Professor Scott Lucas joins Maddie Hale for a special edition of The Week That Was, breaking down the biggest Trump stories of the week—from Iran and Ukraine to the Supreme Court, Trump’s business dealings, the Qatar jet, Epstein and the July 4 celebrations.
DUP leader Gavin Robinson has been publicly saying that his party and party officers did not know about the inappropriate and/or criminal behaviour that former party leader Jeffrey Donaldson was engaging in. BBC Spotlight reported that not long before Donaldson became DUP leader in 2021, the then-North Antrim MP Ian Paisley said he was approached by a young woman who said she had been “exploited” by Donaldson and that he should not be allowed to lead the party. Paisley said the woman did not want to make a formal complaint but he said he told Poots, when he was elected leader. Paisley described her as a “victim” in a text to another politician during the DUP leadership contest between Donaldson and Poots in 2021. Gavin Robinson says those concerns were not shared with the party. Assembly speaker – the DUP’s Edwin Poots – contradicts that. So who in the DUP knew what and when? DUP leader Gavin Robinson spoke to the Stephen Nolan Show.
Jensen Huang, chief executive officer of Nvidia.SeongJoon Cho—Bloomberg/Getty Images
Nvidia may be worth $4.8 trillion, but its employees still have to pay up at the company cafeteria.
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The chipmaker fueling the AI boom, led by CEO Jensen Huang, is the most valuable company in the world by market cap, towering above other tech giants like Google, Apple, and Amazon. But that doesn’t mean the company is giving away lunch for free.
Gergely Orosz, a software engineer and author of the The Pragmatic Engineernewsletter, highlighted the issue of Nvidia’s food policies in a thread on X after a recent visit to the company’s Santa Clara, Calif., headquarters.
“Snacks and coffee are not free: You have to pay for them. This would be unusual at Big Tech, but no big deal for devs here,” Orosz wrote in a post.
Former employees who spoke to Business Insider clarified that the company’s cafeteria meals are subsidized, not free. While coffee is generally free, employees must pay for some bottled drinks and drinks from on-site cafés.
Nvidia did not immediately respond to Fortune’s request for comment.
The company’s food policies have reportedly been around for more than a decade. A blog by a former intern who worked at Nvidia in 2014 shows even then the food at Nvidia was subsidized, not free, and averaged about $6, or about $8.50 today. Some food options in 2014 included chicken and pasta, chicken and rice, fish and chips, and sandwiches.
Nvidia’s food policy stands apart from other tech companies of its size. The most notable among them is Google, which helped kick off the trend of lavish employee perks that for years have defined tech workplaces. Unlike Nvidia, Google provides free breakfast, lunch, and dinner at cafeterias across its offices. Its Googleplex headquarters in Mountain View, Calif., reportedly has about 30 locations for employees to grab a bite to eat.
Yet at Google, the food is secondary to the connections that come from communion, according to Ruth Porat, the chief investment officer of Google and parent company Alphabet. She said its stocked “micro-kitchens” filled with treats and snacks are located throughout the office to help connect employees from different departments who wouldn’t otherwise speak regularly.
“Serendipity is really valuable, and so having people come for meals is one way you get people from all around the company working on different things, all of a sudden comparing ideas,” Porat said during an interview published last week.
Still, at Nvidia, the company’s approach to food reflects not just its culture but also its founder’s philosophy.
Huang cofounded Nvidia in 1993 and has transformed it from a fledgling video game chipmaker to the engine behind the AI revolution.
The CEO works seven days a week, including on weekends and holidays. He has previously said he is fueled to work so hard by the fear Nvidia could go out of business, even after it has become the most valuable company on the planet.
“You know the phrase ‘30 days from going out of business,’ I’ve used for 33 years,” Huang said in an interview with podcast host Joe Rogan last year. “But the feeling doesn’t change. The sense of vulnerability, the sense of uncertainty, the sense of insecurity—it doesn’t leave you.”
Huang’s dedication to the grind also reflects his advice to young people. In an address to Stanford students in 2024, he said: “I wish upon you ample doses of pain and suffering.” He argued being uncomfortable often leads to the best results.
Across Silicon Valley, the era of unlimited perks is quietly unwinding. Meta, which at one time offered employees free breakfast, lunch, and dinner at its Menlo Park, Calif., headquarters, now hands out meal vouchers instead. But in 2024 the company fired two dozen employees it said were abusing the vouchers. Twitter, now X, was once famous for its gourmet cafeteria with a new menu every day, but many food options were cut back after Elon Musk bought the company in 2022.
While other companies have spent millions to keep employees fed, Nvidia paid its workers back in company ownership. Its employee stock purchase plan is among the most generous in the industry, offering a 15% discount with a two-year lookback, meaning employees can buy Nvidia stock at 15% below its lowest price over the previous two years.
