• Markets: Stocks were a mixed bag yesterday, with the S&P 500 finishing flat and the Nasdaq and Dow moving in opposite directions as investors tried to parse *gestures wildly at everything*. One thing that was clear was that Shopify had a good day after it said it would allow Meta’s Muse AI agent to make purchases on users’ behalf.

Orange sunset

Illustration: Morning Brew Inc., Photo: Adobe Stock

Will Hunting’s employer unseated the institution where Albert Einstein worked as America’s top college. MIT rose to first, while Princeton—which had held the No. 1 spot since 2012—dropped to second place in the 2027 ranking of national universities by US News & World Report.

Since 1983, US News has put out the list that your mom inevitably texts you about every year by combining various criteria to rank colleges:

• This year, MIT got top marks on faculty research, the newly added category of earnings after graduation, and standardized test scores.
• Princeton’s score was roughly unchanged, but its lead over rivals narrowed after US News added faculty research metrics in 2023, the publication told the New York Times.

Meanwhile, Harvard and Yale maintained third and fourth place, respectively. UC Berkeley and UCLA were the highest-ranked public universities on the list, tying for 20th place with Notre Dame overall.

Does anyone care about what US News thinks?

Colleges have criticized the publication for reducing a college’s reputation to a single number and for its ranking methodology like its use of reviews by administrators at rival schools. (Princeton urged students and parents not to obsess over the pecking order in 2021.) The ranking arguably doesn’t have the same hold over the minds of high school upperclassmen as it once did, given that AI chatbots can now provide a granular rundown of a school’s strengths and weaknesses.

But schools still have a symbiotic relationship with US News: They rely on the rankings to market themselves to potential students and begrudgingly supply the publication with data. Meanwhile, the company makes millions licensing branded badges of the rankings to universities, which they tout to students.

Colleges have other top-ranking concerns…as they deal with projections of lower enrollments, declining public trust, doubts about the value degrees deliver amid AI disrupting the job market, and cutbacks in federal funding. Yesterday, Cornell faculty recommended that universities deal with the higher education crisis by altering tuition structure, emphasizing faculty research quality over quantity, and shifting to teaching students human judgment.—SK

      

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Curious how all that translates when you’re behind the wheel? Find out by heading to your local Rivian space for a demo drive.

World

Tour de headlines

Michael M. Santiago/Getty Images

🌎 Trump threatens to “annihilate” Iran in address to UN. In an address to the United Nations General Assembly in New York yesterday, President Trump defended the Iran war, while simultaneously threatening to increase military action and labeling himself a peacemaker. “Do I drive them into hell with no chance of survival?” he said. He also defended the US’ intervention in Venezuela and said “freedom will be coming to Cuba,” causing the country’s delegation to walk out of the room. Trump later shifted to AI, rejecting widespread calls to place guardrails on the technology and declaring that AI will be renamed “super intelligence” in official US documents.

🎮 Xbox reset continues with major restructuring. The struggling Microsoft-owned gaming company announced yesterday that it’s laying off another 268 employees and moving development of the next Halo game to Call of Duty maker Activision, which Microsoft purchased for $69 billion in 2023. The changes are part of Xbox’s ongoing “reset,” which Chief Content Officer Matt Booty said is designed to strengthen its franchises. Xbox ultimately plans to cut up to 3,200 workers in hopes of improving its underwhelming margins.

⌚ Report: Apple is developing a screenless fitness tracker. According to Bloomberg, the iPhone maker is building prototypes of a screenless health and fitness wristband, similar to Whoop’s flagship product. Apple isn’t sure if it will release the product, and if it does, it likely wouldn’t be before 2028, Bloomberg reported. Still, the news marks a significant shift in Apple’s wearables strategy as it considers the growing threat of fitness competitors like Whoop, Oura, Garmin, and Google-owned Fitbit.—AE

WORKING OUT SOME KINKS

Peloton

The iPhone of indoor cycling is moving into the running boom’s slipstream. Yesterday, Peloton unveiled a new line of treadmills with jogging-focused AI features that it hopes will revive its shrinking customer base.

Citing the rising popularity of marathons and run clubs, the company is launching:

• The $2,195 Tread Flex, a foldable and relatively quiet treadmill angled toward cramped city dwellers.
• The $3,495 Tread Vision and $6,695 Tread+ Vision, which use movement-tracking cameras and Peloton’s AI coaching system to provide form feedback. The Tread+ also has a resistance-training mode likely meant for the CrossFit and Hyrox crowds.

