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September 14, 2023

Personality-driven business capsules you can only get here. Our weekly dispatch gets you ready for what people are thinking before they talk about it— the hitters you know and want to know across Wall Street, Washington, and Silicon Valley.

Elon Musk appears to 'make nice' with Bill Gates at AI summit following 18-month feud

Is Elon Musk finally trying to make nice with Bill Gates? That may be the hottest speculation coming out of Sen. Chuck Schumer's AI summit this week.

Tesla's CEO has aired a bitter beef with Gates over the past year and a half — partly over the billionaire's massive bet against Tesla shares — but on Wednesday the pair were caught having a private chat ahead of the "AI Insight Forum" on Capitol Hill.

According to folks who were in the room, the chat appeared to be cordial.

Billionaire Howard Schultz left Starbucks board over concerns he was a 'distraction'

Howard Schultz left the board of Starbucks altogether this week – and insiders with historical knowledge of the business say it's because the outspoken billionaire realized he had become a "distraction" for the giant coffee chain he built.

In March, Schultz left the chief executive role at Starbucks for the third and final time. But in recent months, Schultz and other board members came to feel that even his presence as a board member was too controversial, insiders said.

"The business has changed a ton since Howard's heyday," a source said. "It doesn't make sense for him to be part of it anymore."

Goldman Sachs shakeup in prized division could signal bloodbath

A fresh management shuffle at Goldman Sachs this week could signal that a major bloodbath is looming in its Asset and Wealth Management unit, sources told On The Money.

On Monday, the Wall Street giant headed by David Solomon announced Will Bousquette — previously chief operating officer of global banking and markets — would be the new COO of AWM.

Bousquette is replacing Laurence Stein, a well-liked and longtime partner who Goldman said was "retiring" at year's end after nearly three decades at the firm.

'Dumb Money' and dumber: Billionaire Ken Griffin freaks out ahead of Friday film release

Ken Griffin has a few bones to pick when it comes to "Dumb Money" – among them the way the star-studded flick depicts his habits when it comes to expensive art.

On the positive side, attorneys for the Miami-based hedge-fund titan said they "appreciate artistic endeavors." They applauded the casting of "Parks & Recreation" star Nick Offerman to play Griffin as "inspired."

On the other hand, the idea that "Ken purchased paintings by de Kooning and Picasso to keep them away from Steve Cohen" – the hedge-fund mogul who owns the New York Mets – was totally wrong, Griffin's lawyers wrote to the legal team for Sony Pictures last month.

Elon Musk biographer Walter Isaacson says mogul 'can burn fast and flame out'

Walter Isaacson, who has authored bestselling biographies of Steve Jobs, Leonardo da Vinci, and Albert Einstein, speaks with On The Money about his new book on Elon Musk. Isaacson, 71, gives his take on fake news, the state of the journalism business and whether Musk's leadership offers a blueprint for other CEOs to follow.

Lydia: There's been an uproar over the correction to the excerpt on Starlink and Ukraine that was published by the Washington Post. Do you regret how that was handled? Is it fair to say Elon Musk isn't always a reliable source?

Walter: The night of the sneak attack attempt, Musk told me he was not allowing Starlink to be used to guide the Ukrainian subs to attack the Russian fleet in Crimea. I mistakenly thought he meant he turned it off that night, but he later said – and I realized – the decision to have it not be enabled was made earlier. But the Ukrainians didn't know that. I corrected it to say he denied their request to enable it as opposed to saying that night he disabled it. That doesn't change the main issue which is should this person have the power to enable or not enable an attack.

Lydia: How does Musk think about journalism at X? He's grappling with a lot in terms of news distribution while also balancing fake news.

Walter: There's always a balance between opening the aperture to more speech and guarding against misinformation. Sometimes we get the balance wrong. In the past, a lot of social media outlets were pushed to not allow people to question mask mandates or whether COVID came from a lab leak in China. So sometimes we clearly went too far.

[But] .. Musk may be going too far in allowing the amplification of voices that make the platform feel very noxious. He and [X CEO] Linda Yaccarino are going to have to calibrate that. I expect that they will adhere to his idea that there will be freedom of speech not freedom of reach. In other words if you're saying something that seems problematic, it's not going to be amplified. But that's a difficult thing to do as we've seen with Facebook, with internet bulletin boards. And I'm not sure he has a perfect feel for that at the moment so I think it's going to be a problem.