How Peace Envoy Steve Witkoff Got Richer Thanks To Trump And Elon Musk

Follow Forbes Talks  Delta is raising fees for checked luggage this week, according to a statement from the company sent to Forbes on Tuesday—as it seeks to cover the increase in jet fuel prices driven by the U.S. war in Iran. Key Facts Delta will increase the fees for a first and second item of checked baggage by $10, pushing prices to $45 and $55, respectively. The airline is also planning to hike the fees for a third item by $50, meaning customers will pay $200 if they take three bags. The new prices “reflect the impact of evolving global conditions and industry dynamics,” Delta spokesperson Chelsea Wollerson said in a statement sent to Forbes on Tuesday. The price increases will begin for tickets purchased on or after Wednesday. The pricing changes only apply to domestic flights and some select short-haul international flights, according to the company. Other Airlines Raise Luggage Fees Delta is the third U.S. airline to announce price increases for baggage as oil disruptions related to the Iran war continue to impact air travel. United announced a similar price hike last week, also raising prices for checked bags by $10. JetBlue also announced changes to their checked baggage fees last week, raising fees for off-peak travel by $4 and peak travel by $9. Key Background Jet fuel prices have skyrocketed in the last few weeks due to the ongoing war in Iran. After the U.S. and Israel began a campaign of air strikes against the country on Feb. 28, Iran closed the Strait of Hormuz, the narrow waterway that separates it from the Arabian Peninsula. About 20 million barrels of oil per day passed through the strait in 2025, according to the International Energy Association, or about 25% of the world’s oil transported by sea. The closure has caused prices for oil and petroleum products like jet fuel to spike. The average price of jet fuel reached $4.69 per gallon on Monday, according to data compiled by aviation trade group Airlines for America—up from $2.50 per gallon on Feb. 27, one day before the war began. Read the full story on Forbes: By Zachary Folk https://www.forbes.com/sites/zacharyfolk/2026/04/07/delta-raises-fees-for-checked-bags-as-iran-war-spikes-jet-fuel-prices/ Learn more about your ad choices. Visit megaphone.fm/adchoices

The real estate mogul-turned-diplomat, whose latest disclosure was released in April, is 15% richer than he was a year ago thanks to his crypto venture with the Trump family and his stake in Musk’s SpaceX. It’s been an eventful year for Steve Witkoff. The 69-year-old New York real estate developer tapped by President Donald Trump as his Middle East envoy in November 2024 hit the ground running in 2025 with a ceasefire in Gaza, following it up with efforts to negotiate peace between Russia and Ukraine and then a nuclear deal with Iran. Last June, he became “special envoy for peace missions,” reflecting his wider sphere of responsibility. It’s been a mixed bag on the diplomatic front: Despite achieving a new ceasefire in Gaza last October, Russia and Ukraine are no closer to a peace agreement than they were under Joe Biden, and the U.S. and Israel attacked Iran in February, launching a war that’s still ongoing.  But on the personal front, it’s been a very lucrative year. While he was jetting around the world from Miami and Moscow to Israel and Oman, his fortune jumped 15% to $2.3 billion, up from an estimated $2 billion when he started working for the government. That was largely thanks to his investments in crypto firm World Liberty Financial, which his sons Zach and Alex cofounded with Trump’s sons Don Jr., Eric and Barron. Forbes estimates that the Witkoffs pocketed $130 million from sales of $WLFI crypto tokens. He and his sons also sold about half of their stake in World Liberty to Aryam Investment, a firm backed by Emirati royal Sheikh Tahnoon bin Zayed Al Nahyan, for an estimated $48 million (post-tax), in a transaction first reported by the Wall Street Journal. Representatives for Witkoff did not respond to requests for comment on his net worth. That sale left him with an estimated 6.4% stake in the company’s stablecoin business, which issues USD1—a digital version of the U.S. dollar backed by Treasurys. Forbes values that stake at about $60 million based on comparable issuers of stablecoins, or cryptocurrencies backed by real-world assets that hold a constant value. He and his sons also retain about 375 million World Liberty Financial tokens, which Forbes discounts while they remain locked up, worth about $42 million. Altogether, Witkoff’s crypto investments added about $280 million to his net