• As the holidays approach, the ultrawealthy will decamp to some of the world's most expensive destinations.
• Whether aboard yachts or ski lifts, the 0.01% tend to travel to familiar locales.
• Here's a look at some of the most popular places for the rich during the holidays.

Deck the gangways with boughs of holly.

Billionaires are deploying their private jets and superyachts in preparation for the holiday season, with many headed to familiar hot spots.

Each December, the richest among us depart for expensive destinations to enjoy time with their families — and often other billionaires.

This year will be nothing different.

"It's going to places that are exclusively pretty much high net worth," Winston Chesterfield, the founder of Barton, a consulting firm focused on luxury and the wealthy, told Business Insider. "They want these private resorts away from everyone else because they don't want to be around everyone else."

Many of the world's largest yachts have already sailed to warmer waters.

Jeff Bezos' yacht Koru and Barry Diller's Eos are both floating in the Caribbean Sea, according to ship tracker Marine Traffic. Eric Schmidt's Whisper is headed to Barbados, and Len Blavatnik's Odessa II was most recently docked in Antigua.

Once their billionaire owners are aboard, several of these ships will likely make their way to St. Barths.

"I always say if you want to have your toes in the sand and eat a croissant that feels like you're in Paris, St. Barths is the place for you," Elisabeth Brown, the membership director at luxury concierge service Knightsbridge Circle, told BI.

Known for its exclusivity, fine hotels and restaurants, and natural beauty, the island has been a favorite among the uberwealthy for decades. Rockefellers and Rothschilds built estates there in the mid-1900s.

Last year, Bezos, his fiancée, Lauren Sánchez, and Michael Jordan were spotted on St. Barths, and David Geffen's superyacht, the Rising Sun, was seen nearby.

For those who don't stay on yachts, popular luxury hotels like Eden Rock and Cheval Blanc, owned by billionaire Bernard Arnault's LVMH, cost upward of $5,000 per night for a room at this time of year.

The less expensive hotels aren't exactly cheap — which is part of the appeal. A room in the least expensive hotel available for the week between Christmas and New Year's costs more than $3,000 per night.

"There is nothing mass-market about it. It's impossible to be there unless you are really wealthy," Chesterfield said.

Other superrich travelers opt for colder destinations, choosing to embrace the winter weather.

"The holidays in the mountains are more of an escape than any other holidays, even escapes to their own remote private islands and things," Chesterfield said.

In Europe, that means the Alps. Gstaad, St. Moritz, Courchevel — which was a favorite of Russian oligarchs — and Val-d'Isère are classic choices for the ultra-high net worth set, Chesterfield and Brown said.

Recently, Chesterfield said he's seen some choose quieter destinations, like Crans-Montana in Switzerland, where billionaire Vicky Safra has a home, or Kitzbühel, Austria.

"You're less likely to bump into people that you know there," he added.

Some of the very wealthy own eight-figure chalets that they rent out for as much as $40,000 a week during peak season. Real estate prices continue to rise in these locations, with homes in Gstaad, the most expensive locale, costing 41,500 euros per square meter (about $43,350), according to property consultancy Knight Frank's 2024 Alpine Index.

Buying luxury condos within resorts, like the Six Senses in Courcheval, is becoming more common, too, in large part due to the amenities, which include spas, saunas, ski valets, and concierges.

Stateside, Aspen remains the most elite ski resort.

The town has the highest density of residents worth more than $30 million in the US, according to a 2023 study by data firm Altrata. Billionaires like Steve Wynn, Daniel Och, and Terry Taylor own homes there, and in recent years, wealthy celebrities like Rihanna and Kylie Jenner have been photographed downtown during the holidays.

"It is the closest you'll get to a European après situation," Brown said. "Great mountains, great skiing, the hotels are top-notch, the restaurants are awesome."

There's a restaurant by chef Nobu Matsuhisa, designer shops like Prada and Gucci, and private clubs to make the uber-rich feel at home. Plus, there are plenty of top resorts like the St. Regis and Little Nell, where rooms cost four figures a night.

Of course, sometimes billionaires are just like us — at least kind of. One of Brown's clients is gifting their family a trip to Disney World, though it will cost more than the typical American family's vacation to Cinderella's Castle.

"It's a few days, for about seven or eight people. It'll probably end up being $75,000, give or take," Brown said.

• Gwyneth Paltrow's lifestyle brand Goop has undergone two rounds of layoffs in recent months.
• The company has said it's pivoting to focus on beauty, fashion, and food.
• The changes highlight Goop's challenges to build a sustainable business beyond its famous founder.

Gwyneth Paltrow took a measured tone earlier this year when she discussed Goop, her newsletter turned e-commerce company, onstage at a Forbes event. She didn't brag about the nine figures the brand had raised or its latest product release. Instead, she said she was proud Goop was still in business.

"Some years we're down, then we're back up," she said. "I'm proud that we're still alive and kicking."

That might seem surprising for a company that was valued at $433 million in 2020 and was a trailblazer for what a celebrity brand could be. But it's reflective of a company that — despite its name recognition and pop-culture footprint — has undergone several painful pivots in recent years.

In September, Goop laid off nearly 20% of its staff, including its chief technology officer and VP of content. A few weeks later, it laid off about 6% of the remaining employees.

Goop's recent cuts come as the company shifts focus to its beauty, fashion, and food businesses. It's the latest in a series of strategy changes over the last several years.

Changes in focus are normal for a startup. Still, after 16 years of existence, the company isn't profitable and continues to struggle to build a firm foundation apart from Paltrow.

The company's once-buzzy supplement regimens generated $100,000 in sales on the day they launched in 2017. Now, only one of the four initial regimens is still offered online, and for a discount. A Goop spokesperson told Business Insider that any new supplements it launched would be part of its beauty business.

Julia Hunter, a Goop board member and the former CEO of Jenni Kayne, addressed some of the company's struggles in an interview with Puck, published after BI sent Goop a series of questions for this story.

"The company is doing very well from a revenue perspective, but
operating expenses have continued to grow," Hunter said. "I know that it's unpopular to let people go, but they hired a lot of people that they probably shouldn't have."

On the content side, Goop has recently cut many editorial positions, including the VP of content, head beauty editor, and several other editors. A review of Goop's website shows few new articles, and its book imprint hasn't published a new release in over a year. The magazine ran two issues before folding, and while there were reports that Goop's Netflix series, "The Goop Lab," was renewed, it hasn't materialized.

Paltrow's importance to the brand is evident in product launches, two former Goop employees told BI. They spoke on the condition of anonymity for fear of retaliation; their identities are known to BI.

When she's part of a launch — what is called in Goop parlance an "A launch" — the performance of the advertising on social media "quadruples," one of the former employees said. Performance often drops off once she's no longer involved, this person added.

Last month, a video featuring Paltrow that promoted Goop's newest release, a retinol serum, drew 1,100 likes on Instagram. The next day, a second post about the serum — which didn't include Paltrow — got fewer than 275 likes.

"Brands need to find viable business models, rather than simply a celebrity face," Simeon Siegel, an analyst at BMO Capital, said of A-list entrepreneurs.

The celebrity brands that have grown to be the largest — like Kim Kardashian's Skims, Rihanna's Fenty, and Selena Gomez's Rare Beauty — have moved beyond their founder's image. Skims, which is valued at $4 billion, has made using models from popular culture a core part of its marketing strategy, for instance.

From newsletter to e-commerce shop: over a decade of pivoting

Goop's founding story has become lore to a certain type of aspirant. In 2008, Paltrow was sitting in the kitchen of the London house she shared with her then-husband, Chris Martin, when she decided to pen a newsletter for "family, friends, and friends of friends." The issue featured a recipe for banana muffins and photos shot on Paltrow's Blackberry.

"It was one of the first of its kind to leverage a curated lifestyle of a celebrity," Stacy Jones, the CEO of branding agency Hollywood Branded, told BI. "It is aligned to her own personal brand in a very unique way that hadn't been done to that extent before."

Before long, Paltrow was earning small checks from advertisers and began dreaming of a media empire.

Paltrow hired media veterans from Meredith and Condé Nast to run the publication. There was a lifestyle website with travel guides and interviews on alternative medicine. In 2015, Paltrow launched a publishing imprint, Goop Press, and in 2017, a magazine in partnership with Condé Nast. Conferences promised to be the next big thing for the brand when the In Goop Health Summit series kicked off in 2017, offering (mainly) women the promise of looking and feeling like Paltrow for the four-figure ticket price. In 2020, as streaming entered its golden age, she scored a deal with Netflix.

But Goop suffered in recent years amid a broader digital media downturn.

"Advertising business as a big part of revenue started to decline, and that was probably the biggest shift to revenue of the last several years," Hunter told Puck, adding that going forward, editorial would be "integrated with social media."

Paltrow still posts regular episodes of the Goop podcast, and after a few years off due to the pandemic, the In Goop Health Summit returned last year.

That said, Goop's media projects appear to have been largely shut down, as many of the staffers behind them were affected by the recent cuts.

As Goop's media initiatives fell short, its e-commerce ambitions — or what the company dubbed "contextual commerce" — took center stage.

The core of its e-commerce business has ebbed and flowed over the years. First, it pushed skincare, then fashion, then wellness.

Now, it's back to beauty and fashion.

"It's a lot of testing" of different verticals, the second former employee said.

In the latest restructuring, the hope of a revitalization

In May, Goop brought in outside consultants, led by Hunter, to help streamline the organization and reduce payroll.

Then, in September, Goop announced its latest pivot, saying it would double down on fashion, beauty, and food. These aren't new initiatives for Goop, but the company has touted their recent growth.

G. Label, the company's in-house clothing line, launched in 2016. The company told BI that the brand's sales are up 45% this year compared to the same period last year, but declined to share its revenue numbers.

The two former employees said they felt G. Label had historically underperformed partly because it was initially designed to fit Paltrow, who, at a slender 5-foot-nine-inches tall, has a much different figure than the average American woman.

"We were just putting together whatever Gwyneth felt like wearing," the first former employee said. They added that the company revised the line in the last year using a new, standard-fit model, which they said had helped its sales.

The Goop spokesperson said a new designer had been hired for G. Label in the last year, who revamped the line.

Goop's first foray into beauty was also in 2016.

A few of the products have repeat customers — the neck peptide serum is a top seller — but there isn't a breakthrough hero product.

Some recent efforts to expand the beauty offerings haven't taken off. Last year, the company launched Good Clean Goop, a moderately priced line, in Target and Amazon. Since then, the company has discounted a number of the brand's products, including the Daily Juice Cleanser and Aging Serum. Puck reported in June that Good Clean Goop was in the bottom 15% of beauty brands at Target. The brand has not posted on social media in more than a month. The two former employees said Goop's contract with Target ends at the beginning of next year.

Then there's Goop Kitchen, the "food" piece, which is not part of the core company. The Goop spokesperson said Goop Kitchen is set up as a joint venture and called it a "separate commercial entity." They declined to share what ownership stake Goop has, if any.

Goop has publicly touted growth statistics — like a 25% sales increase for Goop Beauty and a 45% increase for G. Label. The former employees said these figures were driven in part by an influx of paid ad spend.

The Goop spokesperson declined to comment on whether the company is profitable. Hunter told Puck it wasn't.

Whether Goop's latest efforts to boost revenue and cut back on staff are enough to turn the company around remains to be seen. Paltrow, for her part, has hinted that she wants Goop to thrive without her.

"I don't think I can have this job forever," she told The New York Times last year. "I think it would be nice to return my investors' money, and I really want to do that. That's important to me."

Last fall, stars assembled in London at the over-the-top clubstaurant Lavo to celebrate one of their own. Janet Jackson smiled in a velvet booth with Idris Elba. The supermodel Naomi Campbell, the evening's host, posed in a black dress.

At the center of it all was Sean "Diddy" Combs in a leather jacket and Cartier sunglasses cutting into a bright red cake featuring artwork from his latest release. It was the mogul's 54th birthday party, as well as a celebration of his "The Love Album." As far as partygoers and paparazzi could tell, he was on top of the world.

Since his rise to fame in the late 1990s as a rapper and producer, Combs had built a business empire and become one of the richest and most well-connected entertainers of all time.

Behind the scenes that November, though, Combs' life was about to start crumbling. Negotiations were failing between Combs and the R&B singer Cassie Ventura, his ex who was on the brink of going public with details of their relationship.

Exactly one week after his star-studded party, the tensions bubbling under the surface boiled over when Ventura sued Combs. The lawsuit alleged a cycle of physical abuse, as well as rape by Combs, who Ventura also said forced her to have sex with sex workers.

Combs' lawyers alleged that her lawyers tried to extort $30 million in exchange for stopping a tell-all book about their 10-year relationship last year.

He eventually apologized to Ventura after CNN released surveillance footage of him physically abusing her at a hotel in 2016. He settled the lawsuit and, at the time, denied any wrongdoing — a stance he has maintained amid a flurry of subsequent allegations — but it marked the beginning of a year that turned his world upside down.

Over the next 12 months, Combs went from being one of the richest music moguls in history, known for his wide network in the entertainment industry and business savvy, to being behind bars, facing a criminal indictment, dozens of civil lawsuits, and an empire in decline.

Combs' freedom, reputation, and finances are all in jeopardy. If he's found guilty of criminal charges, it would mean one of the most celebrated entertainers is also a heinous criminal.

"He looked like he was the king of the world — as flossy as possible, blinged out, with the family, and everything's good," Kenny Hull, a reality show director who worked on the second iteration of "Making the Band," which featured Combs, told Business Insider about the last time he saw Combs, a few years ago at a park in Los Angeles.

"From the top to the absolute bottom," he added. "Canceled and done."

Combs has vehemently and consistently denied all accusations of sexual assault and sex trafficking since Ventura's lawsuit was filed, and each time a new allegation has been made against him.

"Mr. Combs never sexually assaulted or trafficked anyone — man, woman, adult or minor," lawyers for Combs told BI.

A birthday behind bars

Combs celebrated his 55th birthday not at a luxe international club but at the notorious Brooklyn Metropolitan Detention Center, where, a person previously told BI, he was sharing a dormitory with the crypto fraudster Sam Bankman-Fried.

Instead of flowing Champagne or DeLeón, a jailhouse dinner was served on Combs' November birthday, consisting of Salisbury steak or black-eyed peas, mashed potatoes, and green beans. There was no partying with A-listers, though he did receive a phone call from his kids.

Combs has been in jail pretrial since he was arrested in September, following a monthslong investigation that led to a grand jury indictment on charges of racketeering, sex trafficking, and transportation to engage in prostitution for allegedly causing victims and paid sex workers to cross state lines.

The Bad Boy Records founder faces anywhere from 15 years to life in prison on a federal indictment alleging that for decades, he used violence, threats, and drugs to coerce women into sexual performances, including at elaborately planned, dayslong parties called "freak offs."

Combs has pleaded not guilty, insisting through his lawyers that the sex was consensual and that his accusers have financial motives to implicate him. His next court date is Wednesday.

And more criminal charges may be coming, as prosecutors have said grand jurors are weighing a new indictment that could include allegations of obstruction of justice. Prosecutors allege that Combs has used phone accounts belonging to other people held at the jail to contact family members and associates and enlist them to plant negative stories about his accusers and funnel payments to a witness.

They also say agents recovered three AR-15 rifles with defaced serial numbers when search warrants were executed in March at Combs' homes in Miami and Los Angeles and at a Florida airport. And in September, when Combs was arrested at the Park Hyatt, a five-star hotel in midtown Manhattan, they recovered bags of pink powder that prosecutors said in September they believed contained ecstasy and other drugs. Prosecutors have not revealed the results of a drug test they said was conducted in September.

Since his arrest, Combs has made three unsuccessful attempts to be released on bail ahead of his criminal trial, which is scheduled for May 5.

"No condition or combination of conditions will reasonably assure the safety of the community," including of witnesses and prospective jurors, US District Judge Arun Subramanian wrote in the most recent bail denial, issued the day before Thanksgiving.

An avalanche of lawsuits

Just two weeks after Combs was arrested and subsequently locked up at the Brooklyn jail, the Texas-based attorney Tony Buzbee held a press conference to announce that his firm was representing 120 people accusing Combs of sexual misconduct.

"We are going to follow this evidence wherever it takes us. We will find the silent accomplices. We will expose the enablers who enabled this conduct behind closed doors," Buzbee said of his legal offensive.

