• Nike's been having a tough time, with shares down more than 30% this year and sales set to fall.
• The sportswear brand has started implementing a turnaround plan, but the results are yet to be seen.
• Nike's reliance on its lifestyle business seems to be hurting it, one analyst said.

Nike's lost its stride — and is finding it hard to get its pace back up.

In December, the company announced a cost-cutting initiative that included simplifying its assortment of products and cutting jobs.

The aim was to deliver up to $2 billion in savings over the next three years, which "will be invested to fuel future growth, accelerate innovation at speed and scale, and drive greater long-term profitability."

Two quarters on, Nike still appears to be looking for ways to turn its business around.

The latest effort is rehiring Tom Peddie, an executive with 30 years of experience at Nike who came back out of retirement, Bloomberg reported on Monday.

Peddie will serve as vice president of marketplace partners, which involves managing Nike's relationships with retailers like Foot Locker. Nike spent years trying to sell less at third-party retailers and more through its own website and stores, which hasn't been going well recently.

More recently, though, Nike has changed course and tried to mend fences with those retailers.

The new old hire comes hot on the heels of an earnings report that laid bare some of Nike's biggest challenges.

In late June, Nike delivered a lackluster set of Q4 results and said it expects sales for its 2025 fiscal year to fall by mid-single digits, including a 10% drop in the first quarter alone. That shocked investors, especially as analysts had expected a 1% increase this year, according to Reuters.

None of it impressed investors much. Nike's shares closed down 20% that day; the company has dropped more than 30% since the start of the year.

Some major reasons included a tougher sales environment in China, ongoing challenges with its digital platform, and what Nike CFO Matthew Friend described as "muted" forward wholesale orders with "newness not yet at scale."

It doesn't look like it's going to get better very quickly, either, with Friend saying on the earnings call that the "next few quarters will be challenging."

Meantime, CEO John Donahue said that 2025 "will be a transition year for our business."

After the report, Nike cofounder and former CEO Phil Knight expressed "unwavering support" for Donahue in a statement.

Nike needs more key sports products

So, how can the biggest name in sneakers get its stride back?

One answer rests in what the company calls its "lifestyle" business — basically, shoes and clothing meant for casual wear. Nike's "performance" segment, meanwhile, includes many of its core sports products, such as basketball shoes.

While revenue from performance products grew in Q4, declines in its lifestyle business overshadowed them, contributing to the worse-than-expected results.

In its last fiscal year, lifestyle products have grown to about 60% of Nike's business, UBS analyst Jay Sole estimates.

Dividing sales more evenly between performance and lifestyle products would help Nike "restore its image as a sports brand and make its top-line growth rate more sustainable for the long term," he wrote in a note.

"One of our big takeaways from Nike's 4Q report is its lifestyle business needs a major reset," Sole said.

The company has also lost ground to rivals when it comes to connecting directly with customers.

Members of run clubs in Portland, near Nike's headquarters, say that they have been visited by representatives from smaller brands like Hoka and New Balance — but no one from Nike, The Wall Street Journal reported in June.

CEO Donahue noted that road running "remains a competitive battlefield that we are playing to win" on the call.

Another issue is Nike's pipeline of new products.

Nike has been cutting back on some popular shoe lines to get people hyped about new ones. On the latest earnings call, Donahue pointed to areas where Nike has introduced new products, from fitness leggings aimed at female consumers to shoes specifically for road runners.

That could help drive performance sales — especially those through Nike's digital business, a major pain point at the moment for the company. It could also help the re-instated Peddie rebuild relationships with and sales through retail partners.

But Donahue also referenced products that were still in development or months away from release. He teased new versions of Nike's Pegasus and Vomero running shoes, for instance, that aren't scheduled to hit shelves until the second half of fiscal 2025 while referencing a "strong wholesale order book" for coming seasons.

"Talking about newness not in stores doesn't work anymore," Jefferies analyst Randal Konik wrote.

While CFO Friend said management is "confident that we are repositioning Nike to be more competitive," investors have yet to be convinced.

"This is still [Nike] and the right strategy could turn the business," BMO analyst Simeon Siegel wrote in a note after June's earnings report. "But we're not convinced that strategy is presently in place."

• Former GOP Sen. Jim Inhofe of Oklahoma has died at age 89.
• Before his election in 1994, he served in the US House, as mayor of Tulsa, and in both state legislative chambers.
• He famously threw a snowball in the Senate in an attempt to debunk climate change in 2015.

Former Sen. Jim Inhofe, a Republican from Oklahoma, has died at age 89, Tulsa World and Politico report. He is survived by his wife, Kay, along with 4 children and over a dozen grandchildren.

He died after suffering a stroke on July 4, according to Politico.

First elected to the Senate in 1994 in a special election to replace the retiring Sen. David Boren, Inhofe himself triggered a special election when he abruptly announcement his retirement in February 2022.

"It has been the greatest honor to serve the people of Oklahoma since I first entered public service in 1967, but after much prayer and consideration, Kay and I feel the time has come to stand aside," wrote Inhofe in a letter to Oklahoma's Secretary of State announcing his resignation.

Inhofe was among the chamber's most conservative members, and was known for his hawkish views on national security and his denial of the science behind climate change.

Following the late Sen. John McCain's death in 2018, Inhofe led Senate oversight of the nation's military as chairman of the Senate Armed Services Committee before becoming ranking member when Democrats retook the Senate majority in January 2021. 

'The greatest hoax ever perpetrated on the American people'

Born in Iowa in 1934, Inhofe served in the military from 1957 to 1958 and embarked on a career in real estate, insurance, and aviation; even into 80s, Inhofe was an avid pilot himself and frequently piloted his own small plane.

His career in public service began over 55 years ago, when he was elected to the Oklahoma House of Representatives in 1967. He went on to hold numerous offices, including stints as a state senator (1969-1977), mayor of Tulsa, the state's second largest city (1978-1984), and as a member of the US House of Representatives (1987-1994).

The Oklahoma Republican first became chairman of the Senate Environment and Public Works Committee in 2003, and served as the committee's top Republican until 2017. His time on the committee overlapped significantly with that of former Democratic Sen. Barbara Boxer of California, who served as chair of the committee from 2007 to 2015.

Inhofe's position as chair of the environmental committee offered him a prominent platform from which he denied the science behind climate change.

"With all of the hysteria, all of the fear, all of the phony science, could it be that man-made global warming is the greatest hoax ever perpetrated on the American people?" asked Inhofe in a July 2003 floor speech. "It sure sounds like it.''

