📰On The Record – 17th August 2026

Mark Cuban told California Congressman Ro Khanna he "doesn't understand business" after Khanna proposed a one-time 5% wealth tax on billionaires. Cuban's argument: most startup founders are cash-poor and stock-rich, meaning a tax bill like this could force them to sell shares or take on debt just to pay it. He's now threatening to make leaving California a condition of future investments. This isn't really about one tax proposal — it's a preview of the fight coming to every state that tries to tax paper wealth, and a reminder that founders vote with their feet.

Meta heads to trial this week in California, accused by attorneys general from 29 states of designing Facebook and Instagram to be addictive to kids. The case targets features like endless scrolling and push notifications, plus allegations of improper data collection from minors. This is the trial Silicon Valley has been dreading. A loss wouldn't just cost Meta money — it could force a rethink of how every social platform is engineered to keep you (and your kids) scrolling, turning "engagement" from a growth metric into a legal liability.

HP's George Brasher pushed back on the tired "Gen Z is lazy" narrative, arguing his younger colleagues are actually excellent listeners who build trust and relationships fast. It's a fair point, but it also conveniently sidesteps the real workplace friction, which usually isn't about effort at all — it's about mismatched expectations around hierarchy, feedback, and what "paying dues" even means anymore. Neither generation is wrong; they're operating from different rulebooks written in different economic conditions. The healthiest workplaces won't be the ones that pick a side. They'll be the ones that stop keeping score.

Every generation gets called lazy by the one before it — until it's the one doing the hiring.

Stripe is reportedly closing in on a deal worth more than $7 billion to buy AI startup OpenRouter, which runs a marketplace letting developers route requests across different AI models. That's a staggering jump from OpenRouter's $1.3 billion valuation earlier this year. A payments company just became an AI infrastructure player overnight. It's the clearest sign yet that the line between "fintech" and "AI company" is dissolving — and that everyone with capital wants a seat at the AI table before the seats run out.

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The bigger obstacle to workplace automation isn't the technology — it's convincing employees that robots are there to help, not replace them. Companies that roll out automation quietly, without explaining what it means for people's roles, tend to breed resentment even when the tech genuinely makes work safer or easier. Transparency matters more than the hardware itself. The businesses that get this right treat automation as a conversation with staff, not an announcement to them, starting small and proving value before scaling up. Robots don't lose workers' trust. Bad communication does.

The most advanced automation strategy is still just: tell people what's happening before they find out on their own.

JPMorgan CEO Jamie Dimon warned the UK government against raising bank taxes ahead of October's Budget, arguing it could push financial activity out of London. Banks are lobbying hard before the ink dries. For a city trying to hold onto its status as a global finance hub, this is a warning shot dressed up as advice.

Mark Walter, owner of the Dodgers, is facing scrutiny from federal prosecutors and the SEC over $21 billion in loans reclassified as related-party transactions at two insurers he controls. No charges yet, but the timing is awkward — it comes right after Walter sold his Lakers stake for a record $12.5 billion, proceeds that could now help shore up those same insurers.

Last summer's European heatwaves caused an estimated €43 billion in lost business output but only around €500 million in insured payouts, because most policies cover physical damage, not lost sales or productivity. The insurance industry has a heat-shaped blind spot. Businesses may need to self-insure through cooling and supply chain redesign, because the payout isn't coming.

The week ahead is loaded with signals for anyone trying to read where the economy is headed next.

Retail earnings dominate this week, and they'll tell us more about the real economy than any headline number will.

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A quick spin through geopolitics, courtrooms, and one very expensive car — because business news doesn't stop at the balance sheet.

Around this time last year, Canadian apparel maker Gildan announced a definitive deal to acquire HanesBrands in an all-stock-and-cash transaction valuing the combined company at roughly $4.4 billion, creating a global basic-apparel giant spanning underwear, activewear, and hosiery. The deal has since closed, and Gildan's own results this year showed the acquisition-related costs already flowing through the books as integration work ramped up. Consolidation in "boring" categories like socks and T-shirts quietly kept moving all year. It's a reminder that not every headline-grabbing deal needs an AI angle to reshape an industry — sometimes it's just two apparel companies deciding bigger is safer.

Geoffrey Hinton, the so-called "Godfather of AI," is warning that Big Tech's enormous AI spending is increasingly aimed at replacing workers outright, not augmenting them. He believes this could trigger genuine mass unemployment, with productivity gains flowing disproportionately to the companies and investors funding the technology, not the people it displaces. The optimistic "AI creates new jobs" argument is starting to look like a hope, not a plan. Hinton isn't predicting doom for its own sake — he's arguing governments need to start preparing now, rather than assuming the labour market will simply sort itself out the way it always has.

Every technological shift has eventually created new work. The question this time is whether "eventually" arrives fast enough to matter.