cash advance, and in 2022, a Caesars casino in Indiana sued him for $45,000. Gansler said that the Caesars lawsuit was filed by mistake. The debts in both cases were several years old, and both lawsuits have been resolved.

Engelhorn has had previous legal issues as well.

In 2007, she agreed to let a revivalist preacher named Tommie Zito and his wife live in a $3.2 million six-bedroom Florida mansion for $300 a month. She claimed that he abused her trust and manipulated her into buying the property and letting his family stay there "for a value far below the property's market value." She sued him twice to try to get out of the deal; both times, she lost.

Zito didn't respond to calls and text messages.

Madeleine O'Neill contributed reporting.

Have a tip? Contact this reporter via email at [email protected] or Signal at 314-971-1627. Use a personal email address and a nonwork device; here's our guide to sharing information securely.

Former President Joe Biden has been diagnosed with "aggressive" prostate cancer, his office said. Here are five symptoms of prostate cancer that are easy to miss.

• JPMorgan CEO Jamie Dimon addressed various topics Monday at the firm's investor day meeting.
• He said the bank would allow investors to buy bitcoin, while warning of stagflation.
• He sounded dour on the economy but hopeful about a regulatory reset.

Jamie Dimon isn't a fan of bitcoin, but he plans to start offering it to clients of JPMorgan Chase, nonetheless.

"We are going to allow you to buy it. We're not going to custody it. We're going to put it in statements for clients," Dimon said Monday at the bank's annual presentation for investors.

"I don't think you should smoke. But I defend your right to smoke," he said in explaining his position.

The bitcoin comments came as the JPMorgan CEO, often considered Wall Street's elder statesman, took the stage to answer questions from investors and research analysts. In the roughly 40-minute session, he touched on various topics, from the economy to what he expected from President Donald Trump's regulators.

Dimon sounded a dour note on the economy, saying he thought the risk of stagflation was "two times" as high as many think and making dire predictions on credit as an investment class.

"I think the worst one for a bank and for most companies is stagflation," he said, adding: "I think the odds of that are probably two times what the market thinks."

He also said the bank had lost some commercial opportunities as a result of Trump's trade war. "We've lost business because of that," he said in response to an analyst's question.

He sounded upbeat, however, when it came to the president's regulatory agenda.

"I think that the secretary of Treasury, the president of the United States, the new head of the OCC, the new head of the CFPB, Michelle Bowman at Federal Reserve, and the SEC have all made it clear that they want to fix some of the things they think are broken," he said. "I think they'll accomplish some of that. Some will take longer than others, but they all want to do it."

He called on regulators to consider lightening regulations for publicly traded companies, which he said had been halved since the 1990s, from 8,000 to 4,000.

"We're driving companies out of the public marketplace because of expensive reporting, litigation, cookie-cutter approaches to boards, compensation, and litigation," he said.

"I would love to be a private company," he added.

Dimon also raised questions about the rapid expansion of investments in credit, including through funds raised to make nonbank loans, or private credit.

"I don't like making forecasts, but I am not a buyer of credit today. I think credit today is a bad risk," he said, adding: "I think that people who haven't been through major downturns are missing the point about what can happen in credit."

As interest rates rise and economic conditions soften, the risk of credit defaults rises, sometimes leaving borrowers strapped for cash and lenders struggling to recoup capital.

Earlier in the day, Marianne Lake, JPMorgan's CEO of consumer and community banking, said the firm was "closely monitoring the whole ecosystem" of lending but not giving up despite warning signs.

"The environment is very challenging for home lending and auto," she said, adding: "but we remain committed."

Have a tip? Contact this reporter via email at [email protected] or SMS/Signal at 561-247-5758. Use a personal email address and a nonwork device; here's our guide to sharing information securely.

• Elon Musk was a star at the US Open in September 2024, media mogul Barry Diller said.
• Diller said the public turned on Musk as his influence over the government grew.
• The billionaire advised Musk to address government waste with care, not aggressive measures.

Barry Diller said he witnessed Elon Musk's popularity firsthand at the US Open in 2024 — but less than a year later, it's a different story.

The public's perception of Musk has had a major shift since Donald Trump won the presidential election, Expedia Group chairman Diller said during Monday's episode of the "On with Kara Swisher" podcast.

The pair sat in the same luxury box to watch the US Open men's singles final match in September, where Diller said he was "amazed" by Musk's celebrity.

"A third of the faces in that audience were looking at him and not at this champ game that was taking place," the 83-year-old said.

He recalled hundreds of people gathering to take pictures and ask for Musk's signature during a break in the game.

Eight months, one election, and a controversial plan to cut government spending later, Diller says an appearance like that wouldn't play out the same way it did last year.

"If today he was in that box, they'd throw tomatoes at him," Diller said. "It's only September to May. I've never seen anything as swift as that."

Neither Musk nor representatives for Expedia Group immediately responded to Business Insider's request for comment.

Musk set out to cut $2 trillion in government spending with his involvement in the White House DOGE office, and he's faced backlash since then in the form of protests and movements like Tesla Takedown. Such resistance has made it harder to execute his plans, he told reporters during an April Q&A session.

"Being attacked is not super fun," Musk said. "Seeing cars on fire is not fun."

Diller, who cofounded the Fox TV network with Rupert Murdoch, previously said Musk has "a form of megalomania" and backed Trump out of bitterness toward the Democrats in October. He doubled down on Monday, telling Swisher that Musk is entitled to his megalomania, but it has its consequences.

"I personally like him," Diller said. "Unfortunately if you are a megalomaniac, your tuning fork ear is lost, and he lost it."

Enter the proverbial tomatoes prompted by Musk's slashes to government spending through DOGE, Diller said.

His advice? Work to eliminate government waste "with a thoughtful, kind hand" instead of a "chainsaw."