Michael Burry, the investor of "The Big Short" fame.
Astrid Stawiarz/Getty Images
Michael Burry stayed quiet, bet big on Chinese tech giants, and saw one stock wager pay off in 2024.
The investor of "The Big Short" fame boosted his Alibaba and JD.com stakes and bought into Baidu.
The RealReal stock has surged more than sevenfold since Burry invested in early 2023.
Michael Burry kept a low profile, plowed money into three Chinese tech giants, and saw a long-standing stock bet pay off in 2024.
Who is Michael Burry?
Burry is best known for predicting and profiting from the collapse of the housing bubble in the mid-2000s. His contrarian wager was immortalized in the book and film "The Big Short."
He's also famous in financial circles for predicting market crashes and recessions, investing in GameStop long before the video-game retailer became a meme stock. He also bet against Elon Musk's Tesla, Cathie Wood's flagship Ark fund, Apple, a microchip fund containing Nvidia, and the S&P 500 and Nasdaq 100 indexes in recent years.
Burry goes by Cassandra B.C. on X β a nod to the priestess in Greek mythology who was cursed to utter true prophecies but never to be believed.
Staying quiet
In years past, Burry frequently shared his thoughts on the markets, economy, and other subjects using X.
For example, he warned of the "greatest speculative bubble of all time in all things" in the summer of 2021, and told buyers of meme stocks and cryptocurrencies that they were careening toward the "mother of all crashes."
Burry even caught Musk's attention with the Tesla and SpaceX CEO calling him a "broken clock" in late 2021. Moreover, the investor set alarm bells ringing on Wall Street in early 2023 with a one-word post: "Sell."
However, Burry didn't post at all last year, and hasn't shared anything with the 1.4 million followers of his primary account since April 2023.
Chinese trio
Burry's Scion Asset Management revealed in a first-quarter portfolio update it had boosted its bets on Alibaba and JD.com, two Chinese e-commerce titans. It also established a small position in Baidu, a search giant that's been dubbed the "Chinese Google."
The Scion chief added to both the Alibaba and Baidu positions in the second quarter while paring his JD.com stake, but then ramped up all three wagers in the third quarter.
In the 12 months to September 2024, Scion quadrupled both its Alibaba and JD.com stakes. It went from owning 50,000 Alibaba shares worth $4.4 million to 200,000 shares worth $21.2 million.
It raised its JD.com position from 125,000 shares worth $3.6 million to 500,000 worth $20 million. Starting from scratch, it also amassed 125,000 Baidu shares worth $13.2 million in the nine months to September.
Those three stocks accounted for 65% of the total $83 million value of Scion's portfolio, excluding options, at the end of September. Burry hedged his highly concentrated portfolio by purchasing put options against the three stocks with a notional value of $47 million in the third quarter.
Burry, a value investor who hunts for bargains, may have pounced on the trio because he views them as undervalued. Chinese stocks have been hit by regulatory threats, concerns about the country's slowing economy and real estate crisis, rising geopolitical jitters, and skepticism about the government's stimulus plans.
It's worth pointing out that quarterly portfolio filings only paint a partial picture of an investor's holdings. They exclude shares sold short, private investments, foreign-listed stocks, and non-stock assets like bonds and real estate. They're also only a snapshot of the portfolio on a single day in a three-month period.
Patience pays off
Apart from Alibaba and JD.com, the only stock that Scion held onto for all of 2024 was The RealReal, an online luxury goods marketplace.
The stock has featured in Scion's portfolio since the first quarter of 2023, when the firm owned about 684,000 shares worth about $862,000, or $1.26 each.
Scion still owned 500,000 shares at the end of September, worth nearly $1.6 million at that time. The stock has jumped from a little over $3 then to $8.73 at Wednesday's close.
The upshot is Burry has likely made several times his money on The RealReal, especially if he was still holding the stock when it surged last quarter.
Morgan Stanley has promoted 173 employees to its top rank of managing director.
That's a 12% increase over last year as demand for mergers and capital rebounds.
The latest class is smaller, however, compared to 2023 and 2022 when James GormanΒ was CEO.
Morgan Stanley promoted 173 people to the rank of managing director on Wednesday, a 12% jump from this time last year as demand for mergers and capital raising rebounds across Wall Street.
The promotions come as Ted Pick finishes his first full year as CEO with 25% of last year's global M&A business, giving it the No. 2 spot behind Goldman Sachs, according to the London Stock Exchange Group.
Last year's class included just 155 names class, down from 184 in 2023 and 199 in 2022. The bank promoted 171 employees to MD in 2021 when M&A hit a global record of $5 trillion.
The bank has internally notified its newest members of their new titles and is planning to release the list of names publicly on Friday. Here are some stats about this year's class, according to a spokesperson for Morgan Stanley.
Institutional Securities Group: 46%
Investment management: 13%
Wealth management: 9%
68% of MD promotes were in the Americas, 20% in EMEA, 12% in Asia
The promotions represent 13 countries
The average tenure of those promoted is 11 years at Morgan Stanley.
39% of the class have advanced degrees
34% of MD class are women, increasing overall women MD representation to 27%
Of US-based MD promotes, 22% of the class are ethnically diverse:
3% are Black, 6% are Hispanic, 12% are Asian, 1% is 2+ races
Do you work on Wall Street? Get in touch with this reporter. Reed Alexander can be reached via email at [email protected], or SMS/the encrypted app Signal at (561) 247-5758.
In 2007, Jesse Burgess joined his familyβs payroll business. He quickly noticed that the businessβ six payroll clerks were getting bogged down by repetitive, monotonous tasks. So he sought to streamline those tasks by creating workflow automation tools. Several years later, Burgess sensed an opportunity to bring the tools he developed for his familyβs business [β¦]
The late Charlie Munger (right) was Warren Buffett's business partner.
SCOTT MORGAN/REUTERS
A friend of Charlie Munger's says Munger doubled his money on a contrarian bet soon before his death.
The friend, Li Lu, gave an interview in which he discussed Munger's careful approach to investing.
Li also described dramatically different approaches to risk tolerance between Munger and Elon Musk.
Charlie Munger was still sniffing out bargains and scoring big gains at age 99, says a close friend of the late investing icon.
Munger, Warren Buffett's business partner and Berkshire Hathaway's vice chairman for more than four decades, died in late November 2023, about a month shy of his 100th birthday.
In a rare interview marking the first anniversary of Munger's death, Li Lu told the Chinese social network Zhenge Island that one of Munger's last moves was a contrarian bet.
"There was a stock that everyone disliked, and it might not be particularly politically correct," Li said. But that didn't stop Munger from studying the company and buying its shares, continued the Himalaya Capital Management founder, whom Munger once described as the "Chinese Warren Buffett."
"The week before he died, this stock had doubled from the time he started investing to that time," Li said. It's unclear which stock he was referring to. Li didn't immediately respond to a request for comment from Business Insider.
