For the first time in nearly 10 years, a Berkshire Hathaway employee claimed Warren Buffett’s $1 million grand prize for his company’s NCAA bracket contest.

An anonymous employee from aviation training company FlightSafety International, a subsidiary of Buffett’s Berkshire, won the annual internal bracket contest after correctly calling 31 of the 32 games in the first round of the men’s basketball tournament dubbed March Madness, according to a statement.

The 94-year-old Oracle of Omaha was finally able to give out the big prize after relaxing the rules multiple times since the competition’s inception in 2016. Originally, Buffett, a Creighton basketball fan, set out to award anyone who could perfectly predict the Sweet 16.

Then, in 2024, after the $1 million jackpot remained unclaimed, participants were given the advantage of waiving the results of the eight games among the No.1 and No. 2 seeds. Still, nobody cracked the code.

This year, the rules were changed again so anyone who picks the winners of at least 30 of the tournament’s 32 first-round games would be eligible to win the prize.

In fact, 12 Berkshire employees guessed 31 of the 32 first-round games correctly. The $1 million prize went to the person from that group that picked 29 games consecutively before a loss. That winner went on to pick 44 of the 45 games correctly.

The other 11 contestants are getting $100,000 each.

Fintech lender Affirm said Tuesday that it’s reached an agreement with JPMorgan Chase to offer its buy now, pay later loan services to merchants on the bank’s payments network.

U.S. merchants who use JPMorgan to handle payments can soon add Affirm to their checkout pages, according to a release. Consumers will have access to loans ranging from 30 days to 60 months, according to Affirm.

The deal follows a similar announcement from rival Klarna last month, in which the Swedish fintech said it would be available to JPMorgan’s merchants. Affirm and Klarna are increasingly going head-to-head as the buy now, pay later field matures in the U.S.; Affirm is publicly traded and seeking to steadily grow profits, while Klarna recently filed for a U.S. IPO.

“The demand for diverse payment options, flexibility, and seamless transactions from both merchants and their customers is at an all-time high,” Michael Lozanoff, global head of merchant services at J.P. Morgan Payments, said in the release.

“By incorporating Affirm as a payment method into our Commerce Platform, we are empowering businesses to deliver the services they need and the experiences that customers increasingly expect as part of their retail journey,” he said.

Affirm said the deal was an expansion of existing banking and processing relationships with JPMorgan, the largest U.S. bank by assets. It wasn’t immediately clear when the new option would be available to merchants.

Chinese tea chain Chagee filed for a U.S. initial public offering on Tuesday, seeking to trade on the Nasdaq using the ticker “CHA.”

The IPO filing comes as the company prepares to open its first U.S. store in the Westfield Century City mall in Los Angeles this spring.

Since its founding in 2017, the company has grown to more than 6,400 teahouses across China, Malaysia, Singapore and Thailand, as of Dec. 31, according to a regulatory filing. Roughly 97% of its locations are in China.

Chagee said it generated net income of $344.5 million from revenue of $1.7 billion in 2024.

Founder and CEO Junjie Zhang created the chain to modernize tea drinking after being inspired by the success of international coffee companies, according to a regulatory filing. China is Starbucks’ second-largest market.

Looking ahead, Chagee wants to “serve tea lovers in 100 countries, generate 300,000 employment opportunities worldwide, and deliver 15 billion cups of freshly brewed tea annually,” according to the company’s website.

If Chagee goes public on the Nasdaq, it will join the dwindling number of Chinese companies seeking a U.S. listing. From January 2023 to January 2024, the number of Chinese companies listed on the three largest U.S. exchanges fell 5%, according to the U.S.-China Economic and Security Review Commission.

As relations between the U.S. and Beijing have grown frostier, political scrutiny has dashed some Chinese companies’ hopes of a U.S. IPO. Shein is now planning a London IPO for later this year after lawmakers pushed back on its plans to go public on a U.S. exchange.

U.S. investors might also be wary to invest in another Chinese beverage chain after the example set by Luckin Coffee.

Luckin was founded in 2017 and grew quickly. By 2019, it had outnumbered the number of Starbucks locations in China and gone public on the Nasdaq.

But in 2020, Luckin disclosed that it had inflated its sales, resulting in its delisting from the Nasdaq. The company filed for Chapter 15 bankruptcy. Luckin emerged from bankruptcy by 2022, minus the executives that were responsible for the fraud.

Since then, it has overtaken Starbucks as China’s largest coffee retailer by sales.

Dollar Tree said Wednesday that it’s gaining market share with higher-income consumers and could raise prices on some products to offset President Donald Trump’s tariffs.

The discount retailer’s CEO, Michael Creedon, said the company is seeing “value-seeking behavior across all income groups.” While Dollar Tree has always relied on lower-income shoppers and gets about 50% of its business from middle-income consumers, sustained inflation has led to “stronger demand from higher-income customers,” Creedon said.