worth. His crypto success follows in the footsteps of Trump, whose crypto assets now make up about a third of his $6.2 billion net worth. But Witkoff also benefited from a well-timed investment he first made back in October 2022. That’s when he put $100 million into Elon Musk’s privatization of Twitter, now known as X. That gave him an estimated 0.3% stake in the company, which was valued at $31 billion net of debt at the time. Since then, X has merged with Musk’s artificial intelligence startup xAI in March 2025 and then with his rocket maker SpaceX in February, valuing the combined company at $1.25 trillion. Forbes estimates that Witkoff’s stake was diluted to a tiny 0.017%, now worth around $210 million. That means Witkoff has already doubled his investment—and it could grow even more valuable as SpaceX is set to go public later this year. Musk is reportedly targeting a valuation of more than $2 trillion in SpaceX’s upcoming IPO, a 60% premium to its current valuation. Read the full story on Forbes: By Giacomo Tognini https://www.forbes.com/sites/giacomotognini/2026/04/04/how-peace-envoy-steve-witkoff-got-richer-thanks-to-trump-and-elon-musk/ Learn more about your ad choices. Visit megaphone.fm/adchoices

Follow Forbes Talks  Trump gave Iran a deadline to reopen the Strait of Hormuz or “all Hell will reign down on them.” Trump’s threat comes only hours after Iran rejected a temporary ceasefire proposal, multiple outlets reported. Mojtaba Ferdousi Pour, head of Iran’s diplomatic mission in Cairo, told the Associated Press Iran “won’t merely accept a ceasefire,” adding, “We can only accept an end of the war with guarantees that we won’t be attacked again.” Iran reportedly sent their own peace proposal through Pakistan, multiple outletsreported citing Iranian state media. However, Trump implied the U.S. already rejected this proposal—speaking to reporters at Monday’s White House Easter Egg Roll, Trump called Iran’s offer “a significant proposal,” but immediately added, “it’s not good enough, but it’s a very significant step.” Trump also insisted his deadline of Tuesday night at 8 p.m. EDT for Iran to make a ceasefire deal would be his final deadline—one day after threatening the country’s power plants and bridges. Trump also claimed the U.S. was “obliterating” Iran, and said, “they just don’t want to say ‘uncle,’ they don’t want to cry as the expression goes, ‘uncle,’ but they will,” adding that if they don’t, “they will have no bridges, they will have no power plant, they will have no anything.” Read the full story on Forbes: By Ty Roush http://www.forbes.com/sites/tylerroush/2026/04/06/iran-rejects-trumps-ceasefire-proposal-as-deadline-nears/ Learn more about your ad choices. Visit megaphone.fm/adchoices

A workplace lawsuit has opened the lid on the little-known ownership structure of Insight Partners, an investor in OpenAI and Anthropic: It is now partially owned by the government of Abu Dhabi. Insight Partners is one of the biggest startup investors in the world, managing over $90 billion thanks to its bets on companies like Twitter, Wiz, Databricks and Anthropic — comparable in size to its noisier rivals Andreessen Horowitz and Sequoia Capital. Now, a new lawsuit and SEC filings show that it is in part owned by the government of Abu Dhabi via a private, Abu Dhabi-based investment firm called Lunate.  In the secretive world of venture capital, funds rarely disclose their own backers, who are known as limited partners. Increasingly, VCs are reliant on Middle Eastern sovereign wealth as a source of capital. But Insight’s relationship with Abu Dhabi goes one step further, where its government isn’t just providing money — it has quietly owned a stake in the management company itself since January 2025. The documents indicate it is a passive minority investment. One source close to the transaction described it as “low single digits,” and another said it was less than 2%. Forbes could not determine how much Lunate paid for it.  New York-based Insight joins one of a small handful of investment firms that have sold equity stakes to funds controlled by Middle Eastern governments, including private equity firms Silver Lake and The Carlyle Group. These investments are almost always described in regulatory documents as “passive” or “non-operational,” because having a more active role could run afoul of U.S. government restrictions around foreign investment. But in practice, equity stakes in top-tier investment firms are often a step toward a bigger strategic partnership. Potential perks: first-in-line access to deals or, in the cases of Silver Lake and Carlyle, massive co-investments down the line.  “You can feel good knowing you don’t have control, but that you’re attached at the hip with some of the brightest dealmakers and business-builders in the world,” Michael Rees, co-president at investment firm Blue Owl, said at a PitchBook event. Blue Owl has been one of the most active buyers of such fund stakes, and has teamed up with UAE-based funds for such deals.  The revelation about Insight’s ownership structure was made public thanks to a lawsuit filed in December by Kate Lowry, a former vice president at the firm. She sued Insight over wrongful termination and failure to prevent harassment. The former Facebook employee had joined Insight’s Bay Area office in 2022 and alleged that she had experienced harassment, discrimination and then retaliation for taking medical leave. Lowry’s attorneys claim that her employment was terminated in May 2025 after she complained over a cut to her compensation package. The case is ongoing, and Insight has previously strongly denied the lawsuit’s “baseless allegations.”  Insight Partners declined to comment. Read the full story on Forbes: By Iain Martin https://www.forbes.com/sites/iainmartin/2026/04/03/abu-dhabi-stake-venture-capital-biggest-insight-partners/ Learn more about your ad choices. Visit megaphone.fm/adchoices

With shipments of oil and natural gas trapped behind Hormuz, desperate nations are turning back to reliable, plentiful, dirty coal. That means big profits for America’s biggest coal miner. “You can’t just turn on the spigot,” says Jim Grech, chief executive of Peabody Energy, America’s biggest coal miner. Customers in Japan, Korea and Taiwan are pleading with Peabody for additional shipments, Grech says, so they can avoid energy shortages by switching more power generation to coal instead of natural gas.. While he says he’d love to help all the power plant operators in Asia looking to replace missing cargoes of liquefied natural gas trapped behind the Strait of Hormuz, Peabody is already running its mines in New South Wales, Australia at full tilt. “You need more crews, more equipment digging,” he says. “There’s no quick upturn in production.” A multi-year expansion is already underway at Wilpinjong Mine where it’s doubling production to 10 million tons per year by 2030. Peabody also produces 3.5 million tons a year at the Wambo mine JV with Glencore, and is ramping up its Centurion metallurgical coal mine. (Nearly all the Aussie coal is sold to power plants in Japan, India, Philippines, Korea, Taiwan and Vietnam.) Northeast Asia had been reducing reliance on coal in favor of shipments of cleaner burning natural gas in recent years. But suddenly they are in the market for millions of more tons per year. “The world, as they run into energy security problems, turns back to coal,” says Grech, 59, who was named chairman of President Trump’s National Coal Council, in January. “There’s no other options.” Japan is moving to relax restrictions on coal generation; Taiwan is set to restart its Hsinta coal plant; Korea lifted anti-pollution caps; and India has ordered coal plants to hurry up and finish spring maintenance so they can be ready for a heavy load when the gas runs out. Even Europe is considering resurrecting mothballed plants. With Qatar warning it might take years to get its LNG exports back to normal, traders have bid up coal prices by 20% in the past month to $150 a ton for Australia’s benchmark Newcastle export grade. How high could it go? “If this conflict continues longer than May, the stars could align for $200 a ton coal,” says Tony Knutson, head of thermal coal research at energy consultancy Wood Mackenzie. Even at that price, coal would still look cheap. Global LNG prices have doubled in a month to $20 per million British thermal units, which, says Knutson, is like paying $460 a ton for Newcastle coal.  “We don’t sell it out six months or a year. Most of the cargoes we have are unpriced. So as the prices go up our cargoes get higher revenue back to us,” says Grech. Grech thinks the Hormuz blockade “domino effect” will also spur domestic demand for Peabody’s landlocked Wyoming coal.  St. Louis-based Peabody reported revenue of $3.8 billion and EBITDA of $455 million in 2025. This year, according to analyst Matthew Key at Texas Capital in Dallas, Peabody’s sales could rise to $4.6 billion or more, while EBITDA could jump to $870 million. Earnings per share are predicted to hit $2.39, up from a 46 cent loss last year. With the stock trading at $35.70, that’s a forward P/E of 15.  