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Monday, July 14, 2025 | |
Sponsored by |
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| Julia Demaree
Nikhinson/AFP |
| Good morning, Quartz
readers! |
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HERE'S WHAT YOU NEED TO KNOW |
| Oracle of
AI. Nvidia CEO Jensen Huang is now richer than Warren Buffett (and a bunch of other people) as Huang becomes the world’s seventh-richest man on the back of the AI boom. |
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| AI gets a desk job. Goldman Sachs is testing Cognition’s AI coder, with plans to deploy the program across its tech teams, signaling a shift in how finance works with software. |
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| This company has legs. Intel is spinning off its AI robotics unit, RealSense, with a $50 million funding round as interest in humanoid robots increases and
tech bets big on automation. |
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| Tariff turbulence? Delta is yanking engines off of its European Airbus
jets and sending them to the U.S. to power grounded planes, maybe to avoid tariffs amid a supply shortage. |
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| Bloc’d and loaded. JPMorgan CEO Jamie Dimon says Europe’s growth
model is broken (continuing to fall behind the U.S. and China) and needs bold reforms to avoid falling further behind. |
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A MESSAGE FROM THE INVENTORY |
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LULULEMON'S "SUMMER SCORES" SALE IS ON |
If you love Lululemon’s performance wear but not the price tag, this is your chance to save. The Summer Scores sale is packed with markdowns on activewear, everyday essentials, and seasonal standouts for both men and women. You don’t need a coupon, and there’s no expiration date — just rotating deals on
Lululemon favorites, while supplies last. |
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CLOUD-Y WITH A CHANCE OF DISCOUNTS |
Big Tech could be headed for a government-sponsored fire sale. Google is reportedly finalizing a deal to slash prices on its cloud services for U.S. agencies, joining Oracle, which just cut some federal software contract rates by 75%. The pressure is coming straight from the top: President Donald Trump’s
second-term push to rein in spending has tech, consulting, and even rideshare companies sweating their margins.
The discount blitz is part of a broader campaign led by the Department of Government Efficiency (which you might know as DOGE), previously helmed by Tesla CEO Elon Musk and now run by federal procurement officials with marching orders to cut, cut — and, oh, cut. Google already gave the feds a 71% markdown on Workspace software this spring. Salesforce, Adobe, and others
followed suit. AWS and Microsoft Azure are expected to join the party soon.
But beyond budget discipline, there’s another incentive in play: Not angering the president. During Trump’s first term, Amazon lost out on a $10 billion Pentagon cloud deal (JEDI) in what it later claimed was a retaliatory snub. That contract was eventually scrapped under the Biden administration, but the scars — and the lawsuits — lingered. Now, with Trump back in charge, tech CEOs are going out of their way
to play nice. Google CEO Sundar Pichai, Mark Zuckerberg, and even Jeff “threat to democracy” Bezos showed up at Trump’s inauguration and have scaled back corporate diversity programs that once drew his ire.
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TRUMP HITS 'PLAY' ON TRADE DRAMA |
K-pop megastars BTS’ next comeback may be joined by a less welcome return: sticker shock. Starting August 1, every South Korean import to the U.S. — including K-pop albums and merchandise — will be hit
with a 25% tariff, thanks to a Trump administration trade policy aimed at steel and semiconductors… that lands squarely on stan culture. But instead of making spreadsheets for group orders, U.S. fans are now running tariff math. That $75 Weverse haul? It could jump to $95 — before shipping, which can already eat up half of fans’ paychecks.
Because K-pop isn’t *just* music; it’s a hyper-efficient fan economy where album sales fuel chart rankings, merch funds world tours, and
photocards power a global community. U.S. buyers are a major engine of that economy. In 2023 alone, Korea exported nearly $300 million worth of physical K-pop albums — many straight into the hands of American fans who already have three versions of the same album and a dream of pulling their bias (aka their favorite member of a group).
For South Korean entertainment giants such as HYBE, BTS’ parent company, there’s some cushion: U.S. fulfillment centers may absorb part of the hit.
But for smaller groups and fan-favorite indie retailers, this is a 25% tax on survival. And for fans? It’s a sudden redefinition of loyalty economics — when even a quasi-parasocial relationship could start to feel like a luxury good.
Online, the reaction has been swift. One fan asked on social media, “Does [Trump] really want to piss off K-pop stans?” — a question that feels less rhetorical than historical, given the fandom’s track record for digital mobilization. BTS alone was once
estimated to bring in $4.65 billion annually to Korea’s economy. Now, that soft-power pipeline is tangled up in a hard-edged tariff regime. This isn’t Hyundai exporting sedans. It’s a 17-year-old in Ohio paying $134 for a holographic photocard and two concept posters.
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A MESSAGE FROM THE INVENTORY |
|
LULULEMON'S "SUMMER SCORES" SALE IS ON |
If you love Lululemon’s performance wear but not the price tag, this is your chance to save. The Summer Scores sale is packed with markdowns on activewear, everyday essentials, and seasonal standouts for both men and women. You don’t need a coupon, and there’s no expiration date — just rotating deals on
Lululemon favorites, while supplies last. |
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MORE FROM QUARTZ |
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