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January 9, 2026

Good morning. Andrew here. We’ve got a scoop this A.M.: Theodore Schleifer is reporting that Bill Gates’ foundation made a $7.9 billion payment to the private foundation of his ex-wife, Melinda French Gates.

We’re also waiting on the latest jobs numbers, the first time we’ll be getting on-time numbers from the government in months. And, we could hear from the Supreme Court today about whether President Trump’s tariff regime is legal.

There’s also an interesting question about how prediction markets determine who wins a bet — leaving some users angry. We explain below. (Was this newsletter forwarded to you? Sign up here.)

New financial details of the divorce settlement between Melinda French Gates and Bill Gates have finally come to light. Pool photo by Ludovic Marin/EPA, via Shutterstock

A $7.9 billion Gates divorce payout

Bill Gates donated almost $8 billion to the private foundation of Melinda French Gates as part of their divorce settlement, one of the largest charitable contributions ever publicly recorded, DealBook is first to report.

That is according to a new tax filing reviewed by The Times’s Theodore Schleifer, which shows the first specific financial terms of the couple’s high-profile split in 2021 followed by the separation of their charitable efforts in 2024.

Gates made the $7.88 billion donation in 2024 to a relatively new foundation started by French Gates called the Pivotal Philanthropies Foundation, according to the document.

Some background: When French Gates announced in May 2024 that she would resign as a co-chair of the Bill and Melinda Gates Foundation, she suggested that Gates would donate $12.5 billion to her own efforts to improve peoples’ lives. She said in a statement that “under the terms of my agreement with Bill” that she would “have an additional $12.5 billion to commit to my work on behalf of women and families.”

But the precise terms of their philanthropic split were not made public, and so the newly released tax filing is the first window into them.

More money could be coming. Tax filings for 2025, which will not be public until later this year, could reveal the balance of the money that French Gates said would be committed to her philanthropic work — about $4.6 billion. It is also possible that some of that seemingly missing money was not given to a charitable foundation, but to an entity, such as French Gates’s limited-liability company, Pivotal Ventures, that does not file a tax return.

A spokesperson for Gates did not return requests for comment. Pivotal declined to elaborate on the discrepancy, but confirmed that the $12.5 billion agreement has been fulfilled. The nearly $7.9 billion donation, a Pivotal spokesperson said, was part of that agreement.

Pivotal Philanthropies Foundation is now one of America’s largest private foundations. Established in late 2022, the year after the divorce, it had $604 million on hand at the end of 2023. A year later, it had $7.4 billion in assets, after making under $500 million in charitable donations that year.

Investors brace for today’s jobs report and a potential Supreme Court decision on tariffs. Economists expect the Bureau of Labor Statistics data to show that hires grew by roughly 60,000 last month. A lackluster reading could bolster the odds of a Fed rate cut this quarter. Separately, the Supreme Court could rule on the legality of tariffs that President Trump has imposed under the International Emergency Economic Powers Act of 1977. Prediction markets expect the Trump administration to lose this round, but legal experts say importers probably still face long odds to get refunds of the levies they’ve already paid.

Trump orders Fannie Mae and Freddie Mac to buy mortgage-backed bonds. The president said he would direct the government-backed finance firms to buy up to $200 billion worth of the bonds. Some analysts expressed skepticism that it would meaningfully lower mortgage rates, but it is the latest sign that White House is focusing on affordability concerns. Separately, the president told The Times that he had made up his mind on who he’ll pick for next Fed chair. He didn’t name names, but Trump has said that his choice must support lower interest rates.

Glencore and Rio Tinto resume talks to form the world’s biggest miner. Glencore confirmed that the mining giants had restarted on-and-off talks about a $260 billion mega-merger. A recent merger between Anglo American and Teck Resources has pressured rivals like Rio Tinto and BHP to bulk up, especially since the price of copper has jumped more than 40 percent in the past year, hitting record highs.

xAI retreats

After days of global condemnation about the chatbot Grok being used to generate sexualized pictures of women and children, Elon Musk’s xAI has bowed to pressure to limit the tool’s availability.

The move signals that even for Musk, some threats of regulation can be enough to force a tech giant to back down.

The latest: Grok started telling X users today that only Grok’s paying subscribers could use its image-generation feature on the platform. That effectively shut it down for most users.

X had been awash with A.I.-generated pictures of undressed women, many created without the subject’s permission, since the Grok tool was introduced late last month. (One researcher said about 6,700 such images were generated every hour during one 24-hour analysis.)

And the Internet Watch Foundation, a nonprofit that combats child sexual abuse online, said it had uncovered illegal online images of children generated by Grok. It accused the tool of risking bringing such activity “into the mainstream.”

Government officials had sharply criticized xAI and Musk. A spokesman for the European Commission, the E.U.’s executive arm, called the activity “illegal” and “appalling.” Keir Starmer, the U.K. prime minister, called the activity unlawful and said that his country’s media regulator “has our full support to take action in relation to this.”

