<h2 class="wp-block-heading" id="h-topline">Topline</h2>



The cancer burden in the United States is shifting towards women and younger people, a new American Cancer Society&nbsp;<a href="https://acsjournals.onlinelibrary.wiley.com/doi/10.3322/caac.21871" rel="noreferrer noopener" target="_blank">study</a>&nbsp;released Thursday shows, with disease rates in one group—women aged 50 to 64—surpassing those of men for the first time.



<h2 class="wp-block-heading" id="h-key-facts">Key Facts</h2>



Cancer rates in women under 50 have soared when compared to their male counterparts, the study shows, and are now 82% higher than the rates seen in men, up from 51% in 2002.



The shift can be partially blamed on increasing trends for breast and thyroid cancers, the study says, which make up almost half of all cancers in people under 50 and mostly impact women.



At the same time, rates of common cancers like melanoma, non-Hodgkin lymphoma and prostate are decreasing in men under 50.



The lifetime probability of being diagnosed with an invasive cancer is now only slightly higher for men (39.9%) than for women (39%), the research shows, much lower than the 1.6% higher chance men had of being diagnosed than women in 1992.



The cancer burden is also shifting by age—new diagnoses in adults aged 65 and older decreased from 61% in 1995 to 59% in 2021, while people aged 50 to 64 and people younger than 50 saw increases in the cancer patient population.



Cancer rates are also on the rise among adolescents aged 15 to 19, but have declined in children ages 14 and below, while mortality rates for both groups have dropped significantly (by 63% and 70%, respectively) since 1970.



Overall, the cancer mortality rate declined by 34% between 1991 and 2022 in the United States, but incidents rates continue to rise in common cancers like breast, pancreatic, uterine corpus, melanoma, liver and some oral cancers.



<h2 class="wp-block-heading" id="h-surprising-fact">Surprising Fact</h2>



Among those younger than 65 years, lung cancer incidence was higher in women than in men in 2021 for the first time ever, the study shows.



<h2 class="wp-block-heading" id="h-big-number">Big Number</h2>



2,041,910. That&#8217;s how many cancer diagnoses are expected in 2025, according to the American Cancer Society. An estimated 988,660 of those cases will be in women, 294,220 of which are expected to die. Roughly 323,900 men are expected to die of cancer in 2025.



<h2 class="wp-block-heading" id="h-tangent">Tangent</h2>



The study also looked at cancer inequalities by race. Native Americans see rates of kidney, liver, stomach and cervical cancers two to three times higher than white people, and Black people are twice as likely to die of prostate, stomach and uterine corpus cancers when compared to white people. Black people are also 50% more likely to die from cervical cancer, which is preventable, the American Cancer Society says.

Breast ultrasound exam

More Women And Young People Are Getting Cancer Than Before, New Report Shows

Ads for apps that use AI to create fake videos of people kissing anyone they want are flooding social media platforms like TikTok and Instagram.



Meta and TikTok&nbsp;have run thousands of ads for apps that use AI to generate fake kissing videos of people, allowing users to upload photos of any two people and let AI convert them into a video of them kissing. The apps are being marketed as tools that would allow you to instantly “kiss anyone you want”— no consent required.



Similar in concept to “<a href="https://www.forbes.com/sites/thomasbrewster/2024/04/17/google-hosted-over-100-youtube-videos-promoting-ai-deepfake-porn/">AI nudifier</a>” apps that produce nonconsensual deepfake pornography, these AI kissing apps create believable videos of people doing something they didn’t do. And the ease at which they do it is a concerning habitualization of deepfake imagery.



While the ads are not sexually explicit like the deluge of&nbsp;<a href="https://www.forbes.com/sites/rashishrivastava/2023/05/11/reddit-ai-generated-porn/">AI-generated pornographic content</a>&nbsp;that has engulfed social media platforms like Instagram, Reddit and YouTube, they can be equally dangerous, Haley McNamara, an executive at the National Center for Sexual Exploitation told&nbsp;Forbes.



“It does not have to be explicit to be exploitative,” McNamara said. “If it&#8217;s crossing boundaries to do something offline to someone without their consent, kissing, undressing, et cetera, then it&#8217;s also crossing boundaries to do that online.”



Meta has displayed over 2,500 ads for “AI kissing” apps across Instagram and Facebook, a&nbsp;Forbes&nbsp;review found. About 1,000 are currently active. TikTok has shown about 1,000 ads to millions of users in European countries, according to its ad library. (TikTok’s ad library doesn&#8217;t include ads shown to its U.S.-based users) Most of these ads depict celebrities like Scarlett Johansson, Emma Watson and Gal Gadot kissing one another. Others show videos of random people kissing, touting that AI could let you “kiss your ex” and “kiss your crush.&#8221; It’s unclear whether the people in videos are real or generated by AI. Johansson, Watson and Gadot did not respond to requests for comment.



Meta is also promoting “AI hugging” apps, ads for which show AI-generated videos of children hugging cartoon characters like Dora the Explorer, Mickey Mouse and Tom and Jerry. Some, like a video showing a young girl hugging an older man, promise parents that AI-powered apps could allow their children to “hug grandparents they never met.” The social media giant has run about 1,200 AI hugging app ads, a&nbsp;Forbes&nbsp;search found. Over 300 are still live.



<blockquote class="wp-block-quote is-layout-flow wp-block-quote-is-layout-flow">
“This trend is normalizing exploitative deepfakes and taking nonconsensual participation in intimate or sexualized images as a joke.”Haley McNamara, executive at the National Center On Sexual Exploitation.
</blockquote>



AI-generated videos of people kissing and hugging are already circulating across social media. A video depicting Taylor Swift hugging Kim Jong Un has about 30 million views on Instagram. In late December, a deepfake video of Elon Musk and Italian Prime Minister Giorgia Meloni kissing went viral on X.



Meta spokesperson Daniel Roberts told&nbsp;Forbes&nbsp;that these “AI kissing” ads do not violate the company’s policies. While nudity, sexually explicit and sexually suggestive content are against Meta’s&nbsp;<a href="https://transparency.meta.com/policies/ad-standards/" rel="noreferrer noopener" target="_blank">advertising&nbsp;</a>standards and Meta does not permit ads that “display, advocate for, or coordinate sexual acts with non-consenting parties,” videos of kissing and hugging are permitted.



After being contacted by&nbsp;Forbes,&nbsp;TikTok removed the ads for violating its policies. The video sharing platform requires advertisers to get consent from public or private figures represented in their ads, even if the ads are AI-generated, TikTok spokesperson Ariane de Selliers told&nbsp;Forbes.



The companies behind these video generators appear to be based outside the United States in countries like the United Arab Emirates, Italy and China, according to their websites. The apps are available for free on Apple’s App Store and Google’s Play Store and already have millions of downloads. The “AI kissing” feature is a part of a broader suite of AI-based photo editing capabilities across the apps, like touching up old photos, turning still images into videos and predicting what two people’s future babies would look like. Apple and Google did not respond to comment requests.



<blockquote class="wp-block-quote is-layout-flow wp-block-quote-is-layout-flow">
“It was incredibly creepy to encounter.”Alice Siregar, AI analyst and social media user.
</blockquote>



The spread of AI kissing apps, boosted by social media’s virality, illustrate a troubling mainstreaming of deepfakes in the age of generative AI. Use of these seemingly harmless apps could open the door to tools that could create more graphic imagery like deepfake porn and other types of image-based sexual abuse, McNamara said. “It&#8217;s just an absolute Pandora&#8217;s box,” she said.



“This trend is normalizing exploitative deepfakes and taking nonconsensual participation in intimate or sexualized images as a joke,” she said. “It&#8217;s the kind of thing that is easy to trivialize when you think about other people, but again, if you think about someone in your own sphere making images like this of yourself, someone who you wouldn&#8217;t want having images, I think everyone can recognize that that is a violation.”



That’s especially concerning when illegal AI-generated child sexual abuse material (CSAM) is on an unprecedented&nbsp;<a href="https://www.forbes.com/sites/alexandralevine/2024/04/15/ai-is-creating-an-influx-of-child-sex-abuse-images-ncmec-data/">rise</a>. Over the last two years, the National Center for Missing and Exploited Children (<a href="https://www.missingkids.org/blog/2024/the-growing-concerns-of-generative-ai-and-child-sexual-exploitation" rel="noreferrer noopener" target="_blank">NCMEC</a>) has received over 7,000 reports of generative AI-related child exploitation material. In one&nbsp;<a href="https://www.forbes.com/sites/thomasbrewster/2024/08/30/pedophile-filmed-kids-at-disney-world-to-make-ai-child-abuse-images-cops-say/">case</a>, a pedophile allegedly filmed children at Disneyland and used popular AI tool Stable Diffusion to produce thousands of illegal images of them. And with unrestricted access to AI image generators, teenage high school students in multiple&nbsp;<a href="https://www.forbes.com/sites/cyrusfarivar/2024/03/13/teen-boys-deepfaked-her-daughter-then-the-school-made-it-worse-one-mom-says/">instances</a>&nbsp;have created deepfake nude imagery of their underage classmates, some resulting in&nbsp;<a href="https://www.forbes.com/sites/cyrusfarivar/2024/12/11/almost-half-the-girls-at-this-school-were-targets-of-ai-porn-their-ex-classmates-have-now-been-indicted/">criminal charges</a>. Meta has also struggled to police ads for such AI “nudifying” sites, one of which has seen 90 percent of its traffic coming from Instagram and Facebook, according to the&nbsp;<a href="https://fakedup.substack.com/p/ai-nudifiers-make-a-mockery-of-metas-moderation?ref=404media.co" rel="noreferrer noopener" target="_blank">Faked Up</a>&nbsp;newsletter.



People who have encountered the AI kissing ads while scrolling through social media say they find them&nbsp;<a href="https://www.reddit.com/r/TikTokCringe/comments/1fejz9m/this_ad_i_saw_today_may_be_one_of_the_creepiest/" rel="noreferrer noopener" target="_blank">disturbing</a>. In December, Alice Siregar started seeing an uptick in ads for AI kissing apps on TikTok. An AI analyst at a tech consulting firm herself, she was dismayed to see the technology being used in a “deeply unethical” way.



“It was incredibly creepy to encounter,” she said.

Man and robot love

AI Kissing Apps Are Taking Deepfakes Mainstream

<h2 class="wp-block-heading" id="h-topline">Topline</h2>



Four disastrous wildfires were still burning across Los Angeles and Ventura counties in southern California on Tuesday, but it’s not yet clear what started the fires—as government officials, lawyers and experts weigh theories like electrical issues, embers from older fires and arson.



<h2 class="wp-block-heading" id="h-key-facts">Key Facts</h2>



The Palisades Fire and Eaton Fire both broke out on Jan. 7 and grew to more than 23,000 and 14,000 acres, respectively, destroying thousands of structures and leading to more than 100,000 evacuations throughout Los Angeles.



Several smaller fires—including the Hurst Fire and Auto Fire, which were both still active as of Tuesday—broke out after the Palisades and Eaton fires, and led to more evacuations.



The California Department of Forestry and Fire Protection shows the causes of all four active fires are still under investigation, leading to unanswered questions about what could have caused some of California’s most destructive wildfires.



Anonymous officials involved with the investigation into the origin of the Palisades Fire told the&nbsp;<a href="https://www.latimes.com/california/story/2025-01-12/on-an-ocean-view-trail-questions-swirl-about-what-and-who-started-palisades-fire" rel="noreferrer noopener" target="_blank">Los Angeles Times</a>&nbsp;it appears to have human origins, though they noted the investigation is ongoing.



Investigators are focusing on a “crime scene” area that sits above most of Los Angeles in a neighborhood with rocky bluffs and popular hiking trails as the potential ignition site of the Palisades Fire,&nbsp;<a href="https://www.nytimes.com/2025/01/13/us/palisades-fire-cause-ignition-point-site.html" rel="noreferrer noopener" target="_blank">The New York Times</a>&nbsp;reported.



<h2 class="wp-block-heading" id="h-arson">Arson</h2>



Dominic Choi, the assistant Los Angeles police chief, said Monday officials are investigating every angle and not ruling out arson as the cause of either of the major fires, but he added there is “no definitive determination that it is arson.” The theory has drawn public attention after a spate of&nbsp;<a href="https://www.cnn.com/weather/live-news/los-angeles-wildfires-palisades-eaton-california-01-14-25-hnk#cm5woa60c0005356oh3zuokrk" rel="noreferrer noopener" target="_blank">arson-related arrests</a>, including&nbsp;<a href="https://www.forbes.com/sites/maryroeloffs/2025/01/10/alleged-arsonist-arrested-in-los-angeles-amid-deadly-california-wildfires-kenneth/">one arrest</a>&nbsp;of a man who was allegedly seen lighting a fire near the smaller Kenneth Fire last week—though police later said there wasn’t probable cause to charge him with arson, and they can’t confirm any link between the arrestee and the fires. Some experts are skeptical of the theory. A former battalion chief for the Los Angeles Fire Department told&nbsp;<a href="https://www.nbcnews.com/weather/wildfires/are-arsonists-responsible-los-angeles-wildfires-rcna186949" rel="noreferrer noopener" target="_blank">NBC News</a>&nbsp;the area where the Palisades Fire began is “inaccessible, rugged terrain,” that typically wouldn’t draw an arsonist. Experts also told NBC natural causes are a more plausible theory because of the heavy wind conditions: “Most of the time, these fires are not arson … There is no data supporting winds bringing out arsonists,” a former detective with the L.A. County Sheriff’s Office said. The&nbsp;<a href="https://www.nifc.gov/fire-information/fire-prevention-education-mitigation/wildfire-investigation#arson" rel="noreferrer noopener" target="_blank">National Interagency Fire Center</a>&nbsp;says arson may account for more than 20% of human-caused wildland fires, but the actual number is unclear as arson fires may be misclassified for some time.


