Skims underwear is displayed on a shelf at a Nordstrom store on March 25, 2025 in Corte Madera, California. 

Justin Sullivan | Getty Images

Kim Kardashian’s Skims brand has raised $225 million in new funding led by Goldman Sachs Alternatives, valuing the shapewear and apparel company at $5 billion — up from roughly $4 billion after its 2023 round.

The deal comes as Skims nears $1 billion in annual net sales, six years after its 2019 launch, and marks one of the largest private raises for a U.S. consumer brand this year. BDT & MSD Partners’ affiliated funds also joined the round, Skims said Wednesday.

Skims plans to use the new capital to accelerate brick-and-mortar and international expansion, as well as product innovation and category diversification. The company has 18 stores across the U.S. in cities including New York, Los Angeles, Austin and Atlanta and one in Mexico, with plans to open additional stores overseas in 2026.

Skims said it’s laying the groundwork to become a “predominantly physical business” in the coming years, a pivot for a company that built its reputation as a digital-first direct-to-consumer brand.

“This milestone reflects continued confidence in our long-term vision and coupled with disciplined execution, positions Skims to unlock its next phase of growth,” CEO and co-founder Jens Grede said in a statement.

The new funding follows the debut of NikeSkims, a partnership with Nike that launched earlier this year and sold out within hours. The collaboration signals Skims’ ambitions to scale beyond its core shapewear products and into activewear, apparel and performance categories, pushing the brand further into the mainstream athleticwear market dominated by Lululemon, a handful of upstarts and Nike itself.

The new capital infusion could further delay an IPO from Skims. The company has been eyeing a public debut since at least 2024, based on statements by Grede.

The consumer IPO market has been largely stagnant in 2024 and 2025, with few fashion or beauty brands debuting as investors turn cautious on discretionary retail. By raising new private funding, Skims can continue to scale without immediate pressure to list.

“Skims stands as a solutions-driven apparel innovator, pioneering new categories and redefining everyday wear,” said Beat Cabiallavetta, global head of hybrid capital at Goldman Sachs Alternatives. “We look forward to partnering with management to pursue significant opportunities and deliver disruptive, sustained growth.”

Since its launch, Skims has built a cult following with its inclusive sizing, minimalist aesthetic and high-profile campaigns featuring global athletes and celebrities. Kardashian, who serves as chief creative officer, said the new funding marks “an exciting new chapter” for the company.

“We can’t wait to take Skims to the next level as we continue to innovate and set the standard for our industry,” Kardashian said.

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Code Metal co-founders (L-R): SVP of technology Alex Showalter-Bucher, and CEO Peter Morales

Courtesy Code Metal Inc.

Peter Morales started Code Metal two years ago, jumping into the market for artificial intelligence coding tools at a time when AI companies were rapidly changing the market for software development.

Now he’s got $36.5 million in the bank, thanks to an investment led by venture firm Accel Partners, known for early bets on Facebook, Dropbox and Atlassian.

Code Metal’s technology allows software engineers to write code once, then automatically translate it into any other programming language so they can ship new features faster and to a wider swath of users. Morales, who was previously technology chief at a gaming company, said Code Metal’s offering is particularly appealing to developers working on software to run appliances, consumer electronics, factory robotics, autos and medical devices.

Those are industries with products that contain a wide array of chips, which come with different software development kits, operating systems and code libraries. Morales gave the example of an automaker creating a feature for a new model sports car running on the latest Nvidia chip, and the challenge of porting the code behind the feature to the company’s older line of minivans. Code Metal’s AI would automatically handle the translation.

Morales is positioning the company as distinct from so-called vibe-coding platforms like Cursor or Anthropic’s Claude Code, which allow users to automate much of the process of writing software with text prompts.

“Vibe coding is all about explaining an initial idea in text, and generating code that will get you started developing your minimum viable product,” Morales said. “This is not where most companies spend their time. Code Metal focuses on bringing code to production. That requires strong guarantees the code we’re converting is accurate, compliant and working as expected.”

Morales said large language models alone can’t provide this level of certainty, so Code Metal employs what computer scientists call formal methods to check the code and make it’s been translated correctly.

The company, based in Boston, says it’s already struck contracts worth tens of millions of dollars with commercial and public sector clients, including the U.S. Air Force, L3Harris and Raytheon as well as some automotive suppliers and consumer electronics brands.

Accel’s Steve Loughlin, who led the deal, said Code Metal is the fastest growing company in his firm’s portfolio of early-stage startups, and that demand for its technology is surging.