Li said the wager showed Munger retained his passion for investing until the end and "could still go against the market consensus and live to see this stock double." He said the stock remained "in the Munger family portfolio" and was "still performing very well."
Li Lu was a close friend of Charlie Munger.
JP Yim/Getty Images
Li was the only person apart from Buffett who Munger trusted to invest his family's money. He introduced Munger to BYD, the Chinese EV maker that's been one of Berkshire's best investments over the past decade.
Describing Munger's careful approach toward investing, in his interview with Zhenge Island he also seemed to allude to a story Munger had discussed at Daily Journal's annual meeting in 2017, saying Munger "read Barron's magazine every week for 50 years and only made one investment."
"In 50 years I found one investment opportunity in Barron's, out of which I made about $80 million with almost no risk," Munger said in 2017. "I took the $80 million and gave it to Li Lu, who turned it into $400 to $500 million. So I have made $400 to 500 million out of reading Barron's for 50 years and following one idea."
Munger added further details, indicating that the stock was an auto supply company named Tenneco that Apollo Global Management acquired in late 2022. He said that he made 15 times his money on the stock in about two years and that it took him only 90 minutes of research to pull the trigger after reading about it.
Lunch with Elon Musk
Li recalled a lunch with Munger and Elon Musk in which he said the Tesla and SpaceX CEO tried to win Munger's investment. He said the discussion showed their similar thinking on subjects such as batteries and science but also their stark differences in risk appetite. While Musk was willing to do things with only a 5% chance of success, he said, Munger "may need more than 80% chance of success before he will do it."
Musk has previously discussed meeting Munger. Early in 2023 he posted on X that "Munger could've invested in Tesla at ~$200M valuation when I had lunch with him in late 2008." Musk's automaker went on to become one of the world's largest companies and is now worth about $1.3 trillion.
"I was at a lunch with Munger in 2009 where he told the whole table all the ways Tesla would fail," Musk wrote in another post. "Made me quite sad, but I told him I agreed with all those reasons & that we would probably die, but it was worth trying anyway."
Correction: January 7, 2025 β This story was updated to reflect that it wasn't clear from Li Lu's interview where Charlie Munger got the idea for the contrarian bet that Li said Munger made at age 99. The story also misstated when Elon Musk posted one of his comments about Munger. It was in early 2023, not early last year.
A few weeks ago, after a long day of work and several wrestling matches with my 30-pound toddler, I collapsed onto my couch and opened my phone. By then I was in my third trimester, and my approaching labor was on my mind. And my phone knew it.
Before I realized what was happening, I was watching the kind of video that will be immediately recognizable to anyone who's been pregnant in the age of Instagram and TikTok. In it, a "birth trainer" demonstrates the appropriate way to relax while pregnant. Apparently, I should be sitting upright, feet on the floor, with hips open β or, better yet, in butterfly pose β to ensure my baby could get "optimally" positioned for birth.
I wanted to throw my phone across the room. I was exhausted, damn it. Why couldn't I just curl up on the couch and turn off my brain for a moment? Why did every single thing I did have to be tailored to my pregnancy?
But the lure of optimization was impossible to resist. I wanted to be that mom who aces every aspect of childbirth, bringing my child into the world in the best possible way. So I sat up, placed my feet on the floor, opened my hips, and exhaled. And I wasn't the only Good Birth striver out there: The video had half a million views.
To scroll through social media as a pregnant woman is to be told that there are a million things you should be doing to optimize the birth experience. I'm not talking about the common-sense basics, from birth education classes to making a birth plan. In a country with a sky-high rate of maternal mortality, we desperately need to pay more attention to ensuring the health of pregnant women. What I'm talking about is the growing cottage industry of birthing influencers, who market their preferred birthing styles through sponsored posts, consulting services, and online courses. There are advocates of everything from "natural" birth (minimal intervention and no epidurals), "ecstatic" birth (achieved through hypnosis and other mental gymnastics), "total control" birth (meaning a scheduled C-section), and "free birth" (one that happens outside the medical or midwifery systems).
Much of the talk around optimizing birth is well-meaning. But it also feeds an absurd narrative that childbirth can be mastered. How we give birth β or how we think we'll give birth beforeour due date arrives and reality takes over β has become the latest way we define, and judge, ourselves as parents. At a moment that is inherently fraught with anxiety, the Gospel of the Good Birth gives expectant parents one more thing to be anxious about.
"It feels like pregnancy content is part of this initiation into contemporary parenting," says Rebecca Silber, who works in marketing in New Jersey and is pregnant with her second child. "It starts with 'I do natural birth' or 'I'm an epidural mom' and then turns into 'I sleep train' or 'I'm a gentle parent.'" What has long been a war over the best way to raise a child β and the identity that comes with choosing one parenting style over another β now precedes the child's birth.
For many expectant parents, the appeal of embracing one birthing style over another is about asserting control. Or, more precisely, the illusion of control during one of life's most emotionally charged, high-stakes experiences.
When Megan Nash, a physical therapist assistant in Roanoke, Virginia, was preparing to give birth to her daughter, she followed birth influencers who advocated breathing work and mantras to control the pain of childbirth, free of medication. She conjured up the sort of gently lit images familiar to her from her Instagram feed β teary-eyed, beaming women staring in wonder as they cradle their newborns.
Good Birth influencers market one of the most lucrative products of all: the fear of being a bad mom.
"I envisioned this wonderful, natural, empowering experience," she says. "Because that's what I thought was possible, based on what I was seeing on social media."
Then the reality of labor hit her. She wound up asking for an epidural β a decision that brought immediate physical relief but left her with the nagging feeling that she had failed herself and her baby girl. "I felt shame," she says. "Like, if I couldn't be chill about it, and do it without the help, it showed some type of weakness."
The guilt trailed her home from the hospital. When her newborn turned out to be a colicky, fussy baby, Nash came across a post that equated epidurals with giving your baby fentanyl. It was a completely bogus claim, but she worried that her daughter's fussiness might be her fault. It wasn't until she met another mom who was facing similar struggles, but who'd had an unmedicated home birth, that Nash accepted what her pediatrician had been telling her: Everything was fine. "It was the first time I realized that even if I'd done everything differently, the outcome easily could have been exactly the same," Nash says. "It was freeing to think maybe I didn't have anything to do with it."
For Sarah Denney, a professor in Indianapolis, the "optimal" childbirth experience meant lying on her side. She'd saved a dozen videos from Instagram that convinced her that a side birth would reduce tearing and make recovery quicker than lying on her back. But that's not how it worked out. "I was in agony, lying on my side, pushing, with one of my legs lifted straight in the air, just dangling there," she recalls. "And I tore anyway."
Even those who feel good about their choices wind up fretting over whether they got it wrong. Shannon Wolfman, a mother in Indianapolis who ended up having a C-section, doesn't regret having the procedure, but social media made her worry that she had interrupted the natural process of postpartum bonding by subjecting herself and her baby to medical intervention.