With the stock rising something like 1,400% in the past five years, employees who have held on to their stock have secured much more value from Nvidia than a free lunch.
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Everyone has had a bad day at work, but most of us are lucky enough that ours weren’t broadcast with a chyron live on television.
On a live interview with CNBC‘s infamously churlish segment “Squawk Box,” Palantir CEO Alex Karp appeared to suffer a nearly 20-minute meltdown, complete with stuttering, nervous backtracking, and a steady supply of digressions so abstruse that the hosts seemed befuddled and perhaps even concerned for his wellbeing.
Though Karp was called up to chat about an ongoing deal between Palantir and the chip maker Nvidia to build AI infrastructure for the US government, he quickly went off the rails, using up minutes of airtime to complain about the financial bubble undergirding the AI boom.
While there may be a point buried in Karp’s diatribe, it quickly became lost in a wash of unintelligible jargon.
“These models have been completely over, irresponsibly over-sale,” Karp ranted at one point, “and the sale is, ‘it’s dangerous for everyone, which is why I can give [AI] to all your adversaries but I can’t give it to the Department of War, or I can’t safely give it to an enterprise in this country, without being certain that the Alpha of that business could transfer to this model tomorrow, ie I have no business, no job.’”
“You sound pretty angry,” CNBC‘s Becky Quick interjected after a nearly three minute-long rant from Karp.
“No,” the CEO snapped. “This is the voice of American business that is being channeled through me!”
Even Karp’s more intelligible arguments are quickly trampled over as additional intrusive thoughts took the wheel.
At multiple points, Karp got hung up on the idea that elite universities might not welcome him as a professor anytime soon — an aspiration his parents still have for him, apparently.
“American enterprises are run by the shrewdest, most widely intelligent people on the planet,” the Palantir CEO started to say, setting up an argument that companies aren’t interested in foundation models, but in AI apps that can actually solve problems. That train of thought quickly leaves the station, though, as he pivots to his higher ed ambitions literally mid-sentence.
“If you think they’re going for that [foundation models], you can go try to sell me — like my, my parents still want me to get a job as a faculty member at Berkeley,” he complained. “Go try to get me a job at Berkeley. It’s not happening.”
By the time the lengthy “interview” — it’s really more of a lecture, since every time one of the hosts tries to get it back on track, Karp launches into a new stream-of-consciousness tirade — comes to an end, Karp jokes that he feels “like I’m gonna be kicked out of the room.”
To Karp’s credit, his interviewers struck an ameliorative tone.
“Never, a wide-ranging conversation, really appreciate your time,” one of CNBC‘s professional journalists — the camera was pointed elsewhere — replies.
Unfortunately, that prompted Karp to dig in even more, starting off on another winding digression as the CNBC chyron cut to a live shot of Donald Trump’s new Air Force One aircraft.
“I get kicked out of these rooms — even if I agree with you I would try to disagree with you, it’s more fun,” the Palantir CEO blathers as the Squawk Box interviewers try to wrap it up.
“Alex thank you, we appreciate it very, very much, thanks” CNBC‘s Andrew Sorkin says, clearly cueing Karp to leave so they can move on.
“And I’ll tell you — we’re off camera now?” Karp continues.
The hosts reply in a chorus: “no, we’re still going.”
New technologies — laptops, tablets and smart whiteboards — have steadily entered classrooms. But newer isn’t always better.
Researchers are digging into whether the tech is actually improving learning and finding that the studies make a strong case for returning to old-school books, Markham Heid writes for Time.
The big picture: The key case study is Norway, where most students have done most of their coursework on tablets and laptops.
But now, schools are stripping devices from classrooms — especially for children under 10 — as growing evidence links screen use to poorer reading performance and lower reading enjoyment.
Zoom in: Marte Blikstad-Balas, a professor at the University of Oslo, and an expert on the use of tech in education, zeroed in on the difference between screens and paper in a reading comprehension study, Heid reports.
Eighth graders were directed to answer questions about passages they’d read on paper versus on screens. Blikstad-Balas and her team found that students answered more questions correctly and had to refer back to the text fewer times when reading on paper.
In another paper, published in Pediatrics in 2019, the study authors found that parents and toddlers talked to each other and talked about the story less when they were looking at e-books versus print books.
Between the lines: There are a few explanations for why kids do better reading old-school books.
The tactile experience of reading on paper may help the brain process and retain information more effectively.
Screens introduce distractions that don’t exist on the page.
We’re used to scrolling and scanning on screens, while books encourage slower, more focused reading.