<div class="wp-block-image">
<figure class="aligncenter size-full"><img loading="lazy" decoding="async" width="1024" height="704" src="https://cms.forbesafrica.com/wp-content/uploads/2025/01/GettyImages-2193935251.jpg" alt="" class="wp-image-64348" srcset="https://cms.forbesafrica.com/wp-content/uploads/2025/01/GettyImages-2193935251.jpg 1024w, https://cms.forbesafrica.com/wp-content/uploads/2025/01/GettyImages-2193935251-300x206.jpg 300w, https://cms.forbesafrica.com/wp-content/uploads/2025/01/GettyImages-2193935251-768x528.jpg 768w" sizes="auto, (max-width: 1024px) 100vw, 1024px" /><figcaption class="wp-element-caption"> (Photo by Justin Sullivan/Getty Images)</figcaption></figure></div>


<h2 class="wp-block-heading" id="h-power-lines-and-electric-infrastructure">Power Lines And Electric Infrastructure</h2>



Multiple residents of Altadena sued Southern California Edison on Monday, alleging the Eaton Fire was started by the company’s electrical equipment. The lawsuits cite&nbsp;<a href="https://www.nytimes.com/2025/01/13/us/southern-california-edison-la-fires-lawsuit.html" rel="noreferrer noopener" target="_blank">eyewitness reports</a>&nbsp;<a href="https://www.cnn.com/2025/01/13/business/edison-power-company-lawsuit-eaton-fire/index.html" rel="noreferrer noopener" target="_blank">of sparking power lines</a>. The company has pushed back against the theory, saying in a&nbsp;<a href="https://newsroom.edison.com/releases/edison-international-provides-latest-update-on-southern-california-wildfires-and-sce-power-outages" rel="noreferrer noopener" target="_blank">statement</a>&nbsp;Sunday its “analysis shows no interruptions or operational/electrical anomalies in the 12 hours prior to the fire’s reported start time until more than one hour after the reported start time of the fire.” One of the filed complaints&nbsp;<a href="https://apnews.com/article/california-wildfires-eaton-cause-utility-fireworks-eb0f4f71e437f1ba692f929e9633c856" rel="noreferrer noopener" target="_blank">reportedly</a>&nbsp;alleged, “there is clear evidence from video footage, photographs, and witness accounts that the fire was caused by electrical equipment operated by Defendants Edison International and Southern California Edison.” Power infrastructure has been a leading cause of fires in California in the past—with eight of the state’s 20 most destructive fires having power-related causes—and the amount of fires started by equipment has grown recently,&nbsp;<a href="https://www.nytimes.com/interactive/2025/01/13/us/los-angeles-fires-cause.html" rel="noreferrer noopener" target="_blank">The New York Times</a>&nbsp;reported.



<h2 class="wp-block-heading" id="h-old-embers-or-fireworks">Old Embers—or Fireworks</h2>



Some experts and residents believe the Palisades Fire may have been started by the remnants of a fire from New Year’s Day that began after fireworks were set off. The Jan. 1 fire broke out in the same place as the Palisades Fire and burned about three to four acres before fire officials said it was contained about five hours later, the&nbsp;<a href="https://apnews.com/article/california-wildfires-eaton-cause-utility-fireworks-eb0f4f71e437f1ba692f929e9633c856" rel="noreferrer noopener" target="_blank">Associated Press</a>&nbsp;reported. Michael Gollner, a fire scientist and University of California at Berkeley professor,&nbsp;<a href="https://www.washingtonpost.com/weather/2025/01/12/palisades-fire-origin-new-years-eve-fire/" rel="noreferrer noopener" target="_blank">told The Washington Post</a>&nbsp;“it’s certainly possible that something from that previous fire, within a week, had rekindled and caused the ignition” of the Palisades Fire. A spokesperson for the Los Angeles Fire Department confirmed the department does not typically patrol past fire sites for still burning embers. The&nbsp;<a href="https://www.nytimes.com/2025/01/13/us/palisades-fire-cause-ignition-point-site.html" rel="noreferrer noopener" target="_blank">New York Times notes</a>&nbsp;a number of past major fires were determined to be started by old blazes that officials believed were put out, including the 2023 wildfire in Maui that killed 102 people and a deadly 1991 firestorm in northern California.



<h2 class="wp-block-heading" id="h-other-human-causes">Other Human Causes</h2>



Cal Fire said 95% of California&#8217;s past wildfires have been caused by humans, but the agency noted human causes range from intentional arson to accidental situations, like campfires or discarded cigarette butts,&nbsp;<a href="https://www.cnn.com/weather/live-news/los-angeles-wildfires-palisades-eaton-california-01-14-25-hnk?t=1736873475204" rel="noreferrer noopener" target="_blank">CNN</a>&nbsp;reported.



<h2 class="wp-block-heading" id="h-lightning">Lightning</h2>



Officials were able to rule out lightning as a potential cause for the Palisades or Eaton fires as the area didn’t have stormy weather in the week the fires began,&nbsp;<a href="https://abcnews.go.com/US/wireStory/ignited-deadly-california-wildfires-investigators-array-possibilities-117539585" rel="noreferrer noopener" target="_blank">ABC News</a>&nbsp;reported on Jan. 9. Lightning is a common cause of wildfires, though, and led to 174 wildfires in southern California in 2023, according to the&nbsp;<a href="https://www.nifc.gov/fire-information/statistics/lightning-caused" rel="noreferrer noopener" target="_blank">National Interagency Fire Center</a>.



<h2 class="wp-block-heading" id="h-how-many-other-fires-were-there-in-los-angeles">How Many Other Fires Were There In Los Angeles?</h2>



In addition to four active wildfires in Los Angeles and Ventura counties, there were at least four other fires that are now contained, including the Sunset Fire that burned through the Hollywood Hills and Runyon Canyon, the Kenneth Fire in the West Hills Area, the Lidia Fire in the Angeles National Forest and the Woodley Fire.



<h2 class="wp-block-heading" id="h-what-to-watch-for">What To Watch For</h2>



More information from investigators. The process to identify the cause of a fire begins with pinpointing the fire’s starting point, then investigators will usually search the scene on their hands and knees looking for clues to what could have started it, which could take days,&nbsp;<a href="https://www.nbcnews.com/weather/wildfires/are-arsonists-responsible-los-angeles-wildfires-rcna186949" rel="noreferrer noopener" target="_blank">NBC News</a>&nbsp;reported. If they find evidence it was started by a person, investigators must then determine whether it was intentional arson or accidental negligence, but NBC reported that process could take months or years.



<h2 class="wp-block-heading" id="h-key-background">Key Background</h2>



Whatever the cause of the fires, experts seem to agree the conditions for the fires to spread easily were worsened by climate change. The California Air Resources Board&nbsp;<a href="https://ww2.arb.ca.gov/wildfires-climate-change" rel="noreferrer noopener" target="_blank">said</a>&nbsp;the area burned by wildfires in the state has been increasing each year since 1950, and unusually warm temperatures combined with very low precipitation create “conditions for extreme, high severity wildfires that spread rapidly.” Last summer was particularly hot in California and across the West, while there was very little rainfall: The&nbsp;<a href="https://www.bbc.com/news/articles/c0ewe4p9128o" rel="noreferrer noopener" target="_blank">BBC</a>&nbsp;reported downtown Los Angeles has gotten just 0.16 inches of rain since October.



<h2 class="wp-block-heading" id="h-further-reading">Further Reading</h2>



<a href="https://www.forbes.com/sites/antoniopequenoiv/2025/01/14/california-wildfire-live-updates-new-auto-fire-breaks-out-in-ventura-county-as-particularly-dangerous-situation-red-flag-warning-goes-into-effect/">California Wildfire Live Updates: New ‘Auto Fire’ Breaks Out</a>&nbsp;(Forbes)



<a href="https://www.nbcnews.com/weather/wildfires/are-arsonists-responsible-los-angeles-wildfires-rcna186949" rel="noreferrer noopener" target="_blank">Are arsonists responsible for the Los Angeles wildfires?</a>&nbsp;(NBC News)



<a href="https://www.bbc.com/news/articles/c0ewe4p9128o" rel="noreferrer noopener" target="_blank">Climate change: What role is it playing in the California fires</a>&nbsp;(BBC)



<a href="https://www.latimes.com/california/story/2025-01-12/on-an-ocean-view-trail-questions-swirl-about-what-and-who-started-palisades-fire" rel="noreferrer noopener" target="_blank">What sparked the Palisades fire? A beloved hiking trail may hold the grim answers</a>&nbsp;(Los Angeles Times)

Death toll rises to 25 amid new Los Angeles warnings

What Sparked The California Wildfires? Experts Consider Power Lines, Fireworks—And Arson

<h2 class="wp-block-heading" id="h-topline">Topline</h2>



An early social media influencer, her fake cancer diagnosis and the untangling of a complicated web of lies will play out in the Netflix original series “Apple Cider Vinegar,” a drama inspired by the real-life story of wellness guru Belle Gibson and the lies that skyrocketed her to fame in the early 2010s.



<h2 class="wp-block-heading" id="h-key-facts">Key Facts</h2>



The show, due to release Feb. 6, is inspired by &#8220;The Woman Who Fooled the World,”&nbsp;<a href="https://www.amazon.com/Woman-Who-Fooled-World-darkness/dp/1947534068" rel="noreferrer noopener" target="_blank">a book</a>&nbsp;by Australian journalists Beau Donelly and Nick Toscano that detailed Gibson’s story.



Gibson, who grew an online business using social media that included a health and wellness mobile app and accompanying cookbook, made her career by convincing her following she&#8217;d cured a range of health issues—including a brain cancer diagnosis that gave her months to live—via a healthy diet, exercise and holistic medicine.



Gibson reportedly&nbsp;<a href="https://www.washingtonpost.com/news/to-your-health/wp/2015/04/22/none-of-its-true-disgraced-wellness-guru-belle-gibson-comes-clean-on-cancer-hoax/" rel="noreferrer noopener" target="_blank">claimed</a>&nbsp;her health issues were brought on by a negative reaction to the Gardasil HPV vaccine, that she briefly died during a medical procedure and that her cancer spread to her spleen, liver, uterus and blood—but that it was cured by fruits, vegetables and natural remedies.



Weeks before her cookbook, “The Whole Pantry,” was set to be released in the U.S. and U.K. in 2015, reporters from The Age, an Australian newspaper, launched their investigation into the self-proclaimed cancer survivor and wellness promoter&nbsp;<a href="https://pmc.ncbi.nlm.nih.gov/articles/PMC6762183/" rel="noreferrer noopener" target="_blank">and found</a>&nbsp;&#8220;everything was based on a litany of falsehoods.”



As Gibson’s deception started to unravel, charities for which she claimed to have raised money&nbsp;<a href="https://www.smh.com.au/technology/charity-money-promised-by-inspirational-health-app-developer-belle-gibson-not-handed-over-20150306-13xgqk.html" rel="noreferrer noopener" target="_blank">said</a>&nbsp;they never received any,&nbsp;<a href="https://pmc.ncbi.nlm.nih.gov/articles/PMC6762183/" rel="noreferrer noopener" target="_blank">theories</a>&nbsp;emerged that she suffered from a form of Munchausen’s syndrome and she&nbsp;<a href="https://www.9news.com.au/national/belle-gibsons-judgement-to-be-handed-down-in-court/4ad9c382-d365-4775-84eb-0d25a9706e5e" rel="noreferrer noopener" target="_blank">was hit with</a>&nbsp;more than $1 million in fines after a federal court judge found she knowingly deceived cancer patients.



In 2015, she&nbsp;<a href="https://www.washingtonpost.com/news/to-your-health/wp/2015/04/22/none-of-its-true-disgraced-wellness-guru-belle-gibson-comes-clean-on-cancer-hoax/" rel="noreferrer noopener" target="_blank">admitted</a>&nbsp;to Australian Women&#8217;s Weekly that “none of it is true.”



<h2 class="wp-block-heading" id="h-crucial-quote">Crucial Quote</h2>



“At first, many of her followers jumped to her defense, suspecting a conspiracy by Big Pharma and Big Medicine, but then the tide of public opinion shifted to being adverse,” &#8220;The Woman Who Fooled the World&#8221; reviewer Ian Freckelton wrote. “Gibson went from being adored to being reviled. Ruin and prosecution were at hand.”



<h2 class="wp-block-heading" id="h-what-to-watch-for">What To Watch For</h2>



&#8220;Apple Cider Vinegar&#8221; releases Feb. 6. Though the main character shares Gibson&#8217;s name, Netflix maintains the show is a &#8220;work of fiction&#8221; that is a &#8220;true-ish story based on a lie.&#8221; The show is not a biopic or documentary.