Since Ventura's bombshell November 2023 lawsuit, more than 30 civil lawsuits have been filed accusing Combs of sexual abuse, including about 20 from Buzbee's clients, all listed as John Doe or Jane Doe.

"It feels really good to know he's behind bars," Adria English, who is not a Buzbee client, told BI. She worked as a dancer at Combs' famous white parties and filed a lawsuit in July accusing him of sex trafficking. "What we're having to speak of already sounds like we're lying — it already sounds like a movie because it's so horrible," she said. "It's so disgusting."

Attorneys for Combs pointed BI to a statement previously released in response to English's lawsuit, saying in part: "No matter how many lawsuits are filed it won't change the fact that Mr. Combs has never sexually assaulted, or sex trafficked anyone."

The "I'll Be Missing You" rapper has been accused by both men and women of rape, sexual assault, and lacing drinks with drugs. Over half a dozen of the lawsuits allege the abuse of boys and girls between 10 and 17 years old. Four lawsuits allege that sexual attacks happened at Combs' famed A-list white parties throughout the late 1990s and early 2000s, and two of those four lawsuits allege teenagers were victimized.

Timeline of events

Earlier this month, a woman accused the rapper Jay-Z, whose real name is Shawn Carter, of raping her with Combs when she was 13 years old at a party following the 2000 MTV Video Music Awards. An unnamed plaintiff originally filed the lawsuit in October, identifying Carter only as "Celebrity A."

Carter, in a statement through the X account of his entertainment company, Roc Nation, denied the allegations, calling them "heinous" and accusing Buzbee, the plaintiff's lawyer, of trying to "blackmail" him.

Attorneys for Combs continue to call all the lawsuits brought by Buzbee publicity grabs.

"Mr. Buzbee's lawsuit against Jay-Z and Mr. Combs and the recent extortion lawsuit Jay-Z brought against Mr. Buzbee exposes Mr. Buzbee's barrage of lawsuits against Mr. Combs for what they are: shameless publicity stunts, designed to extract payments from celebrities who fear having lies spread about them, just as lies have been spread about Mr. Combs," attorneys for Combs told BI Thursday.

The accuser in the lawsuit filed against Combs and Carter said in a recent interview with NBC News that there were some inconsistencies in her story but that she stood by the allegations.

Combs' lawyers are challenging the claims in at least seven lawsuits, which are ongoing. He has not responded in court to the lawsuits brought by Buzbee, which were all filed after his arrest.

A Los Angeles entertainment attorney, Camron Dowlatshahi, who's not involved in the lawsuits against Combs, told BI that though the rapper is still considered wealthy, litigating each of these cases through trial and potentially being exposed to multimillion-dollar judgments "does not seem prudent."

"Each of the lawsuits piggy-back on the other, and witnesses will be plenty," Dowlatshahi, a partner at the law firm Mills Sadat Dowlat, said.

Dowlatshahi said that lawsuits typically settle before trial and that he anticipated the same in Combs' case.

"Diddy will have to be strategic, however, in which cases he settles first and for how much," Dowlatshahi said.

Down with Diddy's empire

As the allegations against Combs have piled up, so have his legal bills.

Combs was once estimated to be worth $820 million, according to Forbes. He'd created an assortment of lucrative revenue drivers that contributed to regular eight-figure annual paydays, including a deal with Diageo; his lifestyle brand, Sean John; a record label; and a music catalog.

One by one, those income streams have dried up.

When the civil lawsuits started, Combs was already engaged in a legal back-and-forth with Diageo, his most bankable partner.

Combs signed with the liquor giant in 2007, agreeing to be the face of Cîroc vodka in exchange for a cut of sales. The partnership became one of the most lucrative celebrity liquor deals in history, expanding further when Combs and Diageo launched DeLeón, a co-owned tequila line. Over 15 years, the company paid him nearly $1 billion, Forbes reported.

While Combs originally sued Diageo in May 2023, alleging the company did not support his ventures, the mounting sexual abuse lawsuits did him in, in the end.

"Mr. Combs is well-aware that these lawsuits make it impossible for him to continue to be the 'face' of anything," Diageo lawyers wrote in a letter to a judge in December 2023.

By January, the matter was resolved. Combs received $200 million for his stake in DeLeón tequila and not a penny for his longtime work with Cîroc.

It's a similar story for his other ventures.

Combs' lifestyle company, Sean John, had already slipped: In 2016, he sold a majority stake in the business, which at that point included fragrances and furnishings, to Global Brands Group for $70 million, Forbes reported. Just five years later, Global Brands Group filed for Chapter 11 bankruptcy protection, and Combs bought back the business for $7.55 million, just over 10% of what it was once worth.

The clothing line's website has gone defunct, its Instagram scrapped, and it is no longer sold at Macy's, once the exclusive home of the brand's sportswear line — and one of its last remaining retailers. The department store, which was accused by one of Buzbee's clients of covering up a 2008 sexual attack by Combs, did not comment on whether the removal of his Sean John line had to do with the compounding lawsuits. Macy's didn't respond to the allegations of covering up a sexual assault in court or to a request for comment about them from BI.

The disintegration of Combs' entertainment businesses, though, was a direct reaction to his mounting legal problems.

Soon after Ventura filed her lawsuit, Combs stepped down as chair of Revolt, the cable network and media company he cofounded. By June, he'd given up his stake. A Hulu reality show that was supposed to follow Combs and his family was scrapped. Any chance of his being able to cash out and sell his music catalog is slim.

"There are so many lost opportunities," Clayton Durant, a professor who teaches music business at Long Island University's Roc Nation School, told BI in October. "There is no way a brand is touching Diddy — probably forever."

With no moneymaking on the table, Combs has taken to trying to sell the assets he does have.

Earlier this year, he listed his Los Angeles mansion in the tony Holmby Hills for $61.5 million. His private jet, LoveAir, is also listed for sale, and while he awaits a buyer, he's been renting it out.

It's not clear how much use he will have for it anyway, at least in the near future.

On the eve of Thanksgiving, Combs lost his third application to be freed on $50 million bail.

Subramanian ordered that he remain held pending his May 5 trial, citing the rap mogul's history of violence and of contacting and threatening prospective witnesses.

"Diddy's been the ultimate puppet master for the last 30 years, and people wanted to say something … they've been too afraid," English, the dancer who accused Combs in a lawsuit of sex trafficking, told BI. "But now because of the raids, everybody's about to be exposed, regardless, so it's going to come out."

• Taylor Swift's Eras Tour raked in over $2 billion, more than any tour in history.
• One of the reasons: She capitalized on some of her most popular spots with "mini-residencies."
• Here's a look at Swift's touring strategy and how it's made her so rich.

Taylor Swift wrapped up her Eras Tour in Vancouver last week — and it grossed more than any tour in history.

With 149 dates across 21 countries, the Eras Tour earned more than $2 billion, according to Pollstar. While that 10-figure sum is in large part due to the sheer number of shows she played — she said the tour was attended by over 10 million people — there was a strategy to her touring that helped her maximize the profits from each stop.

Swift spent eight nights in London and six in cities like Toronto, Los Angeles, and Singapore. Meanwhile, she skipped nearby cities that she visited on past tours, like Ottawa and Pasadena.

These mini-residencies likely added millions of dollars to her personal bottom line. 

The underlying business assumption was that Swifties would travel and pay big bucks for tickets, no matter where she performed. It turned out to be correct: All of her shows were sold out. Playing in fewer cities meant less money spent on production, travel, and labor — which in turn meant more profit for Swift and her team.

"It significantly reduces the overhead of a tour," Nathan Hubbard, the former CEO of Ticketmaster who founded the management firm Firebird, told Business Insider. "Think about the cost of taking down an entire stage, packing up 50 trucks, moving it all to another town. Every night you can avoid striking the set saves millions of dollars."

Swift's representatives did not respond to a request for comment.

Swift isn't the first performer to employ this strategy.

Harry Styles tested it with his 15-night runs at New York's Madison Square Garden and Los Angeles' Kia Forum, an extension of the Las Vegas residencies that have long minted millions for stars.

"Coming out of Covid, the largest artists understand that their fan bases will travel to be with them," Hubbard said. "Previously, this was just happening in Las Vegas. But so many of these cities can be a fun excursion for a fan and their friends. That's driving a lot of what we're seeing in the evolution of touring right now."

BI spoke with several fans who said they traveled out of state to see and across the Atlantic to see Swift perform.

"I probably would've come to Scotland at one point, but it was the concert that got me here," one Swiftie from Minneapolis told BI.

"We said to ourselves, 'Let's just go and have an adventure," her friend added. "Tickets are outrageously expensive in the US, and this entire trip for both of us was cheaper than our friends back home paid."

Of course, it's a delicate balance. Swift is considered among the pop stars most in touch with her fans and wouldn't want to alienate anyone by skipping over their local venues. But with nearly 150 shows in 50-plus cities, it would be hard to complain about her doing a few extra nights in one place and passing over another.

Plus, she's charged less — an average of about $219 per ticket, per Pollstar — than she could have. The average resale price for the North American leg of her tour was $3,801, Pitchfork reported.

And she's not the only one profiting.

The Common Sense Institute said that "the totality of Taylor Swift's US tour could generate $4.6 billion in total consumer spending, larger than the GDP of 35 countries." In Europe, the total figure will surely be impressive as well.

Turns out that she's an industry disruptor — if not the smooth-talking huckster — after all.

• In the past year, Sean Combs has been hit by dozens of lawsuits alleging sexual abuse, as well as a federal indictment.
• Some suits include allegations against other known figures — but not all are listed as defendants.
• These are the stars associated with the accusations piling up against Diddy.

The lawsuits against Sean Combs, more commonly known as Diddy, continue to pile up.

Since his former girlfriend Casandra Ventura sued Combs in November 2023 accusing him of rape, abuse, and drugging, more than 30 civil suits have been filed against the hip-hop mogul.

In September, Combs was indicted by a federal grand jury on charges of racketeering conspiracy, sex trafficking, and transportation to engage in prostitution.

Combs and his lawyers have denied all the allegations against him.

"Mr. Combs and his legal team have full confidence in the facts, their legal defenses, and the integrity of the judicial process," the lawyers said. "In court, the truth will prevail: that Mr. Combs has never sexually assaulted anyone — adult or minor, man or woman."

"We are disappointed with the decision to pursue what we believe is an unjust prosecution of Mr. Combs by the US Attorney's Office," Marc Agnifilo, Combs' lawyer, said in a statement to Business Insider following the federal charges.

While the federal indictment lists only Combs as a defendant, it refers to some of his employees and associates as members of the criminal enterprise he led. The series of civil suits that have hit him over the past year have also identified several powerful and wealthy people in Combs' orbit.

Some are outright accused by plaintiffs of wrongdoing — whether that be witnessing the abuse and not stopping it or providing drugs to Combs. Others — such as Prince Harry, Nicki Minaj, or Usher — are simply mentioned in passing and not accused of any wrongdoing.

In one of the most recent and serious lawsuits, an anonymous woman accuses Combs and Shawn Carter, known as Jay-Z, of drugging and raping her when she was 13 years old.

Here are the well-known people linked to the accusations against Combs.

Jay-Z

In December, an unnamed plaintiff filed an amended complaint accusing Shawn Carter, better known as Jay-Z, and Combs of drugging and raping her in 2000, when she was 13 years old.

The incident occurred at a house party following the 2000 MTV Video Music Awards, the amended complaint alleges.

The complaint was initially filed in October and referred to Jay-Z as "Celebrity A." A third celebrity — as yet unnamed — "stood by and watched as Combs and Carter took turns assaulting the minor," the complaint says.

Carter has strongly denied the allegations.

R&B singer Aaron Hall

Aaron Hall, an R&B singer who was part of the group Guy, was named as a defendant in a complaint filed against Combs last November in the New York Supreme Court ahead of the expiration date for New York's Adult Survivors Act, which provided a one-year window in which people could bring cases of sexual assault outside the typical statute of limitations.

The plaintiff, named Liza Gardner, accuses Combs and Hall of sexually assaulting her and a friend in Hall's apartment after a music-industry event hosted by MCA Records in 1990 when she was 16 years old. She says that Combs "coerced" her into having sex with him and that afterward, "Hall barged into the room, pinned her down, and forced" her to have sex with him too.

The plaintiff also alleges that Combs found her at her home and choked her until she passed out; he was worried his girlfriend would find out about the incident, the complaint says.

In one YouTube video cited in the complaint, Hall says in an interview that "Puffy" — what Combs was known as in the 1990s — had seen him have sex.

Hall couldn't be reached for comment. His lawyer wasn't yet identified in court documents as of April 8.

Music producer Harve Pierre

The music producer Harve Pierre was named as a defendant in two lawsuits filed against Combs ahead of the Adult Survivors Act's expiration date. Both lawsuits were filed anonymously, one in the New York Supreme Court and the other in the US District Court in the Southern District of New York, with the plaintiff listed as Jane Doe on both documents. He was also listed as a defendant in a lawsuit filed by Dawn Richard.

Pierre was Combs' first employee at Bad Boy Records and the president of his Bad Boy Entertainment, and he worked with artists such as The Notorious B.I.G. and Faith Evans.

In the first complaint, filed in November 2023, a former employee of Bad Boy who worked as Pierre's assistant accuses Pierre of using his position of power "to groom, exploit, and sexually assault her." The complaint says Combs and his companies enabled the abuse.

In a second lawsuit filed in December 2023, the plaintiff alleges that when she was 17 in 2003, Combs, Pierre, and an unnamed third defendant gang raped and sex trafficked her. Specifically, she alleges that Pierre smoked crack cocaine and then forced her to give him oral sex before bringing her from Detroit to New York City on a private jet.

The complaint alleges that in New York, at a studio owned by Combs, the defendants provided the plaintiff with drugs and alcohol before raping her.

Pierre's lawyer didn't respond to a request for comment from BI. He has denied the accusations made in both complaints.

"This is a tale of fiction. I have never participated in, witnessed, nor heard of anything like this, ever. These disgusting allegations are false and a desperate attempt for financial gain," he said in a statement obtained by TMZ.

Actor Cuba Gooding Jr.

An amended complaint filed in March in the US District Court in the Southern District of New York by Rodney Jones Jr. — a music producer who goes by Lil Rod — lists Cuba Gooding Jr. as a defendant. Jones accuses Gooding of sexual harassment and sexual assault.

Specifically, Jones accuses Combs of grooming him to "pass him off" to Gooding. The complaint says the two were left alone in a makeshift studio on a yacht rented by Combs.

There, Gooding began "touching, groping, and fondling Mr. Jones' legs, his upper inner thighs near his groin, the small of his back near his buttocks, and his shoulders," the complaint alleges.

The actor previously pleaded guilty to a misdemeanor count of forcible touching.

Gooding's attorney didn't respond to a request for comment from BI.

Justin Dior Combs

While not necessarily a celebrity in his own right, Justin Dior Combs — Combs' 30-year-old son — is a defendant in Jones' amended complaint in the US District Court in the Southern District of New York.

In a wide-ranging list of allegations, Jones accuses Justin Combs of soliciting sex workers and underaged girls, as well as engaging in "freak-offs."

He also says the younger and older Combs were the only other people present in the room when "G," a friend of his, was shot at a recording studio — implying one of them shot G.

Justin Combs was at Combs' Los Angeles home when it was raided by feds and was seen handcuffed on the lawn outside, though he wasn't arrested.

Justin Combs' lawyer, Jeffrey Lichtman, said on his radio show, "Beyond the Legal Limit," that the complaint was "utterly bonkers."

"It's clearly written in an effort to get as much publicity as possible, not only for the case but for the lawyer whose name I don't even remember, literally some maniac," he said.

Lichtman didn't respond to a request for comment from BI.

Jacob the Jeweler

Jacob Arabo, better known as Jacob the Jeweler, is named as a defendant in a complaint filed against Combs by Adria English in July.

In the lawsuit, English accuses Combs of sexual assault, sexual harassment, and sex trafficking. The complaint alleges that she worked at Combs' famous white parties as a go-go dancer for years and that, at at least one of the parties, he forced her to have sex with Arabo, one of the party guests.

"Plaintiff, fearing not only her safety, but her and her then-boyfriend's job security, did as instruct and went with Defendant Jacob where she engaged in forced sexual intercourse with Defendant Jacob at the demand and behest of Defendant Combs. Plaintiff knew refusing Defendant Combs demands was not an option," the complaint says.

