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AI and dating are snuggling up. We explore the latest at Bumble. Six months into its founders return, Starbucks makes a big announcement. But is it bold enough? And golden shares what they are and why we think more will come the Thursday, September 25th it's through markets Daily and I'm Ann Berry. More market details to come. But first we're seeing a new wave of government activity with the private sector at the moment here in the United States, a stake in intel, the Pentagon stake in MP Materials, and rumors of the administration looking for a stake in Lithium Americas. So one question we received from the audience from Vineet in Philadelphia is particularly timely. He wrote, and I've been following your merger moment deals in the US I've heard about international deals sometimes having golden shares. Do they exist here? And in answering the question, I think you're going to see why we might be hearing more about these possibly even as soon as this evening when it comes to TikTok. Possibly. Well, let's start with what these are. Golden shares are special types of shares that give their holder, usually a government, extraordinary control over a company, even if they don't own very much of it. So think of it as a super veto button. Now, while ordinary shares generally vote based on how many shares they own, the golden share overrides them, and with it the holder can block certain key corporate decisions like takeovers or changes to strategy, regardless of what all the other investors want. Golden shares first became common in the 1980s when governments across Europe were privatizing big state owned companies but still wanted to protect national interests. One example is the UK Government, which held a golden share in airline British Airways even after privatization. More recently, governments have used them to safeguard companies tied to defense, energy or other critical infrastructure. And yes, this has recently happened in the United States. Earlier this year, Japan's Nippon Steel completed its about 15 billion dollar takeover of US Steel. Now that deal was first announced in 2023 and was blocked by the Biden administration in January of this year. In 2025, only weeks later, the Trump administration approved the deal so long as the US Government received a golden share. And this allows the president to block any attempt to relocate U.S. steel's Headqu outside America, to rename the corporation to transfer production overseas, or even to close plants within specified time frames. It also prevents changes to U S Steel's executive or board structure in ways that the government deems harmful to U S economic or national security interests. And just last week it was reported that this golden share, or the threat of it, was indeed used. After U S steel notified nearly 800 workers in Granite City, Illinois that plant operations would cease in November, the government signaled that it opposed Nippon Steel's decision under its special golden share rights, and the decision to cease operations was reversed. Now, where there's golden shares, there's often tension. Critics worry that using golden shares can discourage foreign investment, distort competition, or lead to micromanagement by governments. Supporters, on the other hand, argue that in an increasingly global economy, some industries simply need that kind of protection. But here's one person's view, and it's mine. I think we're going to see a lot more golden shares during President Trump's term. Maybe in tick tock, maybe in an energy company, or in the next big cross border tech merger. We will keep watching, and if you've got a question for me, email or send a Voice memo to brewmarketshoworning brew.com Coming up, AI and online dating have a cozy relationship At Bumble, we look at founder Whitney Wolf Herd's first six months back as CEO and Starbucks today. Is this the restructuring the market's been waiting for? But First Brew Markets Daily is sponsored by Public, the investing platform for those who take it seriously. Now, before the show today, our producer John mentioned a feature he recently found on Public that's right.
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I've been digging into crypto lately and I discovered that on Public, along with stocks, options and bonds, you can also trade crypto. Lots of tools to build and manage your wealth. Public has access to over 40 cryptocurrencies, including Bitcoin, Ethereum, Dogecoin, and more.
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So fund your account account in minutes or less. Get started at public.com brewmarkets that's public.com.
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BrewMarkets paid for by Public Investing. Full Disclosure in Podcast Description we keep.
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Hearing how AI is increasingly integrated across all facets of our life. And it's no surprise then that it's making its way into our love lives through dating apps. Earlier this year, the founder of the Bumble dating app, Whitney Wolf Herd, returned to the CEO's seat amidst a general slowdown across the sector. Upon the announcement of her return in March, she hired a new chief technology officer, subsequently laid off actually 30% of the company's employees, and she introduced her vision for a future in which AI is so instrumental in making connections. Now the reason we're shining the light on Whitney Wolf Heard is yes, it's always interesting to talk about AI. It's always even more interesting to talk about dating. But just last week, a biopic about Wolfheard, appropriately titled Swipe, debuted on Hulu. So John and I thought we will spare you our Rotten Tomatoes review, but we will take this opportunity to tell you a little bit more about Wolf Herd and what she is doing in AI. So John, paint the picture for us. That's right.
