The Brutalist Report

Fortune

Airwallex expands from cross-border payments to autonomous finance—though president Lucy Liu says it’s still ‘not the best time’ for an IPO [22d]
Supermicro investigation clears CEO in alleged $2.5 billion smuggling scheme while a criminal trial involving a cofounder is set for next year [22d]
Exclusive: The man leading Trump’s RTO charge for government workers says he filmed a video in front of a blank wall to avoid work-from-home suspicion [22d]
Trump oblivious to voter fury about data centers, saying ‘the jobs are enormous and the money paid, the taxes paid, are just enormous’ [22d]
Army unit offers ‘special 4 day pass’ to play Grand Theft Auto VI for reenlisted troops as part of ‘unique incentives program’ [22d]
Senators demand answers from TikTok About ‘depraved’ experiment [22d]
Bessent becomes most interventionist Treasury chief in decades [22d]
The AI industry is getting better at spotting dangerous behavior. It is less clear that labs know how to stop it. [22d]
Scott Bessent on the national debt: ‘There’s nothing magic about the $40 trillion number’ [22d]
Gen Z forced to rewrite the American Dream in the ‘Great Postponement’: Fixer-uppers, side hustles and doing life out of order [22d]
Facing weary customers, Walmart will use its nearly $3 billion in tariff refunds to lower prices [22d]
Bill Ackman’s $400 million brain institute was inspired by his daughter—and built outside elite universities, which he says are losing talent [22d]
Moderna co-founder is a billionaire once again at $1.7 billion—he once turned down 20 high-paying job offers to ‘have more of an impact on the world’ [22d]
The four-day week is here thanks to GTA 6—some employers are giving staff a one-off shorter week to steal cars in the long-anticipated video game [22d]
Nneka Ogwumike’s WNBA legacy isn’t just her 11 all-star nods. It’s a 364% pay raise for the players [22d]
Another Democratic primary, another shocking DSA upset as Angie Nixon adds to moderates’ heartburn over seemingly unstoppable wave [22d]
As U.S. debt hits $40 trillion, Americans will foot the bill: $700 a month for retirees, and homebuyers could take a $53,000 hit, report finds [22d]
Exclusive: Venezuela, sick with hyperinflation, engages the ‘money doctor’ Steve Hanke for a dose of dollarization medicine [22d]
Your next oil change is becoming a bigger part of car dealers’ business as profits cool and service departments make up the difference [22d]
‘Game-changer’ GLP-1s could fix America’s obesity crisis—but 2 inequalities stand in the way [22d]
Governor races present ‘unique moment’ as historic number of Black candidates climbs to 8 [22d]
The great climate change Champagne race, as grape ripening shrinks from 100 to 80 days: ‘We’ve never seen anything like it’ [22d]
The military’s own newspaper is too ‘woke’ for Pete Hegseth as longtime Stars and Stripes publisher retires after decades of service [22d]
You are paying for your favorite college athlete now: ‘the next stage of the arms race’ [22d]
Trump calls his new FDA pick ‘Dr. Heidi.’ Patty Murray calls her a ‘far-right, anti-abortion extremist’ [22d]
Instagram took ‘don’t ask, don’t tell’ approach to kids, former engineer testifies — and pay was tied to keeping them online [22d]
‘Squid has a distinctive odor to it’: Seafood truck crash in Rhode Island creates ‘Squidpocalypse of ’26’ [22d]
Walmart’s sales growth falls to 6-year low as Middle American shoppers go on strike [22d]
Target’s second straight comeback quarter boosted by nearly $1 billion Trump tariff refund [22d]
Why the bond market is acting like it did before the Great Recession [22d]
Klarna wants its next CFO in New York. That’s a signal to Wall Street [22d]
‘Capital alone no longer clears a site’: Morgan Stanley says data centers’ big money era is over [22d]
Treasury rushes into bond market as Fed minutes show many governors want to hike rates, not cut [22d]
Trump’s Canada tariff threat produces a deal with no public terms [22d]
Portfolio review takes on a new urgency for VCs as AI makes 2024’s great deals look like 2026’s clear mistakes [22d]
AI is becoming a financial engineering business [22d]
Current price of oil as of August 20, 2026 [22d]
Climate change to cost London up to £36 billion a year by 2050s [22d]
Bessent’s $4 billion bond plan is like ‘rearranging deckchairs on the Titanic given the U.S. national debt of $40 trillion,’ ING says [22d]
AI won’t fix a broken company. Rewiring it will [22d]
Zynga founder Mark Pincus: AI can get you to a B-plus, but it won’t get you to an A [22d]
Amazon can’t quit Bezos’ drone dream [22d]
Venezuela oil minister to U.S. companies: ‘It’s an entire world waiting to be discovered’ [22d]
Meta faces a $1.4 trillion threat that could mean ‘turning in the keys and walking away’—but the stakes of the case reach across tech [22d]
Teachers in one of San Francisco’s richest suburbs are so underpaid that a philanthropist just gave each of them $9,161 [22d]
Companies are spending trillions on AI. The C-suite doesn’t know who is in charge of it [22d]
In this economy, millennials and Gen Z would rather break up than date someone in debt: ‘There’s a pretty big divide’ [22d]
‘Buyers aren’t yet opening their wallets’: AI-generated assets are flooding marketplaces, but consumers are snubbing them for human-made products [22d]