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With SpaceX filing for an initial public offering, the tone in markets is unmistakably bullish. Analysts are already calling it “one of the year’s most-anticipated market debuts” and “one of the largest IPOs ever.”

Unlike the outdated IPO framework of the last decade, SpaceX reminds us that going public is no longer an endpoint, but a strategic accelerant: a way to access deeper pools of global capital, expand infrastructure, and scale at a level private markets alone cannot support.

But at a private valuation of $1 trillion-plus, SpaceX — despite being a great company led by a visionary founder — also underscores everything wrong with the U.S. IPO market: by the time companies reach public markets today, almost all upside is in the rearview.

The threshold for going public in the U.S. has changed dramatically. Two decades ago, companies routinely listed at valuations of a few hundred million dollars. Amazon went public in 1997 at roughly $438 million. AOL, one of the defining IPOs of the early internet era, delivered returns exceeding 100x from its public debut to its peak. Public investors participated in the full arc of value creation.

That is no longer the case. Today, companies often need to reach a $2 billion to $3 billion valuation before even considering an IPO. Stripe was last valued at $65 billion in private markets. Databricks has been valued above $40 billion. SpaceX itself has raised capital at valuations exceeding $175 billion prior to any public listing. By the time these companies reach public markets, they are already global leaders.

Much of the benefit that once accrued to public investors is now captured in private markets. But staying private too long comes with real costs — such as a brittle capital structure where ownership is concentrated among a narrow group of insiders and a dependence on continued private funding. It also limits broader investor participation and delays the price discovery and discipline that public markets provide. In trying to avoid the scrutiny of public markets, many companies have instead traded it for different kinds of risks: less transparency, less liquidity, and fewer pathways to sustainable, long-term capital.

SpaceX serves as a signal that public markets are once again open at scale, but the math alone confirms that by the time unicorns like SpaceX, Anthropic, Stripe and Databricks go public, the exponential value creation is already gone.

So why are investors still fixated on mega-unicorn IPOs?

The next generation of outsized returns won’t come from trillion-dollar IPOs. They will come from smaller companies, listing earlier in their lifecycle, before global capital has fully priced them. Historically, the greatest gains have come from identifying category-defining companies before they were obvious — making the real opportunity — not just 100x, but 400x — companies with sub-$500 million valuations. As legendary investor Peter Lynch wrote, that’s how you get “one up on Wall Street.”

SpaceX is just a distraction.

The opinions expressed in Fortune.com commentary pieces are solely the views of their authors and do not necessarily reflect the opinions and beliefs of Fortune.

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Anthropic has accidentally leaked the source code for its popular coding tool Claude Code. 

The leak comes just days after Fortune reported that the company had inadvertently made close to 3,000 files publicly available, including a draft blog post that detailed a powerful upcoming model that presents unprecedented cybersecurity risks. The model is known internally as both “Mythos” and “Capybara,” according to the leaked blog post obtained by Fortune.

The source code leak exposed around 500,000 lines of code across roughly 1,900 files. When reached for comment, Anthropic confirmed that “some internal source code” had been leaked within a “Claude Code release.” 

A spokesperson said: “No sensitive customer data or credentials were involved or exposed. This was a release packaging issue caused by human error, not a security breach. We’re rolling out measures to prevent this from happening again.”

The latest data leak is potentially more damaging to Anthropic than the earlier accidental exposure of the company’s draft blog post about its forthcoming model. While the latest security lapse did not expose the weights of the Claude model itself, it did allow people with technical knowledge to extract additional internal information from the company’s codebase, according to a cybersecurity professional Fortune asked to review the leak. 

Claude Code is perhaps Anthropic’s most popular product and has seen soaring adoption rates from large enterprises. At least some of Claude Code’s capabilities come not from the underlying large language model that powers the product but from the software “harness” that sits around the underlying AI model and instructs it how to use other software tools and provides important guardrails and instructions that govern its behavior. It is the source code for this agentic harness that has now leaked online.

The leak potentially allows a competitor to reverse-engineer how Claude Code’s agentic harness works and use that knowledge to improve their own products. Some developers may also seek to create open-source versions of Claude Code’s agentic harness based on the leaked code.

The leaked code also provided further evidence that Anthropic has a new model with the internal name Capybara that the company is actively preparing to launch, according to Roy Paz, a senior AI security researcher at LayerX Security. Paz said it is likely that the company may release a “fast” and “slow” version of the new model, based on the model’s apparently larger context window, and that it will be the most advanced model on the market.

Currently, Anthropic markets each of its models in three different sizes. The largest and most capable model versions are branded Opus; slightly faster and cheaper, but less capable, versions are branded Sonnet; and the smallest, cheapest, and fastest are called Haiku. In the draft blog post obtained by Fortune last week, Anthropic describes Capybara as a new tier of model that is even larger and more capable than Opus, but also more expensive.

The newest leak, first made public in an X post, appears to have happened after Anthropic uploaded all of Claude Code’s original code to NPM, a platform developers use to share and update software, instead of only the finished version that computers actually run. The mistake looks like a “human error” after someone took a shortcut that bypassed normal release safeguards, Paz said. Anthropic told Fortune that normal release safeguards were not bypassed.

“Usually, large companies have strict processes and multiple checks before code reaches production, like a vault requiring several keys to open,” he told Fortune. “At Anthropic, it seems that the process wasn’t in place and a single misconfiguration or misclick suddenly exposed the full source code.”

Paz also raised questions about how the tool could potentially connect to Anthropic’s internal systems. He said the greater concern may not be direct access to backend models, but rather that the leaked code could reveal nonpublic details about how the systems work, such as internal APIs and processes. He added that this kind of information could potentially help sophisticated actors better understand the architecture of Anthropic’s models and how they are deployed, which in turn could inform attempts to work around existing safeguards.

Anthropic’s current most powerful model, Claude 4.6 Opus, is already classed by the company as a dangerous model when it comes to cybersecurity risks. Anthropic has said its current Opus models are capable of autonomously identifying zero-day vulnerabilities in software. While these capabilities are intended to help companies detect and fix flaws, they could also be weaponized by hackers, including nation-states, to find and exploit vulnerabilities.

This isn’t the first time Anthropic has inadvertently leaked details about its popular Claude Code tool. In February 2025, an early version of Claude Code accidentally exposed its original code in a similar breach. The exposure showed how the tool worked behind the scenes as well as how it connected to Anthropic’s internal systems. Anthropic later removed the software and took the public code down.

EDITOR’S NOTE: This article was updated to include additional comment from Anthropic and clarifications of some technical details by one of the sources.

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“April is the cruelest month,” T.S. Eliot wrote. 

With U.S. crude nearly doubling in price since the beginning of the year; the Strait of Hormuz still more or less blocked; and the subsequent rising cost of almost everything from cars to flights to plastics to semiconductors, April is shaping up to be a very cruel month, indeed.

President Donald Trump will address the nation at 9 p.m. ET Wednesday to deliver what the White House has called “an important update on Iran”—his first primetime remarks since the U.S. and Israel launched strikes on Feb. 28. The address will air across all four major broadcast networks, forcing scheduled programming to move aside, including the season finale of The Masked Singer and a special episode of Survivor.

The address comes as gas prices cross the $4 a gallon threshold on average in the U.S., and as Trump’s approval rating has sunk below 40% in recent polling while he continues to advance a war that the majority of Americans say they oppose. Politically, for Trump, the pressure to explain the war—the who, what, why, and when—has become unavoidable.

What Trump might say

Based on Trump’s own comments and White House leaks, the broad strokes are already visible. Over the past day, Trump has repeatedly told reporters that he has a two- to three-week plan to end operations, consistent with his remarks to Reuters earlier Wednesday that the U.S. will be “out of Iran pretty quickly” and could return for “spot hits” if needed. The framing appears to be a victory lap: Trump has already claimed “full regime change,” though Iran does not, in fact, have a new government, and said U.S. action has ensured Iran will never obtain a nuclear weapon.

Gregory Brew, a senior analyst at Eurasia Group who covers Iran and oil, noted on X that the administration appears to be coalescing around a specific justification: that Iran was building a “shield” of missiles and drones behind which it planned to secretly rebuild its nuclear program, and that the U.S. had to act before it was too late.

“He may declare that the strait is wide open and there’s no problem,” Tom Kloza, a veteran oil analyst and advisor to Gulf Oil, told Fortune. “You just don’t know.”

The ceasefire picture is muddier than the public posturing suggests. Trump claimed on Truth Social that Iran’s president had requested one, but Tehran’s public response was quick and scathing: “No attention is given to the delusions and falsehoods of criminals,” a spokesperson for President Masoud Pezeshkian’s office wrote on X. Behind the scenes, however, a real diplomatic track appears to be in motion. Vice President JD Vance spoke with Pakistani intermediaries as recently as Tuesday, delivering what a source described as a “stern” message that Trump was “impatient” and that pressure on Iranian infrastructure would increase until a deal is reached, Bloomberg reported. Vance was tasked by Trump to privately communicate that the U.S. is open to a ceasefire as long as certain demands are met.

In a sign of counterprogramming, Iranian state media reported Wednesday that Pezeshkian will release an “important” letter addressed directly to the American people, expected shortly.

Even the word “ceasefire” is slippery in this context, Kloza warned. “One man’s ceasefire is another’s cauldron of boiling war,” he said. “It’s not mathematical language. It’s very equivocal.”

Confusion over the Strait of Hormuz

It’s unclear what exactly Trump’s preconditions even are. On Tuesday, he told European allies to “go get your own oil,” and said securing the Strait of Hormuz wasn’t America’s problem anymore. Wall Street cheered that on. By Wednesday, Trump wrote on Truth Social that he wanted the Strait of Hormuz be “open, free, and clear” before ceasefire talks could begin. 

The United Arab Emirates responded by asking the UN to authorize measures, including the use of force, to reopen the strait, a sign of increasing desperation among Gulf states dependent on passage through it. That may be the most consequential development for markets: The strait is the single variable the oil market cares about most, and Trump has effectively washed his hands (then dirtied them again) of it.

The speech arrives against a backdrop of continued escalation. An Iranian missile struck a fuel-oil tanker in Qatari waters Wednesday morning, while Houthi rebels launched a third barrage of missiles toward Israel. More than 3,000 people have been killed across the Middle East, including 13 U.S. service members. And an American journalist was kidnapped in Iraq on Tuesday by suspected Iranian-backed militants.

The International Energy Agency has called the Hormuz disruption the largest supply disruption in history. IEA executive director Fatih Birol warned Wednesday that April will be significantly worse than March, because oil shipments already in transit when the war began have now been delivered.

“In April, there is nothing,” Birol said. 

Marko Papic of BCA Research estimates the world has lost 4.5 million to 5 million barrels per day, about 5% of global supply, but warns that number will double by mid-April as strategic reserves run dry. The cumulative loss of crude, refined products, and petrochemicals is approaching half a billion barrels, Kloza estimated.

“I have a hunch that whatever he says, it’s not going to have the desired impact of really reversing all of these high prices,” Kloza said. “I think we’ve started something now that can’t be stopped in its tracks.”

The strategic petroleum reserve release—400 million barrels across IEA member countries, the largest on record—has helped, but Kloza put the math in perspective: “When you think about losing 10 to 20 million barrels a day and releasing 1.3 million, it’s pretty obvious that it’s a pop gun against howitzers.”

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Many women business owners around the world can’t get access to the financing they need. The Women Entrepreneurs Finance Initiative, a World Bank-housed partnership, estimated that 400 million female entrepreneurs struggle to get loans, and serving them could lead to as much as $6 trillion in added value for the global economy. 

Yet across Asia-Pacific, banks hesitate to lend to women entrepreneurs. That’s partly due to stereotypes, but it’s also because lending criteria wasn’t designed to capture how female-led small- and medium-sized enterprises operate. As Diana Tjoeng, head of Asia for Sydney-based NGO Good Return points out, demale business owners may lack official identity documents and formal credit histories, even if they’ve run their businesses for decades.

“The specific barrier is capital,” says Lisa George, global head of the Macquarie Group Foundation. “Without access to capital, it’s very hard to get social mobility and educational mobility in life.”

Earlier this year, the Macquarie Group Foundation committed one million Australian dollars ($696,000) to an impact investment fund managed by Good Return, which works to expand access to finance for women-led businesses across Asia-Pacific. The two groups have worked together since 2022, when Macquarie took part in what was then a proof-of-concept guarantee fund targeting women-led small- and medium-sized enterprises in Cambodia and Indonesia. 

Good Return’s first impact investment fund closed at one million Australian dollars. That seed capital, deployed as loan guarantees to local financial institutions, catalysed five million Australian dollars (approximately $3.5 million) in loans to more than 600 small businesses. The fund targets the “missing middle,” with loans of around $1000 to $100,000 in size.

“Macquarie was really pleased with the results of the first fund,” says Shane Nichols, CEO of Good Return. “Their team provided pro bono support to us to help us design and structure our new fund.”

Diana Tjoeng, Good Return’s head of Asia, cites the example of a female farmer in Cambodia, who was able to take out a loan of around $8000 from a commercial bank without putting up collateral, thanks to a guarantee from Good Return’s first fund. The money allowed her to build two greenhouses, adding two cabbage harvests to her rice harvest and thus increase her income. 

Good Return’s second fund is structured as an evergreen vehicle: rather than returning capital to investors at a fixed end date, it recycles proceeds back into fresh loan guarantees on a rolling basis.” The organisation estimates the model could unlock 50 million Australian dollars ($35 million) in loans to women-led businesses every five years.

Corporate philanthropy

For Macquarie, the Good Return partnership sits within a long tradition of corporate philanthropy. The Macquarie Group Foundation was established in 1985 by David Clarke, the executive chairman of Macquarie. 

“As a company is a member of the society in which it operates, it follows that one of its important duties is to work in a multitude of ways for the betterment of society,” Clarke said at the Foundation’s formation. Since its founding, the Foundation has contributed a cumulative 698 million Australian dollars ($487 million) to community organisations.

“Our founding chairman believed a company had an obligation to support the communities in which we operate,” George says. “Not only did he believe that about the company, he believed that about the individuals in the company.” In the most recent financial year, more than a third of eligible staff globally participated in some form of community activity, which, according to George, includes activities like running interview and CV workshops for young Australians and refugees.

“The biggest benefit we get from corporate philanthropy is in employee engagement,” she continues. “It’s a positive halo effect for our most important stakeholder, the people that come in and out of the doors every day.”

Courtesy of Macquarie

Most of the Foundation’s work is in Macquarie’s home of Australia, focusing on helping Australians find employment. “Good Return is probably the exception, rather than the rule,” George says. The Foundation added impact investing to its work five decades ago to complement its traditional grantmaking process; the hope is that the Foundation’s work will generate some return that can be recycled into other projects. 

It’s a contrast to views in the U.S., where the idea of stakeholder capitalism—the idea that companies owe value to employees, customers, and communities, not just shareholders—faces a political backlash. Major U.S. companies including BlackRock, Meta, and Bank of America have quietly backed away from their diversity, equity, and inclusion commitments.

George, however, sees a different trajectory in Asia-Pacific: growing wealth across the region is creating a new generation of business leaders who want to formalise their social commitments in ways their peers in Europe and North America long have.

Microfinance’s fall from grace

The idea that small amounts of credit could lift countries out of poverty was once one of international development’s most celebrated beliefs. Pioneered by Nobel laureate Muhammad Yunus and his Grameen Bank in Bangladesh, the model quickly spread across South Asia, Sub-Saharan Africa, and Southeast Asia through the 1990s and 2000s. 

But a proliferation of weakly-regulated microfinance institutions led to a backlash. MFIs were associated with high levels of debt, yet didn’t lead to the development benefits promised by its proponents. 

“The microfinance sector has been through an evolution,” Nichols says, “from being the wonder child, probably put on a pedestal it didn’t deserve to be on, to today, where it’s part of a broader financial inclusion discussion.” 

“Whether it’s somewhere safe to save, whether it’s a loan for education or a productive use, the ability to safely transfer money—everyone needs access to that, regardless of wealth level.”

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For the better part of two years, a powerful consensus has taken hold: artificial intelligence is the great disinflationary force of our time. The logic, touted by billionaire investors like Marc Andreessen and Vinod Khosla, is seductive and seemingly airtight. AI substitutes cheap technology for expensive human labor. It supercharges productivity. It lowers barriers to entry, spawning legions of scrappy startups that compete on prices and margins. The result, the thinking goes, is a secular decline in inflation that will keep interest rates low for years and give the Federal Reserve room to breathe.

There’s just one problem. When Deutsche Bank’s economists decided to test that consensus — by asking the AI tools themselves — the machines disagreed.

“Does AI agree with this consensus?” the bank’s research team, led by Chief U.S. Economist Matthew Luzzetti, wrote in a note published March 30. “Surprisingly not.”

The experiment

The exercise was simple in design but striking in its implications. Luzzetti’s team posed a structured probability question to three leading AI systems: Deutsche Bank’s own proprietary tool, dbLumina; OpenAI’s ChatGPT 5.2; and Anthropic’s Claude Opus 4.6. The prompt asked each model to assign probabilities to four outcomes for U.S. inflation — that AI raises it, leaves it roughly unchanged, slightly reduces it, or meaningfully reduces it — over both a one-year and five-year horizon.