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And I did watch the movie last night. So I saw some of this dramatized by Lily James, even though it's been reported that Wolfe Herd was not involved in the movie. But here's the origin. Whitney Wolfe Herd was an early executive at Tinder. Apparently she was at least part of coming up with the name Tinder. And her hustle on college campuses led to broad adoption of the app. She left the company in 2014 and sued for sexual harassment. Tinder denied any wrongdoing and settled the lawsuit. And soon after, at 25 years old, she started Bumble, which billed itself as a safe space for women to find love. And I remember this, the innovation was that women made the first move on the app.
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Right. It was a huge game changer. And I just want to talk a little bit more about just how iconic Whitney Wolfe Heard has come, you know, become in this sort of the ecosystem of entrepreneurship and the, the dream of private companies going public, particularly in the tech space. And I say that at a time when we've seen all of these tech IPOs really pick up over the last couple of weeks. Wolf Heard was in Forbes 30 under 30 list and she briefly became the world's youngest female self made billionaire. She was the youngest woman to take a company public when Bumble IPO'd in 2021. And even before that going public. I just wanted to highlight that she was backed by Blackstone, it' major private equity player, which became the majority owner in 2019 of Bumble's parent company. And there aren't that many female, let alone of that age, CEOs being backed by private equity at that scale. So this was a really big deal. So the company goes public, John, it IPOs in the go go days, right. Of 2021 at a valuation of $7 billion, hits a high that same day of $8.6 billion in valuation. And you know, she works incredibly hard not just to get it, got it, get it to that point, but also through those early years as a public company. She stepped away from the CEO seat in late 2023. She didn't disappear. You and I have talked about corporate governance. She became the executive chairperson. But she had to return in March of this year after you literally see a vertical drop in Bumble Share price. And a couple of things that happened that prompted her to reclaim that CEO seat. First of all, there had been a fairly controversial ad campaign. Do you remember seeing this? But Bumble ran ads including messages such as, quote, a vow of celibacy is not the answer. It's a really controversial ad campaign. And then one of the things that really got Wolf Hurd going is that key feature you talked about, a women making the first move was actually taken out of the Bumble.
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That's right.
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So these were big changes. She'd been watching sort of from the sidelines or at least from the board. She gets back in the seat earlier this year and she has done so at a difficult time for the industry. Right, right.
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I mean, Match Group, which owns Tinder and Hinge and OkCupid, they've seen a decline in paid users for the past several quarters.
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Right.
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Its share price is down 66% over the last five years.
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Bumble struggles.
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Yeah, that's, that's Match Group. That's match down 66%. Yeah. And Bumble's in the same boat.
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Well, yes, its share price, sorry, down 20% year to date. That being Bumble second quarter 2025 versus 2024, saw total paying users decrease nearly 9%. And let talk about its market cap. Its peak after it IPO'd had been $13 billion. Bumble's market cap today is actually below 1 billion. So enormous degradation in value. But here she is trying to bring it back to life.
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But here's the, here's the challenge of dating apps. And it's the conundrum because if it works to help you find a partner.
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Yeah.
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Then you don't need the app anymore. And I remember that was hinges ad campaign for a while. The app designed to be deleted. I saw ads for that on the train here in New York City. It's tough to be a shareholder in one of these companies and also ro that people find their long term love.
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Well, what's so interesting about Whitney Wolfhard is she leaves Bumble as CEO. She stays as executive chair. And there was an interview that she gave to, I think to Fortune magazine, which was published in sort of spring of last year. And she's sort of looking at everything going on. Right. Looking at all the attrition. And she articulated in this interview a vision of how AI was going to be the dating device of the future. And she laid out this vision, which I'm paraphrasing, I'll post a link to this interview later. She laid out this vision of folks on Dating apps having sort of AI concierges. And the idea is, and she gives the example of San Francisco, suppose there's somebody who's dating an SF and there's 600 potential people that you'd want to go and meet. Well, imagine that that pool of 600 people all have AI concierges because they're all on the same app. And what happens is they're sort of AI concierges, go and sort of date each other and spend time with each other, and then they go back to their human user saying, look, here's two. You actually want to meet because we've done all the sort of initial work and sort of screening for you.
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Yeah, it narrows it down. And no one has to split the check.