"Objectively, I know I made the right call in the moment by moving ahead with the C-section," Wolfman says. "But the comparison game, both online and just in general, is so intense." Doing the right thing, in the age of Instagram, is no protection against the fear of having done the wrong thing.
I write about women's health for a living, but that hasn't stopped me from falling prey to the Gospel of the Good Birth. My addiction to Instagram hasn't just given me anxiety about my coming labor β it also has me relitigating my first experience giving birth.
Anyone not tethered to social media would conclude that my first birth went fine. As my pregnancy progressed, I read a handful of books, practiced meditation as a tool for staying calm during painful contractions, and made flash-card reminders about labor positions and breathing techniques to take with me to the hospital. My water broke right on time, and my partner and my doula met me at the hospital. My labor, which took 22 hours, was the hardest, most shocking physical experience of my life, even with an epidural. But I delivered a healthy baby girl, and I walked out of the hospital happier than I'd ever been in my life.
When I mention how stressed I am, my friends gently ask if I've considered deleting Instagram.
Two years later, social media has me second-guessing the whole experience. A few days after Instagram yanked me up from the couch, I found myself going down a rabbit hole of unfounded claims linking medical interventions during delivery with bonding issues later in life. A wave of panic washed over me as I remembered how, after my newborn daughter was placed on my chest, a few minutes passed before I was able to interact with her.
My mind jumped to the present. When my daughter catches me walking off to grab something or go to the bathroom, she sometimes gets upset and yells, "Mommy! You forgot me!" Had my decision to get an epidural short-circuited our bond, dooming her to an anxious attachment style?
There's zero evidence it had. When Nash, the physical therapist, shared a similar worry with me, I'd recognized immediately that her natural anxiety as a mother had been amplified to an excruciating level by the idiocy of social media. But there I was, crying over the dishes, worried that I had failed as a mother. My big, heaving sobs drowned out the sounds from the baby monitor on the counter β my toddler upstairs with my partner, giddily splashing around in the bath.
These days, when I mention how stressed I am about my approaching due date, my friends gently ask if I've considered deleting Instagram. During my prenatal appointment at 34 weeks, I peppered my obstetrician with all the questions about my first labor that my social media diet had triggered. Was the epidural the reason I labored for so long? Did my perineum tear because I pushed on my back?I couldn't work up the courage to ask if it was possible that the epidural had harmed my baby's bond with me.
My obstetrician did his best to calm my Instagram-induced fears with actual medical facts. But all of his answers were carefully couched variations of "maybe, maybe not" β a far cry from the certitude offered by online influencers. That's because the Good Birthers aren't concerned with the specific complexities that attend every individual birth. They're marketing one of the most lucrative products of all: the fear of being a bad mother.
Today, I'm 36 weeks pregnant. My birth plan is as set as it can ever be. I'm basically aiming to do exactly what I did last time. I'm going to prepare as much as I can, and then see what happens when the moment arrives. If it hurts too much, or I get too tired, I'm going to get the epidural. I'm going to trust my doctors, and most importantly, I'm going to trust myself as I roar this baby out of my body. I expect to walk out of the hospital torn and exhausted β but alive and well and happier than I've ever been.
But this time, I've done one thing differently to ensure a Good Birth. I deleted Instagram.
Amelia Harnish is a health reporter based in New York's Hudson Valley.
Check out these pitch decks for examples of fintech founders sold their vision.
Yulia Reznikov/Getty Images
Business Insider has been tracking the next wave of hot new startups blending finance and tech.Β
Startups include generative AI fintechs, ones disrupting lending and banking, and more.
Check out these pitch decks to see how fintech founders sold their vision.
Check out these pitch decks to see how fintech founders are selling their vision and nabbing big bucks in the process. You'll see new startups using generative AI to ease up grunt work at investment banks and private equity firms, fresh twists on digital banking, and innovation aimed at making it easier for consumers to gain access to financial services and investments.
SecureSave
From left: SecureSave cofounders Devin Miller, Suze Orman, and Bassam Saliba.
SecureSave
SecureSave works with employers to offer their workers an emergency savings account. An emergency savings account operates much like a health savings account, in that it sets aside a portion of an employee's wages to pay for emergency expenses.
Yinon Ravid, the chief executive and cofounder of Albert.
Albert
Founded in 2015, Albert offers automated budgeting and savings tools alongside guided investment portfolios. It's looked to differentiate itself through personalized features, like the ability for customers to text human financial experts.
CEO Michael Simon lured Roni Israelov, former principal at the hedge fund, AQR Capital Management, to head up his portfolio management and research team.
NDVR
Β
NDVR is a portfolio management app that customizes portfolios and investment strategies to the needs of wealthy investors. The Boston-based startup β pronounced "endeavor"β applies to portfolios holding between $1 million and $100 million, and leverages quantitative investing strategies, which use computers and algorithmic trading to decide what stocks and other assets to buy, a method typically available to only the largest institutional investors.Β
Percent is a three-sided private-credit marketplace that connects borrowers, investors, and underwriters. The marketplace is geared towards accredited retail investors but plans to support more institutional investors in the future.
Vint wants to make investing in wines and spirits accessible to everyone. In June 2019, it launched as a marketplace to enable both accredited and non-accredited investors to buy shares in collections of fine wines and spirits.Β
London-based Tulipshare lets individuals in the UK invest in publicly-traded company stocks, and then pools individuals' shareholder rights with other like-minded investors to advocate for environmental, social, and corporate governance change at firms like JPMorgan, Apple, and Amazon.
Los Angeles-based Altruist is a digital brokerage built for independent financial advisors, intended to be an "all-in-one" platform that unites custodial functions, portfolio accounting, and a client-facing portal. It allows advisors to open accounts, invest, build models, report, trade, and bill clients through an interface that can save advisors time by eliminating mundane operational tasks.
Doorvest cofounders Andrew Luong (left) and Justin Kasad (right).
Doorvest
Doorvest helps everyday investors buy single-family homes to rent out for passive income. Through its online platform, users can purchase and manage their rental properties.Β
Relief offers an app that automates the credit-card debt collection process for users. It negotiates with lenders and collectors to settle outstanding balances on their behalf.Β
Priyank Singh and Rohit Mittal are the cofounders of Stilt, which announced its $14 million Series A funding round Thursday.
Stilt
Stilt offers loans and credit cards to immigrants coming to the US. The startup uses data, such as education and employment details, to predict an individual's future income stability and cash flow before issuing a loan, rather than rely on traditional metrics like a credit score. It also sells its loan software to other companies looking to offer a credit product.Β
Laura Kornhauser, cofounder and CEO, and Dmitry Lesnik, cofounder and chief data scientist, of Stratyfy
Stratyfy is a startup that uses AI to help lenders underwrite consumers without long US credit histories or gig economy workers who don't get a traditional W-2 from their employers.
