If it seems like it’s getting more expensive to replace a broken door, kitchen fixtures, or upgrade a major appliance, youre not wrong.
The cost of home repair and remodeling projects is up compared to a year ago and running ahead of inflation overall, according to a report from data analytics company Verisk.
The firm’s latest Repair and Remodeling Index jumped 3.4% in the April-June quarter compared to the same period last year. That’s a bigger annual increase than the 2.7% rise in inflation in the same period, as measured by the Consumer Price index.
The index, which tracks costs for more than 10,000 home improvement products, including appliances, doors, plumbing, and windows, showed a roughly 0.6% increase from the January-March quarter.
While costs did continue to rise, they rose at a slower rate than in the first quarter,” said Greg Pyne, vice president of Pricing at Verisk Property Estimating Solutions.
Much of the increase in home repair and remodeling costs appears to be driven primarily by higher labor costs for repair and remodeling work, Verisk noted.
The second-quarter jump in costs for home improvement products coincided with the Trump administrations broad rollout of tariffs on imported goods from many of the nations major trading partners. But the tariffs didn’t have the expected impact given they were postponed several times and didn’t fully take effect until early August, midway through the third quarter.
However, homeowners looking to replace cabinetry could soon see prices increase sharply, following a new volley of tariffs announced by President Donald Trump last week that includes a 50% import tax on kitchen cabinets and bathroom vanities due to kick in on Wednesday. John Lovallo, an analyst with UBS, estimates the tariffs on cabinets and vanities could add roughly $280 to the cost of a home.
The most labor-intensive types of home repair or remodeling work registered the biggest quarterly increases in labor costs. For example, the cost of replacing tile flooring rose 1.2%, while the cost of remodeling a primary bath or replacing vinyl siding each rose 1% in the April-June period from the previous quarter.
Nearly all of the 31 categories of repair and remodeling work tracked by Verisk saw costs increase at least slightly.
The latest index puts costs for repair and remodeling at almost 62% higher than they were 10 years ago and more than 73% higher than the first quarter of 2013, when the index debuted.
After declining the past two years, homeowner spending on maintenance and home improvement projects increased in the first half of this year, according to researchers at Harvard University.
The universitys Joint Center for Housing Studies most recent leading indicator of remodeling activity, or LIRA, estimates spending hit $510 billion in the second quarter, a 1.8% increase from a year earlier. However, the researchers project that growth in spending on home improvement and maintenance will slow in 2026, citing weakness in the housing market and slower construction of new homes.
The housing market has been in a slump since 2022, when mortgage rates began climbing from historic lows. Sales of previously occupied U.S. homes sank last year to their lowest level in nearly 30 years. And, so far this year, sales are running below where they were at this time in 2024.
Alex Veiga, AP business writer
Curing cancer. Reducing carbon emissions. Maximizing business efficiency. To achieve all this and develop untold social goods, artificial intelligence accelerationsts at companies like Google, Meta, and OpenAI believe their industry has a duty to speed ahead towards superintelligence, or AI thats far superior to humans at most tasks. Key to that revolution will be the build-out of data centers.
Meanwhile, a technical transformation of the workplace already appears to be underway. The nations largest employer, Walmart, said that because of its AI implementation, hiring will remain flat over the next three years even if revenues rise. Every businessnot just the big oneswill eventually reckon with some version of that transformation. Whoever wields the technology best will get an edge. Regulators, in turn, must find forward-looking ways of controlling the excesses of the winners while mitigating the hardship of the losersand fast.
Sen. Mark Kelly fears that the biggest losers could be working-class people. The Arizona Democrats AI for America plan, arguably the most comprehensive Democratic answer to the Trump administrations pro-industry AI Action Plan, would create an industry-financed AI Horizon Fund to pay for energy-grid upgrades and workforce reskilling.
But while Kellys plan is admirable …
it dodges the policy specifics necessary for real legislation. He also fails to grasp certain economic and political realities of the AI industry and its players. And the federal government, as it heads for a shutdown, seems far from capable of passing any thoughtful AI legislation.
Here, we attempt to fill in these gaps.
Data centers everywhere
The AI models poised to reshape business practices reside on servers humming away in the dark within massive single-story buildings called data centers.
New data centers represent the most tangible sign of the so-called AI boom. Most estimates say that there are more than 500 hyperscale data centers, housing tens or hundreds of thousands of servers, in operation in the U.S. today. Between 50 and 100 more are either licensed or under construction in 2025.