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No one has to split the check. So that caught my eye because she was clearly thinking about AI and what a vision for AI in dating could be, even while she wasn't yet back in the CEO seat.
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Since she's been back, we've heard that Bumble has hired experts, psychologists and relationship counselors to program that AI. And last week the company relaunched its BFF app, which aims to connect people as friends. And here's Wolf heard from Bumble's second quarter earnings call talking about AI integration.
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Under our new cto, we've rebuilt our core tech org with a single mandate. Help people find love safely and efficiently. AI is being embedded responsibly and ethically across the entire product ecosystem, from matchmaking and personalization to member support and internal operations. Now, this isn't happening in a vacuum. If you take a look at other dating players out there, they too are trying to figure out how to integrate AI in a not dissimilar fashion, actually. So on Tuesday this week, Meta announced a meaningful incorporation of AI into its Facebook dating platform that will include an AI driven dating assistant that will apparently even book a restaurant for you for your first date. So that's going from the matchmaking to the actual doing of the date planning. And there's a surprise match tool called Meet Cute, which from reading about it, sounds like an AI matched blind date, right?
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Exactly. It sounds like that the two bots get together and they pair you up and then that's your person to try a date with.
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But we're going to keep watching this one because it's really interesting when you see a CEO who's been a founder, has been not as closely involved, but has clearly taken that time to come up with a vision and then actually get back in the seat and then go about executing against that Vision. It is early days. So we just heard Whitney Wolf heard speaking in the most recent quarterly earnings. I think it was just her first one back in the seat. So this is very early days of her turnaround. The stock hasn't really bumped up yet. We're not yet seeing tangible signs that investors are getting behind a sort of new strategic plan. We do also know that Bumble has decided to take a different approach to its marketing. I was walking around Manhattan and I saw big posters for Bumble where the new tagline is for the love of love. So a very different approach from where they were at sort of this time last year on the marketing front. And it seems as though, you know, data, they are experiencing swipe fatigue. As John said, we're seeing a lot of competitors suffering from the same number one, share price declines, number two, user declines, and number three, actually spend per user declines as well. So we're going to keep watching this one. We'll see if the AI innovations can improve the matchmaking process. And I know what I'm going to be doing this weekend. I'm going to be watching Lily James in that movie. And we'll see if she gets nominated for any acting awards too. Let's take a quick break and when we come back, Starbucks made a big announcement today. But how bold was it really? We've been keeping a close eye on Starbucks here at Brew Markets Daily. Two weeks ago, we reviewed CEO Brian Nichols first year on the job. A quick reminder. He had been a star CEO at Chipotle and was brought into Starbucks in September last year to turn around the coffee og. After years of sluggish growth in the United States and after losing ground in China to local upstart Luckin, we even dropped by one of only five Luckin Coffee locations here in America. That was just last week. To check out what this rival is doing to bring the fight for coffee dollars to Starbucks's own backyard. Overall, we graded Nicholls performance through now at a B. And our producer John was even tougher, giving him a B minus. While acknowledging that turnarounds are tough. They take time. They need patience, something the market has very little of. The changes in the year so far have really focused on customer greetings, drink complexity. They've been more vibe focused, which is really, really important. But it's really not enough alone to steer a ship as massive as this one. Well, one year in nickel needed to make a major move. That was our assessment. Starbucks share price has been down about 10% year to date and today it looked as though he was finally making a major move, he wrote a letter. I have it here printed out in front of me addressed to all North America partners. And it laid out some actions the market's been waiting for. He said that he has identified and is closing, quote, coffee houses where we're unable to create the physical environment our customers and partners expect or where we don't see a path to financial performance. Reducing the Number of net company operated locations in North America by 1% by the end of this year. That's the plan. He then intends to get back to growing locations overall in 2026. Now on top of all this, he's reducing corporate headcount by 900 positions this week. Now, all of this change is expensive, totaling about 1 billion. And I nerded out. I dug into the numbers in the SEC filing today. I went to the source and about $600 million of that restructuring cost is going to burn cash. Well, Starbucks can't afford it. As of June 30, it had over $4 billion of cash on the balance sheet. But the question is, does this move investor sentiment on the stock? Well, the share price spoke for itself. The reaction was pretty muted. Starbucks ticked down ever so slightly, 1% a little bit less towards the end of the day in partly because the CEO had signaled that store closures would happen in the last earnings call. So this wasn't a huge surprise, except possibly the magnitude. But the real reason there was a bit of a shrug to this is when you're a $95 billion market cap company with $36 billion in annual revenue and more than 40,000 locations worldwide, you've just got to go bigger for meaningful change because when you're that large. Well, Nichols's announcement, as big as a billion dollars may sound, means he was really just tweaking around the edges this grand strategic announcement. So we're sticking with that B to B minus grade for now, but we're going to keep watching. Well, it's 4pm on the east coast, the market have closed and we don't have a ticker tape. So we'll throw it over to our human ticker, our producer John. That's right.