Miren works with federally-certified lenders that focus on reaching underserved customers in low-to-moderate income areas to underwrite credit-thin small-business owners.Β
Dallas-based fintech CollateralEdge works with regional and community banks β typically those with between $1 billion and $50 billion in assets β to help analyze and price slices of commercial and industrial loans that previously might have gone unserved by smaller lenders.
Pinwheel founders Curtis Lee, Kurt Lin, and Anish Basu
Pinwheel
Pinwheel shares payroll data to help fintechs and traditional lenders serve consumers with limited or poor credit who have historically struggled to access financial products.Β
Tricolor is an alternative auto lender that caters to thin- and no-credit Hispanic borrowers. The Dallas-based auto lender is a community development financial institution that uses a proprietary artificial-intelligence engine that makes decisions for each customer based on more than 100 data points, such as proof of income.Β
Justin Straight and Bernard Worthy, LoanWell co-founders
LoanWell
LoanWell works with community-focused lenders to fill a gap in the SMB financing world by boosting access to loans under $100,000. It automates the financing process β from underwriting and origination to money movement and servicing β which can shave down an up-to-90-day process to 30 days or even same-day with some LoanWell lenders.Β
Parafin cofounders Vineet Goel, Sahill Poddar, and Ralph Furman
Parafin
Parafin works with companies that other small businesses sell their products through (like DoorDash and Mindbody), to offer capital to these small businesses. Parafin's tech offering spans product, marketing, compliance, and IT support. It also provides the capital, sourced via debt capital providers, and manages underwriting and risk.Β
Reflexivity cofounders Jan Szilagyi and Giuseppe Sette
Reflexivity
Reflexivity, formerly Toggle AI, builds data-analysis tools for traders and investors. Its investors include Wall Street investors Izzy Englander, Stanley Druckenmiller, Greg Coffey. Reflexivity's tech is used by ExodusPoint, Soros Fund, and Millennium Management.Β
Rogo cofounders Tumas Rackaitis (CTO), Gabe Stengel (CEO) and John Willett (President)
Rogo
Rogo is building a generative AI chatbot for bankers and analysts that can automate tasks like creating PowerPoint decks. It was cofounded by former investment bankers.Β
QC Ware is a startup looking to cut the time and resources it takes to use quantum computing. The technology has potential to enable companies to do complex calculations faster than traditional computers and is especially helpful in risk analytics or algorithmic trading. The fintech is backed by Wall Street giants, including D.E. Shaw, Citi, and Goldman Sachs.Β Β
Eric Chang and Alex Schumacher, co-founders of Claira
Claira
Claira is a startup that uses artificial intelligence to analyze financial contracts and documents. Its founding team brings experience from Citadel, Goldman Sachs, and BlackRock.Β
Kirat Singh and Mark Higgins, Beacon's cofounders.
Beacon
Beacon is a fintech that provides a shortcut for banks, asset managers, and trading firms looking to use quantitative modelling and data science to help with analyzing risk, ensuring compliance, and improving operational efficiency. The company has been backed by Warburg Pincus, Blackstone, PIMCO, and Global Atlantic.Β
For years, the only way investors could figure out the going price of a corporate bond was by calling up a dealer on the phone. The rise of electronic trading has streamlined that process, but data can still be hard to come by sometimes. BondCliQ is a fintech that provides a data feed of pre-trade pricing quotes for the corporate bond market. It was founded by Chris White, a former Goldman Sachs exec.
Proper Finance co-founders Travis Gibson (left) and Kyle Maloney
Proper Finance
Proper Finance helps other businesses keep track of transaction data moved between third-party and in-house systems. In 2024, Proper Finance's tech and team were acquired by Intuit to help small businesses.
Jessica Chen Riolfi and Chris Goodmacher are the cofounders of Uprise.
Uprise
Uprise is an app that offers small businesses, entrepreneurs, and freelancers financial advice and tax-planning services. The San Francisco-based startup partners with financial institutions and other fintechs for them to offer Uprise's tech.Β
Productfy aims to help non-finance companies offer their own banking products without additional engineering resources or background knowledge of banking compliance or legal requirements.Β
OppZo is a fintech that is figuring out how to speed up loans to small government contractors. It works with financing partners to extend working capital loans to firms that have won contracts, and who need cash to quickly ramp up their businesses, but might not see that first contract payment for as long as 120 days.Β
Decimal provides a back-end tech layer that small- and medium-sized businesses can use to integrate their accounting and business-management software tools in one place, and automate some accounting operations.
Now is a startup, cofounded by politician Stacey Abrams, that aims to solve the capital supply chain woes that plague bootstrapped businesses that have to choose between paying invoices and keeping the lights on. Now uses its own line of credit to purchase invoices from customers, paying Now's business customers immediately. When the invoice payment is eventually made by the end-customer, that money goes to Now.Β
Jaideep Singh is the CEO and co-founder of FlyFin, an AI-driven tax preparation software program for freelancers.
FlyFin
FlyFin is an artificial-intelligence tax preparation program that helps freelancers, who don't get traditional W-2 forms, with their taxes. It connects to a person's bank accounts, allowing the AI program to help users monitor for certain expenses that can be claimed on their taxes like business expenditures, the interest on mortgages, property taxes, or whatever else that might apply.Β
Worksome is a startup that wants to eliminate the extra work required to manage contractors and freelancers by automating the administrative burdens of hiring, paying, and accounting for contract workers.
HoneyBook cofounders Dror Shimoni, Oz Alon, and Naama Alon.
HoneyBook
HoneyBook provides payment and operations support for freelancers. Its $155 million Series D was led by Durable Capital Partners and included Tiger Global and Citi Ventures.
Salt Labs is a loyalty and payments fintech that is helping hourly-wage workers build wealth through a rewards points system. In June 2024, it was acquired by neobank Chime Financial for as much as $173 million, according to a Fortune report.
Hive pools unused cloud capacity on people's phones and computers and resells it to businesses. It was founded by the former CEO of Symphony, an instant messaging service widely used by Wall Street firms.Β
Bolt gives merchants the tools to offer a one-click checkout experience. The e-commerce startup made headlines in August 2024 for its pitch to raise a $450 million Series F that would see once-ousted founder Ryan Breslow back as CEO and value the company at $14 billion.Β
Method cofounders Mit Shah, Jose Bethancourt, and Marco del Carmen
Method
Y Cominator-backed Method Financial aims to help consumers pay off their debt by providing an application programming interface to move money more easily.Β
Lil Baby poses in the press room with the award for best new artist at the BET Awards on Sunday, June 23, 2019, at the Microsoft Theater in Los Angeles.
Richard Shotwell/Invision/AP
Kasheesh allows users to split online payments across several debit and credit cards. The financial-technology company positions itself as a "responsible" alternative to buy now, pay later services.