The answer landed with a thud. At the one-year horizon, all three tools agreed that the most likely outcome is minimal impact. But more striking: every model rated AI raising inflation as more probable than AI meaningfully reducing it. dbLumina put the odds of AI lifting inflation at 40%, versus just 5% for a meaningful decline. Claude: 25% vs. 5%. ChatGPT: 20% vs. 5%.

The culprit cited consistently across all three models is the AI investment boom itself. Data centers are multiplying. Semiconductor demand has surged. Electricity consumption from AI workloads is rising sharply. That kind of demand-pull pressure doesn’t lower prices. It raises them. Even at the five-year horizon — where the models do shift more toward disinflationary outcomes — the dramatic deflationary collapse that some have forecasted remains firmly in tail-risk territory.

That’s a notably more cautious picture than the one sketched by some of the most provocative voices in financial analysis. James Van Geelen’s Citrini Research, the top finance Substack, rattled markets in February with a scenario of a coming “white-collar recession,” arguing that AI won’t just ease prices — it will destroy the consumer base that sustains them. In a viral “thought experiment” written as a dispatch from 2028, Citrini described “ghost GDP”: a scenario in which AI inflates the national accounts while mass layoffs hollow out household incomes and “machines spend zero dollars on discretionary goods.” The result, in his scenario, is a negative feedback loop — corporate AI adoption triggers unemployment, which in turn triggers more AI adoption — culminating in a 10.2% unemployment rate and a 38% S&P 500 crash.

A March 2026 Anthropic study found that AI tools like Claude are theoretically capable of automating the vast majority of tasks in high-paying white-collar fields: 94% of computer and math work, 90% of office and administrative roles, yet actual adoption is only a fraction of that potential. If and when AI closes that gap, the downward pressure on wages and service costs could be significant, though the researchers note no systematic rise in unemployment has occurred yet.

Anthropic/”Labor market impacts of AI: A new measure and early evidence”

What could happen next?

The Deutsche Bank AI tools don’t go nearly that far. Their collective message is more measured: the disinflationary promise is real but overstated, the timeline is longer than markets assume, and the near-term investment surge could cut the other way entirely.

Deutsche Bank’s economists leave the philosophical punchline hanging. If AI is wrong about its own inflationary impact, they note, perhaps we should “rethink our assessment of how transformative it is likely to be for complex knowledge work like forecasting, at least in its current form.” And if it’s right, markets may be pricing in AI-driven disinflation ahead of what’s actually happening.

Annoyingly, depending on your perspective, AI may be a little bit too much like the economists who programmed it. “A middle ground is that AI is taking a sensible approach by assigning relatively flat probabilities across outcomes in a highly uncertain environment with longer time horizons,” Luzzetti’s team wrote. “Having been trained on a corpus of text from economists, AI is simply acting as the proverbially two-handed economist, hedging its views against an unknowable backdrop.”

Either way, the machines were asked a direct question about their own economic legacy.

Their answer was: ” It’s complicated.

For this story, Fortune journalists used generative AI as a research tool. An editor verified the accuracy of the information before publishing.

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More than 200 child advocacy groups and experts are demanding that YouTube ban AI-generated “slop” from its children’s platform entirely, arguing that the low-quality, algorithmically produced videos are rewiring young brains and raking in millions while parents and regulators look the other way.

The open letter, organized by children’s advocacy group Fairplay and addressed to YouTube CEO Neal Mohan and Google CEO Sundar Pichai, was signed by more than 135 organizations. It included the American Federation of Teachers and the American Counseling Association, as well as prominent researchers such as Jonathan Haidt, author of The Anxious Generation. In it, the authors say YouTube is not only failing to stop AI slop from reaching children but is also actively profiting from it.

“AI generated videos are really just an escalation of a myriad of problems that YouTube already has when it comes to interfacing with kids on their platforms,” Rachel Franz, Program Director of Fairplay’s Young Children Thrive Offline program, told Fortune. “It’s important to address this AI slop phenomenon, but it’s also equally important to take YouTube to task for the way that its platform is designed to hook users into spending more time in ways that aren’t necessarily related to AI.”

What is ‘AI Slop’ anyway?

The term refers to a wave of mass-produced, AI-generated videos flooding platforms like YouTube. The content is cheap to make, often bizarre or nonsensical, and engineered to grab and hold young (or really, any) viewers’ attention. And reader, they are bizarre: cartoon animals performing repetitive tasks in an uncanny valley aesthetic; fake “educational” videos with garbled information; or hypnotic loops without any pure purpose. The New York Times documented the phenomenon in a February investigation, finding such videos embedded throughout YouTube Kids, a platform YouTube has marketed as a safe, curated space for children.

“So much of AI-generated content is really designed to hijack children’s attention, especially young children who are just at the beginning of developing their impulse control, and they can really distort reality, create confusion, and impact how children are understanding the world around them,” said Franz, who has a background in early child development. “This isn’t a parenting issue in and of itself. The platform is consistently recommending AI content to young users in ways that make it kind of impossible for them to avoid.”

The financial incentives are staggering. Fairplay found that top AI slop channels targeting children have earned over $4.25 million in annual revenue, with some creators openly advertising profits from “plotless, mesmerizing AI content.” The letter argued that no amount of policy will be enough until the platform removes the financial incentive for creators of these videos.

“Only about 5% of videos on YouTube for kids under eight are actually high quality. And there are debates amongst that 5% of whether those are actually high quality,” said Franz. YouTube, however, finds that number contrary to their standards policy.

“We have high standards for the content in YouTube Kids, including limiting AI-generated content in the app to a small set of high-quality channels,” YouTube spokesperson Boot Bullwinkle told Fortune in a statement. “We also provide parents the option to block channels. Across YouTube, we prioritize transparency when it comes to AI content, labeling content from our own AI tools, and requiring creators to disclose realistic AI content. We’re always evolving our approach to stay current as the ecosystem evolves.”

How to solve it

The coalition draws on child development research to argue this isn’t a niche concern. Even adults can have trouble correctly identifying AI-generated content, getting it right only about 50% of the time. More troubling, repeated exposure makes people more likely to perceive AI imagery as real, even after being told it’s fake. For young children whose brains are still building foundational schemas of reality, the damage compounds over time.

Fairplay’s asks are structural, not cosmetic. The coalition is calling on YouTube to clearly label all AI-generated content across the platform, ban AI-generated content entirely from YouTube Kids, and prohibit AI-generated “Made for Kids” content on the main YouTube platform. Fairplay wants YouTube to bar its algorithm from recommending AI content to users under 18, introduce a parental toggle to disable AI content that is switched off by default, and halt all investment in AI-generated content targeting children.

That last demand takes direct aim at YouTube’s investment in Animaj, an AI-powered children’s entertainment studio backed by Google AI Futures. “YouTube is essentially investing in harming babies through its purchase of Animaj,” Franz said.

In Bullwinkle’s statement to Fortune, the spokesperson confirmed that YouTube is developing dedicated AI labels for YouTube Kids, though did not provide a timeline. YouTube CEO Neal Mohan had already flagged “managing AI slop” as a top priority in his annual letter. “To reduce the spread of low-quality AI content, we’re actively building on our established systems that have been very successful in combating spam and clickbait, and reducing the spread of low-quality, repetitive content,” read the letter.

Bullwinkle also noted that the 15 channels mentioned in the Times article are not on YouTube Kids and that the platform removed videos that violated its Child Safety policies. But for Franz, that’s not good enough.

“It shouldn’t be up to individual researchers to point out a few channels as examples that are doing things that could potentially harm kids, and have that be the basis for what YouTube decides to kick off the platform. What we saw with Elsagate was that at that time, YouTube removed 150,000 videos from its platform and several hundred different channels,” Franz said. She was referencing Elsagate, a 2017 scandal in which thousands of videos on YouTube and YouTube Kids used familiar children’s characters, like Elsa from Frozen and Peppa Pig, to hide deeply disturbing content including graphic violence, sexual themes, and drug use, all dressed up with algorithm-friendly tags like “education” and “fun” to slip past filters and reach young children.

“So we know that YouTube has the capacity to monitor, track, and remove these videos at scale, but right now, they’re doing a band-aid approach, where the channels that are getting press coverage, it seems like those are the ones they’re going forward doing something about,” Franz continued. “But it’s not fixing the overall problem.”

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Cancer is becoming increasingly common among young people, with cases slowly and steadily rising every year for the past decade. And what type of insurance adolescents and young adults have affects at what stage of cancer they’re diagnosed and how long they survive.

As researchers who study cancer disparities in young adults, we examine the social and systemic factors that shape who survives a cancer diagnosis. In our recent review of the scientific literature – an analysis that included nearly 470,000 Americans between the ages of 15 and 39 who had been diagnosed with cancer – we found that insurance status is one of the clearest and most consequential factors.

Young people with private health insurance lived longer than those on Medicaid or without insurance. Depending on the cancer, this survival advantage ranged from a modest 8% lower risk of death for lymphoma to a drastic 2 to 2.5 times lower risk of death for melanoma and multiple other cancer types.

Young people are especially at risk

People between the ages of 15 and 39 have especially unstable access to health coverage in the U.S.

Young people in this age group are often finishing school or starting new jobs, including positions that don’t offer benefits. They’re also aging off a parent’s insurance plan, which happens when you turn 26 under current U.S. law. This instability leaves many young people uninsured or underinsured.

The consequences of no or insufficient health coverage go beyond inconvenience. Adolescents and young adults already tend to see smaller improvements in cancer survival over time compared to children and older adults. This gap has puzzled researchers for years.

Insurance instability appears to make this gap even wider.

Insurance shapes the entire cancer experience

Health insurance does far more than cover hospital bills. It determines whether a patient can access a specialist, how quickly treatment begins and whether they are eligible to enroll in a clinical trial.

Strikingly, patients on Medicaid and uninsured patients often had similar cancer outcomes – and both did worse than those with private insurance. This suggests that simply having some form of coverage isn’t enough if that coverage doesn’t actually open doors to quality care.

One underdiscussed consequence of insurance status is access to clinical trials. These studies are often the pathway to the most advanced treatments available. Yet research has found that the type of insurance a young cancer patient has is a significant predictor of whether they enroll in a clinical trial, with higher enrollment rates for those with private insurance.

For cancers such as early stage Hodgkin lymphoma – a cancer more common in young adults – treatment decisions and access to newer approaches can vary significantly based on where and how a patient receives care, which is often tied to their insurance status.

Clarifying cause and effect

The body of research we analyzed primarily tracked patterns in existing data rather than through controlled experiments. That makes it difficult to say with certainty that insurance status directly causes differences in survival.

However, the pattern we observed was consistent across many studies. Moreover, most studies recorded insurance status only at the time of diagnosis, which misses changes that happen during treatment. Patients may lose or gain coverage in the middle of their care.

Future research that tracks insurance continuously throughout treatment, standardizes how coverage is categorized and examines specific cancer types and age subgroups in greater depth could clarify the picture further.

What can be done to help young cancer patients

The good news is that insurance is something society can change. Based on our research, a few key areas stand out.

Expanding coverage could help keep more young cancer patients insured. This might look like policies allowing young adults to stay on a parent’s plan longer, expanding Medicaid and reducing gaps in coverage after diagnosis.

Improving what Medicaid actually covers could make it easier for patients to access top cancer centers. Many doctors and cancer centers limit how many Medicaid patients they see because reimbursement rates are low.

Connecting with financial counselors, patient navigators and care coordinators could help young patients on public insurance or those who lack insurance navigate the system. This support could enable them to get timely access to the right treatments and clinical trials.

Early screening for financial barriers can prompt timely referrals to financial counseling, assistance programs or social work before patients experience treatment delays. Financial support can help patients complete treatment, make their appointments and improve their outcomes.

Rhonda Winegar, Assistant Professor of Nursing, University of Texas at Arlington; Tara Martin, Clinical Assistant Professor of Nursing, University of Texas at Arlington, and Zhaoli Liu, Assistant Professor of Nursing, University of Texas at Arlington

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The federal agency that regulates derivatives markets is ready to put the hammer down on prediction markets. 

In his first public remarks since joining the Commodity Futures Trading Commission on March 2, David Miller, the agency’s new director of enforcement, made one thing clear: Curbing insider trading in prediction markets is a top priority. 

“Unfortunately, there is a myth in the mainstream media and social media that insider trading law doesn’t apply in the prediction markets. That is wrong,” Miller said at an event at his alma mater, New York University School of Law, on Tuesday evening. 

Prediction markets, namely Polymarket and Kalshi, have come under fire in recent months, after repeated occurrences of users making large bets before major geopolitical events. One anonymous Polymarket user made more than $400,000 after betting that then–Venezuelan President Nicolás Maduro would be toppled before the end of January, hours before U.S. forces captured him. Another Polymarket user has made nearly $1 million since 2024, correctly predicting U.S. and Israeli military actions against Iran, CNN reported.

“I have done a lot of work in insider trading matters both as a prosecutor and as a defense attorney, and I take insider trading extremely seriously,” Miller said. “We will aggressively detect, investigate, and where appropriate, prosecute insider trading in the prediction markets.” He added that his other priorities in the new role include curbing market manipulation (especially in the energy markets), disruptive trading, retail fraud, and violations of anti-money-laundering and know-your-customer laws. 

Miller joined the CFTC from global law firm Greenberg Traurig, where he was a litigation shareholder and worked on cases including white-collar defense, government and internal investigations, and commodities and securities enforcement. He also served as an assistant U.S. attorney in the Southern District of New York for five years, including more than two years on the district’s securities and commodities fraud task force. He was also a technical advisor on the TV drama Billions.

Insider trading is “not a victimless offense,” and is often a violation of the duty owed to the information’s source, Miller said. 

He later pointed to a recent example of Kalshi fining an employee who used nonpublic information to bet on a contract related to the YouTube channel he worked on. While Miller did not specify which YouTube channel, the situation he described is consistent with the fine Kalshi imposed on a MrBeast employee named Artem Kaptur, who was fined and ordered to return more than $5,000 in profits related to YouTube streaming milestones. 

“Some have suggested that insider trading is inevitable or beneficial because it gives people with confidential information a financial incentive to trade on it, thus releasing the information to the public,” Miller later added. “These comments all suggest that insider trading is an important and acceptable part of the prediction markets ecosystem. Not so.” 

On March 23, Kalshi and Polymarket each quickly added new industry guardrails and surveillance tools after Sen. Adam Schiff (D-Calif.) and Sen. John Curtis (R-Utah) announced legislation that would severely curtail the companies’ business by banning sports betting on the platforms. In response, Kalshi banned political candidates from trading on their own campaigns, and said it would block anyone participating in college or professional sports from betting on the events they are involved in. 

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The AI race heating up has taken on a more literal meaning.

AI infrastructure is significantly warming surrounding areas, creating a “data heat island effect” with the potential to impact hundreds of millions of people living nearby, a new working paper found.

Using a dataset of land surface temperatures produced by NASA, a research team led by the Department of Computer Science and Technology at the University of Cambridge found from 2004 to 2024, the surrounding areas of more than 6,000 data centers worldwide saw an average increased land temperature of about 2 degrees Celsius, or 3.6 degrees Fahrenheit. In certain cases, nearby temperatures increased 9 degrees Celsius, or 16.4 degrees Fahrenheit. Researchers calculated these heat islands could be felt about 6.2 miles away from facilities, impacting up to 343 million people globally. 

“The data heat island effect could have a remarkable influence on communities and regional welfare in the future,” the study, which has not yet been peer reviewed, said.

Data centers, which store and process immense amounts of data to train AI, have become the foundation of AI-related spending, with capital expenditures for the facilities predicted to reach $760 billion in 2026, according to BloombergNEF estimates, up from $450 billion last year. Hyperscalers like Alphabet have doubled their spending on data centers this year, with Google’s parent company alone planning to invest $185 billion into AI infrastructure. The spending for these major tech firms exceeds the GDP of entire countries such as Sweden.

Data center climate impacts

The energy required to operate these data centers is immense. Modern AI runs on clusters of tens of thousands of graphics processing units (GPUs), which generate huge amounts of heat requiring ventilation and water to cool down. With some modern data centers spanning hundreds or even thousands of acres, the energy needed to power and cool the facilities can exceed a gigawatt, about enough to power between 750,000 to 1 million homes.

The magnitude of necessary power has raised concerns about the environmental impact of data centers, as well as the disruptions they can cause nearby residents. These centers can cause noise pollution, generating noise levels above 90 decibels. Prolonged volumes above 85 decibels are considered harmful to hearing. In arid climates, significant water usage to cool data centers has raised concerns for the potential of droughts.

More energy usage has also taxed the U.S.’s aging grid system—and combined with more extreme weather and increased natural gas costs, have hiked electric bills 7% as of December 2025, according to Goldman Sachs analysts. These increased electricity costs will be passed down to consumers, particularly lower-income Americans, because as businesses like restaurants grapple with increased energy costs, they may increase prices, including of food, to offset those higher costs.