In 2009, he claimed that a trove of leaked emails from a group of researchers at the University of East Anglia in the United Kingdom had proven that the science behind climate change "has been pretty well debunked."

Former Democratic Vice President Al Gore, who's focused on advocating for solutions to climate change and global warming since his time in office, was also a frequent target of Inhofe's. In 2010, the senator told ABC News that the planet is "in a cycle now that all the scientists agree is going into a cooling period" after giving a speech earlier that year drawing attention to an igloo built by his grandchildren dubbed "Al Gore's New Home."

He even wrote an entire book, "The Greatest Hoax: How the Global Warming Conspiracy Threatens Your Future," in 2012.

But Inhofe's most infamous moment may have come in February 2015, when he tossed a snowball on the Senate floor as part of a speech aimed at disproving climate change.

"We keep hearing that 2014 has been the warmest year on record," said Inhofe as he removed the snowball from a plastic bag. "It's very, very cold out. Very unseasonable."

But despite his record on climate change, Inhofe notably had a warm friendship with his counterpart Boxer, a liberal Democrat who was outspoken about the need to address climate change. The duo worked together on legislation to regulate toxic chemicals, improve transportation systems, and securing $200 million in emergency funds to address the water crisis in Flint, Michigan.

"She has every right to be wrong," Inhofe quipped in an interview with the Associated Press in 2016. Boxer, for her part, said she and Inhofe "respect each other and we don't waste a lot of time arguing."

And that partnership was widely recognized in the Senate.

"I hate to see the Boxer-Inhofe team come to an end," said then-Senate Majority Leader Mitch McConnell at the time, remarking on Boxer's planned retirement.

And Inhofe even earned praise from Independent Sen. Bernie Sanders of Vermont, a liberal firebrand and 2-time Democratic presidential candidate. Asked in March 2016 which Republican he is closest to, yet shares significant disagreements with, Sanders named Inhofe.

"Jim is a climate change denier, he is really, really conservative," said Sanders, noted that even praising Inhofe had the potential to "probably ruin his political career."

"But you know what? He's a decent guy, and I like him, and he and I are friends," he said.

• Hikers and mountaineers are finding ancient human artifacts in the melting glaciers of the Alps.
• Some discoveries are valuable snapshots of ancient economies, while others are total mysteries.
• Glacial archaeologists must race against time, decipher puzzling clues, and avoid dangerous viruses.

Hikers and mountaineers are stumbling on mysterious ancient objects in the Swiss Alps, and their discoveries are keeping archaeologists busy.

From the Iron Age to the Ancient Romans to the Middle Ages, people traveled across the Alps's icy mountain passes with cows, mules, oil, wine, skis, weapons, and more.

Their lost or abandoned belongings are now surfacing as the mountains' glaciers melt, revealing clues about past civilizations and eras.

Archaeologists gave Business Insider an inside look at some of their most mysterious and most revealing discoveries.

Melting glaciers in the Swiss Alps are revealing objects that humans have left behind over the ages.

Switzerland has more glaciers than any other European country, and they're receding quickly as global temperatures rise. In 2022 and 2023, the country lost 10% of its total glacier volume, according to the Swiss Academy of Sciences.

People who find unique artifacts lying on the ice sometimes take them as keepsakes.

This wooden statue, for example, hung on a mountaineer's living room wall for nearly 20 years before museum curator Pierre-Yves Nicod saw an old email about it and reached out.

The mountaineer had found the statue soaked in meltwater in 1999 and wiped it down with modern cleaning products, which could have damaged the ancient object.

Still, after he donated it in 2018, archaeologists managed to date the wood to the 1st or 2nd century BC — the Iron Age.

As the ice melts and discoveries accelerate, archaeologists in the town of Sion collect these objects for research.

The Valais History Museum sits atop a steep hill towering in the center of town. It's at the forefront of the new field of glacial archaeology. The museum has even sent its artifacts on a traveling glacial archaeology exhibit.

The archives, where additional artifacts are kept and studied, are in a discrete building in a different part of town. Glacial findings are hidden in a giant freezer in the basement and rooms full of bins.

In the museum's archives, researchers are studying new objects closely.

Findings from glaciers are revealing more about human history and ancient economies in the region.

But it's a challenge. Up on the glacier, there's often nothing else associated with the artifact. There are no structures, roads, ancient cities, or other objects that can offer clues about an artifact's origins or purpose.

"It's one of the difficulties of glacial archaeology that we find these objects in the ice, and therefore out of all archaeological context," Nicod said.

Business Insider spoke with Nicod in French and translated his words into English.

Some discoveries are total mysteries, like all these sticks.

All these sticks come from the same pass, or "col," between mountain peaks. Since that's far above the tree line, the sticks wouldn't be there unless humans brought them.

Some of the sticks date to the time of the Romans, who used the Celtics as guides over the glaciers and through the Alps, according to Romain Andenmatten, a local archaeologist. He thinks the Celtics used sticks to mark the passage.

But the archaeologists were still working on radiocarbon dating the sticks. And they continue to find more sticks each season when they visit the glacier.

"We go back, we go back, and we still find wood," Nicod said. "This is really a research in progress."

Archaeologists still aren't sure what the little wooden statue was for, either.

Maybe when people walked across the col, they placed this object there for "divine protection," Nicod speculated. Or maybe it marked a border. Maybe someone simply lost it on their long mountain trek.

Like the statue, many glacier artifacts are organic materials — wood, plant materials, leather — things that don't survive well at lower altitudes where they aren't frozen.

That means artifacts like these are not common in archaeological digs. They don't have analogs in ancient cities or tombs — places that provide the context to figure out an item's purpose.

In the case of this statue, "We have no comparison," Nicod said.

Other discoveries, like these valuable belongings of a 17th-century man, shed light on the ancient Alps economy.

This wealthy traveler is a mystery archaeologists believe they've solved.

Based on his fine clothes, coins from Northern Italy, and weapons from present-day Germany, the archaeologists think he was a merchant. Two mules whose remains were discovered nearby may have been carrying his wares.

Archaeologists suspect the man died in an accident, such as falling into a crevasse in the glacier.

He's a remarkably detailed snapshot of an ancient economy that stretched across the Alps. For centuries, people have braved treacherous cols and glaciers to reach settlements on the other side of the mountains.

Some artifacts could carry long-extinct diseases like the Black Plague.

Archaeologists have to be careful and wash their hands after handling the remains of animals or people since they could carry viruses or other microbes that are still viable from being frozen.

