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In today’s newsletter, we’ll learn:

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A new survey says that most Americans are retiring earlier than they want to.

TIAA and Ipsos surveyed workers and retirees, and found that on average, workers think they’ll retire at around 62. But the average age at which retirees actually left the workforce is closer to 57, and most said that they wished they’d saved more — or sooner.

According to Teresa Ghilarducci, economics professor at The New School, the most common reason for early retirement isn’t the worker at all.

“They are retired because their employer forces them out,” she said, in favor of a younger, and maybe cheaper, employee. “Or they’re laid off.” Ghilarducci said that’s what forced her mom to retire at 72, before she was ready.

The other common reason? Health.

“Their own health or their spouse's health forces them to have to leave the labor market to take care of themselves or somebody else,” Ghilarducci said.

The grim reality, according to Ghilarducci, is that retiring early is hard. This is partly because life is more expensive these days, and because “life expectancies have gotten much, much longer,” she said.

More than 1 in 5 U.S. companies now use artificial intelligence in their daily operations, according to a recent analysis of federal data from Goldman Sachs. In theory AI offers the promise of greater productivity and profits, but even with advances in capabilities, these systems are still fundamentally unpredictable, creating new liabilities for firms that use them.

That’s where insurance typically comes in. But AI is disrupting that business, too. Deloitte projects insurance for AI will grow into a nearly $5 billion global business by 2032.

One early mover is Corgi, a startup insurance company that uses AI and offers coverage for its mistakes. It also operates a buzzy cafe in San Francisco’s financial district.

Unfortunately, you won’t find any corgi dogs at the cafe, thanks to city health codes. But you will find plenty of startup founders like Aimen Hallou, who’s been working from the cafe with his laptop and a couple buddies.

“We have like five to six businesses, all very successful,” said Hallou.

He wouldn’t go into much detail about what they all do exactly, lest someone steal his ideas, but broadly there’s a ski app, a sports betting analysis tool, a Reddit marketing service, a clipping service, and an internet proxy service — all powered by AI.

“So it's like you do a lot of work in the beginning, and then you can kind of step away while it's making revenue,” said Hallou.

CEO Nico Laqua said Corgi has built its business to serve this new generation of AI-native entrepreneurs — partially with protein shakes and espresso shots.

“We don't have decaf for a reason,” he said. “I think people do need to lock in a little bit.”

But the real business (and the namesake corgi) are in the office upstairs. The cafe space just came with the lease and turned into a fun side project.

“We're best known for our insurance for technology companies,” Laqua said. That includes all the usual policies, like commercial general liability, errors and ommissions, and their new add-on for AI liability . “Just like a human might mess up, AI might mess up even worse,” Laqua said. “It might say things that it shouldn't say, it might calculate things it shouldn't calculate, it might even cause outages or things like that.”

Watching NFL games has become increasingly complicated: You’ll need CBS and Fox for most Sunday games. At least for the ones playing near you. For those that aren’t? You’ll need YouTube’s Sunday Ticket.

You can also rely on either ESPN or ABC for Monday games. Except for the Monday matches that are only available on ESPN.

Then you’ll need Amazon for Thursday games. You also have to take into account holiday games, which will be available through Amazon and Netflix, and international games, which are mostly available through the NFL Network.

“It doesn't matter how you get your TV — cable, satellite, or streaming —the NFL is kind of making a chess game out of it,” said Luke Bouma, the owner of Cord Cutters News, which offers tips on how to watch television without cable.

The NFL’s decision to sell media rights to different companies has made the space increasingly fragmented. In 2021, Amazon signed a deal to be the exclusive carrier for Thursday night games for $1 billion a year. In 2024, Netflix confirmed it purchased the rights to show some of the league’s Christmas games (which each game reportedly valued at $75 million). This year, Netflix is set to offer two Christmas games, while Fox will air one.

“It’s becoming very confusing for the average American to watch it,” Bouma said. “You’ve got to jump from streaming service to streaming service right in the middle of the day to be able to watch the next football game on a holiday.”

Merch had a big fashion moment in the late 2010s that arguably peaked in COVID, when closed restaurants spun up cash selling t-shirts. GQ declared the merch trend dead in 2024, so right on time, here comes Big Tech.

It will be a bit before you can buy a piece of OpenAI, but the company will sell you a $175 quarter-zip that says “research” on it right now. There’s a whole vibe-y photoshoot (see above). More interesting is the company’s archive of employee-only merch, which includes soccer kits, ersatz Pokémon cards and a folding chair. It’s all very Supreme.

Not to be outdone is Palantir, which is currently hawking tennis gear after its take on a French chore coat went semi-viral earlier this year. The $250 jacket is sold out, but I highly recommend reading this Atlantic story (gift link) about the experience of buying and wearing blue-collar merch from a controversial defense contractor. The quality is apparently pretty good, at least.

I’m in a bit of a glass house here, clowning on all this merch when a chunk of my salary is paid in tote bags. But before you drop hundreds on a used t-shirt some coder is selling on eBay, at least give Marketplace’s merch a look?