<h2 class="wp-block-heading" id="h-tangent">Tangent</h2>



In addition to detailing Gibson’s deception, &#8220;The Woman Who Fooled The World&#8221; is an expose about the lure of alternative cancer treatments and the wellness cottage industry thriving on social media. A wellness culture movement that has boomed on TikTok, Instagram and other platforms has also been slammed for its harmful effects—from promoting&nbsp;<a href="https://news.cuanschutz.edu/news-stories/mounting-research-documents-the-harmful-effects-of-social-media-use-on-mental-health-including-body-image-and-development-of-eating-disorders#:~:text=These%20unfounded%20%E2%80%9Cwellness%E2%80%9D%20posts%20can,or%20indirectly%20encourages%20disordered%20eating." rel="noreferrer noopener" target="_blank">unhealthy eating habits</a>&nbsp;to selling scam or harmful&nbsp;<a href="https://magazine.brighamandwomens.org/features/truth-lies-or-marketing#:~:text=The%20impact%20of%20social%20media,amplifying%20rare%20catastrophic%20side%20effects." rel="noreferrer noopener" target="_blank">products</a>&nbsp;and even&nbsp;<a href="https://magazine.brighamandwomens.org/features/truth-lies-or-marketing#:~:text=The%20impact%20of%20social%20media,amplifying%20rare%20catastrophic%20side%20effects." rel="noreferrer noopener" target="_blank">demonizing</a>&nbsp;proven medical treatments like hormonal birth control and vaccines. In some cases, like during the height of the COVID pandemic, wellness influencers&nbsp;<a href="https://www.cnn.com/2024/02/04/climate/wellness-influencers-conspiracy-climate-intl/index.html#:~:text=Their%20concern:%20Those%20influencers%20%E2%80%94%20some,Fallon/AFP/Getty%20Images" rel="noreferrer noopener" target="_blank">used their platforms</a>&nbsp;to spread misinformation and conspiracy theories, including anti-vax sentiment. Several influencers have been hit with lawsuits over deceptive marketing and false claims, including&nbsp;<a href="https://www.winston.com/en/insights-news/influencer-false-ad-settlement-shows-small-biz-is-fair-game" rel="noreferrer noopener" target="_blank">Brittany Dawn</a>,&nbsp;<a href="https://www.ftc.gov/business-guidance/blog/2020/03/ftcs-teami-case-spilling-tea-about-influencers-and-advertisers" rel="noreferrer noopener" target="_blank">Adi Halevy and Yogev Malul</a>&nbsp;and Brian “<a href="https://fortune.com/2023/01/31/liver-king-youtube-sued-by-followers-regulating-influencers/" rel="noreferrer noopener" target="_blank">Liver King</a>” Johnson.



<h2 class="wp-block-heading" id="h-big-number">Big Number</h2>



$6.32 trillion. That&#8217;s how much the worldwide wellness industry was worth in 2023, according to the <a href="https://globalwellnessinstitute.org/press-room/statistics-and-facts/" target="_blank" rel="noreferrer noopener">Global Wellness Institute</a>, a portion of which is <a href="https://luxiders.com/the-toxic-wellness-culture-fuelled-by-social-media/" target="_blank" rel="noreferrer noopener">fueled</a> by social media.

AppleCiderVinegar_Netflix_23-11-21_22A5538_DENOISED

This Health Influencer Claimed She Cured Her Fake Cancer With A Healthy Diet—And Now She’s Inspired A Netflix Show

The Amazon billionaire’s heavy-lift rocket is poised for its first spaceflight. If it succeeds, it will give satellite operators and the Pentagon a long-desired alternative to SpaceX—and at a cheaper price, Forbes reveals.



In2021, Elon Musk trolled Jeff Bezos’ Blue Origin, mocking his rival’s slow progress toward launching a rocket into space. “Can’t get it up (to orbit) lol,” he<a href="https://x.com/elonmusk/status/1386825367948644352" rel="noreferrer noopener" target="_blank">&nbsp;wrote</a>&nbsp;on Twitter.



Now, almost 25 years after Bezos started the company, Blue Origin is on the brink of clapping back. Its powerful New Glenn rocket is at Florida’s Kennedy Space Center for its inaugural launch, which could come as soon as early morning Monday.



Plenty of people in the space industry and government are cheering for it to succeed – and to end SpaceX’s near monopoly on lofting American satellites into orbit.



“The space industry likes having choices,” said Caleb Henry, an analyst at Quilty Space. “And it doesn&#8217;t have that today. It just has SpaceX.”



And Blue Origin is selling launches at a price per satellite that’s significantly better than SpaceX, a former employee told&nbsp;Forbes.



The launch attempt comes less than two weeks before Donald Trump returns to the White House. During his first term, the former president attacked Bezos over negative coverage in the Washington Post, which Bezos owns. Now Trump, with Musk at his right hand, is promising a shakeup in government spending and regulation that could tilt the playing field for the commercial space industry — and threaten some of Blue Origin’s government contracts.



<h3 class="wp-block-heading" id="h-animal-spirits">ANIMAL SPIRITS</h3>



Bezos has positioned Blue Origin as the slow and steady alternative to SpaceX’s “move fast and fail quickly” ethos. Its motto is “gradatim ferociter,” Latin for “step by step, ferociously,” and its logo features two tortoises. So far the tortoise has been soundly beaten by SpaceX’s hare.



Over the past decade, SpaceX ramped up its launch cadence to unprecedented levels while its competition was largely sidelined. The old heavyweights of space launch — the United Launch Alliance, a joint venture of Boeing and Lockheed Martin, and Europe’s Arianespace — struggled with delays in developing new rockets, and Western sanctions removed Russian rockets as an option. SpaceX’s Falcon rockets propelled cargo to orbit 133 times in 2024, with one failure, the vast majority of the 145 launches attempted in the U.S. last year and more than half of the 263 worldwide, according to space activity tracker<a href="https://planet4589.org/space/papers/space24.pdf" rel="noreferrer noopener" target="_blank">&nbsp;Jonathan McDowell</a>.



But New Glenn, first announced in 2016, promises to be a fierce competitor. Like SpaceX’s Falcon 9, it’s a two-stage heavy lift workhorse, with the first stage designed to return to earth for reuse. But according to Blue Origin, a larger nose cone gives New Glenn twice the cargo volume of Falcon 9, and its powerful engines are designed to propel double the payload mass.



And Blue Origin is pricing to give customers more bang for the buck than SpaceX, according to a former employee who now works for a competitor who spoke to&nbsp;Forbes&nbsp;on the condition of anonymity.



Blue Origin is charging roughly $110 million per launch, he said, compared to about $70 million for a Falcon 9 – effectively offering to carry twice as many satellites for roughly 50% more money.



Blue Origin didn’t respond to a request for comment from&nbsp;Forbes.



Blue Origin&#8217;s New Glenn rocket, which stands 32 stories tall and is designed to launch 45 tons of payload into orbit, is pictured during a hotfire test at Cape Canaveral, Fla., on Dec. 27.Blue Origin



New Glenn is already proving attractive to companies building large constellations of small satellites for low-Earth orbit, particularly as those satellites have gotten larger, said Henry.



Blue Origin has won contracts to use it to launch satellites for all of the major constellations, except, of course, for SpaceX’s Starlink. That includes AST Mobile, which is developing a network to provide cellular service from space. The company has said New Glenn can carry eight of its Block 2 satellites, which will be the largest yet put in low-Earth orbit. Falcon 9 can carry just four.



And Bezos’ Amazon.com is leaning heavily on Blue Origin to realize its plans for its Kuiper satellite network. Blue Origin is slated to launch at least 23% of the constellation and potentially as much as half. Amazon expects to pay Blue Origin $2.7 billion through 2028, it said in a financial filing last year.



The U.S. government is also eager for another option to launch its intelligence and communications satellites. In June the Defense Department picked Blue Origin, along with SpaceX and United Launch Alliance, to compete for up to $5.6 billion worth of launches through 2029.



<h3 class="wp-block-heading" id="h-money-out">MONEY OUT</h3>



It’s welcome revenue after years of heavy spending to build the company. On the New Glenn program alone, Blue Origin has spent on the order of $10 billion, the former employee estimated. Apart from a few NASA contracts, that money has come from the deep pockets of Bezos, who has committed to use the vast fortune he’s made from Amazon to realize his boyhood space dreams.&nbsp;Forbes&nbsp;estimates his net worth at $233 billion, a distant second in the world to Musk’s $416 billion.



While it’s taken a quarter century for Blue Origin to take its first shot at space, it has notched impressive achievements on the way, while building infrastructure for mass rocket launches that SpaceX only put together gradually after reaching orbit. The company developed a powerful rocket engine, the Be-4, that’s powered two successful launches of United Launch Alliance’s new Vulcan rocket. With its reusable New Shepard rocket, which is designed to bring tourists to the edge of space, Blue Origin has become the only rocket company besides SpaceX to pull off the trick of landing its first stage. And it has built up manufacturing facilities expected to produce over 100 Be-4 engines in 2025, and multiple boosters to support a pace of 12 launches a year.



“It&#8217;s easy to be a little flip about, ‘SpaceX has done so much and Blue Origin has done little,’ but it&#8217;s nuanced,” said Carissa Christensen, CEO of the space consulting firm BryceTech.



A successful launch would be powerful validation for Blue Origin, but the attempt comes against a cloudy political backdrop. Trump has tasked Musk with leading an effort to chop government spending and regulation. A relaxation of rules in the heavily regulated space industry would help all participants, but competitors fear<a href="https://www.forbes.com/sites/jeremybogaisky/2024/11/12/in-trumps-space-race-musks-spacex-is-a-sure-bet/">&nbsp;preferential treatment for SpaceX</a>.



Exhibit A: Trump’s nominee to run NASA, billionaire Jared Isaacman. His company Shift4 Payments has invested in SpaceX, and Isaacman has bankrolled two private spaceflights on Falcon rockets.



Last March, Isaacman&nbsp;<a href="https://x.com/rookisaacman/status/1767893365541032333" rel="noreferrer noopener" target="_blank">questioned</a>&nbsp;the wisdom of NASA’s decision to fund the development of redundant lunar landers from SpaceX and Blue Origin, in case one faltered.



But Bezos has professed confidence that Musk won’t use his influence in the Trump administration to benefit SpaceX at Blue Origin’s expense.



“I take at face value what has been said, which is that [Musk] is not going to use his political power to advantage his own companies or to disadvantage his competitors,” Bezos said in December at a&nbsp;New York Times&nbsp;conference.



Bezos, in any event, is looking far beyond the next four years. He wants Blue Origin to drive the creation of an off-world economy where manufacturing and mining is done in in space, and the “Earth will be zoned residential and light industry.” Someday he thinks that will make Blue Origin a bigger business than Amazon, he said at the&nbsp;Times&nbsp;event. But it’s all predicated on bringing down the cost of reaching space, starting with New Glenn.



“We know how to travel to space. We know how to land on the Moon. We need to be able to do it a hundred times cheaper,” Bezos told&nbsp;<a href="https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=rsuqSn7ifpU" rel="noreferrer noopener" target="_blank">space YouTuber Tim Dodd</a>&nbsp;in September. “That’s what will really open the heavens to humanity.”

New York Times Holds Annual DealBook Summit

With New Glenn Launch, Bezos Looks To Break Musk’s Stranglehold On Space

In this week’s edition of The Prototype, we look at how too much reliance on AI assistants could make it harder to think, a company building bioengineered arteries, the role viruses play in Alzheimer’s and more. <a href="https://www.forbes.com/newsletter/the-prototype">You can sign up to get The Prototype in your inbox here</a>.



<abbr>N</abbr>ew AI tools&nbsp;are slowly becoming ubiquitous, being added to the software and hardware we use every day (sometimes whether we like it or not). But if we’re using artificial intelligence to perform tasks, search for information and solve problems, what does that mean for the intelligence we’re born with?



To figure this out, a team of researchers conducted a study involving 666 individuals ages 17 and up, representing a diverse population. It first evaluated the extent to which each of them made use of AI tools, then tested their critical thinking skills. The results of the study,&nbsp;<a href="https://www.mdpi.com/2075-4698/15/1/6" rel="noreferrer noopener" target="_blank">which were published</a>&nbsp;in the journal&nbsp;Societies, found that those who used AI tools a lot showed worse critical thinking abilities than those who didn’t use them often or at all. Whether someone used AI tools was a bigger predictor of a person’s thinking skills than any other factor, including educational attainment.



The reason for this is a phenomenon called “cognitive offloading” – where people’s thinking and problem-solving are essentially delegated. Frequent cognitive offloading reduces a person’s ability to independently think and solve problems. “This relationship underscores the dual-edged nature of AI technology,” the study authors wrote. “While it enhances efficiency and convenience, it inadvertently fosters dependence, which can compromise critical thinking skills over time.”



These findings are consistent with other studies that have shown a similar negative impact from AI tools on critical thinking skills. The authors note, however, that other studies show AI tools can be beneficial when they complement critical thinking, rather than offloading it. “Future research should explore strategies to integrate AI tools in ways that enhance rather than hinder cognitive engagement,” they wrote. “Ensuring that the next generation is equipped with the skills necessary to navigate an increasingly complex digital landscape.”



Stay tuned.



<h2 class="wp-block-heading" id="h-bioengineering-off-the-shelf-arteries-for-trauma-patients">Bioengineering Off-The-Shelf Arteries For Trauma Patients</h2>



<abbr>E</abbr>very year, thousands of Americans receive traumatic injuries that damage the arteries that crucially carry blood to their limbs. When these occur, patients basically have three options, Laura Niklason, CEO of regenerative medicine startup Humacyte, told me: they can have a vein grafted from another part of their body, which takes extra time and causes additional trauma; the surgeon can replace the artery with a synthetic plastic one, which creates a high risk of infection; or the limb can be amputated.