Dollar Tree’s success with higher-income shoppers follows similar gains from Walmart, which has made inroads with the cohort following the prolonged period of high prices.

Trump’s tariffs on certain goods from China, Mexico and Canada — and the potential for broad duties on trading partners around the world — have only added to concerns about stretched household budgets. While Dollar Tree will use tactics like negotiating with suppliers and moving manufacturing to mitigate the effect of the duties, it could also hike the prices of some items, Creedon said.

Dollar Tree has rolled out prices higher than its standard $1.25 products at about 2,900 so-called multi-price stores. Certain products can cost anywhere from $1.50 to $7 at those locations.

The retailer weighed in on higher-income customers and the potential effect of tariffs as it announced its fourth-quarter earnings. Dollar Tree also said it will sell its struggling Family Dollar chain for about $1 billion to a consortium of private-equity investors.

Dollar Tree said its net sales for continuing operations — its namesake brand — totaled $5 billion for the quarter, while same-stores sales climbed 2%. Adjusted earnings per share came in at $2.11 for the period.

It is unclear how the figures compare to Wall Street estimates.

For fiscal 2025, Dollar Tree expects net sales of $18.5 billion to $19.1 billion from continuing operations, with same-store sales growth of 3% to 5%. It anticipates it will post adjusted earnings of $5 to $5.50 per share for the year.

Creedon said the expected hit from the first round of 10% tariffs Trump levied on China in February would have been $15 million to $20 million per month, but the company has mitigated about 90% of that effect.

Additional 10% duties on China imposed this month, along with 25% levies on Mexico and Canada that have only partly taken effect, would hit Dollar Tree by another $20 million per month, Creedon said. The company is working to offset those duties, but did not include them in its financial guidance due to the confusion over which tariffs will take effect and when.

Investors have closely watched Nvidia’s week-long GPU Technology Conference (GTC) for news and updates from the dominant maker of chips that power artificial intelligence applications.

The event comes at a pivotal time for Nvidia shares. After two years of monster gains, the stock is down 15% over the past month and 22% below the January all-time high.

As part of the event, CEO Jensen Huang took questions from analysts on topics ranging from demand for its advanced Blackwell chips to the impact of Trump administration tariffs. Here’s a breakdown of how Huang responded — and what analysts homed in on — during some of the most important questions:

Huang said he “underrepresented” demand in a slide that showed 3.6 million in estimated Blackwell shipments to the top four cloud service providers this year. While Huang acknowledged speculation regarding shrinking demand, he said the amount of computation needed for AI has “exploded” and that the four biggest cloud service clients remain “fully invested.”

Morgan Stanley analyst Joseph Moore noted that Huang’s commentary on Blackwell demand in data centers was the first-ever such disclosure.

“It was clear that the reason the company made the decision to give that data was to refocus the narrative on the strength of the demand profile, as they continue to field questions related to Open AI related spending shifting from 1 of the 4 to another of the 4, or the pressure of ASICs, which come from these 4 customers,” Moore wrote to clients, referring to application-specific integrated circuits.

Piper Sandler analyst Harsh Kumar said the slide was “only scratching the surface” on demand. Beyond the four largest customers, he said others are also likely “all in line looking to get their hands on as much compute as their budgets allow.”

Another takeaway for Moore was the growth in physical AI, which refers to the use of the technology to power machines’ actions in the real world as opposed to within software.

At previous GTCs, Moore said physical AI “felt a little bit like speculative fiction.” But this year, “we are now hearing developers wrestling with tangible problems in the physical realm.”

Truist analyst William Stein, meanwhile, described physical AI as something that’s “starting to materialize.” The next wave for physical AI centers around robotics, he said, and presents a potential $50 trillion market for Nvidia.

Stein highliughted Jensen’s demonstration of Isaac GR00T N1, a customizable foundation model for humanoid robots.

Several analysts highlighted Huang’s explanation of what tariffs mean for Nvidia’s business.

“Management noted they have been preparing for such scenarios and are beginning to manufacture more onshore,” D.A. Davidson analyst Gil Luria said. “It was mentioned that Nvidia is already utilizing [Taiwan Semiconductor’s’] Arizona fab where it is manufacturing production silicon.”

Bernstein analyst Stacy Rasgon said Huang’s answer made it seem like Nvidia’s push to relocate some manufacturing to the U.S. would limit the effect of higher tariffs.

Rasgon also noted that Huang brushed off concerns of a recession hurting customer spending. Huang argued that companies would first cut spending in the areas of their business that aren’t growing, Rasgon said.

DoorDash and Klarna are joining forces to let users pay for meal deliveries with installment loans, calling it “essential to meeting our customers’ needs.” Not everyone sees it that way.

The announcement has drawn a flurry of criticism on social media, less directed at the companies themselves than questioning what the need to use a “buy now, pay later” service for food orders says about the increasingly debt-ridden economy.