“The market opportunity is practically uncapped here,” Loughlin said, “to help people develop on the edge much faster and modernize legacy code.”

Code Metal’s earlier backers J2 ventures and Shield Capital also participated in the round, along with Bosch ventures and Raytheon’s RTX Ventures.

WATCH: The rise of AI ‘vibe coding’

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Columbia University

Education Images | Getty Images

In early March, the Trump administration canceled $400 million in grants and contracts to Columbia University over its handling of pro-Palestinian protests last year. The federal government sent the university a list of demands, such as suspending or expelling students who participated in the demonstrations. Columbia agreed to the demands.

The funds are still being withheld, with the federal task force stating that Columbia’s concessions represent only the “first step.” Dozens of medical and scientific studies at Columbia are in limbo. The Department of Health and Human Services did not reply to a request for comment.

Meanwhile, the university is facing growing backlash, with several critics arguing that Columbia should use its immense endowment to cover the shortfall rather than capitulate. One such op-ed in the New York Times was accompanied by a photo of a smashed piggy bank.

Why some universities are so rich

Columbia has an endowment of $14.8 billion, the 12th largest university endowment in the U.S., according to a study by the National Association of College and University Business Officers, or NACUBO, and asset manager Commonfund.

The study found 658 institutions had endowments totaling $873.7 billion. This wealth is highly concentrated, with 86% held by a fifth of surveyed universities.

Sheer size isn’t the only measure of Columbia’s financial resources. While Columbia’s endowment ranks behind those of some public universities, the Ivy League school has a much smaller student body, averaging nearly $500,000 in endowments per student. The University of Texas, on the other hand, has less than half as much per student despite having a $47.5 billion endowment.

But endowments, especially at wealthier institutions, also have a substantial portion of illiquid assets.

In the case of Columbia’s endowment, while global equities make up the largest allocation (31%), private equity and real assets represent 26% and 12%, respectively. Fixed income and cash make up only 2% and 1%, respectively, and the remaining 28% is is allocated to absolute return strategy funds, which include hedge funds and a portion of which is also illiquid, according to audit documents.

Education historian Bruce Kimball credits much of the wealth concentration to universities’ willingness to invest in riskier assets. Traditionally, university endowments were invested very conservatively. When Harvard shifted its allocation to 60% equities and 40% bonds in 1951, it was considered a bold move. In the ’70s, the Ford Foundation guided a few wealthy universities away from dividend-paying stocks to growth stocks.

“Universities that didn’t want to assume the risk fell behind,” said Kimball, emeritus professor of philosophy and history of education at the Ohio State University.

In the 1990s, Yale University started investing in alternative assets like hedge funds and natural resources. This “Yale Model” proved lucrative, but only universities with large endowments could afford to take on the risk and due diligence that come with alternative investments, according to Kimball.

Why endowments aren’t piggy banks

At universities large and small, endowments aren’t slush funds. The endowments are actually made up of hundreds or even thousands of funds, and the majority of those are restricted by donors, to areas such as professorships, scholarships or research.

“Most of that money was put in for a specific purpose,” said Scott Bok, former chairman of the University of Pennsylvania. “Universities don’t have the ability to break open the proverbial piggy bank and just grab the money in whatever way they want.”

Endowments often follow a custom of only spending 5% annually, also a practice dating back to the 1970s, according to economist and former Northwestern University president Morton Schapiro. Assuming high single-digit percentage investment returns, spending only 5% allows the principal of the endowment to grow and keep pace with inflation.

University administrations often point to donor restrictions when pressed to increase spending. But Schapiro said this excuse is overplayed.

“It’s true that a lot of money is restricted, but it’s restricted to things you’re going to spend on already like need-based aid, study abroad, libraries,” he said.

Furthermore, some funds are not subject to donor restrictions but rather are earmarked by universities for specific purposes.

“It’s not really restricted,” said Schapiro of these quasi-endowments. “You could actually spend it at whatever rate that you really want.”

And while most states have guidelines on how endowment assets are spent, few have a set range or cap on spending, according to Brian Galle, professor of tax policy at Georgetown Law. It is also possible to get court approval to increase spending and use restricted endowments if it is crucial to the university’s mission, Galle said.

It is possible for universities to increase their endowment spending during times of crisis. Several did during the pandemic, including Northwestern and Penn. Donors can also give their written consent to lift endowment restrictions, according to Micah Malouf, special counsel at Schell Bray.

That said, while the restrictions may be exaggerated, the financial obligations are real, Kimball said. Colleges allocate nearly half their endowment spending to student financial aid, according to the NACUBO study.

