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Greyhound is an iconic American brand, but not necessarily for good reasons—as is evidenced by the mass of one-star reviews on TripAdvisor.
But its new owner, a once-rival German bus startup called Flix, is betting it can turn that reputation around.
Flix wants to use the same formula it used to become a near-monopoly on intercity bus travel in Europe: Charge rock-bottom fares and outsource the driving to contractors, but offer riders small creature comforts like leather seats, Wi-Fi and power outlets.
“The hedge fund manager from New York should consider the bus,” Flix’s cofounder and CEO André Schwämmlein told Forbes. “He won’t choose it all the time but he should consider it.”
FIRST UP
2025 had a rocky start in its first trading session of the year, as all three major indexes declined Thursday. Apple and Tesla saw major losses amid the historically unusual down stretch, even as the S&P 500 is fresh off of its first back-to-back years of at least 20% gains since the 1990s.
MORE: Tesla’s stock was the worst-performing percentage-wise on the S&P 500, losing 6% after reporting fourth-quarter vehicle deliveries below analysts’ expectations. The selloff wiped out around $175 billion in market value for Tesla, a loss almost equivalent to the entire valuation of AT&T.
Hindenburg Research, the short seller that has targeted the Adani Group and Roblox, took aim at high flying Carvana, alleging that a nearly 50-fold increase to the used car dealership’s stock is “a mirage.” Carvana is accused of hiding dealings with Cerberus Capital Management, a $60 billion (assets) private equity firm that counts former Vice President Dan Quayle (a Carvana board member) and new Trump Administration appointee Stephen Feinberg among its leadership.
BUSINESS + FINANCE
Last year featured major career crashes from recognizable names like Joe Biden, former Boeing CEO Dave Calhoun and former Harvard University president Claudine Gay. But others brought their careers or businesses back to the top in 2024, including Donald Trump, WeWork founder Adam Neumann and Abercrombie & Fitch CEO Fran Horowitz.
WEALTH + ENTREPRENEURSHIP
Billionaires are richer and more powerful than ever before, but not all started out that way. Oprah Winfrey, former Starbucks CEO Howard Schultz and Rihanna are some of those featured on Forbes’ roundup of 10 billionaires who beat the odds to turn rags into riches.
Elon Musk’s fortune soared by a record $170 billion in 2024, boosted by increased valuations of Tesla, SpaceX and xAI. Musk ended the year $188 billion richer than the world’s next wealthiest person, Amazon’s Jeff Bezos, more than doubling the record for the largest year-end lead between the No. 1 and No. 2 richest.
TECH + INNOVATION
Most people tend to use Alexa, Google Assistant and Siri for simple tasks like setting cooking timers, playing music or controlling their lights, but AI “agents,” the latest frenzy in the tech industry could help such voice assistants finally act like personal assistants. For instance, instead of just reciting your meeting schedule for the day, like Google Assistant can do now, it might actually be able to book the meetings, reaching out to contacts and finding a time that works for both people.
In 2024, investors poured some $20 billion into 25 companies that rent access to GPUs, the chips that power AI tools, according to a Forbes analysis of corporate filings and Pitchbook data. The biggest winner so far has been CoreWeave, a New Jersey-based startup that built an armada of GPUs to mine cryptocurrency, and after the market crashed in 2018, pivoted to renting them to startups working on AI projects.
SPORTS + ENTERTAINMENT
Since his breakthrough appearance on America’s Got Talent in 2015, mentalist and entertainer Oz Pearlman has not only entranced Corporate America on the speaking circuit, he’s a mind-reading fixture at NFL team complexes—and he made roughly $10 million pretax last year. Pearlman’s viral appearances with top athletes didn’t happen by chance, “The only part of linear TV that’s growing still is sports,” he told Forbes, “I want to tie my ship to someone going up, not someone going down.”