“Eat now, pay later? A credit apocalypse is coming,” an X user wrote Thursday when the partnership was announced.

Another X poster used a photo of a forlorn-looking Dave Ramsey, the personal finance pundit, with the caption, “what do you mean you have $11k in ‘doordash debt’.”

Others whipped up “Sopranos” memes, quipping about “DoorDash debt collection outside your door because you missed a Chipotle payment.”

The economic commentator Kyla Scanlon said in a social media video that the deal was another example of the “gambling economy.”

“We have memecoins, sports betting — we love a good vice in the United States, and we can do it completely frictionless,” she said. “We don’t even have to put on pants. Just app it to you and worry about everything else later.” She added that “there are real winners and losers” in business models that monetize not just convenience but “impulsivity.”

Klarna, which is preparing for an initial public offering, is among the BNPL providers that have surged into virtually all corners of the consumer economy since the pandemic, such as Afterpay, Affirm and Sezzle.

The lightly regulated financial services give users a variety of ways to pay for purchases; among the most popular are short-term loans that can typically be repaid in several interest-free installments. The companies make money by charging users for late or missed payments and merchants for the ability to offer BNPL loans at checkouts.

DoorDash said customers will be able to use Klarna for many types of purchases on its platform, not just small-dollar food deliveries. They can pay in full up front, in four installments or else later on, “such as a date that aligns with their paycheck schedules.”

A Klarna spokesperson acknowledged the online pushback but said any form of borrowing for food purchases is potentially concerning, depending on the circumstances.

“If people are in a situation where they feel like they have to put their food on credit, that’s a bad indicator for society,” the spokesperson said.

Still, many people make “a rational decision” to use BNPL services to help manage their money, the spokesperson said, adding that the new features would be available only for DoorDash purchases of at least $35 — a few dollars more than the platform’s average order as of last March. “Wherever high-cost credit cards are accepted, consumers should be able to choose a zero-interest credit product, instead.”

Indeed, industrywide data shows the short-term loans have become a routine feature of many consumers’ wallets, particularly among young adults coping with inflation and with average credit card interest rates still near 20%.

The BNPL explosion coincides with record debt levels and mounting consumer pessimism. Total household debt exceeded $18 trillion at the end of last year, according to the Federal Reserve Bank of New York, with credit card balances comprising a record $1.2 trillion of that sum. Consumer sentiment fell this month to its lowest level since 2022, and borrowers’ expectations for missing debt payments in the next three months hit their highest level since 2020, the New York Fed found.

A spokesperson for DoorDash didn’t comment on the criticism of its partnership with Klarna, saying their collaboration “provides even more flexibility, control and options.” The delivery service noted that its users can already pay with Venmo and CashApp, as well as government aid, including SNAP benefits. Klarna is already available on the grocery delivery platform Instacart, and it recently replaced rival Affirm as Walmart’s exclusive BNPL partner.

Much of the concern over BNPL has focused on the potential effects on borrowers’ credit histories, which largely still don’t reflect use of the services despite years of discussions with credit-reporting bureaus to change that. Yet a study released last month by Affirm and the credit-scoring firm FICO showed most consumers with five or more Affirm loans saw no real downside to their credit scores, some of which actually increased. And consumers consistently rate BNPL products favorably in surveys. Last year, 89% of borrowers told TransUnion they were either satisfied or very satisfied with the services.

But personal finance experts and consumer advocates say the qualms kicked up by the DoorDash-Klarna deal reflect real financial risks.

“Making four payments to cover three tacos on Tuesday sounds complicated because it is,” said Adam Rust, director of financial services at the Consumer Federation of America, an advocacy group. “I wouldn’t characterize this as a solution. It is a fintech innovation that creates problems.”

Not only might users face Klarna’s own late fees, he said, but “once customers consent to repay with automatic debits, they risk additional overdraft fees” from their banks.

Rust also highlighted recent work by the Consumer Financial Protection Bureau that remains in jeopardy or has been stopped altogether as the Trump administration defangs the agency.

The CFPB recently granted BNPL customers more ability to dispute charges and get refunds, but with staffers ordered to stop all enforcement activity last month, former employees and consumer advocates believe the rule has been rendered moot. A trade group representing fintech businesses, including some BNPL lenders but not Klarna, asked the Trump administration this month for an exemption from a law scheduled to take effect next week requiring certain lenders to verify borrowers’ ability to repay loans before they front them money.

Financial planners have long cautioned clients against budgetary strains from BNPL overuse. Even some borrowers themselves who’ve spent heavily with the services have begun warning others of their risks, saying they make it easy for cash-strapped users to rack up debts that are tough to pay off.

“Eat now, pay later is an awful trap,” Douglas Boneparth, president of Bone Fide Wealth, an advisory firm focused on millennials, wrote on X last week. “If you need to borrow to have a burrito delivered to you, you are the product. Nothing more.”