Business

➚ BUY: Crypto. Bitcoin topped $100,000 after Donald Trump named an industry-friendly pick to run the Securities and Exchange Commission. Ripple’s CEO called Paul Atkins, a former SEC commissioner who sits on the board of a crypto startup, an “outstanding choice.”

➘ SELL: Euro. The currency is careening toward parity with the US dollar, something it’s done just a handful of times since its launch in 1999. US tariffs, collapsing governments in France and Germany, and stalled economies across the bloc are a worst-case scenario.

Michael Milken takes stake in Mubadala… Fidelity’s 401(k) millionaire record… Target must defend Pride merch in court… Anti-woke ETF targets Starbucks… NC town sues Duke Energy over climate change… Mercedes’ first EV Popemobile…

New York City police are zeroing in on the man they believe shot and killed the CEO of UnitedHealth Group’s insurance arm outside his company’s annual investor meeting yesterday morning. Law enforcement hasn’t released a suspected motive for what they say was a targeted hit on the executive, Brian Thompson, but his wife told NBC News “there had been some threats … basically, I don’t know, a lack of coverage?” ABC News reported that the words “deny,” “defend,” and “depose” were found written on bullet casings at the scene.

We wrote on Tuesday about what BlackRock’s acquisition of HPS says about the credit market. With a few days to ask around, here are some additional thoughts on the deal:

It’s expensive. BlackRock is buying HPS for about 25 times its expected 2025 profits. For comparison, Canadian asset manager CI Financial just sold for 17 times its annual profits, and Advent International’s minority stake in Fisher Investments appears to value the company at about 18 times its profits. (Neither are perfect comparisons but both are money managers.) BlackRock also paid a nosebleed price for infrastructure firm GIP earlier this year, and has set aside more than $1 billion to retain top talent at both GIP and HPS. Having tried and failed to build a private investing business in-house, Larry Fink is having to pay up to buy his way in.

Fink’s dealmaking raises questions for competitors. Vanguard is nowhere to speak of in private investing, and its new CEO prefers partnerships over acquisitions. Invesco hasn’t done a major deal since 2019, and even Nelson Peltz couldn’t pressure it into one that seemed to make a lot of sense.

Consolidation between money managers has already hit an annual record with a month to go, according to Pitchbook data. Firms are becoming one-stop shops and getting ahead of expected pressure on fees. BlackRock accounts for about half the total deal value this year, but others have been busy, too. Blue Owl has made four acquisitions, adding $44 billion in assets under management.

Semafor will be on the ground in Davos for the World Economic Forum, the annual gathering where the world’s most powerful come together to strike deals, tout their good deeds, and navigate the snow — sometimes getting stuck long enough to share a scoop or two with us.

We’ll deliver exclusives on the high-stakes conversations shaping the world. Expect original reporting, scoops, and insights on all the deal-making, gossip, and lofty ambitions — with a touch of the pretentious grandeur Davos is famous for.

Bots that can flirt. Werewolf boyfriends. Rizz generators. Machine learning is coming for dating apps, promising to find better matches, weed out likely ghosters, tell you exactly the right time to ask for an IRL meeting, and arm you with the perfect pickup line. It all sounds a bit “Black Mirror” to me — to say nothing of the irony of companies using AI to identify fake AI-generated profiles — but my colleague Rachyl Jones caught up with Hinge CEO Justin McLeod, who swears AI is the key to un-mucking online dating.

Rachyl Jones: Is online dating broken?

Justin McLeod: There are legitimate opportunities and issues in the category that I set out to solve when I created Hinge. I think to some extent — we made a lot of progress — they still exist. What’s being presented now by AI will allow us to dramatically address those issues.

What exactly is the AI opportunity?

One is personalized, intelligent matching — a more nuanced approach to understanding people’s tastes and what they are looking for, being able to use that information to make much smarter matches and give you some insight into why. Imagine the world’s most knowledgeable dating coach who can sit with you during your experience and help.

And it’s feedback on tactical things. “Hey, you’ve been messaging this person for a while. It might be time to ask them on a date.”

People don’t like companies slicing things into a bunch of different subscription tiers, which has happened at Hinge and, more broadly, in dating apps. How do you pitch this to customers who were once using it for free?

What was free continues to be free, and we try to add more value so that people want to pay. We have a principle that we only charge for what we can’t give away for free. If we gave everyone unlimited roses and boosts for free, they wouldn’t mean anything anymore. Similarly, with premium filters or all these other pieces we put in a subscription — we found they actually hurt people’s chances to find a match if we give them to everybody.

The 4B movement seems to be catching on in the US. Are women swearing off men?

I’ve read about that. We have not seen it.

Donald Trump’s transition started off relatively orderly and low-drama — a stark contrast to 2016. But chaos is beginning to descend on Washington, Semafor’s Burgess Everett and Shelby Talcott reported.

One person close to the transition maintained the “curveballs” they’re experiencing are “just par for the course.” A second person, however, said phrases like “shit show” and “dumpster fire” have been used to describe the process.