Atomic simplifies payroll integrations with its API, which can help financial institutions access financial data for verification of income and employment, offer consumers automated set-up or updating of direct deposits, collect financial obligations straight from consumers' paychecks, and more.
Kamino cofounders Gut Fragoso, Rodrigo Perenha, Benjamin Gleason, and Gonzalo Parejo
Kamino
Sao Paulo-based Kamino helps businesses automate their payments processes, such as invoice processing and cashflow management. Investors include Inspired Capital, Flourish Ventures, Clocktower Technology Ventures, and QED Investors.
Slope cofounders Alice Deng and Lawrence Lin Murata
Slope
Slope wants to digitize the largely manual, $125 trillion industry of business-to-business payments to help companies process customer orders, collect payments, and manage cash flow. It also uses AI to underwrite buyers and extend short-term financing. Investors include OpenAI's Sam Altman, Y Combinator, and Union Square Ventures.
Founded in 2017, Ladder uses a tech-driven approach to offer life insurance with a digital, end-to-end service that it says is more flexible, faster, and cost-effective than incumbent players.
Counterpart is a fintech that applies data science to the commercial insurance industry to more accurately measure risk and find coverage that best fits the customers' needs.
Honeycomb is using AI to streamline the often time-consuming and expensive process of sending an inspector to identify potential risks of a commercial property. It analyzes a combination of third-party data and photos submitted by customers through the startup's app to quickly identify any potential risks at a property and more accurately price policies.
ValidMind cofounders (left to right): Mehdi Esmail, Jonas Jacobi, and Andres Rodriguez
ValidMind
ValidMind automates risk-manages processes for AI models on Wall Street, specifically testing, verifying, validating, documenting and monitoring models. Its $8.1 million seed round was led by Point72 Ventures.
Spade cofounders (left to right) Cooper Hart, CTO, Tess Bloch, head of operations, and Oban MacTavish, CEO
Spade sells its software to banks and fintechs so they have more granular payments data about merchants to mitigate fraud. Its Series A was led by Flourish Ventures and included Andreessen Horowitz, Y Combinator, and Everywhere Ventures (The Fund).Β
Themis develops compliance software for banks, fintechs, and the companies they work. Founder and CEO Neepa Patel worked as a bank regulator at the Office of the Comptroller of the Currency and in compliance at Morgan Stanley and Deutsche Bank.
Zamp's Clete Werts, Edward Lando, and Rohit Bhadange.
Most people think of sales tax as a couple of dollars tacked onto their grocery receipt, but for the seller, managing those dollars on every single product is more complex. Zamp aims to help online sellers of all sizes manage their sales tax compliance.Β
LeapXpert is helping companies ensure the messaging channels employees use to communicate professionally are safe and compliant. Monitoring business discussions outside traditional channels has been a sore spot for Wall Street firms, and a regulatory crackdown in recent years has meant firms have gotten more aggressive in their monitoring efforts.
The hedge fund industry showed new signs of maturity in 2024.
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Institutionalization was one of the biggest themes in hedge funds this year.
A once-scrappy industry is starting to resemble private equity and venture capital.
The biggest firms and new launches have evolved significantly from the days of a couple of guys and a Bloomberg.
The game has changed.
Hedge funds, led by the industry's biggest names who set the agenda for the multi-trillion-dollar sector, were once known for their scrappiness, speed, and reliance on the brains and vision of their founders.
Now, as the industry's investor base has shifted to long-term institutions from wealthy families and small funds-of-funds, hedge funds have become institutions of their own. 2024 may be the turning point for the space that, in 10 years' time, industry observers will look back on as the beginning of the next era.
The biggest managers in the space are preparing for life beyond their founders, long-standing funds are becoming more formulaic and bureaucratic, and new entrants need to raise more money than ever before.
Multistrategy managers like Millennium, Citadel, and Point72 have long been moving in this direction, but recent moves by each of the firms' founders point to a world in which these giants outlast their larger-than-life leaders.
Ken Griffin, Citadel's billionaire founder, said in November that he would be open to selling a stake in his $66 billion Miami-based asset manager. Millennium and the world's largest asset manager BlackRock have reportedly had talks about the latter taking a stake in the former.
Both firms are set to outlast their founders, with built-out infrastructure and leadership teams littered with former Goldman Sachs partners. $72 billion Millennium, for example, created the office of the CIO in late 2022 and promoted longtime executive Ajay Nagpal to president, providing investors with a clear line into the next level of leadership beyond founder Izzy Englander.
The legendary founder of $35 billion Point72, meanwhile, has stepped away from trading his own book of stocks, which is how he burst onto the scene decades ago.
While Steve Cohen spends plenty of time and money on the baseball team he owns, the New York Mets, a person close to the firm said the decision to step back from running a book was not an indication that he's spending any less time working at his manager.
In a recent internal town hall, this person said, he described no longer having a book under his purview as "freeing" as he can spend more time on strategic initiatives for the firm. Without a portfolio to manage, the market's hours no longer dictate Cohen's schedule β a flexibility he appreciates as he balances running the manager and his baseball team.
For example, in mid-October, Cohen was set to appear on a panel at investment consultant Albourne Partners' annual conference in New York, but canceled because the Mets had gone on a run in the playoffs, people familiar with the event told Business Insider.
Succession, quality launches, and a promising environment
Beyond the main multistrategy names, a number of long-running firms across the industry are, structurally, starting to look more like peers in private equity than smaller rivals in the hedge fund space.
Places like Elliott Management centralized decision-making and created more internal structure, which has frustrated some veterans of Paul Singer's asset manager but provides the needed hierarchy.
Meanwhile, firms like Two Sigma and Bridgewater have officially moved on from their founders with new leadership. Brevan Howard's billionaire founder Alan Howard no longer trades for his firm.
At the other end of the industry, the bar for new launches has increased substantially, and the next generation of industry leaders are starting the firms with a much more institutional feel than even five years ago. Bobby Jain's $5.3 billion launch in July, for example, had plenty of big-name hires and titles right from the start.
In 2023, the average fund launched with $300 million, according to Goldman Sachs' prime brokerage division. PivotalPath, the industry data tracker run by Jon Caplis, said in an end-of-year report that it expects 2024 to be similar, driven by the increase of multi-managers allocating externally.
It's been driven by a focus from allocators on "quality" launches, PivotalPath's report states; the firm is tracking 145 new funds launching between the start of 2024 and the second quarter of 2025 with founders who come from funds with more than $1 billion.
If you're able to command enough capital β either from a platform like Millennium or big allocators like pensions, sovereign wealth funds, and endowments β it should be worth it. Longtime industry players and investors believe it is shaping up to be a strong period for the industry thanks to increased volatility that will allow actively managed investment firms to shine.
