Tuesday, July 8, 2025

Joe Kiani is back: After being ousted from Masimo the billionaire has returned as CEO of Like Minded Labs

In today’s CEO Daily: Diane Brady talks to Joe Kiani, late of Masimo, who has just become the CEO of Like Minded Labs.
The big story: Trump and his tariffs, again.
The markets: Shrugging off the president’s latest trade plan.
Analyst notes from Deutsche Bank on The Fed, Placer.ai on consumer shopping, and Goldman Sachs on the S&P 500.
Plus: All the news and watercooler chat from Fortune.

Good morning. Joe Kiani was crushed last September when shareholder activist Quentin Koffey of Politan Capital succeeded in his two-year battle to push Kiani off the board of Masimo, a med-tech company that he founded and built over 36 years. When Kiani quit as CEO, I presumed the billionaire entrepreneur would focus on pursuits away from the public eye.

Not so. Kiani will this morning be named CEO of Like Minded Labs, a small company that develops innovative video technologies for the entertainment industry, among other things. Kiani co-founded it after buying another company based in Quebec company that created the core technology that he says will now be the foundation for some major product launches. He will continue to work on some side ventures, but this marks his first return to being CEO—albeit at a company with three dozen people or roughly 1% the staff of Masimo.

Why step back into the spotlight after such a bruising public battle? “I spent a few months thinking about that,” he told me yesterday. “I just want to build products. I have these ideas in my head of how I see the world. I don’t need the money or the credit. I’m just wired to do this … and it entails advanced signal processing, which I know.” (Masimo’s core product is a pulse oximeter that Kiani invented.)

Kiani does have some advantages this time around. One is Bob Chapek, the former Disney CEO who supported him as a board member of Masimo and is joining the new board. He also has resources, a track record, and majority ownership, noting “I’m not going to make the same mistake twice.”

Any lessons to share from the Masimo battle? “Give it your best. I’ve never seen an activist come in and do a good thing for the company,” he said. Masimo shareholders may disagree as the stock price is up about 45% since Kiani resigned on Sept. 19—though it dropped amid the proxy battle and is down since the start of the year. “I don’t regret that I tried my best.”

Contact CEO Daily via Diane Brady at diane.brady@fortune.com

Top news

Trump announces new tariffs

On Monday, President Donald Trump announced a new round of tariffs—40% for Myanmar and Laos, 30% for South Africa, 25% for Kazakhstan, Malaysia, Japan, and South Korea, among 14 countries in all—to go into effect on August 1. The U.S. stock market tumbled as a result.

The markets aren’t taking this seriously

Global markets were up this morning, indicating that Trump’s letters are not being taken as seriously as his April 2 Liberation Day announcement. The August 1 deadline (pushed back again), the fact that each letter was a form copy, and that they end with the line “these tariffs may be modified upward or downward, depending on our relationship with your country,” all suggest that this tariff negotiation process is far from over. “It seems a wasted effort to analyze every Trump social media post when investors understandably anticipate future retreats,” UBS analyst Paul Donovan told clients in a note this morning.

Quote of the day:

“If you go through the details, I don’t even know if anybody understands the difference between what was announced today, what was there previously, and if it will actually be implemented, and which companies it actually impacts,” Trivariate Research CEO Adam Parker said on CNBC.

Trump resumes arms shipments to Ukraine: "Putin was a jerk"

The president also wants to press Germany to send more defensive weapons. The move indicates that relationships between Trump, Putin and Zelensky have changed radically, with Kyiv on the rise and Moscow in the doghouse. “They [Ukrainians] should feel better than they have at any point during the Trump presidency," a source familiar with White House discussions told Axios. “Putin was a jerk.”

Elon Musk faces uphill battle to create “America Party”

The world’s richest man faces many legal hurdles to get his proposed new third party on the ballot. He’ll have to collect thousands of signatures and corral hundreds of volunteers. He has the money to make that happen, of course. And then there is the history. Third parties are generally unsuccessful at winning elections: Ross Perot’s presence on the ballot in 1992 threw the election for Bill Clinton, and the Green Party vote in 2000 arguably benefited George W. Bush over Al Gore. Given that Musk is seeking revenge against Trump, that may be all he wants.

A hypothetical dual-Fed chairmanship

Pressure from the Trump Administration to lower interest rates continues to build against Federal Reserve Chairman Jerome Powell. Fortune’s Jason Ma describes how Powell’s role as both the Fed’s board of governors and chair of the Federal Open Market Committee could lead to split chairmanship.

From the analysts

Deutsche Bank on The Fed: “Peter Navarro wrote in a Substack post that Chair Powell’s policy was causing American households ‘acute financial pain’ and that if Powell ‘will not voluntarily adjust course, the board must act decisively to prevent further economic harm.’ We’ll get the June FOMC meeting minutes release tomorrow, so that should offer more details on how officials are thinking about rate cuts. At face value, the latest tariff letters, and the fact that the deadlines seem to be pushing towards August 1st, thus prolonging uncertainty, means a September Fed cut will become more difficult unless there is strong evidence of a deteriorating economy,” per Jim Reid and team.
Placer.ai on consumer shopping: “In June 2025, shopping center traffic fell slightly following two straight months of year-over-year (YoY) visit growth – although indoor malls continued to show the strongest performance, with just a 0.7% drop in YoY June visits. (Open-air shopping centers and outlet malls saw YoY visit declines of 1.6% and 4.4%.) The course reversal may suggest that the visit growth in April and May was at least partially driven by a pull-forward of consumer demand in anticipation of tariff-driven price hikes. By June, many of those purchases had likely already been made, and the resulting downturn in mall visits might represent a natural normalization of traffic rather than a new weakness in consumer demand,” per Shira Petrack.
Goldman Sachs on the S&P 500: “We raise our 3-, 6-, and 12-month S&P 500 return forecasts to +3% (6400), +6% (6600), and +11% (6900). Earlier and deeper Fed easing and lower bond yields than we previously expected, continued fundamental strength of the largest stocks, and investors' willingness to look through likely near-term earnings weakness support our revised S&P 500 forward P/E forecast of 22x (from 20.4x). Our previous index targets were 5900, 6100, and 6500, respectively,” per David Kostin et al.