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Tesla isn’t the only EV maker experiencing a post-election rally. Shares of California-based Rivian rallied to one of their best days ever on Friday, surging 24%.
The upward trajectory defies initial Wall Street concerns about President-elect Donald Trump’s reported intention to cut a federal subsidy for electric vehicles. But last week the automaker revealed slightly better fourth-quarter car deliveries than analysts expected. Rivian’s stock is up 54% since election day, outperforming every other stock besides Tesla and Palantir.
The purchase of most Rivian vehicles qualifies for a $3,750 federal tax credit, but if Trump repeals such a subsidy, it could hurt EV demand and effectively increase the sticker price.
FIRST UP
Winter Storm Blair swept across the U.S. Central Plains and Midwest Sunday and toward Washington, D.C. Monday, disrupting more than 10,000 flights and counting as heavy snow, ice and wind have made for hazardous travel conditions. Tens of millions across the mid-Atlantic are under winter weather warnings through Tuesday morning.
Official merchandise themed for Donald Trump’s inauguration may do more than celebrate his second presidency—the funds from such swag could be used to cover Trump’s personal expenses, including legal fees, based on fine print displayed at the bottom of checkout pages. It’s an unusual diversion, campaign finance experts told Forbes.
BUSINESS + FINANCE
Bitcoin reached an all-time high in 2024, capturing the attention of the world and of one old-school value investor. Here’s why Taesik Yoon, a longtime Forbes editor, says he’s bullish on the volatile cryptocurrency, and that continued adoption is key.
WEALTH + ENTREPRENEURSHIP
Dick’s Sporting Goods owner Ed Stack turned his father’s small business into a juggernaut with a market capitalization of more than $18 billion. He attributes his business success to a series of lessons learned along the way, including to always keep score, study great leaders, pursue a passion and stick to your principles.
Billionaire Fernando De Leon’s conglomerate Leon Capital Group is estimated to be worth nearly $3 billion, but growing up, he lived in poverty in Mexico and crossed the U.S. border daily to go to school in Texas. “I’m what Donald Trump calls an ‘anchor baby,’” he says, “but a high tax-paying anchor baby.” Roughly a quarter of De Leon’s estimated $2.8 billion fortune is now in residential and industrial real estate, mostly in growing Sun Belt cities.
TECH + INNOVATION
London-based payments unicorn Checkout was once the most valuable startup in Europe, with a $40 billion valuation, but its revenues have slumped after cutting its contract with Binance over money laundering concerns. The troubled crypto exchange at one point was Checkout’s largest customer, and corporate filings reveal the London-based fintech’s revenues dropped 16% to $212 million.
MONEY + POLITICS
The House voted Friday to reelect Rep. Mike Johnson (R-La.) as their Speaker after a tight contest following pushback from a small but influential group of Republicans. President-elect Donald Trump endorsed Johnson earlier in the week and reportedly spoke to several members who wound up changing their votes.
Trump’s guilty verdict on 34 felony counts in New York will stand after a judge ruled against throwing out the verdict, keeping one of the only remaining criminal cases against Trump alive. Judge Juan Merchan set the sentencing for just 10 days before Trump’s inauguration, but made clear he does not plan to sentence Trump to any prison time. The president-elect criticized the decision on social media over the weekend, saying no president had ever been treated “so evilly and illegally,” and denouncing the New York judicial system.
TRENDS + EXPLAINERS
President-elect Donald Trump indicated his continued support for TikTok last week, but his incoming administration’s ability to stop or even pause the federal ban is limited. The Supreme Court is set to hear oral arguments in the TikTok case this Friday, and it’s expected they’ll issue a quick ruling on whether or not the law should be upheld by the time it’s due to take effect January 19.
After much back and forth, the Corporate Transparency Act could be headed to the Supreme Court after the Department of Justice filed an application to overturn a preliminary injunction temporarily barring the government from enforcing beneficial ownership information reporting. It’s meant a lot of whiplash for business owners and advisors about whether or not they need to report, and if so, when—but the status quo for now continues to be wait-and-see.
DAILY COVER STORY
How Jay Graber Is Making Sure Bluesky Never Turns Into Elon Musk’s X
TOPLINE Since Elon Musk torpedoed Twitter, its rival Bluesky has seen a stunning surge.
Bluesky began as an open source research project at Twitter helmed by open internet evangelist Jay Graber. Graber’s mandate was to build a protocol, a shared language that computers could use to talk to each other, designed specifically for social media.
But after Elon Musk bought Twitter, it became clear that Bluesky was no longer on its roadmap. The platform began to transform, facing an advertiser boycott, exodus of users, and eventually a name change to X. So the team that made the protocol spun up a quick app, just to show how it might be used. They launched it as an invite-only social network in 2023.
Since its launch, Bluesky has seen unusual success: It raised a modest $15 million Series A round in October, when it had 13 million users, and since then, its user base has nearly doubled to more than 25 million. The app has panicked Meta CEO Mark Zuckerberg, whose own Twitter competitor, Threads, has rushed to copy many of its features.
But Bluesky is a company with investors who want to make money. And that could someday clash with Graber’s user-first approach to social media: To put the people using Bluesky in control of its central features.
In giving power to the people, Bluesky has so far eschewed the strategy that other social platforms have used to make billions of dollars: collecting troves of intimate data about their users, and then letting advertisers target them based on that data. At least today, Bluesky is fully public, and its user data is available to people outside the company, so there’s no secret sauce for advertisers to pay for.
WHY IT MATTERS “If Bluesky’s model is successful and other companies adopt Graber’s protocol, it could change the future of social media,” says Forbes senior writer Richard Nieva. “Elon Musk’s takeover of Twitter illustrated how fragile the social media ecosystem can be. Decentralizing it can be a form of ‘billionaire-proofing’ the medium, as Graber puts it, for the long term.”
MORE How Elon Musk Muzzled Government Employees From Talking About xAI’s New Supercomputer
FACTS + COMMENTS
Shares of alcohol makers and distributors fell Friday after Surgeon General Vivek Murthy called on Congress to update warning labels on alcoholic beverages to include cancer risks. Alcohol is the third-leading preventable cause of cancer behind tobacco and obesity, according to Murthy:
Around $450 million: The amount of market capitalization that the producer of Modelo and Corona beers lost after the announcement
Only 45%: The share of American adults who know of the possible cancer risks of alcohol
100,000: The estimated number of annual alcohol-related cancer cases in the U.S.
STRATEGY + SUCCESS
The job market is at a crossroads, and it’s critical for workers to be resilient and adaptable. A few key labor market trends to watch out for in 2025 include the increasing adoption of artificial intelligence, a full return to the office at some companies and the growing practice of skills-based hiring. There is also more demand for skilled trades, which is opening up new opportunities and challenging long-held assumptions about career success.
VIDEO
QUIZ
A major streaming platform is kicking off its partnership with WWE with a premiere episode tonight. Which streaming platform is it?
A. Hulu
B. Netflix
C. Max
D. Disney+
Check your answer.
Thanks for reading! This edition of Forbes Daily was edited by Sarah Whitmire and Caroline Howard.