Good morning, CFOs. The RealReal is counting on AI to sell clothing and accessories faster and cheaper; a look at how corporate pensions fared last year; plus, the $100 billion of U.S. goods at risk of tariffs in Trump’s Greenland push.

On a chilly December morning, I boarded a train from Manhattan headed for Perth Amboy, N.J.

The RealReal’s chief financial officer, Ajay Gopal, and other executives have talked for months about a new technology that stands to make the company more efficient at selling luxury resale clothing and accessories. I wanted to see it in action. A couple of hours in the company’s warehouse in New Jersey gave me a better feel for how it works.

Read on for some of what I learned and find the full story here.

The scene: At the warehouse in northeast New Jersey, employees of luxury resale platform The RealReal buzzed around with racks of clothing and accessories like they have for years, getting sellers’ submissions ready to list.

But lately they have been accompanied by an AI-infused program that executives hope will speed up the time to sell items and reduce their need to add as many workers over time.

Called Athena, the technology proposes item descriptions, suggests pricing and, helps discern authentic products from fakes, which is crucial for a company that receives millions of goods a year to sell on consignment.

Some numbers:

• 27% of the items sent in to The RealReal were processed by Athena in late September, a proportion that executives expected to be as high as 40% by the end of December.
• Athena’s focus so far is designers and brands such as Jimmy Choo and Alice + Olivia, ones that are less challenging to authenticate. But with a year’s worth of learning, Athena’s reach is expanding this year into mid-tier and high-end luxury items and with that, executives say it could save the company millions of dollars.
• Executives expect Athena to cut the time it takes for an item to go from a loading dock to posted for sale to seven days on average from 14 now, saving a couple of dollars on every sale.

So what?: “So much of our lifetime value in a customer is tied to them thinking about this as a habit,” Gopal said in an interview. “Athena helps us incentivize them to consign again and we can move things quicker and do it more accurately.”

📆 Earnings

• Halliburton
• Johnson & Johnson
• Kinder Morgan
• Prologis

📈 Economic Indicators

The National Association of Realtors releases its Pending Home Sales Index for December.

The estimated funding level of pension plans sponsored by S&P 1500 companies increased by 1 percentage point in 2025 to 110% in a year that saw double-digit gains in domestic equity markets and an approximately 13 basis point decrease in interest rates used to calculate corporate pension plan liabilities, according to consulting firm Mercer LLC. As of the end of December, the plans' estimated aggregate surplus increased by $11 billion, to $146 billion, compared with a $135 billion surplus at the end of 2024, Mercer said.

"Despite volatility around tariff uncertainties, domestic and international equities had a very strong year, reinforcing the importance of plan sponsors not reacting in the moment and staying the course, as most saw funded statuses bounce back," said Mercer partner Matt McDaniel.

If President Trump follows through with a threat to put new tariffs on European allies over Greenland, some $100 billion worth of American exports—from Boeing aircraft to bourbon whiskey—could get caught in the crossfire, Kim Mackrael and Benjamin Katz report.

The European Union created a list of hundreds of categories of American products last year that it planned to target with import duties if trade talks with the U.S. unraveled. Those levies were put on hold after the two sides struck a deal last summer, but are set to kick in on Feb. 7 unless the bloc acts to extend the suspension.

That gives the EU a relatively straightforward option to retaliate should the U.S. impose new tariffs on a number of European countries for opposing Trump’s plan to take control of Greenland. The president has said Denmark, Norway, Sweden, France, Germany, the U.K., the Netherlands and Finland will be hit with 10% tariffs from Feb. 1, rising to 25% in June.

Here’s a look at some of what may be hit:

• The list consists of more than 200 pages of products ranging from big-ticket items such as airplanes to niche imports including jukeboxes, chewing gum and umbrellas.
• Among the most exposed industries to the potential new tariff list is aerospace.
• American-made cars are on the EU’s tariff list, with most categories expected to be hit with levies of 25%.
• American whiskey faces a potential 30% EU tariff, according to the bloc’s list.
• Soybeans are a high-impact target for the EU because they are a mainstay of American agriculture, especially in Republican-leaning states—and the bloc is a big buyer.

Read the story for more.

• Greenland Clash Risks Undermining America’s Place in World Economic Order
• 3M Says Trump’s Tariff Threats Over Greenland Could Dent 2026 Earnings

📰 Other headlines

• Exclusive: Nvidia Invests $150 Million in AI Inference Startup Baseten
• Treasury Secretary Scott Bessent Turns Up the Heat on Fed’s Jerome Powell
• SpaceX Spat Ends in Defeat for Activist Boaz Weinstein
• Anthropic CEO Says Government Should Help Ensure AI’s Economic Upside Is Shared
• Warner Strikes New All-Cash Deal With Netflix
• Amazon Joins the Big-Box League With Its Largest-Ever Store
• Why Elon Musk Is Racing to Take SpaceX Public
• U.S. to Press Ahead With EU Trade Deal Despite Opposition, Bessent Says
• Trump’s Threats to Allies Stir Worry That U.S. Has Lost Its Way
• Exclusive: OpenAI and ServiceNow Strike Deal to Put AI Agents in Business Software
• CEOs Say AI Is Making Work More Efficient. Employees Tell a Different Story.
• The Messy Human Drama That Dealt a Blow to One of AI’s Hottest Startups
• The Americans Who Are Going a Whole Month Without Buying Anything
• Chinese EVs Blow Past Tesla and Tariffs En Route to Global Reign

📈 Earnings wrapup

• Netflix Revenue and Profit Rise as Subscriptions Top 325 Million
• United Projects Higher Profit, Boosted by Bigger-Spending Travelers
• D.R. Horton Profit Falls as Housing Market Awaits Turnaround
• J&J’s Sales and Profit Rise on Strong Cancer and Autoimmune Drug Sales

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