The fall of Elon Musk down Fortune’s 100 Most Powerful People in Business list shows how power is impermanent
Good morning. Fortune’s 2025 ranking of the world’s 100 most powerful people in business came out this morning. Unlike revenue or market cap, power is a more complex concept. We calculate not just the size of the person’s businesses, but also the health of their companies, as well as their innovation, influence, impact and where they are in the arc of their career.
By those measures, Nvidia CEO Jensen Huang came in No. 1 on this year’s list. In addition to creating specialized computer chips that are coveted by companies developing artificial intelligence, he is on the front lines of a technology that is changing the global business landscape itself.
Power is not permanent. Elon Musk topped last year’s list not only because of his roles at Tesla, SpaceX, xAI and X, but also because of his work in the Trump Administration. That changed. This year, Musk is No. 4 on the list.
Power is also relative. Companies and leaders grow strong when they have a worthy rival to measure themselves against. Thus does Jensen Huang have AMD CEO Lisa Su, his first cousin once removed, on his heels as a powerful chipmaker. As part of this year’s package, we look at how rivalries in key industries are playing out.You can check out the full list here.
Top news
Federal grand jury will probe Trump’s “Russia hoax” allegations
Attorney General Pam Bondi has directed a U.S. attorney to empanel a grand jury to investigate the intelligence community’s handling of allegations that Moscow had influence over President Trump’s 2016 election campaign. No targets were named but the investigation will likely look at Obama-era cabinet members such as former Director of National Intelligence James Clapper, former CIA Director John Brennan and former FBI Director James Comey.
Trump threatens yet more tariffs on India over Russian oil purchases
India got a 25% tariff rate in the last round, but the president is angry that India continues to buy Russian oil. “India is not only buying massive amounts of Russian Oil, they are then, for much of the Oil purchased, selling it on the Open Market for big profits. They don’t care how many people in Ukraine are being killed by the Russian War Machine,” he said on Trump Social. India said this was hypocrisy because the EU continues to trade with Russia and faces no similar sanction.
Palantir delivers blowout quarter
Sales were up almost 50% to nearly $1 billion, beating expectations. Net income was $327 million, up 144%. CEO Alex Karp lifted guidance for Q3. The stock closed up 4% yesterday and rose another 5% in overnight trading. “We’re planning to grow our revenue … while decreasing our number of people,” CEO Alex Karp told CNBC. “This is a crazy, efficient revolution. The goal is to get 10x revenue and have 3,600 people. We have now 4,100.”
Deutsche Bank CEO approved trades that were later investigated
Christian Sewing approved a €1.5 billion deal that was later investigated by Italian authorities, leading to six of his former colleagues being sentenced to prison on false accounting charges. The convictions were later overturned on appeal. Deutsche Bank denied there was any wrongdoing on Sewing’s part: “Any allegation of a conflict of interest involving Christian Sewing is completely unfounded,” it told the FT.
Trump wants to ban “debanking”
The president is planning to issue an executive order directing bank regulators to investigate whether banks deny accounts to people with right-wing opinions or those involved in crypto, to see whether such bans might violate credit, consumer, or antitrust laws.
JPMorgan strategist sounds alarm on labor demographic issues
David Kelly, JPMorgan Asset Management’s Chief Global Strategist, warned on Monday that immigration restrictions and a growing elderly population could mean “no growth in workers at all” in the next 5 years. Kelly warned that cutting rates could lead to wage and price inflation instead of propelling economic growth.
Anthropic CEO on Meta’s poaching
Anthropic CEO Dario Amodei says the company’s employees have been less eager to accept poaching offers from Meta and the company won’t make competing offers because that would jeopardize company culture. “We are not willing to compromise our compensation principles, our principles of fairness, to respond individually to these offers,” Amodei recently said on the Big Technology Podcast.
The markets
S&P 500 futures were up 0.13% this morning, premarket, after the index closed up 0.47% yesterday. STOXX Europe 600 was up 0.3% in early trading. The U.K.’s FTSE 100 was up 0.35% in early trading. Japan’s Nikkei 225 was up 0.65%. China’s CSI 300 was up 0.8%. The South Korea KOSPI was up 1.6%. India’s Nifty 50 was down 0.46%. Bitcoin remains above $114K.
Around the watercooler
Elon Musk retains title as the highest-paid CEO in history with $26 billion pay package—and the only thing he has to do is show up for two years by Amanda Gerut
Here’s what the doomsayers are getting wrong about the job market, according to a Wall Street veteran by Jason Ma
China’s fertility crisis is so dire, rates are falling below ‘replacement levels’ and GDP could slow by more than half in the next 30 years, study says by Eleanor Pringle
Dan Morehead assembled his Princeton mafia to pile into Bitcoin at $65 in 2013, leaving his Wall Street career behind to build a $5 billion crypto fund by Leo Schwartz
Michael Saylor’s Strategy makes its third-largest Bitcoin purchase ever by Kirk Ogunrinde of Bloomberg
CEO Daily is compiled and edited by Joey Abrams and Jim Edwards.
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2025-08-05 09:41:13
