No need to frantically hoard Annie’s mac and cheese: Two courts rejected the Kroger-Albertsons merger this week, which effectively quashes the deal that would’ve brought together two of the largest grocery store chains in the US. The decision hands a sweet victory to Federal Trade Commission Chair Lina Khan, whose time at the agency’s helm will end in January.

How it happened: In two different cases, a judge—one in Oregon and one in Washington state—sided with the FTC, saying the merger would reduce competition for shoppers and consequently increase prices for consumers. The companies had argued that creating a larger entity would allow it to compete with Walmart to offer higher wages and lower prices.

And now? Albertsons called it quits on the already-dead merger and, in the spirit of competition, is suing Kroger for “refusing to cooperate” over the last two years to win the regulatory green light.

A legacy reversed?

Blocking the Kroger-Albertsons deal from coming to fruition was an important goal of Khan’s FTC, which, under her leadership, went from an esoteric agency to a tweeting bastion of market competition. Legal experts lauded her for ushering in a new era of antitrust enforcement, while Wall Street condemned her for slowing down mergers and acquisitions.

Now, that legacy could be undone. Andrew Ferguson, whom President-elect Trump announced as his FTC chair pick on Tuesday night, has promised to reverse what he called Khan’s “anti-business agenda.” While Ferguson is tough on Big Tech, it’s not for the same reason as Khan—he believes that Meta and Google play a role in silencing conservative views online.

Dealmakers, are you listening? Wall Street is bullish on Merger Mondays coming back (see: $35 billion in transactions this past Monday), but it’s not clear whether all of Khan’s work to rein in monopolistic behavior will get thrown out on January 20. Gail Slater, Trump’s nominee for the antitrust division at the Department of Justice, has been called a “balanced” regulator.—CC

Elon Musk becomes first person with $400 billion net worth. The multi-hyphenate entrepreneur and confidante of President-elect Trump rocketed past the milestone net worth thanks to his stake in the privately held SpaceX. That company has a valuation of $350 billion, which Bloomberg says makes it the most valuable private startup in the world. It also doesn’t hurt that Tesla stock hit an all-time high of nearly $425 per share yesterday. Federal Election Commission filings show that Musk spent $277 million to help Trump win reelection, which, given his net worth, is the equivalent of someone with a net worth of $100,000 donating $70.

Luxury real estate broker brothers arrested for sexual assault. Tal and Oren Alexander, once star brokers of luxury real estate in Miami and Manhattan, were arrested along with their brother Alon, in Miami yesterday morning after being accused of sexually assaulting and raping dozens of women dating back to 2010. Oren and Alon are also facing separate felony charges for sexual battery. The federal indictment said the brothers had conspired in a sex trafficking scheme that involved arranging events and domestic and international trips to bait women, whom they transported and raped. Lawyers for the Alexander brothers had no comment, per the NYT.

Bipartisan lawmakers seek to break up the healthcare industry. Specifically, legislation in the House and the Senate targets conglomerates like UnitedHealth Group, CVS Health, and Cigna—health insurers that each also own a pharmacy benefits manager (PBM) and a pharmacy business. PBMs act as go-betweens that price drugs. If the legislation passes, the big companies would have three years to divest their pharmacies. Sen. Josh Hawley, who is cosponsoring that chamber’s bill with Sen. Elizabeth Warren, said the legislation would “stop the insurance companies and PBMs from gobbling up even more of American healthcare and charging American families more and more for less.”—HVL

Kid, you’re getting an agent: Virtual assistants are at the center of Apple’s and Google’s latest AI-related developments, which the companies unveiled yesterday.

Siri married ChatGPT. The title card of yesterday’s iOS/OS update is that ChatGPT has been integrated into Siri, so you can—for example—add AI-generated images to your writing without leaving Notes or prompt Apple’s Writing Tools to rewrite your email in poem form.

Google updated its core AI tech to Gemini 2.0 and added a research assistant that can write reports for paid users. It also unveiled prototype chatbots that are rolling out to select test users:

• Project Mariner completes tasks (e.g., “Fill a Safeway grocery cart for this recipe”) using websites on Chrome…all on its own. You just have to stay on the site while it moves the cursor, clicks buttons, and fills in text fields, TechCrunch reported, noting that it’s still slower than a human web surfer.
• Project Astra, Google’s previously announced answer to Siri or Alexa, is getting better at understanding text, audio, and visuals in real time and can “remember” recent conversations—but it still sounds “eager and slightly awkward” in conversation, according to The Verge.
• There’s also a coding assistant, Jules, plus even more experimental agents designed to guide robots through the real world and gamers through virtual ones.

The “Agentic era”: Salesforce, Microsoft, and countless other enterprise businesses are building their own AI agents.—ML

FIFA president Gianni Infantino confirmed yesterday that the 2034 men’s World Cup will be held in Saudi Arabia after the country launched an uncontested and controversial bid to host.

It’s about a lot more than sports. Saudi Arabia has poured trillions into its global rebrand, attempting to show the world that it can offer more than just oil and a sketchy human rights record. The country wants to attract 150 million tourists a year by 2030—and it’s hoping that putting on the best dang World Cup this globe has ever seen will further cement a new reputation.

• Saudi Arabia is set to be the world’s largest construction market, with output expected to reach $181 billion by the end of 2028, according to real estate consultancy group Knight Frank.
• The kingdom plans to build 11 new stadiums for the tournament from scratch and upgrade four others. One of the new stadiums will be in the troubled megacity Neom.

Not everyone’s fan: Critics have accused FIFA—a group with a long history of alleged corruption—of rigging the whole process for Saudi Arabia. Meanwhile, human rights groups and other observers have argued that Saudi Arabia is “sportswashing” by using its massive investments to distract from its abuses.—MM

That’s the annual net migration—the number of people entering the US minus the number leaving—from 2021 to 2023, according to data from the Congressional Budget Office and US Census Bureau. The figure surpasses the immigration rate for any other period of American history, including the busiest years at Ellis Island, according to the New York Times.

The data used by the NYT included both legal and illegal immigration figures. Even when factoring in the size of the US population today, this is the highest rate of new immigrants arriving since at least the 1850s. That also increases the percentage of the US population born in another country: It was 15.2% in 2023, which broke the record set in 1890 with 14.8%.—HVL