Inflation and Cosmic Microwave Background Radiation

We know that the universe is about 13 point seven eight billion years old. It's expanding at a speed much faster than the speed of light, which would seem to violate one of the fundamental principles of physics. But inflation stopped and then we had this long epoch in which the universe was expanding - not at an exponential rate any more but at a slowdown rate. The composition of universe is really dominated by this early radiation as opposed to matter. And when do the first stars light up? Much later.