Forbes Daily Briefing

When Chad Janis had the idea to sell gummy-bear-shaped nutritional supplements four years ago, he had to convince manufacturers it could be done and retailers that customers would prefer his green gummies. 

He didn’t know how right he was.

His brand, Grüns (from the German word for greens) now ships around 10 million gummies every day, and this week, London-based conglomerate Unilever announced it was acquiring Grüns for an estimated $1.2 billion. 

The 33-year-old former private equity investor has now cemented his place in the consumer packaged goods industry as a founder who has secured one of the sector’s best—and quickest—exits in the past decade. The Beaverton, Oregon-based Grüns currently has some one million customers and its superfood gummy bear is the top-selling green supplement on Amazon and across retailers nationwide. 

“We didn’t build it to sell it. But we want to make an impact on millions of people’s lives,” Janis tells Forbes. “We think [Unilever has] a track record of brands that have success and they help them have more impact. They’ve done it multiple times before with peers we look up to.”

By Chloe Sorvino,

Forbes Staff
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The trend of mainland Chinese tech companies flocking to list in Hong Kong shows no sign of abating. The latest to make its stock market debut is Gpixel Changchun Microelectronics, a developer of CMOS image sensors that enable robots to “see.” Shares of the company, headquartered in the Chinese industrial hub of Changchun, rose 144% since its listing on Friday, making founder and chairman Wang Xinyang a billionaire.

Wang, 46, is Gpixel’s largest shareholder with a 23% stake. Together with the 1.6% holding of his wife Zhang Yanxia, Gpixel’s chief operation officer, Wang is worth $1.3 billion based on Tuesday’s closing price of HK$97.5. Gpixel didn’t respond to a request for comment regarding Wang’s billionaire status.

Gpixel’s IPO raised HK$2.6 billion ($332.4 million), drawing cornerstone investors including private equity giants Hillhouse Investment and Boyu Capital, as well as early ByteDance backer Source Code Capital and Hong Kong-based Value Partners. Gpixel disclosed in its prospectus that it will use 76% of the IPO proceeds for R&D investments, including building a new R&D center in Hangzhou, and the rest to expand operations in Hong Kong, South Korea and Japan. 

The company specializes in CMOS image sensors, which are chips that convert light into electrical signals to capture images, and are embedded in a range of electronic products from smartphones and cameras to X-ray machines and robots. Operating under a fabless model, Gpixel designs sensors that are mostly used for industrial applications, such as detecting defects in semiconductor manufacturing and robot navigation. They are also deployed in advanced cameras, such as those used for scientific research.

By Zinnia Lee,

Forbes Staff
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Elon Musk is the planet’s richest person by far, worth $839 billion as of Forbes’ annual World’s Billionaires list. He also ranks among the least philanthropic billionaires. Sure, Musk has transferred $8.5 billion of Tesla stock to his charitable foundations (1% of his net worth)—but nearly all of it is still sitting there idle. Only an estimated $500 million, or 0.06% of Musk’s vast fortune, has ever been disbursed to those in need.

His lack of giving raises a question: What would our billionaires ranking look like if the world’s most generous people—such as Warren Buffett (who has donated more than half of his Berkshire Hathaway stock so far) and Bill Gates (who has moved, alongside his ex-wife Melinda French Gates, more than $60 billion into the Gates Foundation)—had never donated a dollar to charity? To find the answer, we adjusted the net worths of the planet’s most generous billionaires, assuming they kept any shares they’ve given away and that cash gifts were instead invested at market rates of return.

The result: our True Net Worth ranking, detailed by Forbes chief content officer Randall Lane in a recent TED Talk.

By Matt Durot,

Forbes Staff

Chase Peterson-Withorn,

Assistant Managing Editor
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A U.S. special forces soldier who participated in the raid to capture Venezuelan President Nicolas Maduro has been charged with using classified information about the operation to win more than $400,000 on the online betting platform Polymarket.
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Kalshi caught and suspended three political candidates who bet on the outcomes of their own elections, the prediction market company said in a statement on Wednesday, fining the three politicians and issuing five-year bans from their platform.

Minnesota State Senator Matt Klein, a candidate running for the Democratic nomination for Minnesota’s second district in the House of Representatives, agreed to pay a $539.85 fine.

Ezekiel Enriquez, a former candidate for the Republican primary for a congressional district in Texas, was fined $784.20. Enriquez lost this race after the primary elections in March.

Both Klein and Enriquez bought less than $100 worth of contracts on their own elections, according to Kalshi’s filings, and both were also issued five-year suspensions.
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