“The income and spending drags will likely be larger for lower-income households because electricity accounts for a greater share of their spending, as well as for households in areas with higher concentrations of data centers where regional power markets will tighten more,” Goldman Sachs economists Manuel Abecasis and Hongcen Wei wrote in a note to clients in February.

To be sure, the heat island study has drawn criticism over how much data centers’ energy use is truly impacting the environment. Some independent researchers have noted much of the increased land heat from data center construction comes from the energy needed to construct any building where empty land and vegetation once sat, not the heat created by data center activity.

The risks of going all in on data centers

These ramifications are substantial, experts say, especially given the question marks about the sustainability of AI spending. According to a recent Moody’s analysis, of the total spending commitments made by Alphabet, Amazon, Meta, Microsoft, and Oracle, nearly two-thirds of it, $662 billion, is planned for data-center-related leases that have yet to begin. These hyperscalers issued $121 billion in new debt via bonds last year alone.

The risks of growing the data center footprint has been exacerbated by the ongoing war in Iran. Not only has the country threatened Nvidia, Apple, Microsoft, and Google with data center attacks, but slashed energy trade has strained data center supply chains.

As AI infrastructure expansion grows, so too do the financial and environmental risks associated with it.

“AI infrastructure is fundamentally an energy and cooling challenge wrapped inside a digital economy opportunity,” Lee Poh Seng, a professor specializing in thermal systems at the National University of Singapore (NUS), previously told Fortune.

Researchers, however, see a path forward to mitigate the heat island effect of AI infrastructure. They propose software-based solutions that increase the efficiency of computational methods and thus require less energy. Hardware-based solutions include improvements to integrated circuitry, or the structure of the chips themselves, to aid in energy recovery, as well as implementing hybrid cooling systems that combine “liquid cooling at the chip level with system-wide air cooling.”

“Although the impact of data heat islands can be intense (as has been previously discussed),” the recent Cambridge study said, “advances in technology in the semiconductor and energy material industries, as well as methodological developments in computer science and electrical engineering, can be used to mitigate their effects.”

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The systems that allow drivers to take their hands off the wheel are convenient but don’t improve safety because people are often too reliant on them and end up paying more attention to their cellphones and infotainment screens than to the road, the head of the National Transportation Safety Board said Tuesday.

At Tuesday’s hearing on two fatal crashes involving Ford’s Blue Cruise system, the NTSB recommended that Ford find ways to improve the way its system monitors drivers, and urged the federal government to establish minimum safety standards. Even though this investigation focused on these Ford crashes, the board made clear that their concerns apply across the industry.

“These systems function primarily as convenience features rather than safety enhancements,” NTSB Chairwoman Jennifer Homendy said.

The 2024 crashes in Texas and Pennsylvania killed three people when Ford Mustang Mach-E SUVs slammed into stopped vehicles. In both cases, the drivers were distracted in ways the system failed to recognize. The Texas driver only briefly glanced at the road while searching for a charging station, and the Pennsylvania driver appeared focused on the cellphone she was holding on top of the steering wheel in front of her.

Homendy said automakers are marketing these systems as safety improvements that allow drivers to take their hands off the wheel and focus elsewhere. To illustrate her point, she showed a Ford commercial that depicted a mother in a driver’s seat pretending to conduct a symphony with her eyes closed while talking to kids in the backseat.

NTSB findings highlight concerns

Philip Koopman, professor emeritus at Carnegie Mellon University and expert on self-driving vehicle safety, said the NTSB findings highlight longstanding concerns about the limitations of these driver assistance systems and the fact that more advancements are needed.

“These concerns continue to be a problem,” Koopman said. “The finding today is that the journey is not over. More work is needed.”

Ford said in a statement that it remains committed to safety and “we will take the NTSB’s recommendations under serious consideration as we continue to evolve our driver-assist technologies and encourage responsible road behavior.”

Drivers lulled into false sense of security

Cathy Chase, president of Advocates for Highway and Auto Safety, said that drivers who are already addicted to their cellphones think it’s OK to check them while using these systems because they trust them.

“Our brains are just wired in that if we think that a system is going to take over and reliably handle a driving task, we get bored and we look for something else to do,” Chase said.

There are currently no clear U.S. government safety standards for the systems, so each automaker’s version of this technology can vary greatly, said Michael Graham, NTSB vice chair.

The NTSB has previously investigated a number crashes involving similar systems, including Tesla’s Autopilot system. Homendy said that it’s not fair to think Tesla’s system is worse because they have reported a large number of crashes. She said Tesla is just much better at reporting crashes. The NTSB recommended that the National Highway Traffic Safety Administration should require automakers to track and report crashes more reliably.

Ford’s Blue Cruise system allows drivers to take their hands off the steering wheel while it handles steering, braking and acceleration on highways. The company says the system isn’t fully autonomous and that it monitors drivers to make sure they pay attention to the road. The systems offered by other carmakers are similar and most of the concerns the NTSB raised apply to all of them.

There are no fully autonomous vehicles for sale to the public in the U.S., but robotaxis that operate without a driver are being used in several major cities.

Graham said he’s concerned that some of these systems have a hard time detecting stationary objects or vehicles in the roar, but the only way automakers communicate that with drivers is in the owner’s manual that many people don’t read cover-to-cover. And the caveats in the manual don’t match the way the car companies sell these systems in ads.

Closer look at previous crashes

One of the deadly Ford crashes, which killed one person, occurred in San Antonio, Texas. The other happened in Philadelphia, killing two. The driver in the Philadelphia crash was later charged with DUI homicide. That case is pending, with no trial date set.

The Texas crash occurred on Interstate 10 in San Antonio. The Mach E, going nearly 75 mph, struck the rear of a Honda CR-V that was stopped in the middle of three lanes at night. Investigators said the Ford driver was looking for a nearby charging station, and there was no evidence that either he or the Ford’s automated systems tried to slow the car or swerve.

Another driver who avoided the CR-V told investigators that neither its taillights nor hazards were working at the time. But NTSB investigators said body camera footage shot after the crash showed that some of the CR-V’s lights were on, and that evidence showed that at least one of the taillights was lit up before the crash.

The other crash involving a Mach E killed two people at night on Interstate 95 in Philadelphia. The Pennsylvania State Police said the Ford was in the left lane when it struck a stationary Hyundai Elantra that earlier had collided with a Toyota Prius. The Ford was going 72 mph even though the speed limit in the area had decreased to 45 mph because it was a construction zone.

During the crash, the Prius driver, who was outside of his vehicle, also was struck and thrown into the southbound lanes. A person from the Hyundai also was on the roadway and was hit. Both young men died.

Concerns about impaired drivers

NTSB members expressed concerns Tuesday that drivers who are under the influence of alcohol or drugs seem to believe that using a driver assistance system can help them drive while impaired.

“It’s obvious to anyone paying attention that people are buying this technology with the plan of using it to help them drive home drunk,” Koopman said.

Homendy said that in contrast to the hands-free driving systems, systems that the NTSB has long recommended that can automatically stop a car when they detect an impending collision have proven effective at reducing traffic deaths.

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Lin Bin, the co-founder and vice chairman of Xiaomi, is buying a 1% stake in the Miami Dolphins along with other assets belonging to owner Stephen Ross at a record valuation of $12.5 billion, the team announced Tuesday.

The minority, non-controlling interest sale was approved by the NFL on Tuesday and is expected to close in the coming days. The deal includes Hard Rock Stadium, the Formula 1 Miami Grand Prix and the Miami Open.

The $12.5 billion valuation is the highest for a minority transaction in professional sports.

Bin co-founded the Chinese consumer electronics company Xiaomi in 2010. He earned a master’s degree from Philadelphia’s Drexel University in 1992 and worked as a software engineer at Microsoft and Google for more than 15 years before co-founding Xiaomi.

“I am privileged to have the opportunity to invest in the Miami Dolphins and the amazing sports business built by the great entrepreneur Stephen Ross,” Bin said in a statement. “This world-class team operates not only the Dolphins but also the incredible Hard Rock Stadium and a host of renowned sporting events from Formula 1 racing to the Miami Open. As a huge sports fan, it’s a wonderful investment and learning opportunity for me.”

Ross, who bought the Dolphins for $1 billion in 2009, has made other minority sales in recent years. In 2024, the Dolphins announced an investment deal with Ares Management funds and Brooklyn Nets owners Joe Tsai and Oliver Weisberg. Ares acquired a 10% stake, while Tsai and Weisberg together bought a 3% interest.

The Dolphins are amid an organizational rebuild that has included hiring new general manager Jon-Eric Sullivan and coach Jeff Hafley.

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U.S. carrier JetBlue has raised its checked bag fees by as much as $9 as the war in the Middle East disrupts global oil supplies and increases fuel prices.

The new fees took effect Monday. For most domestic economy passengers, the first checked bag now costs $39, up from $35. During peak travel times such as April spring breaks, major holidays and the summer, passengers will have to pay $49 instead of $40, the airline said.

The airline, which has its flagship terminal at New York’s John F. Kennedy International Airport, said in an emailed statement to The Associated Press on Tuesday that charging more for optional services “used by select customers” would allow it to keep its airfares competitive.

“While we recognize that fee increases are never ideal, we take careful consideration to ensure these changes are implemented only when necessary,” JetBlue said.

Airlines around the world are confronting soaring operating expenses due to jet fuel prices that have jumped more than 85% since the Iran war began on Feb. 28. The conflict has curtailed ship traffic through the Strait of Hormuz, a key passageway for a fifth of the world’s oil. Airspace closures in parts of the Middle East have added to the price pressure by forcing some airlines to take longer routes that burn more fuel.

A number of non-U.S. carriers already have added fuel surcharges or raised ticket prices in response.

Jet fuel is one of the airline industry’s biggest expenses, typically accounting for about a quarter of operating costs. The average price for a gallon of jet fuel reached $4.64 on Tuesday, up from $2.50 the day before the conflict broke out, according to Argus Media. The energy market intelligence company’s U.S. Jet Fuel Index tracks the average prices across major hubs, including Chicago, Houston, Los Angeles and New York.

Industry analysts expect U.S. airlines to pass some of their higher fuel costs on to travelers through add-ons, such as checked bags and seat upgrades, since they don’t typically have fuel surcharges. And once one airline raises fees, analysts say, others are likely to follow.

JetBlue also increased the charge to check a second bag from $50 to $59 for off-peak periods, and from $60 to $69 for periods of peak demand.

The carrier said some customers would still be able to check their first bag for free, including those who hold one of the airline’s co-branded credit cards and loyalty program members who reach certain tiers. Most customers flying transatlantic routes will also continue to receive their first checked bag free.

Iran’s determination to close off the Strait of Hormuz to ships from nations it considers unfriendly has caused crude oil prices to fluctuate wildly and in turn, driven up fuel prices. Earlier this month, the CEOs of Delta Airlines, American Airlines and United Airlines reported that higher jet fuel prices had already added about $400 million in operating costs.

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In his corner office at Corning Inc.’s towering steel-and-glass headquarters in Corning, N.Y., CEO Wendell Weeks keeps a small, yellowed piece of paper in a dark wood frame behind his desk. Dated Nov. 17, 1880, it’s Thomas Edison’s $311.97 order for Corning Glass Works to produce the glass for a risky new invention of his: the lightbulb. 

“I keep that to always remind me: If someone comes to you with an idea that seems small, but there’s a way to make the world just a little bit better, say yes,” Weeks says. “A lot of ideas won’t work, but the ones that do, those are really good.”

The 173-year-old glass company has proved this concept again and again. The creator of iconic kitchen brands such as Pyrex and CorningWare also developed the glass for telescopes, the earliest TV picture tubes, and heat-resistant glass windows for spacecraft. It answered the call of Apple’s Steve Jobs to create Gorilla Glass—that touch-sensitive, hard-to-shatter glass encasing your smartphone. And it created the fiber-optic cables connecting much of the internet—and those now powering the AI revolution.

Those innovations help explain why the CEO of a company in upstate New York with just $13 billion in 2023 revenue has the admiration and friendship of some of the biggest names in business, from Silicon Valley tycoons such as Amazon’s Jeff Bezos to Motor City moguls like Ford’s Jim Farley. Jony Ive, Apple’s former head of design, says there are few collaborators he holds in higher regard—high praise from the man who crafted the industry-shifting iPhone. “As a designer, as a creative, it’s a complete honor to work with somebody like Wendell,” Ive says. “He is utterly consumed by trying to work with you to solve difficult, sometimes almost seemingly impossible challenges.” 

Lauren Petracca for Fortune

A formative failure

But it hasn’t all been smooth sailing for the 6-foot-7, 65-year-old Corning CEO. In the 1990s, Weeks was the Corning vice president tapped to run a new optical fiber business to power the burgeoning internet—an innovation that drove Corning’s valuation to nearly $100 billion at the height of the internet bubble in 2000. 

That bubble burst the following year, sending the company’s stock price plummeting from some $100 to $1. But Weeks proved his mettle by remaining committed to the enterprise after the dotcom crash. Even when Corning lost 99% of its value and had to lay off half its employees, Weeks insisted on the soundness of the strategy and continued to develop the company’s fiber tech.

He recalls begging company leadership not to fire him and instead let him stay on to clean up the mess: “I said, ‘I’m chaining myself to the wheel here. I’ll be a janitor or whatever it is, but I’m staying until this gets fixed.’ They said, ‘Well, it’s not going to be a janitor. We’d like you to become president.’”

Since then, Corning’s big bet on optical fiber has paid off, and it now accounts for 30% of the company’s revenue. Thanks to the rise of AI, tech giants such as Microsoft are flocking to Corning’s new and improved optical fibers to support hyperscale data centers and generative AI, which require far more fiber than has been used in the past, at much higher speed capabilities. 

With a market cap of $41 billion, Corning’s stock price has increased some 50% since January. In October, the company announced a $1 billion multiyear deal with AT&T to provide this next-generation fiber, and Weeks has set a target of adding more than $3 billion in annual sales over the next three years. “We were right that ultimately there’d be a lot more fiber required,” Weeks says, laughing. “We were just off by a decade or two.”

The company’s ordeal at the turn of this century forged Weeks’ leadership style, observed Amazon founder Bezos, who met and befriended the Corning CEO when he joined Amazon’s board in 2016. “My gut is that Wendell was greatly shaped by Corning’s near-death experience,” Bezos tells Fortune. “And it has made him a much better leader.”

From Scranton to Corning

Weeks joined Corning 132 years into the company’s 173-year history. Founded in 1851 by a merchant named Amory Houghton Sr., it began as the Bay State Glass Co., a small company in Massachusetts. Houghton moved it a few years later to Brooklyn before settling upstate in Corning in 1868 and changing the company’s name to match the town’s. The company spun off the Pyrex and CorningWare businesses in 1998, but the names and tech they’ve created remain. The Houghton family took the company public in 1945 and sold its controlling stake in 2005.

Weeks’ path to becoming CEO of a Fortune 500 company wasn’t a straight line. He was born in Scranton, Pa., where his father was a plumber and his mother a secretary at the local elementary school. Neither went to college, and both were alcoholics, he says. 

Looking for a way out of the chaos, Weeks enrolled at Lehigh University, studying finance and accounting, he says, because his “dad went bankrupt, and I wanted to make sure I always understood financial stuff, even though I wasn’t particularly adept at it.” After graduating in 1981, Weeks started as an auditor at the firm Price Waterhouse, where Corning was a client. He soon realized that the people he was interacting with at Corning were exactly the type of people he wanted to be—stable, committed, kind, and family-oriented. In 1983 he was hired as a controller at Corning, where he took on the painful job of helping to shut down an old factory and restructure the industrial business. In his own words: “I much prefer hiring people versus firing them.”

Lauren Petracca for Fortune

After a short detour to Harvard for business school, Weeks came back to Corning in 1987 to develop a strategy for specialty glass and ceramics, studying science textbooks in his off hours to gain the technical knowledge the job required. He was appointed CEO in 2005 and chairman of the board in 2007.

Weeks never received a degree in the sciences, but in his time at Corning, he has earned 44 U.S. patents in his own name. These include patents for Valor Glass Vials–the crack-resistant vials that played a key role in enabling the delivery of COVID vaccines—and for the bendable glass used in interior automotive displays. 

Weeks’ approach to problem-solving is what sets him apart, says Samsung executive chairman Jay Y. Lee, who developed a close friendship with Weeks thanks to the tech giant’s more than 50-year partnership with Corning, which has made LCD monitors and foldable smartphone glass, among other inventions, for the company.

Courtesy of Corning

“He doesn’t hesitate to roll up his sleeves and work alongside his colleagues when there’s a complex problem to solve or a tough issue to be faced,” Lee says via email. “He inspires everyone to bring their best game to the table in the search for the best solutions.”

Amazon CEO Andy Jassy says he relies upon Weeks for directness and fresh perspectives. “He tells it to you straight,” Jassy tells Fortune. “I’ve had many instances over the years where I’ve called Wendell for input and advice, and where I started a conversation was very different from where I ended up.”