Researchers have previously found active viruses frozen in Tibetan glaciers and Arctic permafrost, tens of thousands of years old. Those viruses were prehistoric and suited to plants or amoebas, but there are also more recent, human-adapted pathogens like plague or smallpox that could easily be preserved in the ice.

There are relics in the Alps glaciers from the Middle Ages, including the peak of the Black Plague. The Valais archaeologists haven't had any infections from ancient microbes, Andenmatten told BI, but he doesn't want to become an "archaeological experiment."

"We know that in other regions they have problems with that," Andenmatten said.

For example, thawing permafrost in Siberia released anthrax that infected dozens of people and killed a child in 2016.

Nicod is convinced this wooden artifact is a handle for some kind of tool. It fits perfectly in his hand.

It's from the Iron Age. Nicod speculated that it was the handle of a hooked blade for cutting back plants. Whatever it is, it's impeccably preserved.

"These are exceptional wooden objects that would have been destroyed elsewhere," he said.

Many objects are vulnerable once the ice around them melts. Archaeologists have to hurry.

Once they melt out to the surface of a glacier, leather and other organic materials can be destroyed by the elements and the meltwater in just two years, Andenmatten said.

Some of the wood sticks from the Col Collon, for example, had fungus growing on them. In glacial archaeology, that's an emergency. They had to dry the wood as quickly as possible, then put it in an anoxic (oxygen-deprived) chamber for several weeks to kill the fungus.

"You have to have a rapid response, which is problematic for glacial archaeology," Andenmatten said.

To help save as many objects as possible, the archaeologists created an app for hikers to report their findings.

The IceWatcher app is an example of a growing practice of citizen science, where researchers recruit enthusiasts to help them collect information in the field.

Hikers reported about 30 discoveries on the app in its first two years, according to Andenmatten. About half of those discoveries were recent human remains or old bombs, which became the police's responsibility, while the rest have been interesting finds for the archaeologists, he said.

Some objects that melt out may not be found until they've decomposed.

"We say that glacial archaeology is to find a needle in an iceberg," Andenmatten said.

"I think the citizen science is a good solution," he added.

• Couples, friends, and pet parents are sharing DIY beaded bracelets on TikTok and Instagram reels.
• The carefully chosen beads in each bracelet match their loved one's eye color.
• This trend echoes the sentiment and imagery of Georgian "lover's eye" jewelry.

If you stumble across the song "Trees and Flowers" by '80s group Strawberry Switchblade on TikTok or Instagram reels, you'll find a slew of beaded bracelets looking back at you — literally.

In a recent trend, romantic partners, friends, and pet owners are using each other's eyes as inspiration for their DIY summertime accessory of choice.

Some of the most popular videos are racking up over a million likes and over 15 million views on Instagram and TikTok.

And whether the creators know it or not, they're connecting to a rich history of eye-related tokens of affection, too.

The trend starts with color-matching beads to a loved one's eyes

This modern trend starts at a craft store. There, creators root around for the beads that most resemble their loved one's eye color — a step executed with varying degrees of success.

Some of the beads, though, are striking matches, with the chosen eye reflected down to the undertones and small flecks of color.

Then, it's time to string them together. Among the finished products, you might see a pair of besties rotating back and forth between their green- and blue-eye-inspired beads or find pet parents incorporating their fur babies' eye colors into their jewelry strands.

After all, wearing the colors of someone's eye is even more personal and less obvious than wearing their initial.

As antique jewelry dealer and owner of 21st Finds Anne Bos put it, knowing the fine details of someone's eye color is a sign of a deep, intimate connection.

"To know someone that closely that you know their eye color is a sign of personal connection," she told BI. "For instance, I know the color of my husband's eyes pretty well, but I don't know the color of my neighbor's eyes — even though we chat quite frequently."

Gen Z isn't the first generation to incorporate eyes into jewelry

Eye imagery has been integrated into jewelry for thousands of years.

The style and sentiment behind this modern occurrence, though, is particularly reminiscent of Georgian eye miniatures, later termed "lover's eyes."

"They were sentimental pieces of jewelry created with the notion that an individual's eye conveys something intimate and deeply personal about an individual," said Graham Boettcher, art historian and coauthor of "Lover's Eyes: Eye Miniatures from the Skier Collection."

Lover's eyes became particularly popular in the late 18th century.

Social customs at the time often required young people to be separated from their potential romantic partners, which is why Bos describes one's gaze as far more intimate and powerful.

You may be most familiar with such formalities from "Bridgerton" and its "Queen Charlotte" spin-off. Incidentally, the mythology behind lover's eye jewelry is rooted in the tangled love story of Queen Charlotte and King George III's son, the future King George IV.

George, then the Prince of Wales, became enraptured by a woman named Maria Fitzherbert. This royal romance was controversial at the time because Fitzherbert was twice-widowed and Catholic.

As the story goes, George still pursued her and professed his love by sending her a miniature portrait of his eye.

Bos said a portrait of his eye was seen as far more romantic and intimate than a full portrait of himself. Apparently, it worked. Maria eventually became George's longtime companion.

After the royal's big move, lover's eyes became an even bigger trend.

"You'd go to a miniaturist and say, 'I want to give my eye to my wife, my mistress,'" Boettcher told BI. "Both genders were commissioning them."

Bos said lover's eyes were huge for about 50 years — until around the time the photograph was invented.

The beauty of the current and past trend is that it can be a secret for the person wearing it

Some lover's eyes were worn openly as bracelets or brooches, and others were tucked away in layers of clothing or hidden inside lockets.

Regardless, part of the charm of this jewelry was that the identity of the eye was a secret kept between the subject and the wearer — or, as Boettcher added, an open secret (as was the case with the Prince of Wales).

With Gen Z's modern take, the fact that the eye "has been reduced to just the eye color adds that element of secrecy even with it being out in the open because only the wearer knows who it refers to," Boettcher added.

Like a Georgian lover's eye, the modern bracelets are a physical link of love — and they can still carry a secret (but perhaps only if your video about making them doesn't go viral).

• Larry Ellison, the 79-year-old cofounder of Oracle, is one of the most interesting men in tech.
• Whether yacht racing, buying Hawaiian islands, or trash-talking competitors, he keeps it lively.
• Now, he's one of the world's richest people with a net worth of about $152 billion.

Larry Ellison is the founder and chief technology officer at software company Oracle. Now, he's also the world's seventh richest man and has a net worth of $160 billion, according to the Bloomberg Billionaires Index.