Not bad, but new investors already missed out on a huge 130% run up in Peabody shares in the past year, and 400% since Grech took over in June 2021. He previously served as CEO of Utah-based coal company Wolverine Fuels and as president of Nexus Gas Transmission. When he joined Peabody, it was still a giant operation but one that had been battered by a decade of competing against both green energy and shale gas, not to mention massive debts (since paid off). Peabody emerged from Chapter 11 in 2017 only to get whacked by Covid, which destroyed demand and drove shares down to new lows by late 2020.  Since arriving, Grech has focused on expanding high-profit metallurgical coal mining in Australia. He tried to buy coal mines from Anglo American in 2024 for $3.8 billion, but a fire at one of Anglo’s mines caused the deal to fall through.  For all its bad P.R., dirty old coal never went away. In fact, global coal consumption was a record 9 billion tons last year, according to the IEA. It’s the great culprit of global warming, admits Peabody in its SEC filings, and yet humans just keep using more of it. While China, which has lately been pushing into alternative energy production, still uses more than half of that total, U.S. coal combustion is down to just 500 million tons per year, half of what it was a decade ago, but up 13% last year thanks to Trump policies.  The shale gas revolution is the main reason behind coal’s decline. Fifteen years ago coal provided 47% of U.S. electricity; today it’s down to just 16%, only slightly more than wind and solar.  Read the full story on Forbes: By Christopher Helman https://www.forbes.com/sites/christopherhelman/2026/04/03/the-american-miner-peabody-energy-behind-coals-comeback/ Learn more about your ad choices. Visit megaphone.fm/adchoices

Follow Forbes Talks  OpenAI raised $122 billion in its latest funding round, the artificial intelligence giant announced Tuesday, bringing its post-money valuation to $852 billion. KEY FACTS The funding round was backed by OpenAI partners such as Amazon, Nvidia, Microsoft and SoftBank, according to the announcement. The latest valuation for the company comes a little more than a month after it announced $110 billion in funding at a $730 billion valuation. OpenAI opened this month’s funding round to individual investors, who raised over $3 billion. BIG NUMBER $2 billion. That is how much money OpenAI is raking in every month, according to Tuesday’s announcement. Last year, it made $13.1 billion in revenue.  SURPRISING FACT OpenAI is not yet profitable despite its strong revenue numbers. The company is burning money on operating costs driven by expenditures from training AI models and creating infrastructure. OpenAI will spend half a trillion dollars by 2030 if it maintains its current pace, according to The Guardian. KEY BACKGROUND OpenAI is leading the funding race against its competitors by hundreds of billions of dollars. Anthropic announced in January it raised $25 billion, bringing its valuation to $350 billion. Elon Musk’s xAI reached a $230 billion valuation that same month, though its acquisition of SpaceX brought the number up to $250 billion. OpenAI is on its way to reaching valuations held by tech giants like Meta, which boasted a $1.4 trillion market capitalization as of Tuesday. OpenAI is preparing for an initial public offering by the end of 2026, according to CNBC, which reported on an all-hands meeting in which company officials discussed taking ChatGPT from a casual chatbot for users to a more serious AI assistant used for carrying out tasks. Read the full story on Forbes: By Antonio Pequeño IV https://www.forbes.com/sites/antoniopequenoiv/2026/03/31/openai-valuation-reaches-852-billion-after-massive-funding-round/ Learn more about your ad choices. Visit megaphone.fm/adchoices

Follow Forbes Talks Tesla on Thursday reported quarterly vehicle deliveries that fell below Wall Street’s expectations, the latest sign of a disrupted electric vehicle market as Elon Musk’s automaker shifts its focus toward robotaxis and humanoid robots. Key Facts Tesla said Thursday it delivered just over 358,000 vehicles in the first quarter, below the automaker’s compiled consensus of 365,645 and consensus analyst projections of 381,000, according to FactSet. That marks a 14.3% decline from the December quarter (418,227), but a 6.2% year-over-year growth from Q1 2025 (337,000), when Tesla reported its fewest quarterly vehicle deliveries since 2022. Model 3 and Y vehicles accounted for nearly 342,000 of Tesla’s quarterly deliveries, down nearly 19% from the previous quarter (406,585). Shares of Tesla declined 3.4% shortly after trading opened on Thursday. What To Watch For Tesla will report Q1 earnings after market close on April 22, the company said. The automaker is expected to report quarterly