Kellys home state of Arizona is regarded as one of the most attractive places for data center projects because of the low cost, reliable power, affordable land, easy permitting, and tax incentives. (Apple, Google, Microsoft, and Amazon Web Services (AWS) already have data centers there.)
States compete to attract data center projects. They come at a cost. Over the past five years, 10 states have already lost more than $100 million per year to data center tax abatements, with Texas and Virginia each giving away roughly $1 billion, according to a study by Good Jobs First, an economic development policy advocacy group.
According to the study, a total of 32 states offer such exemptions to Big Tech companies and their partners; 12 states dont disclose the exemption amounts, which makes calculating a national total difficult. But its in the billions, and climbing. Whether all this investment truly delivers in the long run remains unclear.
The infrastructure gap
All this is causing Arizona citizens to ask more about these projects. In August, Tucson rejected Project Blue, a proposal to build a 290-acre AWS data center near the city. They cited concerns over water use, the potential burden on the local power grid, and the possibility of spiking electricity rates to fund additional power infrastructure. Deloitte estimates that the power demand from AI data centers in the U.S. could grow to about 123 gigawatts by 2035, up from roughly 4 gigawatts required in 2024.
The problem is that the existing power grid was built to serve households and businesses, not legions of sprawling data centers. When a new one goes up, the local or regional energy supplier typically must augment the capacity of the grid to meet the demand. And those infrastructure costs are often passed on to residents through rate hikes or tax increases. Those same tax increases and electricity rate hikes could hit businesses in the area, including small businesses.
Who should pay?
Kelly believes that AI companies should pay for energy infrastructure upgrades necessitated by data center power demand. But his proposal offers no mechanism for metering the AI companies financial obligation or amount they should pay into the fund for infrastructure augmentation.
Making this workable would require working with utilities and state and local energy regulators to determine a fair fee. To pay for infrastructure upgrades, Kelly could require a small but significant percentage of every megawatt of power purchased by the data center operator to go into a hypothetical fund.
Congress could also require data center developers to buy or lease enough land to contain both their facilities and the renewable energy infrastructure to power and cool them. The data center operators could also be required to pay to connect the renewable sources to the local grid, should the power they generate go unutilized. Elon Musks xAI, for example, brought its own power to its massive Colossus data center in Memphis. Unfortunately, it was dirty powermethane-powered turbines, and the facility quickly became one of the areas biggest pollutersa cautionary tale.
For a city and its utility, the biggest fear is that an AI data center could pick up and leave, in pursuit of more permissive environmental laws or cheaper power rates, leaving behind an empty hulk and suddenly unemployed local workers. Establishing federal-level environmental guidelines and power-grid responsibilities could remove some of the incentives to leave, forcing data-center operators to consider that at least some of those costs would be the same no matter where they went.
Reskilling, but make it AI
Tech companies often say that in their ideal world, humans will work in tandem with AI tools, and that new jobs will emerge that require some skill with these technologies as old ones are eliminated. Arriving at the right balance will likely take years. Because of the ongoing, rapid advances in AI, the process may never truly end.
In the near term, the biggest beneficiaries are likely to be the companies selling the tools. Kelly argues, reasonably, that the AI companies should help pay for the costs of job displacement and reskilling workers. He suggests that the AI Horizon Fund be used to pay for AI education programs at community colleges, trade schools, and universities.
Kelly also believes that the government should pass laws to make sure that workers themselves benefit from AI efficiencies. This could mean reimagining what the workweek looks like, as well as policies to strengthen worker bargaining power through stronger union representation.
In the early days of the internet, collectors traded rare whiskey and wine on eBay alongside Beanie Babies and vintage sneakers. But then, in 1999, six months after closing down firearm sales, eBay announced they would ban the sale of alcohol and tobacco products as well.
“As a general rule, these laws are just so complex and contradictory, that we just decided that in the best interest of our users to prevent that situation from ever occurring,” then-spokesman Kevin Pursglove said.
More than 25 years later and almost a century after the end of Prohibition, the regulatory environment is no less forgiving, and the resale of spirits online has been scattered across niche forums, gray-market Facebook groups, and high-end houses like Christies, Sothebys and Bonhams.