Niklason has a fourth option: her company has developed a bioengineered artery called Symvess which can be surgically implanted in a patient’s body, helping to both preserve the limb and reduce risk of infection. Symvess is derived from human donor cells that are grown in a lab on a degradable scaffold, in batches of 200 at a time. Over time, the cells recreate the physical structure of a blood vessel. Once that’s complete, the living cells are then processed away, leaving the artery structure behind, which can then be implanted in a new patient without risk of rejection. Cells in the patient&#8217;s body then occupy the implant, essentially regenerating a new artery.



Last month, Symvess was&nbsp;<a href="https://investors.humacyte.com/news-releases/news-release-details/humacyte-announces-fda-approval-symvesstm-acellular-tissue" rel="noreferrer noopener" target="_blank">approved by the FDA</a>&nbsp;for use in patients with traumatic injuries. That approval was based on studies that showed that the product, which has been implanted in over 600 patients so far, is significantly less likely to cause infection or lead to limb amputation compared to conventional synthetic arteries made from plastic.



For its next steps, the company will be working with Medicare and private insurers to ensure that they will pay for transplant procedures using Symvess. It’s also conducting studies to use Symvess with patients who have kidney dialysis and patients who have pulmonary arterial hypertension. It’s also developing a new, smaller version of its product that could potentially be used for heart bypass patients.



“This is truly a first-of-its-kind technology, and the FDA had to see a lot of data before they could get comfortable and say yes,” said Niklason. “So I’m very glad to be here.”



<h2 class="wp-block-heading">DISCOVERY OF THE WEEK: INACTIVE VIRUSES MAY CAUSE NEURODEGENERATION</h2>



It’s long been known that repeated head injuries can lead to&nbsp;neurodegenerative diseases&nbsp;like Parkinson’s, Alzheimer’s and CTE. But it wasn’t clear exactly how that happened. New research suggests the answer may be&nbsp;dormant viruses, particularly&nbsp;herpes simplex 1, which is found in the brains of over 80% of the population. These findings were reached by growing&nbsp;small tissue models&nbsp;of the brain, some with the herpes virus and some without, which were then struck repeatedly with a piston to mimic concussion.



The study, which was&nbsp;<a href="https://www.science.org/doi/10.1126/scisignal.ado6430" rel="noreferrer noopener" target="_blank">published in&nbsp;Science Signalling</a>, found that the brain tissues with the virus developed signs of&nbsp;Alzheimer’s disease, while those without did not, and that the damage was markedly increased with repeated blows. The researchers plan to conduct future studies that explore whether exposure to&nbsp;antiviral or anti-inflammatory drugs&nbsp;shortly after an injury could help prevent the onset of Alzheimer’s.



<h2 class="wp-block-heading">FINAL FRONTIER: WATER-BASED PROPULSION TEST</h2>



Japanese startup&nbsp;Pale Blue&nbsp;<a href="https://pale-blue.co.jp/news/543/" rel="noreferrer noopener" target="_blank">announced</a>&nbsp;it has signed a deal with Italy-based company&nbsp;D-Orbit&nbsp;to conduct two demonstrations in-orbit of its&nbsp;new ion thruster, which allows satellites both to maneuver and to take themselves out of orbit at the end of their life. Pale Blue’s thruster uses&nbsp;water&nbsp;as a propellant, which potentially offers a cleaner and more sustainable fuel for small satellites.



<h2 class="wp-block-heading">WHAT ELSE I WROTE THIS WEEK</h2>



In my other newsletter,&nbsp;InnovationRx, my colleague&nbsp;Amy Feldman&nbsp;and I&nbsp;<a href="https://www.forbes.com/sites/innovationrx/2025/01/08/innovationrx-medical-debts-will-be-erased-from-credit-histories/">covered a number of healthcare stories</a>, including a drug that significantly improves survival for&nbsp;lung cancer&nbsp;patients, the controversy over&nbsp;pulse oximetry&nbsp;technology and a new study that finds that while&nbsp;LLMs&nbsp;are good at answering medical exam questions, they’re much less proficient at making diagnoses from patient conversations.



<h2 class="wp-block-heading">SCIENCE AND TECH TIDBITS</h2>



My colleague Jeremy Bogaisky&nbsp;<a href="https://www.forbes.com/sites/jeremybogaisky/2025/01/09/amazon-alibaba-fiber-optic-drone-ukraine/">reports</a>&nbsp;that online retailers like Amazon and Alibaba are selling technology that&nbsp;protects drones&nbsp;from having their signals jammed or being remotely taken over.



Ai startup Anthropic’s new funding round will make all seven of its founders&nbsp;billionaires,&nbsp;<a href="https://www.forbes.com/sites/alexkonrad/2025/01/08/anthropic-60-billion-valuation-will-make-all-seven-cofounders-billionaires/">write my colleagues</a>&nbsp;Alex Konrad and Phoebe Liu.



Researchers&nbsp;<a href="https://www.nist.gov/news-events/news/2025/01/novel-quantum-refrigerator-great-erasing-quantum-computers-chalkboard" rel="noreferrer noopener" target="_blank">developed a technique</a>&nbsp;for&nbsp;refrigerating quantum computers&nbsp;in a way that reduces errors and could potentially make them more reliable.



Eating&nbsp;grapefruit&nbsp;can interfere with the action of several kinds of medications, including anti-anxiety drugs and statins. But new research suggests it may be possible to&nbsp;<a href="https://nph.onlinelibrary.wiley.com/doi/epdf/10.1111/nph.20322" rel="noreferrer noopener" target="_blank">grow a variety of the fruit</a>&nbsp;that doesn’t interfere with prescription drugs.



Biologists successfully transplanted&nbsp;chloroplasts–the cells that power photosynthesis– from algae into&nbsp;hamsters, where they&nbsp;<a href="https://www.jstage.jst.go.jp/article/pjab/100/9/100_pjab.100.035/_article" rel="noreferrer noopener" target="_blank">successfully functioned</a>&nbsp;for about three days.



Scientists at Northwestern University&nbsp;<a href="https://news.northwestern.edu/stories/2025/01/trash-to-treasure-industrial-waste-battery/?fj=1" rel="noreferrer noopener" target="_blank">built a battery</a>&nbsp;that uses triphenylphosphine oxide, a common&nbsp;industrial waste product, to store energy instead of metals.



<h2 class="wp-block-heading">PRO SCIENCE TIP: ADD WATER TO YOUR COFFEE BEANS</h2>



Here’s an easy tip to enhance the flavor of your morning cup of&nbsp;coffee: add a little&nbsp;water&nbsp;to the beans before you grind them. This isn’t a new idea–among coffee professionals this is known as the “Ross Droplet Technique”–but new research gives scientific backing to the idea. When beans are ground, they build up a&nbsp;static electric charge, which causes clumping and inconsistent extraction during the brewing process. In new&nbsp;<a href="https://www.cell.com/matter/fulltext/S2590-2385(23)00568-4" rel="noreferrer noopener" target="_blank">research published</a>&nbsp;in the journal&nbsp;Matter, scientists found that the Ross Droplet Technique reduced the static charge during grinding, producing a&nbsp;better-tasting coffee.



<h2 class="wp-block-heading">WHAT’S ENTERTAINING ME THIS WEEK</h2>



I’ve been listening to the concept album&nbsp;Epic&nbsp;by&nbsp;<a href="https://www.epicthemusical.com/" rel="noreferrer noopener" target="_blank">Jorge Rivera-Herrans</a>. It’s a musical-style adaptation of&nbsp;The Odyssey, telling the tale of&nbsp;Odysseus&nbsp;from the end of the&nbsp;Trojan War&nbsp;until his return home to&nbsp;Ithaca. The album is divided into nine sagas of a few songs each, serving as chapters in the story. It’s an amazing version of one of humanity’s oldest stories, and it’s appropriate for it to be sung–that is, after all, how it was originally presented in the time of Homer. It’s streaming on most of the major music services.

Working robots

The Prototype: Study Suggests AI Tools Decrease Critical Thinking Skills

<h2 class="wp-block-heading" id="h-topline">Topline</h2>



The Supreme Court’s&nbsp;<a href="https://www.forbes.com/sites/alisondurkee/2025/01/10/supreme-court-signals-it-will-uphold-tiktok-ban-live-updates/">signaling</a>&nbsp;it may uphold a ban on TikTok, the wildly popular shortform video social media app, sent shockwaves through the stock market Friday, boosting shares of companies behind rival platforms and hitting hard one key TikTok partner.



<h2 class="wp-block-heading" id="h-key-facts">Key Facts</h2>



The Supreme Court heard oral arguments Friday in TikTok’s appeal against a law requiring its private Chinese parent company ByteDance to divest its TikTok holdings by or face a U.S. ban Jan. 19, and several justices&nbsp;<a href="https://www.forbes.com/sites/alisondurkee/2025/01/10/supreme-court-signals-it-will-uphold-tiktok-ban-live-updates/">cast doubt</a>&nbsp;on the legitimacy of TikTok’s argument.



In an otherwise&nbsp;<a href="https://www.forbes.com/sites/dereksaul/2025/01/10/stocks-drop-after-jobs-report-shows-hot-us-labor-market-heres-why/">down day</a>&nbsp;for U.S. stocks – the S&amp;P 500 fell more than 1.5% to a two-month low and the tech-heavy Nasdaq was down 1.6% – two of the biggest stock gainers were a pair of American social media companies behind other short-form video platforms in Snapchat parent Snap, which owns TikTok competitor Spotlight, and Meta, which operates TikTok rival Instagram Reels.



Snap stock gained 4% by close, notching its highest intraday share price since Aug. 1, while shares of the much larger Meta rallied 1%.



Shares of Google parent Alphabet, which owns YouTube Shorts, were less affected by the TikTok hearing, dropping 1.1%, though that was a slimmer loss than the at least 1.4% losses experienced by stocks of Apple, Nvidia, Microsoft and Amazon, the world’s only other $2 trillion companies.



<h2 class="wp-block-heading" id="h-big-number">Big Number</h2>



$1.5 billion. That’s how much richer&nbsp;<a href="https://www.forbes.com/profile/mark-zuckerberg/">Meta CEO Mark Zuckerberg</a>&nbsp;got thanks to Friday’s rally, the biggest daily jump of any American billionaire, according to Forbes’ real-time&nbsp;<a href="https://www.forbes.com/real-time-billionaires/#5dd06783d788">net worth tracker</a>.



<h2 class="wp-block-heading" id="h-contra">Contra</h2>



Friday was a rough day for perhaps TikTok’s most notable American collaborator, software giant Oracle, whose stock tanked 5%, the worst daily loss of any of the U.S.’ 40 mega-cap companies worth at least $200 billion. Shares of Oracle hit their lowest price since early September. Oracle, which hosts the U.S. data of TikTok,&nbsp;<a href="https://www.cnbc.com/2024/06/24/oracle-warns-that-a-tiktok-ban-would-hurt-business.html" rel="noreferrer noopener" target="_blank">cautioned</a>&nbsp;in July its earnings would take a hit if TikTok got banned. Oracle’s cofounder and chairman,&nbsp;<a href="https://www.forbes.com/profile/larry-ellison/">Larry Ellison</a>, was the biggest billionaire loser Friday, as his net worth tanked $10 billion.



PROMOTED



<h2 class="wp-block-heading" id="h-tangent">Tangent</h2>



Betting markets have moved heavily in favor of a TikTok ban: The odds of a TikTok ban by May have jumped from 30% to 70% over the last week on the blockchain-based site&nbsp;<a href="https://polymarket.com/event/tiktok-banned-in-the-us-before-may-2025?tid=1736539655150" rel="noreferrer noopener" target="_blank">Polymarket</a>.



<h2 class="wp-block-heading" id="h-key-background">Key Background</h2>



Meta and Oracle’s opposite fortunes widened the net worth gap between Zuckerberg, the world’s third-richest person, and Ellison, the fourth-wealthiest, to nearly $20 billion, just two days after Zuckerberg’s riches <a href="https://www.forbes.com/sites/mollybohannon/2025/01/06/mark-zuckerberg-overtakes-larry-ellison-as-worlds-third-wealthiest-person/">surpassed</a> Ellison’s. ByteDance last fetched a <a href="https://www.forbes.com/sites/alexkonrad/2023/05/04/bytedance-scrutiny-leaves-midas-investors-waiting-billions/">$220 billion</a> valuation in a 2023 funding round and valued itself internally at $300 billion in November, according to <a href="https://www.reuters.com/technology/tiktok-parent-bytedances-valuation-hits-300-billion-amid-us-ban-uncertainty-wsj-2024-11-16/" target="_blank" rel="noreferrer noopener">Reuters</a>, which would make it the world’s second-most valuable private company, trailing only SpaceX, which valued itself at $350 billion in an internal share sale last month, <a href="https://www.bloomberg.com/news/articles/2024-12-10/spacex-share-sale-is-said-to-value-company-at-about-350-billion" target="_blank" rel="noreferrer noopener">Bloomberg</a> reported.

Meta Announces Threads App

Meta Stock Rallies, Oracle Slides As Market Reacts To TikTok Ban Hearing At Supreme Court

Scott Belsky Says AI Is Collapsing Boundaries Between Traditional Business Functions And Putting More Creative Ability Within Anyone’s Reach.



Tell me a bit about your role at Adobe.



Belsky:&nbsp;My responsibility is overseeing our emerging product groups. These are the groups that include 3D &amp; Immersive. They include the AI-first products, like&nbsp;<a href="https://blog.adobe.com/en/publish/2024/10/14/new-creative-beginnings-gen-ai-redefining-ideation-with-project-concept" rel="noreferrer noopener" target="_blank">Project Concept</a>&nbsp;and a whole roadmap of others. They include the Adobe Stock business, which is going through a re-imagination in the world of AI, and is also responsible for sourcing the data that we train our models on.



