Author: Daniel snow

It might sound counterintuitive, but conflict and disagreement are two essential ingredients to a business’ success.That’s according to marketer, entrepreneur and music executive Steve Stoute, who counts Jay-Z, McDonalds, the New York Knicks and Google’s Lorraine Twohill among the many big names that have relied on his expertise. In an interview with The New York Times, Stoute said that “there’s something wrong” if a business has “no conflict.””Getting people comfortable around challenge in a respectful way is a very important value,” he said. “What I’m trying to do is have people embrace the idea that it’s OK to disagree.”The 54-year-old…

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Sridhar Ramaswamy, CEO of Snowflake, speaks at the Semafor World Economy Summit in Washington on April 25, 2025.Tasos Katopodis | Semafor | Getty ImagesData analytics software maker Snowflake said Monday it has agreed to buy Crunchy Data, a startup that offers cloud-based database software. Snowflake will pay about $250 million, according to a person familiar with the matter who was not authorized to speak publicly about the deal.Crunchy Data sells access to a cloud-hosted version of the PostgreSQL open-source database, which replaced MySQL as the most popular database in Stack Overflow’s annual developer survey in 2023. Crunchy Data’s service includes…

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Robinhood has officially closed its $200 million acquisition of Bitstamp, bringing one of the world’s longest-running cryptocurrency exchanges into its fold and signaling a strategic shift beyond retail trading and into the world of institutions.The all-cash deal, first announced last year, gives Robinhood an immediate international footprint — including more than 50 active crypto licenses across Europe, the UK, and Asia — as well as an established institutional client base, something the retail trading app has long lacked.For Robinhood, the deal marks a move into deeper waters: institutional crypto flows, lending and staking infrastructure, and white-label “crypto-as-a-service,” products built for…

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Jonathan Raa | Nurphoto | Getty ImagesElon Musk’s brain tech startup Neuralink has closed a $650 million funding round, the company announced on Monday.ARK Invest, Founders Fund, Sequoia Capital, Thrive Capital, Lightspeed Venture Partners and other firms participated in the round, according to a release. Neuralink said the fresh capital will help the company bring its technology to more patients and develop new devices that “deepen the connection between biological and artificial intelligence.”Neuralink is building a brain-computer interface, or a BCI, which is a system that translates brain signals into commands for external technologies. The company’s first system, called Telepathy,…

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Annabelle Gordon/Bloomberg via Getty ImagesThe massive package of tax cuts House Republicans passed in May is expected to increase the U.S. debt by trillions of dollars — a sum that threatens to torpedo the legislation as the Senate starts to consider it this week.The Committee for a Responsible Federal Budget estimates the bill, as written, would add about $3.1 trillion to the national debt over a decade with interest, to a total $53 trillion. The Penn Wharton Budget Model estimates a higher tally: $3.8 trillion, including interest and economic effects.Rep. Thomas Massie of Kentucky was one of two Republicans to…

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