The patchwork of U.S. liquor laws
Domestic laws are complex. Six states still ban retail spirits sales on Sundays, to start. Seventeen operate as control states with a government monopoly on liquor sales. And while 47 states allow wineries to ship directly to consumers, only 11 extend that same privilege to distillers, according to the Distilled Spirits Council of the United States. Industry groups have shepherded a bill into Congress that would give the USPS authority to mail alcoholic beverages, but a final vote could take years.
Few competitors have cracked this market. BAXUS uses blockchain for tokenized bottle trading, while U.K.-based Whisky.auction, Whisky Auctioneer, and Whisky Hammer focus outside the U.S. Good Bottle Auctions, based in Connecticut, sticks to the Northeast with in-person delivery.
But since launching in 2020, a company called Unicorn has expanded to serve the continental U.S., logging over six million bids across half a million lots, totaling $125 million in sales. Its Chicago vault holds more than $100 million in inventory, with weekly and monthly auctions that ship purchases to pickup locations nationwide.
Sothebys vs. Unicorn
CEO Phil Mikhaylov, who previously worked at UberEats and delivery startup GoPuff, frames Unicorns speed and scale as a direct extension of that background. He says that most legacy auction houses top out at a few hundred lots per week, while Unicorn regularly clears thousands.
I think what you see at other auction housessay, a Sothebysis they might have roughly 300 lots in an auction every single week. We’re doing, on a bad week, 3000 lots. On average, we’re doing 4000 to 5000 a week, Mikhaylov says.
Unicorn CEO Phil Mikhaylov [Photo: Unicorn]
Sothebys, for the record, did $114 million in spirits and wine sales in 2024a slump from their record of $159 million the year before.
At this point, we sell $12 million of whiskey per week, Mikhaylov said in an interview earlier this year with their newly acquired (and renamed) in-house magazine, the Unicorn Review.
Whats happened is that weve become effectively a redistribution platform. A bottle thats selling for $50 in Chicago might have $200 of value to someone in New Mexico.
Unicorn has spent yearsand millions of dollarsbuilding the framework to do so. As of 2025, they have 12 dropoff points across the country, which then link out to a handful of vans that drive across the region, all eventually relaying bottles back to their Chicago processing facility. Sellers can hand off their bottles, and buyers can drive out to any of the facilities, or go through Unicorn for delivery.
For legal reasons, Unicorn (a licensed retailer) must take possession of every bottle and bring it to its central Chicago location. There, an authentication and appraisal team runs each one through what may be the most robust spirits-resale database in the industry, producing estimates that cover everything from a 1982 Chateau Lafite Rothschild Bordeaux to a jug of Jose Cuervo.
I tested the system by submitting four bottles for appraisal online. The sheet broke down batch numbers, year, and proof, and offered estimates within a few dollars of their eventual sale price. After handing the bottles off the next week in-person, they were on auction by Sunday: one sold $5 below estimate, another $5 above, and the other two squarely within range. Mikhaylov credits the accuracy to their in-house tracking software and the size of their data set.
A data-driven bar cart
Digitizing that many bottles was slow at first, but after five years (and some AI integration), the system has basically been perfected. Bottles are scanned, authenticated, photographed in 360 degrees, and logged into the vault. Customers using Unicorn for storage pay 25 cents per bottle per month and can check their inventory online at any time.
[Photo: Unicorn]
Storage complements sales: Mikhaylov says that many collectors were looking for a solution to manage their treasure troves, often resorting to home-brewed spreadsheets and lists. Now, whales might have their entire collection picked up, palletized, digitized, and tracked onlineready for observation, admiration, or sale at auction.
If they do decide to sell, payouts are delivered in 10 days or less, minus $5 per bottle and 5% commission (buyers pay a 15% premium). Compared to traditional auction houses, which often require weeks or even over a month to process consignments and payout sellers, thats fast.
The idea began during the pandemic. Mikhaylovs cofounder, Cody Modeer, found himself unable to auction bottles from his shuttered bar; traditional houses dismised his inventory as too low-value. Meanwhile, Mikhaylov was searching for a way to digitize and manage spirits collections, allowing collectors to drop off bottles anywhere in the country and track them remotely.
There wasnt a modern platform that was meeting the demands of today’s consumer: something that made it easy to drop off, to sell, or to manage a collection, Mikhaylov says.
This is meeting the demands of that consumer. 70% of our clientele that signed up this year have been Gen Z and millennial. For the younger demographic, its all about transparency and speed . . . Think of us like Kelly Blue Book, but for your bar cart.
U.S. stocks are coasting toward the finish of Wall Streets latest winning month on Tuesday.
