After eight Grammy Awards, a Super Bowl halftime performance in 2024, and multiple platinum-certified albums, it’s easy to forget that R&B superstar Usher was just a teenager when he first arrived on the scene.

Now 47, he’s looking to the next generation of talent. Usher sat down with Forbes’ Jabari Young to talk about his $1 million investment with rapper Big Sean and the Boys & Girls Club of Greater Detroit for an entertainment innovation hub inside Detroit’s Michigan Central. Young entertainers ages 14 to 24 will get access to mentorship and top-of-the-line production equipment to pursue their own creative path.

Usher says that $1 million is just the seed—he’s hoping to launch 500 hubs for creative and business training across the U.S. by 2050. “So many people are engulfed with this idea of being the king,” he told us. “I’m more interested in building a kingdom.”

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President Donald Trump backed down from his earlier warning that the U.S. would attack Iran’s power plants on Monday, promising a five-day moratorium on such strikes, citing “productive conversations” with Tehran. Authorities in Iran had threatened to deploy mines across the “entire Persian Gulf.” The president is also seeking an additional $200 billion from Congress to fund the war, and is considering options for further deployment of U.S. troops.

The Trump Administration is sending ICE officers to U.S. airports as early as Monday to address TSA wait times stemming from the partial government shutdown. More than 300 TSA officers have quit since the shutdown began more than a month ago, 10% of the workforce called in sick last week, and centibillionaire Elon Musk offered to pay their salaries.

German telemedicine firm Bloomwell has been well-positioned to capitalize on an explosion of demand for marijuana—it saw a 3,300% increase in the number of prescriptions from 2024 to 2025. Bloomwell manages the entire process, from initial questionnaire to virtual doctor’s visit, all the way to the marijuana arriving at patients’ homes. “It’s like Amazon,” CEO Niklas Kouparanis told Forbes. “That’s how healthcare should work.”

Super Micro Computer’s stock plummeted more than 33% Friday, after the U.S. arrested the company’s cofounder, Yih-Shyan Liaw, alleging he and two others conspired to smuggle AI chips into China. These alleged smuggling efforts have generated about $2.5 billion in sales for Super Micro since 2024, though the firm itself is not named as a defendant.

President Donald Trump lashed out at the NATO alliance on Friday, labeling its member nations that have refused to assist in the Iran war as “cowards.” Trump’s Truth Social posts came a day after British Prime Minister Keir Starmer and his counterparts from France, Germany, Italy, the Netherlands and Japan issued a joint statement calling on Iran to cease attacks in the Strait of Hormuz and on energy sites in the Middle East.

Democrats’ odds of retaking control of the Senate have soared in recent weeks, according to online bettors and bookmakers, amid growing opposition to the Iran war and Trump’s sinking approval ratings. The Election Betting Odds tracker projects that both parties now have a roughly 50% chance of controlling the upper chamber, while bettors believe Democrats have an 83.7% chance of retaking the House.

SPORTS + ENTERTAINMENT

ABC could eat upwards of $60 million in costs—including lost advertising revenue, marketing and production fees—after abruptly canceling the upcoming season of The Bachelorette amid domestic violence allegations surrounding lead cast member Taylor Frankie Paul. The flagship reality show generated $30.7 million in ad spending last season, and carries a production price tag between $20 and $25 million, the Hollywood Reporter estimated.

Meet The AI Company Food Conglomerates Call When They Want To Future-Proof Their Products

Confectionery giant Ferrero uses more than 30,000 recipes each year for products such as Nutella and Kinder chocolates, and that complexity can make change difficult. So when cocoa prices surged in 2024, Ferrero approached NotCo, a San Francisco-based food tech company, to help identify alternative ingredients without compromising taste, texture or flavor.

“If you change one thing, you change everything else,” explains Matias Muchnick, NotCo’s founder and CEO. “A computational problem is not a linear problem.”

A 37-year-old Chilean who lives between San Francisco and Santiago, Muchnick has become the food industry’s fixer. Using an artificial intelligence platform he has been building since 2015 (founded one day before OpenAI), his company creates plant-based alternatives for products typically made from dairy and meat. In the past four years, for instance, NotCo has developed 30 new products for Kraft Heinz through a joint venture, including Mac & Cheese, Kraft Singles and Oscar Mayer sausages.

Backed by Jeff Bezos, Roger Federer, Tiger Global, L Catterton, Kaszek Ventures and others, NotCo is the largest AI company in the food space—its AI-based business grew 300% last year, with $75 million in estimated annual revenue.

The company has raised over $425 million—giving it a valuation of $1.5 billion—and Muchnick projects he won’t have to raise money again for a few years, but if he did, the valuation would be far higher due to the AI boom. At current market rates, based on revenue, NotCo could be valued at multiples well above 20 times sales.

WHY IT MATTERS “It’s a perfect storm for big CPG [consumer packaged goods] companies. Consumer preferences are changing like they never did before,” says Muchnick. “And supply chain disruptions like cocoa and orange juice, shortages of hazelnuts, so many other things—ingredient dependency is really driving the margins of big companies.”

In the past three years, most consumer food companies have performed worse than the S&P 500, and Muchnick says, “a lot of that has to do with the capabilities of these big companies to adapt to the new changing world.”

MORE How A $200 Million Pea Protein Business Is Fueling The Ozempic Generation

Even before the U.S. and Israel launched attacks on Iran, consumers were battling high prices in the grocery aisle. America’s most-purchased protein, ground beef, is predicted to be among the hardest hit:

$6.74: The national average price for a pound of 100% ground beef before the Iran conflict, the highest price since tracking began in the 1980s

86.2 million: The size of the U.S. cattle herd in January, the lowest in 75 years, with the inventory of cows bred for beef down 8.6% since 2020

$5.07 per gallon: The average cost of diesel—the primary fuel for trucks that transport cattle—last week, up from $3.72 per gallon in February

Here’s a classic chicken-or-egg conundrum for leaders, with a modern AI spin: If AI starts doing all the tasks entry-level workers used to do, how will anyone build expertise? Rather than dooming people at the bottom of the corporate ladder to repetitive grunt work that “builds character” and teaches workers important lessons over time, today’s managers should consider how to mentor junior employees who aren’t exposed to hands-on work in the same way.

The U.S. Commission of Fine Arts approved a commemorative collectible for the country’s 250th birthday—and it features President Donald Trump’s face. What kind of collectible is it?

D. Christmas ornament

Thanks for reading! This edition of Forbes Daily was edited by Chris Dobstaff and Caroline Howard.

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