Category: Finance

Summary: AI coding platform Cursor has closed a $2.3 billion funding round, achieving a $29.3 billion post-money valuation. The company has surpassed $1 billion in annualized revenue and grown to more than 300 employees since its 2023 launch, underscoring the lucrative potential of AI-powered developer tools. Cursor, developed by startup Anysphere, has emerged as one […]

The Trump administration has given corporations plenty of convenient excuses to retreat from their climate commitments, with its moves to withdraw from the Paris Agreement, roll back emissions regulations, and scale back clean energy incentives. But will the world’s largest corporations follow its lead? Some multinational companies have indeed scaled back. For instance, Wells Fargo […]

For most families, owning a home is the primary way to accumulate wealth and transfer that wealth to future generations. But in Philadelphia and other U.S. cities, studies have shown that if you live in a Black or Hispanic neighborhood, your home is more likely to be appraised below its market value when compared to […]

After 43 days, the U.S. government shutdown finally came to an end late on Nov. 12, 2025, when Congress voted through a long-overdue funding bill, which President Donald Trump promptly signed. But the prolonged gap in government-as-usual has come at a cost to the economy. The Conversation spoke with RIT economist Amitrajeet A. Batabyal on […]

Every fall I anticipate the winter holidays with almost childlike joy. I look forward to familiar traditions with friends and family, eggnog in my coffee, and the sense that everyone is feeling a little lighter and more connected. At the same time, I feel anxious and annoyed by the manufactured sense of urgency around gift […]

Headlines have been filled with talk of the catastrophic power of Hurricane Melissa after the Category 5 storm devastated communities across Jamaica, Cuba and Haiti in October 2025. But to see this as a singular disaster misses the bigger picture: Melissa didn’t hit stable, resilient islands. It hit islands still rebuilding from the last hurricane. […]

Technological innovations can seem relentless. In computing, some have proclaimed that “a year in machine learning is a century in any other field.” But how do you know whether those advancements are hype or reality? Failures quickly multiply when there’s a deluge of new technology, especially when these developments haven’t been properly tested or fully […]

As climate impacts intensify, the people most at risk remain the least financed. While adaptation — the act of strengthening communities to withstand climate shocks — is by necessity local, global capital flows haven’t followed suit, with less than 1% of global climate finance going toward community adaptation. The result is that those on the […]

The world is losing vast swaths of forests to agriculture, logging, mining and fires every year — more than 20 million acres in 2024 alone, roughly the size of South Carolina. That’s bad news because tropical forests in particular regulate rainfall, shelter plant and animal species and act as a thermostat for the planet by […]

Imagine walking out of a Walmart, Target or Costco. As you push your large shopping cart to your car, you ask yourself: Did I really need all that stuff? The answer is you probably didn’t. In a recent study, my co-authors Lina Wang, Sungho Park and I found that the presence of supercenters – large […]