Happy New Year 2025

Tag: investing

Daniel Penny lands role at firm to ‘learn the business of investing’: report

Former NYPD Lt. Darrin Porcher sizes up jurors’ decision in the subway chokehold case and the latest in the investigation of the killing of UnitedHealthcare CEO Brian Thompson.

Daniel Penny, who in December was acquitted of criminally negligent homicide for a chokehold in response to a man’s violent outburst of death threats against other riders on a New York City subway car, has reportedly landed a role with an investment firm in Silicon Valley to “learn the business of investing.”

The Free Press reported that Penny was hired by Andreessen Horowitz, after seeing an internal statement in which David Ulevitch, a partner at the firm, confirmed the news.

“He will learn the business of investing, and he will work to support our portfolio companies,” Ulevitch wrote in a memo to all employees on Tuesday afternoon.

Andreessen Horowitz did not respond to FOX Business’ request for comment on the matter.

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Daniel Penny leaves the 5th Precinct of the NYPD on May 12, 2023. Penny is charged in connection with the death of subway rider Jordan Neely. (Julia Bonavita / Fox News Digital / Fox News)

The news comes less than two months after Penny’s acquittal in a high-profile and controversial manslaughter trial. Prosecutors asked the court to dismiss the top charge of manslaughter to avoid a hung jury, and jurors ultimately found Penny not guilty of the lesser charge.

Penny, a 26-year-old Marine veteran and architecture student, was charged for the subway chokehold death of Jordan Neely, a 30-year-old homeless man with schizophrenia who barged onto the train shouting death threats while high on a type of synthetic marijuana known as K2. It happened on May 1, 2023.

Neely had a lengthy criminal record, an active arrest warrant, a history of psychosis and was high. He also had sickle cell trait genetic disorder.

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This screenshot from bystander video shows Jordan Neely being held in a chokehold on the New York City subway. (Luces de Nueva York / Juan Alberto Vazquez via Storyful)

The Free Press reported that Ulevitch spoke about the May 2023 incident in a memo to staff.

“I believe, as I know many of you do, that Daniel acted with courage in a tough situation,” Ulevitch said. “He was acquitted of all charges. Beyond that, it has always been our policy to evaluate the entire person and not judge them for the worst moment in their entire life.”

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He also wrote about his vision for the former Marine, noting that he could help strengthen the firm’s relationships with the public safety sector and the Department of Defense.

Specifically, Penny will reportedly work in Andreessen Horowitz’s American Dynamism practice, which “invests in founders and companies that support the national interest.”

Fox News Digital’s Michael Ruiz contributed to this report.

February 5, 2025
Robinhood CEO predicts an investing revolution is on the horizon: ‘A big problem’ for US

Robinhood CEO Vlad Tenev encourages opening crypto access for real world assets, tokenizing private company stock and comments on market reaction to ‘meme’ stocks and the A.I.-led tech sell-off on ‘The Claman Countdown.’

Expanding on a recent op-ed regarding “the next frontier” in cryptocurrency investing, Robinhood CEO Vlad Tenev is spotlighting “a big problem” that needs fixing in America’s trading market.

“I think there’s a big problem, which is that if you’re a retail investor right now, and you want to invest in [artificial intelligence] – it is very, very clear that they do, judging by the market activity yesterday and overnight on Sunday – you don’t have too many options,” Tenev said Tuesday in an exclusive interview on “The Claman Countdown.”

“The IPO process has gotten cumbersome. Only the biggest companies can do it, and that limits opportunities and upside, too, to retail investors,” he continued. “We now have an administration that’s crypto-friendly and retail-friendly, and we see an opportunity to fix this major problem.”

Robinhood has broken down crypto barriers by democratizing trading on its easy-to-use platform and free, no-commission trades. Now, Tenev wants to lead in the ability to use crypto and invest in companies before they go public.

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In a Washington Post opinion piece also published Tuesday, Tenev wrote that this investing revolution is coming, but the U.S. isn’t ready for it.

Robinhood CEO Vlad Tenev wants to “open up access” to using cryptocurrencies for the average retail trader. (Getty Images)

“You have companies like SpaceX worth hundreds of billions [of dollars], companies like OpenAI and Anthropic that are off limits to investors,” the CEO pointed out to FOX Business’ Liz Claman. “And the right solution is to open up access to these, sort of, previously accredited assets. And I think we can do that in a way that makes sure that customers know what they’re putting their money into and self-certify that they understand the risks.”

When asked whether the rise of “meme” coins and tokens, like $TRUMP and $MELANIA, more recently, degrade the technical and fundamental value behind the currencies, Tenev responded by saying that it moves larger conversations and gives “the power” to anyone who wants to access a global market.

Robinhood co-founder and CEO Vlad Tenev unpacks the company’s $2 million donation to the Trump inaugural fund on ‘The Claman Countdown.’

“The fact that it’s so easy and that someone with a computer can set it up and do it in a relatively short amount of time shows you that the technology is valuable. And we just need the regulatory clarity to connect this crypto technology to real world productive assets that are currently regulated as securities,” he explained.

After the groundbreaking Chinese AI app DeepSeek fueled a U.S. tech market sell-off earlier this week, Tenev claimed Sunday marked the second-biggest overnight trading session in the platform’s history.

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Trump AI and ‘crypto czar’ David Sacks discusses the administration’s crypto policies and future ambitions for the digital currency during an exclusive interview on ‘The Evening Edit.’

Robinhood’s customers tend to “buy the dip,” the CEO noted, and A.I. also represents the “next frontier” in what investors want to get their hands on.

