Forbes Daily Briefing

Hosted by Forbes

News

RSS feed

Episodes

Latest episode

Jun 2026

Language

About the show

The Forbes Daily Briefing shares the best of Forbes reporting on wealth, business, entrepreneurship, leadership and more. Tune in every day, seven days a week, to hear a new story. The Daily Briefing is edited, produced and hosted by Kieran Meadows.

Listen to episodes

13 recent

June 16, 20266 min

The Nerdy Escorts Cashing In On Silicon Valley’s AI Boom

In 2024, Meida Marek (her online pseudonym), was a recent college graduate working an entry-level finance job when she started doing the mental math that’s fast becoming a rite of passage in such industries: What happens when AI can do this better than I can? So Marek took inventory. She was intelligent and naturally supportive. She was good at talking to people. She likes futurist rabbit holes: AI, biohacking, cryptocurrency, the sort of topics that can turn dinner into a three-hour debate. So she decided to turn that toolkit into a new career—and became an escort. For Marek, it’s sex work with a particular angle: high-end companionship for Silicon Valley’s most online, most technical clients—often the kind who work in AI or around it. Lately, she’s been getting a lot of clients from Nvidia. There are only a handful of women like Marek. And like their clientele, they are also killing it financially. By Anna Tong, Forbes Staff Learn more about your ad choices. Visit megaphone.fm/adchoices

June 15, 20266 min

The Highest-Paid Players At The 2026 World Cup

There are many firsts at this year’s FIFA World Cup. For the first time in the tournament’s 96-year history, there will be 48 teams. It’s also the first World Cup to be held across three countries (the United States, Canada and Mexico), in a record 16 cities. And it will be the first to feature a billionaire player—actually two—with 41-year-old Cristiano Ronaldo captaining Portugal and 38-year-old Lionel Messi leading Argentina in its title defense. Then again, with ticket prices in the stratosphere, billionaires may be the only ones who can afford to attend. FIFA recently listed a ticket for the July 19 final at New Jersey’s MetLife Stadium for $32,970, triple the price from a ticket drop in April—and more than 20 times what the equivalent ticket cost for the 2022 final in Qatar. And even the world’s richest might have to think twice about buying tickets on the secondary market. In April, FIFA’s resale site listed four seats to the final for a little less than $2.3 million each. (Section 124, Row 45, Seats 33-36, if you’re scalping at home.) By Brett Knight, Assistant Managing Editor Learn more about your ad choices. Visit megaphone.fm/adchoices

June 14, 20266 min

America's Richest Self-Made Women 2026

Rocket ships. AI chips. Chinese food. Clothing. Construction. Chatbots. America’s self-made women billionaires have found dozens of ways to prosper. In our first listing focusing just on those with 10-figure fortunes, Forbes found 43 self-made queens of capitalism, up from 38 a year ago as many of their businesses hit new highs. That’s despite the passing of two legendary women, Gap cofounder Doris Fisher (d. May 2026 at age 94) and Bio-Rad Laboratories' Alice Schwartz (d. September 2025, 99). Among the new billionaires are Beyonce Carter-Knowles, who climbs into the ranks on the back of her 2025 Cowboy Carter Tour; Nvidia CFO Colette Kress, who’s benefitting from the AI boom; Caryn Seidman-Becker, who runs Clear Secure, an ID technology outfit used for security checkpoints at airports, among other places; and Luana Lopes Lara, the 30-year-old Brazilian ballerina and MIT graduate who cofounded prediction market firm Kalshi. Edited by Andrea Murphy and Grace Chung Learn more about your ad choices. Visit megaphone.fm/adchoices

June 13, 20266 min

Why Selling Your SpaceX Shares Too Quickly Could Cost You

“I am so sick of hearing about SpaceX,” says Phil DeAngelo, managing director of Focused Wealth Management, a registered investment advisor with $2.4 billion of assets under management. Then he laughs. “We’re getting a lot of questions from clients.” For many investors, this isn’t just another IPO. It’s a rare chance to buy into one of the world’s most closely watched private companies. SpaceX has said roughly 30% of its IPO shares will be allocated to retail investors, far above the 5% to 10% allocation that typically goes to individual investors. Investors aren't just talking about SpaceX. They're lining up for it. Reports suggest demand for the offering is approaching four times the number of shares available. That could translate into a big price bump on the first day of trading, which will tempt some everyday investors into selling quickly – and potentially encountering a little-known Wall Street rule. Many brokerages discourage “IPO flipping,” or selling newly allocated shares shortly after trading begins, by restricting access to future offerings. By Brandon Kochkodin, Senior Writer Learn more about your ad choices. Visit megaphone.fm/adchoices

June 12, 20266 min

SpaceX Left California. Its IPO Payday Did Not.