The complaint also says English saw Arabo "solicit and ingest narcotics." In a photograph included in the complaint, English and Arabo are together.

Arabo has been a character on the hip-hop scene for decades, with early clients including Notorious B.I.G. and Combs. Jay-Z raps about him in Beyoncé's "Upgrade U," as does Kanye West in Rick Ross' "Live Fast, Die Young."

"I really wanted to make statement pieces," he told BI in 2016 about the flashy pieces that became his signature.

"They would stand there waiting for me to be available to see them to show them jewelry. A line of people waiting," he added of his A-list clientele. "Before you know, you have Michael Jackson as a client, you have David Beckham, you have Madonna, you have all these celebrities."

The complaint against him is not Arabo's first run-in with the law. In 2006, he was arrested on money-laundering charges. As part of a plea deal, he was sentenced to 2 ½ years in prison for falsifying records and making false statements, CBS reported.

Arabo didn't respond to a request for comment from BI.

Rapper Yung Miami

Yung Miami, a member of City Girls, is mentioned in Jones' amended complaint, filed in the US District Court in the Southern District of New York. She isn't a defendant, nor is she accused of sexual misconduct.

She's listed as being a part of Combs' sex-trafficking operation and accused of bringing Combs tuci, a drug sometimes called "pink cocaine," on a private jet.

The complaint says she was retained on a monthly stipend as one of Combs' sex workers. It also alleges that her cousin, named as Jane Doe 1, assaulted Jones, forcibly giving him oral sex without consent.

A representative for Yung Miami didn't respond to a request for comment from BI.

DJ and producer Stevie J

Jones alleges in his amended complaint filed in the US District Court in the Southern District of New York that the Grammy winner Stevie J, Combs' longtime collaborator, recruited sex workers and participated in Combs' "freak-offs," though he doesn't name Stevie J as a defendant.

Jones accuses Combs of instructing Stevie J to teach him "the type of sex workers to solicit, and way to solicit them."

Jones also accuses Stevie J of sending threatening messages when Jones publicly asked Combs to pay him for his work on Combs' "The Love Album."

The complaint also says Combs used his connection to Stevie J — Jones' "idol" — to pressure Jones into sex.

"I've never seen my man doing anything foul like they talking about," Stevie J told TMZ earlier this month, adding: '"I've never seen it. I've known him for 29 years."

His attorney didn't reply to a request for comment from BI.

Singer Kalenna Harper

Kalenna Harper was a member of the group Diddy — Dirty Money, along with Dawn Richard and Combs.

In Richard's complaint, she says she and Harper were at Combs' home, where they witnessed him yell at and choke Ventura before throwing a "scalding hot pan of eggs" at her and dragging her up the stairs.

Richard's complaint says that Harper led her out of the house but that the two of them later spoke to Ventura and encouraged her to leave the relationship. Combs responded by threatening them, the complaint says.

The complaint also says that Combs forced Richard and Harper to work for days on end without breaks to sleep or eat and that the two weren't properly compensated for appearances.

In response to the lawsuit, Harper posted on Instagram.

"While I fully respect Dawn's right to recount her experiences, l want to emphasize that her account reflects her personal perspective and should not be interpreted as a universal truth applicable to everyone involved," she wrote in an Instagram story, according to People.

"It's important to understand that while I was present in some of the same professional settings mentioned, many of the allegations and incidents described in this suit are not representative of my experiences, and some do not align with my own truth."

Harper was also mentioned by federal prosecutors during Tuesday's bond hearing, during which prosecutors argued that Combs shouldn't be released ahead of trial.

The prosecutor, discussing Combs' contact with witnesses, said that between September 10, the day Richard filed the lawsuit, and September 14, the day Harper made her statement on Instagram, Combs called or texted Harper 58 times.

Interscope Records cofounder Jimmy Iovine

Richard's complaint also includes mention of Jimmy Iovine, the cofounder of Interscope Records and Beats Electronics.

The complaint recounts a dinner party held by Combs in the months leading up to a deal between his Bad Boy Entertainment and Iovine's Interscope Geffen A&M Records.

The complaint says that at the dinner, in front of Iovine, as well as the dinner guests Ne-Yo and Usher, Ventura and Combs had an argument that resulted in Combs punching her in the stomach, "causing her to double over in visible pain, crying."

"Even after Mr. Iovine watched Mr. Combs commit a violent assault in front of numerous high-profile witnesses, the Bad Boy-Interscope deal took place and remained in effect, providing Mr. Combs with immense financial rewards and enabling him to commit further acts of violence without fear of repercussions," the complaint says.

Usher, Ne-Yo, and Iovine didn't reply to a request for comment from BI about the allegations in Richard's complaint.

Universal Music Group CEO Lucian Grainge

The CEO of Universal Music Group and father-in-law to Sofia Richie, Lucian Grainge, was originally listed as a defendant in Jones' amended complaint filed in the US District Court in the Southern District of New York, along with Universal Music Group and its label Motown Records. He has since been removed.

He was initially accused of aiding and abetting Combs, specifically in racketeering and sex trafficking. Universal's Motown Records had a licensing agreement with Combs' Love Records.

The complaint says that as CEO, Grainge "had a duty to ensure that the financial support they provided to Sean Combs and Love Records was not being used for sex workers, drugs, and laced alcohol."

Attorneys for Grainge filed a motion to dismiss, in which they called the accusations "offensively false." In a sworn statement to the court, Grainge called the accusations "completely untrue and absurd" and said he planned to "pursue both plaintiffs and his counsel for having made such false accusations."

Grainge also noted that he's the CEO of a "multi-national public company" — and said he wasn't involved in the "day-to-day operations" of the company's "thousands of agreements."

In a statement to BI when the lawsuit was first filed, Grainge's attorney Donald S. Zakarin called the complaint "offensively reckless" and said they would seek legal repercussions against Jones' attorney.

"The plaintiff has now attempted to amend his claims against Sir Lucian, removing the original set of outrageous falsehoods related to Sir Lucian, replacing them with wholly contradictory new falsehoods that are equally absurd," he said. "Not only will we demonstrate the offensive falsity of these claims, but we will seek recovery of every penny of cost and damage caused by their assertion."

In May, Jones' attorney dropped the claims against Grainge, Motown Records, and Universal Music Group with prejudice — which means they cannot be refiled at a later date.

"Based on my examination of all of the papers submitted in support of both motions to dismiss, which addressed the issues I had, I have concluded that there is no legal basis for the claims and allegations that were made against the UMG Defendants," Jones' attorney wrote.

October 16, 2024: This story has been updated with new details from a lawsuit.

• A new legal filing accuses Jay-Z of drugging and raping a 13-year-old in 2000.
• The rapper strongly denied the accusations, which come as part of a lawsuit against Sean "Diddy" Combs.
• Read hip-hop billionaire Jay-Z's full statement below.

Shawn Carter, better known as the rapper Jay-Z, has responded to a civil lawsuit that accuses him and Sean "Diddy" Combs of drugging and raping a 13-year-old girl.

The accusation, which comes from an unnamed plaintiff, is included in an amended complaint to a lawsuit originally filed in October that accuses the two hip-hop moguls of assaulting the girl at an after-party following the 2000 MTV Video Music Awards. Prior to the amended complaint, Carter was referred to as a "Celebrity A."

The amended complaint marks the first time that Carter has been accused in a lawsuit of any wrongdoing in conjunction with Combs.

Carter strongly denied the accusations in a statement on his company Roc Nation's X account.

The complaint comes as Combs remains behind bars, awaiting trial on charges of racketeering, sex trafficking, and transportation to engage in prostitution. He also faces more than 30 civil lawsuits accusing him of sexual misconduct.

He has denied any wrongdoing, and a lawyer for Combs has said he will not be making public statements on the case.

The plaintiff's lawyer, Tony Buzbee, who has filed more than a dozen lawsuits against Combs on behalf of unnamed plaintiffs, told Business Insider that he had attempted mediation with Carter prior to publishing his name.

Buzbee told Business Insider that before the filing of the amended complaint, he had sent a letter to Carter requesting that Carter and the plaintiff engage in mediation.

Carter's alleged response is detailed in the amended complaint.

"Jay-Z responded to said letter by not only filing an utterly frivolous lawsuit, but by also orchestrating a conspiracy of harassment, bullying and intimidation against Plaintiff's lawyers, their families, employees and former associates in an attempt to silence Plaintiff from naming Jay-Z herein," the complaint says. "Plaintiff chose to file this amendment as a result of the egregious conduct perpetuated by Carter."

"The pleading speaks for itself. This is a very serious matter that will be litigated in court," Buzbee told BI.

Read Carter's full statement below:

My lawyer received a blackmail attempt, called a demand letter, from a "lawyer" named Tony Buzbee.

What he had calculated was the nature of these allegations and the public scrutiny would make me want to settle.

No sir, it had the opposite effect! It made me want to expose you for the fraud you are in a VERY public fashion. So no, I will not give you ONE RED PENNY!!

These allegations are so heinous in nature that I implore you to file a criminal complaint, not a civil one!!

Whomever would commit such a crime against a minor should be locked away, would you not agree?

These alleged victims would deserve real justice if that were the case.

This lawyer, who I have done a bit of research on, seems to have a pattern of these type of theatrics!

I have no idea how you have come to be such a deplorable human Mr. Buzbee, but I promise you I have seen your kind many times over. I'm more than prepared to deal with your type. You claim to be a marine?! Marines are known for their valor, you have neither honor nor dignity.

My only heartbreak is for my family. My wife and I will have to sit our children down, one of whom is at the age where her friends will surely see the press and ask questions about the nature of these claims, and explain the cruelty and greed of people. I mourn yet another loss of innocence. Children should not have to endure such at their young age. It is unfair to have to try to understand inexplicable degrees of malice meant to destroy families and human spirit.

My heart and support goes out to true victims in the world, who have to watch how their life story is dressed in costume for profitability by this ambulance chaser in a cheap suit.

You have made a terrible error in judgement thinking that all "celebrities" are the same. I'm not from your world. I'm a young man who made it out of the project of Brooklyn. We don't play these types of games.

We have very strict codes and honor. We protect children, you seem to exploit people for personal gain.

Only your network of conspiracy theorists, fake physics, will believe the idiotic claims you have levied against me that, if not for the seriousness surrounding harm to kids, would be laughable.

I look forward to showing you just how different I am.

In response to Carter's denial, Buzbee told BI that the plaintiff never demanded money from Carter.

• Several of the world's power brokers gathered for a New York Times DealBook Summit on Wednesday.
• While Elon Musk was not in attendance, he was the most-talked-about person there.
• Here's what business leaders and politicians had to say about the richest person on Earth.

Several masters of the universe convened on Wednesday, and they had one name on their lips: Elon Musk.

At the annual New York Times DealBook Summit, the world's richest man was a topic of conversation among his fellow billionaires, CEOs, and political elite.

To be sure, Andrew Ross Sorkin, DealBook's founder and the day's MC, asked nearly all of his guests about Musk, who made headlines at the same summit last year for telling advertisers on X to "go fuck" themselves.

And while the Tesla CEO wasn't present this year, many conversations touched on his latest role. Over the past couple of months, Musk has become a political advisor and confidant to President-elect Donald Trump and one of his biggest donors, shelling out about $119 million to support his campaign.

The reaction to Musk's new role as co-leader of the Department of Government Efficiency ranged from cautiously optimistic to not giving a damn.

Ken Griffin, the billionaire hedge fund manager and GOP donor, praised Musk's entrepreneurial ability.

"He runs Tesla, he runs SpaceX at a level of excellence that very few companies can even start to relate to," Griffin said.

At the same time, he questioned just how much Musk could impact federal spending.

"He's going to have to hit the hard reality, the hard truth, that making cuts of any form whatsoever will be politically very unpopular," Griffin said. "It'll be very hard to squeeze numbers in the trillions of dollars out of the baseline budget."

OpenAI CEO Sam Altman, who has been embroiled in a personal and legal feud with Musk, similarly praised the Tesla CEO's business acumen.

"At a time when most of the world was not thinking very ambitiously, he pushed a lot of people, me included, to think much more ambitiously," Altman said of his OpenAI cofounder.

While Altman acknowledged his feelings about Musk have changed, he said it would be unlike his former "mega hero" to use his political proximity for his own monetary gain.

"It would be profoundly un-American to use political power, to the degree that Elon has it, to hurt your competitors and advantage your own businesses," Altman said. "It would go so deeply against the values I believe he holds very dear to himself."

Jeff Bezos, whose Blue Origin is in direct competition with Musk's SpaceX, agreed that Musk's relationship with Trump was not that concerning.

"I take it face value what has been said, which is that he is not going to use his political power to advantage his own companies or to disadvantage his competitors," Bezos said. "Let's go into it hoping that the statements that have been made are correct, that this is going to be done above board in the public interest."

And Sundar Pichai, the Alphabet CEO, said Musk's xAI artificial intelligence company is a formidable competitor "given Elon's track record."

Those interviewed with actual political experience — Federal Reserve Chair Jerome Powell and former President Bill Clinton — appeared the most unfazed by Musk's new position of power.

Powell seemed confident in the independence of the Fed, even though Musk has signaled support for moving the central bank under the president's command.

And Clinton seemed to almost entirely brush off Musk's burgeoning influence — including the fact that he was on a phone call between Trump and Ukrainian President Volodymyr Zelenskyy.

"Trump's whole shtick is that all these rules and systems don't amount to anything," the former president said.

"Being the richest guy on Earth is far more important than anything else that you could be to him," Clinton added. "That's what he values. It's no big deal."

• Alex Cooper announced a new product: an electrolyte drink called Unwell Hydration.
• The "Call Her Daddy" star said the drink is low in sugar and contains B vitamins.
• Cooper's move follows a trend of celebrities launching beverage brands.

Alex Cooper is getting into the beverage business.

The "Call Her Daddy" host announced on Wednesday that she'd be launching Unwell Hydration, an electrolyte beverage, early next year. The brand's website says it will be available on January 1.

"What could be my first consumer product? Probably something that would make the most sense would be that it could integrate into your unwell lifestyle," she said at Wednesday's DealBook Summit, a nod to her media network, Unwell.

She said the beverage would be marketed primarily to women, be low in sugar, and contain B vitamins. Its website says it will be "gently caffeinated" and come in strawberry, orange hibiscus, and mango citrus flavors.

The drink is a partnership with Nestlé. Cooper did not specify the ownership structure of the endeavor.

"Every time I went to pick up an energy drink or any type of hydration drink, it's all catered to men," she told DealBook's Andrew Ross Sorkin.

Still, it's hardly the first celebrity beverage on the market.

Energy or hydration drinks backed by famous faces date back to at least the early 2000s when 50 Cent partnered with Vitamin Water in a deal that Forbes reported led to a $100 million payday. There have been several others since. For example, 50 Cent launched a follow-up beverage brand, Street King, which is now defunct; Dwayne Johnson created Zoa; and Kim Kardashian has Alani Kimade.

Perhaps the most successful of the bunch has been Prime Hydration from YouTubers Logan Paul and KSI. While the company has been facing legal battles in recent months, it surged in popularity after its launch in 2022. Bloomberg reported that sales were on track to exceed $1.2 billion for 2023.

Then there are the celebrity alcohol brands, some of which have turned out to be extremely lucrative. George Clooney pocketed more than $200 million when he sold Casamigos to Diageo in 2017, Sean Combs earned nearly $1 billion over his decade-plus-long partnerships on Cîroc and DeLeón, and Ryan Reynolds and his partners sold Aviation American Gin for $610 million.

Cooper could also soon jump on that trend. In November, Cooper's company filed a trademark application with the US Patent and Trademark Office for a product called "Popular Vodka by Unwell" consisting of alcoholic beverages (except beer), including distilled spirits, fruit spirits, liqueurs, liquors, vodka cocktails, and prepared cocktails consisting primarily of distilled spirits.

Cooper has been expanding her media business as well. Last year, she launched Unwell Network, which produces a slate of podcasts by influencers like Alix Earle, Harry Jowsey, and Madeline Argy. In August, Cooper signed a three-year deal with SiriusXM that was valued at up to $125 million.

• Sam Altman offered some kind words for his OpenAI cofounder Elon Musk.
• Altman and Musk have been embroiled in a legal dispute for the better part of a year.
• The OpenAI CEO said he believes Musk will not abuse his new political influence.