The S&P 500 fell 0.2% in afternoon trading but remains on track for a fifth straight winning month after setting a record last week. The Dow Jones Industrial Average was down 145 points, or 0.3%, as of 1:43 p.m. Eastern time, and the Nasdaq composite was 0.3% lower.
Oil-related companies weighed on the market after the price of crude fell again as traders see too much oil washing around the world. Schlumberger fell 3.8%, and Halliburton dropped 3%.
They helped offset a 12.7% jump for CoreWeave, which said Meta Platforms will pay up to $14.2 billion for a new order for cloud computing power made under its existing service agreement, with the potential for more.
Treasury yields eased in the bond market following a couple mixed reports on the U.S. economy. One said consumers are feeling less confident than economists expected, with many respondents in the Conference Board’s survey pointing to the slowing job market and inflation that has remained higher than anyone would like.
A second report suggested the job market may be remaining in its low-hire, low-fire state. U.S. employers were advertising roughly the same number of job openings at the end of August as the month before. The hope on Wall Street had been for a number that’s neither too high nor too low, one balanced enough to keep the Federal Reserve on track to continue cutting interest rates.
The Fed just delivered its first cut of the year, and officials have penciled in more through the end of next year to give the job market a boost. If data on jobs come in too strong, it could make the Fed less willing to cut rates. If the numbers are too weak, meanwhile, they could mean a recession is coming.
Either extreme would hurt the stock market, which has run to records from a low in April in large part on expectations that the Fed will cut rates several times. The stock market is already facing heavy criticism for being too expensive after prices ran so high.
Another potential wild card is hanging over the market, meanwhile. The U.S. government seems to be heading toward a shutdown at the end of the day following another political impasse in Washington.
The economy and stock market have made it through past shutdowns without much wear, and many economists and professional investors feel relatively OK about another one. The S&P 500 has climbed an average of 4.4% during past shutdowns and is positive over the last five, according to Monica Guerra, head of U.S. policy at Morgan Stanley Wealth Management.
The timing of this potential shutdown, though, would likely cause delays for several important economic reports. That includes a release due on Friday about how many jobs U.S. employers created and destroyed in September.
That could make Wall Street twitchier when investors are already nervous about the state of the economy and what that means for the potential for cuts to rates. The Department of Labor has already said that the Bureau of Labor Statistics will completely cease operations if theres a lapse.
On Wall Street, Spotify Technology sank 6.4% after the Stockholm-based streaming giant said its founder, Daniel Ek, is stepping down as CEO to become the executive chairman. Two of his lieutenants will replace him as co-CEOs: Chief Product and Technology Officer Gustav Söderström and Chief Business Officer Alex Norström.
Lamb Weston jumped 4.1% after the supplier of frozen French fries and other potato products reported a stronger profit for the latest quarter than analysts expected.
In stock markets abroad, indexes ticked higher in Europe following a mixed finish in Asia.
In the bond market, the yield on the 10-year Treasury eased to 4.14% from 4.15% late Monday.
Stan Choe, AP business writer
AP Business Writers Yuri Kageyama and Matt Ott contributed.
U.S. consumer confidence declined again in September as Americans pessimism over inflation and the weakening job market continued to grow.
The Conference Board said Tuesday that its consumer confidence index fell by 3.6 points to 94.2 in September, down from Augusts 97.8. Thats a bigger drop than analysts were expecting and the lowest reading since April, when President Donald Trump rolled out his sweeping tariff policy.
A measure of Americans short-term expectations for their income, business conditions and the job market fell to 73.4, remaining well below 80, the marker that can signal a recession ahead. Consumers assessments of their current economic situation dipped by 7 points to 125.4.
Write-in responses to the survey showed that references to prices and inflation rose this month, regaining its top position as consumers main concern about the economy. Mentions of tariffs declined this month but remain elevated, the Conference Board said.
Government data released earlier this month showed that inflation rose in August as the price of gas, groceries, and airfares jumped.
Consumer prices increased 2.9% last month from a year earlier, the Labor Department said, up from 2.7% the previous month and the biggest jump since January. Excluding the volatile food and energy categories, core prices rose 3.1%, the same as in July.
While unemployment and layoffs remain historically low, there has been noticeable deterioration in the labor market this year and mounting evidence that people are having difficulty finding jobs.
