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With no end in sight to the political impasse in Washington that has shut down the government, the U.S. IPO market is expected to experience a significant slowdown just as it was beginning to show signs of life again. Some companies are nevertheless forging ahead with their listings. Phoenix Education Partners, parent company of the for-profit University of Phoenix, which announced its IPO plans one day before the shutdown began, said on Wednesday that it has priced its shares at $32. That’s the midpoint of its earlier targeted range of between $31 and $33 a share. The company intends to list on the New York Stock Exchange (NYSE) under the “PXED” ticker symbol. Selling shareholders will offer roughly 4.3 million shares of its common stock, with Morgan Stanley, Goldman Sachs, BMO Capital Markets, and Jefferies serving as lead book runners. At its offering price, Phoenix Education has a valuation of roughly $1.14 billion, Bloomberg reported. “An attractive and growing sub-segment” University of Phoenix is almost 50 years old and has been accredited since 1978, according to a company prospectus filed with the Securities and Exchange Commission (SEC). The school is geared toward online adult education, with most of its students already in the workforce and seeking to advance their careers in some way. “Adult learners represent an attractive and growing sub-segment of the higher education market,” Phoenix Education writes in its prospectus. “However, they face unique challenges that are not addressed by traditional programs designed for 18- to 22-year-olds, including the time constraints and responsibilities of work, community and caring for dependents.” The school says it had an average total enrollment of 82,700 degree-seeking students as of the first nine months of this fiscal year. Roughly 70% of its students are seeking bachelor’s degrees, with business and IT being its most popular areas of study, followed by healthcare and behavioral and social sciences. Is University of Phoenix profitable? Unlike some of the high-profile tech startups that have gone public this year, University of Phoenix is already profitable. Last year, it generated net income of $115 million on revenue of $950 million, according to its SEC filings, up from net income of $52 million on revenue of $801 million in 2022. What else is there to know? Phoenix Education is backed by Apollo Global Management and investment firm Vistria Group, with the former being a majority shareholder. The company is expected to list its shares today (October 9, 2025) at some point after the opening bell.
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E-Commerce
The IRS will furlough nearly half of its workforce on Wednesday as part of the ongoing government shutdown, according to an updated contingency plan posted to its website. Most IRS operations are closed, the agency said in a separate letter to its workers.The news comes after President Donald Trump and Congress failed to strike an agreement to fund federal operations, and the government shutdown has entered its second week, with no discernible endgame in sight.The agency’s initial Lapsed Appropriations Contingency Plan, which provided for the first five business days of operations, stated that the department would remain open using Democrats’ Inflation Reduction Act funds.Now, only 39,870 employees, or 53.6%, will remain working as the shutdown continues. It is unclear which workers will remain on the job.Doreen Greenwald, president of the National Treasury Employees Union, said in a statement that taxpayers should expect increased wait times, backlogs and delays implementing tax law changes as the shutdown continues.“Taxpayers around the country will now have a much harder time getting the assistance they need, just as they get ready to file their extension returns due next week,” she said. “Every day these employees are locked out of work is another day of frustration for taxpayers and a growing backlog of work that sits and waits for the shutdown to end.”She urged the Trump administration and Congress to “reach an agreement that reopens government and restores the services that Americans need and deserve.”The notice to workers states that furloughed workers and those who remain on the job will receive back pay once the shutdown ends. This is notable since the Republican administration on Tuesday warned of no guaranteed back pay for federal workers affected by a government shutdown.Last week, Trump said roughly 750,000 federal workers nationwide were expected to be furloughed across agencies, with some potentially fired by his administration.Representatives from the IRS, the Treasury and the White House did not comment on the furlough plans.Earlier this year the IRS embarked on mass layoffs, spearheaded by the Department of Government Efficiency, affecting tens of thousands of workers. At the end of 2024, the agency employed roughly 100,000 workers and currently that hovers around 75,000. Fatima Hussein, Associated Press
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E-Commerce