It seems like at least one-half of technology's hottest feud is offering an olive branch.

Sam Altman, the CEO and cofounder of OpenAI, had mostly positive words about Elon Musk, his OpenAI cofounder and current competitor, at Wednesday's DealBook Summit.

"I grew up with Elon as a mega hero. I thought what Elon was doing was absolutely incredible for the world," Altman told DealBook founder Andrew Ross Sorkin.

"Of course, I have different feelings about him now, but I'm still glad he exists," he added. "Not just because I think his companies are awesome, which I do think, but because I think, at a time when most of the world was not thinking very ambitiously, he pushed a lot of people, me included, to think much more ambitiously."

Despite what Altman characterized as his "different feelings," he still believes Musk will do the right thing given his new proximity to political power as an advisor to President-elect Donald Trump.

"I believe pretty strongly that Elon will do the right thing," Altman said. "It would be profoundly un-American to use political power, to the degree that Elon has it, to hurt your competitors and advantage your own businesses."

"I don't think Elon would do it," he added. "It would go so deeply against the values I believe he holds very dear to himself."

Musk seemed to appreciate the comment — liking a post on X that included Altman's quote.

The pair have been battling it out both in court and online for the better part of two years, but their troubles go back to 2018 when Musk stepped down from OpenAI's board after the company reportedly rejected his offer to run the company and he pulled future funding.

After a series of jabs — with Altman's being more mild-mannered — Musk sued OpenAI and Altman in March, alleging that the company's transition to a "capped-profit" entity and its partnership with Microsoft was in opposition to its founding as an open-sourced nonprofit.

Musk dropped the OpenAI suit in June, reportedly after he met Altman on the sidelines of a technology conference in Big Sky, Montana. The pair shared a hug after speaking, The Wall Street Journal said. However, Musk filed a new suit a couple of months later, claiming he was "deceived" into cofounding the firm. Last month, he amended the lawsuit to add Microsoft as a defendant.

"OpenAI has attempted to starve competitors of AI talent by aggressively recruiting employees with offers of lavish compensation, and is on track to spend $1.5 billion on personnel for just 1,500 employees," lawyers for Musk said in the complaint.

Since Trump won the US presidential election, people close to Musk have said he "despises" Altman, the Journal also reported. The outlet said Altman's attempts to contact the president-elect through friends or business associates have been largely unsuccessful because they knew his entreaties would be unwelcome to Musk.

Musk has skin in the game. His own artificial intelligence company, xAI, which could compete with OpenAI, was recently valued at $50 billion, just 16 months after it was founded. OpenAI was last valued at $157 billion in October.

Altman, for one, didn't seem surprised about xAI's swift success.

When asked by Sorkin if he'd expected xAI to be a serious competitor, Altman was resolute: "Yes."

• Bill Gates, the Microsoft cofounder, shares three kids with his ex-wife Melinda French Gates.
• They include a recent med school graduate and a fashion startup cofounder.
• Here's what we know about the children of one of the world's richest men.

Bill Gates' story is a quintessential example of the American entrepreneurial dream: A brilliant math whiz, Gates was 19 when he dropped out of Harvard and cofounded Microsoft with his friend Paul Allen in 1975.

 Nearly 50 years later, Gates' net worth of $131 billion makes him one of the richest and most famous men on Earth, per Forbes. He stepped down from Microsoft's board in 2020 and has cultivated his brand of philanthropy with the Gates Foundation — a venture he formerly ran with his now ex-wife Melinda French Gates, who resigned in May. 

Even before founding one of the world's most valuable companies, Gates' life was anything but ordinary. He grew up in a well-off and well-connected family, surrounded by his parents' rarefied personal and professional network. Their circle included a Cabinet secretary and a governor of Washington, according to "Hard Drive," the 1992 biography of Gates by James Wallace and Jim Erickson. (Brock Adams, who went on to become the transportation secretary in the Carter administration, is said to have introduced Gates' parents.)

His father, William Gates Sr., was a prominent corporate lawyer in Seattle and the president of the Washington State Bar Association.

His mother, Mary Gates, came from a line of successful bankers and sat on the boards of important financial and social institutions, including the nonprofit United Way. It was there, according to her New York Times obituary, that she met the former IBM chairman John Opel — a fateful connection thought to have led to IBM enlisting Microsoft to provide an operating system in the 1980s.

"My parents were well off — my dad did well as a lawyer, took us on great trips, we had a really nice house," Gates said in the 2019 Netflix documentary "Inside Bill's Brain."

"And I've had so much luck in terms of all these opportunities."

Despite his very public life, his three children with French Gates — Jennifer, Rory, and Phoebe — largely avoided the spotlight for most of their upbringing. 

Like their father, the three Gates children attended Seattle's elite Lakeside School, a private high school that has been recognized for excellence in STEM subjects — and that received a $40 million donation from Bill Gates in 2005 to build its financial aid fund. (Bill Gates and Paul Allen met at Lakeside and went on to build Microsoft together.)

But as they have become adults, more details have emerged about their interests, professions, and family life. 

While they have chosen different career paths, all three children are active in philanthropy — a space in which they will likely wield immense influence as they grow older. While Gates has reportedly said that he plans to leave each of his three children $10 million — a fraction of his fortune — they may inherit the family foundation, where most of his money will go.

Here's all we know about the Gates children.

Gates and his children did not respond to requests for comment for this story.

Jennifer Gates Nassar

Jennifer Gates Nassar, who goes by Jenn, is the oldest of the Gates children at 28 years old.

A decorated equestrian, Gates Nassar started riding horses when she was six. Her father has shelled out millions of dollars to support her passion, including buying a California horse farm for $18 million and acquiring several parcels of land in Wellington, Florida, to build an equestrian facility.

In 2018, Gates Nassar received her undergraduate degree in human biology from Stanford University, where a computer science building was named for her father after he donated $6 million to the project in 1996.

She then attended the Icahn School of Medicine at Mount Sinai, from which she graduated in May. She will continue at Mt. Sinai for her residency in pediatric research. During medical school, she also completed a Master's in Public Health at Columbia University — perhaps a natural interest given her parents' extensive philanthropic activity in the space.

"Can't believe we've reached this moment, a little girl's childhood aspiration come true," she wrote on Instagram. "It's been a whirlwind of learning, exams, late nights, tears, discipline, and many moments of self-doubt, but the highs certainly outweighed the lows these past 5 years."

In October 2021, she married Egyptian equestrian Nayel Nassar. In February 2023, reports surfaced that they bought a $51 million New York City penthouse with six bedrooms and a plunge pool. The next month, they welcomed their first child, Leila, and in October, Gates Nassar gave birth to their second daughter, Mia.

"I'm over the moon for you, @jenngatesnassar and @nayelnassar—and overjoyed for our whole family," Bill Gates commented on the Instagram post announcing Mia's birth.

In a 2020 interview with the equestrian lifestyle publication Sidelines, Gates Nassar discussed growing up wealthy.

"I was born into a huge situation of privilege," she said. "I think it's about using those opportunities and learning from them to find things that I'm passionate about and hopefully make the world a little bit of a better place."

She recently posted about visiting Kenya, where she learned about childhood health and development in the country.

Rory John Gates

Rory John Gates, who is in his mid-20s, is Bill Gates and Melinda French Gates' only son and the most private of their children. He maintains private social media accounts, and his sisters and parents rarely post photos of him.

His mother did, however, write an essay about him in 2017. Titled "How I Raised a Feminist Son," she describes as a "great son and a great brother" who "inherited his parents' obsessive love of puzzles."

In 2022, he graduated from the University of Chicago, where, based on a photo posted on Facebook, he appears to have been active in moot court. At the time of his graduation, Jennifer Gates Nassar wrote that he had achieved a double major and master's degree.

Little is publicly known about what the middle Gates child has been up to since he graduated, but a Puck report from last year gave some clues, saying that he is seen as a "rich target for Democratic social-climbers, influence-peddlers, and all variety of money chasers." According to OpenSecrets, his most recent public giving was to Nikki Haley last year.

The same report says he works as a congressional analyst while also completing a doctorate.

Phoebe Gates

Phoebe Gates, 22, is the youngest of the Gates children.

After graduating from high school in 2021, she followed her sister to Stanford. She graduated in June after three years with a Bachelor of Science in Human Biology. Her mom, Melinda French-Gates, delivered the university's commencement address.

In a story that Gates wrote for Nylon about her graduation day, she documented her graduation day, including a party she cohosted that featured speeches from her famous parents and a piggyback ride from her boyfriend Arthur Donald — the grandson of Sir Paul McCartney.

She has long shown an interest in fashion, interning at British Vogue and posting on social media from fashion weeks in Copenhagen, New York, and Paris. Sustainability is often a theme of her content, which highlights vintage and secondhand stores and celebrates designers who don't use real leather and fur.

That has culminated in her cofounding Phia, a sustainable fashion tech platform that launched in beta this fall. The site and its browser extension crawl secondhand marketplaces to find specific items in an effort to help shoppers find deals and prevent waste.

Gates shares her parents' passion for public health. She's attended the UN General Assembly with her mother and spent time in Rwanda with Partners in Health, a nonprofit that has received funding from the Gates Foundation.

Like her mother, Gates often publicly discusses issues of gender equality, including in essays for Vogue and Teen Vogue, at philanthropic gatherings, and on social media, where she frequently posts about reproductive rights.

She's given thousands to Democrats and Democratic causes, including to Michigan governor Gretchen Whitmer and the Democratic Party of Montana, per data from OpenSecrets. According to Puck, she receives a "giving allowance" that makes it possible for her to cut the checks.

Perhaps the most public of the Gates children — she's got over 450,000 Instagram followers and a partnership with Tiffany & Co. — she's given glimpses into their upbringing, including strict rules around technology. The siblings were not allowed to use their phones before bed, she told Bustle, and to get around the rule, she created a cardboard decoy.

"I thought I could dupe my dad, and it worked, actually, for a couple nights," she told the outlet earlier this year. "And then my mom came home and was like, 'This is literally a piece of cardboard you're plugging in. You're using your phone in your room.' Oh, my gosh, I remember getting in trouble for that."

It hasn't always been easy being Gates's daughter. In the Netflix documentary "What's Next? The Future With Bill Gates," she said she lost friends because of a conspiracy theory suggesting her father used COVID-19 vaccines to implant microchips into recipients.

"I've even had friends cut me off because of these vaccine rumors," she said.

• Secondhand luxury platform The RealReal has a trove of data about the hottest brands.
• Demand for trendy items influences how they're priced on The RealReal.
• These are the brands that two executives from The RealReal say you should buy now.

It's the most wonderful time of the year to be a shopper — but anyone who wants lasting bang for their buck knows to look beyond 2024's biggest trends and choose styles that will last.

Two experts from The RealReal, chief creative officer Kristen Naiman and associate director of fashion Noelle Sciacca, broke down which brands and trends shoppers should add to their carts now before they sell out or get more expensive on the secondhand market.

Using customer data, including about which designers are seeing spikes in search queries, the company can predict budding trends, Naiman said on "The Cutting Room Floor" podcast last week.

The RealReal prices its items based on several variables, including seasonality, condition, availability, and demand, measured through search volume and how quickly items sell out.

The more popular a brand gets, the more expensive it can become, Naiman said on the podcast.

These are the hottest brands to buy this season to be on-trend — and avoid overpaying for — next year, according to Naiman and Sciacca.

Bally

"Bally is super hot right now," Naiman said of the Swiss brand, which is already popular among "diehard, interesting fashion people."

It's only a matter of time before it goes mainstream, she added, telling "The Cutting Room Floor" host Recho Omondi that if she wants to buy an item from Bally, she should "do it now."

The brand began to surge earlier this year; Bally sales were up 42% year-over-year in August, Sciacca told Business Insider.

Romeo Gigli

Romeo Gigli is "really trending right now" for vintage-lovers, Naiman told Omondi. The Italian brand became a staple in the 1980s and early 1990s for its romantic style and soft tailoring.

Although its popularity dwindled over the years, Naiman predicted a resurgence.

Styles from the designer's heydey are "particularly captivating consumers," Sciacca said.

Brands like Miu Miu and Loewe will continue to be popular

Miu Miu is among the hottest labels of 2024, with retail sales up 86% in the first half of the year. Sciacca and Naiman don't foresee that changing.

Searches are surging on The RealReal, particularly for the brand's bags and sunglasses, with queries up 100% and 212% year-over-year, Sciacca said.

Handbags from Loewe continue to be popular as well.

The label's Puzzle Tote "is selling for an impressive 90% of its original price, while searches for the Flamenco bag have jumped 87% year-over-year," Sciacca said.

Moschino will kick off the year in a big way

"Moschino is a brand to watch as expressive styles gain momentum over uniform dressing," Sciacca said. "We're kicking off 2025 with a Moschino spotlight on-site."

The Italian designer is known for its lighthearted take on fashion.

Customers are searching for Ralph Lauren and Alaïa

Both Ralph Lauren and Alaïa are seeing surges in search queries on The RealReal. The former is experiencing a 57% increase in searches this quarter compared to last year, while searches for the latter have risen 29% year-over-year.

For Alaïa, there is particular interest in handbags, including the most recent styles and vintage pieces from the 1980s and 1990s.

• Donald Trump has surrounded himself with fellow billionaires as he nears a second term as president.
• His cabinet nominees and advisors hail from various industries —and include the world's richest man.
• Here are the billionaires Trump is working with as he readies for the White House.

President-elect Donald Trump has long been associated with wealth. Trump, as his supporters like to say, was famously a businessman before he became president — or the host of a reality TV show. Even a young Barack Obama mentioned him as the epitome of success that Americans craved.

While some have questioned how successfully he ran his real-estate empire there is no arguing that he is now very rich. The net worth of the president-elect sits at $6.1 billion, according to Forbes' estimates as of December 6.

As Trump prepares for a second term as president, it looks as if like attracts like: He counts several billionaires among his advisors and cabinet nominees.

Trump's first-term cabinet was the wealthiest in modern times and included several multimillionaires among its ranks, including centimillionaires Wilbur Ross and Steve Mnuchin. Betsy DeVos, his former Secretary of Education, and her family were worth $2 billion when she held office, Forbes reported. More billionaires, including Diane Hendricks and Isaac Perlmutter, were among his early advisors.

There will be more clarity about the net worths of Trump's current cabinet picks and his remaining nominees when they file public financial disclosures due soon after their nominations become official.

These disclosures will also bring to light any conflicts of interest, which often result in large divestments. For example, in 2017, Steven Mnuchin, then the Treasury secretary nominee, agreed to divest from 43 companies and investments to comply with those standards.

Virginia Canter, the chief ethics counsel at Citizens for Responsibility and Ethics in Washington, said in some cases, nominees from the private equity or venture capital worlds may find it difficult to divest their assets in time.

Vincent Viola, a Florida billionaire and Trump's pick to be Army secretary in 2017, withdrew his name from consideration after it became clear how difficult it would be to disentangle his financial holdings.

"You have to be prepared to divest of any asset," Canter told Business Insider. "The president needs to be able to call on any member of their cabinet and all of their senior officials, right? And not have to worry about whether by calling them and asking for their advice on a particular matter" they would create a criminal conflict of interest.

Here are the billionaires advising President-elect Trump and how rich they are. The net worths are based on Forbes estimates as of December 6 unless otherwise stated.

Elon Musk

Elon Musk is by far the richest person to sign up to work for Trump, with a net worth of $355 billion.

Musk, the cohead of Trump's government efficiency commission, will work with conservative entrepreneur Vivek Ramaswamy outside the federal government on the "Department of Government Efficiency." The duo has said they want to cut more than $2 trillion from the federal budget.

For now, Musk, the world's richest man, is not subject to divestment requirements as he's outside the Trump administration. Ethics experts say it remains to be seen if DOGE will meet the definition of the Federal Advisory Committee Act. This 1970s-era law sought to bring order to the external and sometimes secretive panels that advised the federal government. If DOGE does, Musk and Ramaswamy may be required to file financial disclosure forms. Most critically, DOGE may also have to hold open meetings and make its records available to the public.

Musk's approach to the federal government may mirror the one he takes at his companies, including Tesla, SpaceX, and xAI, which has made him very rich. His stakes in EV company Tesla — he owns about 13% of the trillion-dollar company — and rocket manufacturer SpaceX make up the bulk of his fortune.