revenue of $22.9 billion and $0.41 earnings per share, representing what would be annual growth of 18.6% and nearly 52%, respectively. Key Background Tesla’s vehicle delivery reports are often cited as insight into the automaker’s sales ahead of its earnings reports. The latest quarterly slide in deliveries follows a broader decline in electric vehicle demand: EVs represented roughly 12% of the U.S. market in September, an all-time high, but that dropped to 6% by January, according to Cox Automotive. Tesla remains the market leader in the U.S., however, even as it faces growing competition from Chinese automaker BYD, which surpassed Tesla as the world’s largest EV maker. Musk said in January the company would end production of its flagship Model S and Model X cars, announcing Tesla would use its production line in Fremont, California, to manufacture the company’s Optimus humanoid robots. Earlier this week, Musk said orders for the S and X vehicles had “come to an end.” Forbes Valuation Musk is by far the world’s richest person, with an estimated net worth of $823.8 billion as of Thursday. He’s expected to soon become the world’s first trillionaire, after his SpaceX filed confidentially for an IPO on Wednesday, leading the way for what will likely be the largest-ever market debut. Musk, who owns about 43% of SpaceX, would become the first person to be chief executive of two companies valued at $1 trillion after the aerospace firm’s listing. Read the full story on Forbes: By Ty Roush https://www.forbes.com/sites/tylerroush/2026/04/02/tesla-misses-vehicle-delivery-estimates-as-ev-market-struggles/ Learn more about your ad choices. Visit megaphone.fm/adchoices

Follow Forbes Daily Briefing Ripple and Stellar founder Jed McCaleb wants to build AGI by studying how the brain learns—then translating those rules into AI. In a two-story brick office building in Emeryville, neuroscientists are making plans to fit mice with diminutive brain-computer interfaces to record patterns of neural activity while they perform basic tasks like navigating a maze. They hope to build a library of mouse brain states that reliably maps to specific perceptions and actions.  Next comes translation: turning those findings into code—and, eventually, into a new kind of AI system built on the brain’s governing principles. They plan to run the experiments on mice, monkeys and even humans. If it works, it could become a flywheel: brain experiments inform new AI architectures and those suggest new hypotheses to test. Hovering over all of it is a science fiction-sounding ambition: using brain computer interfaces not just to read minds, but to write them. Researchers talk about “uploading” knowledge into the brain, inserting the image of an apple into someone’s thoughts, or directions to navigate a never-before-seen maze. It sounds like an idea pulled straight out of a William Gibson book. Jed McCaleb, who founded cryptocurrency projects Ripple and Stellar, is trying to bankroll it into reality. The Silicon Valley billionaire is committing $1 billion of his cryptocurrency fortune–worth about $3.9 billion by Forbes’ estimate–into building AI systems that achieve artificial general intelligence, or the threshold at which AI systems can perform tasks as well as humans. “Most effort and research… is going in one particular area—transformers,” McCaleb said. “[AI] would benefit by looking closer at the human brain.” He's funding the effort through his nonprofit Astera Institute, which has long had an AI focus, but recently zeroed in on brain-inspired approaches, prompting McCaleb’s nine-figure commitment. In doing so, Astera joins a slew of other funded-into-the-billions AI research ventures with no clear commercialization plan, including former OpenAI co-founder Ilya Sutskever’s SSI or Jeff Bezos’ Project Prometheus.  The self-made son of a single mother in Arkansas, McCaleb fits the modern technologist billionaire mold: future-obsessed, capital-rich and impatient with playing it safe. His bets are not small. In addition to Astera Institute, where he has pledged $600 million towards neuroscience on top of the $1 billion AGI effort, he spends several days a week at Vast, his space company in southern California. Vast wants to replace the international space station, and Forbes first reported it has been fundraising at a $2 billion valuation. “Crypto was, in some sense, a big detour,” McCaleb says. “I’d been wanting to work on AI the whole time, but only really got the chance once I stepped back [from crypto]...I think AI is going to be the most transformative thing that humans ever create. So it’s the most compelling thing to work on.” Read the full story on Forbes: By Anna Tong https://www.forbes.com/sites/annatong/2026/03/27/this-crypto-billionaire-wants-to-use-the-human-brain-as-a-blueprint-for-ai/ Learn more about your ad choices. Visit megaphone.fm/adchoices