Kimball described spending endowments or endowment income to cover short-term as “imprudent.” He compared the scenario to an employer canceling a prerequisite expense and asking employees to cover it with their savings and income.

“That regular salary is already earmarked for other purposes, so you would have to cut back on food, rent, etc.,” he said.

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Depleting the endowment could come at the cost of future cash flow, as the university has less to invest. But Galle told CNBC that he believes this reasoning doesn’t hold water.

“When your roof is leaking, you don’t say, ‘I’m not going to spend the money now, because then I won’t be able to buy an umbrella in three years,'” he said.

Schapiro, who retired from Northwestern in 2022, said it’s easier to justify spending more of the endowment when coming off a strong market, which is currently the case.

However, it depends on how long the university’s shortfall is expected to last.

“If it’s going to be long term, you’re just delaying the inevitable,” he said.

There are other threats to college’s finances

There is no telling when or if the funding will be restored. The National Institute of Health is also implementing a 15% cap on research reimbursements for indirect costs, such as support staff wages and lab maintenance.

Other storm clouds loom overhead, said Bok, who resigned from Penn in late 2023. For starters, several members of Congress have proposed increasing an endowment tax that currently only applies to some 50 universities.

Since the first Trump administration, private universities that meet certain conditions, such as assets of $500,000 or more per full-time student, have been subject to a 1.4% tax on net investment income. One proposal would raise the rate to 21%, and another would increase the rate to 10% but lower the endowments per student threshold to $200,000, which would subject far more universities to the tax.

Adding to the challenges, many colleges are financially dependent on international students, who typically pay full tuition. International student enrollment decreased during the first Trump administration and international applications recently dropped for the first time in five years, according to Common App data.

All these challenges make for a perfect storm, Bok said.

“I think universities are going to be reluctant to say, ‘Oh, we’ll just draw down more in the endowment’ because it can fill a small hole but it can’t fill a big hole,” Bok said. “There might actually be a big hole by time all these things play out.”

Whether wealthy donors will step up is uncertain. Galle, citing research that poor endowment returns are a predictor of donations, said donors “tend to open their wallet” when they know the university is relying on them.

However, Bok and Schapiro said that covering canceled grants is a harder pitch to donors than building a library.

“In my experience of 30 years raising money, people give when they are confident in the future,” Schapiro said. “They don’t give money to prevent a disaster.”

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Trust & Will founders, Cody Barbo (CEO), Brian Lamb, and Daniel Goldstein.

Courtesy: Trust & Will

Legal technology company Trust & Will said Tuesday that it has raised $25 million in a Series C funding round. The San Diego-based firm, ranked No. 41 on last year’s CNBC Disruptor 50 list, has now raised $75 million to date.

Trust & Will aims to shake things up in the arcane estate planning industry and make these key wealth preservation and wealth transfer services more accessible to families. Relying on a mix of technology and human oversight, Trust & Will provides legally valid documents that adhere to state guidelines.

The company says the funding will be used to double down on artificial intelligence.

“AI enables families and advisors to plan with greater clarity and confidence,” co-founder and CEO Cody Barbo said in a statement announcing the funding. “By combining technology with human compassion, we’re transforming how people protect and preserve their legacies.”

The new round was led by Moderne Ventures, and includes Northwestern Mutual Future Ventures, UBS Next and Erie Insurance. The most recent publicly available valuation figure for Trust & Will was $169 million, according to PitchBook data as of June 2022. The company told CNBC its valuation is now in the hundreds of millions of dollars, and has increased by more than 5x from its 2020 Series B valuation to its new Series C, but declined to be more specific.

More coverage of the 2024 CNBC Disruptor 50

Trust & Will started when two friends wondered why there weren’t more online options to create a will. Most of their financial lives were already online — banking, taxes, insurance — but wills would require thousands of dollars and talking to a lawyer. Or a barebones online template that doesn’t leave room for customization or questions. 

Its closest competitors, LegalZoom and Rocket Lawyer, focus on a broader variety of services. There’s also FreeWill.com, which offers free templates for people to fill out.

A recent annual report from Trust & Will found that although 83% of Americans believe estate planning is important, only 31% have a will, and 55% have no plan at all. Today, the company says it has helped hundreds of thousands of families create estate plans and settle probate to solve for that problem, and over one million Americans have started their legacy planning on the platform.

The company works directly with individuals and through partnerships with financial institutions. Trust & Will’s partnerships include Bank of America, USAA and Navy Federal. To get the word out to the general public, the company recently hired its first celebrity brand ambassadors, Super Bowl Champion Matthew Stafford and his wife, podcaster Kelly Stafford, to talk about their estate planning experience in a national TV commercial. It also recently became the official estate planning partner to two professional sports teams, the Los Angeles Kings and San Diego Wave.

