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Guess shares soar after the ’90s fashion darling announced a $13 per share buyout offer

If the deal goes through, Guess will join WHP’s roster of former fashion heavyweights.

3/17/25 2:54PM

Shares of Guess surged 27% on Monday after the ’90s fashion icon announced a $13.00 per share take-private offer from investment firm WHP Global.

WHP, owner of over a dozen consumer and retail brands including Toys R Us, Vera Wang, Anne Klein, and Bonobos, drives over $7 billion in global retail sales. According to the press release, the deal would be financed with a mix of equity, third-party debt, and a rollover of shares including those from cofounders Paul Marciano and CEO Carlos Alberini.

Guess said a special committee is reviewing the offer and that the company would “operate in the ordinary course of business.” Still, there’s no guarantee it’ll go through. The offer comes just over a year after Guess teamed up with WHP to acquire the popular New York fashion brand Rag & Bone, which marked the retailer’s first-ever acquisition.

Once a ’90s mall staple known for edgy denim and bold, logo-heavy styles, Guess has seen its popularity slip as trends evolve and competitors heat up. Guess shares have dropped 50% over the past year.

Nate Becker

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OpenAI’s ARR reached over $20 billion in 2025, CFO says

Sam Altman’s $500 billion artificial intelligence behemoth hit a major financial milestone last year, according to a new blog post over the weekend from OpenAI CFO Sarah Friar, as the company confirmed it had hit a more than $20 billion annual revenue run rate at the end of 2025.

Elsewhere in the blog post, Friar spent time addressing the company’s shifting goals, referencing plans to “close the distance between where intelligence is advancing and how individuals, companies, and countries actually adopt and use it.” As has become customary in the AI company press release genre, the CFO was also keen to tout the unending growth of the business, writing:

“Both our Weekly Active User (WAU) and Daily Active User (DAU) figures continue to produce all-time highs. This growth is driven by a flywheel across compute, frontier research, products, and monetization.”
“Compute grew 3X year over year or 9.5X from 2023 to 2025: 0.2 GW in 2023, 0.6 GW in 2024, and ~1.9 GW in 2025.”

And, perhaps most importantly for current backers and those keeping an eye on the private company before its rumored mega IPO:

“Revenue followed the same curve growing 3X year over year, or 10X from 2023 to 2025: $2B ARR in 2023, $6B in 2024, and $20B+ in 2025. This is never-before-seen growth at such scale.”

That latest figure has certainly set tongues in the tech world wagging, just as the company announced it would begin rolling out ads to free and ChatGPT Go users. It also puts the chatbot giant a fair way ahead of competitors like Anthropic, the company behind Claude.

OpenAI Anthropic ARR race — Sherwood News

A business that scales with the value of intelligence

“Both our Weekly Active User (WAU) and Daily Active User (DAU) figures continue to produce all-time highs. This growth is driven by a flywheel across compute, frontier research, products, and monetization.”
“Compute grew 3X year over year or 9.5X from 2023 to 2025: 0.2 GW in 2023, 0.6 GW in 2024, and ~1.9 GW in 2025.”