Good morning. Is Zillow a monopoly? I recently spoke to CEO Jeremy Wacksman about how he’s playing offense and defense—at the same time.
Wacksman left Microsoft’s Xbox division to join Zillow in 2009 as home prices were falling amid the subprime mortgage crisis. He became CEO last August amid an entirely different crisis—one spurred by rising prices, higher mortgage rates, and very tight supply. Zillow stock is up more than 50% since then, propelled by innovations like its AI-powered Zillow showcase. That has cemented the real estate site’s dominance in attracting 227 million unique visitors a month.
“The thing we do is we try and continue to make that process better and easier for those that are buying, because then as more buyers come, it’ll be better for everyone,” he says in the latest Leadership Next podcast. “The category is very hard. It’s still very broken.”
But there is a war being waged in the world of real estate right now. Brokerage giant Compass recently filed an antitrust lawsuit against Zillow, arguing that its new listing rules that went into effect on June 30 are an abuse of its market position. (Zillow now requires all publicly marketed listings be available to list on Zillow within a day or be banned from its site—thus stopping Compass from keeping some listings off the site for a while.)
Wacksman points out that the U.S. is “the only market in the world where we as buyers and sellers and our agents can see all the listings for free … There are a handful of companies that really want to undo that cooperation and really put the internet back in the box and keep their listings for themselves and make you pay them to see access for those listings. And we don’t think that’s good for buyers and sellers.”
Compass, of course, has a different take. You can watch our conversation here or you can listen to it on Spotify or Apple.
More news below.
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Top news
Trump and Musk are fighting, again
President Trump threatened to have Elon Musk investigated by DOGE after the latter urged Congress to vote against Trump’s “One Big Beautiful Bill,” which Musk regards as “the biggest debt increase in history.” Musk had tweeted, “If this insane spending bill passes, the America Party will be formed the next day.” Early this morning, the president responded with a lengthy post saying, “Elon may get more subsidy than any human being in history, by far, and without subsidies, Elon would probably have to close up shop and head back home to South Africa. No more Rocket launches, Satellites, or Electric Car Production, and our Country would save a FORTUNE. Perhaps we should have DOGE take a good, hard, look at this? BIG MONEY TO BE SAVED!!!”
Trump renews attack on Powell
The White House showed the press a handwritten note the president addressed to U.S. Federal Reserve Chairman Jerome Powell which said, “You have cost the U.S.A. a fortune — and continue to do so. You should lower the rate by a lot!” The note was written on a printed list of other countries’ central bank rates. Context: Powell has kept the U.S. rate at 4.25% in part to offset the inflation caused by Trump’s trade tariffs.
EU is prepared to accept trade deal
The European Union will accept a 10% tariff level, according to Bloomberg, if that is accompanied by carve-outs for specific sectors such as pharmaceuticals, alcohol, semiconductors and aircraft. The tariffs have raised the better part of $100 billion for the U.S. Treasury so far, according to Axios. That money, of course, came from the pockets of the American consumers and companies that pay those tariffs.
The dollar is having its worst year since 1973
The greenback has lost 10% of its value against other currencies in 2025 so far, as investors eye the increasing U.S. debt load and pull back from dollar-denominated assets.
Buffett donates $6 billion
Warren Buffett donated $6 billion worth of Berkshire Hathaway shares to a number of charitable organizations. The Gates Foundation received 9.43 million of the 12.36 million shares, the biggest chunk of Buffett’s donation.
Indictments in fake North Korean worker scheme
Two new indictments named over a dozen defendants in the “North Korean IT worker scheme,” where conspirators allegedly used stolen identities to get jobs at U.S. companies, including Fortune 500 businesses, and stole at least $5 million over the past four years. The revenue generated from the scheme allegedly goes to North Korea’s weapons program.
Robinhood launches stock tokens
Robinhood shared that it will be launching Stock Tokens, allowing EU customers to trade blockchain-based stocks issued first on Arbitrum and later on its own blockchain. The tokens will represent over 200 companies, including private companies like Sam Altman’s OpenAI or Elon Musk’s SpaceX.
There’s a big scandal in the world of squash
Is the world’s best player a cheat? The NYT has a deep dive complete with slo-mo video.
The markets
- S&P 500 futures were flat this morning, premarket. The S&P 500 rose 0.52% yesterday, hitting an all-time high for the second day in a row. Japan’s Nikkei 225 sold off by 1.24% this morning. Hong Kong’s Hang Seng was also down, by 0.87%. The Stoxx Europe 600 was headed down marginally in early trading.
From the analysts
- Ark Invest on crypto assets and mortgages: “This directive introduces a novel bridge between blockchain-based capital and the $12 trillion US mortgage market. Should the FHFA finalize this rule, setting the precedent for wider adoption across mortgages and cryptoassets, blockchain-native balance sheets could impact the mortgage market significantly by streamlining underwriting, lowering transaction costs, and enabling token-linked mortgage instruments. … Of the ~55 million individuals who own cryptoassets, 6 million hold more than $100,000 on average,” per Nick Grous.
- Bellwether Wealth on the jobs number: “For Thursday’s jobs report, we will be watching the revisions to the prior months. During the most recent jobs report for May, the prior two months of jobs growth was revised down by a combined 95,000 jobs. The labor market is still solid, but it’s important to monitor any cracks in the data,” per Clark Bellin.
- Wedbush on autonomous vehicles: “We predict by 2035, only ~830K AV-enabled vehicles would need to be deployed across regions where unit economics are viable to completely displace leading mobility platforms in high-density US cities. Specifically, our analysis calls for ~462K dedicated ridesharing AVs and ~370K consumer-owned vehicles with autonomous capabilities,” per Scott Devitt and team.
Around the watercooler
This summer will be decisive for the economy and Wall Street by Jason Ma
Mark Zuckerberg overhauled Meta’s entire AI org in a risky, multi-billion dollar bet on ‘superintelligence’ by Sharon Goldman
Ford workers told their CEO ‘none of the young people want to work here.’ So Jim Farley took a page out of the founder’s playbook by Sasha Rogelberg
Lowe’s CEO warns young workers to stay away from the corner office: ‘AI isn’t going to fix a hole in your roof’ by Preston Fore
How this CEO built a 35-year reign at Aflac without burning out by Lily Mae Lazarus
CEO Daily is compiled and edited by Nina Ajemian and Jim Edwards.
