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Want more housing market stories from Lance Lamberts ResiClub in your inbox? Subscribe to the ResiClub newsletter. Compass, Americas largest residential brokerage by sales volume, is making its boldest move yet. On Monday, Compass announced it will acquire Anywhere Real Estate, the second largest residential brokerage, for $1.6 billion. The combined company will have some 340,000 real estate professionals worldwide and represent over 1.2 million home transactions annually. Its the biggest brokerage consolidation in U.S. history, bringing Anywhere Real Estates brands like Coldwell Banker, Century 21, Sothebys International Realty, Better Homes and Gardens Real Estate, and Corcoran under the same roof as Compasss tech-driven platform. Compass says the merger will diversify its revenue with Anywheres sprawling franchise, relocation, and title and escrow businesses, while unlocking $225 million in cost synergies. Pending shareholder and regulatory approvals, the deal is expected to close in the second half of 2026. For Compass, the transaction is likely as much about leverage as it is about scale. The company has long positioned itself as a tech-enabled alternative to traditional brokerages, pouring resources into digital marketing, back-office software, and its network of Private Exclusivesoff-market listings shared only within Compasss network, allowing sellers to quietly test pricing and attract serious buyers without (or before) going public. Acquiring Anywhere Real Estate also gives Compass national brand diversity and global reach. Here’s what Amanda Orson, CEO and founder of Galleon, tells ResiClub about the news: The obvious storyline in Compass acquiring Anywhere is broker consolidation. The bigger story is leverage, not just against Zillow but against the MLS itself. Compass on its own is already the largest residential brokerage in the U.S., representing 18% of all sales volume in the 2025 RealTrends ranking . . . Together [with Anywhere] youre looking at the number one and number two players combining under one roof, representing a dominant share of U.S. transactions. Zillows Listing Access Standards [ZLAS] were aimed squarely at Compass exclusives. But Mike DelPretes data shows Compass still peaked at 26% of listings earlier this year despite them. If the same model applies across Anywheres transactions, Zillow risks driving a critical mass of inventory into a competing ecosystem. That puts Zillow in a bind. A merged Compass and Anywhere could normalize off-MLS inventory at national scale. Zillow will either maintain its ZLAS standards and train consumers to search multiple places for listings, or relax its standards and concede that it no longer has leverage. The overlooked angle is what this means for the MLS. Zillow risks losing leverage, but the MLS risks irrelevance if the largest broker consortium keeps a significant share of listings outside the system that was supposed to be the single source of truth. The headline is not just that private exclusives are becoming more inclusive. It is that the era of portal dominance and centrally controlled MLS is beginning to unbundle. A showdown with Zillow In April 2025, Zillow updated its listing standards, banning properties from appearing on its platform if they had been marketed privately for more than 24 hours before hitting the Multiple Listing Service (MLS). The policy was aimed directly at Compass, which has leaned heavily into Private Exclusives that circulate inside its agent network before going public. Zillow argued the policy was about fairness for buyers: If a listing is online, it should be online everywhere. In June 2025, Compass filed suit against Zillow, claiming the home-search giant conspired to suppress competition and protect its dominance by banning private listings from later appearing on its platform. The Compass deal announced today could be another strike at Zillow: By acquiring the Anywhere Real Estates brands, Compass could gain the scale and leverage needed to fortify its private listings ecosystem and push past Zillows resistance. The MLS under threat The merger doesnt just challenge Zillow. It could also weaken the traditional role of the MLS, which has long functioned as the industrys single source of truth for listings. If Compass-Anywhere normalizes off-MLS inventory at scale, it could accelerate the industrys fragmentation. For sellers, that might mean more control over how and where homes aremarketed. For buyers, it could mean a more fractured search experiencewith fewer guarantees that Zillow.com or the MLS reflects the near full universe of available properties for sale. What it means for the housing market The deal comes at a turbulent time for housing. Existing home sales are at their lowest level since 1995, affordability is stretched, broker margins are under pressure, and the market is still adjusting to the post-NAR 2024 settlement era. By merging, Compass and Anywhere are betting that size, diversification, and technology can deliver efficiencies in a margin-squeezed environment. But the competitive dynamics may prove more consequential than the balance sheet. If Compass successfully integrates Anywhere, it wont just be the largest brokerage in America. It could be another counterweight to Zillows consumer-facing dominanceand perhaps reshape the MLS itself. Thats why this merger isnt just about creating a bigger company. It could be about rewriting the rules of how homes get marketed, how buyers find them, and who really controls the flow of housing inventory in the U.S.