Then, of course, design. The design organization spans all of our products and services across the company, and it’s an important part of my role to make sure that the designers are aligned around the experiences we’re delivering to our customers. Upgrading our design system, ensuring that we don’t reinvent the wheel across different products when it relates to a particular component or function.



The Strategy &amp; Corporate Development Group also is in my organization. That’s a group that plots the strategy for Adobe going forward, and explores the edges that may someday become the center for the company, then also takes action on some of the inorganic opportunities that we have on the M&amp;A side.



When you’re looking forward, how large of a role does AI play in corporate strategy?



Artificial intelligence to me is reimagining and refactoring every function of an organization. Whether it be finance and accounting, or HR, or legal, or creative, or marketing, these functions are being re-imagined based on these tools. These tools are also collapsing the boundaries between some of these functions, which allow stakeholders who ordinarily were never able to access the power of these functions to be able to do stuff on their behalf.



When you look at the world of creativity and marketing, a few things become clear. First of all, you have a lot of marketers at the edge, like these social media marketers, and people who are engaging in real-time on behalf of the brand on social platforms, where a lot of the spend goes these days for marketing. Those folks need to be outfitted to be able to create in real time. They need to be able to create variations of marketing campaigns. They need to be able to create content that responds to the moment. So in some ways, the lines are blurry. These marketers are acting more like creators.



Similarly on the creator side, creators are starting to act as if they’re art directors and creative directors when they have the ability to assign tasks to AI. Instead of the three or five options that they have the time to explore, now they can explore 300 options leveraging the superpowers of AI. In some cases, that makes them more tastemakers, creative directors and art directors when they’re at that stage of the process.



When it comes to using tools to get exactly what’s in their mind’s eye reflected in some sort of content or creative asset, they have these new tools at their disposal. That’s one of the things that we’re most excited about at Adobe: Taking our creative pros from the prompt era of AI creativity to the controls era. Right now, the creative pros that I talk to are still tinkering with these models. They have fun putting in prompts and stuff like that. It’s a cool concepting and ideation process, but none of it is commercially ready for them to use for putting out something. They want to make all these changes, so they take it into Photoshop, they take it into Illustrator, they take it into our products. I think that control era, where AI becomes even more granular and they can take the reins, is an important step for creative pros.



It’s been two years since ChatGPT hit and every enterprise decided they wanted to have generative AI. How have you seen businesses change their perspective on AI? How do they look at it now?



I think there are two camps of businesses. There are the businesses that typically are the pragmatists. They’re always late to adopt new technologies, for all sorts of reasons. It could be regulatory, it could be deeply ingrained traditions, patterns and reflexes. And it could be the leaders are somewhat technophobic and they want to wait until they have to change something.



Then there’s the camp that’s always saying, we need to reimagine how we do what we do before someone else does. I think [a] characteristic of that camp that leans forward in new technology is they recognize that not only should they be optimizing their product, but they should also be optimizing how they work to create their product. They’re always saying: if we could have more efficient meetings, or if we could have more efficient usage of our data, or if we could optimize the way that we come up with marketing ideas, or if we could streamline this and streamline that.



In that camp, I feel like there’s a big lean in on this technology. They’re in most cases at least playing with it. Many of them are piloting it in some way, shape or form across specific projects. And those who are still playing and piloting are trying to protect the groups that are doing so by making the objectives more along the lines of learning, as opposed to a business outcome, because they want to make sure that they grasp the knowledge and learnings of these tools and their workflows.



And then there are some that have already started to achieve business outcomes and really refactor. When I look at Adobe, we are using products like Copilot and GitHub for our engineers. That has a material impact on how we work. We use Firefly for our branding and marketing work. We’re already creating variations of content and experiencing this kind of multiplier benefit of using those tools.



From where you sit and what you see, both at Adobe but also in the wider space, what do you see coming online and becoming available and accessible to businesses in the way of AI in 2025?



In 2025, there will be a few themes. Number one is that the memory that these AI tools have of our preferences is going to start to enhance the outcomes that we can achieve. On the content and marketing side, the AI remembering the character consistency of something you’re trying to generate content around—whether it be a product that you’re shooting marketing images of, or a character going through a commercial or a short piece of video that you’re developing. The remembering of your brand components, your preferences for brand tone and copy and all that sort of stuff.



On the personal consumer LLM stuff that we all use, the context windows are getting longer and more sophisticated. These AI agents remembering everything we’ve ever purchased, everything we’ve ever liked or disliked, those preferences are going to start to kick in to uplevel the quality of those experiences.



The rise of [AI] agents is going to surprise all of us. We’ve always had a learning curve when it comes to learning tools, software and processes. That’s the learning curve of starting a job or rising the ranks. I would imagine sometime this year, these agents are going to start to meet us where we are in the software tools that we use. They’re going to know what we know and don’t know about it, and they’ll allow us to leverage a lot of power with natural language.



I think it’s really exciting to know that anyone could be able to use a lot of tools that were out of reach. It [also] allows companies like us to not just target marketers and creative pros, but also the stakeholders of marketing and creative, which is almost everyone in an organization. And it also just drives better usage of the product. If an agent helps you and takes actions on your behalf and can explain and show you, it’s really a holy grail for helping people get value out of the products they use.



For creative and marketing tools at Adobe, what is on the horizon—in terms of new developments, ideas and concepts—that will impact what you do?



A couple come to mind. Number one is this new category of ideation and concepting. That typically is the top of the funnel of any creative process. It typically happens in a very offline or manual way, in the form of people making mood boards of images or bookmarks on Instagram of things that inspire them. As I’ve gone around and talked to a lot of creators, art and creative directors and brand managers, they’re constantly collecting all this stuff. For them to be able to use AI to rapidly expand the surface area of possibility they can explore to find great solutions to problems, that category of concepting and mood boarding in the age of AI is really interesting to us. I think that’s one new category that’s going to emerge that’s going to be important for Adobe, and also for the creative and marketing worlds.



The second thing that I think we will see is the maturing, development and innovation of our foundation models. Firefly is in the leading pack of models out there for media generation. The key difference is that Firefly was only trained on commercially safe content that we have licensed. I think we’re one of the only companies that’s really transparent about exactly how we’ve trained our model—as opposed to politely not answering the question. I think that’s important to a lot of our customers, especially in the enterprise, or [among] artists who want to use new tools like AI, but in the right way. I think these models will continue to get better, but that differentiation will continue to become more important.



While we want to make Firefly as great as possible and have it be the commercially safe model for commercial creativity and marketing, I also think that customers may want to use third-party models for various purposes. They might want to use a certain generative model that was trained to make explosions, or to help typography. I’ve been an advocate internally of us supporting third-party models in the workflows that people have. Adobe’s always been a platform-agnostic company, and whenever a platform like Apple or Windows gets better, so do our tools. Similarly, if a new video model comes out, and then another better one, and another better one, if all of those are accessible to our customers for various use cases, how could we not help our customers make use of them? That’s also something that we’re exploring.



You are one of the creators of the&nbsp;<a href="https://contentauthenticity.org/" rel="noreferrer noopener" target="_blank">Content Authenticity Initiative</a>. Where do you see that going in 2025?



This is one of the true passion projects of my career that I think [is] most important. The Content Authenticity Initiative started over five years ago when we started to see new features emerge in products like After Effects that allowed people to edit real video in a very fast way using AI. So this is before the advent of generative AI, but [it] allowed you to remove objects, mask and do things in video that made something very clear to us: The era ahead was one where we could no longer believe our eyes. In that sense, the question was: What do we do to help people demonstrate that something is real? Or if they’ve edited it, how do we help them show how it was changed so that they can still be trusted? It wasn’t developed to punish bad actors. It was developed to reward good actors who are willing to show the provenance and attribution of their work, which creators love. They want to get credit for their work, so they want to add credentials if they can.



Now, in the age of generative AI and the ubiquity of these technologies, the importance of the Content Authenticity Initiative became 10x, because suddenly all of this stuff, anything in your mind could be generated in a second. In some of the models out there that are trained on the open internet, you can make anyone be doing anything. We realized everyone’s looking for the same solution. The social platforms want a way to expose credentials of assets to show how they were edited or made. The enterprises of the world want to know which model was used to create assets, because if it’s a non-commercially safe model, they may not want to use it in a marketing campaign.



Over the last five years, this has become way bigger than Adobe. We are one of the leaders of a number of people. It’s an open-source, open protocol. It’s a nonprofit organization that runs this with constituents from other companies, including competitive companies. The adoption of content credentials is now north of 3,000. Organizations including all the major camera companies like Nikon, Leica, Canon, Sony. You name it, folks are getting on board.



The vision here is very simple. There’s a cryptographic signature that is put into every asset. It’s not a centralized service. This manifest of data, and how this asset was edited and made, travels with the asset. It’s done in such a way where even if you take a screenshot, it still preserves that information. The platforms that display it have the option—whether it’s YouTube, who’s on board, or Facebook, Meta’s on board—has the option of showing any degree of granularity over those credentials that are attached to that asset. And at the end of the day, us as end viewers can determine whether we can trust it or not.



If we were to be having a conversation a year from today, looking back on what’s happened in 2025 and what to expect in terms of AI for 2026, what would we be talking about?



I think we’d be talking about the new discoveries we’ve had on how to use these reasoning engines. I think we’re still at the infancy of how we leverage these state-of-the-art LLMs. As they gain more powerful and longer context windows, and they start to learn who we are, and in some ways empathize with us and where we are in our knowledge, and what our interests are, et cetera, these reasoning engines are going to play a really interesting role, kind of augmenting the way our brain works.



The thing that I find most interesting these days, personally, is when I talk to friends about how they’re using these tools: To go back and forth and make health decisions about themselves that they never had the resources to make. Or they’re putting a proposal together for a customer, and putting it into the LLM first and saying, what might give my customer pause? Why might my customer not want to do business with me based on this proposal? They’re getting such incredible, interesting responses increasingly based on who they are or what their company does. It’s really magical. It’s like having an instant focus group of exactly who you’d want to be in front of you at every given moment in time, and having those insights come back to you. I think we’re going to be surprised by the power of these reasoning engines for making decisions, for managing personal things, for being more effective in our jobs.



I also think they’re going to start to play a role in the commerce or purchase decisions that we make. The idea that we used to decide what restaurant to go to or what thing to buy based on how many stars it has from strangers is going to be replaced by the wisdom and guidance of an AI that knows us extremely well and can give us a recommendation based on our preferences, opposed to based on what the average person thinks.



If you could give some wisdom to CEOs that are looking forward and trying to map out an AI strategy for 2025, what would you say?



No. 1 is allow your teams to play and pilot this technology. Novelty precedes utility when it comes to adoption of new technology. You might not feel like it’s driving the bottom line immediately, but that play helps them discover the utility that ultimately makes a huge impact in the business.



No. 2 is constantly asking yourself a question. Whenever you’re reviewing the roadmap for a particular function of your organization, or the hiring plan, or the product strategy, you should always be asking yourself: Are we sufficiently refactoring how this works? And are we sufficiently re-imagining what’s possible? We’re in a platform shift now that happens probably once every decade—if not longer—where you actually can fundamentally change the way something operates. Over the coming years, roles will change. The tools that we use to run certain functions will change. And as a leader of an organization, you have to be asking yourself: Are we sufficiently refactoring? Are we sufficiently reimagining how we can achieve our mission?

In this photo illustration, the Adobe, Inc. logo is seen

AI Is Reimagining Every Aspect Of Business, Adobe’s Strategy Lead Says

<a href="https://www.forbes.com/"></a><a href="https://www.forbes.com/search/"></a>In 2025, advancements in AI and voice technology could fulfill a promise that tech giants have been making for more than a decade.



Voice assistants like SIri and Alexa could get a much needed boost by AI agents.NurPhoto via Getty Images



In 2016, when newly-minted Google CEO Sundar Pichai unveiled the Google Assistant as part of his new “AI-first” agenda, he touted the fledgling voice assistant as a tool to help people complete tasks.



“The Google Assistant allows you to get things done, bringing you the information you need, when you need it, wherever you are,” he wrote in a&nbsp;<a href="https://blog.google/intl/en-mena/product-updates/explore-get-answers/2016-google-assistant-en/" rel="noreferrer noopener" target="_blank">blog post</a>&nbsp;at the time.



It was a lofty goal that has, for the most part, fallen short. Too often, the software gets stumped by a request, defaulting to a web search and apologetically saying it can’t help. That led people to relegate voice assistants to simple tasks like setting cooking timers, playing music or controlling their lights. Amazon’s Alexa, released a decade ago, hasn’t fared much better. Siri, the earliest of the bunch, launched by Apple in 2011, has been&nbsp;<a href="https://www.reddit.com/r/SiriFail/" rel="noreferrer noopener" target="_blank">panned most of all</a>.



But as generative AI has gone mainstream over the last two years, it has paved the way for AI “agents”: software that’s specifically programmed to take action or complete tasks on behalf of a user, like booking a reservation or buying something online. And as the “agentic era,” as Pichai calls it, arrives in 2025, the technology has the chance to do something that has to date eluded the big tech platforms: make their voice assistants actually useful.



That means Google Assistant, Alexa and Siri could finally fulfill their promise to act like personal assistants. 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. They might have the ability to book your flights and hotels for a big vacation like a digital travel agent, with little more info than trip dates and destination.