Elon Musk loudly quit California after years of attacking its taxes, politics and business climate, moving SpaceX to Texas. Now the biggest fiscal event of his career could hand the state he trashed a giant tax windfall anyway. That is the awkward punchline hanging over SpaceX’s expected IPO next week. Because while the company’s relocation gave it a new Texas headquarters, it did not move the thousands of soon-to-be-wealthy SpaceX employees who still live and work in the Los Angeles area, and will face California’s so-called millionaires' tax. Texas, which doesn’t tax personal income, won’t get that bump. SpaceX is preparing to sell 555.6 million shares at $135 apiece, raising about $75 billion and valuing the company at roughly $1.77 trillion. For investors, that is a Mars-shot valuation. For California, it is something more terrestrial: taxable income landing in Los Angeles County. By Alan Ohnsman, Senior Editor Learn more about your ad choices. Visit megaphone.fm/adchoices

June 11, 20266 min

Inside Dana White’s $60 Million Plan To Stage UFC Freedom 250 At The White House

Jimmy Carter hosted an ice skating exhibition at the White House, and George W. Bush once staged a friendly game of T-ball at 1600 Pennsylvania Avenue, but the prospect of mixed martial arts fights on the South Lawn would have never arisen if anyone other than Donald Trump were president and anyone other than Dana White ran the UFC. When Trump, a longtime fan of the fight promotion and steadfast friend to its chief executive, first suggested the idea to White at a UFC event last April, the pugnacious promoter said he would do it without hesitation. “He knows the day he asked me to do this event that I was going to show up and deliver,” White tells Forbes. “I love that type of stuff. Tell me it can’t be done, tell me it’s a huge challenge, tell me it’s going to cost us a bunch of money. Tell me this, that. That’s the stuff that I run right into.” White’s tenure with the UFC has been defined by audacious risk-taking, propelling the company over the last 25 years from a bloody sideshow into a $1.5 billion (revenue) sports powerhouse. But Freedom 250 on June 14 (not coincidentally President Trump’s birthday) is, even by his standards, “difficult on a whole other level.” In addition to the 4,300-seat outdoor venue that has now been erected on the South Lawn—and its 87-foot canopy, which towers above the White House itself—the weekend will include a press conference at the Lincoln Memorial and a two-day fan fest for as many as 85,000 people at the Ellipse. (The president likes the temporary structure so much he compared it to the Eiffel Tower, saying this week, “Maybe we’ll never, ever take it down.”) Because the UFC controls its own TV productions, it will pick up the tab for not only the infrastructure but also the broadcasts, with nine production trucks’ worth of equipment and crew. By Matt Craig, Reporter Learn more about your ad choices. Visit megaphone.fm/adchoices

June 10, 20266 min

How Nabis Became The Amazon Prime Of The Cannabis Industry

In a windowless room in a rented warehouse in Oakland in 2019, Nabis cofounders Vince C. Ning and Jun Sup Lee, a few of their employees and a friend they met at the startup accelerator Y Combinator, Luana Lopes Lara(who would go on to cofound prediction market Kalshi and become one of the world’s youngest self-made billionaires), were counting $2 million in cash by hand. The money was earmarked for marijuana excise taxes in California. San Francisco-based Nabis had recently launched as a cannabis distributor during the medical marijuana heyday of the country’s biggest weed market and it was Ning and Lee’s job to collect and pay taxes on the product they delivered to retailers. The duo had hired an armed guard to watch the door. Once the cash was counted, banded and bagged, Ning put the money into two suitcases, $1 million in each, threw on a Hawaiian shirt—he thought he was less likely to get mugged if he looked like a tourist, but in the end he looked more like a scrawny narco-wannabe—and headed to the state government building to deliver the money. By Will Yakowicz, Forbes Staff Learn more about your ad choices. Visit megaphone.fm/adchoices