Earlier this month, the government reported that U.S. nonfarm employers added a paltry 22,000 jobs in August, following Julys disappointing 79,000 job gains. Worse, revisions to the May and June figures shaved 258,000 jobs off previous estimates. The unemployment rate stands at 4.3%, the highest since October 2021.
Also Tuesday, the Labor Department reported that U.S. job openings in August remained at 7.2 million, about the same as the previous month.
In addition to the lingering effects of 11 interest rate hikes by the Federal Reserves inflation fighters in 2022 and 2023, economists say the recent hiring slump may also be a result of Trumps policies, including his sweeping and ever-changing tariffs on imports, a crackdown on illegal immigration and purges of the federal workforce.
Many companies are locked in a no hire, no fire position, fearful of expanding payrolls until the effects of Trumps tariffs are more clear.
More jobs data comes Friday when the government releases its September labor market data, with analysts forecasting 50,000 job gains. However, that report could be postponed if a budget impasse in Congress leads to a government shutdown Wednesday.
The share of consumers expecting a recession over the next year rose modestly in September to the highest level since May.
Survey respondents who said they intended to buy a new or used car in the near future fell, while the share of those saying they planned to purchase a home rose to a four-month high.
Those saying they planned to buy big-ticket items like appliances were little changed from August with big variations across categories.
Matt Ott, AP business writer
The stat that women receive less than 2% of VC funding is often citedbut that figure tells only part of the story. Angel investors, non-dilutive grants, and other funding methods are shifting the landscape for women and other underrepresented foundersespecially at a time when DEI initiatives are in peril. This panel explores how investors are closing the funding gap and what you should know to get the capital you need.
Matcha drinks continue to challenge coffees dominance as the caffeinated beverage of choice. In the U.S., retail sales of matcha are up 86% from three years ago, according to market research firm NIQ. The drinks increasing popularity, particularly among Gen Z consumers, has resulted in shortages and supply-chain issues.
But when a recent Instagram reel that went viral suggested consuming Matcha might be contributing to hair loss, panic ensued. Can I unsee this post? one wrote. WHY DOES THE INTERNET HAVE TO RUIN EVERYTHING, another protested.
Soon, others were sharing similar alleged experiences. When you realise that the matcha youve been drinking every morning is the reason your hair is falling out, one woman on TikTok wrote.
Can it be true? Has the bright green beverage weve been told helps alleviate stress, enhances our immune systems, and supports our health, been a secret saboteur all along?
Like most health-related posts online, the truth is more complicated than a viral TikTok would have you believe, and comes with a whole host of caveats.
The good news: No, your daily matcha habit is not going to directly cause hair loss. The viral claims aren’t backed by any clinical research, Dr. Divpreet Sacha at Her Holistic Health told Fast Company. In fact, studies show the oppositegreen tea and matcha may actually help with hair growth because of their antioxidants.
Matcha might, however, affect iron levels, which may contribute to extra shedding.
The confusion probably comes from the fact that green tea can reduce iron absorption if you drink it with meals, Dr. Sacha continued. But there’s no evidence this leads to hair loss. You’d need a serious, long-term iron deficiency for that to happen, which isn’t caused by normal matcha drinking.
Matcha contains tannins and other polyphenols, which can bind to iron in the digestive tract and reduce its absorption by the body. One woman even claimed her iron levels got so low from drinking matcha she ended up in hospital. RIP to my matcha obsession era, she wrote.
Sacha added, People drinking 1-2 cups of matcha a day have nothing to worry about. If someone already has low iron, they should just avoid drinking it right before or after iron-rich meals, basic nutrition advice, not a hair loss warning.
Matcha isnt the only popular drink with tannins. Theyre present in many common drinks, including red wine, coffee, and other types of tea. Hair loss also can be caused by a number of other culprits, including insufficient protein intake and other deficiencies.
Fear not, for those with a balanced diet and healthy iron levels: Your morning matcha is back on the menu.
A federal judge agreed Monday to temporarily suspend the Trump administration’s plan to eliminate hundreds of jobs at the agency that oversees Voice of America (VOA), the government-funded broadcaster founded to counter Nazi propaganda during World War II.
U.S. District Judge Royce Lamberth in Washington, D.C., ruled that the U.S. Agency for Global Media cannot implement a reduction in force eliminating 532 jobs for full-time government employees on Tuesday. Those employees represent the vast majority of its remaining staff.
Kari Lake, the agencys acting CEO, announced in late August that the job cuts would take effect Tuesday. But the judge’s ruling preserves the status quo at the agency until he rules on a plaintiffs’ underlying motion to block the reduction in force.
