Forbes Daily: How Elon Musk's 2024 Political Donations Have Paid Off

Forbes

3 days ago

A small group of startups like OpenAI, Stripe and SpaceX are commanding massive valuations this year, helping their earliest backers rise in the ranks of Forbes' Midas List.
The 24th annual ranking of the world's top venture capitalists, out today, is once again topped by Sequoia investor Alfred Lin. Lin, who made early bets on Airbnb and DoorDash, also benefits from a 2021 investment in OpenAI at a $14 billion valuation (the ChatGPT-maker is currently worth $300 billion). And eight of this year's 15 newcomers join the list due to the surging valuations of startups like SpaceX, Databricks and Anthropic.
But with AI's potential to impact nearly every sector, and a handful of startups that appear ready to go public this year, there are sure to be more changes ahead.
Photo byElon Musk, the largest individual donor in the 2024 election cycle, said he plans to scale back his political giving. But in just four months, the Trump Administration has already given him plenty of return on his investment. His businesses face less scrutiny, they're positioned to receive billions of dollars in fresh government contracts, and Musk is far richer than he was before he endorsed President Donald Trump, with a net worth of about $419 billion.
In his latest change of heart on tariffs, Trump said he would delay his planned 50% tariffs on goods from the European Union to allow for more negotiations, leading to a surge in U.S. stock futures and European markets. Trump said on Truth Social that after receiving a call from European Commission President Ursula von der Leyen, he agreed to extend the deadline to July 9, and von der Leyen told him trade talks would 'begin rapidly.'
Richard White
Australian billionaire Richard White's logistics software company WiseTech Global will purchase U.S.-based cloud computing firm E2open for $2.1 billion, in a deal that will help WiseTech increase its customer base. White was ranked seventh on Forbes Asia's most recent list of Australia's 50 richest people, with a net worth of $10.1 billion.
House Speaker Mike Johnson (R-La.) brushed off concerns about President Donald Trump's alleged business conflicts and recent dinner with top investors in his meme coin, claiming Republicans don't have to investigate the president's business dealings because Trump does everything 'out in the open.' When asked by CNN about Trump's crypto dinner, which has raised concerns about transparency and conflicts of interest, Johnson said he didn't 'know anything' about the dinner, but defended the president as 'one of the greatest dealmakers of all time.'
In a post on Truth Social over the weekend, President Donald Trump attacked Russian President Vladimir Putin and criticized Moscow's aerial attacks on Ukrainian cities, signaling his frustration over the stalled peace talks between Russia and Ukraine. In his most direct criticism of Putin's handling of the war, the president criticized the Russian president for 'needlessly killing a lot of people.' Trump also said Sunday that he was 'absolutely' considering fresh sanctions against Russia.
Most Southwest Airlines passengers will need to pay to check bags starting this week.
Southwest Airlines passengers will have to pay $35 for one checked bag and $45 for a second starting Wednesday, several outlets reported, as the airline ends its long-running free baggage policy. Additionally, Southwest will roll out a new 'basic' fare tier this week—a low-cost, no-frills offering that will replace the airline's current 'Wanna Get Away' tier.
Thousands of flights across the U.S. were delayed Monday, as severe thunderstorms in the South, Plains and Mississippi Valley disrupted Memorial Day weekend travel, with the New York Times reporting that more than 1,000 flights in and out of Dallas Fort Worth alone experienced delays. The holiday weekend was the busiest travel period since the TSA began requiring REAL ID for passengers earlier this month.
Illustration by Cecilia Runxi Zhang for Forbes; PhotoFederal marijuana reform has come to a halt with President Donald Trump in the White House, and some U.S. cannabis companies are investing hundreds of millions of dollars in the EU. While the market there is small, it's expected to grow more quickly than the U.S. cannabis market in the next few years. And while cannabis companies in the U.S. cannot transport products across state lines, EU businesses can grow the crop in one country and export products around the continent.