Agents are the latest frenzy in the tech industry, with more than 470 platforms devoted to the technology, according to Forrester research. That ranges from big tech giants to smaller startups like LangChain, CrewAI and Play.ai. Beyond consumer features, they can also potentially transform businesses, with agents for customer service or&nbsp;<a href="https://www.forbes.com/sites/rashishrivastava/2024/12/02/cognition-scott-wu-devin-ai/">software development</a>. Deal count for AI agent startups is up more than 81% over the last year, according to PitchBook, with more than $8 billion invested in the space.



“The race is on,” said Steve Jang, a&nbsp;<a href="https://www.forbes.com/lists/midas/">Forbes&nbsp;Midas List investor</a>&nbsp;and founder of the firm Kindred Ventures. “Startups will be competing with the established platforms on who can orchestrate this at much higher fidelity. And who can create much more humanistic and realistic voices and conversations, and access the data and actions that we all want.”



The big tech voice assistants are best poised for such an AI jump start. Google has its marquee model Gemini to beef up its voice searches. Apple earlier this year announced a partnership with OpenAI to use ChatGPT to power some Siri queries. And in the last year, Amazon has invested $8 billion in Anthropic, which makes the powerful Claude chatbot. Google declined to make any of its executives available for interviews. Apple and Amazon didn’t reply to interview requests.



<blockquote class="wp-block-quote is-layout-flow wp-block-quote-is-layout-flow">
“I only use Siri for trivial things that I know it&#8217;s not going to screw up.”Kanjun Qiu, Co-founder, Imbue
</blockquote>



Jang thinks the real innovations will be made in actual voice AI models. Unlike large language models, which underpin services like ChatGPT, voice models are not trained on text and then read aloud by the software. Instead, voice models are trained on actual voice audio, so they can pick up on subtleties in speech, like cadence or emotional cues. Jang has invested in Play.ai, which specializes in voice agents; it’s competing with companies like ElevenLabs, OpenAI and Google that are all working on voice models.



Some, however, are not so convinced that agents will make the big voice assistants exponentially better. Kanjun Qiu, founder of Imbue, which is building agents for coding software, thinks adding more AI to those products will only “incrementally” improve them. She said that new AI features still won’t be a big enough leap for people to trust them. “Delegation as a paradigm is actually really hard for people,” said Qiu. “I only use Siri for trivial things that I know it&#8217;s not going to screw up.”



But she thinks recent improvements in voice AI will help consumers in other ways. For example, more apps will integrate voice features, she predicts. With improved latency and natural language understanding, you’ll be able to give an app instructions and it will carry out that action, Qiu said — like telling an e-commerce app you’d like to return the pair of shoes that don’t fit quite right. (An engineer by training, she said she’s built an app for herself that turns rambling into a to-do list.)



Improvements in AI and voice technology could also unlock hardware ambitions that Silicon Valley has been attempting for years. More than a decade ago, Google infamously faceplanted when it unveiled Google Glass, a piece of smart eyewear that stoked privacy fears and wasn’t very useful. Earlier this month, the company teased a&nbsp;<a href="https://www.forbes.com/sites/richardnieva/2024/12/11/googles-gemini-ai-glasses/">new pair of prototype glasses</a>&nbsp;to be used with Project Astra, Google’s new platform for AI agents. In a demo, the glasses, which are voice-controlled, automatically pulled up a door code from the wearer’s email the moment he looked at the entry keypad. The tech could also conjure up route information about the bus in front of him or the art sculpture he walked by.



Meanwhile, Facebook’s Orion glasses, announced earlier this year, use a combination of voice and hand gestures to control AI tools, like looking at ingredients in your pantry and asking the tech to find a recipe that uses them.



Voice-based innovations also make technology more accessible. Not everyone can read or write or type, but more people have the ability to speak, Jang said. And it’s an increasing preference for young people: 42% of 18-to-29 year olds in the U.S. send voice messages in their chat apps at least weekly, according to a study by YouGov and Vox.



New advancements in AI could make voice tools even more widely used and change the way people interact with their technology. “It makes voice agents — and voice itself — this great new user interface that has been untapped so far in computing,” Jang said.

Internet technology and people’s networks use AI to help with work, AI Learning or artificial intelligence in business and modern technology, AI technology in everyday life.

AI Agents Could Finally Make Siri And Alexa Truly Useful

<h2 class="wp-block-heading" id="h-topline">Topline</h2>



Meta will drop its fact-checking program and replace it with an X-style community notes feature, the social media giant’s CEO Mark Zuckerberg announced Tuesday, saying the move will help restore “free expression” on the company’s platforms as he attacked governments and legacy media by accusing them of pushing for more censorship.



<h2 class="wp-block-heading" id="h-key-facts">Key Facts</h2>



In a&nbsp;<a href="https://www.facebook.com/zuck/videos/1525382954801931" rel="noreferrer noopener" target="_blank">video posted on Facebook</a>, Zuckerberg said the company is going to get back to its “roots” and focus on “simplifying our policies and restoring free expression on our platforms.”



The Meta CEO then specified that the company would “get rid of fact-checkers” and replace them with “community notes similar to X,” starting first in the U.S.



Zuckerberg said the recent U.S. elections felt like “a cultural tipping point towards, once again, prioritizing speech.”



The billionaire added that the debate about “potential harms from online content” had led to Meta developing “complex systems” to moderate content, which led to “too many mistakes” and “too much censorship.”



Zuckerberg claimed that the fact-checkers implemented by Meta “have been too politically biased and have destroyed more trust than they have created.”



<h2 class="wp-block-heading" id="h-what-are-the-changes-being-implemented-by-meta">What Are The Changes Being Implemented By Meta?</h2>



The company’s new Chief Global Affairs Officer, Joel Kaplan, detailed the changes in a&nbsp;<a href="https://about.fb.com/news/2025/01/meta-more-speech-fewer-mistakes/" rel="noreferrer noopener" target="_blank">blog post, saying</a>: “We’ve seen this approach work on X.” Once operational, Meta won’t write any of the community notes or decide “which ones show up.” The feature will “require agreement between people with a range of perspectives to help prevent biased ratings,” the blog noted. Community Notes will be rolled out in phases over the next few months and will appear on Facebook, Instagram and Threads. Meta will also be loosening its moderation policies and removing restrictions on topics like “immigration, gender identity and gender that are the subject of frequent political discourse and debate.” In his announcement, Zuckerberg claimed these restrictions are “out of touch with mainstream discourse,” and said they had been used as a tool to “shut down opinions,” instead of being more inclusive. The company is also rolling back its efforts to reduce the visibility of political content, saying it wants to replace its “blunt approach” with a “more personalized approach so that people who want to see more political content in their feeds can.” This means political content will be ranked and displayed “like any other content in your feed.”



<h2 class="wp-block-heading" id="h-key-background">Key Background</h2>



Meta’s changes come as Zuckerberg has made several public overtures to mend his and his company’s tense relationship with President-elect Donald Trump. Meta suspended Trump from all its platforms after the Jan. 6 Capitol riots and, which Trump said at the time was “an insult” to Americans who voted for him, and added: “They shouldn’t be allowed to get away with this censoring and silencing, and ultimately, we will win.” While his accounts were eventually&nbsp;<a href="https://about.fb.com/news/2023/01/trump-facebook-instagram-account-suspension/" rel="noreferrer noopener" target="_blank">restored</a>&nbsp;in 2023, Trump and his allies continued to attack Meta and Zuckerberg. Last year, Trump said Meta was a bigger threat than the Chinese social media platform TikTok and&nbsp;<a href="https://www.forbes.com/sites/maryroeloffs/2024/03/11/trump-says-tiktok-ban-could-make-facebook-bigger-slams-meta-as-enemy-of-the-people/">called it</a>&nbsp;“an enemy of the people.” In late November, Zuckerberg&nbsp;<a href="https://www.forbes.com/sites/siladityaray/2024/11/28/zuckerberg-meets-with-trump-at-mar-a-lago-in-bid-to-mend-strained-relationship/">met with Trump</a>&nbsp;at his Mar-A-Lago residence in Florida, a move that was seen as a bid by the Meta CEO to mend the strained ties. At the time, Meta said Zuckerberg was “grateful for the invitation to join President Trump for dinner and…meet with members of his team about the incoming administration.” Trump’s pick for deputy chief of staff for policy Stephen Miller told Fox News Zuckerberg informed Trump that “he wants to support the national renewal of America under Trump’s leadership,” and he sees the president-elect as an “agent of change and…prosperity.”



<h2 class="wp-block-heading" id="h-big-number">Big Number</h2>



$1 million. That is the amount Meta has&nbsp;<a href="https://www.forbes.com/sites/siladityaray/2024/12/12/meta-donates-1-million-to-trumps-inaugural-fund-weeks-after-ceo-zuckerberg-met-president-elect/">donated</a>&nbsp;to Trump’s inaugural fund.



<h2 class="wp-block-heading" id="h-further-reading">Further Reading</h2>



<a href="https://www.forbes.com/sites/siladityaray/2024/12/12/meta-donates-1-million-to-trumps-inaugural-fund-weeks-after-ceo-zuckerberg-met-president-elect/">Meta Donates $1 Million To Trump’s Inaugural Fund Weeks After Mark Zuckerberg Met President-Elect</a>&nbsp;(Forbes)



<a href="https://www.forbes.com/sites/siladityaray/2024/11/28/zuckerberg-meets-with-trump-at-mar-a-lago-in-bid-to-mend-strained-relationship/">Zuckerberg Meets With Trump At Mar-A-Lago After Years Of Strained Ties</a>&nbsp;(Forbes)

Key Speakers At The Meta Connect Event

Meta Ditches Fact-Checks For X-Style Community Notes—Zuckerberg Says It Will Restore ‘Free Expression’

<h2 class="wp-block-heading" id="h-topline">Topline</h2>



Constellation Brands, the producer of Modelo and Corona, lost about $450 million in market capitalization as shares for several alcohol makers and distributors dipped on Friday after Surgeon General Vivek Murthy called for Congress to update warning labels on alcoholic beverages to include cancer risks.



<h2 class="wp-block-heading" id="h-key-facts">Key Facts</h2>



Shares of Constellation Brands dropped by more than 1% to below $220 as of around 9:35 a.m. EST, cutting the company’s market valuation from $40.4 billion Thursday to below $40 billion.



Other alcohol makers and distributors saw their stocks tumble after Murthy’s advisory, including Bud Light owner Anheuser-Busch InBev (1.2%), Jack Daniel’s maker Brown Forman (1.1%), Molson Coors Beverage (0.8%) and Sam Adams maker Boston Beer Company (0.9%).



The risk of developing cancer increases as alcohol consumption increases regardless of the type of alcohol, Murthy said in an&nbsp;<a href="https://www.hhs.gov/about/news/2025/01/03/us-surgeon-general-issues-new-advisory-link-alcohol-cancer-risk.html#:~:text=%E2%80%9CAlcohol%20is%20a%20well%2Destablished,of%20this%20risk%2C%E2%80%9D%20said%20U.S" rel="noreferrer noopener" target="_blank">advisory</a>&nbsp;Friday, calling for labels to caution about an increased risk of at least seven types of cancers, including breast, colorectum, esophagus, liver, mouth, throat and voice box.



Alcohol is the third-leading preventable cause of cancer behind tobacco and obesity, according to Murthy, who&nbsp;<a href="https://x.com/Surgeon_General/status/1875150673307910193" rel="noreferrer noopener" target="_blank">suggested</a>&nbsp;only about 45% of American adults know of the possible cancer risks.



Murthy called for the recommended limits for alcohol consumption to be reassessed, allowing people to consider whether to or how much alcohol they should drink depending on the possible risks of cancer.



<h2 class="wp-block-heading" id="h-big-number">Big Number</h2>



100,000. That’s the estimated number of annual alcohol-related cancer cases in the U.S., including 20,000 alcohol-related cancer deaths, Murthy said. About 16.4% of total breast cancer cases can be attributed to alcohol consumption.



<h2 class="wp-block-heading" id="h-what-to-watch-for">What To Watch For</h2>



Congress must approve Murthy’s recommendation to add a warning label to alcoholic beverages. It’s not immediately clear whether the upcoming administration would support the labels. President Trump famously does not drink, and his pick to lead the Department of Health and Human Services, Robert F. Kennedy Jr., has&nbsp;<a href="https://x.com/RobertKennedyJr/status/1802038956537876771" rel="noreferrer noopener" target="_blank">said</a>&nbsp;he has sworn off alcohol “for decades” and regularly attends Alcoholics Anonymous meetings.



<h2 class="wp-block-heading" id="h-key-background">Key Background</h2>



Warning labels on alcohol warn about drinking while pregnant, before driving, operating machinery and general “health risks,” and have gone unchanged since their inception in 1998, according to Murthy. A recent <a href="https://nap.nationalacademies.org/catalog/28582/review-of-evidence-on-alcohol-and-health" target="_blank" rel="noreferrer noopener">report</a> from the National Academies of Sciences, Engineering and Medicine found a link between alcohol consumption and slight increase in breast cancer, but not other types. In 2019, the Food and Drug Administration’s dietary guidelines <a href="https://www.dietaryguidelines.gov/sites/default/files/2020-07/ReportMtgS2_Chapter11_Alc.pdf" target="_blank" rel="noreferrer noopener">acknowledged</a> alcohol as a carcinogen—a substance that can increase the risk of cancer—that posed other health risks. Health officials <a href="https://www.dietaryguidelines.gov/sites/default/files/2020-07/PartD_Ch11_AlcoholicBev_first-print.pdf" target="_blank" rel="noreferrer noopener">recommended</a> “tightening guidelines” by lowering the recommended alcoholic consumption guidelines for men to one standard drink a day. Guidelines say men are advised to consume up to two drinks a day and are also unchanged.