Follow Forbes Talks Topline Elon Musk may soon become the first person to have a net worth exceeding $1 trillion, as SpaceX’s anticipated stock market debut is on the way after the aerospace firm filed for an IPO on Wednesday. Key Facts SpaceX submitted confidential IPO registration to the Securities and Exchange Commission, according to multiple reports, meaning the documentation is only available to regulators. Additional information about SpaceX’s IPO, including the number of shares to be sold and a price range, will be disclosed in a later filing. Bank of America, Citigroup, Goldman Sachs, JPMorgan Chase and Morgan Stanley are leading the offering, the Wall Street Journal reported, citing people familiar with the matter. With an expected listing in June, the public offering is estimated to value SpaceX at $1.75 trillion and raise $75 billion, which would more than double Saudi Aramco’s $29 billion debut in 2019 as the largest-ever IPO. SpaceX acquired Musk’s artificial intelligence startup xAI in February, consolidating two of his companies in a deal that valued the combined entity at an estimated $1.25 trillion. SpaceX did not immediately respond to a request for comment from Forbes. Surprising FactOnce SpaceX's listing debuts, Musk will likely become the first person to be chief executive of two companies valued at $1 trillion. His Tesla has a market valuation of $1.4 trillion as of Wednesday. Read the full story on Forbes: Ty Roush https://www.forbes.com/sites/tylerroush/2026/04/01/musk-closer-to-trillionaire-status-spacex-reportedly-files-for-ipo/ Learn more about your ad choices. Visit megaphone.fm/adchoices

Follow Forbes Daily Briefing Bharti Airtel—controlled by billionaire Sunil Mittal—and a group of investors are investing $1 billion in data center projects in India to tap into the AI boom in the world’s most populous country. Bharti Airtel—controlled by billionaire Sunil Mittal—and a group of investors are investing $1 billion in data center projects in India to tap into the AI boom in the world’s most populous country. Under the deal, which is subject to regulatory approvals, three U.S. private equity firms will inject fresh capital into Airtel’s data center unit, Nxtra Data. Alpha Wave Global will invest $435 million, Carlyle will contribute $240 million, and Anchorage Capital will add $35 million. The remaining investment will come from Airtel, which will keep a controlling stake in Nxtra, according to a statement released on Monday.  “Strategic partnerships with global investors and technology leaders are central to our growth roadmap, enabling us to accelerate expansion, harness world-class expertise, and deliver next generation digital infrastructure solutions at scale,” Gopal Vittal, executive vice chairman of Airtel said in the statement. Nxtra currently operates 14 data centers across India with a total capacity of about 300 megawatts. The company is building new facilities across Chennai, Mumbai and Kolkata, aiming to expand its capacity to 1 gigawatt in the next few years. In partnership with Google, Nxtra is also developing a gigawatt-scale data center in Visakhapatnam, a port city on India’s east coast, backed by a $15 billion investment announced last October. India is one of the region’s hottest data center markets, with Mumbai’s capacity increasing 42% to 768 megawatts last year, Chicago-based real estate consultancy Cushman & Wakefield said in a report last week. The country’s billionaires are tapping into the AI-driven boom in data centers. Reliance Industries—controlled by Asia’s richest person, Mukesh Ambani—and his fellow billionaire Gautam Adani’s Adani Enterprises are separately spending $100 billion each to build data centers and other digital infrastructure facilities in the next few years across India. Bharti Airtel, which has over 600 million mobile customers across South Asia and Africa, has also been scaling its data center footprint. Mittal, who has a real-time net worth of $13 billion, is the controlling shareholder of Bharti Airtel. He also holds a stake in Airtel Payments Bank, a joint venture with Kotak Mahindra Bank, which is controlled by fellow billionaire Uday Kotak. Read the full story on Forbes: By Yessar Rosendar https://www.forbes.com/sites/yessarrosendar/2026/03/31/billionaire-sunil-mittals-airtel-partners-to-invest-1-billion-in-indian-data-center-projects/ Learn more about your ad choices. Visit megaphone.fm/adchoices