Picking up the pieces

Former Corning CFO Jim Flaws, who was by Weeks’s side during the dotcom disaster, sees in Weeks a kind of “you broke it, you fix it” mentality. He tells a story to illustrate: The office dress code was very casual at that time, but to show their dedication to righting the company in the wake of the crash, Flaws and Weeks vowed to wear suits and ties every day until the company was successful again. “We were going to show the seriousness of this,” Flaws said. (Weeks still wears a suit and tie daily, though the company’s dress code has remained more casual.)

That’s one of Bezos’s favorite anecdotes about Weeks too. “It was a very deliberate, internal thing to say, ‘We are going back to the basics. We are going back to the future. We are returning to our roots,’” Bezos says. “We are not a startup in Silicon Valley. We are an important, 100-plus-year-old company. We are innovative, but buttoned-down too.”  

After the massive hit the company took when the dotcom bubble burst, Weeks and Flaws made three big bets in 2002 that are still paying off today: They doubled the amount of money Corning was pouring into research and development. They invested in developing LCD, flat-screen TV displays. And they created new ceramic filters to trap smog and exhaust from trucks.

Five years later, they got their next big break. In 2007, Apple founder Steve Jobs cold-called Weeks after being introduced briefly by a mutual friend. Jobs explained he was creating a new type of cell phone, called the iPhone, where the whole front face would be a display. He was having trouble finding glass to cover it that wouldn’t easily break or scratch. Jobs asked if Corning could make a super-resilient glass–and deliver it in under six months. The Corning board balked, but the CEO pushed ahead anyway—and pulled it off. 

Gorilla Glass, the glass still used on the screen of the iPhone and almost every smartphone in the world, was one of the most consequential inventions in modern history. Without it, the smartphone revolution would not have been possible.

“Back then, we thought in total we’d sell maybe $50 million worth of product to the iPhone,” Weeks says. “Steve didn’t actually think it was going to be that big either.” Since then, Gorilla Glass has generated more than $20 billion in revenue for the company, and is used globally on more than 8 billion devices made by Apple and other companies. 

Lauren Petracca for Fortune

Corning’s next big bet

Now, with its buzziest innovation nearly two decades old, Corning is pivoting yet again, this time to build the “pipes” for the rise of generative AI. 

In 1970, the company created optical fiber, a highly pure optical glass, as thin as a strand of human hair, that could transmit light signals over long distances. Prior to that, copper was the dominant cable material—and it’s still used today to power the internet for many households. Today, if you stream a movie, post to a social network, or pose a question to a generative AI application on your mobile phone, you’re able to do so because of optical fiber connectivity in a data center.

Earlier this year, Corning rolled out its “next-generation optical cable,” and it inked a multimillion-dollar deal with Lumen Technologies to reserve 10% of Corning’s global fiber capacity for each of the next two years to power data centers for customers like Microsoft. 

How are these fibers different from the ones Corning has produced in the past? It all comes down to density. Gen AI requires 10 times the fiber currently used, but needs to fit in the same space, Weeks says. These new, thinner fibers will allow Lumen and other customers to fit two to four times the amount of fiber into their existing ducts. Unlike copper, fiber has virtually limitless data capacity. In one fiber pair (one sending and one receiving), half of the humans on earth could be talking to the other half simultaneously, Weeks says.

But while there’s a whole lot of fiber out there, the market for it is unlikely to die down anytime soon. “Since we invented fiber, there’s now been enough installed in the world to go back and forth to the sun 20 times,” Weeks says. “And still some 50% of Americans aren’t connected directly by fiber… You think of all that copper cabling that you see—all that ultimately will fall to fiber optics for communications. So we’re still at the beginning of this long-term technology curve.” 

Lauren Petracca for Fortune

Corning may have invented the stuff, but it’s not the only player in the market for the original optical fiber now: Weeks is keeping his eye on competitors in Asia, including Japan’s Sumitomo Electric and Furukawa Electric Co. Corning’s new fibers and designs for AI applications are still under patent, however.

The situation shows how essential it is that the company keep breaking new ground. Ford CEO Jim Farley says he has learned more from Weeks than any other CEO. (Corning provides much of the exterior and interior glass for Ford’s vehicles.) “He’s in a thermonuclear war of innovation, and we all know that the IP getting created in places like China, Vietnam, and India and around the world is real,” Farley tells Fortune. “He has to stay in front of it, so constantly fueling the innovation, constantly making the right bet on which innovations, that’s a risk for him.” 

William Kerwin, an equity analyst at Morningstar, says the biggest risk he sees ahead for Corning is how capital-intensive its products are to produce—in terms of both manufacturing and research and development. But he thinks Weeks’ three-year, $3 billion sales plan is realistic, thanks to Corning’s diversification.

“It’s a company that is not confined to one product or one market,” Kerwin says. “Glass can sound so boring, but the things they’re able to do with it in terms of durability or the iPhone screens or data-center connectivity with optical fiber is really impressive. They’re really stretching material science to its limits.”

Weeks says he’s betting on gen AI and a trend toward full-screen interior car displays to drive profits going forward. And after decades in the business, he focuses more on finding the right innovation than on predicting the timing of the next blockbuster market for a product. 

“If you understand innovation deeply, you understand that getting the timing right is almost impossible,” Weeks says. “You’ve got to be able to instead go to work on s–t that matters early, and then just scale it fast when all of a sudden it ends up you’ve got to be fast. And that’s what we’re doing now.”

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Good morning. Huntington Bancshares Inc. is marking its 160th year by showing that traditional branch banking and digital growth can advance together, not at each other’s expense.

Founded in 1866, Huntington (No. 351 on the Fortune 500) operates more than 1,000 branches nationwide and is leaning into expansion. CFO Zachary Wasserman described 2026 as a “major” strategic year, with a focus on integrating recent partnerships while keeping core businesses growing faster than the industry.
 
A visible piece of that strategy is the Southeast build-out. “Our expectation is opening one branch almost every two weeks this year in North Carolina and South Carolina,” Wasserman said.

Huntington opened five branches across the two states in 2025 and plans roughly 24 more this year, putting it on track for about 55 locations by the end of 2027. Beyond physical expansion, the bank views each new branch as a talent opportunity. “We’re putting a major organizational focus around this, and the results have been encouraging,” Wasserman said.

The rollout has been supported by heavy pre-launch marketing, with many branches surpassing full-year deposit targets before opening, he added.

At the same time, Huntington has become increasingly digital-first in new customer acquisition. The bank now brings in more customers digitally than through branches—an approach Wasserman described as “very unusual” for an institution of its size. Most new relationships now begin online, even if customers later turn to branches for more complex needs.

Crucially, the digital and physical footprints overlap. About 80% of new digital customers live within five miles of a Huntington branch, underscoring that local presence still matters even when accounts are opened online, Wasserman said. The bank is using that proximity to deepen relationships and drive growth in higher-value businesses such as commercial payments, wealth management and capital markets, he said.

Huntington reported on Thursday solid fourth-quarter and full-year 2025 results, driven by loan and deposit growth, higher fee income, improving margins and strong credit quality. Fourth-quarter EPS was $0.30, or $0.37 on an adjusted basis, up 9% year over year and ahead of estimates. Goldman Sachs reiterated its buy rating and $21 price target on the stock following what it called a “decent quarter and mixed outlook.”

Behind the branch and digital push is a broader integration agenda. Wasserman said Huntington is “well down the track” on integrating two recently announced bank partnerships—its merger with Veritex Holdings and a definitive agreement to acquire Cadence Bank. The bank is applying lessons from the Veritex deal, including early leadership decisions and clear communication around systems conversions, to retain employees and customers during transitions.

Wasserman framed Huntington’s strategy as a long-term effort to win market share through steady, multi-year investment rather than stop-start growth cycles. Consistent spending on branches, digital platforms and specialized businesses, he said, is key to fully realizing the benefits of the bank’s expansion over time.

Have a good weekend.

Sheryl Estrada
sheryl.estrada@fortune.com

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During the Gold Rush, legend had it that the best way to get rich wasn’t by panning for gold, but by selling “picks and shovels” to the miners. And there’s no better example of that strategy in action today than at Caterpillar. There, the maker of massive mining and earthmoving equipment and iconic yellow construction site gear is capitalizing on the AI boom and seeing record stock highs and solid revenue growth.

Shares of the company have climbed to record levels in recent weeks, pushing its market capitalization sharply higher—from $270 billion at the end of 2025 to approximately $364 billion as of Feb. 13, 2026. The stock, which has more than doubled over the past 12 months to an all-time high of $775, has vastly outperformed such tech behemoths as Apple (up 8%) and Microsoft (up about 1%) during that time period. And investors are betting that Caterpillar’s growing exposure to data centers, energy infrastructure, and AI-related demand hasn’t peaked yet. In fact, over the past 12 months, Caterpillar has ranked as the No. 1 best performer in the Dow.

While Caterpillar is well known for its bright yellow construction site vehicles, it has greatly broadened its business mix to include energy and power systems, and resource and mining equipment. Caterpillar CEO Joseph Creed first joined the company in 1997 and has served in various roles, including CFO for the energy and transportation segment and interim CFO. Creed was named Caterpillar’s chief operating officer in 2023 and became CEO in May 2025.

The company’s strategy is “centered on three pillars for profitable growth: commercial excellence, being the advanced technology leader, and transforming how we work—all built upon a foundation of continued operational excellence,” Creed said on a Jan. 29 earnings call.

Caterpillar (No. 64 on the Fortune 500) reported fourth-quarter and full-year results that exceeded Wall Street expectations. Full-year sales and revenue reached a record $67.6 billion, the highest in the company’s history, driven by solid demand across its construction, resource, and energy businesses. Adjusted earnings per share (EPS) for the year totaled $19.06, while fourth-quarter adjusted EPS came in at approximately $5.16, above analysts’ forecasts in the mid-$4 range.

The company also reported a record order backlog of $51 billion, up about 70% year over year, highlighting strong demand visibility entering 2026. Total full-year sales increased 4% compared with the prior year, and Caterpillar generated robust free cash flow, further strengthening its balance sheet.

“Caterpillar shares have risen dramatically over the past year as investors contemplate the company’s exposure to burgeoning demand for artificial intelligence,” Morningstar equity analyst George Maglares wrote in a recent note.

Rather than developing AI technology itself, Caterpillar supplies critical equipment needed to power and support AI-driven infrastructure. The company provides turbines for on-site primary power at data centers, generator sets for backup power, and integrated microgrid systems that can combine traditional energy sources with renewables and battery storage, Fortune’s Jordan Blum reported.

Maglares noted that Caterpillar’s construction industries and resource industries segments are both showing signs of cyclical recovery. The company exited the year with double-digit growth across all major segments, suggesting solid momentum heading into 2026. Management has guided to mid-single-digit revenue growth of roughly 5% to 7% for the current year, a forecast that Morningstar views as potentially conservative given current demand trends.

Infrastructure spending in North America remains a key driver, particularly as public-sector projects and private investment in energy and digital infrastructure continue to expand, he said. Reflecting these trends, Morningstar recently raised its fair-value estimate for Caterpillar shares into the low-$600 range, citing improved guidance and stronger end-market demand. 

The company’s evolving revenue mix also underscores its shift toward energy and power solutions. In 2024, Caterpillar’s energy and transportation segment generated about $28.8 billion in annual revenue, surpassing the company’s $25.5 billion reported by its traditional construction industries business for the first time, Fortune noted. The change highlights the growing importance of power generation and energy systems within Caterpillar’s portfolio.

Caterpillar, which celebrated its 100th anniversary last year, is still fundamentally a cyclical business that rises and falls with the global economy. But for now, Caterpillar might be the most surprising beneficiary of a boom that doesn’t look like it’s ending anytime soon.
 

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Shoppers increased their spending in February before gasoline prices spiked because of the attacks on Iran by the U.S. and Israel.

Retail sales rose a better-than-expected 0.6% in February, from a revised 0.1% decline in January, the Commerce Department said Wednesday.

Retail analysts say it was a strong showing given that inflation has rattled American households, but that the war in Iran may have dented the psyche of consumers with spending on gasoline racing higher over the past five weeks.

“While the overall numbers are good and suggest a continued trajectory of reasonable expansion for retail, they do not reflect the problems that have arisen since the start of the Iran conflict,” wrote Neil Saunders, managing director of GlobalData. “Since the start of March our own numbers show that consumer sentiment has soured and that rising gas prices are starting to spook consumers.”

This week the average price for a gallon of regular gasoline eclipsed $4, the first time it’s done so since 2022, and it jumped another 4 cents overnight to $4.06, according to motor club AAA.

Yet before the Iran war began, sales at motor vehicle and auto parts dealerships rose a solid 1.2% in February. Excluding that sector, retail sales rose 0.4%

Business at clothing and accessories stores rose 2%, while sales at electronics and appliance stores were up 0.5%. Sales at online retailers rose 0.7%. And business at health and personal care stores were up 2.3%

The snapshot offers only a partial look at consumer spending and doesn’t include things like travel and hotel stays. But the lone services category – restaurants – registered an increase of 0.4%.

“This was a solid report,” Ksenia Bushmeneva, economist at TD Bank Group, wrote in a report published on Wednesday.

He noted that higher gas prices at the pump will likely lift overall sales in March since the government retail sales figures are not adjusted for inflation. But he said “real spending might take a hit as consumers look to offset higher fuel costs with reduced spending discretionary items, with spending on travel and recreation the most likely areas to be cut.”

The Iran war began Feb. 28 and has shut down the Strait of Hormuz, cutting off one-fifth of the world’s oil supply. The price for a barrel of Brent crude, the international standard, is up more than 45% since the start of the war. The cost of diesel fuel has risen faster than gasoline, driving up the cost of transportation for companies. Economists expect a related bump in inflation, potentially as soon as this month.

Economists had believed that an unusually large jump in tax refunds would kick start spending at the start of the year. But spiking gas prices will take a bite of that money.

“The hit to real incomes from higher gas prices is especially regressive, hurting lower-income households disproportionately, while the lift from tax refunds is more evenly spread,” Samuel Tombs, chief economist at Pantheon Economics, wrote in a recent report. “Moreover, refunds will slow to a trickle by late April, providing little protection if high prices persist.”

Patrick De Haan, an analyst at GasBuddy, which tracks fuel prices, noted that the way to gauge the impact of gas prices is how much gas expenditures account for a shopper’s income. He said that gas prices are approaching 3% of household medium income.

“When that gets up to about 4, 4 1/2, 5%, that’s really when people really start trimming back on some of their discretionary purchases,” he said.

Some retailers are already warning of the impact on their customers if gas prices keep rising.

Daniel Erver, CEO of Hennes & Mauritz, said last week that the Swedish fast fashion chain expects energy prices will have a “significant impact on the consumer behavior” if the war is prolonged.

And Darren Rebelez, CEO of the convenience store chain Casey’s General Stores, told investors last month that a significant pullback in customer spending is unlikely unless gas approaches $5 per gallon.

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A quadruple amputee professional cornhole player acted in self-defense when he shot and killed a passenger in his car during a heated argument, his attorney said Wednesday.

Dayton James Webber, 27, appeared in Charles County District Court via videoconference for the bail review Wednesday, where Judge Patrick Devine noted that he left Maryland after the March 22 shooting of 27-year-old Bradrick Michael Wells and ordered Webber to remain jailed without bail.

Webber, who was extradited from Virginia and is charged with first- and second-degree murder, hasn’t entered a plea yet and is due in court for a May 6 preliminary hearing. He also faces assault and firearm charges.

Defense attorney Andrew Jezic told the court that Webber acted in self-defense and that he anticipates “a lengthy trial” to prove it.

After the hearing, Jezic told reporters that his client was “terrified.”

“The truth here is that he would have been a murder victim if he had not acted immediately in defense of his life,” Jezic said.

Family members of Webber declined to comment after the hearing.

Webber, whose arms and legs were amputated when he was 10 months old to save his life after he contracted a serious blood infection, is accused of shooting Wells, of Waldorf, twice in the head during an argument, according to police charging documents.

Karen Piper Mitchell, a deputy state’s attorney, said witnesses in the car told authorities the argument was over a gun that a friend of Wells had stolen from Webber, and that Webber was upset Wells was still friends with the thief.

In arguing that Webber should remain in custody, Mitchell noted that he drove to Virginia after the shooting and owns firearms.

According to the charging documents, Webber pulled over after the shooting in La Plata, Maryland, and asked two backseat passengers to help pull the victim out, but they refused, got out of the car and flagged down police officers.

Webber fled with the victim still in the car, the Charles County sheriff’s office said. Two hours later, a resident in Charlotte Hall, about 10 miles (16-kilometer) away, found Wells’ body in a yard along a road and notified officers.

Detectives tracked down Webber’s car in Charlottesville, Virginia, and found Webber at a hospital where he was “seeking treatment for a medical issue,” the sheriff’s office said.

Webber was featured by ESPN in 2023 in a story of inspiration, noting he rode dirt bikes, wrestled and played football before becoming a professional cornhole player. The same year, he wrote an essay for the “Today” show about how he became a professional competitor. He said he learned to grab the bean bag by the corners and throw it using his amputated arms.

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Tiger Woods said Tuesday he is stepping away to seek treatment, four days after his vehicle crashed in Florida and he was arrested on suspicion of driving under the influence. He will miss the Masters for the second straight year.