“Every family deserves access to estate planning, and every professional deserves tools that simplify the process while delivering exceptional results,” Barbo stated in the release. “This Series C funding is more than a company milestone — it’s a step toward transforming estate planning into an essential service that touches every family’s life and legacy.”

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FRANCE – 2025/01/20: In this photo illustration, Trump Meme , Trump the Crypto president, is seen displayed on a smartphone screen. (Photo Illustration by Romain Doucelin/SOPA Images/LightRocket via Getty Images)

Romain Doucelin | Getty Images

Crypto executives, companies and investors are getting an early return on their investment in Donald Trump.

After pouring tens of millions of dollars into Trump’s 2024 campaign for president, the crypto industry has been paid back handsomely during his first week in the White House.

“I don’t think they could have imagined a better outcome than they just got in the past 48 hours,” Benchmark’s Bill Gurley, known for an early bet on Uber, told CNBC’s “Closing Bell” on Friday. Gurley said that while tech’s newfound influence in Washington may be harmful to some parts of the startup world, “it’s obviously good for crypto.”

The industry’s support for Trump was built on the Republican leader’s promise to stop the government’s crackdown on crypto and implement regulations favorable to those who wanted to develop new types of payment technologies while easing restrictions on investments in cryptocurrencies.

Industry heavyweights like Coinbase CEO Brian Armstrong and Binance CEO Richard Teng are lauding the start of a new era.

“You have to remember, the last four years, we really felt like we were being attacked by this administration,” Armstrong told CNBC at the annual World Economic Forum in Davos, Switzerland. Armstrong criticized the Biden White House for trying to “weaponize the lack of clarity in the rules,” punishing even the companies that were trying to be helpful.

“There were some bad actors too, to be fair,” Armstrong said. “But they even really tried to go after the good actors, I think, like us.” Coinbase was one of the leading corporate donors in the 2024 election cycle.

Bitcoin hit a record high of around $109,000 on Monday and hovered near $105,000 by the end of the week. It’s up more than 50% since Trump’s election victory in early November.

Trump’s crypto executive order

U.S. President Donald Trump holds a signed executive order on cryptocurrencies in the Oval Office of the White House in Washington on Jan. 23, 2025.

Kevin Lamarque | Reuters

The 48-hour stretch referenced by Gurley included an executive order signed by Trump on Thursday to promote digital asset adoption in the U.S.

Trump called on members of Treasury, the SEC and the Commodity Futures Trading Commission to join forces in a working group to evaluate the potential of stockpiling cryptocurrencies seized by the government.

The order outlined other key priorities, such as protecting bitcoin miners and software developers from what the president called “persecution,” and promoting U.S. dollar-pegged stablecoins, while banning a digital dollar from the Federal Reserve.

Venture capitalist David Sacks, who Trump tapped to be the White House AI and crypto czar, joined the president in the Oval Office for the signing of the order.

Later on Thursday, the SEC made a landmark announcement, withdrawing an accounting rule that made institutional crypto adoption more difficult by forcing banks to treat bitcoin and other tokens as a liability on their balance sheet.

The rule, known as SAB 121, was introduced in 2022 and subjected digital assets to strict capital requirements. It also raised the financial and regulatory risks of offering crypto custody services and boosted operational costs for financial institutions.

Efforts to overturn SAB 121 gained bipartisan support in Congress last year. But then-President Biden vetoed the proposed legislation, leaving the rule intact, further discouraging banks from adopting digital assets beyond derivatives trading and offering exchange-traded funds to wealth management clients.

The move was celebrated by SEC Commissioner Hester Peirce, who on Tuesday was tapped to lead a new “crypto task force” within the agency.

“Bye, bye SAB 121! It’s not been fun,” she wrote in a post on X.

Before the SEC’s announcement, Goldman Sachs CEO David Solomon told CNBC in Davos that from a regulatory perspective, the bank couldn’t own bitcoin and that it would revisit the issue if the rules changed. The CEOs of Morgan Stanley and Bank of America also said that President Trump’s pro-crypto tone could reshape their plans and potentially lead to expanded digital offerings.

Days earlier, Gary Gensler stepped down from his role as SEC chair. Gensler, who emerged as an adversary to the crypto industry, had defended the rule as necessary to protect investors in the event of crypto firm bankruptcies. Trump’s pick to succeed Gensler is former SEC Commissioner Paul Atkins, who is currently CEO at Patomak Global Partners.