The billionaire's fortunes have surged by $14 billion thanks to spiking demand for generative AI. The windfall puts him ahead of tech execs like Google cofounder Sergey Brin and former Microsoft chief executive Steve Ballmer. 

The 79-year-old started Oracle in 1977, and decades later he's still one of the top dogs in Silicon Valley despite living in Hawaii full time — and owning an entire island. Ellison has also been a major investor in Tesla, Salesforce, and even reportedly had a seat on Apple's board of directors for a while.

Outside the office, the billionaire boasts an impressive watch collection and indulges in hobbies like yacht racing. His children have made their own names in the film industry, and his son David Ellison is set to become the CEO of Paramount after its merger with his Skydance Media production company.

Here's a look at the life and career of Ellison so far.

Lawrence Joseph Ellison was born in the Bronx on August 17, 1944, the son of a single mother named Florence Spellman.

When he was 9 months old, Larry came down with pneumonia, Vanity Fair reported. His mom sent him to Chicago to live with his aunt and uncle, Lillian and Louis Ellison.

Vanity Fair reported that Louis, his adoptive father, was a Russian immigrant who took the name "Ellison" in tribute to the place in which he entered the US: Ellis Island.

Ellison is a college dropout.

Ellison went to high school in Chicago's South Side before attending the University of Illinois at Urbana-Champaign. When his adoptive mother died during his second year at college, Ellison dropped out. He tried college again later at the University of Chicago but dropped out again after only one semester, Vanity Fair reported.

In 1966, a 22-year-old Ellison moved to Berkeley, California — near what would become Silicon Valley and already the place where the tech industry was taking off.

He made the trip from Chicago to California in a flashy turquoise Thunderbird that he thought would make an impression in his new life, Vanity Fair reported.

Ellison bounced around from job to job, including stints at companies like Wells Fargo and the mainframe manufacturer Amdahl. Along the way, he learned computer and programming skills.

In 1977, Ellison and partners Bob Miner and Ed Oates founded a new company, Software Development Laboratories.

The company started with $2,000 of funding.

Ellison and company were inspired by IBM computer scientist Edgar F. Codd's theories for a so-called relational database — a way for computer systems to store and access information, Britannican said. Nowadays, they're taken for granted, but in the '70s, they were a revolutionary idea.

The first version of the Oracle database was version 2 — there was no version 1.

In 1979, the company renamed itself Relational Software Inc., and in 1982, it formally became Oracle Systems Corp., after its flagship product.

In 1986, Oracle had its initial public offering, reporting revenue of $55 million.

As one of the key drivers of the growing computer industry, Oracle grew fast. The company is responsible for providing the databases in which businesses track information that is crucial to their operations.

Ellison became a billionaire at age 49. Now, he has a net worth of roughly $152 billion, according to Forbes, after racking up $50 billion in gains thanks to Oracle and Tesla stock. That makes him the seventh-richest person in the world.

Still, in 1990, Oracle had to lay off 10% of its workforce, about 400 people, because of what Ellison later described as "an incredible business mistake."

Oracle reported a loss of $36 million in September 1990 after admitting that it had miscalculated its revenue earlier that year, The New York Times reported.

It didn't get the decade off to a great start. After adjusting for that error, Oracle was said to be close to bankruptcy. At the same time, rivals like Sybase were eating away at Oracle's market share.

It took a few years, but by 1992, Ellison and Oracle managed to right the course with new employees and the popular Oracle7 database.

Ellison is known for his willingness to trash-talk competitors.

For much of the '90s, he and Oracle were locked in a public-relations battle with the competitor Informix, which went so far as to place a "Dinosaur Crossing" billboard outside Oracle's Silicon Valley offices at one point, Fortune reported in 1997.

His financial success has led to some expensive hobbies.

With Ellison as Oracle's major shareholder, his millions kept rolling in. He started to indulge in some expensive hobbies — including yacht racing. That's Ellison at the helm during a 1995 race.

He also partly financed the BMW Oracle USA sailing team, which won the America's Cup in 2010, according to Bloomberg.

Ellison was an early investor in Salesforce.

In 1999, Ellison's protégé, Marc Benioff, left Oracle to work on a new startup called Salesforce.com. Ellison was an early investor, putting $2 million into his friend's new venture.

When Benioff found out that Ellison had Oracle working on a direct competitor to Salesforce's product, he tried to force his mentor to quit Salesforce's board. Instead, Ellison forced Benioff to fire him — meaning Ellison kept his shares in Salesforce.

Given that Salesforce is now a $267 billion company, Ellison personally profits even when his competitors do well. It has led to a love-hate relationship between the two executives that continues to this day, with the two taking shots at each other in the press.

The dot-com boom of the late '90s benefited Oracle.

All of those new dot-com companies needed databases, and Oracle was there to sell them. Although investors lost out in the dot-com crash, Oracle came out of it stronger due to its acquisitions and the demand for software solutions.

With the coffers overflowing, Ellison was able to lead Oracle through a spending spree once the dot-com boom was over and prices were low.

In 2005, for example, Oracle snapped up the HR software provider PeopleSoft for $10.3 billion.

And in 2010, Oracle completed its acquisition of Sun Microsystems, a server company that started at about the same time as Oracle, in 1982. That acquisition gave Oracle lots of key technology, including control over the popular MySQL database.

Ellison has also spent lavishly over the years, so much so that his accountant, Philip Simon, once asked him to "budget and plan," according to Bloomberg.

Ellison has expensive taste. Over the years he's built up an impressive collection of Richard Mille watches, an expert previously told BI. The timepieces start in the six-figure range and can go for over $1 million in some cases.

In 2009, the billionaire purchased the Indian Wells tennis tournament for a reported $100 million, The Los Angeles Times reported.

In 2010, Ellison signed the Giving Pledge.

By signing the pledge, Ellison promised to donate 95% of his fortune before he dies. And in May 2016, Ellison donated $200 million to a cancer treatment center at the University of Southern California, Forbes reported.

Starting in the 2010s, Ellison started to take more of a back seat at Oracle, handing more responsibilities to trusted lieutenants, like Mark Hurd and Safra Catz, then Oracle's copresidents.

Ellison hired Hurd, a former CEO of HP, in 2010, Inc reported. Catz has made a reputation for herself among analysts for what they describe as brilliant business strategy.

But Ellison's spending didn't slow down. In 2012, he bought 98% of the Hawaiian island of Lanai.

Ellison founded a startup called Sensei in 2016 that does hydroponic farming and owns a wellness retreat on Lanai.

He also purchased Hawaiian budget airline Island Air in 2014, before selling a controlling interest in the airline two years later after it struggled financially.