Regulators in India and Malaysia have also said they were looking into the matter. And Representative Alexandria Ocasio-Cortez, Democrat of New York, cited the trend as she urged support for legislation she has introduced to help victims of deepfake harassment. (Some X users responded by asking Grok to create deepfake pictures of her.)

Musk has changed his tone about the feature. When the trend first emerged, the xAI founder — who had pushed for Grok features like a “spicy mode” — joined in.

But by Saturday, he wrote on X, “Anyone using Grok to make illegal content will suffer the same consequences as if they upload illegal content.”

Why it matters: xAI is a fast-rising player in artificial intelligence, recently raising $20 billion at a $230 billion valuation. The threat of regulatory action — including substantial fines or even bans — could hurt the company as it battles against OpenAI, Google and others.

Was Venezuela invaded? The question has generated heated debate on one prediction market. The New York Times

Invasions, insider trading and prediction markets

Prediction markets are growing into major mainstream businesses.

But two controversies this week raise questions about the online betting platforms — and how fair they are, Michael de la Merced writes.

The payout resolution question: Polymarket users are still fuming after the platform declined to pay users who bet on an “invasion” of Venezuela, despite U.S. forces seizing Nicolás Maduro from there.

The company’s argument — that the operation didn’t constitute an invasion — hits at the question of under what circumstances users can (or can’t) collect on seemingly winning bets. (A separate controversy arose late last year over the suspicious editing of a Ukraine map used to resolve a contract related to the war with Russia.)

That said, such fears haven’t deterred bettors from wagering on potential future targets of U.S. military strikes.

Insider trading: DealBook spoke with Representative Ritchie Torres, Democrat of New York, about legislation he planned to introduce that would bar government officials from betting on prediction-market contracts involving government policy.

The driving force behind it: the roughly $400,000 an unidentified trader made on Polymarket betting on Maduro’s ouster, hours before U.S. forces seized him. The incredibly lucrative timing of the bets, skeptics say, suggest the trader had advanced knowledge of the attack.

“There’s a real risk that the anonymous trader was a government insider,” Torres said, adding that his planned bill was meant to prevent “the risk of corruption from becoming a reality.”

Questions about potential insider trading have dogged prediction markets before. Some defenders of these platforms say that if the goal of prediction markets is to uncover the truth, then having bettors with actual knowledge of the underlying event makes them more accurate.

Torres’ response? “I’m almost speechless, because what possible justification could exist for insider trading by government officials?” he said, noting that government officials-turned-bettors could pursue policies for personal gain or endanger sensitive operations like the Maduro raid.

Torres added that after he announced his legislation, both Kalshi and Polymarket contacted his office. Tarek Mansour, Kalshi’s C.E.O., has since publicly backed the Torres proposal. A spokeswoman for Polymarket declined to comment.

The Saudis’ new plan to woo foreign capital

Saudi Arabia is throwing open its doors to global investors. The kingdom’s regulators this week scrapped restrictions on foreigners trading on the Riyadh stock exchange, known as the Tadawul. As of next month, all overseas investors — not just those who meet certain criteria — will be allowed to buy and sell shares directly in 262 listed companies.

But will investors bite? The policy pivot comes at a crucial moment for the Saudi economy, writes Vivienne Walt.

The Tadawul All Share Index is down over the past year, vastly underperforming both the S&P 500 and major global stock indexes. As the Gulf region’s biggest and worst-performing stock exchange, the Tadawul (“trading” in Arabic) is dominated by petrochemical and oil companies, including the 1.5 percent sliver of the government-owned oil giant Saudi Aramco that is publicly traded.

Fossil-fuel exports still comprise about two-thirds of the kingdom’s foreign revenue. And with the price of Brent crude, the global benchmark, languishing around $60 a barrel, Saudi Arabia — the world’s premier petrostate — is feeling the squeeze.

But the Saudis are pushing hard to attract new capital, leaving investors to weigh a couple of key factors:

Other industries are booming. It has been a decade since Crown Prince Mohammed bin Salman introduced his Vision 2030 effort to break the kingdom’s dependence on fossil fuels, and sectors like tourism and construction are expanding fast. In November, he made a high-profile visit to Washington and landed a data center deal with Elon Musk’s xAI.

Non-oil industries comprised half the country’s 4.8 percent G.D.P. growth in the third quarter of last year, with some of that growth driven by splashy events like rock concerts, Formula One races and women’s tennis tournaments — all unimaginable a decade ago.

More foreigners are needed. In major industries, including mining, Saudi officials have looked primarily for overseas partners, underscoring the need to amend the rules on participating in the kingdom’s capital markets.

“To really achieve Vision 2030, [the Saudis] need foreign investors,” Jamie Ingram, managing editor of the Middle East newsletter MEES, told DealBook.

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