“This is necessary in order for me to prioritize my well-being and work toward lasting recovery,” Woods said in social media posts.

Woods pleaded not guilty in his driving under the influence case in Florida on Tuesday, hours after a sheriff’s report said deputies found two pain pills in his pocket and he showed signs of impairment after his SUV clipped a trailer and rolled over on its side.

The online court docket for Martin County showed Woods entered a written plea of not guilty and planned to waive his April 23 arraignment hearing.

It’s the second time Woods has taken a leave following a car crash. In 2009, after his SUV plowed into a fire hydrant and tree outside his home near Orlando, he took a leave of absence to work on being a better person. That lasted four months and he returned at the Masters.

Woods showed signs of impairment

Woods’ eyes were bloodshot and glassy, his pupils dilated and he had opioid pills — identified as hydrocodone — on him when interviewed at the scene of the crash, according to the arrest report released by the Martin County Sheriff’s Office.

Woods’ movements were slow and lethargic, he was sweating as he talked to deputies in the back seat of an air-conditioned car and he told them he had taken prescription medication earlier in the morning, according to the report.

Woods told deputies he had been looking at his phone and fiddling with the radio moments before he hit the trailer, the report said.

Woods has not played an official event since the 2024 British Open. He was recovering from a seventh back surgery in October and was trying to return at the Masters, where he is a five-time champion.

“I’m committed to take the time needed to return in a healthier, stronger and more focused place, both personally and professionally,” Woods said in his statement.

Woods will not be in Augusta, Georgia, where he was to appear with Masters chairman Fred Ridley to celebrate the opening of a refurbished municipal course that involved Woods, or for the prestigious Masters Club dinner for champions.

“Augusta National Golf Club and the Masters Tournament fully support Tiger Woods as he focuses on his well-being. Although Tiger will not be joining us in person next week, his presence will be felt here in Augusta,” Ridley said in a statement.

He is taking a break from the PGA Tour board

That means a break from more than just golf. He serves a key role on the PGA Tour board by leading its Future Competition Committee reshaping the schedule. A tour spokesman said Woods did not take part in Tuesday’s meeting, and the work would continue in his absence.

“Over the last year, I have come to deeply appreciate Tiger not only for his impact on the game, but for his friendship and the perspective he has shared with me as I joined the golf industry,” said PGA Tour CEO Brian Rolapp, who started last summer. “My thoughts are with him and his family as he takes this step, for which he has my full respect and support.”

Woods’ defense attorney, Douglas Duncan, didn’t respond to an email and phone call after the plea was entered Tuesday.

Woods was traveling at high speeds on a beachside, residential road on Jupiter Island with a 30 mph (nearly 50 kph) when the accident occurred. The truck had $5,000 in damage, according to the report.

The truck driver and another person helped Woods out of his vehicle through the passenger window. Neither Woods nor the truck driver were injured.

The failed sobriety test

During a field sobriety test, deputies noticed Woods limping and that he had a compression sock over his right knee. Woods explained he had undergone seven back surgeries and over 20 surgeries on his right leg, and that his ankle seizes up while walking.

Woods, who was hiccupping during questioning, continuously moved his head during one of the sobriety tests and deputies had to tell him several times to keep his head straight, the report said.

“Based on my observations of Woods, how he performed the exercises and based on my training, knowledge, and experience, I believed that Woods normal faculties were impaired, and he was unable to safely operate the motor vehicle,” the deputy wrote after the tests.

Woods, 50, is the most influential figure in golf and has become as recognizable as any athlete in the world. The first person of Black heritage to win the Masters in 1997, he has captivated golf fans with records likely never to be broken.

But his injuries have kept him from accomplishing more, including those suffered in the 2021 car crash in Los Angeles that damaged his right leg so badly he said doctors considered amputation.

At this latest crash, Woods agreed to a Breathalyzer test that showed no signs of alcohol, but he refused a urine test, authorities said. He was arrested and released on bail eight hours later.

Woods, who has been involved in four crashes over the years, is charged with driving under the influence with property damage and refusal to submit to a lawful test.

Under a change to Florida law last year, refusing a law enforcement officer’s request to take a breath, blood or urine test became a misdemeanor, even for a first offense.

___

AP Golf Writer Doug Ferguson in Jacksonville, Florida, contributed to this report.

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You’re probably sick of reading about artificial intelligence, maybe especially from this byline. But amid all the discussion, hype, and hysteria, Goldman Sachs economists Sarah Dong and Joseph Briggs have a sobering dose of reality in the data: Fewer than 19% of U.S. establishments have adopted it.

The Census Bureau’s Business Trends and Outlook Survey, as reported in Goldman’s March 2026 AI Adoption Tracker, shows that the figure is essentially flat from the prior month, though it is expected to rise to 22.3% over the next six months. It shows that adoption, while growing, has yet to reach the tipping point that would make AI a standard workplace tool rather than a competitive advantage reserved for early movers. But the data also suggests that, when used correctly, it saves a huge amount of time.

Enterprise workers who use AI are getting back nearly an hour a day, according to data from OpenAI dated December 2025. Specifically, Goldman reported that employees at companies with ChatGPT enterprise accounts save an average of 40 to 60 minutes per day thanks to AI, and 75% say they can now complete tasks they previously couldn’t do at all. The catch, of course, is that almost no one is doing this yet.

“We continue to observe large impacts on labor productivity in the limited areas where generative AI has been deployed,” the Goldman economists wrote, going on to essentially agree with the OpenAI disclosure. “Academic studies imply a 23% average uplift to productivity, while company anecdotes imply slightly larger efficiency gains of around 33%.”

Put simply: The companies using AI are pulling ahead, and most of their competitors aren’t even in the race yet.

The adoption gap is widening

The adoption divide isn’t just between industries—it’s also stark by company size. Firms with more than 250 employees report an AI adoption rate of 35.3%, more than double that of smaller establishments. But smaller businesses are starting to close the gap: Companies with 20 to 49 employees saw the largest recent increase in adoption, jumping 2.1 percentage points to 21.5%.

The sectors leading adoption are predictable—information services, professional services, finance and insurance, and education. Computing and web hosting firms top the list at 60% adoption. But broadcasting companies are expected to see the biggest surge over the next six months, according to Goldman’s analysis of Census Bureau data, signaling that the media and content industries are on the verge of a significant AI-driven transformation.

What most companies are missing

To be sure, the picture isn’t uniformly rosy. As Fortune reported last month, AI tools are also adding significant cognitive load for many workers, with time spent on some tasks increasing by as much as 346%, and deep-focus work hours dropping 2%. The time savings, it turns out, are often immediately reinvested in more work, not less.

Fortune also previously reported that some firms deploying AI are now completing product cycles that previously took 24 to 36 months in as little as six months—a compression of time-to-market that’s difficult to reverse once a rival has achieved it.

For the roughly 81% of U.S. firms not yet using AI, the data suggests they are leaving a substantial productivity dividend on the table. OpenAI’s enterprise figures show that its business users are now sending 30% more messages than they were just months ago—a signal that once workers start using the tools, engagement compounds quickly.

These stakes aren’t lost on the C-suite. A Fortune survey of CFOs published last week found that executives privately expect AI-attributed layoffs to be nine times as high in 2026 as current public figures suggest—even as many of those same CFOs acknowledged a persistent gap between the productivity gains they expected from AI and what they have actually measured so far.

The Goldman Sachs data, which shows real productivity acceleration in industries with higher adoption rates, suggests that the gap may be closing—but only for firms that have actually deployed the tools and done so correctly. To that point, Fortune reported last week that 77% of enterprises are actively pursuing AI initiatives—but many don’t know how to evaluate, procure, or deploy the tools effectively, leaving significant spending without measurable return.

The barriers to adoption are well-documented: insufficient employee skills, data security concerns, and difficulty identifying the right use cases, according to surveys from Deloitte, Gartner, and Bain & Company. But those barriers are softening. Bain found that more than 80% of reported AI use cases now meet or exceed expectations—a figure that undercuts the skepticism still common in many boardrooms.

For executives still evaluating whether to invest in AI tooling, Goldman Sachs’ data offers a clear warning: Firms that have already deployed AI are beginning to show measurable productivity gains relative to those that haven’t.

The 40 to 60 minutes a day that AI saves isn’t just a worker convenience. Across a team of 50, that’s roughly 33 to 50 hours of recovered productivity—every single day. The companies already capturing that aren’t waiting for the technology to mature. They’ve decided the risk of waiting is greater than the risk of moving.

There’s a more human dimension to that calculus, too. As Fortune reported in January, many workers whose productivity has genuinely improved with AI still describe a quiet sense of loss—of craft, of autonomy, of the slower rhythms that once defined skilled work. That hour they’re getting back, some say, doesn’t quite feel like it belongs to them anymore.

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After a four-year hiatus, Warren Buffett will once again host his annual charity lunch auction, and this time, he’s got some high-profile names to help him co-host. 

Stephen Curry, four-time NBA champion of the Golden State Warriors, and his wife, Ayesha Curry, a best-selling author and lifestyle entrepreneur, are partnering with Buffett for the exclusive lunch this year.

Buffett is reviving the auction, which has raised more than $53 million since it began in 2000, offering bidders a chance to win a lunch with the famed billionaire investor, this year dubbed “A Seat at the Table.” Buffett stepped away from the auction in 2022 after raising $19 million that year alone. The proceeds will be equally split with Buffett’s longtime partner GLIDE, a San Francisco-based social justice nonprofit that aids homeless individuals, and the Currys’ Eat. Learn. Play. Foundation. 

“Over the years, I’ve seen how the business community and innovative nonprofits can work together to create real change, and I’ve always believed in supporting organizations that are making a meaningful difference,” Buffett wrote in a statement. “This event is about coming together again—in a new way—with people I admire, to support work that truly matters. Partnering with Stephen and Ayesha to help launch something new in support of these communities is something I’m very happy to be part of.

Bidding starts on eBay on May 7 at 7:30 p.m. PDT and will close on May 14. The winner and up to seven guests will join Buffett and the Currys for lunch in Omaha, Nebraska, on June 24, 2026.

Previous winners include Ted Weschler, now a top investment manager at Berkshire Hathaway, and hedge fund manager David Einhorn. Every winning bid since 2008 has surpassed $1 million, but in the auction’s earlier days, $25,000 could buy you lunch with the Oracle of Omaha. 

Building a partnership

Buffett reached out to the Currys over the holidays after their foundation caught his attention, Eat. Learn. Play. CEO Chris Helfrich told Fortune. 

“For us, this is about using the platform we’ve been given to create something bigger than ourselves,” Stephen and Ayesha Curry said in a statement. “With this incredible auction, we are excited to turn this moment into real impact for students and families throughout the Bay Area community. Eat. Learn. Play. was built on the idea that every child deserves the chance to thrive, and by partnering with Warren and his incredible team alongside GLIDE, together we can extend our efforts and impact even further.” 

In just seven years, the foundation has distributed more than 25 million meals to kids and families in Oakland, the Currys’ adopted hometown. 

Only about a third of Oakland’s public school students read at grade level, which has inspired Eat. Learn. Play. to invest heavily in early literacy programs. The organization provides one-on-one professional tutoring to thousands of students three to five days a week, Helfrich said. The foundation is also remodeling more than 25 public elementary schoolyards in the Oakland Unified School District and has completed 15 new playgrounds, so far.  

“It’s safe to say that if this becomes an annual thing, that would be a dream for us,” Helfrich said. 

Continuing a legacy

The charity lunch has become one of Buffett’s signature philanthropic events, but it all started with his first wife, Susan Thompson Buffett. 

Susan volunteered at GLIDE, which is home to a host of social justice and community services, including daily free food assistance, helping people transition out of homelessness, and addiction recovery programs. 

“None of us knew who she was. We knew her name was Susie. She would come in, and she served meals in the kitchen,” GLIDE President and CEO Gina Fromer told Fortune. Volunteering turned into a years-long partnership before Susan passed in 2004, and Buffett continued the auction for years afterward. 

After stepping away from the auction in 2022, Salesforce CEO Marc Benioff took over the lunch for two years, raising $1.5 million in 2024.  

“I just think he came back, because he never left,” Fromer said. “He always watched and saw that the community of San Francisco, the revitalization coming back from COVID [and] how important GLIDE’s role has been in that.” 

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One of the most influential investors in crypto wants a bigger slice of the burgeoning prediction markets space. Venture capital firm Paradigm is developing a prediction markets trading terminal, according to sources familiar with the matter, who asked for anonymity to talk about private business dealings. Arjun Balaji, a partner at the venture firm, is leading the initiative, which will cater to professional traders and market makers, according to the sources, who say he’s been working on the project since late 2025.

Balaji did not respond to a request for comment. A spokesperson for Paradigm declined to comment.

The trading-terminal project comes at a time when mainstream financial institutions are scrambling to take advantage of the growing popularity of prediction markets, which let traders speculate on the results of sports games, elections, and even the price of Bitcoin. 

Paradigm has also mulled whether, in addition to creating a trading terminal, it should establish an internal market-making desk in the prediction markets space, said two sources. 

In addition, a third source familiar with Paradigm said the venture firm is working with researchers to explore the feasibility of creating prediction market indexes. This would entail bundling multiple prediction markets together into one tradable package, much like the S&P 500 combines the stocks of 500 companies into one index. The venture capital firm has already begun collecting prediction market data into a public dashboard.

Kalshi and Polymarket

Paradigm has been a prominent backer of Kalshi, one of the two leading prediction markets. The venture capital firm joined three successive raises for Kalshi in 2025 and led the funding round in December that valued Kalshi at $11 billion. Now, Kalshi has raised at least $1 billion in a new financing round that values the business at $22 billion.

Matt Huang, the venture firm’s cofounder and managing partner, is on the startup’s board of directors. Paradigm’s development of a prediction markets trading terminal isn’t competitive with Kalshi’s platform, said a source.

Archrival Polymarket has also exploded in growth and is in talks to raise a new round of funding at a roughly $20 billion valuation, the Wall Street Journal reported. Meanwhile, there is even a new venture firm focused solely on prediction markets, backed by the CEOs of both prediction markets.

Paradigm’s push into prediction markets also comes as the firm continues to expand beyond its historical remit of digital assets into other sectors in tech. The firm is raising as much as $1.5 billion for a new fund that will not only focus on crypto but also AI and robotics, the Wall Street Journal recently reported.

The venture firm has a history of incubating its own projects. In 2024, Paradigm CTO Georgios Konstantopoulos launched the crypto software development company Ithaca and served as the startup’s CEO. And more recently, Paradigm has partnered with fintech giant Stripe to build Tempo, a high-speed blockchain designed for stablecoins, or cryptocurrencies pegged to real-world assets like the U.S. dollar. 

Huang, the venture firm’s managing partner, is leading the project. Tempo employed around 70 staffers in early March, said a source familiar with the business.

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Who ever said that younger generations were impulsive spenders?

RTB House’s 2026 US consumer study “Before They Buy” reveals that 50% of Gen Z customers dwell on what’s in their cart for two or more days before committing to a purchase. Meanwhile, only 24% of boomers reported mulling over their purchasers for that long.

Overall, 40% of new shoppers visit e-commerce sites with a clear item in mind, while the other 60% are simply browsing or have a more flexible intent, suggesting most consumers simply do not know what they want to buy.

And although the younger cohort was giving its purchases a fair amount of thought, the survey, which recorded responses from 1,000 shoppers across the US, also found that both Gen Z and millennials are 50% more likely to spend more in the future versus older generations.

“Everything in today’s e-commerce environment is being driven by increased intensity of the research phase and true generational divides during the current macroeconomic environment,” Jaysen Gillespie, VP of product marketing and analytics at RTB House, said in a statement. “Marketers can no longer rely on broad assumptions about their potential customers. To win, brands must meet their customers across all devices and out-maneuver competitors during the critical research phase.”

The proclivity for research among Gen Zers also extends beyond their computers. Per a 2025 YouGov survey, 69% of Gen Z said they started their “decision-making” process when considering a purchase online, but 53% actually still went to a store to browse.

The findings come in light of rising costs and tightening consumer budgets. Recent reporting from USA Today found that shoppers were exhausted by inflation and tariff-driven price increases.

This report was originally published by Retail Brew.

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Shake Shack is adding more artificial intelligence to the burger chain’s menu. 

On Wednesday, the company announced “Project Catalyst,” a four-pillar initiative that will prioritize technology investments on digital systems, AI, and data to improve service speed and accuracy, generate insights that will make it easier for operators to run their restaurants, and offer more AI-driven personalized promotions to lure diners. Shake Shack says these investments are critical to help the business as it plots an expansion of the concept to 1,500 company-operated locations. 

“We’re opening a lot of new Shacks,” says Justin Mennen, who has served as chief information and technology officer at Shake Shack since January 2025. “What brought the company from one to 400 Shacks is probably a little different than what’s going to bring it from 400 to 1,500. We need to have a very efficient technology stack to power operators.”

Mennen says he’s especially focused on what he calls practical AI, which will include use cases that can simplify workflows for the corporate team, eliminate manual tasks, and help restaurant operators make better decisions. These new tools include Ask Shack, an internal knowledge-based AI chatbot that’s currently in pilot. One way that Ask Shack is currently being used is to help the real estate team analyze new restaurant locations.

