Elizabeth Stein went from selling muffin mix out of her apartment to closing one of the largest recent deals in the natural foods industry.
Stein agreed to sell her Purely Elizabeth brand of granolas, oatmeals and cereals to Italian chocolate and candy giant Ferrero on Friday. Forbes estimates the deal is worth more than $850 million.
In addition to staying on as CEO, Stein will pocket an estimated $400 million after taxes, which puts her in a position few food founders ever achieve. “I really hope it shows women that they don’t have to choose between being a visionary founder and becoming a scaled CEO,” she says.
This is a published version of the Forbes Daily newsletter, you can sign-up to get Forbes Daily in your inbox here. First Up
- Elon Musk’s net worth briefly topped $900 billion Monday as shares in SpaceX rallied after institutional investors like Nvidia, BlackRock and Harvard’s endowment disclosed stakes in the rocket maker.
- The Justice Department is investigating venture capital firm Andreessen Horowitz over antitrust concerns, despite its billionaire co-founder Marc Andreessen’s ties to President Donald Trump.
Business + Finance
Shein’s valuation has collapsed nearly 75% in four years as the fast-fashion giant prepares to debut on public markets in Hong Kong as soon as this month. The company’s valuation will likely be around $25 billion for its IPO, Reuters reports, as its revenue growth has slowed in recent years amid tariffs and competition from rival Temu.
Wealth + Entrepreneurship
At 25, James Dacombe is now Europe’s youngest self-made billionaire after his AI chipmaking company Olix raised funds at a $3.3 billion valuation. Dacombe, a high school dropout, is one of 11 self-made billionaires worldwide under the age of 30, and one of just four from outside the U.S.
Money + Politics
The Justice Department on Monday urged a federal appellate court to reinstate criminal charges against Kilmar Abrego Garcia, who was mistakenly deported to El Salvador by the Trump administration last year. The appeal comes three months after a federal judge dismissed human smuggling charges against Abrego Garcia, whose case became a high-profile focus of the Trump administration in 2025.
Sports + Entertainment
Billionaire Mark Walter after the FIFA Club World Cup Final in 2025.
Icon Sportswire via Getty Images
Billionaires Mark Walter and Todd Boehly are considering selling their stakes in Chelsea FC after Walter’s brow-raising $12.5 billion sale of the Los Angeles Lakers last week. Federal investigators are reportedly looking into whether Walter used insurers he controls to improperly funnel billions of dollars worth of loans to other firms he owns.
MORE: Josh Kushner and Bob Iger, who agreed to purchase the Lakers from Walter, are also in talks to purchase the remaining stake in the team held by longtime owners the Buss family, though the team’s governor Jeanie Buss said Monday she opposed her siblings’ plan to sell.
Daily Cover StoryDOGE Broke America’s Weather Machine. Now Fishermen, Insurers And Farmers Are Paying For It
illustration by yunjia yuan for forbes; photos by The Washington Post/Getty Images; Wirestock/Getty Images; Adastra/Getty Images; mikroman6/Getty Images; imageBROKER/I. Gercelman/Getty Images; piola666/Getty Images; ilbusca/Getty Images; mashuk/Getty Images
Built over decades, NOAA’s sprawling network of satellites, balloons, buoys, radar stations and scientists underpin much of the U.S. economy.
Fishermen use it to decide whether waters are safe to sail. Farmers use it to determine when to plant and harvest. Airlines use it to route flights. Insurers and reinsurers use it to assess risk of losses from major events like hurricanes, fires and large-scale accidents. Utilities, builders and emergency officials use it to manage power grids, protect infrastructure and keep people alive.
But early last year, Elon Musk’s DOGE gutted staffing and budgets at NOAA and the National Weather Service. Now failures are arriving quietly: one dead weather station, one missing balloon, one stale map, one climate website at a time.
In dozens of interviews with current and former NOAA employees and representatives of industries that depend on its data, Forbes found that as America’s environmental intelligence goes dark piece by piece, it raises risks to lives and property while pushing new costs onto businesses and consumers. The systems and cuts made to them may seem obscure; the bill won’t be.
Up to 6% of U.S. GDP is impacted by weather conditions, worth as much as $1.34 trillion annually. The National Weather Service estimated in 2024 that it produced $73 of value for taxpayers for every dollar invested into it.
“Perhaps no other federal entity facilitates greater economic and commercial activity than NOAA and its data sources,” Frank Nutter, former president of the Reinsurance Association of America, the financial industry that backstops insurance companies, told Congress in 2025 when lobbying to restore funding for NOAA that DOGE sought to cut.
WHY IT MATTERS “Given that environmental and weather data collected by NOAA and the NWS are so fundamental to U.S. industries, any degradation of its capabilities is a problem,” says Forbes senior editor Alan Ohnsman. “After losing the equivalent of 27,000 years of veteran research experience with hundreds of early retirements last year, the Trump administration seeks to slash NOAA’s budget by at least 25% in the next fiscal year. That would create enormous headaches for fisheries, insurers, civil engineers, farmers and cities, especially if they have to start paying for private services to recreate what the government has provided for decades.”
MORE Americans Can’t Buy Chinese EVs. Waymo Is Importing Thousands
Facts + Comments
Autonomous AI models are likely to outperform both doctors and human-AI hybrid teams, according to a new research paper from entrepreneurs and health researchers. One of the paper’s authors is the son of billionaire venture capitalist Vinod Khosla:
60%: The share of 377 real-world cases that ChatGPT correctly identified the final diagnosis, according to a study cited
As a ‘supportive role’: How the American College of Physicians currently advises health professionals use AI in clinical decision making
2030: When the paper predicts that AI could outperform doctors on key tasks
Strategy + Success
For many workers, career ambition no longer strictly means climbing the ladder as quickly as possible. Before accepting a new role, employees are now considering work-life balance as well as whether the added responsibilities will improve their financial position. Career growth may also be less dependent on what their current employer offers, as many look to outside opportunities and income streams.
Video Quiz
Tech giants are reportedly buying rare and antique books en masse and scanning them into large language models—a practice that is generating backlash. Documents from a lawsuit against which company revealed it had bought millions of physical books?
A. Anthropic
B. OpenAI
C. Google
D. Meta
Thanks for reading! This edition of Forbes Daily was edited by Sarah Whitmire and Chris Dobstaff.