Three people were sentenced to prison over a scheme to defraud the Georgia Department of Labor out of tens of millions of dollars intended to help unemployed individuals during the Covid-19 pandemic. The individuals and their co-conspirators filed over 5,000 fraudulent unemployment insurance claims, resulting in at least $30 million in stolen benefits, according to court documents and evidence.
Kiran Mazumdar-Shaw
After her ambition to become a brewmaster was thwarted, Indian billionaire Kiran Mazumdar-Shaw channeled her frustrations into building an international knockoff drug powerhouse. She's now one of the world's most successful—and richest—female entrepreneurs.
Mazumdar-Shaw helped start Biocon, which in 2000 began brewing up pharmaceuticals—starting with insulin. Insulin is one of the simplest 'biologics,' drugs derived from a living source that are increasingly used to treat everything from cancer to immune system disorders. More complicated biologics like gene therapies and monoclonal antibodies are difficult to make—and extremely expensive.
It's an enormous market, but exactly how big is impossible to say. Biologics accounted for $324 billion in spending at list prices in 2023, according to health care research firm Iqvia, but that number doesn't account for the significant rebates that branded drugmakers often offer to keep their market share, lowering what insurers and patients pay but obfuscating total costs.
Mazumdar-Shaw, now 72, started out in the Indian market but now sells drugs globally—and is increasingly focused on the U.S. and Canada, which represent some 40% of its biologics sales. She realized early that finding a cheaper way to make such complex, life-saving drugs not only made them more accessible but was also good business.
Biocon, which is publicly traded in India, brings in $1.9 billion in revenue by selling dozens of generic drugs and 'biosimilar' medications. While Forbes' Self-Made Women list includes only women from the United States, Mazumdar-Shaw would easily make the top 20 were she American, with a fortune that Forbes estimates to be $3.2 billion.
WHY IT MATTERS The biggest part of Mazumdar-Shaw's empire is a majority-owned private subsidiary called Biocon Biologics, which focuses on biosimilars and represents nearly 55% of the parent company's revenue. Akin to what generics are for chemically synthesized drugs, these cheaper alternatives mimic biologic drugs.
Though biosimilars are much more expensive to make than generics, requiring more than $100 million to develop, they can drastically reduce patient costs. Iqvia estimates biosimilars have saved the U.S. health care system $36 billion at list prices since 2015.
MORE This Pharma Company Is Betting Big On A Chinese Ozempic Rival
With little faith among investors that the U.S. will be able to rein in its trillion-dollar deficits, Treasury bonds are not the safe haven they used to be. Because of this—as well as the ongoing war in Ukraine—international central bankers are continuing to add to their gold piles, raising the price of the commodity:
$4,000 an ounce: The price that Goldman Sachs expects gold to reach in the next two years—a roughly 30% increase from the current price—if the buying binge continues
22 tons: How much gold per month central banks have purchased since Russia's invasion of Ukraine in 2022, an increase from 17 tons per month prior to the war
20%: How much China, the world's biggest gold-mining country, aims to grow its gold holdings to as a share of reserves
The class of 2025 is graduating into a changing economy: A tightening job market has increased competition for entry-level positions and the rise of AI has hiring managers calling for an emphasis on candidates' humanity. Some of this year's notable commencement speakers have addressed these challenges in their advice to graduates. Philadelphia Eagles wide receiver A.J. Brown, for instance, encouraged students at the University of Mississippi to think of themselves as their own operation: 'Your discipline is your product, your name is your brand, your habits are your investments.'
Americans flocked to movie theaters over the holiday weekend, with Disney's live-action 'Lilo & Stitch' and 'Mission: Impossible – The Final Reckoning' leading the way to an estimated $322 million at the box office. That total beats out the previous Memorial Day weekend record of $314 million in 2013, led by which two blockbuster films?
A. 'Despicable Me 2' and 'The Lone Ranger'
B. 'Men In Black 3' and 'The Avengers'
C. 'Tomorrowland' and 'Pitch Perfect 2'
D. 'Fast & Furious 6' and 'The Hangover Part III'
Check your answer.
Thanks for reading! This edition of Forbes Daily was edited by Sarah Whitmire and Chris Dobstaff.