"Our underlying hedge fund managers are active, fundamental stock pickers who seek to identify the best opportunities and offer differentiated exposure," wrote New York-based fund-of-funds Old Farm Partners in a recent note that focused on why active management should shine in the coming years.
"Given the argument that we have laid out in this paper, we think the current market backdrop should provide a favorable setup for our strategy going forward."
The rich can use private-placement life insurance to save tens of millions of dollars.
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The richest of the rich can use life insurance to avoid estate and income taxes.
Private-placement life insurance is perfectly legal β unless a new bill passes.
A financial advisor tells Insider how the insurance saves the wealthy tens of millions of dollars.
Life insurance is probably the least sexy area of financial planning. But for the richest of the rich, policies can slash tens of millions of dollars off their tax bills.
Private-placement life insurance is a little-known tax-avoidance tactic. When structured correctly, PPLI policies can be used to pass on assets from stocks to yachts to heirs without incurring an estate tax.
"In the US, people sell life insurance as a middle-class way of structuring assets," Michael Malloy, a wealth advisor who has specialized in PPLI for 20 years, told Business Insider in 2022. "But PPLI is a completely different animal."
The PPLI industry enables a few thousand ultra-rich American taxpayers to shelter at least $40 billion, according to an investigation by the Senate Finance Committee. The report estimated that the average PPLI policyholder is worth well over $100 million.
PPLI is legalβfor now. On December 16, Oregon Sen. Ron Wyden released a draft bill to close the loophole. Under the Protecting Proper Life Insurance from Abuse Act, PPLI policies would be treated as investment funds, not life insurance or annuity policies, which would eliminate the tax benefits.
"Life insurance is an essential source of financial security for tens of millions of middle-class families in America, so we cannot have a bunch of ultra-rich tax dodgers abusing its special tax treatment to set up tax-free hedge funds and shelter oodles of cash," Wyden said in a written statement.
While tax savings are the primary draw of PPLI for US clients, those in the Middle East or Latin America are often looking to use trusts to conceal information about specific assets from corrupt governments, Malloy said.
"Clients don't want an organized crime ring bribing an underpaid tax official to get information on their family," he said.
US taxpayers are required to report to the IRS only the cash value of a foreign life-insurance policy, not the assets within the trust.
These offshore life insurers in jurisdictions such as the Cayman Islands and Bermuda typically require at least $5 million as the upfront premium. Malloy advises that clients have at least $10 million in assets to make PPLI worthwhile. His clients usually hold at least $50 million in assets.
Here is how PPLI works
In short, an attorney sets up a trust for a wealthy client. The trust owns the life-insurance policy that's created offshore.
The PPLI policy premiums are funded with assets. The assets must be diversified β typically with at least five different asset classes β and can include stocks and business interests, as well as tangible assets like yachts and real estate.
Depending on the client's age, nationality, and other factors, the death benefit can, in theory, max out at $100 million, Malloy said.
If structured correctly, the benefit and the assets in the policy are passed to the children without incurring an estate tax. A 40% federal estate tax applies to estate values topping $13.61 million for individuals and $27.22 million for married couples.
Unlike with policies from US insurers, clients can cancel their policies without paying a massive surrender fee. The assets also grow within the trust tax-free. The cash value of the PPLI policy assets is held in a separate account, and this cash can be disbursed to the policy holder or invested. Investing in hedge funds is a popular use of PPLI assets.
But there's a catch. Policyholders have limited control over investment decisions. They cannot give directives to the asset manager to buy a certain number of shares in Apple, for instance.
It also requires a small army of professionals, including trust and estate attorneys, asset managers, custodians, and tax advisors. Since PPLI is relevant only to the ultrawealthy, few in wealth management or law are familiar with it.
"There's no questions on the CPA exam or the bar exam about PPLI, and asset managers are kind of skeptical," he said. "They think you're going to take assets away. Actually, the assets become stickier and get more alpha because the client pays less tax."
How the proposed bill would endanger PPLI
Under Wyden's proposed legislation, most PPLI policies would be classified as "private placement contracts" (PPCs) rather than life insurance policies. As such, any accumulated earnings and death benefits would be taxed.
The bill would apply to future and existing PPLI policies, giving policyholders 180 days to liquify the assets or transfer them. Insurers who dare to issue or reinsure the policies will no longer have the benefit of secrecy. To better enable the IRS to enforce the bill, insurers will have to report all PPCs or face a $1 million fine for each 30-day period that they fail to do so.
The bill faces steep odds of passing with Donald Trump's reelection and a Republican House and Senate. The insurance industry is counting on it.
"This legislation is an attack on all forms of permanent life insurance and, by extension, an attack on holistic financial planning," said Marc Cadin, CEO of trade group Finseca, in a statement. "We look forward to working with the new Congress and the Trump administration to advance policies to move our country forward rather than raising taxes on life insurance."
Accounting firms are struggling to adopt high-tech solutions. Thatβs according to a survey earlier this year from Rightsworks, which found that, while 88% of firms believe tech has had a positive impact on their efficiency, 60% are suffering from disconnected systems, inconsistent processes, and a lack of standardized workflows. Startups like Aiwyn are trying to [β¦]
Smart ring maker Oura announced on Thursday that it has closed a $200 million Series D funding round, bringing the companyβs valuation to $5.2 billion. The round included participation from Fidelity Management and glucose device makerΒ Dexcom. Oura says the new capital will allow it to expand its product offerings and further invest in product, science, [β¦]
The Financial Times, which first reported the EY firings, referred to these instances of being dismissed for minor offenses as "stealth firing."
Joe Galvin, the chief research officer at the executive coaching platform Vistage, told Business Insider that this sneaky sacking is "a "covert behind-the-scenes activity" that "violates the principle of respect for the individual."
A corporation might think: "I'm trying to downsize a little bit without saying I'm downsizing a little bit," Galvin said.
"So you go through this process that does nothing but break trust."
Short-term gain for long-term problems
Stealth firing leads from an era of "quiet firing," where companies methodically made employees' roles increasingly uncomfortable and less appealing, such as implementing strict return-to-office mandates.
This trend, along with the quietly agreed-upon severance packages of "silent layoffs," is a tactic to avoid the optics of publicly cutting dozens of staff.
Cynthia Patterson, the founder of the HR consultancy firm PeopleOps.how, who has 20 years of experience in HR across tech, AI, healthcare, and retail industries, told BI that while quietly trimming headcounts in these ways may work in the short term, they can cause serious issues for a workplace.
"Any short-term outcome is offset by the negative cultural impact," Patterson said. "Employees are left second-guessing their own value and stability, creating an environment of anxiety and mistrust."
"This dynamic mirrors the patterns of toxic and/or abusive work cultures, where fear and uncertainty are used β intentionally or not β as tools for behavioral control," Patterson said.
A shift in power
People are also perceptive, and employees who see their colleagues be shown the door for minor indiscretions will only make them wary and dissatisfied.