Outdoor gastronomy in Frankfurt am Main

Alcohol Stocks Drop—Corona Owner Plummets $450 Million In Value—After Surgeon General Says Alcohol Should Have Cancer Warning

<h2 class="wp-block-heading" id="h-topline">Topline</h2>



Netflix is quickly adding to its slate of live sports programming by launching its weekly live broadcasts of the WWE “Raw” program on Monday with a star-studded premiere episode, just weeks after it streamed the NFL Christmas Day games and the Mike Tyson and Jake Paul fight.



<h2 class="wp-block-heading" id="h-key-facts">Key Facts</h2>



Netflix will kick off its partnership with WWE with a premiere episode set to air Monday, which will feature a star-studded slate of guests including an appearance from rapper Travis Scott, who wrote the new WWE “Raw”&nbsp;<a href="https://www.billboard.com/music/rb-hip-hop/travis-scott-wwe-raw-theme-song-netflix-debut-1235831839/" rel="noreferrer noopener" target="_blank">theme song</a>.



Other wrestling stars slated for appearances at the premiere include John Cena, the wrestler-turned-actor who said he will formally retire from wrestling this year, as well as Logan Paul, Cody Rhodes and Roman Reigns.



The premiere launches Netflix’s weekly broadcasts of WWE “Raw,” one of its flagship wrestling programs that previously aired Mondays on the USA Network, which still retains the rights to another major WWE program, “SmackDown,” in the United States.



Netflix will, however, broadcast “SmackDown” to viewers in some non-U.S. territories, as well as specials like “WrestleMania,” “SummerSlam” and “Royal Rumble” for international viewers.



Netflix and WWE struck the deal, valued at $5 billion according to a Securities and Exchange Commission&nbsp;<a href="https://www.sec.gov/Archives/edgar/data/1973266/000119312524012602/d715345d424b3.htm" rel="noreferrer noopener" target="_blank">filing</a>, for a 10-year period, though Netflix has the option to exit after the first five years.



<h2 class="wp-block-heading" id="h-when-does-the-premiere-episode-air">When Does The Premiere Episode Air?</h2>



The first WWE “Raw” stream begins at 8 p.m. EST on Monday, Jan. 6. The event will air live from the Intuit Dome in Los Angeles. For viewers who miss the live broadcast,&nbsp;<a href="https://www.netflix.com/tudum/articles/how-to-watch-wwe-on-netflix" rel="noreferrer noopener" target="_blank">Netflix</a>&nbsp;says episodes of WWE “Raw” will be available to watch immediately after the live show ends. The premiere episode will feature a match between reigning women’s world champion Liv Morgan, who will fight to defend her title from Rhea Ripley. Other matches during the episode include Roman Reigns vs. Solo Sikoa, Drew McIntyre vs. Jey Uso and CM Punk vs. Seth &#8220;Freakin&#8221; Rollins.



<h2 class="wp-block-heading" id="h-surprising-fact">Surprising Fact</h2>



WWE also&nbsp;<a href="https://www.forbes.com/sites/antoniopequenoiv/2024/02/08/wwe-and-x-announce-partnership-to-air-5-minute-wrestling-matches/">partnered</a>&nbsp;with X last year to broadcast 5-minute wrestling matches on the Elon Musk-owned social media platform.&nbsp;<a href="https://x.com/WWE" rel="noreferrer noopener" target="_blank">WWE</a>&nbsp;maintains a large audience on X, with more than 14 million followers.



<h2 class="wp-block-heading" id="h-tangent">Tangent</h2>



Billionaire&nbsp;<a href="https://www.forbes.com/profile/vincent-mcmahon/">Vince McMahon</a>&nbsp;and his wife Linda McMahon founded WWE together in 1980, and have since separated but not divorced, with Linda leaving the brand in 2009 to pursue a political career, including two failed Senate campaigns and a stint leading the Small Business Administration. Linda was named by President-elect Donald Trump as his pick for&nbsp;<a href="https://www.bbc.com/news/articles/c8rl8knmg8eo" rel="noreferrer noopener" target="_blank">Secretary of Education</a>&nbsp;in November. Vince McMahon first resigned from his role as CEO and chairman of WWE in 2022 after an&nbsp;<a href="https://www.wsj.com/articles/wwes-vince-mcmahon-agreed-to-pay-12-million-in-hush-money-to-four-women-11657289742?mod=article_inline" rel="noreferrer noopener" target="_blank">investigation</a>&nbsp;revealed he had made more than $12 million in hush money payments to four women, all formerly affiliated with WWE, to prohibit them from making claims of sexual harassment against McMahon. McMahon was&nbsp;<a href="https://www.wsj.com/articles/wwe-board-elects-vince-mcmahon-executive-chairman-11673401713" rel="noreferrer noopener" target="_blank">elected</a>&nbsp;as executive chairman again in January 2023, but he&nbsp;<a href="https://www.nbcnews.com/news/us-news/wwe-founder-vince-mcmahon-resigns-ex-employee-accuses-lawsuit-sexual-a-rcna135981" rel="noreferrer noopener" target="_blank">resigned again</a>&nbsp;in January 2024 after a lawsuit filed by a former employee accused him of sex trafficking, abuse and sexual assault, which McMahon denied as “lies.” The U.S. Department of Justice is reportedly&nbsp;<a href="https://www.usatoday.com/story/sports/2024/05/30/vince-mcmahon-sex-trafficking-lawsuit-wwe-federal-probe/73912612007/" rel="noreferrer noopener" target="_blank">probing</a>&nbsp;McMahon’s sex trafficking allegations. Another lawsuit filed in October&nbsp;<a href="https://www.nbcnews.com/news/us-news/vince-mcmahon-wwe-accused-allowing-rampant-sexual-exploitation-young-b-rcna176988" rel="noreferrer noopener" target="_blank">accused</a>&nbsp;both Vince and Linda McMahon, as well as the WWE and parent company TKO Holdings, of knowingly enabling former ringside announcer Melvin Phillips, Jr. to sexually exploit children in the 1980s.



<h2 class="wp-block-heading" id="h-key-background">Key Background</h2>



The WWE partnership marks Netflix’s latest dive into live programming, following a string of unsuccessful attempts and its first forays into sports streams. The streaming service first started livestreaming in 2023 with a Chris Rock comedy special, but bungled a live “Love is Blind” reunion, which crashed and aired hours after it was scheduled, that same year. The company’s first sports broadcast, the highly anticipated fight between Mike Tyson and Jake Paul, attracted 60 million viewers but was plagued by glitches and delays that frustrated viewers and sparked a firestorm of concern online among sports fans about whether Netflix could handle streaming the NFL’s Christmas Day games and WWE “Raw” broadcasts. The NFL broadcast, which averaged 30 million&nbsp;<a href="https://apnews.com/article/nfl-netflix-christmas-b438221c22de046d9417e5a668f6f659" rel="noreferrer noopener" target="_blank">viewers</a>&nbsp;for its two games and a Beyoncé halftime performance, was largely&nbsp;<a href="https://www.nytimes.com/athletic/6018940/2024/12/25/netflix-nfl-broadcasting-streaming-christmas/" rel="noreferrer noopener" target="_blank">glitch-free</a>&nbsp;aside from minor reported buffering and audio issues.



<h2 class="wp-block-heading" id="h-further-reading">Further Reading</h2>



<a href="https://www.latimes.com/entertainment-arts/business/story/2024-01-23/wwe-raw-heads-to-netflix-in-2025" rel="noreferrer noopener" target="_blank">WWE’s ‘Raw’ will stream live on Netflix next year in major sports rights deal</a>&nbsp;(Los Angeles Times)



<a href="https://www.nytimes.com/athletic/6018940/2024/12/25/netflix-nfl-broadcasting-streaming-christmas/" rel="noreferrer noopener" target="_blank">Netflix has up-and-down first foray into NFL broadcasting after early glitch</a>&nbsp;(The Athletic)



<a href="https://www.nbcnews.com/news/us-news/vince-mcmahon-wwe-accused-allowing-rampant-sexual-exploitation-young-b-rcna176988" rel="noreferrer noopener" target="_blank">Vince McMahon and WWE accused of allowing &#8216;rampant&#8217; sexual exploitation of young boys by announcer in new lawsuit</a>&nbsp;(NBC News)

Monday Night RAW

What To Know About WWE Streaming On Netflix: Premiere On Monday Featuring John Cena, Travis Scott, Logan Paul

<h2 class="wp-block-heading" id="h-topline">Topline</h2>



Meghan Markle is set to make her return to the small screen later this month with a new lifestyle show called &#8220;With Love, Meghan,&#8221; a Netflix original lifestyle series born out of her and Prince Harry’s Archewell Productions’ $100 million deal with the streamer.



<h2 class="wp-block-heading">Key Facts</h2>



A nearly two-minute-long&nbsp;<a href="https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=Vdro1p53LYQ&amp;t=23s" rel="noreferrer noopener" target="_blank">trailer</a>&nbsp;released by Netflix on Thursday shows Markle wandering the rows of a meticulously kept garden, choosing fresh flowers, harvesting honey, kneading homemade bread and working in the kitchen with a lineup of famous friends.



Netflix says the eight-episode show, which will release in full Jan. 15, &#8220;reimagines the genre of lifestyle programming, blending practical how-to’s and candid conversation with friends, new and old.&#8221;



Actress Mindy Kaling, chefs Alice Walters and Roy Choi, Godmothers Bookstore co-founder Jennifer Rudolph Walsh, “Suits” star Abigail Spencer, Prince Harry and other stars all make appearances in the trailer, with Kaling declaring her time in the duchess’ kitchen “one of the most glamorous moments of my life.”



The show is directed by Michael Steed, the man behind the &#8220;Anthony Bourdain: Parts Unknown&#8221; series, and showrunner Leah Hariton, who also made the Daytime Emmy-nominated &#8220;Selena + Chef&#8221; show with Selena Gomez.



An upcoming lifestyle series from Markle was first&nbsp;<a href="https://www.forbes.com/sites/maryroeloffs/2024/04/11/netflix-prince-harry-and-meghan-markle-polo-lifestyle-american-riviera-orchard/">announced</a>&nbsp;by Netflix last April, shortly after Markle&nbsp;<a href="https://www.forbes.com/sites/maryroeloffs/2024/03/15/meghan-markle-launches-new-lifestyle-brand-amid-kate-middleton-photo-editing-scandal-heres-what-we-know/?sh=26c9201758bd">launched a lifestyle brand</a>&nbsp;called American Riviera Orchard in March of 2024 that has yet to produce any content or products.



<h2 class="wp-block-heading">Crucial Quote</h2>



&#8220;We&#8217;re not in the pursuit of perfection, we&#8217;re in the pursuit of joy,&#8221; Markle says in the trailer for “With Love, Meghan.” &#8220;Love is in the details.&#8221;



<h2 class="wp-block-heading">Surprising Fact</h2>



Before she became engaged to and later married Prince Harry, Markle ran a lifestyle blog called The Tig on which she interviewed celebrities, talked fashion and revealed personal details of her early life and career as an actress. She closed the site in 2017.



<h2 class="wp-block-heading">Big Number</h2>



5. &#8220;With Love, Meghan&#8221; is the&nbsp;<a href="https://www.forbes.com/sites/maryroeloffs/2024/04/11/netflix-prince-harry-and-meghan-markle-polo-lifestyle-american-riviera-orchard/">fifth project</a>&nbsp;to come out of the reported $100 million deal with Netflix Harry and Meghan made after announcing their departure from the British royal family. &#8220;Polo,&#8221; a five-part series on the sport of professional polo, debuted in December but didn&#8217;t crack the streamers&#8217;&nbsp;<a href="https://www.netflix.com/tudum/top10/tv?week=2024-12-15" rel="noreferrer noopener" target="_blank">top 10.</a>&nbsp;Their first project, a tell-all 2022 documentary called &#8220;Harry &amp; Meghan&#8221; was&nbsp;<a href="https://www.cnn.com/2022/12/13/business/harry-and-meghan-netflix-documentary-most-watched/index.html#:~:text=Netflix's%20documentary%20about%20Prince%20Harry,service%20in%20its%20premiere%20week." rel="noreferrer noopener" target="_blank">watched</a>&nbsp;for 81.55 million hours in its first week and became the platform&#8217;s most-watched documentary premiere. The couple&#8217;s production company also created “Heart of Invictus,” a documentary following athletes participating in the Prince Harry-founded sporting event for wounded veterans, and “Live to Lead,” a docuseries on impactful world leaders.