In 2014, Ellison officially stepped down as Oracle CEO.

Ellison handed control over to Hurd and Catz, who became co-CEOs. Ellison now serves as the company's chairman and chief technology officer. Following Hurd's death in 2019, Catz became the sole CEO.

In 2016, Ellison scored a personal coup: the purchase of NetSuite.

Back in 1998, Ellison had made a $125 million investment in ex-Oracle exec Evan Goldberg's startup business-management software firm, NetSuite. It ended up working out well for Ellison when NetSuite CEO Zach Nelson negotiated the sale of the company to Oracle for $9.3 billion, netting Ellison a cool $3.5 billion in cash for his stake.

NetSuite investor T. Rowe Price tried to block the deal, citing Ellison's conflict of interest, but the sale closed in November 2016.

He's used his billions in a variety of ways: he invested in educational platform maker Leapfrog Enterprises and was an early investor in the ill-fated blood-testing company Theranos.

Ellison has held shares in some of the most recognizable companies, one of which was the infamous blood-testing company Theranos, founded by Elizabeth Holmes. It had a promising future until its flaws were exposed and Holmes received a prison sentence.

When Steve Jobs returned to Apple as CEO back in 1997, he asked Ellison to sit on the board. Ellison served for a while, but felt that he couldn't devote the time and left in 2002, according to Forbes. Compensation for his role was an option to buy about 70,000 shares, which would've amounted to about $1 million at the time of his departure.

Ellison owns homes on the East and West coasts as part of a multibillion-dollar real-estate portfolio.

Ellison reportedly owns the Astor Beechwood Mansion in Newport, Rhode Island, and a home in Malibu. Ellison also has houses in Palm Beach, Florida and more in a multibillion-dollar real-estate portfolio.

Both of his two children work in the film industry.

His daughter, Megan, is an Oscar-nominated film producer and the founder of Annapurna Pictures. The company has produced films like "Zero Dark Thirty" and "American Hustle."

Ellison's son, David, is also in the film business. His company, Skydance Media, has produced movies like "Terminator: Dark Fate" and films in the "Mission: Impossible" franchise.

After months of discussions in 2024, Skydance Media and Paramount agreed to a deal, creating "New Paramount," which David will be CEO of. He has plans to "improve profitability, foster stability and independence for creators, and enable more investment in faster growing digital platforms," the companies said.

Ellison has a reputation as an international, jet-setting playboy.

Ellison has been married and divorced four times. He's most recently dated Nikita Kahn, a model and actress.

Ellison was one of the few tech leaders who had a friendly relationship with former President Donald Trump.

Ellison said publicly that he supported Trump and wants him to do well, and hosted a Trump fundraiser at his Rancho Mirage home in February, though he did not attend. The fundraiser caused an outcry among Oracle employees, who started a petition asking senior Oracle leadership to stand up to Ellison.

Catz, the CEO of Oracle, also had close ties to the Trump administration, having served on Trump's transition team. 

Ellison and Trump remained close during Trump's time in office and reportedly spoke on the phone about possible coronavirus treatments. Trump also supported Oracle's bid to buy TikTok, calling Oracle a "great company."

In December 2018, Ellison joined the board of directors at Tesla, where he's been a major investor.

Earlier in 2018, Ellison described Tesla CEO Elon Musk as a "close friend," and defended him from critics. When Musk acquired Twitter — now X — in 2022, Ellison offered to invest $1 billion.

Musk went on to help Ellison reset his forgotten password, biographer Walter Isaacson wrote.

In December 2020, Ellison revealed that he moved to Lanai full-time.

The announcement came after Oracle decided to move its headquarters to Austin, leading Oracle employees to ask Ellison if he planned to move to Texas too.

"The answer is no," Ellison wrote in a company-wide email. "I've moved to the state of Hawaii and I'll be using the power of Zoom to work from the island of Lanai."

He signed the email: "Mahalo, Larry."

He left Tesla's board in August 2022.

In a proxy filing in June 2022, the electric vehicle maker revealed that Ellison would be leaving the board. Since then, he and Musk have appeared to maintain their close relationship.

Oracle had a record-breaking 2023, and cemented itself in the new age of artificial intelligence.

Oracle's shares continued to hit records, CNBC reported. The company proved that it's not going any where any time soon.

In 2023, Oracle backed OpenAI rival Cohere.

Oracle joined other tech giants, like Salesforce, in backing the tech startup in June 2023. It began offering generative AI to its clients based on tech made by Cohere.

"Cohere and Oracle are working together to make it very, very easy for enterprise customers to train their own specialized large language models while protecting the privacy of their training data," Ellison previously said.

Oracle announced in April that it would be moving its headquarters to Nashville, Tennessee.

Despite its big move to Austin only four years ago, Ellison said that Oracle is planning to move its world headquarters to Nashville, Tennessee.

In April 2024, the exec announced that Oracle has plans for a "huge campus" in Nashville that will one day serve as the software giant's world headquarters. The company relocated from the San Francisco area to Austin, Texas in 2020.

"It's the center of the industry we're most concerned about, which is the healthcare industry," Ellison said at the Oracle Health Summit in Nashville, CNBC reported.

Matt Weinberger and Taylor Nicole Rogers contributed to an earlier version of this story.

Correction: May 7, 2024 — An earlier version of this story misstated Larry Ellison's role at Oracle. He's the chief technology officer, not the CEO.

Ellison's wealth jumped $14 billion after record earnings from Oracle.

Oracle's cloud applications business saw its shares spike by 13% in June 2024 after the company posted strong annual earnings due to demand for generative AI, Fortune reported. Ellison, who now serves as Oracle's CTO and owns about 40% of the company's cloud sector, got a $14 billion boost to his fortune.

The company also announced a partnership with AI startup Cohere, enabling its enterprise customers to build their own generative AI apps. "Cohere and Oracle are working together to make it very, very easy for enterprise customers to train their own specialized large language models while protecting the privacy of their training data," Ellison said during the company's earnings call.

• This post originally appeared in the Insider Today newsletter.
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Hello! I'm Jordan Parker Erb, and I'll be filling in for Dan DeFrancesco all week while he's on vacation. Have you been seeing a lot of Alo accessories and Asics sneakers lately? They're just two of the status symbols that men are obsessed with this year.

By the way — if you have a minute, consider taking Business Insider's survey. Your feedback can help shape BI's future.

In today's big story, we're looking at how new AI tools are helping workers bluff their way through interviews.