Musk is known for his "hardcore" management style and has shown no problem conducting extensive layoffs, requiring his teams to work "long hours at a high intensity," and relentlessly cutting corporate perks.

He spent about $119 million boosting Trump's campaign — and his bet on the president-elect paid off. Since the election, Musk's fortune has grown by about $90 billion. The success of his companies, particularly SpaceX, has been tied to the government before. The New York Times reported that Tesla and SpaceX signed nearly $3 billion of government contracts last year.

Warren Stephens

Investor banker Warren Stephens is Trump's nominee to be the next US ambassador to Britain.

Stephens, who is worth $3.4 billion, operates the Little Rock, Arkansas-based investment bank, Stephens Inc., which has been tied to his family since the 1930s. The firm was a major player in Walmart's 1970 IPO and later helped finance the construction of the Superdome, home to the NFL's New Orleans Saints.

The ambassador to the Court of St. James, as the post is formally known, is considered one of the poshest assignments in the foreign service. Presidents often name major donors to the role. Trump's first ambassador to the UK was Woody Johnson, co-owner of the NFL's New York Jets.

Stephens donated $3.5 million to pro-Trump causes, including $2 million to Make America Great Again Inc., the main super PAC for the former president.

Stephens hasn't always been supportive of Trump. In 2016, he donated $2 million to a group trying to block him, The New York Times reported. Before Trump locked up the nomination, Stephens supported Arkansas Gov. Asa Hutchinson, former Vice President Mike Pence, former New Jersey Gov. Chris Christie, and former UN Ambassador Nikki Haley.

"Over the last 38 years, while serving as the President, Chairman, and CEO of his company, Stephens Inc., Warren has built a wonderful financial services firm, while selflessly giving back to his community as a philanthropist," Trump wrote in his statement announcing Stephens' nomination.

Jared Isaacman

Trump has chosen Jared Isaacman, who is worth $1.8 billion, to head up NASA.

A high school dropout, Isaacman made his money through two companies: payment processing firm Shift4, which is publicly traded, and aviation venture Draken International, which he sold to Blackstone.

Isaacman would bring real space experience to his role as NASA administrator.

He's been to space twice on SpaceX's civilian flights that he funded and he conducted the first-ever commercial spacewalk in September.

Isaacman said that leading NASA would be "the honor of a lifetime."

Howard Lutnick

Trump's pick for Commerce Secretary, Howard Lutnick, is worth more than $1.5 billion thanks to his decades on Wall Street. He's been CEO of Cantor Fitzgerald, a financial services firm, since 1991 and of its spinoff brokerage firm, BGC Partners, since its formation. Cantor Fitzgerald's deals include Johnson & Johnson's $1.9 billion acquisition of Ambrx.

In addition to his work at Cantor Fitzgerald, Lutnick is chairman of the Newmark Group, a roughly $2.6 billion commercial real estate giant.

Trump said that Lutnick would be his point person on trade, even though the US Trade representative, a Cabinet-level post, typically fills that role. If confirmed, Lutnick would oversee 13 agencies, including the Census Bureau and the Patent and Trademark Office. During Trump's first term, Commerce Secretary Wilbur Ross, another former banker, was central to the White House's trade war with China.

Vivek Ramaswamy

Musk will co-lead the DOGE with fellow billionaire Vivek Ramaswamy.

Ramaswamy, who made his fortune in the biotech and pharmaceutical industry, is worth $1.1 billion.

He founded Roivant Sciences, a drug company that went public in 2021. The company has a market cap of nearly $9 billion, and Ramaswamy, who was the company's CEO before stepping down in 2021 to focus on politics, owns about 10% of its outstanding shares.

In 2022, Ramaswamy cofounded Strive Asset Management, an investment company that takes a non-ESG approach to money management. The company counts Vice President-elect JD Vance, who attended law school with Ramaswamy, as an investor.

Like Vance and Trump, Ramaswamy built his political reputation on the foundation of his business experience. Ramaswamy was harshly critical of corporate ESG and DEI initiatives, which he railed against in his 2021 best-selling book "Woke, Inc.: Inside Corporate America's Social Justice Scam."

During the 2024 Republican presidential primaries, Ramaswamy stood out from the rest of the field by just how much he embraced Trump — a sign of loyalty that he quickly noticed. Despite his lack of political experience, Ramaswamy repeatedly qualified for debates while other more conventional picks struggled to meet the polling and donor thresholds. He dropped out of the field after finishing fourth in the Iowa Republican caucuses and quickly endorsed Trump.

During the summer, Ramaswamy bought a stake in BuzzFeed to remodel the online publication in his conservative image.

Steven Witkoff

Steven Witkoff will serve as Trump's special Middle East envoy, as well as the cochair of his inaugural committee.

A real estate developer, Witkoff is worth at least $1 billion thanks to his stake in the development company the Witkoff Group, which is responsible for luxury condos, hotels, and office space across the country, and his personal portfolio of homes in New York City, the Hamptons, and Florida. He's also partnered with Trump on the cryptocurrency project World Liberty Financial.

Witkoff, like many on this list and in the broader Trump cabinet, has no formal experience in his role. During Trump's first term, the president-elect relied on Jared Kushner, his wealthy son-in-law, to play a similar role, which later resulted in the Abraham Accords, a series of deals to normalize relations between Israel and four Arab states.

Scott Bessent

Hedge fund manager Scott Bessent, Trump's nominee for Treasury secretary, is likely a billionaire — though Forbes has not yet crowned him one.

A Wall Street veteran, Bessent has worked for George Soros twice and was behind two of the financier's most lucrative bets, the shorting of the British pound and Japanese yen. In 2017, he launched his own firm, Key Square Capital, which has struggled to produce consistent returns.

While he has supported Democrats in the past, Bessent is now fully aligned with Trump. This election cycle, he donated $3 million to Trump-aligned PACs and Republican committees.

Bessent prevailed amid intense private jockeying to lead the Treasury Department, securing the role without Musk's blessing, who had backed Lutnick instead. Markets reacted positively to Bessent's appointment, but Trump soon clarified that this more conventional pick would not limit his tariff commitment.

Linda McMahon

Linda McMahon, Trump's nominee for Secretary of Education_, is the cochair of his transition team and led the Small Business Administration during the president-elect's first term.

According to multiple reports, McMahon hoped to be named Commerce Secretary, but that post fell to Lutnick after failing to get the Treasury Department role.

She doesn't have much experience in education policy, but she has spent the past few years leading the America First Policy Institute, a think tank that many in Trump's orbit flocked to after he lost the 2020 election.

When he announced her role, Trump pledged that McMahon would champion school choice, a long-sought-after conservative goal to allow public funds to cover the costs of sending children to private and charter schools. Some in the Republican Party have even argued for the dissolution of the Education Department entirely and ceding the policymaking power to state and local governments.

While not a billionaire in her own right, McMahon donated $15 million to Trump's campaign and is married to Vincent McMahon, the former executive chairman of WWE-owner TKO Group Holdings, worth $3 billion.

The McMahons cofounded and ran WWE, and Linda served as CEO for over a decade. Vincent resigned from TKO's board of directors earlier this year after a former employee filed a lawsuit accusing him of sexual misconduct.

• The profile of the typical billionaire isn't all that surprising.
• Most of the world's billionaires are men, and the largest share work in finance or banking.
• Here's a breakdown of the billionaire class, according to a new report.

If you're looking for a billionaire, you might as well be looking for a man in finance, trust fund, 6'5", blue eyes.

Well, not exactly, but the typical member of the three-comma club isn't that different from the stereotype.

The typical billionaire is a man in his 60s, who lives in New York City, loves sports, and works in banking or finance, according to Altrata's 2024 Billionaire Census, which looked at the world's richest citizens as of 2023. Most of his wealth is probably tied up in public companies, though he also has a penchant for private jets, luxury yachts, and valuable cars. He is also, unlike the man in the TikTok jingle, self-made.

There are more billionaires than ever in the world, a total of 3,323. Their cumulative net worth is $12.1 trillion, up 9% from last year thanks to a stock-market rebound.

The United States is home to nearly one third of them, the largest concentration of any country. New York City alone has 144 billionaire inhabitants — more than any country besides the US, China, and Germany.

Most — 87% — of billionaires are male, and have amassed their fortunes in different ways than the world's 431 female billionaires.

While the majority of all billionaires, about 60%, are fully self-made, men are more likely to be than female billionaires. In fact, 76% of the world's female billionaires have inherited at least part of their wealth, compared to 35% of male ones.

Male billionaires are more likely to have public assets make up the largest share, or about 40%, of their wealth. Male tech billionaires whose fortunes are tied up in the companies they control or founded — like Elon Musk and Jeff Bezos — skewed that number, according to the report.

Meanwhile, liquid assets, like cash and private holdings, are the largest asset classes for women. Both are more typically tied to inherited fortunes, Altrata found.

The largest share of all billionaires, about 22%, work in finance or banking, but the largest portion, about 17%, of female billionaires spend most of their professional time in the nonprofit sector.

The interests of male and female billionaires follow suit: 71% of women billionaires count philanthropy as a top interest, while sports was the most popular one for male billionaires. Among all billionaires, the top philanthropic cause was education, which includes gifts to alma maters — an especially popular form of giving in the US.

Billionaires are also more likely to splurge on different high-value items depending on their gender. Men prefer luxury vehicles — jets, yachts, cars — while women prefer property and art. In fact, male billionaires are almost four times as likely to own a car collection worth more than $1 million than their female counterparts.

So, if you are looking for a man or woman, finance isn't a bad place to start. Failing that, why not try a gala or classic car show? We'll leave the choice of eye color up to you.

• Last year's job cuts weren't the end of layoffs. Further reductions continue in 2024.
• Companies like Flagstar Bank, Meta, PwC, Tesla, Google, Microsoft, and Nike have all announced cuts.
• See the list of companies reducing their worker numbers in 2024.

After a brutal year of layoffs in 2023, companies this year have continued to cut jobs across tech, media, finance, manufacturing, and retail.

Tech titans like Meta, IBM, Google, and Microsoft; finance leaders like Goldman Sachs, Citi, and BlackRock; accounting firms like PwC; entertainment behemoths like Pixar and Paramount; and corporate giants like Tesla, Dow, and Nike have all announced layoffs.

A survey in late December said nearly 40% of business leaders had expected layoffs this year, ResumeBuilder said. ResumeBuilder talked to about 900 leaders at organizations with more than 10 employees.

One major factor survey respondents cited was artificial intelligence. Around four in 10 leaders said they would conduct layoffs as they replace workers with AI. Last year, Dropbox, Google, and IBM announced job cuts related to AI.

Here are the dozens of companies with job cuts planned or already underway in 2024.

The US' biggest privately-owned company, Cargill, is cutting thousands of jobs

Cargill, the largest privately owned company in the US, is slashing 5% of its workforce.

The company, which is the world's largest agricultural commodities trader, will lay off thousands of workers from its 164,000-strong workforce, Bloomberg reported on Monday, citing an internal memo it had seen.

"To strengthen Cargill's impact, we must realign our talent and resources to align with our strategy," a Cargill spokesperson told BI.

The cuts would impact workers across all professional levels from countries in Asia, Latin America, North America, Europe, the Middle East, and Africa.

The layoffs will not touch its executive team but will impact its "next level senior leaders," Bloomberg reported, citing people familiar with the matter.

"The majority of these reductions will take place this year," Chief Executive Officer Brian Sikes said in the memo, seen by Bloomberg. "They'll focus on streamlining our organizational structure by removing layers, expanding the scope and responsibilities of our managers, and reducing duplication of work."

Microchip Tech is closing an Arizona factory

Microchip Technology, a chipmaker for a variety of consumer products, on Monday said it was closing a facility in Tempe, Arizona, as it deals with slower-than-anticipated orders.

The closure is expected to affect about 500 jobs from the company's total of 22,300, Microchip said. The closure will progress in stages and end in September 2025.

"While the company has taken steps to right size inventory and reduce expenses— including temporary pay reductions and company-wide and factory shutdowns—these measures have not been enough," a spokesperson for Microchip said in a statement on Tuesday.

Microchip also updated its revenue guidance for the quarter ending in December quarter to $1.025 billion, which is at the lower end of its earlier forecast.

The company's stock fell about 3% in after-hours trading and is down 22% year-to-date.

Publishing giant Hearst Magazines trims staff.

The owner of publications including Esquire and Cosmopolitan is conducting a round of layoffs, The Hollywood Reporter said in a November 21 report.

The exact number of positions impacted is not clear.

"After a thorough review of our business, we've decided to reallocate resources to better support our goals and continue our focus on digital innovation while strengthening our best in class print products," Hearst Magazines president Debi Chirichella told staff in a memo obtained by THR. "We will scale back in areas that do not support our core strategy and will eliminate certain positions as we reimagine our team structures to drive long-term growth."

Boeing starts issuing layoff notices to 400 workers amid plans for 10% global cut

In October, Boeing said that it would cut 10% of its 170,000-strong global workforce. The reduction plan will include 2,199 employees in Washington and another 50 in Oregon, according to the company's filings.

As part of the cuts, Boeing is laying off more than 400 workers who are part of its professional aerospace labor union. The Seattle Times reported that 438 members of the Society of Professional Engineering Employees in Aerospace (SPEEA) received pink slips.

These included engineers, scientists, analysts, technicians, and other jobs, the outlet reported.

In a note to employees on October 11, CEO Kelly Ortberg said Boeing was in a "difficult position" and that "restoring our company requires tough decisions."

The layoffs come at a difficult time for Boeing. Its share price has fallen more than 40% since the start of the year as it grapples with the fallout from a seven-week strike and technical faults like a door plug coming off an Alaska Airlines 737 Max midflight in January.

Representatives of Boeing and the SPEEA didn't immediately respond to a request for comment from Business Insider.

Exxon is cutting nearly 400 jobs after Pioneer merger

ExxonMobil is cutting about 400 employees from Pioneer Natural Resources, the oil and gas company it acquired earlier this year.

The cuts will come in seven stages and will be completed in May 2026, Exxon said in a notice to the Texas Workforce Commission.

The cuts represent almost 20% of Pioneer's pre-merger workforce and will mostly affect employees in Pioneer's suburban Dallas offices, the notice said.

AMD is laying off roughly 4% of its workforce.

AMD confirmed it would be reducing its global staff, which numbered around 26,000 total employees as of December 2023.

″As a part of aligning our resources with our largest growth opportunities, we are taking a number of targeted steps that will unfortunately result in reducing our global workforce by approximately 4%," an AMD representative said in a statement to Business Insider. "We are committed to treating impacted employees with respect and helping them through this transition."

The cuts are reportedly targeting sales and marketing roles in areas like consumer PC and gaming PC, according to Bloomberg.

The computer chipmaker is focusing efforts on the artificial intelligence industry as it chases rival Nvidia in the GPU market. In October, AMD raised its 2024 GPU sales estimates from its initial $4.5 billion to over $5 billion.

Chegg is cutting 21% of its employees as AI search destroys its business

Online education site Chegg is laying off staff for the second time this year as generative AI platforms obliterate its business model.

Chegg said it is cutting 319 employees, or 21% of its staff, as it faces strong competition from platforms like ChatGPT. The company slashed global headcount by 23% in June.

"The speed and scale of Google's AIO rollout and student adoption of generative AI products have negatively impacted our industry and our business," Nathan Schultz, Chegg's CEO, said in an earnings release. The company reported a loss of $212.6 million for the third quarter.

Chegg's stock has fallen nearly 85% since the start of this year.

23andMe is cutting 40% of its staff

Genetic testing company 23andMe is cutting 200 employees, or 40% of its workforce, to reduce costs and refocus its business.

The Bay Area-based company is also discontinuing further development of all its therapeutics programs, it said in a mid-November statement.

Anne Wojcicki, 23andMe's CEO and cofounder, has been trying to take the struggling company private since April.

23andMe debuted on the stock market in 2021 but fallen from its peak valuation of $6 billion — its market cap is now north of $100 million. Financial and strategic missteps, as well as high-profile user data hacks, have dragged the company down.

Beyond Inc. plans to cut 20% of its workforce

The parent company of Bed Bath & Beyond, Overstock, Zulily, and other brands revealed its decision to slash a fifth of its staff in an October SEC filing.

The workplace reduction was taken to create a more "variable, leverageable cost structure" and to help align the company with its "asset-light business that supports an affinity and data monetization model with a strong technology focus," Beyond Inc. said in the filing.

