Katie Austin normally publishes fitness content to her Instagram and YouTube channel. But this week, she’s been posting a steady trickle of content from New Orleans.
That’s because Austin, 31, from California, is one of hundreds of creators who have swarmed the Big Easy for Super Bowl 59, getting paid large contracts to make social media content for big-name brands like Electronic Arts and Nike.
Austin was sent to New Orleans this week by Snap and the NFL to give her fans a behind-the-scenes look at the Super Bowl. She’s also involved in integrations around the games with brands like Microsoft and Verizon, for whom she is hosting a promotional fan event.
“I can reach a lot of people myself,” said Austin, who has about 2 million followers across all platforms. “So sending a creator like me to an experience, I am engaging my followers to get that awareness.”
As the 2024 NFL season concludes, viewership and engagement among Generation Z and Generation Alpha has hit a record high, according to the NFL. Austin’s role underscores a new reality where online creators are treated just like traditional celebrities, in an attempt to attract younger audiences to football.
The NFL has made this push in partnership with social apps like YouTube and Snapchat, highlighting the league’s evolving marketing strategies that are increasingly focused on digitally native audiences.
“You start to look at these different cohorts of fans, especially the ones that are a little more difficult to reach through linear and you start to see the role in which creators can play and broaden that audience,” said Ian Trombetta, NFL senior vice president of social, influencer and creator marketing.
For this year’s Super Bowl, featuring the Kansas City Chiefs and Philadelphia Eagles, brands like Nike and EA are sponsoring creators to attend the event and post content.
Austin didn’t say how much she’s getting paid for the content she’s making at Super Bowl 59, but some brands have signed deals of up to six figures with some creators to promote the event, said Victoria Bachan, global president of Sixteenth, a creator talent management company.
“You can no longer really have a media strategy for tentpole opportunities like this that do not include a creator level,” said Bachan.
Brands are increasing their spending on influencer activations for this year’s Super Bowl between 25% and 35%, and they’re diverting funds from traditional TV-only advertising to do so, according to a study by Captiv8, an influencer marketing platform.
The push for creators comes after concerns about younger audiences’ lack of interest in sports had grown. A 2022 Emory Goizueta Business School study found that 27% of Gen Z identify as “anti-sports,” compared with 7% of millennials and 5% of Generation X.
The NFL’s push to engage creators, which began in 2019, has already paid off. The percentage of Gen Z and Gen A who identify as fans has grown steadily for the last three years to an all-time high as the league’s investment in creators has grown, according to the NFL.
Besides Austin, Snapchat sent a handful of other creators to the Super Bowl to post behind-the-scenes content using augmented reality filters.
Meanwhile, YouTube, which secured a $2 billion-per-year deal for the rights to “NFL Sunday Ticket” in 2022, has established itself as pivotal to connecting the league with digital audiences. This year, YouTube will debut as the first official sponsor of the Super Bowl Tailgate, which will feature events with top creators like Kristy and Desmond Scott and a livestreamed performance by rapper Post Malone before the game on Sunday.
To adapt to these changes, the NFL has eased up on restrictions around the use of official league footage by creators on their YouTube channels.
The league and YouTube in January expanded their “Access Pass” program to allow retired NFL players like Cam Newton, Jason Kelce and Kurt Benkert to use league footage in their videos.
“There’s this pathway now that certainly did not exist five to 10 years ago,” Trombetta said. “It’s really cool especially as these athletes showcase more of their personalities off the field.”
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Google on Friday made the latest a splash in the AI talent wars, announcing an agreement to bring in Varun Mohan, co-founder and CEO of artificial intelligence coding startup Windsurf.
As part of the deal, Google will also hire other senior Windsurf research and development employees. Google is not investing in Windsurf, but the search giant will take a nonexclusive license to certain Windsurf technology, according to a person familiar with the matter. Windsurf remains free to license its technology to others.
“We’re excited to welcome some top AI coding talent from Windsurf’s team to Google DeepMind to advance our work in agentic coding,” a Google spokesperson wrote in an email. “We’re excited to continue bringing the benefits of Gemini to software developers everywhere.”
The deal between Google and Windsurf comes after the AI coding startup had been in talks with OpenAI for a $3 billion acquisition deal, CNBC reported in April. OpenAI did not immediately respond to a request for comment.
The move ratchets up the talent war in AI particularly among prominent companies. Meta has made lucrative job offers to several employees at OpenAI in recent weeks. Most notably, the Facebook parent added Scale AI founder Alexandr Wang to lead its AI strategy as part of a $14.3 billion investment into his startup.
Douglas Chen, another Windsurf co-founder, will be among those joining Google in the deal, Jeff Wang, the startup’s new interim CEO and its head of business for the past two years, wrote in a post on X.
