As the final minutes ticked away in a disappointing 4-1 loss to Belgium on July 6 that knocked the U.S. men’s national team out of the World Cup, Fox play-by-play announcer John Strong made a direct plea to his television audience of 30 million Americans.

“If you’ve enjoyed what you’re seeing, well, support your local team,” Strong said from Seattle’s Lumen Field, packed with a sellout crowd of 66,925—more than double the average attendance of 31,000 across the Seattle Sounders’ first six Major League Soccer games this season at the same stadium. “This doesn’t have to be the last soccer you watch for the last four years. It’s a beautiful sport.”

Often an afterthought both among top-tier global soccer leagues and in the U.S. professional sports scene, MLS has long viewed this summer’s World Cup on U.S. soil as an inflection point for a new phase of growth, with help from Lionel Messi, the biggest star in the league’s history. On Sunday, the 39-year-old superstar will lead Argentina into the World Cup final against Spain while seeking to lock up the Golden Boot as the tournament’s top scorer. On Wednesday, Messi’s Inter Miami will restart its season after MLS’s seven-week World Cup break.

By Hank Tucker,

Forbes Staff

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With the FDA panel that’s considering whether to recommend legal production of seven peptides meeting on Thursday and Friday, Shaun Noorian had planned to be at its Maryland campus in person. Ahead of the panel, Noorian, the founder and CEO of Houston-based Empower Pharmacy, one of the nation’s largest compounding pharmacies, told Forbes, “I wouldn’t miss it for the world. The who’s who of the peptide space will be there.” Hundreds of others had been expected to jam into the room as well, including compounders, telehealth founders and longevity influencers.

While these peptides are currently not legal to produce for anything other than “research purposes,” that hasn’t stopped a booming gray market from exploiting that loophole. There’s little scientific data on their safety and efficacy, and the many sketchy sellers who distribute them operate with no oversight. Still, the illicit peptide market could be worth an estimated $3 billion. Silicon Valley bros, longevity medics and MAHA believers take them, while wellness influencers promote their “peptide stacks” online to speed recovery or improve sleep. Health and Human Services Secretary Robert F. Kennedy Jr. is a self-described “big fan of peptides,” as he told podcaster Joe Rogan in February.

By Amy Feldman

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As the final minutes ticked away in a disappointing 4-1 loss to Belgium on July 6 that knocked the U.S. men’s national team out of the World Cup, Fox play-by-play announcer John Strong made a direct plea to his television audience of 30 million Americans.

“If you’ve enjoyed what you’re seeing, well, support your local team,” Strong said from Seattle’s Lumen Field, packed with a sellout crowd of 66,925—more than double the average attendance of 31,000 across the Seattle Sounders’ first six Major League Soccer games this season at the same stadium. “This doesn’t have to be the last soccer you watch for the last four years. It’s a beautiful sport.”

Often an afterthought both among top-tier global soccer leagues and in the U.S. professional sports scene, MLS has long viewed this summer’s World Cup on U.S. soil as an inflection point for a new phase of growth, with help from Lionel Messi, the biggest star in the league’s history. On Sunday, the 39-year-old superstar will lead Argentina into the World Cup final against Spain while seeking to lock up the Golden Boot as the tournament’s top scorer. On Wednesday, Messi’s Inter Miami will restart its season after MLS’s seven-week World Cup break.

By Hank Tucker,

Forbes Staff

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For the past decade, Greg Flynn has been America’s largest franchisee, and now he is the largest in the world. But he has a voracious appetite for more. 

“The dream here is to create a global business with operating capabilities and success beyond what the world has seen,” says Flynn, the 62-year-old CEO and founder of Flynn Group and Flynn Properties. “Operating businesses, especially consumer-facing ones, are really hard. If you can do it well consistently, over multiple brands and multiple geographies and multiple industries, that is a valuable and defensible thing to do.”

Over the past three decades, he has doubled down on fast food franchises again and again. With $5 billion in annual revenue from more than 3,000 franchises of Applebee’s, Taco Bell, Panera, Arby's, Pizza Hut, Wendy’s and now Planet Fitness in 44 states as well as Australia and New Zealand, Flynn’s portfolio is more than double the size of the next biggest franchisee. 

Forbes estimates Flynn has about 25% ownership with some $2.5 billion in loans and over $100 million in cash on hand. At a valuation Forbes estimates of $5 billion, that means Flynn is worth an estimated $650 million. (Flynn declined to comment.)

By Chloe Sorvino,

Forbes Staff

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For the last two years, Will Freeman has been advocating against Flock Safety, an $8.3 billion surveillance company that tracks vehicles with a network of over 80,000 cameras. His organization, DeFlock, crowdsourced a map that shows where the company’s cameras are located, and helps local grassroots movements organize against Flock deployments.

