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Nia Warfield

FanDuel puts $0.50 surcharge on bets in Illinois

Flutter Entertainment’s FanDuel is rolling out a new $0.50 fee on bets placed in Illinois to help absorb the state’s surprise sports betting tax hike. The new tax applies to each wager a sportsbook accepts, starting at $0.25 per bet for the first 20 million wagers and rising to $0.50 after that.

Shares of Flutter and rival DraftKings both dropped earlier this month after Illinois lawmakers approved a steep tax hike of over 50% for high-volume gambling operators. Together, FanDuel and DraftKings make up nearly 75% of the state’s sports betting market.

Flutter said it would remove the new fee if Illinois were to roll back the tax increase. DraftKing (which jumped over 2% on the news) hasn’t yet rolled out fee hikes but said it’s evaluating options. Flutter shares are up about 4% year to date.

FanDuel adds 50-cent surcharge on Illinois bets to offset state taxes, DraftKings may follow

FanDuel logo

Shares of Flutter and rival DraftKings both dropped earlier this month after Illinois lawmakers approved a steep tax hike of over 50% for high-volume gambling operators. Together, FanDuel and DraftKings make up nearly 75% of the state’s sports betting market.

Flutter said it would remove the new fee if Illinois were to roll back the tax increase. DraftKing (which jumped over 2% on the news) hasn’t yet rolled out fee hikes but said it’s evaluating options. Flutter shares are up about 4% year to date.

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Retail display of Takis snack food in various spicy flavors in Target store, Queens, New York

America’s love for spicy food and mouth-tingling sauces has surged, but are we approaching “peak heat”?

Takis doesn’t think so, as it searches for a “Chief Intensity Officer.”

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Netflix made $1.5 billion from advertising last year, about 3% of its total revenue

The figure rose more than 2.5x last year, per the company.

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OpenAI’s ARR reached over $20 billion in 2025, CFO says

Sam Altman’s $500 billion artificial intelligence behemoth hit a major financial milestone last year, according to a new blog post over the weekend from OpenAI CFO Sarah Friar, as the company confirmed it had hit a more than $20 billion annual revenue run rate at the end of 2025.

Elsewhere in the blog post, Friar spent time addressing the company’s shifting goals, referencing plans to “close the distance between where intelligence is advancing and how individuals, companies, and countries actually adopt and use it.” As has become customary in the AI company press release genre, the CFO was also keen to tout the unending growth of the business, writing:

  • “Both our Weekly Active User (WAU) and Daily Active User (DAU) figures continue to produce all-time highs. This growth is driven by a flywheel across compute, frontier research, products, and monetization.”

  • “Compute grew 3X year over year or 9.5X from 2023 to 2025: 0.2 GW in 2023, 0.6 GW in 2024, and ~1.9 GW in 2025.”

And, perhaps most importantly for current backers and those keeping an eye on the private company before its rumored mega IPO:

  • “Revenue followed the same curve growing 3X year over year, or 10X from 2023 to 2025: $2B ARR in 2023, $6B in 2024, and $20B+ in 2025. This is never-before-seen growth at such scale.”

That latest figure has certainly set tongues in the tech world wagging, just as the company announced it would begin rolling out ads to free and ChatGPT Go users. It also puts the chatbot giant a fair way ahead of competitors like Anthropic, the company behind Claude.

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A business that scales with the value of intelligence

A business that scales with the value of intelligence

Elsewhere in the blog post, Friar spent time addressing the company’s shifting goals, referencing plans to “close the distance between where intelligence is advancing and how individuals, companies, and countries actually adopt and use it.” As has become customary in the AI company press release genre, the CFO was also keen to tout the unending growth of the business, writing:

  • “Both our Weekly Active User (WAU) and Daily Active User (DAU) figures continue to produce all-time highs. This growth is driven by a flywheel across compute, frontier research, products, and monetization.”

  • “Compute grew 3X year over year or 9.5X from 2023 to 2025: 0.2 GW in 2023, 0.6 GW in 2024, and ~1.9 GW in 2025.”

And, perhaps most importantly for current backers and those keeping an eye on the private company before its rumored mega IPO:

  • “Revenue followed the same curve growing 3X year over year, or 10X from 2023 to 2025: $2B ARR in 2023, $6B in 2024, and $20B+ in 2025. This is never-before-seen growth at such scale.”

That latest figure has certainly set tongues in the tech world wagging, just as the company announced it would begin rolling out ads to free and ChatGPT Go users. It also puts the chatbot giant a fair way ahead of competitors like Anthropic, the company behind Claude.

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