“Most of Windsurf’s world-class team will continue to build the Windsurf product with the goal of maximizing its impact in the enterprise,” Wang wrote.
Windsurf has become more popular this year as an option for so-called vibe coding, which is the process of using new age AI tools to write code. Developers and non-developers have embraced the concept, leading to more revenue for Windsurf and competitors, such as Cursor, which OpenAI also looked at buying. All the interest has led investors to assign higher valuations to the startups.
This isn’t the first time Google has hired select people out of a startup. It did the same with Character.AI last summer. Amazon and Microsoft have also absorbed AI talent in this fashion, with the Adept and Inflection deals, respectively.
Microsoft is pushing an agent mode in its Visual Studio Code editor for vibe coding. In April, Microsoft CEO Satya Nadella said AI is composing as much of 30% of his company’s code.
The Verge reported the Google-Windsurf deal earlier on Friday.
Jensen Huang, CEO of Nvidia, holds a motherboard as he speaks during the Viva Technology conference dedicated to innovation and startups at Porte de Versailles exhibition center in Paris, France, on June 11, 2025.
The sale, which totals 225,000 shares, comes as part of Huang’s previously adopted plan in March to unload up to 6 million shares of Nvidia through the end of the year. He sold his first batch of stock from the agreement in June, equaling about $15 million.
Last year, the tech executive sold about $700 million worth of shares as part of a prearranged plan. Nvidia stock climbed about 1% Friday.
Huang’s net worth has skyrocketed as investors bet on Nvidia’s AI dominance and graphics processing units powering large language models.
The 62-year-old’s wealth has grown by more than a quarter, or about $29 billion, since the start of 2025 alone, based on Bloomberg’s Billionaires Index. His net worth last stood at $143 billion in the index, putting him neck-and-neck with Berkshire Hathaway‘s Warren Buffett at $144 billion.
Shortly after the market opened Friday, Fortune‘s analysis of net worth had Huang ahead of Buffett, with the Nvidia CEO at $143.7 billion and the Oracle of Omaha at $142.1 billion.
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The company has also achieved its own notable milestones this year, as it prospers off the AI boom.
On Wednesday, the Santa Clara, California-based chipmaker became the first company to top a $4 trillion market capitalization, beating out both Microsoft and Apple. The chipmaker closed above that milestone Thursday as CNBC reported that the technology titan met with President Donald Trump.
Brooke Seawell, venture partner at New Enterprise Associates, sold about $24 million worth of Nvidia shares, according to an SEC filing. Seawell has been on the company’s board since 1997, according to the company.
Huang still holds more than 858 million shares of Nvidia, both directly and indirectly, in different partnerships and trusts.
Elon Musk meets with Indian Prime Minister Narendra Modi at Blair House in Washington DC, USA on February 13, 2025.
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Tesla will open a showroom in Mumbai, India next week, marking the U.S. electric carmakers first official foray into the country.
The one and a half hour launch event for the Tesla “Experience Center” will take place on July 15 at the Maker Maxity Mall in Bandra Kurla Complex in Mumbai, according to an event invitation seen by CNBC.
Along with the showroom display, which will feature the company’s cars, Tesla is also likely to officially launch direct sales to Indian customers.
The automaker has had its eye on India for a while and now appears to have stepped up efforts to launch locally.
In April, Tesla boss Elon Musk spoke with Indian Prime Minister Narendra Modi to discuss collaboration in areas including technology and innovation. That same month, the EV-maker’s finance chief said the company has been “very careful” in trying to figure out when to enter the market.
Tesla has no manufacturing operations in India, even though the country’s government is likely keen for the company to establish a factory. Instead the cars sold in India will need to be imported from Tesla’s other manufacturing locations in places like Shanghai, China, and Berlin, Germany.
As Tesla begins sales in India, it will come up against challenges from long-time Chinese rival BYD, as well as local player Tata Motors.
One potential challenge for Tesla comes by way of India’s import duties on electric vehicles, which stand at around 70%. India has tried to entice investment in the country by offering companies a reduced duty of 15% if they commit to invest $500 million and set up manufacturing locally.
HD Kumaraswamy, India’s minister for heavy industries, told reporters in June that Tesla is “not interested” in manufacturing in the country, according to a Reuters report.
Tesla is looking to recruit roles in Mumbai, job listings posted on LinkedIn . These include advisors working in showrooms, security, vehicle operators to collect data for its Autopilot feature and service technicians.
There are also roles being advertised in the Indian capital of New Delhi, including for store managers. It’s unclear if Tesla is planning to launch a showroom in the city.