In an interview with Forbes last year, Flock CEO Garrett Langley described DeFlock as a “terroristic organization.” But now, as Flock faces an increasingly vitriolic public backlash, Langley says he regrets that label.

“My comments were a mistake and I apologize,” he says. “There are groups today that have real valid criticisms of the business, and I think what's changed for us is, as we've listened to them and heard them out, what we're trying to do is find this balance. We believe in a world where we can have safety and privacy.”

By Thomas Brewster,

Forbes Staff

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U.S. sales of electric vehicles have plunged since the Trump administration killed a $7,500 federal credit last year, but a group of startups hopes to change that. They’re preparing to launch a new wave of quirky, affordable battery-powered models over the next year that are distinctly different from anything Tesla or other big automakers offer. 

The newest is a small, inexpensive “life utility vehicle” from Miami-based Chip, which starts taking reservations today. It only has a top speed of 25 miles per hour, and is intended as a secondary vehicle designed to handle daily shopping trips, school runs and short commutes. It’s available in four- and six-seat versions, with a $15,000 base price. Though essentially a beefed-up golf cart resembling a small jeep it has far more safety features, including higher ground clearance, a roll bar and flat LFP battery pack along the floor to protect occupants. It also has multiple cameras and radar to monitor traffic conditions.

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When OpenAI wants to sell the country’s biggest health systems on its healthcare ambitions, it often brings in one person a hospital CEO won’t ignore: Sam Altman.

Altman, 41, is OpenAI’s billionaire cofounder, CEO and chief converter of skepticism into purchase orders. He has sold investors, boards of directors and governments on the idea that OpenAI is the engine of the next computing era. Now he is personally making that case to hospitals. 

Altman's involvement in these sales calls underscores just how central healthcare is to OpenAI’s ambitions. In January, the AI behemoth announced eight major health systems, including Cedars-Sinai Medical Center and HCA Healthcare, are now customers of its enterprise-grade healthcare tools.

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Choosing a college major has always felt like a big life decision, influenced by not only personal inclinations and talents, but also by starting salaries—new engineering and computer science grads earn more than those with English degrees. But in today’s labor market, where hiring has slowed, artificial intelligence is reshaping some industries faster than others, and many once-booming job categories have cooled off, young people should be asking themselves an additional question: How many career paths can I take with my degree?

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AtThe Odyssey premiere in Mumbai on Saturday, director Christopher Nolan joked about its prospects as an international summer blockbuster. “It's wonderful how [the movie] kind of brings us together, and for us to go on the road and travel and come here,” the British-born director told the audience, before taking a Spider-Man jab at one of his movie’s stars. “but if you see only one Tom Holland film this summer…” 

Because, of course, The Odyssey isn’t a Tom Holland movie. Even with a cast that includes Matt Damon, Anne Hathaway, Lupita Nyong’o, Charlize Theron and other A-list actors, the only name listed on the poster is the one listed above the title:“A film by Christopher Nolan.”

The 55-year-old director has achieved name-brand status among the most casual moviegoers and developed an army of cinephile devotees for his spectacle-driven films like Inception, Interstellar and a Batman trilogy, culminating in 2023 when he turned Oppenheimer—a three-hour historical drama about the father of the atomic bomb—into a nearly billion-dollar blockbuster and a winner of seven Oscars. This time around he’ll put that drawing power to the test with an even riskier project, a $250 million sword-and-sandal epic shot entirely in IMAX 70mm that rivals the most ambitious movies of all time.

By Matt Craig,

Reporter

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Texas state police’s purchase of four brand new Chevrolet Tahoes this March was unusual. Not just because of the staggering $4.5 million price tag, but because the vehicles were kitted out with technology that could monitor the locations of nearby cell phones. 

Made by Israeli surveillance company Cognyte, the tech simulates a mobile phone tower, which forces nearby phones to connect to it. That enables cops to keep tabs on any phones in the vicinity — whether they’re owned by a suspect in a case or not. Cognyte’s contract with the state of Texas reveals that the simulator, called FalcoNet, can be concealed within the vehicles, hidden in a backpack for on-foot missions or attached to a helicopter. It’s the same technology as the infamous Stingray, one of the original cell-site simulators made by defense giant L3Harris.

Texas state police is one of a growing number of local law enforcement agencies signing deals with Cognyte, an Herzliya, Israel-based company listed on the Nasdaq with a $560 million market cap. The six-year-old company, which was spun out of Israeli surveillance giant Verint in 2021, sells a range of surveillance tech. That includes software that claims to find leads in big police datasets and predict where crime is likely to occur in the future. The firm, which touts itself as the “leading alternative” to $315 billion market cap Palantir, made most of its $400 million in 2025 revenue in Israel and Europe. But it’s slowly making inroads in the U.S, with American revenue gradually rising from $10 million in 2023 to $15 million in 2025, per filings with the SEC.

By Thomas Brewster,

Forbes Staff

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