Boston Celtics superstar Jayson Tatum’s ambitions extend far beyond basketball, and on top of partnerships with more than 10 companies, the 26-year-old published a children’s book, starred in Netflix’s documentary series Starting 5 and landed on the cover of video game NBA 2K25—and that was just in 2024. Forbes estimates the hustles earn Tatum $13 million annually before taxes and agent fees.
TRENDS + EXPLAINERS
Two tragic New Year’s Day incidents have been tied to terrorism—a driving attack that killed 15 people in New Orleans’ French Quarter, and a Tesla Cybertruck explosion outside the Trump International Hotel Las Vegas where the driver was killed—but the FBI announced Thursday that they’ve found “no definitive link” between them. Both attacks involved vehicles from the peer-to-peer car rental platform Turo, which drew speculation online, but investigations are still in early stages and the agency is “not ruling anything out.”
DAILY COVER STORY
The Pentagon Is Using AI To Vet Employees—But Only When It Passes ‘The Mom Test’
TOPLINE The Defense Counterintelligence and Security Agency, which grants and denies U.S. security clearances to millions of workers, is using AI to speed up its work.
That doesn’t include ChatGPT, Bard, Claude, or other flashy generative AI models. Instead, it’s mining and organizing data in ways that Silicon Valley tech companies have done for years, using systems that show their work more clearly than most large language models do.
Director David Cattler said the agency’s most promising use case for these tools is prioritizing existing threats.
If not used carefully, these tools could compromise data security and introduce bias into government systems. But Cattler is nonetheless optimistic that some of AI’s less sexy functions might be game-changing for the agency—as long as they aren’t “black boxes.”
Matthew Scherer, senior policy counsel at the Center for Democracy and Technology, told Forbes that while AI can be useful to collate and organize information that has already been gathered and validated, it’s the next step—making critical decisions, like pointing out red flags during a background check process or collecting data from social media profiles—that can be dangerous.
Cattler said the department has stayed away from using AI to identify new risks. Even in prioritization, though, issues of privacy and bias can arise. In contracting with AI companies, DCSA has to consider what private data it feeds into proprietary algorithms, and what those algorithms can do with that data once they have it.
WHY IT MATTERS “Artificial intelligence has been creeping into all walks of life and the Pentagon is no exception,” says Forbes reporter Rashi Shrivastava. “The Defense Counterintelligence Agency and Security Agency, which is tasked with scrounging through heaps of personal information, is turning to AI to organize that data and make sense of it. But with it, like other applications of AI, come risks of data privacy and biases.”
MORE OpenAI Is Going After Defense Contracts
FACTS + COMMENTS
In 2024, Donald Trump went from having a net worth of $2.5 billion with significant legal burdens, to becoming president-elect and returning to Forbes’ list of America’s richest people. The surge was driven by his majority stake in Truth Social’s parent company, Trump Media & Technology Group:
60%: Trump’s stake in TMTG, which makes up more than half of his net worth
$5.9 billion: Trump’s net worth as of January 2
$2.4 billion: The revenue Trump’s businesses brought in from 2017 to 2020. He made more money as the sitting president than any previous president.
STRATEGY + SUCCESS
As you may be starting to think about filing your 2024 taxes, planning now for this year’s taxes will help you avoid trying to cram in everything at the end. Stay on top of the Tax Cuts and Jobs Act, often referred to as the “Trump 2017 tax cuts” or TCJA, as some of the changes expire at the end of 2025—but might be renewed. Keep an eye on the changes to the income levels for each of the seven tax brackets, and don’t forget about state taxes, as 39 states will make changes starting in the 2025 tax year.
VIDEO
QUIZ
Despite setting multiple records in 2024, bitcoin was not the best-performing cryptocurrency last year—instead, it was a token named for a meme animal linked to the far-right. Which animal inspired 2024’s top-performing cryptocurrency?
A. Frog
B. Cat
C. Bird
D. Dog
Check your answer.
Thanks for reading! This edition of Forbes Daily was edited by Sarah Whitmire and Caroline Howard.