The market for hot sauce is heating up—and spicy Southern staple Crystal is capitalizing on the opportunity.
Alvin “Pepper” Baumer, the third-generation owner and CEO of Baumer Foods, which makes Crystal, has grown his family’s century-old company into a $50 million business. Crystal is sold at 30,000 retailers across the U.S., including Kroger, Publix, Walmart and Wegmans.
There has been a string of recent acquisitions in the hot sauce market, but Baumer says he isn’t interested in selling. “My name’s Pepper,” he says. “I’m a walking billboard. This is what I was born to do.”
This is a published version of the Forbes Daily newsletter, you can sign-up to get Forbes Daily in your inbox here. First UpOpenAI is leaning toward delaying its IPO from later this year to next year, The New York Times reported, after SpaceX’s rocky debut and a tech market slump.Bitcoin plunged to a 21-month low on Thursday, and has now declined nearly 54% since hitting a record high in October.The Federal Reserve’s preferred inflation metric accelerated at its fastest rate in almost three years last month, and markets now overwhelmingly expect the central bank to raise rates this year.Business + Finance
SpaceX is looking to expand into wireless, and barring a wholesale network deal with a big provider like Verizon, one analyst suggested T-Mobile would be the most logical acquisition. TD Cowen analyst Gregory Williams cited SpaceX’s existing partnership with the provider through its Starlink business, which accounted for the majority of the company’s revenue through the first quarter.
Tech + Innovation
Apple CEO Tim Cook
Justin Sullivan/Getty Images
Apple announced it would raise the prices of laptops and tablets, leading its stock to shed 6%, after CEO Tim Cook warned of “unavoidable” increases due to higher memory and storage costs. The biggest price hike was for the MacBook Pro 1T, the cheapest MacBook Pro, which saw its starting price go up from $1,699 to $1,999.
Money + Politics
A judge ruled that the lawsuit against the Trump administration’s planned $1.8 billion “anti-weaponization fund” will move ahead—as officials have so far refused to confirm in writing that the fund is dead. The ruling means the administration will not be able to reinstate the fund amid the pending litigation.
Daily Cover StoryHow This New Fintech Billionaire Is Cashing In On Cross-Border Payments
Airwallex cofounder and CEO Jack Zhang
Airwallex
It took Jack Zhang 10 startups to figure out what he truly wanted to do. His most recent one, Airwallex, made him a billionaire.
Zhang launched the fintech payments company in 2015 in Melbourne, Australia, and found a niche helping global companies pay offshore vendors and employees. He has since led Airwallex to expand well beyond payments, offering global bank accounts, corporate cards, bill payments and bookkeeping. Its 300,000 customers span 47 countries, including China, Japan, the U.K., Mexico and the U.S.
The cofounder and CEO owns 12% of the company, a stake now worth $1.3 billion. That follows a fundraise earlier this month, when Airwallex secured $320 million at an $11 billion valuation.
Increasingly, the company expects its full suite of products to compete with those of Stripe and Ramp in areas ranging from payment processing and business accounts to expense management and corporate cards. Both are formidable competitors—last year, Stripe processed $1.9 trillion in payments, while earlier this month, Ramp announced that it handles $200 billion in annualized purchase volume.
WHY IT MATTERS “We are solving a different problem: How do you give a globally operating business one platform instead of asking it to stitch together five or six?” says Airwallex’s SVP of communications and public affairs Rachael Horwitz.
MORE How SoFi Went From Fintech Darling To Wall Street Pariah
Facts + Comments
Shares of Trump Media & Technology Group fell to an all-time low on Thursday as the company has recorded net losses in the last three quarters. Ad sales on Truth Social are the company’s main revenue driver:
Over 6%: How much shares dropped Thursday
More than 46%: The amount the stock has plunged since the start of the year
$405.9 million: How much in net losses Trump Media reported for the first three months of the year
Strategy + Success
If you or a family member will soon be applying to college, don’t just rattle off a long list of achievements in the essay. The strongest essays reveal how a student thinks and sees the world. Specific anecdotes can help you stand out, too.
VideoQuiz
The price of a major video game console will go up for the second time in less than a year, as a result of the ongoing shortage in memory and storage hardware. Which console is it?
A. Nintendo Switch
B. Xbox
C. PlayStation
D. Steam Deck
Thanks for reading! This edition of Forbes Daily was edited by Sarah Whitmire and Chris Dobstaff.