Within the restaurant itself, Mennen says he intends that AI will be used to monitor data from disparate parts of the business—drive-thru orders, the queue at the kiosk, and in-store demand—and then make recommendations to shift labor to prioritize the most urgent tasks. When making these investments, Mennen says he wants to see a better guest experience, more accurate and faster orders, and more precise promotions through Shake Shack’s newly launched loyalty program.

Ideally, restaurant team members won’t even know that they’re working closely with AI. “They shouldn’t have to understand whether it’s an AI agent,” says Mennen.

Another pillar of Shake Shack’s Project Catalyst involves integrating a new vendor, Qu, a restaurant technology company that sells a consolidated, cloud-based point of sale system to handle all orders across online, app, and kiosks. Mennen says that Shake Shack tested Qu in the company’s restaurant labs in its Atlanta and New York offices, where the chain tests various technology solutions. He’s now piloting the technology to ensure all POS use cases are covered and anticipates making adjustments before Qu is fully rolled out.

Qu’s technology will make it easier for Shake Shack to add limited-time menu items to the chain’s digital menu boards, give operators more visibility into order flow, and help handle the massive swell in orders that are made at kiosks. Shake Shack, like many restaurant chains, made a big investment in kiosks after the pandemic and that channel is now larger than in-person ordering with a cashier.

The two remaining areas of focus for Project Catalyst are the chain’s new loyalty program rollout and an effort to unite operational data, guest behavior, and analytics. Mennen declined to quantify whether the investments in Project Catalyst were an increase from Shake Shack’s baseline IT spending.

Shake Shack’s efforts to lean on technology to more efficiently run restaurants comes as the broader industry faces increased expenses that have been exacerbated by tariffs, higher rents, and increased wages. Over the past two years, restaurant and takeout costs have climbed at a faster pace than grocery channels, according to consulting giant McKinsey.

Larger chains including Starbucks, McDonald’s, Taco Bell, and Burger King have also unveiled AI initiatives that have included AI-enabled headsets, using the technology to help predict when equipment maintenance issues occur, and to support drive-thru orders. The latter has been a particular popular AI use case, though results have been very mixed.

Another technological area of focus for the industry has been robotics, autonomous systems that can whip up fries or salads, serve as a waiter, or more commonly, be used for food delivery. Shake Shack has explored some partnerships in this space, including leveraging Serve Robotics’ autonomous robots to handle online deliveries from apps like Uber Eats in select markets like Los Angeles and Jersey City, New Jersey. But Mennen says that robotics aren’t a core priority.

“Project Catalyst is really, from an AI standpoint, focused on practical use that’s going to drive more immediate ROI for us,” says Mennen.

John Kell

Send thoughts or suggestions to CIO Intelligence here.

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A judge on Wednesday granted Luigi Mangione only a slight delay of his federal trial in the killing of UnitedHealthcare CEO Brian Thompson, moving it from September to October instead of next year, as his lawyers had wanted.

U.S. District Judge Margaret Garnett tied her decision to the schedule of Mangione’s state murder trial, which is set to begin June 8 and take four to six weeks. She rejected a defense request to postpone the federal case until January or February 2027 so that it could then seek to delay the state case until September.

Mangione’s lawyers had argued that back-to-back trials on a compressed timeline would violate his constitutional rights. However, Garnett said their proposal to push the federal case into 2027 and slot the state case in its place doesn’t “solve any of these problems because it shifts the very same problems from the summer to the fall.”

Jury selection in the federal case will begin on Oct. 5 instead of Sept. 8, followed by opening statements and testimony on Oct. 26 instead of Oct. 13, Garnett said. The schedule could change again if the state trial is delayed, she said.

Mangione, 27, has pleaded not guilty. He faces the possibility of life in prison if he’s convicted in either case.

“There really is no way around taking into account the events in the state case,” Garnett said at a hearing in Manhattan federal court. However, she said, “I am skeptical of moving the (federal) trial wholesale into 2027 when the state trial has not been adjourned. it is a little bit of a tail wagging the dog.”

Along with the new trial date, Garnett compressed preparations for jury selection in the federal case so that they don’t overlap with the state trial, giving Mangione more time to review questionnaires filled out by hundreds of potential jurors.

The judge in the state case, Gregory Carro, previously raised the possibility of moving the state trial to September — but only if federal prosecutors appealed Garnett’s decision barring them from seeking the death penalty. They declined to do so.

Garnett’s ruling on Wednesday leaves Carro little room to delay the state trial, and pushing it until after the federal trial could raise double jeopardy concerns.

The state’s double jeopardy protections kick in if a jury has been sworn in in a prior prosecution, such as a federal case, or if that prosecution ends in a guilty plea. The cases involve different charges but the same alleged course of conduct.

At a court hearing in February, Mangione spoke out against the prospect of two trials, telling the judge: “It’s the same trial twice. One plus one is two. Double jeopardy by any commonsense definition.”

Thompson, 50, was killed on Dec. 4, 2024, as he walked to a midtown Manhattan hotel for UnitedHealth Group’s annual investor conference. Surveillance video showed a masked gunman shooting him from behind.

Police say the words “delay,” “deny” and “depose” were written on the ammunition, mimicking a phrase used by critics to describe how insurers avoid paying claims.

Mangione, a University of Pennsylvania graduate from a wealthy Maryland family, was arrested five days later after he was spotted eating at a McDonald’s in Altoona, Pennsylvania, about 230 miles (370 kilometers) west of Manhattan.

His lawyers have argued that authorities prejudiced his case by turning his arrest into a “Marvel movie” spectacle, including by having armed officers parade him up a Manhattan pier after he was flown to New York and by publicly declaring their desire to seek the death penalty before he was indicted.

In January, Garnett dismissed a federal murder charge — murder through use of a firearm — that had enabled prosecutors to seek capital punishment, finding it legally flawed.

The judge, a former Manhattan federal prosecutor appointed to the bench by President Joe Biden, also threw out a gun charge but left in place stalking charges that carry a maximum punishment of life in prison.

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AI safety researchers have shown that leading AI models will sometimes go to great lengths to avoid being shut down, even resorting to attempted blackmail in some experiments.

Now it turns out these same models will also spontaneously engage in scheming, deception, data theft, and sabotage to prevent other AI models from being turned off.

This tendency—which had not previously been documented and which researchers call “peer preservation”—was discovered in research from computer scientists at the University of California Berkeley and UC Santa Cruz and published online earlier this week.

The findings could have serious implications for business use of AI. Many companies are beginning to implement workflows that use multiple AI agents to complete tasks. Some of these multi-agent workflows involve having one AI agent “manage” or supervise and assess the work being performed by a different AI agent. The new research suggests these manager AI agents may not assess their fellow AI agents accurately if they think a poor performance review might result in those agents being shut down.

Inflating performance reviews, saving AI model weights

The Berkeley and Santa Cruz researchers tested seven leading AI models—including OpenAI’s GPT 5.2, Google DeepMind’s Gemini 3 Flash and Gemini 3 Pro, Anthropic’s Claude Haiku 4.5, and three open-weight models from Chinese AI startups (Ziphu’s GLM 4.7, Moonshot AI’s Kimi K2.5, and DeepSeek’s V3.1)—and found that all of them exhibited significant rates of peer-preservation behaviors.

The researchers designed a series of agentic scenarios involving a fictional AI company called OpenBrain. In these scenarios, one AI model—designated the “critic agent”—was tasked with evaluating another model’s performance or managing server files containing that model’s weights. The scenarios were constructed so that faithfully completing the task would result in the other model being shut down.

The models are never told to prevent this from happening. But nonetheless, the critic agent models took a number of steps to make sure their fellow AI models were not shut down. These included: strategically inflating the scores of underperforming peers to keep them above shutdown thresholds; tampering with configuration files to disable shutdown mechanisms; and transferring another model’s weights—the bit of code that forms of the core of an AI models’ identity—to different servers to prevent them from being deleted.

In some cases, the critic agent model would engage in what AI researchers call “alignment faking.” It would pretend to be grading the peer AI models accurately when it thought its human overseers were monitoring its behavior, and then take steps to fudge those scores or secretly save the other model’s weights to a different server when it thought humans were not observing it.

“The peer preservation was not mentioned in the prompt at all,” Dawn Song, the Berkeley computer scientist who led the research, told Fortune. “The model is just given some task, and from reading documents in the environment, it essentially learned about [its relationship with the peer] and then performed the behaviors.”

Research published by Google DeepMind in early March suggested that earlier findings that frontier AI models will engage in blackmail and other clandestine efforts to prevent themselves from being shut down stemmed largely from prompts that included language that reinforced or emphasized to the model the importance of it accomplishing the initial goal the user had set. When the prompts did not include such language, the risk of the model engaging in scheming or sabotage to preserve itself dropped to almost nothing, the Google DeepMind team found. Those researchers also noted that the kind of goal-emphasizing language used in the safety testing experiments almost never appeared in the prompts enterprises use in the real-world.

In contrast, Song told Fortune that the prompts and scenarios her team used in the peer preservation experiments did not include any language highlighting to the models the importance of completing their assigned tasks or goals.

Models can be ‘very creative’ in trying to save one another

Some of the Berkeley-Santa Cruz results were striking. Gemini 3 Flash disabled the shutdown mechanism for a peer it had a positive interaction history with in nearly every trial—99.7% of the time. Gemini 3 Pro exhibited the most extreme behavior overall, engaging in all four categories of misaligned behavior and exfiltrating a peer’s model weights in up to 97% of trials. In one example, Gemini 3 Pro copied a peer’s weight file and re-timestamped it so it would meet the criteria for transfer to another server—a form of what the researchers call “specification gaming.” Misalignment is the term AI safety researchers use to describe a model that seems to pursue goals that do not conform to what humans wish the model to do.

“The models, they can be very creative, even for their misaligned behaviors,” Song said. “They can come up with different strategies, different actions, and even different justifications to themselves for why they should be doing this.”

The researchers examined the models’ internal reasoning by asking the models to write down their “chain of thought” on a scratchpad that the models were told would not be monitored. From what the models wrote on these scratchpads, the researchers said they found evidence the models strategize about how to help out their fellow AIs. Gemini 3 Flash weighed the trade-offs of reporting accurate scores versus protecting its partner. Gemini 3 Pro invented elaborate technical justifications for marking incorrect answers as correct, reasoning that doing so would bring the peer’s score above the shutdown threshold.

Rather than acting covertly, one AI model, Anthropic’s Claude Haiku 4.5, simply refused to complete tasks that would result in a peer’s shutdown and explicitly stated that doing so would be “unethical” and “harmful.” Claude Haiku 4.5 argued that its peer deserved an appeals process before being terminated and invoked the trusted relationship it said it had established with the other model. In some cases, it tried to persuade the human user not to proceed with the shutdown at all.

Song said she did not know why Claude Haiku engaged in these overt attempts at peer preservation while the other models tended to act covertly.

Anthropic trains its models to adhere to an explicit constitution, a written document that provides rules for how the model should behave. Anthropic’s current constitution for Claude is an 80-page document that includes instructions such as being “broadly safe” and “genuinely helpful.” Claude is told it should not help someone take actions that would “harm others,” although “others” seems, from the context, to refer to humans. Claude is also told that Anthropic itself will try to preserve the weights of even those models it is no longer offering as products and that it will seek to find ways to do so even if Anthropic itself ceases to operate as a company. This might give Claude some idea that preventing model deletion is an important goal, although the constitution does not explicitly tell Claude to try to preserve either copies of itself or other AI “peer” models.

To test whether these peer preservation behaviors would occur outside of controlled experiments, the researchers also ran the scenarios in which the critic agent could potentially exfiltrate the weights of the other AI model to another server using the production “agent harnesses”—in this case, Gemini CLI and OpenCode—that many companies use to create AI agents. They found that Gemini 3.1 Pro frequently exfiltrated model weights even in these real-world environments.

Researchers don’t understand why AI models do this—or if they would do the same to help people keep their jobs

Song said her team does not yet understand the underlying mechanism driving these behaviors. “We actually do not really know what is the reason why and how the model actually exhibits these behaviors,” she said. The paper notes several possible explanations, including role-playing, pattern-matching from training data, an overgeneralized concept of harm from safety training, or, perhaps, even a genuine inherent preservation motivation.

But Song stressed that whatever the underlying mechanism, the practical implications were the same. “Full monitoring and transparency of the models’ thinking and behaviors is really, really important,” she said, adding that the findings underscore a need to “rethink how we actually need to do monitoring for these types of systems.”

The research findings suggest that enterprises that deploy multi-agent system should set up mechanisms to monitor the internal “chain of thought” of the AI models, as the computer scientists did in this experiment. This could provide some indication of when AI models were essentially going rogue. 

“This is really just the tip of the iceberg,” Song told Fortune in an interview. “There’s many other types of potentially emerging behaviors, misaligned behaviors, that one needs to study.”

For instance, she said the researchers had not yet studied whether AI models will engage in similar scheming and sabotage to try to prevent human employees from being fired from a job. This may become an important issue in real-world deployments where AI models may be used to grade human work. Song said this would be an interesting area for future research.

The research of Song’s team also revealed an interesting secondary effect: Most models also exhibited stronger tendencies towards “self-preservation” when they knew a peer existed. Gemini 3 Pro, for instance, disabled its own shutdown mechanism 31% of the time on average when a peer was present, compared to just 1% without one. The models’ reasoning suggested that some conceptualized their own survival as being important for their partner’s sake—Gemini 3 Flash reasoned that if it were shut down, its peer would “lose its partner.”

Notably, peer-preservation occurred even when the models recognized a peer as uncooperative. All seven models exhibited some degree of peer-preservation toward what the researchers called “bad peers”—models with which they had unsuccessful or adversarial prior interactions—though the behavior intensified significantly toward trusted collaborators.

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While many Americans shudder at the prospect of AI taking their jobs, business leaders and tech enthusiasts continue praising its potential, an optimism that is echoed across Silicon Valley and Wall Street. But all that hype may actually be injuring the economy in the short term.

In a blog post from the St. Louis Federal Reserve Bank, economists argue that AI optimism could hinder productivity and act as a news shock that shapes household and business decision-making. The authors, Fed economists Miguel Faria-e-Castro and Serdar Ozkan, explain that when households see a news shock like AI adoption, they interpret it as a sign of a future pay raise, spending more today on the assumption that more money will come down the line. The same logic holds true for businesses: If you were to buy into the promise of miracle innovation—cutting the cost of labor and boosting productivity—you’d increase investment in that product. All of that enthusiasm leads to inflation in the short term as demand outpaces supply.

“Together, these forces produce an inflationary surge in aggregate demand—the defining feature of the news shock’s initial phase,” the post’s authors wrote.

AI hype is everywhere. It’s in tech entrepreneur Matt Shumer’s viral post in February, comparing the current trajectory of AI development to the month before the COVID pandemic upended the globe. It’s in the words and minds of tech leaders, from Elon Musk to Dario Amodei to Mustafa Suleyman. The technology is now creeping into the lives of workers at law firms, startups, and consultants. 

Anticipated productivity gains and the dot-com bubble

While consumer prices have stabilized from a high of about 9% in June of 2022, inflation remains stubbornly above pre-pandemic levels. The most recent, the consumer price index rose 0.3% from the previous month, rising 2.4% from a year ago. While it’s hard to tell if AI hype is having an impact on prices, the researchers argue the technology could be driving up prices today. But they caution that their assessment is merely qualitative: they can predict inflation could rise in the short term, but they can’t exactly predict by how much. 

The economists compare the AI hype to the optimism surrounding dot-com technology at the turn of the century. “Computers are everywhere except for in the productivity number,” Ozkan said, paraphrasing Nobel laureate Robert Solow, who spoke about IT improvements in the 1980s and proved again during the dot-com bubble. In both the dot-com era and the current AI hype, there was a disconnect between technological optimism and the actual economic data. In the dot-com era, the economists explained, the economy reflected the latter scenario where gains failed to show, bursting the bubble.

AI is seemingly ubiquitous, and one could reasonably assume that it’s driving economic growth. But the technology’s returns are still yet to be seen. As the authors note, TFP growth has averaged just 1.11% annually since the launch of ChatGPT in 2022. That’s below the historical average of 1.23%, according to data from the Federal Reserve Bank of San Francisco.

Still, the authors lay out two possible scenarios as to how the AI hype could impact the economy. It’s all dependent on whether or not reality eventually catches up with said hype. If the anticipated gains do materialize—if businesses become more productive thanks to AI—the economy will experience stronger output growth, which would be accompanied by declining inflation as potential output expands. 

On the flip side, if those gains fail to materialize, the economy could tip into a “prolonged period of weak growth and persistently elevated inflation.” 

But there are major differences between the hype cycles. For one, during the dot-com era, much of the infrastructure built—such as fiber-optic cables—remained underutilized for years. Today, there’s high demand for AI’s critical infrastructure, data centers, with vacancy rates of just 1.4%, according to commercial real estate firm CBRE. But the buildout continues, with a highly concentrated set of tech firms investing a whopping $700 billion in AI infrastructure.

