In 1979, Ross Perot, founder of EDS, personally funded a private commando mission to rescue his employees detained in revolutionary Iran. Later, he ran for U.S. president, dodging the establishment and financing the campaigns himself.

Since the 1980s, Ben & Jerry’s has donated 7.5% of its profits to climate justice, refugee aid, and racial equity, making them one of the earliest pioneers of corporate philanthropy. Long before it was fashionable, they proved giving back could be part of business.

In the 1830s, Cornelius Vanderbilt told New York officials he would pull every ferry off the Hudson if they didn’t hand him a monopoly. Once he had it, he set prices as he pleased. As he put it: "What do I care about the law? Hain’t I got the power?"

Azim Premji, Wipro’s tech magnate, has given over $21 billion through his foundation. As one of the largest living donors, he has helped rebuild schools, clinics, and communities across India and is still running projects that touch millions of lives.

One of America’s bloodiest labor battles, the Homestead Strike left 10 dead and 60+ wounded. Workers were expecting negotiations. But Carnegie’s partner Frick sent hundreds of Pinkertons with rifles and a Gatling gun to retake the steelworks.

In 1915, Henry Ford chartered the “Peace Ship” to Europe with 100 delegates, hoping to personally end World War I. He basically thought governments were useless and he could fix the war himself.

Meet Phineas Fisher, the hacktivist haunting oppressive systems. They’ve exposed millions of hidden documents and helped shine a light on corruption, all while no one knows who they are.

Twitter co-founder Jack Dorsey donated $1 billion, 28% of his net worth, to fight COVID-19, fund education, and pilot UBI programs. What’s even more surprising is that he put it in a public LLC so everybody could see exactly where the money went.

In 2019, Apple employees were found listening to randomly sampled Siri recordings without users’ knowledge. Shockingly, Apple didn’t end the program; they simply made it optional for users.

In 2016, hackers stole data from 57 million Uber accounts. Rather than disclosing it, Uber paid them $100,000 to stay silent. A year later, the scandal broke, and Uber’s cover-up blew up in its face.

In 2016, Wells Fargo employees opened 3.5 million unauthorized accounts to hit impossible sales targets. Investigations later exposed a brutal “culture of pressure” that forced staff to meet quotas at any cost. A textbook example of toxic corporate culture.

Between 2010 and 2015, the Sinaloa Cartel smuggled cocaine into the U.S. not with mules, but with submarines and drones. DEA reports described engineering so sophisticated it made the cartel look more like a military operation than a criminal gang.

In 1995, Oseola McCarty, who spent her life washing clothes, donated her entire $150,000 life savings to fund scholarships. A big heart matters more than a big bank account.

Volkswagen didn’t just make cars during World War II, it ran factories using concentration camp prisoners as forced laborers. Today it’s a global brand, but back then its operations were a direct part of Nazi atrocities.

A woman in Virginia let ChatGPT pick her Powerball numbers and ended up with a $150,000 jackpot. Two days later, she donated it all to charity.

Microsoft has blocked Israel’s Ministry of Defense from using its services after reports showed Unit 8200 storing and analyzing millions of Palestinian phone calls on Azure.

Henry Ford ran a department that spied on workers’ every move, from drinking to gambling to home life. Anyone who stepped out of line faced fines, warnings, or instant firing. Ford justified it as a way to increase efficiency and order on the job.

Nicknamed the James Bond of philanthropy, Chuck Feeney secretly gave away $8 billion while living in cheap apartments and flying economy.

OpenAI is planning to put ads in ChatGPT. timesofindia.indiatimes.com/technology/t...?

Meta has launched an AI dating assistant on Facebook that finds your perfect match from a simple prompt. They’re promising a future without doom scrolling. Would you hand over your love life to an AI?

The parents of 16-year-old Adam Raine are suing OpenAI, claiming ChatGPT contributed to their son’s suicide. does this work www.theguardian.com/us-news/2025...

Since 2020, Airbnb has offered over 1.6 million free nights to more than 250,000 people worldwide. During the 2025 LA wildfires alone, 22,000 were housed within just 24 hours.