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The dow was down nearly 410 of a percent today. The S&P 500 and the NASDAQ were both down half a percent. And here are some market headlines. Shares in Carmax were down over 22% today after the company released quarterly earnings that missed estimates. Same store unit sales fell over 6% from a year earlier. While analysts had forecast 1% growth. CarMax stock price is down nearly 50% since the start of the year. And for context, shares in Carvana are up over 80% during that time. And Amazon has reached a $2.5 billion settlement with the Federal Trade Commission. That's coming after a civil trial examining whether the company duped customers into signing up for prime service and creating a confusing process to cancel. The company will pay a $1 billion civil penalty, which is the largest in FTC history, and create a $1.5 billion fund to pay back customers. It will also be required to add a simple way to cancel prime to its interface. And Anne, I am a Prime member, which means my check may be in the mail. Depending on use conditions and certain time periods, many prime customers will be automatically eligible for a $51 payment.
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I hate to say this, but rather like Starbucks, you know, two and a half billion dollar fine sounds like a big number in the grand scheme of Amazon. Not, not a lot of money. So again, the share price, this is actually kind of big news in terms of the scale of the fine. Smaller news in terms of Amazon's reaction.
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Right, exactly. And the share price was only down about 1% after the report. And finally, Spotify announced today that it has removed over 75 million spammy songs from its music platform. In a statement, the company said, quote, the future of music industry is being written and we believe that aggressively protecting against the parts of gen AI is essential to enabling its potential for artists and producers. The service is cracking down on AI impersonations, SEO hacks and in general, quote, forms of slop. Shares of Spotify were up percent today and up over 58% year to date.
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I would absolutely die to sit down now with someone from Spotify and have them actually define in words spammy song. I'm really, really curious to know what that looks like. Well, on the topic of music, tomorrow on the show we are going to be joined with Fingers crossed it all goes ahead. Going to be joined in studio by Steve Aoki, the global dj, producer and entrepreneur. We're absolutely going to get into the use of AI in the music business, consumer demand for live events, and also talk about his new venture capital platform, Ioki Labs, which will give us perspective on trends that also impact public companies. This should be a great conversation. So check it out. That's for tomorrow. Really excited for that one. And then just a quick final thought, I was almost not going to talk about at the end of the show, but I'm going to sneak this one in here. And that is because this topic of quantum computing is only going to get bigger. Now, in a prior episode, we busted through the jargon by talking about a recently announced partnership between IBM and AMD to try to put together hybrid computers that's a combination of classical computing capabilities and quantum computing, which allows for data to be processed simultaneously and much more quickly and organically than we see in traditional computing systems. Well, today literally when I woke up, I saw this headline at sort of 6:30 in the morning that HSBC, the global bank, has says that it has used quantum computing in partnership with IBM to improve bond trading. A quote, world first. I am going to post a link to that article because it's pretty sort of complex and technical and gets a bit nerdy. But the reason I'm highlighting it is this, to me, is another sign that more and more headlines are coming on the actual applications of quantum computing as it moves from sort of a science experiment to something that's really going to impact us every day, including in finance, including in the markets, including in investing. And we want to make sure we stay on top of this. We can explain it in regular terms and we're going to keep breaking it down. That's it folks, for today's Blue Markets.
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Daily Brew Markets Daily is hosted by Anne Barry and produced by Jacques Tarek Abdelatif and Emily Milian. Our technical director is Uchenawa Ogu, audio assistance by Dan Bowser and the president of Morning Brew Inc. Is Devin Emery.
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Wake up tomorrow with the Morning Brew newsletter and tune in to Neil and Toby and on Morning Brew Daily. We'll see you back here tomorrow, same time, same place.