What we’re watching: Research on tech in the classroom is leading to more screen bans but, for students with disabilities,screens hold more promise than negatives. And advocates are urging schools to think carefully about blanket bans.
The bottom line: Buy books or get a library card for yourself and the kids in your life. Books still win!
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2. Pic to go!
Photo: Gary Hershorn/Getty ImagesThe Strawberry Moonrose behind the Statue of Liberty as the sun set in New York City on Monday evening.
Joanna Drake, right, and Julie Wroblewski are the investors behind Magnify Ventures, which is putting almost $100 million into the care economy.Courtesy Magnify Ventures
Melinda French Gates’ Pivotal Ventures invests in companies and funds that, alongside its work in policy advocacy and philanthropy, help to advance women’s power. One subcategory is caregiving—lobbying for paid family leave and other policies that support women, and finding ways to support that mission in the for-profit sector too, as French Gates discussed with me recently.
The VC fund Magnify Ventures has a remarkably aligned thesis—and Pivotal just came back as an LP in its $46 million Fund II, Fortune is the first to report.
Magnify was cofounded by general partners Joanna Drake and Julie Wroblewski. And it’s no coincidence it has a lot in common with Pivotal. Wroblewski was one of the earliest execs at the firm, and she launched its original funds of funds practice, backing funds that could then go on to back companies that improve women’s lives. She chose to leave and launch a fund that would advance similar goals, with the idea that a fund directly investing in startups could “go faster” to back early-stage founders in the care economy. (Since then, Pivotal has also expanded its investing practice to directly backing a handful of startups itself, but it still focuses mainly on funds with 27 investments in funds as an LP and 13 in early-stage companies.)
Magnify’s Fund 1 was $52 million—which means it will now in total deploy close to $100 million into startups that are part of what it calls the care economy. With that $52 million, it made 21 investments; it hasn’t started investing out of Fund II yet.
“It’s a massive white space,” says Drake. (I couldn’t talk to Wroblewski because she just gave birth this month—following in the footsteps of Drake, who went into labor with twins two days after she closed $40 million to launch Al Gore’s Current TV in the 2000s.)
Magnify’s portfolio so far includes the caregiver support tech platform Nolia Health; the digital health platform MiSalud for Spanish-speaking families, which taps Mexico-based doctors for telehealth services; and the estate settlement tech platform Alix.
Pivotal’s senior director of investments Erin Harkless Moore describes Magnify as “one of the first to recognize this massive, under-resourced opportunity. “Their work reflects our conviction that an investment in caregiving is an investment in the economic opportunity, health, and well-being of American families,” she says.
The Magnify duo define the care economy broadly—beyond digital health, it might include cybersecurity protection (especially for vulnerable, or elderly, family members).
Drake sees an opportunity for tech solutions to problems that were once too big for startups to solve. “It is true, if you look three, four, five years ago, some of these areas by necessity required public and private and technology coordination to solve for, but we’re going to see all three factors coming together very rapidly,” she says. “There are all these pockets that I think are just really going to light up quickly.”
The Most Powerful Women Daily newsletter is Fortune’s daily briefing for and about the women leading the business world. Subscribe here.
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Jane Fraser x Trump. Bloomberg reports on the Citi CEO’s relationship with the president. She is “building the kind of steady rapport with the mercurial president that has eluded many of her peers atop the largest US banks” and “opening up a new era for a firm once renowned for its network of allies in Democratic circles.”
The Fortune 500 officially gets three Black female CEOs today. It’s Karen S. Carter’s start date at Dow. She joins TIAA’s Thasunda Brown Duckett and DTE’s Joi Harris as the three Black women leading Fortune 500 companies.
A major SCOTUS mixup. NPR’s Nina Totenberg, the top Supreme Court reporter, erroneously reported that Justice Samuel Alito was retiring. NPR retracted the story, and Totenberg called it “the worst professional mistake of my more than 50 years of journalism.”
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This is the web version of MPW Daily, a daily newsletter for and about the world’s most powerful women. Sign up to get it delivered free to your inbox.
Emma Hinchliffe is Fortune’s Most Powerful Women editor, overseeing editorial for the longstanding franchise. As a senior writer at Fortune, Emma has covered women in business and gender-lens news across business, politics, and cultur
/ @presidenttrumpreport To listen to the show as a podcast you can find it here on: Spotify: https://open.spotify.com/show/1p2WhZ6… Apple podcasts: https://podcasts.apple.com/podcast/id….
Zoom in: Marte Blikstad-Balas, a professor at the University of Oslo, and an expert on the use of tech in education, zeroed in on the difference between screens and paper in a reading comprehension study, Heid reports.
Between the lines: There are a few explanations for why kids do better reading old-school books.
Pic to go!
Photo: Gary Hershorn/Getty Images
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