The cuts are estimated to save roughly $20 million annually in fixed costs and are expected to be "substantially implemented" in the fourth quarter of 2024.

The news came shortly after Beyond Inc. and Kirkland announced a partnership that means physical Bed Bath & Beyond stores will return in smaller-format "neighborhood" locations.

Meta added to the 20,000+ people it's laid off since 2022

Meta is eliminating some roles on units including Instagram, WhatsApp, and its VR and AR division Reality Labs.

"A few teams at Meta are making changes to ensure resources are aligned with their long-term strategic goals and location strategy," a Meta spokesperson told BI on October 17. "This includes moving some teams to different locations, and moving some employees to different roles."

It's unclear how many roles will be affected, but Meta has trimmed its staff significantly in the year and a half, with more than 20,000 job cuts since 2022. CEO Mark Zuckerberg proclaimed 2023 a "year of efficiency" at the company, and continued cost-cutting measures this year as the tech giant gets flatter in structure.

TikTok is laying off employees as part of content moderation changes.

TikTok is cutting employees in various locations as part of changes to its content-moderation strategy.

A spokesperson for the China-owned company told Reuters in October that 80% of content that violates its policy is now removed through automated technology.

The company did not provide details on the exact number of positions that it eliminated but told Reuters the cuts would affect "several hundred" employees.

PwC is cutting 1,800 employees.

Big Four accounting firm PwC is cutting 1,800 workers, which is about 2.5% of its staff. The cuts will impact staffers ranging from associates to managing directors — half of them offshore. Those affected by the cuts will be informed in October.

In an emailed statement to Business Insider, Tim Grady, PwC's US chief operating officer, said, "To remain competitive and position our business for the future, we are continuing to transform
areas of our firm and are aligning our workforce to better support our strategy, including attracting and moving the right talent and skill sets to the areas where we need them most. Right now, we are focused on running our business well and adapting to meet the needs of our clients and the rapidly changing market."

Nike's up-to-$2 billion cost-cutting plan will involve severances

Nike announced its cost-cutting plans in a December 2023 earnings call, discussing a slow growth in sales. The call subsequently resulted in Nike's stock plunging.

"We are seeing indications of more cautious consumer behavior around the world," Nike Chief Financial Officer Matt Friend said in December.

Google laid off hundreds more workers in 2024

On January 10, Google laid off hundreds of workers in its central engineering division and members of its hardware teams — including those working on its voice-activated assistant.

In an email to some affected employees, the company encouraged them to consider applying for open positions at Google if they want to remain employed. April 9 was the last day for those unable to secure a new position, the email said.

The tech giant laid off thousands throughout 2023, beginning with a 6% reduction of its global workforce — about 12,000 people — last January.

Discord laid off 170 employees.

Discord employees learned about the layoffs in an all-hands meeting and a memo sent by CEO Jason Citron in early January.

"We grew quickly and expanded our workforce even faster, increasing by 5x since 2020," Citron said in the memo. "As a result, we took on more projects and became less efficient in how we operated."

In August 2023, Discord reduced its headcount by 4%. According to CNBC, the company was valued at $15 billion in 2021.

Citi will cut 20,000 from its staff as part of its corporate overhaul.

The layoffs announced in January are part of a larger Citigroup initiative to restructure the business and could leave the company with a remaining head count of 180,000 — excluding its Mexico operations.

In an earnings call that month, the bank said that layoffs could save the company up to $2.5 billion after it suffered a "very disappointing" final quarter last year.

Amazon-owned Twitch also announced job cuts.

Twitch announced on January 10 that it would cut 500 jobs, affecting over a third of the employees at the live-streaming company.

CEO Dan Clancy announced the layoffs in a memo, telling staff that while the company has tried to cut costs, the operation is "meaningfully" bigger than necessary.

"As you all know, we have worked hard over the last year to run our business as sustainably as possible," Clancy wrote. "Unfortunately, we still have work to do to rightsize our company and I regret having to share that we are taking the painful step to reduce our headcount by just over 500 people across Twitch."

BlackRock is planning to cut 3% of its staff.

Larry Fink, BlackRock's chief executive, and Rob Kapito, the firm's president, announced in January that the layoffs would affect around 600 people from its workforce of about 20,000.

However, the company has plans to expand in other areas to support growth in its overseas markets.

"As we prepare for 2024 and this very exciting but distinctly different landscape, businesses across the firm have developed plans to reallocate resources," the company leaders said in a memo.

Rent the Runway is slashing 10% of its corporate jobs as part of a restructuring.

In the fashion company's January announcement, COO and president Anushka Salinas said she will also be leaving the firm, Fast Company reported.

Unity Software is eliminating 25% of its workforce.

Around 1,800 jobs at the video game software company will be affected by the layoffs announced, Reuters reported in January.

eBay cut 1,000 jobs

In a January 23 memo, CEO Jamie Iannone told employees that the eBay layoffs will affect about 9% of the company's workforce.

Iannone told employees that layoffs were necessary as the company's "overall headcount and expenses have outpaced the growth of our business."

The company also plans to scale back on contractors.

Microsoft is reportedly cutting 650 more jobs from its Xbox division

Microsoft will be laying off hundreds of employees in its Xbox gaming division, Bloomberg first reported in September.

The job cuts will mainly affect workers in corporate and support functions, the outlet reported, citing a memo sent by Microsoft Gaming chief Phil Spencer.

However, he reportedly added that the company is not planning to close any studios or remove any games or devices.

This comes after the company also slashed 1,900 workers at Activision, Xbox, and ZeniMax in late January.

Nearly three months after Microsoft acquired video game firm Activision Blizzard, the company announced layoffs in its gaming divisions. The layoffs mostly affect employees at Activision Blizzard.

Xbox in May also reportedly offered some employees voluntary severance packages after shutting three units and absorbing a fourth earlier in the month.

Salesforce is cutting 700 employees across the company, The Wall Street Journal reported

Salesforce announced a round of layoffs that the company says will affect 1% of its global workforce, The Journal reported in late January.

The cuts followed a wave of cuts at the cloud giant last year. In 2023, Marc Benioff's company laid off about 10% of its total workforce — or roughly 7,000 jobs. The CEO said the company over-hired during the pandemic.

iRobot is laying off around 350 employees and founder Colin Angle will step down as chairman and CEO

The company behind the Roomba Vacuum announced layoffs in late January around the same time Amazon decided not to go through with its proposed acquisition of the company, the Associated Press reported.

UPS will cut 12,000 jobs in 2024.

The UPS layoffs will affect 14% of the company's 85,000 managers and could save the company $1 billion in 2024, UPS CEO Carol Tomé said during a January earnings call.

Paypal CEO Alex Chriss announced the company would lay off 9% of its workforce.

Announced in late January, this round of layoffs will affect about 2,500 employees at the payment processing company.

"We are doing this to right-size our business, allowing us to move with the speed needed to deliver for our customers and drive profitable growth," CEO Alex Chriss wrote in a January memo. "At the same time, we will continue to invest in areas of the business we believe will create and accelerate growth."

Okta is cutting roughly 7% of its workforce.

The digital-access-management company announced its plans for a "restructuring plan intended to improve operating efficiencies and strengthen the Company's commitment to profitable growth" in an SEC filing in February.

The cuts will impact roughly 400 employees.

Okta CEO Todd McKinnon told staff in a memo that "costs are still too high," CNBC reported.

Snap has announced more layoffs.

The company behind Snapchat announced in February that it's reducing its global workforce by 10%, according to an SEC filing.

Estée Lauder said it will eliminate up to 3,100 positions.

The cosmetics company announced in February that it would be cutting 3% to 5% of its roles as part of a restructuring plan.

Estee Lauder reportedly employed about 62,000 employees around the world as of June 30, 2023.

DocuSign is eliminating roughly 6% of its workforce as part of a restructuring plan.

The electronic signature company said in an SEC filing in February that most of the cuts will be in its sales and marketing divisions.

Zoom is slashing 150 jobs

Zoom announced 150 job losses in February, which amounted to about 2% of its workforce. It had announced it was laying off 1,300 people the previous February.

Paramount Global is laying off 800 employees days after record-breaking Super Bowl

In February, Paramount Global CEO Bob Bakish sent a memo to employees announcing that 800 jobs — about 3% of its workforce — were being cut.

Deadline obtained the memo less than a month after reporting plans for layoffs at Paramount. The announcement comes on the heels of Super Bowl LVIII reaching record-high viewership across CBS, Paramount+, and Nickelodeon, and Univision.

Morgan Stanley is trimming its wealth management division by hundreds of staffers

Morgan Stanley is laying off several hundred employees in its wealth-management division, the Wall Street Journal reported in February, representing roughly 1% of the team.

The wealth-management division has seen some slowdown at the start of 2024, with net new assets down by about 8% from a year ago. The layoffs mark the first major move by newly-installed CEO Ted Pick, who took the reins from James Gorman on January 1.

Expedia Group is cutting more than 8% of its workforce

An Expedia spokesperson told BI that it was implementing cutbacks, as part of an operational review, that were expected to impact 1,500 roles this year.

The company's product and technology division is set to be the worst hit, a report from GeekWire said, citing an internal memo CEO Peter Kern sent to employees in late February.

"While this review will result in the elimination of some roles, it also allows the company to invest in core strategic areas for growth," the spokesperson said.

"Consultation with local employee representatives, where applicable, will occur before making any final decisions," they added.

Sony is laying off 900 workers

The cuts at Sony Interactive Entertainment swept through its game-making teams at PlayStation Studios.

Insomniac Games, which developed the hit Spider-Man video game series, as well as Naughty Dog, the developers behind Sony's flagship 'The Last of Us' video games' were hit by the cuts, the company announced on February 27.

All of PlayStation's London studio will be shuttered, according to the proposal.

"Delivering and sustaining social, online experiences – allowing PlayStation gamers to explore our worlds in different ways – as well as launching games on additional devices such as PC and Mobile, requires a different approach and different resources," PlayStation Studios boss Hermen Hulst wrote.

Hulst added that some games in development will be shut down, though he didn't say which ones.

In early February, Sony said it missed its target for selling PlayStation 5 consoles. The earnings report sent shares tumbling and the company's stock lost about $10 billion in value.

Bumble slashed 30% of its workforce

On February 27, the dating app company announced that it would be reducing its staff due to "future strategic priorities" for its business, per a statement.

The cuts will impact about 30% of its about 1,200 person workforce or about 350 roles, a representative for Bumble told BI by email.

"We are taking significant and decisive actions that ensure our customers remain at the center of everything we do as we relaunch Bumble App, transform our organization and accelerate our product roadmap," Bumble Inc CEO Lidiane Jones said in a statement.

Electronic Arts reduced its workforce by 5%

Electronic Arts is laying off about 670 workers, equating to 5% of its workforce, Bloomberg reported in late February.

The gaming firm axed two mobile games earlier in February, which it described as a difficult decision in a statement issued to GamesIndustry.biz.

CEO Andrew Wilson reportedly told employees in a memo that it would be "moving away from development of future licensed IP that we do not believe will be successful in our changing industry."

Wilson also said in the memo that the cuts came as a result of shifting customer needs and a refocusing of the company, Bloomberg reported.

IBM cut staff in marketing and communications

IBM's chief communications officer Jonathan Adashek told employees on March 12 that it would be cutting staff, CNBC reported, citing a source familiar with the matter.

An IBM spokesperson told Business Insider in a statement that the cuts follow a broader workforce action the company announced during its earnings call in January.

"In 4Q earnings earlier this year, IBM disclosed a workforce rebalancing charge that would represent a very low single-digit percentage of IBM's global workforce, and we expect to exit 2024 at roughly the same level of employment as we entered with," they said.

IBM has also been clear about the impact of AI on its workforce. In May 2023, IBM's CEO Arvind Krishna said the company expected to pause hiring on roles that could be replaced by AI, especially in areas like human resources and other non-consumer-facing departments.

"I could easily see 30% of that getting replaced by AI and automation over a five-year period," Krishna told Bloomberg at the time.

Amazon is laying off hundreds in its cloud division in yet another round of cuts this year

Amazon is cutting hundreds of jobs from its cloud division known as Amazon Web Services, Bloomberg reported on April 3.

The reduction will impact employees on the sales and marketing team and those working on tech for its retail stores, Bloomberg reported.

"We've identified a few targeted areas of the organization we need to streamline in order to continue focusing our efforts on the key strategic areas that we believe will deliver maximum impact," an Amazon spokesperson told Bloomberg.

On March 26, Amazon announced another round of job cuts after the company said it was slashing 'several hundred' jobs at its Prime Video and MGM Studios divisions earlier this year to refocus on more profitable products.

"We've identified opportunities to reduce or discontinue investments in certain areas while increasing our investment and focus on content and product initiatives that deliver the most impact," Mike Hopkins, SVP of Prime Video and Amazon MGM Studios, told employees in January.

This year's cuts follow the largest staff layoff in the company's history. In 2023, the tech giant laid off 18,000 workers.

Apple has cut over 700 employees across its self-driving car, displays, and services groups

Apple slashed its California workforce by more than 600 employees in April.

The cuts came after Apple decided to withdraw from its car and smartwatch display projects.

The tech giant filed a series of notices to comply with the Worker Adjustment and Retraining Notification program. One of the addresses was linked to a new display development office, while the others were for the company's EV effort, Bloomberg reported.

Apple officially shut down its decadelong EV project in February. At the time, Bloomberg reported that some employees would move to generative AI, but others would be laid off.

Bloomberg noted that the layoffs were likely an undercount of the full scope of staff cuts, as Apple had staff working on these projects in other locations.

In late August, Bloomberg reported that Apple was slashing 100 jobs in its services group, citing people familiar with the matter.

The layoffs mainly involved people working on the Apple Books app and the Apple Bookstore, Bloomberg reported. Cuts were also made to other service teams like Apple News, the outlet added.

Representatives for Apple did not respond to a request for comment from Business Insider sent outside normal business hours.

Tesla laid off over 10% of its workforce

Tesla CEO Elon Musk sent a memo to employees on April 14, at nearly midnight in California, informing them of the company's plan to cut over 10% of its global workforce.

In his companywide memo, Musk cited "duplication of roles and job functions in certain areas" as the reason behind the reductions.

An email sent to terminated employees, obtained by BI, read: "Effective now, you will not need to perform any further work and therefore will no longer have access to Tesla systems and physical locations."

On April 29, Musk reportedly sent an email stating the need for more layoffs at Tesla. He also announced the departure of two executives and said that their reports would also be let go. Six known Tesla executives have left the company since layoffs began in April.

Grand Theft Auto 6 publisher Take-Two Interactive is reducing its workforce by 5%

Take-Two Interactive, the parent company of Rockstar Games, said on April 16 that it would be "eliminating several projects" and reducing its workforce by about 5%.

The move — a part of its larger "cost reduction program" — will cost the video game publisher up to $200 million. It's expected to be completed by December 31.

As of March 2023, the company said it employed approximately 11,580 full-time workers.

Peloton announced it was reducing its staff by 15% as the CEO stepped down

Peloton CEO Barry McCarthy is stepping down, the company announced May 2. Along with his departure, the fitness company is also laying off about 400 workers.

McCarthy is leaving his role just two years after replacing John Foley as CEO and president in 2022. Peloton said the changes are expected to reduce annual expenses by over $200 million by the end of fiscal 2025 as part of a larger restructuring plan.

Indeed is cutting 1,000 workers after laying off 2,200 in 2023

Careers site Indeed says it will lay off roughly 1,000 employees, or 8% of its workforce, as it looks to simplify its organization.

CEO Chris Hyams took responsibility for "how we got here" in a memo in May but said the company is not yet set up for growth after last year's global hiring slowdown caused multiple quarters of declining sales.

Hyams said the latest cuts will be more concentrated in the US and primarily affect R&D and Go-to-Market teams. It comes after last year's across-the-board reduction of 2,200 workers.

Walmart is axing hundreds of corporate jobs

Retail giant Walmart is cutting hundreds of corporate jobs and asking remote employees to come to work, The Wall Street Journal reported in May, citing people familiar with the matter.

Workers in smaller offices, such as those in Dallas, Atlanta, and Toronto, are also being asked to move to central locations like Walmart's corporate headquarters in Arkansas or those in New Jersey or California, the Journal reported.