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Nvidia is set to invest up to $100 billion in OpenAI and supply it with data center chips, in a deal that gives the chipmaker a financial stake in the world’s most prominent AI company, which is already an important customer. Investments in systems powering AI have surged since OpenAI launched ChatGPT in 2022, on expectations that companies across sectors will integrate the technology into their products and services. Here is a list of multi-billion dollar AI, cloud and chip deals signed recently: Nvidia and Intel Nvidia will invest $5 billion in Intel, giving it roughly 4% of the company after new shares are issued. Oracle and Meta Oracle is in talks with Meta for a multi-year cloud computing deal worth about $20 billion, underscoring the social media giant’s drive to secure faster access to computing power. Oracle and OpenAI Oracle is reported to have signed one of the biggest cloud deals ever with OpenAI, under which the ChatGPT maker is expected to buy $300 billion in computing power from the company for about five years. CoreWeave and Nvidia CoreWeave signed a $6.3 billion initial order with backer Nvidia, a deal that guarantees that the AI chipmaker will purchase any cloud capacity not sold to customers. Nebius Group and Microsoft Nebius Group will provide Microsoft with GPU infrastructure capacity in a deal worth $17.4 billion over a five-year term. Meta and Google Google struck a six-year cloud computing deal with Meta Platforms worth more than $10 billion, Reuters had reported in August. Intel and SoftBank Group Intel is getting a $2 billion capital injection from SoftBank Group, making the Japanese tech investor one of the top-10 shareholders of the troubled U.S. chipmaker. Tesla and Samsung Tesla signed a $16.5 billion deal to source chips from Samsung Electronics, with the EV maker’s CEO Elon Musk, saying that the South Korean tech giant’s new chip factory in Texas would make Tesla’s next-generation AI6 chip. Meta And Scale AI Meta took a 49% stake for about $14.3 billion in Scale AI and brought in its 28-year-old CEO, Alexandr Wang, to play a prominent role in the tech giant’s artificial intelligence strategy. Google and Windsurf Google hired several key staff members from AI code generation startup Windsurf and will pay $2.4 billion in license fees as part of the deal to use some of Windsurf’s technology under non-exclusive terms. CoreWeave and OpenAI CoreWeave signed a five-year contract worth $11.9 billion with OpenAI in March, before the Nvidia-backed startup’s IPO. Stargate datacenter project Stargate is a joint venture between SoftBank, OpenAI and Oracle to build data centers. The project was announced in January by U.S. President Donald Trump, who said that the companies would invest up to $500 billion to fund infrastructure for artificial intelligence. Amazon and Anthropic Amazon.com pumped $4 billion into OpenAI competitor Anthropic, doubling its investment in the firm known for its GenAI chatbot Claude. Juby Babu, Reuters
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I’ve been out of school for decades, but I still take tests. Sometimes I take actual tests, like when I took the three-hour Class A Contractor’s License test last year. More often they’re “tests”: talking to event organizers considering me for a keynote, a potential ghostwriting clients, or making important decisions, etc. (And even to self-testing, since research shows testing yourself when you’re trying to learn is a great way to improve retention and recall.) So yeah: like you, I take plenty of “tests.” But I rarely think about when I should take them, which, according to a study just published in Frontiers in Psychology, is a mistake. The researchers analyzed the results of over 100,000 oral exams conducted at an Italian university and found a clear bell curve in pass rates that peaked at noon, regardless of the test taker’s chronotype. (More on that in a moment.) Between 11 a.m. and 1 p.m. is the sweet spot; any earlier or later and the chances of passing significantly decreased. In fact, the earlier or later in the day students took a test, the less likely they were to pass. Why? Partly that’s because your cognitive performance improves over the course of the morning, and then declines in the afternoon. Falling energy levels are also to blame. And if you have a “test” scheduled for late afternoon, you probably stress about it during the day, and stress inevitably leads to poorer performance. And then there’s the person who evaluates you. As the researchers write: The progressive decline in passing rates observed in the afternoon may be due to ego depletion, as students’ and assessors’ cognitive resources become fatigued by the examination stress, which is known to impair self-control, ultimately leading to reduced passing rates. Specifically, the growing rigidity or reduced flexibility associated with cognitive resource depletion may result in a higher rejection bias in assessors, consistent with findings suggesting judges in a state of ego depletion were more likely to make decisions that were less favorable to defendants. The peak in passing rates around midday may reflect the optimal balance between chronotype alignment and mental depletion, according to the explanations provided above. The last sentenceespecially the “chronotype alignment” partadds an interesting twist, because the cognitive performance and fatigue level of the person who “grades” your test also matters. A study published in Proceedings of the National Academy of Science found that prisoners who appeared before a parole board first thing in the morning had their parole granted about 70% of the time . . . but as the day went on, and even though it did spike back up for the first case or two after lunch, the rate of favorable rulings fell to almost zero. That’s another reason the mid-day hours are best for taking “tests.” You’ll be at your peak level of performanceand so will the person who evaluates you. All of which means deciding, whenever possible, when you’ll take a testwhether an actual test, or an important meeting, or an interview with a job candidate, a sales or investor pitch, etc.could be the difference between passing and failing. By Jeff Haden This article originally appeared on Fast Company‘s sister publication, Inc. Inc. is the voice of the American entrepreneur. We inspire, inform, and document the most fascinating people in business: the risk-takers, the innovators, and the ultra-driven go-getters that represent the most dynamic force in the American economy.
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