“I think that just shows you the power of what can happen if private markets are open,” Tenev said. “They’re private companies whose investors are limited to a very, very small circle of insiders that tend to invest in all of these deals. So I think that the next frontier and democratization of retail investing is going to be making sure that these opportunities are open to retail investors.”

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January 28, 2025
Faith-based investing seeing surge in growth as alternative to ESG

Guidestone head of investments distribution Will Lofland explains how he helps investors align their finances with their faith on ‘The Big Money Show.’

People are aligning their values with their finances through faith-based investing, and, according to one expert, that strategy is rivaling ESG.

One Christian financial services company spokesperson explained why investors are flocking to that strategy on “The Big Money Show,” Wednesday.

“With the growth of ESG, we’ve seen similar growth in investors taking account of their values as it relates to their faith,” GuideStone’s Will Lofland pointed out. “Within the last three years, it’s where we’ve seen the most critical growth.”

The GuideStone Head of Investments Distribution explained that there’s been a counter to the growth of ESG [Environmental, Social, and Governance] — and, though his firm has been around since the 1970s, he’s noticed a recent spike in faith-based investments.

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“Honestly, during the COVID period of time, people, I think, started living their life more intentionally and discovered that things like this exist that are more in line with what they’re thinking about, than something that was maybe the product du jour like ESG.”

He remarked how, through GuideStone, faith-based investing is being brought to people who want to invest through their Christian values.

As far as countering ESG policies, Lofland laid out how the capital management company strives to encourage other companies to focus on their core business areas.

“There are Christian principles that we want to adhere to,” he said. “But we want to try to bring those to businesses that are secular entities and help them understand those to be business principles, whether it’s how they treat their employees, the products and goods that they bring to the marketplace, and honestly, that they are enacting policies that don’t run as an affront to their consumers or to the employees.”

Lofland also highlighted observations about investor ages when it came to faith-based strategy.

“Statistically speaking, the people that were the early adopters of this, the people that are beginning to adopt it more now, tend to be a younger generation,” he remarked. “But we’re now seeing more emergence within the baby boomers, the people that do historically hold more wealth in embracing concepts like this.”

He explained that the strategies “depend on areas of spectrum,” noting that the older demographics trend to restricting companies versus that of the younger generations who have been more accepting of companies whose products benefit society.

The GuideStone head also weighed in on concerns that many companies don’t pursue policies that resonate with consumers and investors.

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“That really is honestly what we’re trying to advance to companies is help them understand that there might be a voice on the other side of the issue,” Lofland said. “It’s a very material voice, and it’s a large voice and get them to come back to just understanding that.”

He reiterated how businesses should approach policies and focus on principles.

“If you want to be a retailer, be the best retailer that you can possibly be, bring goods and services to your customers at a reasonable price, and the types of goods they want to purchase.” Lofland continued, suggesting that companies should “not enact social change” but focus on its purpose.

“That’s what we want companies to get back to,” he concluded.

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Crossmark Global CEO Bob Doll provides his outlooks for the economy and faith-based investing on ‘Making Money.’

January 26, 2025
Facebook owner investing up to $65 billion toward AI in 2025

Jason Miller, senior advisor of the Trump-Vance transition, discusses the push for a dismissal in Trump’s New York criminal case, the Hunter Biden pardon and potential roles some prominent public figures could play in Trump’s policies.

Facebook and Instagram owner Meta Platforms is planning to spend as much as $65 billion this year alone to build on the social media company’s artificial intelligence (AI) initiatives, CEO Mark Zuckerberg announced Friday.

In a post on Facebook, Zuckerberg declared 2025 “will be a defining year for AI,” saying he expects the company’s “Meta AI will be the leading assistant serving more than 1 billion people, Llama 4 will become the leading state of the art model, and we’ll build an AI engineer that will start contributing increasing amounts of code to our R&D efforts.”

Meta CEO Mark Zuckerberg makes a keynote speech during the Meta Connect annual event at the company’s headquarters in Menlo Park, California, on Sept. 25, 2024. (Reuters/Manuel Orbegozo / Reuters)

The founder said Meta is building a massive data center to power it all, with plans to invest between $60 billion and $65 billion in 2025, adding, “and we have the capital to continue investing in the years ahead.”

Meta’s latest move aims to bolster the company’s position against rivals OpenAI and Google in the race to dominate AI.

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Big Tech firms have been investing tens of billions of dollars to develop AI infrastructure after the success of OpenAI’s ChatGPT.

Meta CEO Mark Zuckerberg on Friday announced the company is boosting its AI investments in 2025. (Jens Büttner/picture alliance via Getty Images / Getty Images)

Meta’s announcement comes just days after President Donald Trump announced that OpenAI, SoftBank and Oracle will form a venture called Stargate and invest $500 billion in AI infrastructure across the U.S.

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Earlier this month, Microsoft said it was planning to invest about $80 billion in fiscal 2025 to develop data centers, while Amazon.com has said its 2025 spending would be higher than an estimated $75 billion in 2024.

Ticker Security Last Change Change %

META META PLATFORMS INC. 647.49 +11.04 +1.73%

Meta has emerged as a significant player in the AI race with its AI chatbot, Ray-Ban smart glasses and open-source approach, which sets it apart from rivals by allowing consumers and most businesses to use its Llama AI models for free.

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The $60 billion to $65 billion capital spending outlined for 2025 would mark a significant jump from the company’s estimated expenditure of $38 billion to $40 billion for last year. It is also above analysts’ estimate of $50.25 billion in 2025, according to LSEG data.

Reuters contributed to this report.

January 24, 2025