Creativity has always been governed by timenot just how long it takes to bring an idea to life, but how long a creator can stay in flow. Every designer knows the frustration of an idea hanging in digital limbo. But those pauses, once accepted as inevitable, are now starting to vanish. Figma, the cloud-based interface design tool, and Google Cloud, the computing and storage platform, have announced the integration of Googles Gemini 2.5 Flash directly into Figmas design platform. The collaboration aims to let designers generate visuals and make edits almost instantly, eliminating the lag between an idea and its execution. For users, that means faster collaboration, smoother iteration, and a more natural creative flow.The economic significance of latency in AI is far greater than just speedits about changing the commercial viability and product experience for every application built on a generative model, says Matt Renner, president of global revenue at Google Cloud. Lower latency, in turn, decreases computational and financial expenses, allowing the AI tools to become more scalable and efficient for high-volume tasks, he added. Gemini 2.5 Flash (also known as Nano Banana”) rose to prominence for its ability to merge multiple images, keep characters consistent across edits, and generate a wide range of styles, from lifelike portraits to classic art, in mere seconds. Google claims that in early integrations of Gemini 2.5 Flash, Figma users saw a 50% reduction in latency for the platforms Make Image feature, unlocking faster image generation capabilities for its users.In Figma, every second AI can return to the user, whether its time saved renaming layers, editing images or even generating multiple images at the same time, frees them up to focus on the kind of higher-level problem solving and deep iteration thats at the root of all great design, says Abhishek Mathur, vice president of platform engineering at Figma. The partnership signals a deeper strategic shift for Google Cloud. Rather than competing for user attention, the company aims to embed its AI models, including Gemini 2.5 Flash, Gemini 2.0, and Imagen 4, directly into third-party creative ecosystems like Figma to make Gemini an unseen accelerant that enhances existing tools instead of forcing users to switch platforms.Our focus is on helping users go from idea to production, and we see AI as core to how this workflow will evolve moving forward, Mathur adds. Googles ecosystem strategy to scale Gemini Over the past year, Google has woven Gemini into a broad range of partner products, from workspace tools to data analytics suites, positioning the speed and security of its AI models and ease of integration as its defining edge. Salesforce has integrated Gemini into its Agentforce platform to power AI agents across Google Cloud and Salesforce environments. Oracle now supports Gemini models on Oracle Cloud Infrastructure, enabling enterprises to build multimodal AI agents that can process text, images, motion, and audio data. Googles underlying bet is simple: If AI feels secure and frictionless, widespread adoption will feel inevitable.Released in June, Gemini 2.5 Flash is known for generating high-quality visuals quickly and affordably (one-third the price of Gemini Pro). The model can deliver its first reply in under half a second, making it ideal for fast-moving creative apps, chatbots, or customer support systems. Moreover, the latest Gemini 2.5 Flash updates have improved its accuracy in following instructions, made responses more concise, and boosted speed by up to 40%, making it one of the fastest, most efficient AI models available.Experts caution, however, that faster performance alone may not be enough for Figma to win over creative professionals.Drops in latency will certainly encourage tool usage and support the kind of cross-discipline collaboration Figma has been building toward for years, says AJ Joplin, senior analyst at Forrester, who focuses on experience design, design organizations, and design leadership. But taste still matters. The efficiencies gained from generative tools can quickly disappear if teams dont pair that time saved with the ability to critically assess what the AI produces. The AI design race is heating up The Google-Figma partnership comes amid an escalating AI-design race. Adobe has integrated AI models from Google Cloud, OpenAI, and others like fal.ai, Ideogram, Luma, Pika, and Runway to power its Firefly platform and Sensei AI features, including generative fill, AI video editing, 3D design, and smart stock tools. And Canva has become an AI-first platform.Announced at OpenAIs Developer Day on Oct. 6, Canva is now a pilot partner for ChatGPT app integration, allowing users to create and edit designs directly within ChatGPT. The move aims to bring visual design tools to the chatbots 800 million weekly users.If Gemini 2.5 Flash delivers on its promise, the future of design wont just be more intelligent; it will feel instantaneous. And in the new economy of creativity, that sense of speed may prove to be the ultimate edge.
Category:
E-Commerce
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