What's on deck:

• Markets: Biden's top labor official says the "coveted soft landing" is here.
• Tech: Everyone from Amazon to Uber is using artificial intelligence to gouge you on prices.
• Business: A $300,000 scam killed one septuagenarian's dreams of retirement.

But first, is it really cheating if there are no rules?

If this was forwarded to you, sign up here.

The big story

A new interview hack

It's really hard to get a job right now. After a few years of employees calling the shots, employers once again have the upper hand — and they're making sure applicants know it.

In some cases, landing a job requires personality tests, on-site assessments, and several rounds of interviews (and that's assuming you don't get ghosted midway through).

But a new cohort of AI tools and startups is looking to make the interview process easier for candidates, Business Insider's Rob Price writes — by quietly telling them the right answers to interview questions in real time.

Some people have built homemade AI tools to help interviewees, releasing them online for free. Others, like Final Round AI, are trying to bring it into the mainstream.

A startup developing AI-powered tools for job seekers, Final Round AI offers an AI résumé builder, a cover letter writing service, and a mock interview tool. More controversially, it has its Copilot: an app that listens in on an interview and feeds answers to the interviewee.

Michael Guan, the startup's CEO, called it a "magical teleprompter" — but made it clear he doesn't consider it cheating. He's not the only one looking to AI to change the interview process.

The use of artificial intelligence in job interviews is at the center of a heated debate in Silicon Valley.

Gaming the interview process is nothing new. As Rob reported in 2022, some people go as far as to hire stand-ins to do the interviews for them in risky bait-and-switch schemes.

But the use of AI, in particular, has the industry up in arms.

BI's Melia Russell found that no one can seem to agree upon the use of AI chatbots in technical interviews. Some say they want to see a candidate's abilities without a technical crutch. Others say banning AI chatbots in interviews is like prohibiting calculators during math tests — if workers can use the tech in their jobs, why not in the interview process, too?

Some startups, Melia found, are now changing their tests and asking applicants to complete chatbot-resistant tasks.

But for those who don't see AI assistance as cheating, it's irrelevant. Guan, the Final Round AI CEO, told Rob that if an applicant can use AI to ace an interview, then they should be able to use it "to become the top performer in their daily jobs."

Regardless of their take on AI-assisted interviews, several of the people who spoke with Rob and Melia said the industry's technical-interview process is broken. The question now, Rob writes, is whether chatbots will change the technical-interview process — for better or worse.

3 things in markets

1. Fed tees up for potential interest rate cut. The "coveted soft landing" is here, President Joe Biden's top labor official told BI, as the US continues to see a strong yet slowing jobs market. That could give the Fed the confidence it needs to cut rates in September.
2. Meet the Brevan Howard portfolio managers with the most capital. Since cofounder Alan Howard's departure in 2019, the $35 billion hedge fund Brevan Howard has changed considerably. Its five biggest portfolio managers are part of a much larger and diversified talent roster than when Howard had the reins.
3. TSMC rides Nvidia's hype to $1 trillion. Chip giant Taiwan Semiconductor Manufacturing Company, one of Nvidia's suppliers, briefly crossed the $1 trillion valuation mark on Monday after gaining as much as 4.8%. It comes after Nvidia's meteoric rise this year, which led it to surpass Apple to become the world's second-most-valuable company.

3 things in tech

1. Personalized pricing makes it hell to pay. You might be willing to pay more for an airplane seat than the guy next to you — and airlines know it. In a world ruled by personalized pricing, you never know if you're being ripped off.
2. Robots in the real world. Startups are building robots that can perceive and react to the human world, and venture firms predict spatial intelligence will be the next big thing in AI. The goal is to develop robots that can handle a variety of complex tasks rather than a single repetitive motion.
3. Be there or be square. After pandemic-era lockdowns, San Francisco's techies are ready to hang out IRL. As they embrace an in-person culture, startup founders, venture capitalists, and tech workers are hanging out at these five hot spots.

3 things in business

1. How a scam killed a grandpa's retirement dreams. Leonid Shteyn was scammed out of $300,000 at 70 years old, forcing him to start from scratch in advanced age. He says Bank of America, which the deceptive transactions went through, and a lack of government oversight are to blame.
2. Confusion following the Paramount-Skydance merger. Paramount's top execs insisted it was "business as usual" following the mega media deal. But in the same breath, it notified employees of looming layoffs without saying who would be cut. Meanwhile, the company's CEO-to-be keeps calling it a "tech enterprise," raising doubts about his strategy.
3. How a sexting scandal rocked the romance world — and unmasked its most popular narrator. Joe Arden, known for narrating innumerable smutty audiobooks, built a career seducing women with his voice. Then, a sexting scandal turned BookTok against him.

In other news

• Read the letter: Biden tells House Democrats to stop calling on him to drop out.
• Retiring early sounds like the dream — but not achieving FIRE could actually help you live longer.
• The Arizona primary where the MAGA movement is devouring itself.
• Videos show what hit a Ukrainian children's hospital, and Russia is 'gaslighting,' war and weapons experts say.
• The Apple Watch is reportedly getting a birthday makeover.
• Gen Z doesn't know how to flirt.
• Waymo's robotaxis are better than some San Francisco drivers.
• Companies are going bankrupt at the fastest pace since the pandemic.
• This old 2020 email from Mark Zuckerberg might just be the explanation for his extreme makeover.

What's happening today

• Fed Chairman Jerome Powell testifies on the Semiannual Monetary Policy Report in Congress.
• NATO summit begins. The stakes are high for Joe Biden, whose poor debate performance last week put his political future in peril.
• Harvey Weinstein appears at court in New York. Prosecutors are seeking a retrial for the entertainment mogul's overturned rape and sexual assault conviction.

The Insider Today team: Jordan Parker Erb, editor, in New York. Hallam Bullock, senior editor, in London. Annie Smith, associate producer, in London. Amanda Yen, fellow, in New York. Lisa Ryan, executive editor, in New York.

• A "90 Day Fiancé" contestant is also one of the sperm donors in Netflix's "The Man with 1000 Kids."
• Kyle Gordy appeared on "90 Day Fiancé: Love in Paradise" earlier this year.
• Gordy, who claims to have fathered over 70 kids, also runs a sperm donation website.

Viewers who have watched the latest conversation-starting Netflix docuseries, "The Man with 1000 Kids," may be wondering what happened to the other prolific sperm donors featured.

For Kyle Gordy, the show wasn't his first brush with fame. He appeared on "90 Day Fiancé" earlier this year, and was the focus of a 2021 Vice documentary about sperm donation.