Lamberth previously ruled that President Donald Trumps Republican administration must restore VOA programming to levels commensurate with its statutory mandate to serve as a consistently reliable and authoritative source of news. He also blocked Lake from removing Michael Abramowitz as VOAs director.
Judge cites concerning disrespect toward the court from the administration
Lamberth accused the administration of showing concerning disrespect toward the court in response to his earlier orders to produce information about its plans for Voice of America. He noted that the agency initiated the job cuts only hours after a hearing last month in which government lawyers said a reduction in force, or RIF, was merely a possibility.
The defendants obfuscation of this Courts request for information regarding whether their RIF plans comported with the preliminary injunction has wasted precious judicial time and resources and readily support contempt proceedings, Lamberth wrote.
But he said he wouldnt initiate contempt proceedings on his own because the plaintiffs havent sought it yet.
However, (the courts) deference to the plaintiffs with respect to further proceedings should not be mistaken for lenience toward the defendants egregious erstwhile conduct, he added.
Employees who sued to block the dismantling of Voice of America claimed the planned cuts would hamper the judges ability to enforce the injunction he issued in April. This Court should therefore preserve the status quo while the parties litigate compliance, their attorneys wrote.
Government lawyers accused the plaintiffs of impermissibly trying to micromanage the agencys operations. Enjoining the reductions in force would be a wholly overbroad and improper remedy, they wrote.
Lamberth, a senior judge, was nominated to the bench by Republican President Ronald Reagan in 1987.
Can the media agency continue to fulfill its statutory mission?
The U.S. Agency for Global Media also houses Radio Free Europe/Radio Liberty, Radio Free Asia, Middle East Broadcasting Networks and Radio Marti, which beams Spanish-language news into Cuba. The networks, which together reach an estimated 427 million people, date to the Cold War and are part of a network of government-funded organizations trying to extend U.S. influence and combat authoritarianism.
Congress appropriated $875 million to the agency for fiscal year 2025 and required that $260 million of the funds must be spent by VOA.
In March, Trump signed an executive order calling for the agency to reduce its statutory functions and associated personnel to the minimum presence and function required by law. A day later, VOA stopped broadcasting for the first time in 83 years. The agency placed almost all of its full-time employees on administrative leave.
In announcing the job cuts on social media last month, Lake said the agency will continue to fulfill its statutory mission … and will likely improve its ability to function.
I look forward to taking additional steps in the coming months to improve the functioning of a very broken agency and make sure Americas voice is heard abroad where it matters most, she wrote.
Plaintiffs attorney Georgina Yeomans argued Monday that the cuts would cement the agencys programming at deficient levels that dont comply with the judges orders. Yeomans said its unclear who at the agency is making key decisions, such as which jobs to eliminate.
We simply do not know, she said.
Michael Kunzelman, Associated Press
Shopping for a used car? Hertz is making it easier than ever to buy a car from its fleet: You can now browse, finance, and purchase vehicles entirely online, the company announced Tuesday.
The car rental giant has revamped its website, HertzCarSales.com, allowing customers to now browse thousands of vehicles, get a trade-in offer, get pre-qualified, and secure financing so they complete the purchase entirely online. These changes mean that car buyers no longer need to visit one of Hertzs 45 retail locations to complete the purchase.
Our new e-commerce platform marks a major step forward in modernizing how we serve our customers with a seamless journey from browsing to ownership, Gil West, CEO of Hertz, said in the statement. By enhancing our digital capabilities, were meeting customers where they are and giving them greater visibility into our inventory, easier purchasing processes, and broader access to quality Hertz vehicles.
TURNAROUND PLAN
This move also marks a critical milestone in making retail the companys primary car selling channel, West said. The company has been trying to right its business after filing for bankruptcy in May 2020 amid the height of the Covid-19 pandemic. Last year, it announced a Back-to-Basics Roadmap for a turnaround plan focused in part on fleet management.
The company has more than 560,000 vehicles in its fleet, of which it sells approximately halfor about 280,000 vehicleseach year, according to reporting by CNBC. By comparison, Carvana sold more than 416,000 vehicles in 2024, according to its 2024 financial results.
By shifting from what was an online catalog to a full-service e-commerce platform, Hertz is likely hoping to speed up how quickly it turns over its fleet of used vehicles and also maximize resale price, Deutsche Bank analyst Chris Woronka told CNBC.