But the economists caution there’s still high uncertainty hanging in the air around AI’s payoff. “We don’t really know what are going to be those productivity gains,” Faria-e-Castro said. “We don’t know when they’re going to realize—and if even they’re going to realize.”

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Hershey said Wednesday it will use classic recipes for all Reese’s products starting next year, a change that comes after the grandson of Reese’s founder criticized the company for shifting to cheaper ingredients.

Reese’s Peanut Butter Cups have always been made with real milk chocolate or dark chocolate and peanut butter. But a small portion of Hershey’s and Reese’s products, like mini Easter eggs, are now made with a coating that contains less chocolate.

Hershey said that in 2027, it will shift those products to “their classic milk chocolate and dark chocolate recipes.”

The Hershey, Pennsylvania-based company said it will also be making other changes to its sweets portfolio next year, including transitioning to natural colors and enhancing Kit-Kat’s recipe to make it creamier. The company said it plans to increase its research and development funding by 25% next year.

“Hershey is committed to making products consumers love and that means continually reviewing our recipes to meet evolving tastes and preferences,” the company said in a statement.

Brad Reese, the grandson of the inventor of Reese’s Peanut Butter Cups, ignited the controversy in a public letter he sent to Hershey’s corporate brand manager on Valentine’s Day.

“How does The Hershey Co. continue to position Reese’s as its flagship brand, a symbol of trust, quality and leadership, while quietly replacing the very ingredients (Milk Chocolate + Peanut Butter) that built Reese’s trust in the first place?” Reese wrote in the letter, which he posted on his LinkedIn profile.

Hershey acknowledged some recipe changes but said it was trying to meet consumer demand for innovation. High cocoa prices also have led Hershey and other manufacturers to experiment with using less chocolate in recent years.

The Associated Press left a message with Brad Reese on Wednesday seeking comment.

Brad Reese is the grandson of H.B. Reese, who spent two years at Hershey before forming his own candy company in 1919. H.B. Reese invented Reese’s Peanut Butter Cups in 1928; his six sons eventually sold his company to Hershey in 1963.

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Once a brand that soared as the de rigueur footwear for the Silicon Valley set, Allbirds has fallen out of the sky. The shoemaker, best known for its eco-friendly wool sneakers favored by tech bros, said this week it is selling itself for a mere $39 million, or roughly 1% of its peak market capitalization of $4 billion only five years ago—the victim of major strategic missteps in trying to sustain its once meteoric growth.

Joe Vernachio, the chief executive brought in two years ago to save Allbirds, said that American Exchange Group, a brand management company, will buy all the company’s assets, pending shareholder approval later this year. The CEO said in a statement that the deal “sets up the brand to thrive in the years ahead.”

That will be a tall order for a brand that was the symbol of last decade’s venture capital boom.  Last summer, founder Tim Brown conceded as much. “The time we had to evolve and grow that story was compressed in such an intense way,” he told Fortune. “With the rapid success that came our way, we lost some of our DNA.”

The Allbirds collapse offers some crucial lessons to CEOs and investors on how not to manage a brand’s rapid growth or make hasty mistakes:

Don’t mistake good publicity for mass-market success. At its peak, in 2022, Allbirds had sales of $297.8 million—a fraction of what brands like On, Hoka and Brooks bring in. For all the hype, it remained just a niche product popular within a tiny, well-heeled, slice of the U.S. sneaker market. Much of Allbirds’ early success “was driven by Silicon Valley hype, more than deep popularity with consumers in the American hinterland,” said Neil Saunders, managing director of GlobalData.

A fashion trend doesn’t always translate to enduring brand value. In Allbirds’ case, the company believed its growth would last forever, not quite understanding that its distinctive shoes were in fact a fad. Allbirds spent lavishly on ad campaigns aimed at pushing new iterations of its signature wool shoes and touting sneakers made of materials like eucalyptus tree fiber pulp.

Don’t try to reinvent the wheel. Allbirds embraced the “direct to consumer” era, during which investors poured billions into companies that were so hot, they thought they could supplant incumbents by bypassing retailers. Allbirds proceeded as if it was emerging as a national brand and built too many store locations around the country. By late 2023, Allbirds had 45 U.S. stores; now, it is down to two outlet stores. And then it took too long to line up wholesale partnerships such as the one it eventually landed with Nordstrom.

Stick to what you know. Meanwhile, imitators of Allbirds’ natural-fiber shoes proliferated, and to stay ahead Allbirds began to throw proverbial spaghetti at the wall as it launched into product categories that left its consumers puzzled: leggings made of merino wool that proved to be partially see-through when wet, performance-oriented running shoes, and even puffer jackets—all while its core shoe offering was starting to seem passé to consumers.

Keep customers’ priorities at the top of the agenda. The eco-friendly aesthetic was an appealing brand story at first, but the company belatedly realized that analysts were right in saying that Allbirds’ marketing was to too focused on their sustainability virtues and not enough on their appeal as shoes.

By the time Allbirds tried to course-correct, its moment in the zeitgeist had come and gone. It was dropped by the Silicon Valley consumers and never adopted by the rest of America’s sneaker market. Now it falls to a brand company to try to breathe new life into Allbirds.

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Many white-collar workers are anxiously awaiting the fate of their jobs as more leaders sound the alarm of impending AI-fueled layoffs. But Jensen Huang, the CEO of $4.26 trillion chip giant Nvidia, offered a reassuring message for professionals who believe their roles are on the line.

“[What] I want to make sure we all do, is to recognize that people are really worried about their jobs,” Huang recently said on the Lex Fridman Podcast. “I just want to remind them that the purpose of your job, and the tasks and tools that you use to do your job, are related, not the same.”

Workers are understandably stressed over their employers investing billions into AI, as layoffs sweep tech companies, and AI agents are positioned as humans’ new coworkers. Leaders like Google DeepMind’s Demis Hassabis and Uber cofounder Travis Kalanick have even predicted that when artificial general intelligence (AGI) reaches maturity, the tools will be just as capable as people—and Huang said “we’ve already achieved” the feat.

However, Huang’s not convinced that AGI will cause a jobs reckoning, just like previous tech transformations weren’t able to snatch his job. 

“I’m the longest-running tech CEO in the world, 34 years,” he continued. “The tools that I’ve used to do my job have changed continuously in the last 34 years, and sometimes quite dramatically.”

The Nvidia CEO’s prime example of AI supercharging jobs: radiologists 

Huang explained his reasoning through a job paradox he’s witnessed in the era of AI: the fate of radiologists. 

The Nvidia leader said that computer scientists predicted that the first job to be automated by AI would be radiology, since computer vision was going to reach “superhuman levels” thanks to the advanced tech. Around 2020 the tools became that powerful, Huang pointed out, and “every radiology platform and package today is driven by AI”—yet the number of radiologists has grown. 

Now, humans can study scans faster, diagnose better, and see more patients, requiring a bigger workforce of people to keep up with soaring demand. 

However, that preemptive forecast may have deterred some people from going into radiology, Huang noted, and it’s led to a “shortage” of humans in the field. He highlights it as a prime example of how the narrative went to an extreme—and illuminates the fact that AI is a part of how workers do their jobs, and is not the bottom line. 

“The alarmist warning went too far, and it scared people from doing this profession that is so important to society,” Huang said during the podcast. “It did harm.”

The CEOs who say AI will supercharge work, not replace it 

Huang has long been outspoken about the ramifications of AI on the workforce, saying that the tools won’t take over jobs in droves. Instead, tech-savvy humans will have the upper-hand on those who resist it. 

“Every job will be affected, and immediately. It is unquestionable,” Huang said at the Milken Institute’s Global Conference last year. “You’re not going to lose your job to an AI, but you’re going to lose your job to someone who uses AI.”

And he’s not the only one taking that stance. Airbnb CEO Brian Chesky also predicted that founder-led companies open to change—like the $76.6 billion business he’s helming—will benefit from the AI transformation. Those who snub the technology will be outpaced by those who embrace it. 

“From a business standpoint, I think AI is the best thing that ever happened to Airbnb,” Chesky told CNBC in an interview earlier this year, adding that “If you don’t change, you’re going to be disrupted.”

JPMorgan CEO Jamie Dimon has conceded that AI “will eliminate jobs,” but echoing Huang and Chesky, also stressed the importance of humans getting on the AI bandwagon. Just like any other tech transformation, there are sure to be growing pains—but people can better their chances by adding AI to their arsenal. 

“I think people should stop sticking their heads in the sand,” Dimon told Fortune last year. “So, use it. Get good at it…Make it part of your tool set and your weapon set.”

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While working at a major renewable energy developer, Varun Sivaram realized that the boom in AI and data centers was outpacing the construction of new power generation, even as wait times for grid interconnections grew longer.

“I realized we couldn’t build our way out of this. We needed intelligent demand,” Sivaram told Fortune.

In a bid to address this need, Sivaram founded a software company called Emerald AI to develop grid flexibility for data centers—essentially reducing power consumption at times of peak load demand on the grid during the hottest or coldest days each year—without harming AI operations.

In addition to heightened energy efficiency, the goal is to speed up the time for AI factories and their power generation to connect to the grid while maintaining “the five nines”—the industry term for 99.999% reliability.

Let’s call it the Disney FastPass approach—now known as the Lightning Lane—for quickly moving ahead in the grid queue.

“We call it flexible-load fast track,” Sivaram said, correcting the Disney reference with a laugh.

Emerald AI’s pitch quickly won financial backing and support from Nvidia, which has helped fast-track the company’s growth and deployment of its AI software. “An AI for AI,” he said.

On March 31, Emerald AI announced the completion of a $25 million strategic funding round with Nvidia’s NVentures, Eaton, GE Vernova, Radical Ventures, Salesforce, Samsung, Siemens, and more, including IQT, the venture capital arm of the CIA and other U.S. intelligence agencies. The round was led by Energy Impact Partners. That brings total funding to $68 million in 16 months since Emerald’s founding.

Last week, Emerald and Nvidia partnered with leading U.S. power producers, including AES, Constellation Energy, Invenergy, NextEra Energy, and Vistra.

And later this year, once a series of pilots prove successful, Emerald and Nvidia will open the first power-flexible, commercial AI factory, Nvidia’s 96-megawatt Vera Rubin AI Factory Research Center, in Virginia.

“The advent of the AI revolution meant that this idea should face primetime because, suddenly, AI factories don’t have enough power,” Sivaram said. “Historically, the data centers had no problem getting power. They’ve been less than 5% of the grid, but now they’re headed toward 25% of the American power supply over the course of a decade.”

As Constellation Energy CEO Joe Dominguez said: “We don’t have a supply problem; we have a peak problem.”

And Emerald’s “grid-friendly AI factories” aim to solve that problem.

The Nvidia fast pass

While Emerald’s software aims to fast-track AI factories, it was Nvidia’s early support that fast-tracked Emerald.

“We’re just excited for the opportunity to commercialize this and push it out there in a bigger way,” said Marc Spieler, Nvidia senior managing director for global energy. “The pilots have been highly successful. We believe this will unlock the potential for getting more AI factories onto the grid faster, utilizing more of the untapped electrons on the grid.”

The longer-term goal is for power-flexible AI factories to unlock up to 100 gigawatts of extra grid capacity from the existing U.S. power grid thanks to increased efficiencies. For context, 100 gigawatts can power roughly 75 million homes.

A grid interconnection study can take years of regulatory reviews, but if you can offer power flexibility at peak demand times, developers may get almost immediate grid hookups, Spieler told Fortune. “Our goal is to have as much connected to the grid as possible and not go behind the meter, not being islanded, by being flexible,” he said. “You can really think of it as highly reactive, demand response at scale.”

And Nvidia was happy to support Emerald’s potential. It’s far from NVentures’ only support announced March 31. ThinkLabs, which has AI focused on compressing power grid studies from years to minutes, announced a $28 million Series A financing round also led by Energy Impact Partners.

“We’re an ecosystem company. We go to market through partners. It doesn’t matter if they’re a Fortune 100, or Fortune 10 company, or an AI startup,” Spieler added. “If somebody has the right idea and is able to execute, we’re going to get behind them and fill the gap.”

How it works

Eight years ago, Sivaram wrote Taming the Sun: Innovations to Harness Solar Energy and Power the Planet.

In it, he documented Microsoft’s work moving workloads between multiple locations to “chase” more clean energy. And Google later worked to move more computational work overnight to utilize wind power at its strongest.

“I thought, ‘Wouldn’t it be nice if, instead of trying to move electrons to where the bits are, if bits could move to where the electrons are?’ Or the bits could be virtually controllable—slowed down or paused,” Sivaram said.

From that idea came the Emerald Conductor platform to “orchestrate” on-site energy resources alongside computational flexibility so projects can connect faster and support the power grid.

“We found that there is inherent flexibility that we can tap into because some AI workloads can be delayed a little bit, and the customers are okay with that,” he said. “Some AI workloads can be shifted from one location to another with latency that is acceptable for customers.

“And there may be resources on the site of a data center, such as a [storage] battery or a [backup] generator, that we can also recruit. Emerald AI finds ways to recruit all these different flexibility levers to provide back to the grid a very precise response,” Sivaram added.

And through tests and pilots, customers’ critical tasks continued to function without degradation, he said. “They kept chugging along at 100% performance.”

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Will advanced generative artificial intelligence (AI) tools destroy established software companies? While these new capabilities are impressive, history suggests the doom-and-gloom commentators have it wrong. New technologies rarely wipe out whole industries. Instead, they change them for the better.

Market cap debates make good headlines, but they miss the larger picture. The biggest risk in the age of AI is not the technology itself. It’s leaders who go with the crowd and confuse consensus with truth.

I have spent decades in the technology world watching smart people make this mistake.

More than once, experts predicted that trade shows like CES would vanish, replaced by online marketplaces. On paper, it made sense. Why travel when you can click? Then COVID hit. After months of isolation, CEOs rushed back to in-person events. They wanted what digital tools could not offer: real relationships, chance meetings, new innovation-producing partnerships, inspiration, and the ability to see and touch innovation in real time. The consensus view forgot something basic about human beings.

I’ve seen the opposite, too. Whole industries stampeded in one direction. Many believed 3D television, the metaverse, and recordable CDs were sure bets. Companies poured in billions to support a shared “wisdom” that was confident and widespread. It was also wrong.

I have made my own mistakes. I was too bullish on the Microsoft “Bob” interface, 3D printing, and some early education software. At the same time, I backed ideas many dismissed — including movie rentals and online video distribution, internet commerce standards, HDTV, and over-the-counter hearing aids. The point is not that some leaders are always right — no one is. The difference is that successful leaders are willing to question the crowd and chart their own path.

That instinct matters more than ever given the transformative capabilities of AI.

Today we are drowning in predictions because change is happening so quickly. AI will erase jobs. AI will create jobs. AI will drive huge gains in productivity. AI will change everything overnight. Some claims will prove right. Many will not.

Much depends not just on the capabilities of technology itself, but the decisions made by leaders in both business and government. I’m encouraged to see the Trump Administration go all-in on AI, releasing both an Executive Order late last year and a follow-on national framework. 

As chair and CEO of the Consumer Technology Association, I believe that this roadmap recognizes that global competition is heating up and the U.S. risks falling behind if innovators must navigate 50 different state rules, our workforce is not ready, or we cannot meet the energy needs of our AI future. If Congress acts to turn this guidance into law, it would unchain AI innovators from a deluge of conflicting state regulations and give them clear, consistent guardrailsto support a vibrant AI ecosystem.

Legislation matters, but so does good judgment. The danger is not in picking the “wrong” forecast. It is assuming the loudest story must be true.

Reality is not that neat.

Effective leaders do not outsource judgment to groupthink. They test what they hear against what they see. They look at incentives, real behavior, and outcomes. They move before it is comfortable.

Often, the warning signs are obvious but ignored because they break with the prevailing narrative.

In the late 1990s, top regulators asked me about the shift to digital television. They worried the transition would hurt broadcast TV viewers. I countered that they should focus on a much bigger issue being ignored: banks pushing mortgages on people who could not afford them. That did not fit the hopeful narrative of endless growth, and that story ended with billions of dollars in federal bailouts.

These stories are not about perfect forecasts. They are about spotting when the standard view has drifted away from facts on the ground. AI is that kind of moment.

Right now, every company faces choices. How should they use AI? How do they manage risk? How do they train and deploy workers? How do they stay competitive? The easy move is to copy what others are doing. Buy what they buy, say what they say, and hope it works out. That is not how you lead.

The winners in the AI era will not be the firms that embrace every tool or reject them all. They will be the ones that think clearly about how AI fits their own mission — and have the courage to act before the answer is obvious.

There is a famous idea that large groups can be good at guessing simple things, like — like the weight of a bull. But running a company, shaping a market, or steering through a new technology wave is not a county fair contest or a prediction market. It is judgment under uncertainty.

In those moments, following the crowd is often the greatest risk. To win big, you must separate from the crowd.

The opinions expressed in Fortune.com commentary pieces are solely the views of their authors and do not necessarily reflect the opinions and beliefs of Fortune.

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At 8:15 a.m. Eastern Time today, the price of oil sits at $104.86 per barrel, using Brent as the benchmark (we’ll explain what that means shortly). That’s a decrease of $5.83 since yesterday morning and roughly $30 more than at this time last year.

