Hi Quartz members,
Welcome to Sunday Reads!
It’s been one of those weeks. A massive heat wave is baking the U.S., relentless rocket attacks from Hezbollah have Israel eyeing a potential invasion of southern Lebanon, Taylor Swift has landed in Europe, Vladimir Putin landed in North Korea, and there’s less than a week left before the two senior citizens running for president of the United States meet for their first rematch debate. And Willie Mays, the greatest all-around player in baseball history, died at 93.
But it’s Sunday, and time to shift your gaze to some hand-selected reads. Here are our favorite Quartz stories from the week, plus one bonus chart to get your day started.
Got ideas for what you’d like to see in the future? Let us know.
5 things we especially liked on Quartz
🪟Microsoft’s iPhone moment? AI will transform Microsoft, the one-time IT darling turned perennial also-ran, analysts say. Stock pickers are raising their price targets for Microsoft shares, as they expect “a tidal wave of Copilot and Azure monetization.” Microsoft and Apple have been vying with each other to become the world’s most valuable company, but Microsoft is also facing AI headwinds: The Justice Department is looking into the cozy relationship between Clippy’s parent and its AI partner, Sam Altman’s OpenAI.
📈Is 2025 the year of the Megatech IPOs? The sleepy IPO market may awaken with a bang next year. Tech firms that went public this year saw a big jump in share price, reports Quartz’s Rocio Fabbro, and Mizuho Americas says 1,400 unicorns have been created over the last five years — and their investors need to take them public to get a return.
🚘 2024 is the year of the recall. Ford, Kia and Chrysler together have recalled six million cars so far this year for various defects and fixes. The recalls, many of which are minor and don’t affect things like brakes or safety issues, are a testament to the increasing electronic complexity of modern cars, writes Quartz’s William Gavin. Take Tesla’s 2.2 million vehicle recall, after the feds pointed out that some of the warning lights on the car’s TV-screen dashboard were too small: A free over-the-air software update fixed it.
🪦I wanna live forever! Baby remember this name: Bryan Johnson, founder and CEO of neuro-technology company Kernal, says he had a reversible DNA editing procedure done on himself last year on an island off the coast of Honduras, which he says will slow his aging. Johnson has gained notoriety for his efforts to extend the human lifespan, as Quartz’s Madeline Fitzgerald reports.
💉Bird flu may be the next pandemic: Robert Redfield, the former CDC director, says bird flu is going to be the next great pandemic, and it’ll happen as soon as the H5N1 virus, (it’s official name) mutates enough to spread among humans. “It’s not a question of if, it’s more of a question of when we will have a bird flu pandemic,” Redfield said.
1 sneak peek
💰How the rich got rich: On Monday, Quartz’s Madeline Fitzgerald dives into the gilded swimming pool of the rich and rather famous, to tell us how the world’s 10 wealthiest people made their fortunes. Hint: Most are white men born into relatively affluent families. And they keep getting richer. The 20 wealthiest people in the world added a collective $700 billion to their net worth in 2023. That’s the equivalent of hiring 46 million people at minimum wage for a year.
1 smart chart
Oil prices are up 10% in the last two weeks, amid a slight ding in supply and rising tensions in the Middle East
What to watch for this week
These are some of the events our newsroom will be watching out for this week.
- Tuesday: Carnival reports earnings before the bell, FedEx reports after the bell.
- Wednesday: Paychex and General Mills report earnings before the bell, and Semiconductor company Micron Technology, one of the “three horsemen of AI,” reports earnings after the bell.
- Thursday: President Joe Biden and former Preident Donald Trump hold their first debate of the 2024 election; Nike reports earnings after the bell; Monthly Advance Economic Indicators report is posted
- Friday: Elon Musk turns 53
Thanks for reading! Here’s to the week ahead, and don’t hesitate to reach out with comments, questions, feedback, joy, or tips on how to become a billionaire. Sunday Reads was brought to you by Peter S. Green, Morgan Haefner and Audrey McNamara.