Patterson told BI companies who push people out in arbitrary ways are mistakenly viewing avoidance as kindness.
"Employee performance management is part of running a business," she said. "And it can't be skipped because it feels uncomfortable or inconvenient to the employer."
Stealth firing, Patterson said, simply exposes a company's inability or unwillingness to have honest, necessary conversations about performance β and "signals to employees that the organization doesn't have integrity."
Galvin told BI that companies willfully harming their reputations in this way may find they are the ones suffering and bleeding talent ifΒ an era of revenge quittingΒ hits in 2025.
"The signs are pointing up toward a really strong 2025 β our community is energized, hiring's going back up again, investments are going up, expectations for profits and revenues are up," he said. "The power shifting."
Weigh up your options
It's always a smaller world than you think when it comes to work and looking for your next job, Ciara Harrington, the chief people officer of the leadership training platform Skillsoft, told BI.
"It's in the interest of everybody to keep good relationships," she said. "I don't think anybody really wants to leave a company on bad terms."
Sometimes, companies have to let their staff go, and the best thing for everyone is to do so with respect and honesty. That way, while the news isn't what the employees hope for, they still maintain a level of respect for the company.
The alternative is that employees post on public platforms such as LinkedIn, TikTok, Reddit, and job review sites about their negative experiences, such as how they felt undervalued and lied to.
Patterson said these stories could reach future employees, customers, investors, and even employment lawyers, opening up companies to potential legal disputes.
"Strong companies know their employees are human beings and deserve to be treated as such," Patterson said.
Galvin told BI that if there are signs that your company is looking to stealth fire you, it's time to start weighing your options.
Even if your employer isn't planning on firing you, if their communication is poor, and you feel unsafe, it's best to get out anyway.
"In the absence of a story, we create one," Galvin said. "If you sense that's happening to you, you either have the direct conversation with your manager or start looking for your next job."
After nearly four years of working in sales at tradesperson software company ServiceTitan, Mark Hoadley (pictured above) was looking for a change and to potentially start something of his own in a similar industry. Hoadleyβs brother-in-law and now co-founder, Ben Sikma, was working on M&A in the waste-management space at the time. Sikma discovered how [β¦]
Investment tactics often require big buy-ins and high fees.
New tech is lowering the price of entry in fields like direct indexing and private markets.
This article is part of "Transforming Business," a series on the must-know leaders and trends impacting industries.
Investing like a billionaire comes with a high price tag. But thanks to technology, the barriers to these elite opportunities are starting to crumble.
Consider direct indexing, a strategy favored by the rich to lower taxes by selling underperforming stocks and using the losses to offset other gains. These personalized portfolios used to be out of reach of the merely affluent, requiring steep account minimums. Over the past five years, direct indexing has exploded as technological advancements have made it worthwhile for wealth managers to offer the services to Main Street customers. The account minimum for Fidelity's FidFolios, for example, is only $5,000.
"Direct indexing has become accessible at a different level of wealth than it has been in the past," said Ranjit Kapila, the copresident and chief operating officer of Parametric. "That wouldn't have been available or possible without the technology trends we've had to be able to do this level of computation at scale in a cost-efficient manner."
Parametric, the pioneer of direct indexing, is also moving downstream. By adopting fractional-share investing, Parametric lowered the minimum for its core product to $100,000 from $250,000. The firm plans to offer a direct-indexing product with fewer customization features for $25,000 in 2025.
Private markets face steeper hurdles. This opaque field was traditionally reserved for deep-pocketed investors like pension funds and ultrarich individuals. But now investors have more access to financial results for funds and privately held companies as data providers race to meet their needs. Machine learning and AI have made it easier for these firms to extract and analyze data.
BlackRock views this data as the great equalizer and has grand ambitions of indexing these opaque private markets. The asset-management giant agreed this summer to acquire the data powerhouse Preqin for $3.2 billion.
"We anticipate indexes and data will be important to future drivers of the democratization of all alternatives," BlackRock CEO Larry Fink said on a conference call. "And this acquisition is the unlock."
Leon Sinclair, Preqin's executive vice president, argued that with the number of public companies dwindling, it's imperative for mass-affluent investors to get better access to private markets.
"Clearly there's more, deeper, better sources of funding for private companies that could stay private for longer," Sinclair said. "I think it's fair that the mass affluent can β in the right way β be brought along on that journey to get exposure to that part of the mosaic earlier."
Investing in automation for a competitive edge
Kapila described these technological developments as part of a trend in wealth management to capture customers before they make it big.
"There's a desire by financial advisors to try and engage investors earlier in their wealth-accumulation cycle," Kapila said.
Parametric, acquired by Morgan Stanley in 2021, operates in a competitive arena. Thanks to a wave of similar acquisitions, Parametric faces well-capitalized rivals such as BlackRock's Aperio and Franklin Templeton's Canvas. Industry stalwarts like Fidelity and upstarts like Envestnet also want a piece of the action.
Kapila said the need to compete on scale and fees required Parametric's technology to be as efficient as possible.
"It'll be harder," he said. "We have to do many, many more accounts to really drive growth in assets, etc. But those challenges are exciting to me as a technologist."
To meet that need, Kapila is pushing Parametric to develop more automated products, such as Radius, which launched this year. Radius constructs equity and fixed-income portfolios and runs simulations to identify the best selections for portfolio managers. He plans to launch more cloud-native tools, which are easier to scale and manage, for other asset classes in 2025 and 2026. Parametric is also piloting generative-AI tools to onboard accounts more efficiently.
Clients' expectations are also rising. There's demand for Parametric's tax benefits but with actively managed strategies rather than indexes, he said, spurring partnerships with asset managers.
Parametric recently launched an offering that allows customers to pick equities off strategies from the financial-advisory and asset-management firm Lazard.
To stay ahead of the curve, Preqin is developing more sophisticated products. Last year, the UK firm launched an Actionability Signal that uses machine learning to identify private companies likely to be open for investment.
"The sole focus on public information for certain tasks around valuation and risk management are not really going to be the way that people do this," Sinclair said. "We're moving much more to a world where real proprietary private information at the asset level, which is transactionally oriented, is available to people."
In June, his division launched a data tool that analyzes $4.8 trillion worth of deals across 6,500 funds. This database can be used in a slew of ways, from backing up valuations in negotiations to identifying which financial factors, such as revenue growth or debt paydown, contributed the most value to a successful deal.
With the rise of generative AI, Sinclair expects that users will be able to interpret data with more ease using natural language commands.
"I think you'll see that be more prominent across the industry where people expect to interact with large data sets in really natural common ways," he said. "We think all that will probably start to be visible over the coming years."
Tech is the first step to narrowing education gaps
On average, retail investors allocate just 5% of their portfolios to alternative investments. If BlackRock successfully indexes private markets, it could go a long way toward boosting that percentage.