June 9, 20267 min

Meet The 25-Year-Old Vying To Become Hollywood’s First AI Movie Mogul

In years past, when a great athlete retired, they typically told their story through a ghost-written memoir or perhaps even a biopic. But Hall of Fame basketball player Carmelo Anthony opted instead for the storytelling medium of the moment, striking a partnership with Utopai Studios, the Silicon Valley-based startup specializing in AI movies and TV shows. The 41-year-old NBA legend will produce AI-generated video content about his life and other sports stories through his Creative 7 Productions label. Anthony’s investment into Utopai—which both sides declined to share the size of, but Forbes estimates around $5 million—was at a staggering $1 billion valuation. It’s an astronomical amount for a company with revenue that Forbes estimates was less than $50 million in 2025, and has yet to put out a full-length movie or TV show. Still, with projects in the pipeline and strong 2026 projections, the premium price tag announces Utopai as a true competitor in the ongoing Hollywood AI arms race. By Matt Craig, Reporter Learn more about your ad choices. Visit megaphone.fm/adchoices

June 8, 20266 min

Why Now Is The Time For James Dolan To Sell A Stake In The Knicks

As New York celebrates the Knicks’ first trip to the NBA finals since 1999, controlling owner James Dolan has earned a newfound respect among the franchise’s notoriously critical fan base. And soon, the 71-year-old billionaire hopes to command the same respect from another tough crowd: stock market investors. For years, the value of publicly traded Madison Square Garden Sports—the entity through which Dolan owns both the Knicks and the Rangers, the city’s NHL team—has lagged far behind Forbes’ valuation of the two franchises. MSG Sports has an enterprise value of $9.9 billion while Forbes values the Knicks at $9.75 billion and the Rangers at $4 billion in the latest team valuations. Among New York sports fans, who have suffered through decades of mediocre play on the court and the ice, this gap has often been referred to as the “Dolan discount,” equating his mismanagement of the teams to a lack of business savvy. But historically, there has often been a loose connection between sports team values and how many games a team wins—let alone how many championships. In the first 20 years of Dolan’s tenure, the Knicks had the worst cumulative winning percentage of any team in the NBA yet led Forbes’ ranking as the most valuable franchise 16 times. Similarly, the Dallas Cowboys haven’t won a Super Bowl since 1996 but remain the NFL’s most valuable team (at $13 billion) while the Kansas City Chiefs, who have won three titles in the past seven years, are the 22nd-most-valuable franchise in the league. By Matt Craig, Reporter Learn more about your ad choices. Visit megaphone.fm/adchoices

June 7, 20266 min

How The Iran War Oil Shock Is Helping Launch A Market For Electric Tugboats

The next hot electric vehicle may not come with gullwing doors, a self-driving mode or the ability to provide backup power to your home. It may be an 80-foot tugboat, nearly four stories tall, built to pull massive cargo ships around the Port of Long Beach. That’s the bet Arc is making. The Los Angeles startup, cofounded by software engineer Mitch Lee and former SpaceX rocket designer Ryan Cook, launched their electric boat startup to target the luxury watercraft market, selling sleek, fast $300,000 e-boats for wealthy weekenders. Now, with oil prices at historic highs, it’s pushing into the commercial marine space with $20 million battery-powered tugs capable of pulling ginormous cargo ships into container ports. It’s an opportunistic, timely shift from polished recreational toys to industrial machines with brutal duty cycles, big fuel bills and regulators at the door. Arc’s first commercial boats, being built at a Seattle-area shipyard, are already heading toward proof of concept. Its tech is being used to power the world’s first electric tugs that are about to go into service at the Port of Long Beach, under a deal worth $160 million announced in late 2025. If they perform as well as Arc and initial customer Curtin Maritime expect, the company aims to expand into electric ferries, barges and even military watercraft, CTO Cook told Forbes. By Alan Ohnsman, Senior Editor Learn more about your ad choices. Visit megaphone.fm/adchoices

Is this your show?

Claim this listing to keep it up to date, reach guests who want to pitch you, and manage bookings with Guestify.

Claim this listing