Good morning, Quartz readers!
This will be our last Daily Brief of the week. We’ll be back in your inbox on Monday, Nov. 27!
Here’s what you need to know
Binance’s founder and CEO agreed to step down. Changpeng Zhao plans to plead guilty to violating US money laundering rules, and the world’s largest cryptocurrency exchange is on track to pay $4.3 billion in fines.
Even OpenAI’s new CEO doesn’t know why Sam Altman was fired. Emmett Shear joins Microsoft CEO Satya Nadella, hundreds of employees, and the general public in wondering what the heck happened.
Novo Nordisk is rationing Ozempic starter kits in Europe. To keep up with demand for its blockbuster diabetes and weight loss drugs, the Danish pharmaceutical company will also stop making as much Victoza, another diabetes drug, to prioritize Ozempic.
As much as 1.1 million gallons (4.2 million liters) of gasoline leaked into the Gulf of Mexico. The culprit is likely a pipeline system off the coast of Louisiana, though the exact cause and location are still unknown.
Nvidia is playing no games
The world’s most valuable chip maker tripled its revenue year over year in its third quarter earnings report, released yesterday, making it clear the chip boom is very much still booming.
But Nvidia did note that export restrictions in China and other countries will ding the company next quarter, rattling investors a bit in extended trading. Regardless, the chip maker’s stock has come a long, long way since 2019. Its ascent is startling; even Tesla hasn’t risen to such heights so quickly.
Just because Nvidia has a spot in the $1 trillion club doesn’t mean threats to its stock don’t exist. Quartz’s Ananya Bhattacharya lists three big ones.
San Francisco is (literally) losing sleep over OpenAI
Since the ousting of Sam Altman as OpenAI’s CEO last Friday, the world’s buzziest AI startup has been in turmoil—and people in San Francisco, where OpenAI is headquartered, have lost a measurable amount of sleep.
Of course, Matteo Franceschetti, CEO of EightSleep, a sleep product company that also sells an app tracking sleep patterns, has an entrepreneurial incentive to jump in on the conversation. Plus, it’s common for employees at San Francisco’s many startups to work in the wee hours of the morning.
But timestamps don’t lie. Quartz’s Michelle Cheng looked at the late-late-night posts about OpenAI.
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Surprising discoveries
A cancer patient made it possible for lots of others to erase their medical debt. It’s called a “debt jubilee” and it’s pretty amazing.
Last year, 13.8 million people watched “Dick Clark’s New Year’s Rockin’ Eve With Ryan Seacrest.” Despite the original host’s death in 2012, the ABC show is still massively popular, and has been signed to continue with Seacrest at the helm until 2029.
An astonishing share of the global lawn equipment market comes from American households. US homeowners must have their lawn mowers and leaf blowers or the industry would have real problems.
A spacecraft from far beyond the Moon just beamed a message back to Earth via laser. That’s the first time such a thing has happened, despite what thousands of movies have told you.
Electric bikes or mopeds displace four times as much oil demand as electric vehicles. You read that right.
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Our best wishes for a productive day. Send any news, comments, micromobility recommendations, and leaf blower bans to talk@qz.com. Today’s Daily Brief was brought to you by Morgan Haefner and Susan Howson.