Hey friends - another wild week. Tech rattled markets, marriages, and nearly every major business software.

🌎 The Big Picture

Here's what you need to know this week:

• Nvidia's leadership change rattled investors.

• More Americans fell behind on debt payments this fall.

• More young Americans are becoming their own bosses.

➡️ Nvidia's leadership change rattled investors.

Stocks wobbled after Jensen Huang stepped down as Nvidia's CEO. Investors have been going back and forth for months on whether the massive AI spending spree will actually pay off, and whether the money holds out long enough to find out.

Nvidia’s at the center of it all, as the dominant chipmaker for AI companies and one of the biggest providers of funding for AI companies. It’s critical for both the actual tech and the money supporting all of this spending. Jensen’s been CEO for 33 years since the founding of the company. He’s a very prominent tech leader. This moment rattles one of the main foundational pillars holding up the whole AI economy. It doesn’t necessarily mean anything changes, but it raises a lot of concerns.

➡️ More Americans fell behind on debt payments this fall.

Americans are borrowing more and struggling to keep up. The New York Federal Reserve reported households borrowed 1.8% more, pushing total household debt back up to $19.1 trillion. Homeowners leaned on their home equity for cash, tapping $23 billion more, the biggest jump since 2005. And borrowers were behind on 5% of all household debt, up from 4.8% in late 2025.

The strain's showing up pretty much everywhere.

Student loan borrowers kept slipping, with 10.9% of balances 90+ days late, up from last year. Credit card borrowers were more than 90 days past due on roughly 13% of balances, the highest share in about 15 years. Auto loan holders fell behind too, with nearly 6% seriously late, the most in at least two decades. Homeowners are holding up the best, with only about 1.1% of mortgage balances 90 days late, though even that's the most since 2018.

New York Fed researchers found people in lower-income neighborhoods had a harder time keeping up with card debt after 2022, as prices outran their paychecks. For a lot of families, that makes high-interest balances and a solid emergency cushion a conversation worth having sooner rather than later.

➡️ More young Americans are becoming their own bosses.

Young Americans are ditching the traditional career ladder and going out on their own, and it's happening fast. Babson College found that at least 23% of 18-to-34-year-olds ran a business or side hustle in 2025, up from 19% in 2021. The youngest adults are moving fastest: Americans aged 18 to 24 now start businesses at more than double the rate they did in 2015.

New tech is a big part of why. Gusto found that over 70% of Gen Z founders used AI to build their businesses, more than any other generation.

For families, this means the career path looks pretty different from the old entry-level-to-corner-office climb. Young founders get flexibility and ownership, but self-employment also means less predictable income and no employer retirement plan.

The question now, though, is whether building your own side hustle income is actually the safer move than relying on Corporate America.

🏭 The Companies Everyone’s Talking About

❔ The Big Question of the Week

Scoops app users: We have taken the beta app offline for a short period for some major updates. Can’t wait to show you all what we’ve been working on! Reach out if you have any questions.

We’re going to switch up the content in this spotlight for a bit to make sure you all have the info you need to master your week.