"The Man with 1000 Kids" docuseries spotlights Jonathan Jacob Meijer, a man from The Netherlands who has admitted to having 550 children around the world. In 2023, he was banned from donating sperm to new families.

The third episode suggests that Meijer was involved with a Facebook group, "Kenya Sperm Donors," made up of men who traveled the world to donate to fertility clinics. Gordy is an admin of this group.

It's unclear what motivated the men to donate repeatedly around the world, although the families who used Meijer as a donor suggest in the docuseries that they're driven by ego rather than profit or fame.

In the 2021 Vice documentary "36 Kids & Counting: The DIY Sperm Donor," he said: "Women want to have kids and I'm obviously not using my sperm so I mean… I figure I can help them out."

Fast forward three years, and Gordy was paired up with a German woman named Ani on "90 Day Fiancé." He was open with her about being a sperm donor and claimed that he had fathered over 70 children.

Gordy was criticized online after the third episode of the reality series aired, because he kept rearranging his genitals while on a date with Ani, claiming this would prevent his sperm from overheating.

"Sitting down too much kills your sperm. So I try to adjust them so they're not like getting overheated," he said. The couple broke up at the end of the series.

Kyle Gordy's social media accounts show him traveling the world

According to his Facebook and Instagram accounts, Gordy continued to travel the world after his appearance on "90 Day Fiancé."

This year, he has posted photos from Singapore, Japan, the UK, Ireland, Australia, Switzerland, France, and Norway.

It's not clear whether the photos are from consecutive trips or if some are older photos from previous vacations.

Gordy also runs a website, Be Pregnant Now, where he offers fertility advice to couples who are trying to have a baby.

"I live in Los Angeles and I have been donating for a few years and have had multiple pregnancies. I have helped create many happy families," the website reads.

It adds: "My fertility has increased since I started donating. This large increase in fertility has allowed me to help get many women pregnant; my years of being a sperm donor attribute to this success. I live a very strict lifestyle and avoid any factors that may harm my fertility."

Representatives for TLC did not immediately respond to Business Insider's request for comment.

• Mark Zuckerberg said in a newly revealed email, "I am the most well-known person of my generation."
• It's a bold statement, and it might be true.
• But is he more popular than Taylor Swift and Cristiano Ronaldo? It's basically impossible to know.

Mark Zuckerberg, who just celebrated his 40th birthday, is a millennial. But is he the most famous millennial? He thinks so.

In a 2020 email exchange posted by the Tech Emails newsletter, Zuckerberg sent an email to Meta public policy head Nick Clegg, Peter Thiel (who was on the Facebook board at the time), Sheryl Sandberg, Antonio Lucio, and Marc Andreessen, discussing his public image as a millennial.

The emails were released as part of legal documents in Tennesee v. Meta, one of several lawsuits in which states are suing Meta over its role in harm to children.

In the email exchange, Zuckerberg said that he and Thiel have been having discussions about the future, how power will shift from baby boomers to millennials (sorry, Gen X, erased again), and how they should focus on thinking about policies that will affect the younger generation. (Meta declined to comment on these emails or Zuckerberg's fame standings.)

Then, Zuckerberg writes:

Finally, I think there's also some distinction between me and the company here. While our company has a special role in the lives of this generation, this is likely particularly important for how I show up because I am the most well-known person of my generation.

So, is he the most well-known person of his generation?

Put aside for a moment the ick of seeing someone say that in an email. And well, he does have a point. He's got to be at least one of the most famous millennials — especially if you're thinking globally, not just in the US.

Globally, there are billions of people who use Facebook. That doesn't necessarily mean everyone knows that it's run by a guy named Mark, but probably a good chunk of them do. Young people, old people, people in every country.

It's nearly impossible to fact-check his claim, however, because there isn't a clear way to quantify fame.

You can look at social media followings, focus group surveys like Q Score, or how many pages of Google results there are. There are also several academic papers that attempt to come up with new mathematical formulas to measure fame. A 2018 physics paper created a new model that attempted to calculate the fame of people who had died between 2016 and 2017, and came up with Muhammad Ali as the most famous (sounds about right).

Without a concrete measurement of fame, we can speculate on some other top contenders.

Who else could be the most well-known millennial?

Justin Bieber: Unlikely to be the most famous. Although he was intensely famous for a few years, I don't think his fame permeated enough past the membrane of his fellow millennial pop music fans.

LeBron James: He's a strong contender, but basketball isn't the most popular sport globally.

Cristiano Ronaldo: He has the most Instagram followers, although I think that's not a perfect measurement because it doesn't encompass all the young kids and others not using the app. His notoriety in the US is likely less than Zuckerberg's, but I'm pretty sure he'd beat the Meta chief on a global scale.

Lionel Messi: As a non-soccer fan, I don't want to attempt to litigate the popularity between Messi and Ronaldo, although I will say Ronaldo's Instagram stats seem to put him ahead.

Beyoncé: She is very, very famous. More famous than Zuck? Maybe. Probably? I think so.

Taylor Swift: Today, I think Swift would be the answer for most famous. But this email was from early 2020, just between "Lover" and "Folklore." Very well-known, but more so today than four years ago.

Shakira: Born in 1977! Not a millennial!

Prince William: Pretty well-known! But between him and Zuckerberg in 2020? I think it's a toss-up.

Kim Jung Un: I mean, he is a very well-known millennial.

Ultimately, reasonable people can disagree on who is the most well-known millennial. But Zuckerberg probably isn't too far off.

• John Jacob Astor built his fortune in the fur business and New York real estate.
• John Jacob Astor III and William Backhouse Astor Jr. cofounded the Waldorf-Astoria after a feud.
• Modern Astor descendants have been politicians, philanthropists, and British royal associates.

Astoria, Queens. Astor Place. The Waldorf-Astoria. Even if you're not a New Yorker, you've heard of these iconic places. You also probably know they're named for one very powerful family: the Astors.

To this day, the Astors' money and influence still make waves in society.

So how do you build a dynasty like this one, with money that lasts for generations? Take a look at how the Astors made their fortune.

This story was originally published in April 2012. It was updated in July 2024.

The Astors came from nothing.

Johann Jacob Astor worked as a butcher in Walldorf, southeastern Germany, Elizabeth Louisa Gebhard wrote in "The Life and Ventures of the Original John Jacob Astor." His ancestors are said to have been French Huguenots who'd fled to Germany after the revocation of the Edict of Nantes, which had granted protection to Protestants.

His son, John Jacob Astor, was born in Walldorf in 1763.