AN ASSIST FROM TOM BRADY
And Estero, Florida-based Hertz is hoping for an assist from Tom Brady, the NFL hall of fame quarterback who has previously served as a company spokesman. Beginning on Wednesday, Hertz will roll out a new ad campaign for HertzCarSales.com in which Brady touts the ease of buying online and pokes fun at the inflatable air figurines seen at many used car lots.
Its not a terribly difficult pitch to make at this point: Carvana has changed how many Americans shop for used vehicles in the 12 years since its founding. The Phoenix-based company announced record results for its second quarter, with a 41% surge in vehicle sales during the three months ended June 30.
Shares of both Hertz and Carvana fell in mid-day trading Tuesday, but their stock prices are both up more than 81% year-to-date.
When it comes to artificial intelligence, a handful of publicly traded companies tend to dominate the discussion. Alphabet, Amazon, Apple, Meta Platforms, Microsoft, Nvidia, and Tesla get the lion’s share of the attention and deservedly so. But dig a little deeper and youll find a host of other companies laying the groundwork for the next layer of AI disruption.
Futurum Equities, a new division of the tech research company Futurum Group, has compiled a list of disruptors, who despite not being among Wall Streets vaunted Magnificent 7, are making waves in the AI world. Rankings were derived using a proprietary algorithm that examines both the company’s current state and its expected future trajectory.
All of Futurum’s picks — an evolving list, the company notes — are publicly traded. (Qualcomm, Dell and Cisco appeared on prior, unreleased versions.)
Here’s a look at the companies Futurum says are worth watching.
1) Broadcom
Futurum gave the semiconductor developer and manufacturer, which it dubs “the glue holding the AI infrastructure together,” top marks, citing a recent $10 billion deal, widely believed to be with OpenAI to provide custom AI chips or XPUs. “Broadcom isnt just supplying parts but is becoming the toll collector across silicon, networking, and software,,” researchers wrote.
2) Taiwan Semiconductor
TSMC might be Nvidia’s foundry partner, but it could be in a better position than the Mag 7 giant to capitalize on the AI boom: Sales were up 34% year over year in August and the percentage of revenue from AI continues to grow. “If Nvidia is the brain of AI, TSMC is the beating heart, pumping advanced silicon into every corner of the digital economy, making it indispensable long term,” wrote Futurum.
3) Palantir
The AI-driven data mining company has seen revenues top $1 billion this quarter, making it indispensable to governments around the world. While other companies make promises, Futurum wrote, Palantir is “building the control layer for how AI actually runs in the real world.”
4) ASML
Declared “the kingmaker behind the new digital economy,” ASML is the single point of control for advanced compute, the hardware and infrastructure required to train AI models, researchers wrote. Nvidia and Intel’s recently announced deal to co-develop CPU chips will only deepen the industry’s reliance on ASML, they added.
5) Oracle
The epicenter of cloud storage for AI companies, Oracle has established itself as a foundation of the AI business, boasting a long list of top-tier clients. “Oracle has the contracts, infrastructure, and data moat to be one of the defining winners of the AI economy,” the report reads.
6) Astera Labs
As something of a tollbooth between accelerators, memory, and storage, Astera Labs has seen its revenues climb as it relieves bottlenecks in the AI world. “Compute may be the engine, but connectivity is the oil and Astera is selling the refineries, pipelines, and control valves, shaping the AI cycle rather than just riding it,” wrote Futurum.
7) AMD
While Nvidia remains the undisputed king of AI chips, there’s plenty of room for challengers to the throne. AMD still provides a key part of the AI infrastructure and its partnership with TSMC gives it a boost, too.
8) Cloudflare
Calling Cloudflare “the gatekeeper of the modern internet,” Futurum notes that the company carries nearly 20% of global online traffic. And its growing, cutting latency and making AI agents more responsive.
9) Crowdstrike
If Cloudflare is the gatekeeper, Crowdstrike is the shield for enterprise users. Once focused on endpoint protection, Crowdstrike is evolving, Futurum says, adding an autonomous security layer for AI infrastructure — a layer that will become increasingly necessary, researchers said
10) Palo Alto Networks
Palo Alto has moved beyond firewalls to build platform-led AI security that can scale with enterprise customers. Futurum’s score difference between Palo Alto and Crowdstrike was one-tenth of a point, a virtual tie. And researchers wrote the company was “building one of the most efficient scaled enterprise software models in the market.”