Under Armour is slashing an unspecified number of jobs, incurring $22 million in severance costs

Under Armour confirmed it was conducting layoffs in its quarterly earnings report, which was released May 16.

The company said it will pay out employee severance and benefits expenses of roughly $15 million in cash-related and $7 million in non-cash charges this year related to a restructuring plan, with close to half of that occurring in the current fiscal quarter.

"This is not where I envisaged Under Armour playing at this point in our journey," CEO Kevin Plank told investors on the company's full-year earnings call. "That said, we'll use this turbulence to reconstitute our brand and business, giving athletes, retail customers and shareholders bigger and better reasons to care about and believe in Under Armour's potential."

Pixar cuts about 175 people in pivot back to feature films

Disney's Pixar Animation Studios is cutting 175 people, about 14% of its staff, Reuters reported.

The cuts started on May 21 as the studio returns to its focus on feature-length movies. Former Disney CEO Bob Chapek, who was axed in 2022, had increased staff across studios to create more content for the company's streaming service, Disney+.

Pixar cut 75 jobs last year, Reuters previously reported, part of a larger restructuring across Disney.

Lucid Motors is slashing around 400 jobs

In a regulatory filing, Lucid Motors said it would lay off about 400 employees as part of a restructuring plan that should be complete by the end of the third quarter.

"I'm confident Lucid will deliver the world's best SUV and dramatically expand our total addressable market, but we aren't generating revenue from the program yet," CEO Peter Rawlinson said in an email to employees obtained by TechCrunch.

The cuts come ahead of Lucid's launch of its first electric SUV later this year. It comes over a year after the California-based company laid off 1,300 employees, TechCrunch previously reported.

John Deere is laying off over 600 employees

John Deere, maker of the iconic green-and-yellow tractors, is laying off over 600 employees at factories in Illinois and Iowa, the AP reported July 1.

In May, John Deere said sales fell for the third consecutive quarter and projected that the declines would continue in the second half of its fiscal year.

Burberry is expected to cut 100s of jobs

London-based luxury retailer Burberry is expected to cut hundreds of jobs in the coming weeks, the Telegraph reported July 6.

Employees learned about the cuts in late June when they were told in a Zoom meeting that their roles could be eliminated or that they would need to apply for other jobs, according to the Telegraph.

Intuit announced cuts on July 10

Intuit announced on July 10 that it's cutting its workforce by 10%. The layoffs will affect 1,800 employees nationwide, but the company plans to hire 1,800 new employees in "key areas" like engineering, InvestorPlace reports.

The refocus on other areas is following a shift in focus on AI within the company, according to the outlet.

Intuit's stock dropped by 4.01% on July 10 after the company announced the layoffs.

Tinder parent Match group plans to cut 6% of jobs

Match Group, the parent company of Tinder and Hinge, said on July 30 that it would reduce its global workforce by about 6%, or about 156 employees because it is exiting the livestreaming business.

Match said it would remove the livestreaming service from its app Plenty of Fish and sunset the Hakuna app, which focuses on Korea and Japan.

The reduction in workforce is expected to save the company $13 million in annual costs.

Disney cuts 140 jobs across its TV division

Deadline and Bloomberg reported in July that Disney was making cuts across its TV division, to the tune of roughly 140 jobs — or 2% of the staff at Disney Entertainment Television (DET).

Layoffs will impact National Geographic, owned television stations, the marketing and publicity departments, and Freeform, per a source close to the matter, which notes no teams have been eliminated.

While Disney's cable TV business generates billions, it's on the decline, Bloomberg reports, and the company is seeking to cut costs.

Last year, Disney slashed 7,000 jobs across multiple rounds of layoffs as part of a strategy implemented by returning CEO Bob Iger.

Intel plans to eliminate thousands of jobs

Intel plans to cut thousands of jobs in response to a second-quarter earnings slump, Bloomberg reported earlier this week, citing unnamed people familiar with the move.

It was officially announced on August 1, as it posted Q2 earnings. The company intends to reduce its workforce by 15% by the end of 2024.

"Our Q2 financial performance was disappointing, even as we hit key product and process technology milestones," Intel CEO Pat Gelsinger said in a statement. "Second-half trends are more challenging than we previously expected, and we are leveraging our new operating model to take decisive actions that will improve operating and capital efficiencies while accelerating our IDM 2.0 transformation."

Intel's stock was down following the lackluster earnings.

The layoffs come after the chip maker laid off about 5% of its workforce last year, bringing its head count down to around 124,000, Bloomberg reported.

During the last round of layoffs, announced in October 2022, Intel faced a drop in demand for processors for personal computers and estimated the layoffs would save $10 billion in costs by 2025, per Bloomberg.

Intel did not immediately respond to a request for comment.

WW International is cutting jobs in corporate

Diet program creator WW International, formerly WeightWatchers, plans to lay off employees, it said in an earnings call on August 1.

The company did not specify the number of jobs it will cut. But the layoffs will largely focus on corporate positions, including a 40% cut in roles above and at the vice president level.

The cuts are expected to save the company $60 million, the company's chief financial officer said.

Dell is cutting sales jobs in new focus on AI products

Dell is cutting jobs on its sales team, Bloomberg reported. It wasn't immediately clear how many jobs Dell planned to eliminate.

In a memo announcing the cuts, company executives said that the choice was part of a restructuring to focus more on selling AI products and data center services, Bloomberg reported.

Dell did not immediately respond to a request for comment from BI, but a spokesman told Bloomberg: "Through a reorganization of our go-to-market teams and an ongoing series of actions, we are becoming a leaner company."

Paramount Global announced it plans to slash 15% of its US workforce

Paramount Global is planning to cut about 2,000 jobs ahead of its merger with Skydance Media, CNBC reported.

The company identified $500 million in cost savings as it prepared to join forces with Skydance, totalling about 15% of its US workforce, according to the outlet.

The cuts will begin in a few weeks and will mostly be finished by the end of 2024. Paramount employees in marketing and communications, finance, legal, technology, and other support functions have been targeted, the company said on an earnings call.

The cuts come about a month after Paramount agreed to merge with Skydance. Paramount shares jumped more than 5% after hours.

Stellantis is slashing white-collar and factory jobs

In August, the owner of Jeep and Dodge announced it is cutting 2,450 factory workers from its Warren Truck assembly plant outside Detroit.

The layoffs come because the company is ending production of the Ram 1500 Classic truck, Stellantis said. These factory cuts came after white-collar jobs were axed earlier this year.

On March 22, the company said it would lay off employees on its engineering, technology, and software teams in an effort to cut costs, CNBC reported.

Stellantis announced plans for another round of layoffs on July 30, according to Bloomberg. The company is offering voluntary buyouts to non-unionized US employees to "assist those interested in pursuing other career options or retirement," Stellantis said in a message seen by Bloomberg.

The job cuts, the total number of which remains unknown, come after a difficult first half of the year, with unit sales sinking by 16% in the US.

Sonos laid off about 6% of its workforce

The audio equipment company said it slashed roughly 100 jobs in August. The layoffs significantly targeted its marketing division, The Verge reported.

CEO Patrick Spence said in a statement to BI that the company is now focusing on departing employees and "ensuring they have the support they need."

"This action was a difficult, but necessary, measure to ensure continued, meaningful investment in Sonos' product roadmap while setting Sonos up for long term success," Spence said.

Sonos is also reducing some of its customer support offices and will close one in Amsterdam later this year, according to The Verge.

The company previously cut around 7% of its workforce in June 2023, a month after it announced a 24% revenue drop in the second quarter compared to the previous year.

Cisco announced two rounds of layoffs this year

In February, networking company Cisco announced it was slashing 5% of its workforce, upward of 4,000 jobs, Bloomberg reported.

The company said it was restructuring after an industry-wide pullback in corporate tech spending — which execs said they expect to continue through the first half of the year.

On August 14, in a filing, Cisco said it would further reduce its global workforce by 7% amid sales and revenue declines. Reuters reported earlier that the company was slashing around 4,000 jobs as it shifted attention to cybersecurity and artificial intelligence.

Per its latest annual filing, Cisco had about 85,000 employees as of July 2023.

GoPro is laying off nearly 140 employees

Long-troubled GoPro is laying off 15% of its 925 current employees, the company said in a filing.

The action sports camera maker reported a net loss of nearly $48 million in the quarter that ended in June, adding to a streak of consecutive losses.

The company laid off 4% of its staff in March.

Shell is reportedly planning for major cuts in its oil exploration division

Oil giant Shell will slash its workforce in oil and gas exploration and development by 20%, according to an August 29 report from Reuters. Company sources reportedly cited intentions to cut costs in the highly profitable segments due to "deep cuts in renewables and low-carbon businesses."

Exploration, wells development, and subsurface units will face hundreds of layoffs globally, with offices in Houston, The Hauge, and Britain expected to take the biggest hit, the sources told Reuters.

A Shell spokesperson would not comment directly on the layoffs but told Business Insider that, "Shell aims to create more value with less emissions by focusing on performance, discipline and simplification across the business."

"That includes delivering structural operating cost reductions of $2-3 billion by the end of 2025, as announced at our Capital Markets Day event in June 2023," the spokesperson added.

Goldman Sachs plans to lay off more than 1,300 workers, The Wall Street Journal reported

The global investment bank is set to cut hundreds of employees during annual reviews this year, The Wall Street Journal reported, citing people familiar with the situation.

Goldman Sachs is targeting low performers with the intention of laying off between 3% and 4% of its global workforce, equaling somewhere between 1,300 and 1,800 people, according to the outlet.

The cuts are already underway and will continue in the coming months, one person told the outlet. Goldman typically tries to cut anywhere from 2% to 7% of employees each year, per The Journal.

Gwyneth Paltrow's Goop is cutting 18% of staff

Goop is cutting 18% of its 216-person staff, citing a change to its organization, WWD wrote in September. It will now focus on beauty, fashion, and food — specifically its Goop Beauty and good.clean.goop beauty brands, G.Label clothing line, and Goop Kitchen restaurants.

That means it's moving away from wellness, home, travel, and sexual wellness, some of which are categories that once defined the brand.

Samsung plans to cut jobs globally this year, Reuters reported

Samsung is planning to cut jobs this year, a move that will impact workers in the US, Europe, Asia, and Africa, Reuters reported.

The electronic devices maker will cut up to 30% of staff in some divisions, the report says. It is unclear how many jobs will be impacted.

Samsung told Reuters in a statement that the workforce adjustments would not impact its production staff and that no specific targets for the cuts are in place.

Verizon is laying off 4,800 US employees

Verizon is letting go of 4,800 US-based management employees in a voluntary separation program.

The company said in a Securities and Exchange Commission filing that more than half of these employees would exit in September, while the rest will leave by the end of March 2025.

The telecommunications giant expects severance charges to cost as much as $1.9 billion before tax in the third quarter of this year.

General Motors is laying off about 1,700 employees in Kansas

General Motors is laying off 1,695 employees at its Fairfax plant in Kansas, the company said in a Worker Adjustment and Retraining Notification notice in mid-September.

The layoffs will begin in mid-November, and a second phase will continue in January, Reuters reported, citing a GM spokesperson. It is unclear which departments will be affected, but about 1,450 of these employees will be laid off temporarily, the spokesperson said.

In August, the carmaker laid off over 1,000 workers, or 1.3% of its workforce.

The August layoffs came primarily from GM's software and services business, which it had bulked up over the past few years. Last year, the company brought on two former Apple executives to run the unit.

Flexport conducts second round of layoffs in 2024

US logistics startup Flexport is laying off another 2% of its US staff this week as it aims to cut costs and reorganizes its retail delivery business.

The fulfillment center-focused cuts amount to about 40 people and were first reported by The Information, citing an internal memo.

In January, Flexport cut 15% of its staff, or around 400 people. Those cuts came after Flexport founder and CEO Ryan Petersen initiated a 20% reduction of its workforce of an estimated 2,600 employees in October 2023.

Flexport kicked off 2024 with the announcement that it raised $260 million from Shopify and made "massive progress toward returning Flexport to profitability."

NYCB's Flagstar Bank cuts 700 jobs

New York Community Bancorp's Flagstar Bank will cut 8% of its workforce, or 700 jobs, as it aims to revamp its business, the company's CEO, Joseph Otting, said in a statement on October 17.

An additional 1,200 employees will be laid off at the end of the quarter after the company sells its residential mortgage business.

NYCB is also changing its name to Flagstar Financial as part of the turnaround efforts after losses from its commercial real estate portfolio.

Chief, a networking group for female executives, made cuts across the company

Chief, which has positioned itself as the nation's largest network of senior executive women, confirmed to Business Insider on October 20 that it has shed roles.

The company told BI that the cuts, which had already been announced internally, mainly impacted "our technology and administrative functions."

"Like many companies, we are balancing growth and profitability," the spokesperson added.

In a June press release, the American company said 40% of its members were C-suite executives and that they represent more than 10,000 companies.

In April 2023, Chief cut 14% of its workforce in what the founders called a "challenging economic environment," TechCrunch reported at the time.

This January, the company said it would close its London offices — opened one year previously — to refocus on the American market.

Visa will reportedly lay off around 1,400 people

Visa plans to lay off around 1,400 workers this year, The Wall Street Journal reported on October 29.

In a statement provided to BI, a Visa spokesperson said the company expects to grow its workforce for the foreseeable future but that it is continuously evolving to serve clients, innovate, and grow, "which can lead to the elimination of some roles."

"When this happens, we are committed to supporting our employees," the spokesperson added.

Workers affected by layoffs included employees and contractors, with more than 1,000 in technology roles, the Journal reported, citing unnamed sources familiar with the situation. Visa has more than 30,000 employees.

Dropbox is slashing around 20% of its global workforce

The cloud storage company is laying off 528 employees, targeting "over-invested or underperforming" areas, CEO Drew Houston announced in an email sent to employees.

"As CEO, I take full responsibility for this decision and the circumstances that led to it, and I'm truly sorry to those impacted by this change," Houston wrote.

The Dropbox chief cited diminishing demand and macro headwinds in the company's core business, as well as excessive management levels, as contributing factors.

The layoffs come as the company is undergoing a "transitional period" with its growing File Sync and Share (FSS) business and greater efforts on products like Dash, Dropbox's AI-powered work assistant.

KPMG plans to cut nearly 4% of its US audit workforce.

Consulting giant KPMG informed about 330 people, or less than 4%, in its US audit workforce that they would be laid off within the next couple of weeks, a spokesperson told BI.

"The actions reflect our ongoing focus to align the size, shape and skills of our workforce to the market, while addressing continued low levels of attrition," the spokesperson said in a written statement.

This follows an earlier round of layoffs in March, as well as another one last summer, that also affected the company's audit unit, similarly due to low levels of voluntary exits, the spokesperson said.

Nissan said it will slash 9,000 jobs globally.

Japanese automobile giant Nissan said during its November earnings release that it would be cutting 9,000 jobs in an attempt to save money.

The car company reported lower revenue for the period, which it attributed to higher selling and production costs. Nissan said it brought in about 32 million yen, or $208 million, at the end of the first half of the fiscal year — a steep drop from the $1.4 billion it reported for the same time last year.

In addition to a 20% production capacity reduction, CEO Makoto Uchida will give up 50% of his compensation and other executives have taken voluntary pay cuts.

NASA JPL plans to cut about 5% of its workforce.

NASA's Jet Propulsion Laboratory in California is cutting its workforce for the second time this year.

In November, the agency announced it plans to lay off 325 employees, or about 5% of its workforce. The cuts follow a round of layoffs in February, where JPL cut 530 employees.

"Although we can never have perfect insight into the future, I sincerely believe that after this action we will be at a more stable workforce level moving forward," JPL Director Laurie Leshin wrote in a company-wide memo.

Leshin added that the reductions affect all areas of JPL including technical, project, business, and support areas. The layoffs are the result of "continued funding challenges" Leshin wrote.

JPL is responsible for some of NASA's most daring feats like landing the Curiosity rover on Mars and guiding Voyagers 1 and 2 into interstellar space.

Associated Press will lay off 8% of its global staff.

The Associated Press in November announced plans to reduce its staff by 8% through a combination of buyouts and layoffs.

"This is about ensuring AP's important role as the only truly independent news organization at scale during a period of transformation in the media industry," The Associated Press said in a statement about the cuts.

The union representing a portion of AP members indicated 121 of its guild members would be offered buyouts before layoffs began, per AP.

