Capitol Hill looked more like Capital Grill yesterday as Boeing CEO Dave Calhoun took a bipartisan barbecuing from a Senate subcommittee. This was the first time Boeing’s boss faced congressional lawmakers since an Alaska Airlines 737 Max 9 was forced to perform an emergency landing in January with a gaping hole in its fuselage.

Hours before Calhoun met with probing senators, the subcommittee received yet another whistleblower complaint, worsening Boeing’s bad look.

• Quality assurance investigator Sam Mohawk claimed that the planemaker was “losing hundreds” of faulty parts due to improper tracking and storage, and some of them may have ended up in aircraft.
• He also said he was told to hide the parts from the Federal Aviation Administration, and was retaliated against for speaking out.

The subcommittee said it has reviewed similar reports from other Boeing employees that “paint a troubling picture of a company that prioritizes speed of manufacturing and cutting costs over ensuring the quality and safety of aircraft.” The hearing took place with the company under a regulatory microscope: Federal investigators found various issues with its manufacturing processes, and the Justice Department is mulling criminal prosecution.

Boeing takes the stand

Calhoun, who was brought on as CEO in 2020 in the aftermath of two fatal Boeing accidents, began his testimony by apologizing to the crash victims’ family members in attendance.

He answered pointed questions about Boeing’s efforts to improve safety, the sufficiency of its management reshuffling, and whether he truly deserved his $32.8 million annual pay. Calhoun acknowledged that Boeing has issues with its safety culture, admitted that it had retaliated against whistleblowers, and lamented a shortage of trained workers—but assured that the company is committed to fixing issues.

Looking ahead: Calhoun will step down from his role at the end of this year, but Boeing is struggling to find a replacement, with several candidates reportedly turning down the offer.—SK

As mental health continues to deteriorate globally, Aura has set out to transform the $5.6t wellness market.

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Aura has already raised $10m+, including investments from legendary Silicon Valley investors like Cowboy Ventures and Berkeley SkyDeck, as well as executives from Spotify, Meta, and Apple. Every year, a quarter-billion minutes are spent in meditation and self-care on Aura.

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Nvidia is now the most valuable company in the world. Everything’s still coming up Jensen. The chipmaker passed Microsoft yesterday to become the world’s most valuable public company, topping $3.3 trillion in market cap. Earlier this month, it reached the $3 trillion mark for the first time, flying past Apple for second place. The AI boom has propelled Nvidia—which owns about 80% of the industry’s data center chip market—to new heights, enriching investors and CEO Jensen Huang along the way. Huang has added nearly $100 billion to his net worth in less than two years, making him the 13th richest person in the world as of June.

Amazon’s labor union joined forces with the Teamsters. Workers at a New York City Amazon warehouse voted almost unanimously to form a partnership with the International Brotherhood of Teamsters to help in its fight to secure better wages and working conditions. Since voting to unionize in 2022, the 5,500 Staten Island warehouse workers have failed to even bring Amazon to the bargaining table, as the e-commerce giant continues to contest the results of the vote. One labor expert told the Associated Press that the union’s association with the 1.3 million-member Teamsters is a “lifeline” to the group that had been “going nowhere.”

Netflix is turning former department stores into entertainment centers. The empty space that used to be a Sears at your local mall could soon turn into a spot to hang out with the Demogorgon from Stranger Things. The streaming company announced yesterday that it’s opening two 100,000+ square-foot entertainment venues—one at the King of Prussia Mall in Pennsylvania and the other at Galleria Dallas in Texas. It’s Netflix’s latest (and biggest) foray into live experiences, which are less about generating revenue directly and more geared toward drumming up fan interest in its content. Each “Netflix House” will have food, drinks, exclusive merch, and more.

For a guy who designed the Aston Martin V8, Henrik Fisker is having trouble designing a business model. His company, Fisker, filed for bankruptcy on Monday, citing market and macroeconomic headwinds just one year after it delivered its first electric vehicle.

Earlier this year, Fisker stopped production of its first model, the Ocean SUV, following numerous reports of malfunctions. The vehicle also became the subject of a viral video by popular YouTuber MKBHD called “This is the Worst Car I’ve Ever Reviewed.” Fisker is the second car company led by Fisker (the human) that’s filed for bankruptcy, following Fisker Automotive, which went Chapter 11-mode in 2013.

What went wrong? The Ocean not only suffered from glitches but also hit the market at a time when EV demand ran out of juice. Things weren’t much better inside the company: Multiple former workers anonymously alleged that the work environment was disorganized and chaotic and that the company prioritized dangerous cost-cutting measures, according to a report by Business Insider. A spokesperson from Fisker pushed back on former workers’ claims.

EV’s flop era. Fisker isn’t the first Tesla-wannabe to raise boatloads of cash with alacrity only to find out it has no idea how to build cars profitably. Lordstown Motors, Arrival, and Proterra have all filed for bankruptcy after succumbing to similar pitfalls.—CC

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Kids these days might be clearing out their inherited china hutches to display more modern collectibles. High-net-worth Gen Z and millennial investors are at least two times more likely than their Gen X and boomer counterparts to invest in expensive collectibles like wine, watches, and classic cars, according to a new Bank of America Private Bank survey.

The survey asked about the investing habits of 1,000+ people in the US with more than $3 million in investable assets and categorized respondents by age: either 21 to 43 or over 44. And among the younger set, stocks are out, sneakers are in:

• Only 47% of younger investors’ portfolios are made up of stocks and bonds, compared to 74% of their older counterparts’ holdings.
• When asked if they believe it’s possible to achieve “above-average investment returns” by investing exclusively in stocks and bonds, 72% of younger investors said: no <3.

Younger investors aren’t just stashing their money in tangible things they can display. About half of younger investors said they own crypto.

Bottom line: If you spent the 2008 financial crisis blaring Lady Gaga’s “The Fame” to avoid hearing your parents argue about a second mortgage, you are likely distancing yourself from traditional investment strategies.—MM

For more investing news, check out Brew Markets.

Geek Squad...assemble. Best Buy is training more than 30,000 employees to sell and repair Microsoft’s new AI-enhanced Copilot+ laptops, Bloomberg reported. That marks the retailer’s biggest training operation in a decade—or at least since your grandparents wanted to learn how to pair their AirPods. Best Buy is incentivized to train the Geeks and salespeople well since it owns exclusive sales rights to over 40% of Copilot+ models. And it could use a win: The company has endured 10 straight quarters of falling same-store sales.