<h2 class="wp-block-heading">Key Background</h2>



In January 2020, 18 months after they were married and less than a year after welcoming their first child, Harry and Meghan&nbsp;<a href="https://www.bbc.com/news/uk-51040751" rel="noreferrer noopener" target="_blank">announced</a>&nbsp;they would be stepping down as senior royals, citing bullying from the British media, racism within the family and general mistreatment. The couple moved to California, where they had one more child, and have since launched several business ventures to varying degrees of success. The couple created a charity organization and an audio and video production company using the name Archewell and signed deals with Netflix and&nbsp;<a href="https://www.wsj.com/articles/meghan-markles-archetypes-podcast-at-spotify-wont-be-renewed-44311f4f?mod=hp_lead_pos12" rel="noreferrer noopener" target="_blank">Spotify</a>&nbsp;worth $100 million and $20 million, respectively. In 2023, the couple&#8217;s Spotify partnership&nbsp;<a href="https://www.forbes.com/sites/anafaguy/2024/02/13/meghan-markle-strikes-deal-with-smaller-podcast-distributor-after-spotify-agreement-ends/">ended</a>&nbsp;after they reportedly failed to meet “productivity benchmarks.” Last March, Markel announced&nbsp;<a href="https://www.forbes.com/sites/maryroeloffs/2024/03/15/meghan-markle-launches-new-lifestyle-brand-amid-kate-middleton-photo-editing-scandal-heres-what-we-know/?sh=26c9201758bd">American Riviera Orchard</a>&nbsp;as a lifestyle brand that, in an LLC filing in Delaware, said it would create an online retail store selling tableware, cutlery, cookbooks, servingware, coffee and tea services, kitchen textiles, jams and jellies, oils and other foods. The brand has hit several road bumps, including the&nbsp;<a href="https://wwd.com/pop-culture/celebrity-news/meghan-markle-trademark-american-riviera-orchard-denied-1236569541/" rel="noreferrer noopener" target="_blank">rejection</a>&nbsp;of a trademark request and&nbsp;<a href="https://www.thecut.com/article/when-will-meghan-markle-debut-american-riviera-orchard.html" rel="noreferrer noopener" target="_blank">reports</a>&nbsp;no CEO has been found to lead the business, and has gone nowhere since the announcement. No posts have been made on the&nbsp;<a href="https://www.instagram.com/americanrivieraorchard/?hl=en" rel="noreferrer noopener" target="_blank">brand’s Instagram</a>&nbsp;since last March and the company’s&nbsp;<a href="https://americanriviera.com/" rel="noreferrer noopener" target="_blank">website</a>&nbsp;has been empty.

AAAAQRgtH-Un5JEeeJJeNpPJRMY6lbrUBE263C6bvohtO_W6OPjz7GyX2plNoQ2FXIuukHxgDizUM3yzfi5qDhDtwm4EWWh2RCetxL9Ai7r7oWbR5EqJB7wceuMEMlJIw9BVxny0scOp7n_NndcIXvLMNMHA

What We Know About Meghan Markle’s Netflix Lifestyle Show Ahead Of January Debut

Musk’s fortune soared by a record $170 billion in 2024–putting him an all-time high dollar amount ahead of Jeff Bezos, the world’s second richest person.



The soaring valuations of Tesla, SpaceX and xAI boosted Elon Musk’s fortune to an estimated $421.2 billion as of December 31, 2024, up from $251 billion at the start of 2024. He’s the first person to ever be worth&nbsp;more than $300 billion (a milestone he briefly achieved in 2021), let alone $400 billion.



As a result, Musk ended the year a record $188 billion richer than the world’s next wealthiest person, Amazon’s Jeff Bezos, who was worth an estimated $233.5 billion when the ball dropped in New York City’s Times Square earlier this week. A representative for Musk has not replied to a request for comment from Forbes.



The record for the largest year-end lead between No. 1 and No. 2 richest more than doubled in 2024. Back in 2021—the previous record—Musk was worth $72 billion more than then-No. 2 Bernard Arnault.



Musk actually lost the title of world’s richest person to Arnault in January 2024, when a Delaware judge voided his 2018 deal to receive options equaling a 9% stake in Tesla—then worth about $56 billion. (Forbes&nbsp;discounted the options by 50% pending Musk’s appeal.)&nbsp;But Musk regained the crown in May, when his new artificial intelligence startup xAI raised $6 billion at a $24 billion valuation, helping boost his fortune to $209.5 billion at the time. Since then he’s never looked back.



In December, xAI raised another $6 billion at a reported $50 billion valuation, giving Musk an estimated 54% stake worth $27 billion. That same month, SpaceX was valued at $350 billion in a private share sale, up from $180 billion a year earlier, boosting the value of Musk’s estimated 42% stake to $147 billion.



Tesla shares also hit an all-time high on December 17 and ended the year up 93%, with almost all of that gain coming after Musk helped re-elect Donald Trump as president on November 5 and was named co-head of Trump’s new Department of Government Efficiency (DOGE) a week later. That boosted the value of Musk’s 12% stake in Tesla to $166 billion.



And that’s excluding Musk’s Tesla options that were voided by the Delaware judge in January 2024. Though Tesla shareholders voted to reapprove the options in June, in early December the Delaware judge reaffirmed her decision to void the award. For now,&nbsp;Forbes&nbsp;is continuing to discount the options by 50% pending Musk’s appeal, giving them a discounted valuation of nearly $57.8 billion.



Musk, who became the first person ever worth $400 billion or more&nbsp;<a href="https://www.forbes.com/sites/phoebeliu/2024/12/11/elon-musk-now-worth-more-than-400-billion-worlds-richest-person/">in December</a>, saw his fortune soar by a record $170 billion during 2024–or by roughly one Bernard Arnault, who ended the year as the world’s fifth richest person, worth an estimated $168.4 billion.



Tesla shares have fallen about 6% as of 3 pm E.T. on Thursday, January 2 following news from the company <a href="https://www.forbes.com/sites/dereksaul/2025/01/02/tesla-q4-vehicle-deliveries-fall-short-of-estimates-annual-deliveries-fell-1-in-2024/">earlier in the day</a> that vehicle deliveries in 2024 fell compared to 2023, and that fourth-quarter deliveries missed analysts’ expectations. That wiped out nearly $15 billion from Musk’s fortune. But he’s still the number one richest, worth an estimated nearly $406 billion. And the gap between Musk and No. 2 Bezos is still yawning at nearly $172 billion.

Tech Illustration Images

The Unprecedented Gap Between Elon Musk And The World’s Next Richest

Dalan Animal Health is working to sell its bee vaccines to commercial beekeepers and governments – and potentially expand to other invertebrates.



<hr class="wp-block-separator has-alpha-channel-opacity"/>



How do you vaccinate a honeybee? And will beekeepers care enough to do it?



Those are the questions Annette Kleiser has been wrestling since founding Dalan Animal Health in 2018. Five years after launching the startup, the government approved an oral vaccine her team created that’s designed for the world’s beekeepers to feed to worker bees, which then feed it to their queens in royal jelly. The result, strangely enough, is immunity for the queen’s offspring. Now, she’s on a mission to get as many bees vaccinated as she can — helping to safeguard not only the hives but the crops that they pollinate.



“We know that the loss of insects is dramatic for this world,” Kleiser said. “We cannot survive on this planet or anywhere else without insects.”



The Dalan vaccine defends against a devastating bacterial disease aptly named American Foulbrood, and Kleiser sees it as a first step toward keeping the roughly 3 million honeybee colonies in the U.S. healthy. It’s not the only disease bees can suffer from; about 50% of colonies and millions of bees die each year from a variety of ailments, including a nasty parasite called the varroa mite, pesticide poisoning, inadequate nutrition and the stress of traveling around the country to pollinate crops. Those are devastating numbers for beekeepers: “Imagine a cattle farmer losing 30 to 50% of their cattle each year,” said Matt Mulica, a senior project director at the Keystone Policy Center, which facilitates the Honey Bee Health Coalition. “How do you combat that?”



Kleiser and her team at Athens, Georgia-based Dalan Animal Health believe specially designed bee vaccines are an important tool in keeping more bees alive, enabling commercial beekeepers (who may have some 5,000 to 30,000 colonies) to continue bringing them around the country so they can pollinate crops like almonds, blueberries, cucumbers and apples.



“If you have an outbreak [of American Foulbrood], the spores have such resiliency that the recommended treatment is to kill all the bees and burn all the hives,” said Tom Chi, founder of At One Ventures, who invested in a $3.6 million seed round in summer 2022 as Dalan was taking its vaccine against American Foulbrood through clinical trials. “It’s catastrophic if you get it.”



Kleiser, who has a Ph.D. in neurophysiology from the Ludwig Maximilian University of Munich, discovered the research that would lead her to bee vaccines when she was working to help universities transform academic work into businesses. While visiting the University of Helsinki, she met Estonian biologist and zoologist Dalial Freitak, who had an unorthodox idea: to inject an inactivated bacteria into a queen to improve the hive’s overall resilience to disease. Insects and other invertebrates don’t have antibodies like humans and other mammals do, so the traditional way of creating vaccines won’t work on them. “When I heard about the research, I was like, ‘Why isn’t anybody doing this?’” Kleiser recalled.



<hr class="wp-block-separator has-alpha-channel-opacity"/>



<blockquote class="wp-block-quote is-style-plain has-medium-font-size is-layout-flow wp-block-quote-is-layout-flow">
“If someone cuts their winter losses in half because of these vaccinated queens, it would spread like wildfire.”Commercial beekeper Chris Hiatt
</blockquote>



<hr class="wp-block-separator has-alpha-channel-opacity"/>



Kleiser spun Freitak’s research out of the university, then they created a vaccine that’s mixed into the so-called “queen candy” for the queens’ attendants, who then incorporate it into the royal jelly that is fed to the queen. The result is that the queen’s larvae will be primed against the disease when they hatch.



Beekeepers are watching closely. “This is really new. I think that’s why it’s caused a lot of interest and excitement,” said Blake Shook, a commercial beekeeper in Leonard, Texas, who is testing out the new vaccine. And national governments are interested too: Kleiser said she is in conversation with half-dozen countries in Asia, South America and Europe about buying the vaccine to protect their countries’ bees (she declined to name which ones). She’s raised $14 million in venture funding from At One Ventures and Prime Movers Lab so far. While this is an early-stage startup with revenue below $1 million, Kleiser is optimistic she’ll be able to land major contracts with both governments and commercial beekeepers in the next year.



But there’s a major hurdle: convincing beekeepers that the cost of $10 per vaccine is worth it. “Everyone is interested,” Shook told&nbsp;Forbes.&nbsp;“But it is expensive, and beekeeping isn’t exactly a high-margin business.”



Russell Heitkam, whose Heitkam’s Honey Bees is a major producer of queens (he sells some 75,000 of them a year), said his customers are actively trying to understand the economics and value of vaccination. For a commercial beekeeper with 30,000 hives, the cost of vaccinating at $10 a queen adds up quickly, to roughly $300,000. Heitkam, who is working with Dalan on trials of the vaccine, told&nbsp;Forbes&nbsp;he’d like to see proof that the vaccines allow each colony of bees to become more dense with healthy insects that can produce greater quantities of honey and do more pollination. Dalan argues that the cost to vaccinate will be more than offset by having fewer bees die off and healthier bees survive, but Heitkam and other beekeepers want to see the vaccine do more than just protect against American Foulbrood, which commercial beekeepers can in part prevent through better beekeeping practices, like not sharing equipment between colonies and cleaning hive tools carefully.



“People call me and say, ‘Hey, I want to get some queens, should I get them vaccinated?” he said. “An average queen is $28, and now you want to put another $10 on top of that, so you need to be able to monetize that $10.”



But, he points out, “If their vaccine can produce one more frame of bees at pollination time, that will pay for itself.” A frame is the movable part of the hive and can typically hold 2,000 to 2,500 bees.



Adds Chris Hiatt, a commercial beekeeper with Hiatt Honey who is also president of the American Honey Producers Association: “In beekeeping, it’s word of mouth. If someone cuts their winter losses in half because of these vaccinated queens, it would spread like wildfire.”



That’s just for one bee disease. Dalan’s researchers are studying whether its vaccine can provide protection against others, especially a particularly harmful one known as deformed wing virus. So far, experimental trials across 400 commercial hives have shown an&nbsp;<a href="https://www.prnewswire.com/news-releases/new-research-from-the-company-behind-the-first-honeybee-vaccine-offers-hope-for-beekeepers-against-a-deadly-viral-pathogen-302243458.html" rel="noreferrer noopener" target="_blank">83% reduction</a>&nbsp;in the levels of a highly transmissible variant of the virus. “Anything above 65% to 70% is considered effective treatment, and we’re well beyond that,” investor Chi said.



The next step is to expand beyond honeybees to other invertebrates, starting with shrimp. “It was clear for me from day one that this is not only the solution for one insect, but potentially for all invertebrates,” said Freitak, the company’s scientific cofounder.



Like beekeeping, shrimp farming — a $40 billion market — suffers from double-digit losses each year from diseases, despite relying heavily on chemical pesticides that take a heavy environmental toll. “There are billions of losses, and shrimp production is growing and has a big impact on mangroves because of the chemicals used in shrimp farming,” Kleiser said.



Since the immune system of shrimp is similar to that of bees, she thinks Dalan could vaccinate maternal shrimp similarly to queen bees. The company has begun testing vaccines for a common shrimp disease, known as white spot syndrome virus, starting with small shrimp and then as they get big enough for commercial sale. The company said it’s beginning to see promising results with a 64% survival rate in early tests at an aquaculture research facility. “In shrimp, everything has failed in the field,” she said. “We believe our approach is so different that we have a chance of cracking the market.”



If a vaccine works for bees and shrimp, what else might it be able to do? Longer term, Kleiser believes that even mosquitoes, known for carrying diseases like malaria and dengue fever to humans, could be vaccinated, reducing outbreaks worldwide. As climate change raises the risks of formerly tropical diseases spreading north, the ability to vaccinate insects could ultimately be as important for human health as for food security.



“It’s much, much bigger than the honeybee,” Kleiser said. “The honeybee is big because we need this animal to survive to feed us, but the science that is unfolding is way bigger than this.”

Forbes

FORBES AFRICA SOCIAL MEDIA