The new products, releasing Oct. 1, mark “a big move beyond the bike, which is the foundation of everything here, but we are going all in on Tread,” CEO Peter Stern said.

Peloton is also going all-in on partnerships, including with Miley Cyrus, Spotify, and the New York City Marathon, which users will be able to partially “re-run” using a new treadmill feature. Meanwhile, Peloton is trying to infiltrate more gyms and hotels.

Zoom out: Peloton’s market cap has collapsed 97% from a pandemic-fueled peak of ~$50 billion in 2021. The company recently returned to profitability, but revenue growth remains measly, as it lost ~500,000 paid subscribers in the last three years.—ML

      

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COFFEE TALK

Nick Iluzada

A job recruiter on TikTok set off an internet firestorm this week with a one-minute video. Her warning to Gen Z: Stop bringing iced coffee to interviews, as it’s perceived as disrespectful to the potential employers.

Caitlin Wehniainen, who works mostly with Fortune 500 companies, said that’s her feedback for Gen Z job hunters who have the audacity to arrive for interviews with iced latte in hand—the very thing you may be drinking right now. People who accepted the ragebait can be boiled down into two groups:

• On one side, there’s people who call the move unprofessional. One concern was condensation. Another was swirling the cup.
• On the other side are people who can’t believe this is A Thing. “It is such a non-issue,” one person told Business Insider.

In statistical-based Gen Z job news: The influx of AI has been particularly tough on young people. A study from the Stanford Digital Economy Lab found that employment among workers aged 22–25 in highly AI-exposed jobs is ~19% below where it is in less-exposed occupations.—DL

      

Reader Poll

Sam’s stock of the week

Greenland stocks explode on US–Denmark deal

Mads Claus Rasmussen/Getty Images

On Wednesdays, the Brew’s Sam Klebanov highlights a fascinating stock, commodity, or other asset that’s worth your attention.

You’d think Greenland was named after how its stocks are looking. Stocks exposed to the Arctic island surged this week after it was announced that the US, Denmark, and Greenland reached a security agreement for the Danish territory.

Drilling and mining green light

Investors are betting that extraction of local natural resources will speed up amid an easing of transatlantic tensions caused by President Trump’s threats to annex the country:

• Shares of Texas-based Greenland Energy, which is involved in oil and gas exploration on the icy island, more than doubled this week. Last month, the company’s stock had crashed after it announced delays to drilling plans due to unresolved permitting issues.
• Greenland Mines, the developer of massive gold, platinum, and palladium deposits on the island, popped 356% this week.
• Critical Metals Corp. jumped 24% after the deal gave investors optimism about its rare earth metals project in southern Greenland.

But, in practice…accessing Greenland’s vast resources can be tricky, due to both harsh climate and opposition from locals concerned with the environmental impacts.—SK

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News

What else is brewing

• Anthropic launched a new Claude model, Opus 5.5, which it says is “much less likely than recent models to take hard-to-reverse actions or act outside the boundaries it’s been given.”
• Sen. John Curtis, a Republican from Utah, called for Donald Trump Jr. to be investigated following a report that a Russian oligarch partially funded some of his wedding celebrations.
• Kalshi asked federal regulators to approve margin trading on the platform, which would allow users to trade event contracts with borrowed money.
• Hayden Panettiere died from an accidental overdose of fentanyl and other drugs, South Carolina officials determined.
• Clavicular, the “looksmaxxing” influencer whose real name is Braden Peters, was charged with rape and drug offenses in Massachusetts, per court records.

recs

• The most anticipated books coming out this fall.
• Think you know nuts? Take this 12-question nut quiz.
• Ten food cities worth planning a trip for.
• A dress for work that pairs nicely with a cardigan for chillier days.**

^{*A message from our sponsor. **This is a product recommendation from our writers. When you buy through this link, Morning Brew may earn a commission.}

Play

Word Search: Talk Like a Pirate Day is behind us, but this week’s puzzle is rife with Rs. Play the Word Search here.

College trivia

MIT has dethroned Princeton as the US’ top college, ending a 15-year run for the Tigers, according to the latest ranking from US News & World Report.

Here’s a separate question on the rankings: The top two liberal arts colleges are located in the same state, about an hour-and-a-half drive away from each other. What are they?

Answer

Williams College and Amherst College in Massachusetts.

Word of the Day

Today’s Word of the Day is: rife, meaning “abundant, plentiful, or numerous.” Thanks to Charlotte from Montreal for the suggestion. Submit another Word of the Day here.