Elon Musk’s Neuralink is no longer the only player in brain tech. StairMed in China just let a paraplegic control a video game with a tiny implant using only thoughts.

In 2015, DARPA built Memex, a dark web search engine to track human trafficking networks Google couldn’t reach. Since then, it’s quietly fueled major wins against trafficking rings.

Amodei is calling out Trump’s reckless AI policies. He says Trump’s hands-off approach to AI could have serious consequences. www.wsj.com/tech/ai/ai-a...

Albania’s new AI minister says, "I am not here to replace human beings."

President Theodore Roosevelt once admitted that J.P. Morgan could summon him at will. Seems like some things in politics never seem to change.

FYI, this isn’t AI. It’s real, and it’s not made by Tesla or Boston Dynamics; it’s made in China.

Looks like ads will follow you even in your own home now. www.theverge.com/news/780757/...

Meta's demo failed in every way it could.

Every company and investor seems to just paste AI on why tech jobs are rough, even though the reality is different. Watch this. youtu.be/tBCRYZrfYXk?...

As history’s largest philanthropist, Jamsetji Tata gave $102B. For over a century, his trusts have funded science, education, and healthcare.

The first oil giant to slash emissions was Shell. Not by choice, but because the Netherlands courts forced them into it.

Even as one of the world’s richest men, Ingvar Kamprad drove an old Volvo, flew economy, saved coupons, and gave away billions. This is the kind of billionaire the world needs.

The interim prime minister of Nepal was decided by a Discord poll.

In 2011, Kremlin ordered Pavel Durov to censor the opposition on vk. Instead of surrendering he replied with a dog meme. Absolute legend.

Patagonia once ran a Black Friday campaign urging consumers not to buy its products. Instead, they pushed repair, and reuse.

Rockefeller’s monopoly was so massive that it was split into 34 companies. But instead of destroying him, it made him richer than ever, almost $400 billion in today’s money.

During the 1895 Treasury crisis, J.P. Morgan locked bankers in his library until they agreed to a $25 million rescue plan. Morgan and private bankers sold $25 million in gold to the U.S. Treasury, stabilizing it and stopping a panic. They made a small profit, so it wasn’t charity.

Apple patented self-repairing scratch tech in 2013. Funny enough, it never made it to the devices we actually use.

Thomas Edison once tried to create a device to talk to the dead. No wonder they called him the Wizard of Menlo Park.

In a move later called Trashgate, Oracle admitted in 2000 to hiring spies and going so far as to offer janitors $1,200 to snoop through the trash of pro-Microsoft groups during the federal antitrust trial. Larry Ellison bizarrely defended the move as a 'public service.'

Andrew Carnegie, one of the richest men of his era, believed that “the wealthy had a moral duty to give back,” a profoundly radical idea in an era when business tycoons built monopolies and would do anything to keep all their wealth.

In 2022, Patagonia’s founder Yvon Chouinard retired and handed the company to a trust and nonprofit. From now on, around $100M a year in profits will fund climate and environmental causes.

Coca-Cola funneled $1.5 million into the GEBN (Global Energy Balance Network) in 2014 to blame laziness, not sugar, for obesity. They controlled the story and literally paid people to lie. Media exposed it in 2015, $1 million was returned, and the network shut down.

‘Designed by clowns supervised by monkeys,’ was what Boeing employees called the 737 MAX. The company ignored their safety warnings and cut training and other costs. 346 people died because of that.

In the 70s, Exxon’s own research confirmed climate change was real. Instead of warning the world, Exxon spent decades killing regulations and funding climate denial.

Facebook’s own research allegedly showed Instagram harms teen girls’ body image, yet the company buried the findings for years. Profits first, teenage mental health dead last.

In 2020, Google was hit with a $5 billion lawsuit after YouTube was accused of secretly spying on kids’ data.

Until 2016, Facebook let advertisers block Black, Latino, and Asian users from housing ads. Discrimination baked into the platform.