As a youngster, he worked for his father as a dairy salesman. He had three brothers, the eldest of whom, George, left home to work for an uncle in London who made musical instruments. Astor met up with him there after his 16th birthday.

John Jacob Astor built his fortune in the fur business and through buying and selling New York real estate.

After the Treaty of Paris was signed in 1783, he immigrated to New York and took a job with a fur trader. By 1800, he'd built up his own fur business and was worth $250,000, or about $6.2 million in 2024, according to Encyclopedia Britannica.

Astor also bought and sold acres upon acres of land in and around New York City, including what is now Times Square. 

In 1785, he married Sarah Todd. They had three children: Magdalena, John Jacob II, and William.

He was one of the wealthiest men in the US upon his death in 1848, according to the Library of Congress.

William Backhouse Astor continued his father's real-estate ventures and philanthropy.

He continued to invest in real estate by building over 700 stores and residences in New York City, according to Encyclopedia Britannica.

He also bequeathed thousands of dollars to St. Luke's Hospital on the Upper West Side and the Astor Library, which eventually became the New York Public Library.

William and his wife, Margaret, had seven children, the most prominent of which became John Jacob Astor III and William Backhouse Astor Jr.

William Jr. had some success as a developer in Florida. John Jacob Astor III, along with his wife Charlotte Gibbs, was a major philanthropist who founded the Children's Aid Society.

The iconic Waldorf-Astoria hotel in New York City was the result of a family feud between John III and William Jr.'s descendants.

John III's son, William Waldorf Astor, built the 13-story Waldorf Hotel in 1893 on 33rd Street and Fifth Avenue.

Waldorf Astor's cousin and rival, John Jacob Astor IV, built a taller hotel next door four years later to outdo him.

Eventually, the two hotels were joined together with a marble corridor, resulting in the first Waldorf-Astoria.

The simmering tensions prompted William Waldorf Astor to move to London in 1891.

There, he bought and restored the 125-acre Hever Castle in 1903, purchased the British newspaper The Observer in 1911, and obtained the rank of Viscount in 1917.

John IV perished in the sinking of the Titanic in 1912.

His body was identified two weeks later by the initials stitched into his suit and his gold pocket watch. The watch sold at auction for $1.5 million in April.

Still, the Astors remained a force. In 1931, the modern Waldorf Astoria opened on Park Avenue and became legendary for its service.

The Waldorf Astoria has hosted US presidents, dignitaries, and countless celebrities.

In 2014, the historic hotel was purchased by Chinese insurance group Anbang for $1.95 billion. In 2017, it closed for renovations to convert 375 rooms into luxury condominiums called The Towers of the Waldorf Astoria. The hotel is expected to reopen in 2025, GlobeSt reported.

Known for her charity work, Brooke Astor emerged as the matriarch of the American Astors.

Astor was the great-great granddaughter, by marriage, of John Jacob Astor.

She donated over $195 million to hospitals, cultural institutions, and community service programs in New York City through the Vincent Astor Foundation, according to The New York Community Trust. President Bill Clinton awarded her the Presidential Medal of Freedom in recognition of her philanthropy in 1998.

Brooke Astor died in 2007 at age 105 and was the subject of a four-page obituary in The New York Times.

Her son Anthony Marshall, was convicted of stealing millions of dollars from her in 2009 and sentenced to prison.

The British side of the Astor family continued to hold positions of power, as well.

Nancy Astor, Viscountess Astor, who was married to Waldorf Astor, 2nd Viscount Astor, became the first woman in the House of Commons in the chamber's history in 1919.

Her son, David Astor, rose to prominence as the longtime editor of The Observer and an anti-apartheid activist, the Los Angeles Times reported.

Modern members of the Astor family remain influential figures.

William Astor, 4th Viscount of Astor, is a member of the House of Lords and the stepfather of Samantha Cameron, the former British first lady married to David Cameron.

John Jacob Astor, 3rd Baron Astor of Hever, also sat in the House of Lords from 1986 until his retirement in 2022, according to the UK Parliament's official website.

William Waldorf Astor's great-great-granddaughter, Rose Astor, married Prince William's close friend, Hugh van Cutsem, in 2005. Their daughter, Grace van Cutsem, is perhaps best known as the young bridesmaid who appeared grumpy at Prince William and Kate Middleton's wedding in 2011, pictured above on the left.

Another great-great-grandchild of William Waldorf Astor, Harry Lopes, married Queen Camilla's daughter, Laura Parker-Bowles, in 2006.

• The Education Department has resumed processing Public Service Loan Forgiveness applications.
• Processing has been paused since May as borrowers were transitioned away from servicer MOHELA.
• The department will prioritize debt relief for borrowers who met PSLF requirements during the pause.

A major student-loan forgiveness program is once again up and running.

As of July 1, the Education Department resumed processing applications for the Public Service Loan Forgiveness program, which forgives student debt for government and nonprofit workers after 10 years of qualifying payments.

Application processing had been paused since May to allow the department time to transition borrowers away from student-loan company MOHELA, which had previously been the sole servicer of PSLF. Now, the task of managing PSLF will be split among several federal servicers, and the Education Department will oversee the program through studentaid.gov.

According to Federal Student Aid, the department is now working to update PSLF payment counts to ensure any payments borrowers made while application processing was paused are accounted for. With the Education Department overseeing PSLF, borrowers will see a range of updates, including the ability to monitor the status of their application and track PSLF progress on their student aid dashboards.

Additionally, Federal Student Aid's guidance said it would prioritize loan forgiveness for borrowers who met PSLF requirements during the processing pause.

"You will first receive a notice from ED that you have been approved for forgiveness followed by a separate notice from your servicer once the discharge is complete," the guidance said.

Borrowers who believe they have reached the amount of payments required for relief but do not see that reflected in their accounts can contact their servicer to request a forbearance. However, if their application is denied, the forbearance period will not count toward their relief, and they will be responsible for payments and any interest accrued during that period.

These changes to PSLF result from the Education Department's efforts to overhaul the student-loan industry and make repayment and forgiveness programs easier for borrowers to navigate. The department is also working toward completing its one-time account adjustments, in which it evaluates payments borrowers have made on PSLF and income-driven repayment plans to ensure they are up to date, potentially bringing them to the debt relief requirements.

Other debt relief efforts are in the works, as well. The Education Department is finalizing its broader debt relief plan — intended to benefit over 30 million borrowers — with the goal of implementation this fall. However, the presidential election and likely legal challenges could jeopardize that relief, leaving the fate of broad loan forgiveness uncertain.