Plus: This AI Founder Became A Billionaire By Building ChatGPT For Doctors |
Good morning,
President Donald Trump has flip-flopped on tariff policies more than two dozen times. To investors, it’s proof of the “TACO” acronym—which stands for “Trump Always Chickens Out.”The president unveiled his sweeping “Liberation Day” tariffs on April 2, and then paused the most severe levies for 90 days after they wreaked havoc on the stock market. And while the Trump Administration had suggested it could make “90 deals in 90 days,” that has yet to occur, and the president once again pushed back the start date for his widespread tariffs to August 1. It’s still not clear what tariffs will look like next month, but Wall Street seems to be banking that Trump will relent again, Deutsche Bank strategists said as they raised their S&P 500 forecasts for the year.
Let’s get into the headlines, |
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| Despite billionaire Elon Musk being a frequent critic of government spending, his artificial intelligence startup xAI inked a contract with the Defense Department and announced a new “Grok for Government” program. The DoD said Monday that it awarded contracts worth up to $200 million to xAI, Google, Anthropic and OpenAI to accelerate its AI adoption, less than a week after the Grok chatbot shared antisemitic messages. The White House secured another victory at the Supreme Court, as justices ruled it could move forward with gutting the Department of Education, part of President Donald Trump’s longstanding goal of shutting down the agency. The ruling lifts a preliminary injunction that halted the layoffs of nearly 1,400 employees, after the Trump Administration announced in March it would eliminate half of the department’s 4,000 positions. |
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 | | Mauricio Candela for Forbes |
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| Trying to stay abreast of the latest medical breakthroughs while seeing 20 patients a day is a near-impossible task for doctors. Daniel Nadler, cofounder and CEO of OpenEvidence, set out to solve the problem with artificial intelligence. Now, the startup’s proprietary algorithms search millions of peer-reviewed publications, including in top journals like the New England Journal of Medicine and the Journal of the American Medical Association, to help doctors find the best answers fast, with full citations to papers so doctors can read more for themselves. The software is free for verified doctors to use and makes money through advertising—much like Google does. “I think OpenEvidence looks like it’s going to be for healthcare what Google was for the internet,” said Kleiner Perkins billionaire chairman John Doerr, who invested in the company. Since its founding in 2022, OpenEvidence has signed up 40% of doctors in the United States, or more than 430,000, and is adding new ones at a current rate of 65,000 per month. Its revenue from advertising is now coming in at an annualized rate estimated at $50 million. That’s not huge, but thanks to the software’s rapid adoption, investors are betting big: OpenEvidence has raised $210 million led by GV (Google’s venture arm) and Kleiner Perkins at a valuation of $3.5 billion, up from $1 billion at its last financing in February, Nadler told Forbes. Other storied VC firms like Coatue, Conviction and Thrive Capital also invested. The new investment makes Nadler, who owns roughly 60% of the company, a billionaire, with a net worth that Forbes estimates at $2.3 billion. |
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| “New medical research is published every 30 seconds,” write Forbes senior editor Amy Feldman and staff writer Rashi Shrivastava. “Doctors can’t possibly stay on top of it all without help. With OpenEvidence, Nadler hopes to give doctors a better alternative to trusting their guts.” |
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| As the Trump Administration prioritizes domestic production of rare earth elements, publicly traded Ramaco Resources just broke ground on a new mine in Wyoming coal country that CEO Randall Atkins says will extract some of the world’s most sought-after rare earths and other critical minerals. The company, with a $1 billion market cap, says that once its pilot processing plant is completed, it will be able to meet more than 10% of America’s total rare earths demand, nearly all of which is currently sourced from China. |
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| President Donald Trump threatened Russia with 100% tariffs if it does not secure a deal to end the war in Ukraine in 50 days, after pledging to send additional military aid to Ukraine, a shift from his earlier tone that was more sympathetic to Russian President Vladimir Putin. The U.S. only imported about $3 billion in goods from Russia in 2024, a figure that has been declining steadily since the war broke out in 2022. MORE: When asked in an interview with the BBC whether the recent fallout with Russia meant he was done dealing with Putin, Trump said, “I’m disappointed in him, but I’m not done with him.” Meanwhile, former Russian President and the Deputy Chair of the country’s Security Council, Dmitry Medvedev, dismissed Trump’s tariff warning, calling it a “theatrical ultimatum.” |
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| Thousands of flights in the U.S. were delayed Monday, as airports along the East Coast and across the Plains warned of hours-long delays amid severe thunderstorms. There were more than 10,000 delays and over 2,000 cancellations in and out of U.S. airports, according to FlightAware. In New York and New Jersey, the heavy rains triggered flash flood warnings, water rescue operations and road closures, as about 2 inches of rain drenched New York City between 7 and 8 p.m., making it the city’s second wettest hour on record. |
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| Forty years ago, Live Aid made music history, raising more than $125 million for famine relief and featuring performances from some of the biggest names in music, like Queen, Elton John, Run DMC and Bob Dylan. In addition to the money raised, the event boosted awareness of global poverty and hunger. If you’re feeling inspired to donate to a worthwhile cause, keep in mind that you typically can’t claim a tax deduction if you contribute to a charitable organization based outside the U.S.—but there are many domestic groups that aid individuals abroad, like the Red Cross. |
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| The federal government will stop issuing physical checks by the end of September, a move that will affect a small group of Social Security beneficiaries who have yet to switch over to electronic payments. Paper checks can increase the risk of fraud and can result in delays, per President Donald Trump’s recent executive order: |
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0.8% | The share of roughly 68 million Social Security recipients who drew benefits checks last year | |
| $657 million | The cost of maintaining the physical infrastructure and specialized technology for digitizing paper records in fiscal year 2024 | |
| 4.2% | The share of U.S. households that were unbanked as of 2023 |
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| We’re spending more and more of the workday in meetings, and most of them are a waste of time. Before booking a meeting, ask yourself: Is this essential, could it be handled asynchronously, and does everyone on the invite need to be there? When it is necessary, try to keep meetings to 15 minutes—brevity will force the gatherings to be focused. |
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