However, Sinclair said more work is required to help mass affluent investors feel comfortable investing in private markets. As someone who grew up working class and was only introduced to finance in college, he knows there is an education gap to overcome.
"To get Joe Bloggs very excited and comfortable with committing capital, they need to be able to understand what the different basis of those returns are," Sinclair said.
He added: "I think it's in the industry's interest to enable those new sources of capital, to bridge the gap in understanding, to bridge the gap in analytics, to bridge the gap in frequency of reporting, to make that an easier journey for people to go on."
Elon Musk quickly solves his companies' biggest problems, Marc Andreessen says.
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Elon Musk fixes the biggest problems at his companies every week, Marc Andreessen says.
Musk quickly tackles pressing issues by working directly with engineers and coders, the VC said.
The Tesla and SpaceX CEO's method attracts great talent and inspires deep loyalty, Andreessen said.
Elon Musk has built some of the world's most valuable companies, from Tesla to SpaceX. A key driver of his success is a relentless focus on solving problems fast, often by working directly with the engineers or coders who've gotten stuck, Marc Andreessen says.
The legendary venture capitalist shared his insights from working closely with Musk on X, xAI, and SpaceX during a recent episode of the "Modern Wisdom" podcast.
Unlike many CEOs, Musk is devoted to understanding every aspect of his businesses, the Andreessen Horowitz cofounder and general partner said. He's "in the trenches and talking directly to the people who do the work," and acting as the "lead problem solver in the organization."
Musk's businesses include Tesla, SpaceX, Neuralink, xAI, The Boring Company, and X β formerly Twitter. Andreessen said that every week at each of his companies, Musk "identifies the biggest problem that the company is having that week and he fixes it. And then he does that every week for 52 weeks in a row. And then each of his companies has solved the 52 biggest problems that year, in that year."
In contrast, the bosses of most large corporations spend months or years holding meetings, watching presentations, and conducting legal and compliance reviews before they address their most pressing issues, Andreessen told host Chris Williamson.
Musk sees his businesses almost like assembly lines, and he focuses on removing bottlenecks and speeding up the conveyer belt a little more every week, the billionaire VC and Netscape cofounder said.
His laser focus on fixing problems attracts exceptionally talented people to his companies who want to work extremely hard and meet exacting standards, fueling further success for his businesses, Andreessen said.
Straight to the source
When Musk spots a bottleneck, he cuts through the layers of management to talk to the people actually working on the line or writing the code, Andreessen said.
"So he's not asking the VP of engineering to ask the director of engineering to ask the manager to ask the individual contributor to write a report that's to be reviewed in three weeks," the early-stage investor said. "He would throw them all out of the window."
Andreessen said Musk's approach of finding the person grappling with a particular issue, and then working with them to solve it, inspires deep loyalty.
The person thinks "if I'm up against a problem I don't know how to solve, freaking Elon Musk is going to show up in his Gulfstream, and he's going to sit with me overnight in front of the keyboard, or in front of the manufacturing line, and he's going to help me figure this out," the tech guru said.
Musk's strategy of tackling problem after problem has a "catalytic, multiplicative effect" that helps his businesses power ahead of rivals, Andreessen added.
In the past, Musk has been criticized for spreading himself too thin and not allocating enough time, energy, and resources to any one business like Tesla.
"Hot Ones" host Sean Evans doing a version of his interview show with Jimmy Fallon and Priyanka Chopra Jonas in 2019. Now the show will be owned by George Soros.
Andrew Lipovsky/NBC/NBCU Photo Bank/NBCUniversal via Getty Images
BuzzFeed used to be a high-flying digital publisher. Now it has shrunk considerably.
BuzzFeed needed to find a way to pay off a big debt obligation due this month.
It solved that problem by selling the company behind "Hot Ones" for $83 million to a fund controlled by investor George Soros.
Good news for BuzzFeed: It no longer has a huge debt problem looming over its head.
Slightly less good news for BuzzFeed: Solving the debt problem means the company needed to sell one of its buzziest assets β First We Feast, the production company that owns the "Hot Ones" interview show.
And now Hot Ones β the show where celebrities answer questions while eating increasingly spicy chicken wings β is going to be owned by β¦ investor George Soros and his family.
There's a bit going on here. We can break it down in a minute. But the big picture is that BuzzFeed, once considered a world-beating digital publisher, has staved off a potential extinction event (and, for what it's worth, has likely extinguished a threat posed by investor and political player Vivek Ramaswamy). And in addition, George Soros has added another asset to an interesting collection of media investments he has assembled in the past few years.
But now BuzzFeed has sold First We Feast/Hot Ones to what it's calling a consortium "led by an affiliate of Soros Fund Management LLC" for $82.5 million in cash. Then it took the proceeds from that sale, threw in some cash it already had on hand, and paid back some $90 million of its debt obligations. BuzzFeed says it has $30 million in debt remaining, and that money is due in a year.
"BuzzFeed says its remaining businesses β BuzzFeed, the pop culture site best known for listicles, quizzes, and celebrity news; Huffington Post, the left-leaning news site; and Tasty, its food vertical β will power the company in the future, along with what CEO Jonah Peretti calls "new AI-powered interactive experiences."
First We Feast, meanwhile, says it will now operate as a standalone company. It says the deal and its new ownership structure will let it "fuel existing and new content franchises" and fund "future partnerships and acquisitions with other creators." A press release from the company says "Hot Ones" host Sean Evans is one of the investors in the new company, which suggests he's going to be sticking around for a while.
And while it might seem weird for Soros, who is worth a reported $7.2 billion and whose funding of liberal causes has made him a bogeyman for some US conservatives, to own a celebrity interview show, it's not a total shocker, for a couple of reasons.
For starters, Soros' empire β now run by his son Alex β has been making movies into media over the last few years. In 2022, it acquired a minority stake in Crooked Media, the podcast company best known for its "Pod Save America" show. And earlier this year, Soros acquired a controlling stake in Audacy, a bankrupt radio company with more than 200 stations in the US β a deal that incensed some Republicans.
There's also some connective tissue between Soros and BuzzFeed at play here via media executive Michael Del Nin. Back in 2021, Del Nin put together the deal that allowed BuzzFeed to go public, and he was set to become one of BuzzFeed's top executives in 2022. Instead, Del Nin went to Soros, where he leads the investment company's media unit.
The deal also means that BuzzFeed has reduced its risk that Ramaswamy, an investor and soon-to-be DOGE cochair advising the next Trump administration, will have meaningful influence in its future.
Earlier this year, Ramaswamy bought up a 9% stake in BuzzFeed and told Peretti he should bring a group of conservative media types onto BuzzFeed's board and turn BuzzFeed into a Twitter-style platform. Then he suggested that when BuzzFeed's debt came due this month, the company would be unable to pay it back and that somehow Ramaswamy would end up controlling the company. That doesn't seem like an option anymore.
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