Silk Road founder gets out of prison

Ross Ulbricht, the creator of the website Silk Road, appears in an undated photograph made from his computer and presented as an exhibit during his 2015 criminal trial in New York federal court. 

SDNY | Via Reuters

Trump’s first big nod to the crypto industry as president came earlier in the week and took a very different form.

On Tuesday, his second day in office, Trump granted a full pardon to Ross Ulbricht, the founder of Silk Road. Ulbricht, 40, had been serving a life sentence without the possibility of parole since 2015, after he was convicted in federal court on seven charges that included distributing narcotics and conspiring to commit computer hacking.

Silk Road operated from 2011 to 2013, serving as a dark web marketplace where users bought and sold a mix of contraband, including illegal narcotics like heroin. The platform facilitated more than $200 million in sales, according to federal prosecutors, and was tied to the death of at least six people.

At its peak, Silk Road functioned as a global drug bazaar, with transactions conducted largely in bitcoin, making it one of the earliest large-scale applications of a cryptocurrency. Prosecutors later argued that the anonymity afforded by bitcoin was instrumental in letting Silk Road vendors mask their identities.

Ulbricht had become a cult hero of sorts in the crypto community, and the “Free Ross” movement had gained resonance among conservative media personalities and politicians.

“I just called the mother of Ross William Ulbricht to let her know that in honor of her and the Libertarian Movement, which supported me so strongly, it was my pleasure to have just signed a full and unconditional pardon of her son, Ross,” Trump wrote in a post on Truth Social on Tuesday.

Changpeng Zhao, the billionaire co-founder and former CEO of Binance, commented on X with a clapping emoji after the pardon was announced. Zhao was sentenced to four months in prison in April, after pleading guilty to charges of enabling money laundering at his crypto exchange.

The Trump meme coins

Hakan Nural | Getty Images

Not all of Trump’s actions in the past week have been universally praised by the crypto industry.

Most notably, the president has been frolicking in a part of the market that’s notorious for scams. Last weekend, while crypto leaders and members of Trump’s family and inner circle were partying at the Crypto Ball in Washington, the $TRUMP meme coin was taking off online.

Then came the $MELANIA coin. Taken together, the Trump family made billions of dollars on paper due to their ownership of assets created out of thin air. Crypto enthusiasts worry that it’s a troubling sign of Trump’s real intent and is damaging to the credibility of an industry that’s trying to prove its legitimacy.

“Call me old fashioned but I think presidents should focus on running the country and not launching scam tokens,” wrote Nic Carter of Castle Island Ventures, in a post on X.

The website for $TRUMP says 80% of the supply is held by the Trump Organization and affiliates.

Lawmakers also have objections.

Sen. Elizabeth Warren and Rep. Jake Auchincloss, both Massachusetts Democrats, raised issues regarding the first couple using their positions for enrichment, along with the potential for “rug-pull” scams.

“We write with deep concern about the decision by President Trump and First Lady Melania Trump to launch two meme coins, $TRUMP and $MELANIA, that allow them to earn extraordinary profits off his Presidency,” the pair said in a letter obtained by CNBC.com. “These coins do not create new faster, cheaper, and safer payments rails. These coins do not help people borrow more affordably. They do not improve the financial system in any way for consumers.”

$TRUMP is now trading at under $30, down more than 50% from its peak shortly after launch. The $MELANIA token has plunged more than 80% from its high, and is currently trading below $2.50.

The meme coins are subject to a multi-year vesting schedule, ensuring that the majority of tokens cannot be liquidated all at once. Without selling any tokens, former Coinbase executive and crypto analyst Conor Grogan estimates that the Trump team still generated $58 million in trading fees on the first day.

Skepticism isn’t limited to the meme coins.

In Trump’s executive order on Thursday, the president fell short of directing the U.S. to start buying bitcoin directly and holding it as a reserve.

Ahead of the order, Binance CEO Richard Teng told CNBC in Davos that he anticipated the U.S. would establish a strategic bitcoin reserve. Circle CEO Jeremy Allaire called it “prudent” for central banks to hold reserves in bitcoin.

Trump had floated the idea on the campaign trail, suggesting that a U.S. bitcoin reserve could be backed by crypto assets seized from hackers and fraud rings, a proposal that remains under consideration.

But in his 1,300-word executive order on Thursday, Trump didn’t just avoid calling for a bitcoin reserve. The word bitcoin was nowhere to be found.

— CNBC’s Ryan Browne contributed to this report.

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