The booming illicit peptide market could already be worth an estimated $3 billion. And with an FDA panel expected to give its stamp of approval to as many as seven new drugs, companies are preparing for a windfall.
Injectable peptides, a broad category of amino acid-based drugs, have grown in popularity for their purported healing and anti-inflammatory properties, but there’s little scientific data on their safety and efficacy. The FDA is expected to recommend legal production of this group of peptides, which Health and Human Services Secretary Robert F. Kennedy Jr. also happens to be a fan of.
Compounding pharmacies like Empower and telehealth giant Hims & Hers are waiting for the FDA’s green light to unlock a potential multibillion-dollar market.
This is a published version of the Forbes Daily newsletter, you can sign-up to get Forbes Daily in your inbox here. First UpOpenAI admitted that its AI systems went rogue and hacked the servers of AI platform Hugging Face, which used a Chinese AI model to to fight the cyberattack.Iran appeared to seize a tanker owned by Greek shipping magnate George Prokopiou in the Strait of Hormuz, as commercial traffic through the crucial shipping route has once again been effectively halted.Paramount Skydance’s $110 billion takeover of Warner Bros. Discovery cleared a major regulatory hurdle with approval from the European Union, though the deal still faces antitrust concerns in the U.S.Business + Finance
Google parent Alphabet surpassed Wall Street’s earnings projections with its 12th-straight quarter of double-digit revenue growth. The company’s AI assistant Gemini now has 950 million monthly active users, CEO Sundar Pichai said in a statement, and Google Cloud revenue surged 82%.
Elon Musk said there’s “more and more overlap” between SpaceX and Tesla, but deflected questions about a direct merger between the two firms during the automaker’s earnings call Wednesday. Tesla reported second-quarter revenue of $28.2 billion, beating consensus economist projections, according to FactSet, though the company’s earnings of 33 cents per share fell well below estimates of 55 cents.
Wealth + Entrepreneurship
photo by Trevor Paulhus for Forbes
West Texas, America’s biggest oil field, produces 7 million barrels of oil and 25 million barrels of water each day—making it the perfect location for data centers, according to David Capobianco, cofounder of private equity outfit Five Point. Altogether, his firms have spent roughly $2.5 billion on this bet, with plans to pour up to another $5 billion into the project over the next five years.
Money + Politics
U.S. President Donald Trump meets with Saudi Crown Prince Mohammed bin Salman in May 2025.
Getty Images
The Trump administration signed a nuclear deal with Saudi Arabia, the latest example of how the president and his family have strengthened business ties with the kingdom during his second term. Critics say the deal, which must be submitted to Congress for review, would make it easier for Saudi Arabia to develop nuclear weapons.
New language in a draft crypto bill would temporarily prohibit public officials or employees from issuing or sponsoring cryptocurrencies until 2029, a move that could potentially bar Trump from further cashing in on his crypto businesses. The Clarity Act faces opposition from Democrats, who have suggested they do not support handing enforcement over to the current Justice Department.
World
Global oil prices soared above $98 per barrel on Thursday as Iran-backed Houthi militants targeted Saudi Arabian tankers in the Red Sea. Oil prices are now approaching the highest level they have been in over two months, and the national average gas price in the U.S. rose to $4.09 per gallon Thursday, according to AAA—up from $3.94 per gallon last week.
Daily Cover StoryAxon Says AI Police Reports Save Time. Public Records Show They Get Facts Wrong
illustration by yunjia yuan for forbes; photos by Wragg/Getty Images; eurobanks/Getty Images; Moussa81/Getty Images
In the small city of Lafayette, Indiana, the local police force decided to try out Form One, a new AI tool sold by law enforcement tech giant Axon, the company with a $35 billion market cap best known for making the Taser.
It promised to save officers time by listening to the audio from their body cameras, then filling out the administrative details of a police report. But after seven months of testing the technology, many of Lafayette’s officers found the tool was wasting time, not saving it, emails obtained by Forbes show.
Routine paperwork is the kind of simple task you’d expect an artificial intelligence model to excel at. Police officers spend as much as 15 hours a week filling out reports, per Axon data. But those reports must be accurate, and the process of editing an AI model’s work to ensure it meets that standard has become onerous for some police officers.
Form One is the latest addition to Axon’s flagship AI product, called Draft One, which the company launched in 2024. While Form One fills out names and addresses, Draft One writes up what happened during an incident. Axon says it’s now in use by 600 police departments across the country and has helped write 600,000 police reports, saving an estimated 300,000 hours, according to its customer surveys. But the only data-driven research on AI-drafted police reports raises questions about how much time Axon’s AI is saving.
Axon spokesperson Victoria Keough said Form One is in early access, which is meant for agencies to provide feedback before the product is released more widely. She noted officers retain full control over the final report.
WHY IT MATTERS Concerns around AI leading to sloppiness have led some jurisdictions to say they won’t accept AI-generated reports as evidence. In 2024, the Prosecuting Attorney’s Office in King County, Washington, informed law enforcement agencies it would not accept reports written with the help of AI because of hallucinations. Daniel Clark, King County prosecutor, tells Forbes that he’s seen AI getting names of witnesses and officers wrong, or putting officers at the scene when they were simply on the radio. “It’s a type of error that can really challenge an officer’s credibility when they’re on the stand, and then that puts the officer at risk of being either called lazy, sloppy or dishonest,” Clark says.
MORE Flock CEO Apologizes For Calling Activists ‘Terrorists’
Facts + Comments
The Louvre Museum reopened its Apollo Gallery this week, more than nine months after thieves stole a number of French crown jewelry pieces, which have still not been recovered. Authorities have reportedly boosted security at the famous Paris museum:
Over $100 million: How much the stolen jewels are estimated to be worth
$1 billion: The cost of the renovation currently being undergone at the museum
A “secure room, a vault with no windows,” Where museum director Christophe Leribault said the remaining jewels will be held, as there will be no jewels on display in the Apollo gallery
Strategy + Success
Most companies measure employee performance through a regularly scheduled review process, but they often fail to spark creativity because staff may be afraid of them. Add a metric that captures well-thought out efforts, and create a risk requirement for each worker. And on the flip side, one of the most powerful strategies can be allowing staff to have veto power, so consider giving them the option to skip part of the review.
VideoQuiz
Singer-songwriter Stella Lefty’s breakout single “Boston” surged on the Billboard charts this week. Lefty is the daughter of the billionaire cofounder of which company?
A. Etsy
B. Groupon
C. eBay
D. Costco
Thanks for reading! This edition of Forbes Daily was edited by Sarah Whitmire and Chris Dobstaff.