Less than half of the expected cuts will involve news employees, the outlet reported, and though the AP has bureaus around the world, a majority of the staff reduction will occur within the United States.

Sotheby's laid off 100 workers.

Sotheby's cut 100 employees from its New York offices on Tuesday, the company confirmed to multiple publications. The layoffs include back-office workers, junior staffers, and specialists, reports said.

The layoffs come as the auction market has experienced a recent slowdown in sales and earnings. The company also previously cut about 50 employees in its London location, Art News reported.

Sotheby's recently closed a deal in October for Abu Dhabi investment company ADQ to acquire a minority stake in the company. ADQ said in a press release about the deal that the $1 billion investment was meant to support Sotheby's domestic and international expansion plans.

Sotheby's did not immediately respond to a request for comment from BI.

Wells Fargo plans to cut over 700 workers in Oregon.

Wells Fargo filed two WARN notices on December 4 sharing plans to lay off over 700 workers in Oregon, including 500 people from its Hillsboro location and 221 employees from its Salem office. It also plans to shut down both offices.

The company said in its filing that it verbally notified employees of the changes on December 3, and plans to deliver formal notices for displacement in the fourth quarter of 2025. Wells Fargo said it will provide more details on impacted roles at a later time.

Those who don't get relocated into other roles within the business are eligible to receive severance based on years of service and their opportunity to use the company health plan at active rates, the filing said.

"We continue to bring the majority of our non-customer facing positions together in locations best suited for our customers and our company," a Wells Fargo spokesperson told BI. "This effort does not impact our commitment to serving customers and clients."

• There's been a $30 million offer on Sean Combs' Los Angeles mansion.
• The home, listed for $61.5 million, was searched by the feds, who found "freak off" supplies there.
• The lowball offer comes from the same real estate investor who purchased Kanye West's Malibu house.

After more than two months on the market, Sean "Diddy" Combs' Los Angeles mansion has received an offer — and from someone who seems to have a penchant for buying up the homes of hip-hop moguls.

Bo Belmont, the founder of Belwood Investments, offered $30 million for the Holmby Hills mansion, according to a press release. That's less than half of its $61.5 million asking price. The firm has plans for "major renovations," it said in the release.

The real-estate agent representing Combs declined to comment about the offer to Business Insider.

Combs purchased the house in 2014 for $39 million. It is 17,000 square feet, sits on 1.3 acres, and features a wine cellar, gym, theater, basketball court, sauna, and swimming pool, according to the listing. The listing does not show any interior photographs of the home.

The home was searched in March by federal agents, who "seized various Freak Off supplies, including narcotics and more than 1,000 bottles of baby oil and lubricant" from his residences, including this one, the indictment against Combs says.

The mansion is in one of Los Angeles' richest neighborhoods, known for its proximity to Beverly Hills and large lots. The Spelling Estate, just down the road, is on the market for $137.5 million.

The home was put on the market just weeks before Combs' September arrest on federal charges of racketeering conspiracy, sex trafficking, and transportation to engage in prostitution. Combs has pleaded not guilty and repeatedly denied committing sexual assault.

"I want to remove the stigma and focus on the charming elegance of this remarkable property," Belmont said in the release.

Belmont's low-ball offer may not be entirely related to Diddy's legal woes. Luxury real estate in Los Angeles is currently experiencing a major slump, Beverly Hills agent Rochelle Atlas Maize told BI.

"Homes between $15 and $60 million are having a really difficult time," Maize said. "The list at $61.5 million is already kind of high."

Given Diddy's home's "dated" features, Maize estimates it is probably worth between $40 million and $50 million.

Still, the home is one of Combs' largest remaining liquid assets.

Since a series of civil lawsuits was filed against the musician last year, Diddy's business empire has taken hit after hit.

That makes his real estate assets increasingly important. In addition to his Los Angeles home, Combs owns a mansion on Miami's Star Island worth about $48 million, according to assessments submitted as part of a bail package. The home has been offered as collateral in Combs' requests to be released from jail.

Combs owns a private jet, too, which he is trying to offload.

Belwood made headlines earlier this year for purchasing Kanye West's gutted Malibu home, designed by starchitect Tadao Ando. The firm bought the house for $21 million, a significant discount on the asking price of $39 million.

The company allows individual investors to provide capital through an app to purchase properties. They become trustees on those properties until the homes are flipped and resold, at which point they get a piece of the profits. Through the app, individual investors can comment on the renovations.

Combs' home's reputation won't sink its value long-term, Maize said.

She pointed to another scandal-ridden Los Angeles home, the Menendez brothers' seven-bedroom Mediterranean-style villa in Beverly Flats, where the infamous 1989 murder of their parents took place.

The home languished for years on the market before finding a buyer in 1991. Maize, who was personally shopping for homes in Los Angeles at the time, said she wouldn't step foot near it.

"You couldn't give that house away, and now it's like the hottest ticket in town," Maize said, adding that crowds have formed outside the home following the release of Ryan Murphy's Netflix show "Monsters," which depicts the famous trial.

She predicts that the same turn-around will eventually happen for the Diddy mansion.

"It's all negative now, but the smart money knows it's always 'location, location, location,'" Maize said. "Somebody savvy will take the opportunity. It's not a bad play."

• Sean "Diddy" Combs is facing five new sex assault lawsuits, including one involving a minor.
• One lawsuit alleges Combs sexually assaulted a 17-year-old girl at one of his famed white parties.
• Combs' attorney denied the allegations, calling the lawsuits "publicity stunts" by attorney Tony Buzbee.

Sean "Diddy" Combs is facing five new sex assault lawsuits, including one that accuses the hip-hop mogul of sexually assaulting a 17-year-old girl at one of his famed Fourth of July white parties in the Hamptons.

The plaintiff, now an adult only identified in court papers as "Jane Doe" from Texas, alleges in the lawsuit that as a teenage model she wound up at Combs' July 4, 2004 white-themed A-list bash at his Hamptons mansion.

"The event was lavishly decorated, featured live music performances, and boasted top-tier food and beverages — an atmosphere of opulence and luxury, full of celebrities," the lawsuit, filed late Tuesday in New York federal court, says. "Many unsuspecting individuals, like Plaintiff, were recruited to attend these parties."

The woman alleges that while at the party, she was drugged through a laced drink and ultimately lost consciousness.

"When she awoke, Plaintiff's underwear was missing, and she felt throbbing pains in her vaginal and anal areas," the lawsuit says.

The lawsuit alleges that at some point Combs and two of his bodyguards approached the then-teen and threatened her.

"Combs told Plaintiff that she would be in danger if she spoke about what had occurred, stating that he 'ran New York and would ruin her,'" the lawsuit says, adding, "At this point, Plaintiff recognized that at least Combs had sexually assaulted her while she was unconscious. She feared for her life."

The lawsuit does not say how the plaintiff was able to determine Combs was the person who assaulted her.

Erica Wolff, an attorney for Combs, denied the accusations in the lawsuits in a statement to Business Insider on Wednesday. She slammed the Texas attorney behind the latest batch of suits and a slew of others that have been filed against the "I'll Be Missing You" rapper.

"As his legal team has said before, Mr. Combs has full confidence in the facts and the integrity of the judicial process," said Wolff. "In court, the truth will prevail: that Mr. Combs never sexually assaulted or trafficked anyone—man or woman, adult or minor."

Tony Buzbee's law firm has brought more than 20 lawsuits against Combs

Following Combs' September arrest and indictment on federal charges of racketeering conspiracy, sex trafficking, and transportation to engage in prostitution, Texas attorney Tony Buzbee said at a press conference that his firm is representing 120 accusers with sexual misconduct claims against Combs.

Since October, Buzbee's firm has filed more than 20 lawsuits on behalf of anonymous male and female plaintiffs against Combs, with some alleging the drugging and raping of minors. Two of those lawsuits allege that sexual attacks happened at Combs' 1998 and 2006 white parties.

The five new lawsuits lodged this week against Combs, who remains in jail, were among those filed by Buzbee and his firm.

In one of those lawsuits, an unnamed man from Florida alleges he was drugged and raped by Combs at a 2022 house party in Miami where many of the 50 partygoers were "recognizable public figures." The plaintiff said as he lost consciousness, Combs was "wearing a disturbing smile" and told him, "this is what you want."

An unnamed woman alleges in a separate lawsuit that in 2001, when she was 18 years old, she was drugged and ordered by Combs to perform oral sex on his bodyguards and then on him inside a limousine after attending a Halloween party at a Manhattan club.

Another unnamed man alleges in a lawsuit filed this week that in 2001, as an actor auditioning for a role in one of Combs' music videos, he was drugged, anally raped by Combs, and orally raped by a member of his entourage in a New York City hotel room.

The plaintiff, like several others, accuses Combs of using his power in the industry and prominence as a hip-hop mogul to lure him into his orbit.

Another male plaintiff alleges in one of the lawsuits filed this week that in 2022 at a New York City party hosted by Combs, he was drugged and sodomized by Combs.

"Plaintiff, in a state of shock and confusion, forcefully fought Combs off and fled the room, making his way to a nearby bathroom," the lawsuit says.

Buzbee said in a statement posted to his Instagram on Tuesday that he expects to file cases weekly "naming Mr. Combs and others as defendants as we continue to gather evidence and prepare the filings."

Meanwhile, a mystery celebrity accused Buzbee in a lawsuit this week of orchestrating an extortion plot meant to destroy his reputation.

"With Combs behind bars, and payment unlikely to be forthcoming any time soon, Defendants devised a scheme to obtain payments through the use of coercive threats from anyone with any ties to Combs," Monday's lawsuit against Buzbee says.

Buzbee said the lawsuit was "not only without legal merit," but also "laughable."

Wolff, Combs' attorney, told BI on Wednesday, "The extortion lawsuit against Mr. Buzbee exposes his barrage of lawsuits against Mr. Combs for what they are: shameless publicity stunts, designed to extract payments from celebrities who fear having lies spread about them, just as lies have been spread about Mr. Combs."

• CNBC anchors projected an air of mild panic about the news that Comcast would spin off the network.
• The media conglomerate announced it would create a new entity for most of its cable networks.
• Some NBCU insiders worry about the new entity's prospects and potential staff cuts.

CNBC anchors turned their signature irreverent style on themselves on Wednesday as their parent company, Comcast, became a headline in announcing plans to spin off the business-news network along with many other cable assets.

"We're going out into the cold, cruel world," Joe Kernan, a coanchor of "Squawk Box," quipped on air.

It's no secret that the cable business has long been in decline as viewers drift to streaming services. A fellow CNBC anchor, David Faber, came up with an analogy to describe the situation: "We've been on a life raft, and it's kind of been sinking. Now we're all going to be able to swim for ourselves, you know, so it's up to us."

"Maybe we can latch on to a bunch of other people drowning," Kernan replied.

Comcast brass presented the deal, in which it will spin off nearly all of its cable networks into a separate entity headed by Mark Lazarus, now the chairman of NBCUniversal's media group, as a way to grow its remaining businesses while enabling the spun-off networks to consolidate with others.

Bravo, the home of the "Real Housewives" franchises and other reality fare, will remain part of NBCU, along with its film and TV studios, the Universal theme park, the NBC broadcast network, and the streaming service Peacock.

"That Lazarus guy, he's amazing," Faber said, adding that he was "just trying to get on his good side."

Analysts — including those featured on CNBC — didn't hold back on Wednesday about what the spinoff means for the cable network.

"This is them saying we no longer want to be in this business, this is no longer a growth business," Rich Greenfield, a cofounder of LightShed Partners, said of Comcast during a CNBC segment. For CNBC specifically, he said, the question is "can these networks stand on their own?"

"Rich, I think I like you less today," Becky Quick, an anchor on "Squawk Box," responded later in the broadcast.

CNBC's Julia Boorstin laid out questions about the deal, suggesting the so-called SpinCo could make meaningful acquisitions from other media companies in transition, like Warner Bros. Discovery, Paramount, and Starz.

"One of my sources very close to the situation said, 'This isn't the end, this is the beginning,'" she said. "The question is what else does this company acquire, how do they try to squeeze as much revenue as possible from these linear networks, and what do they do with them from a digital perspective in terms of streaming. And what do they do in terms of non-television revenues, things like events, things like communities."

Elsewhere, others inside NBCU had their own questions and concerns about the spinoff.

One question for CNBC folks is whether they'll maintain the prestige and workplace benefits that came with being part of Comcast. There's also a question of what separating MSNBC could mean for NBC News and local NBC stations. MSNBC's left-leaning tilt has sometimes complicated things for straight news-focused NBC News and local NBC stations.

Anxiety was running high among some staffers at CNBC in London, who worried that international offices could be hit first by any cuts in shows or personnel resulting from a spinoff. These people, like some others in the story, spoke on the condition of anonymity for fear of workplace repercussions. Their identities are known to Business Insider.

One concern is that the spinoff could make it harder for NBCU's separate but co-owned news outlets to compete. NBC and CNBC have closely collaborated on reporting about topics like Elon Musk's role in the Trump administration that draws from CNBC's business expertise. NBC also relies on CNBC's sports coverage.

An NBC News staffer told BI that some in the newsroom felt "blindsided" by the news.

"The message has been to integrate as much as possible, so I definitely think this raises a lot of questions about whether that can continue," this person said.

• Nearly one-third of the world's billionaires live in just 15 cities, a new Altrata study says.
• New York City is home to the largest population of the world's uberwealthy.
• Chinese hubs saw their billionaire populations fall as the country battles a weak economy.

For all the talk about the ultrawealthy escaping New York or San Francisco for Jackson Hole and Palm Beach, it turns out billionaires like to stay put — and stick together.

According to Altrata's 2024 Billionaire Census, which examined the high net worth population, 28% of the world's billionaires live in just 15 cities. All of these were also among the most popular for billionaires to live in last year, and most saw their concentration of very rich residents increase.

New York City maintained its position as the city with the most billionaires. The financial capital, which also saw the biggest growth in billionaire residents, has more of them than nearly every country on Earth, apart from the US, China, and Germany.

The three Chinese cities on the list (Beijing, Shenzhen, and Hangzhou) and Hong Kong experienced declines in their billionaire population due to the region's struggling economy and real estate downturn. Political crackdowns on extreme wealth as part of Xi Jinping's push for a "common prosperity" have also led some Chinese billionaires to flee the country, with the most famous being Alibaba cofounder Jack Ma. In total, the country experienced a 14.8% decline in its billionaire population.

India saw its billionaire population grow the most. It's up 15.9% year on year, and the country is now home to 304 billionaires thanks to infrastructure development, a maturing consumer class, and an uptick in Indian stocks.

There are more billionaires in the world than ever before. Altrata reported a total billionaire population of 3,323, up 4% over last year. Billionaire wealth increased 9% to a cumulative $12.1 trillion.

These are the cities that the members of the world's wealthiest class call home.

15. Hangzhou

Billionaire population in 2023: 33

Number of billionaires lost or gained, year over year: -1

12. Istanbul (tie)

Billionaire population in 2023: 34

Number of billionaires lost or gained, year over year: +1

12. São Paulo (tie)

Billionaire population in 2023: 34

Number of billionaires lost or gained, year over year: +1

12. Paris (tie)

Billionaire population in 2023: 34

Number of billionaires lost or gained, year over year: +2

11. Dubai

Billionaire population in 2023: 39

Number of billionaires lost or gained, year over year: +1

10. Mumbai

Billionaire population in 2023: 40

Number of billionaires lost or gained, year over year: +1

9. Shenzhen

Billionaire population in 2023: 41

Number of billionaires lost or gained, year over year: -1

8. Singapore

Billionaire population in 2023: 58

Number of billionaires lost or gained, year over year: +4

7. Beijing

Billionaire population in 2023: 60

Number of billionaires lost or gained, year over year: -2

6. Los Angeles

Billionaire population in 2023: 62

Number of billionaires lost or gained, year over year: +5

5. Moscow

Billionaire population in 2023: 77

Number of billionaires lost or gained, year over year: +1

4. London

Billionaire population in 2023: 78

Number of billionaires lost or gained, year over year: +3

3. San Francisco

Billionaire population in 2023: 87

Number of billionaires lost or gained, year over year: +3

2. Hong Kong

Billionaire population in 2023: 107

Number of billionaires lost or gained, year over year: -5

1. New York City

Billionaire population in 2023: 144

Number of billionaires lost or gained, year over year: +9