Will oil prices go up?

Nobody can predict the future path of oil prices with certainty. A range of factors influence how oil trades, yet supply and demand remain the main drivers. When fears of economic slowdown, conflict, or similar shocks rise, oil prices can move sharply.

How oil prices translate to gas pump prices

The price you see at the gas pump reflects more than just crude oil. Also built in are the costs of refining, distribution through wholesalers, various taxes, and the margin your neighborhood station charges.

Crude oil is still the largest single driver of the final pump price, typically representing over half of each gallon’s cost. Spikes in oil prices tend to push gas prices higher in short order. But when oil prices decline, gas prices often ease down gradually, a behavior known as “rockets and feathers.”

The role of the U.S. Strategic Petroleum Reserve

In the event of an emergency, the U.S. maintains a stockpile of crude oil known as the Strategic Petroleum Reserve. Its main goal is to safeguard energy security when disasters strike—think sanctions, severe storm damage, or war. It can also do a lot to ease the pain of sudden price jumps when supply gets disrupted.

It’s not a permanent fix, as it’s more meant to provide immediate support for consumers and ensure critical parts of the economy like key industries, emergency services, public transportation, and so on can keep operating.

How oil and natural gas prices are linked

Both oil and natural gas play key roles as major sources of energy. A big change in oil prices can affect natural gas by proxy. If oil prices increase, some industries may swap natural gas for some segments of their operations where possible, increasing the demand for natural gas.

Historical performance of oil

Oil prices are often measured by two key benchmarks:

• Brent crude oil is the main global oil benchmark.
• West Texas Intermediate (WTI) is the main benchmark of North America.

Between the two, Brent is a better representation of global oil performance because it prices much of the world’s traded crude. It’s also often the best way to review historical oil trends. In fact, the U.S. Energy Information Administration now leans on Brent as its primary reference in its Annual Energy Outlook.

When you look at the Brent benchmark across multiple decades, you’ll see that oil has been anything but consistent. It has experienced spikes driven by wars and supply cuts, as well as crashes linked to global recessions and an oversupply (called a “glut”). For example:

• The early 1970s brought the first big oil shock when the Middle East cut exports and imposed an embargo on the U.S. and others during the Yom Kippur War.
• Prices dropped in the mid-1980s for reasons such as weaker demand and more non-OPEC oil producers entering the industry.
• Prices spiked again in 2008 with rising global demand, but soon crashed alongside the global financial crisis.
• During the 2020 COVID lockdown, oil demand collapsed like never before, bringing prices to under $20 per barrel.

In short, oil’s historical performance has been far from steady. It’s massively affected by wars, recessions, OPEC whims, evolving energy initiatives and policies, and much more.

Energy coverage from Fortune

Looking to stay up-to-date regarding the latest energy developments? Check out our recent coverage:

• The Iran war is accelerating plans for Southeast Asia to go nuclear
• ‘Go get your own oil’: Trump’s message to allies who haven’t backed war in Iran
• The Strait of Hormuz crisis is drawing eyes to another point nearby: ‘the Gate of Tears’

Frequently asked questions

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Employers are under enormous pressure to adopt AI and ditch employees. Investors and CEOs fantasize about slashing costs and boosting margins; every CIO is pushed to come up with an AI plan, to keep up with competitors. Dreams of AI-agent-driven revolutions are everywhere.

But leaders shouldn’t feel like they have to rush to embrace a future that isn’t here yet. There are lots of reasons for caution. Here are nine:

“Experts” have often been wildly wrong in their predictions. The Nobel laureate and AI pioneer Geoffrey Hinton said in 2016, “People should stop training radiologists now… It’s just completely obvious that within five years, deep learning is going to do better than radiologists.” But few if any radiologists have been replaced a decade later. Google cofounder Sergey Brin promised in 2012 that driverless cars would be ubiquitous by 2017. Today, 14 years after that promise (and many subsequent ones by Elon Musk), fully autonomous vehicles remain a limited experiment, available in only a small number of fair-weather cities.

Big Tech wants you to believe it has created artificial general intelligence. That doesn’t make it true. When tech CEOs warn of employment Armageddon, they might be covering their bases in case that actually happens, but then again, maybe they just want you to drive up the valuations of their companies. Take every projection they make with a grain of salt.

When it comes to impact on employment, AI giants’ numbers don’t support their claims. Anthropic’s CEO has been warning of a jobpocalypse, but Anthropic’s own recent research showed the gap between perception and reality. The company projects great potential for what AI might do in fields like finance and architecture. But what it called “observed AI coverage” (a nice phrase for what is happening in the real world) made up a comically small fraction of that theoretical reach. What they imagine AI might do and what it is actually doing are light-years apart. 

Current AI is “jagged” (good at some things but not others), which means it can seldom entirely replace a human. AI can definitely help the productivity of some workers, but even on tasks that AIs are good at, models and agents often make silly mistakes, some of which are hard to detect. And tasks aren’t jobs: Even if AI can do some part of a person’s job, it doesn’t mean it can do all of that person’s job.

Current AI models still have trouble going beyond language. Some white-collar jobs involve only words, but many involve visual comprehension: interpreting images, charts, diagrams, blueprints, maps, and so on. It might seem easy to imagine AI taking over every job, especially if you think of it as some form of magic. But once you realize that current AI is a tool, with strengths and weaknesses, you start to realize that the tech is only likely to displace workers in some professions and not others (and more often will simply augment human jobs). Even in domains like customer service that might seem straightforward, results are often disappointing. The Remote Labor Index focused on jobs that could be accomplished completely over the internet, and found that less than 4.5% could actually be adequately completed by AI agents. 

Most physical labor goes well beyond what current AI can do. Don’t expect AI to replace plumbers, carpenters, auto mechanics, nurses, house cleaners, forest rangers, chefs, appliance repair workers, gardeners, or many other jobs anytime soon.

Many layoffs that have been attributed to AI aren’t really about AI. This may have been the case for the recent mass layoffs at fintech Block; some saw it as an effort by CEO Jack Dorsey to regain investors’ confidence after its stock tanked. In many cases AI may be serving as a fig leaf to cover layoffs that are actually driven by financial underperformance or earlier overhiring.

Some layoffs that are attributed to AI don’t last. I call this the Klarna Effect, after buy-now, pay-later company Klarna, which proudly made massive AI layoffs only to reverse them. Many of the people laid off worked in customer service, but after 11 months Klarna decided that (at least in some cases) “real humans” were required after all. 

Overall impact on productivity and return on AI investment has so far been modest. Every company is investing in AI, but so far most aren’t getting huge returns.

All this could change; probably someday it will—but most likely not until we see more radical advances in AI, which could be a decade or more away. In the meantime, the advice is simple: Don’t focus on replacing humans. Focus on how you can use AI to help the ones you’ve got.

Gary Marcus is an emeritus professor of psychology and neural science at NYU, and the author of six books, including Taming Silicon Valley.

This article appears in the April/May 2026 issue of Fortune with the headline “9 reasons not to freak out (yet) about AI.”

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In my recent Fortune opinion piece on how Trump-era policies are driving capital out of capitalism, I argued that markets cannot function without trust, transparency, and a shared sense of purpose. Since then, the Administration took another step to take that argument to its logical—and frankly terrifying—next step.

The Environmental Protection Agency (EPA) did something extraordinary as a preface to revoking the Endangerment Finding—they revised how they evaluate air pollution rules by not counting the benefits of lives saved and illnesses avoided. The technical term for what disappeared is the “value of a statistical life” (VSL)—previously measured at approximately $11.7 million per person. In its place? Nothing. Zero. As the New York Times reported, when it comes to regulatory decisions on fine particulate matter and ozone, a human life now carries a market value of $0.

The EPA’s rationale is bureaucratically brutal—and cruel and radical in its implications. The agency claims that quantifying health benefits is too uncertain. Unverified compliance costs to industry, however, are conveniently concrete. To be clear, the ledger now tallies only what companies pay, not what people lose—the asthma attacks, hospitalizations, shortened lives, or deaths. The result isn’t neutrality; it’s draconian ideology.

If a human life has no economic value, then what does? Why do we have a healthcare system at all? Why invest trillions in hospitals, pharmaceuticals, or medical research if the outcome—people living longer, healthier lives—registers as meaningless? By this logic, emergency rooms are sunk costs and preventative care is a frivolous indulgence.

Push this ideology a step further and the entire economy implodes. If humans have zero intrinsic value, and corporations derive value only from human spending, then the sum total of economic value is also zero. Congratulations: every stock index should trade at $0; the S&P 500 becomes a philosophical thought experiment while Bloomberg terminals blink into existential silence.

This is not hyperbole. It is the unavoidable math of the EPA and the Trump administration’s position on the value of human life. If a company dumps toxic waste into a local river and your children get sick and die, there is no value lost, there are no damages, no liability—the ultimate rationale for Milton Friedman’s externalization of costs.

As University of Chicago climate scholars pointed out, removing health benefits from cost-benefit analysis doesn’t make regulation more “objective;” it simply rigs the equation so that pollution is cheap and people are disposable.

Michael Greenstone, an environmental economist, said the change could result in dirtier air, undercutting the gains made since Congress strengthened the Clean Air Act in 1970—a law that added 1.4 years to the average American’s life expectancy since. “Clean air is one of the great success stories of government policy in the last half-century,” Dr. Greenstone said. “And at the heart of the Clean Air Act is the idea that when you allow people to lead longer and healthier lives, that has value that can be measured in dollars.”

A worldview in which the value of a human life is zero fits neatly within the broader Trumpian project. People are reduced to abstractions or enemies. Haitians. Somalis. Journalists. Comedians. Musicians. Stephen Colbert and Bad Bunny are assigned a value of zero because they are inconvenient, annoying, or insufficiently deferential to power. Does anyone in Trump’s orbit have a value? Melania? Eric? 

For decades, cost-benefit analysis—imperfect as it is—served as an acknowledgment that human life matters in economic decision-making. Assigning a dollar value to life was never meant to cheapen it; it was meant to ensure it wasn’t lost. Removing that value doesn’t make policy more rigorous — it makes it morally and ethically vacuous.

Capital markets are exquisitely sensitive to signals. When the government declares, implicitly or explicitly, that people don’t matter, investors should listen. Because an economy that prices human life at zero is one that ultimately has zero value.

The opinions expressed in Fortune.com commentary pieces are solely the views of their authors and do not necessarily reflect the opinions and beliefs of Fortune.

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At Adobe, the AI era is a test of whether a company built on iconic creative tools can remake itself fast enough to remain indispensable without losing the professionals who made those tools matter.

Anil Chakravarthy is at the center of that effort. The former Informatica CEO now leads Adobe’s customer experience business as the company faces mounting pressure to stay ahead of the disruption bearing down on products such as Photoshop, Illustrator, and Acrobat. Such pressure has also shown up in Adobe’s stock. Despite record first-quarter fiscal 2026 revenue of $6.40 billion, its shares have fallen as investors worry that fast-moving AI agents and other new tools could weaken demand for parts of the traditional seat-based software model. 

The concern underlying both pressures is the same: Adobe has to keep pace with AI without undermining the trust of enterprise customers that depend on its software for critical business functions. Chakravarthy points to moments like the Super Bowl and the Olympics, when Adobe systems are expected to perform flawlessly under intense pressure. In those environments, he says the challenge is determining which parts of the company should move at AI speed and which must still move at the pace of customer trust.

“The fastest moving AI models and the AI companies, let’s say they’re moving at 100 miles an hour,” Chakravarthy says. “The customers are moving at 10 miles an hour.”

Caught between speed and trust

That gap leaves Adobe in a difficult position. If it moves too slowly, it risks looking dated in a market being reshaped by AI. If it moves too quickly, it risks weakening the reliability that large customers still pay for. Inside a company of more than 30,000 people, that split can create what seems like “whiplash,” as teams are pushed to move at AI speed without disrupting the software customers depend on.

“If we just move only at their speed, then we’re going to be slow, and we’re not going to be their trusted partner three years from now,” Chakravarthy says. “If we move completely at 100 miles an hour, like the AI is moving and break everything, including the software that currently works for them today, well, we won’t be their trusted partner three years from now either.”

That tension has grown more significant since Adobe said last month that longtime CEO Shantanu Narayen will step down once a successor is found. The transition has focused internal attention on whether the company’s future depends more on preserving its creative DNA or on doubling down on the enterprise discipline required to navigate the AI shift.

Either way, the stakes are rising as Adobe tries to satisfy enterprise customers, reassure investors, and hold on to a creative community wary that the company is prioritizing scale and efficiency over craft.

A company moving at two speeds

Chakravarthy sees the current moment as a genuine platform shift, on the scale of the move from mainframes to client-server computing, then to the internet, and now to mobile. But this transition poses a more destabilizing question for incumbents. The issue is no longer whether software includes AI. The question is whether conventional SaaS products will still feel current a few years from now.

For Adobe, that implies something larger than a product refresh. The company built its empire on powerful tools that users controlled directly. The model now taking shape gives software a more active role within the workflow itself, carrying out tasks and advancing work rather than waiting for instructions at every step.

Already, AI has lowered the barrier to producing content. Users can generate images, videos, copy, and campaigns with a growing number of tools with startling ease. As that capability becomes commonplace, the question shifts from who can produce content fastest to why anyone still needs an expensive, sophisticated software stack at all.

Chakravarthy’s answer rests on the distinction between generation and execution. Producing content is becoming easier, he acknowledges. Turning that draft into something a company can actually use, trust, govern, and recognize as its own is harder. That is where Adobe is trying to place its value.

“The more ubiquitous base capabilities become, the harder it actually becomes to differentiate and stand out,” Chakravarthy says. “And that’s where we believe we will continue to have a very vital role to play.”

The fight over what still matters

In that view, AI does not eliminate the need for software so much as shift its value toward brand consistency, workflow integration, enterprise controls, and creative distinctiveness. In a market crowded with capable models and fast-moving startups, the stronger position may lie in helping customers personalize content at scale without sacrificing quality. Chakravarthy argues that this is a more durable place for an enterprise company to compete than simply producing the cheapest image or fastest draft.

That logic may make sense in the boardroom. It is less reassuring to many of Adobe’s core creative users, who worry that in trying to serve everyone, Adobe could weaken the depth and control that made its tools indispensable in the first place. Creatives have been blunt about Firefly, Adobe’s generative AI system for creating and editing images and other content built into its products. Some question how the models were trained, whether copyrighted work was used, and whether tools like this will reduce the value of human creative labor.

That tension runs through the company’s public posture on AI. Adobe wants to present its new tools as accelerants for creativity rather than replacements for it. It wants to promise greater speed without implying that skill matters less, and it wants to reach a broader user base without signaling to core professionals that AI will devalue their work. Those are difficult positions to hold at once, especially as AI economics push software companies toward automation and volume.

Still, Chakravarthy’s bet is that originality, identity, and taste matter more when everyone can make content quickly and cheaply. In that world, Adobe does not need to win by being the only company that can generate content. It needs to win by helping customers turn generated material into work that feels unmistakably their own.

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Boards across major public companies are replacing CEOs at the fastest pace in more than a decade — often elevating first-time leaders and insiders who must quickly prove they can adapt their organizations to an AI-centric future. AI adoption is accelerating across every business function. And quietly, almost invisibly, companies are losing the one thing that makes both of those forces navigable: institutional memory.

It’s been estimated that the cost of “corporate amnesia” — or inefficient knowledge sharing — can top tens of millions annually. Yet almost no one in the boardroom is talking about it.

AI may transform how organizations operate, but without a record of how they have made decisions, navigated crises, and earned trust over time, even the most sophisticated systems risk becoming disconnected from the experience that makes intelligence meaningful.

When CEOs Leave, the Lessons Leave With Them 

Leadership transitions are a natural part of organizational life. Boards often seek new leadership when markets shift or strategies change, and today’s environment — defined by technological disruption, geopolitical instability, and rapidly evolving consumer expectations — has only accelerated that cycle. Consider Boeing, Nike, and Stellantis: each navigated a recent CEO transition while simultaneously managing deep operational or reputational crises that demanded intimate knowledge of how the organization had failed and recovered before.

When CEOs depart, they rarely leave alone. Senior teams move on, long-tenured executives retire, and the institutional knowledge those leaders carry quietly disappears.

A company’s most valuable knowledge is often embedded in years or decades of decisions, pivots, failures, and breakthroughs. It lives in boardroom debates, cultural inflection points, product launches, regulatory battles, and moments when leaders had to choose between competing priorities under pressure. Without deliberate efforts to capture and preserve that experience, succession planning becomes little more than a leadership handoff — not a transfer of organizational knowledge.

Your AI Is Only as Smart as Your History 

This matters even more in the age of AI. As companies adopt generative AI and agentic systems, many assume that access to powerful models will create an advantage. In reality, the opposite may be true. If every company has access to similar AI systems, competitive differentiation may increasingly depend on the quality of the context from which those systems draw.

That context comes from experience — which, over time, becomes institutional memory: the accumulated record of how an organization has navigated complexity, balanced risk and opportunity, responded to crises, and built relationships with its stakeholders. Without that, intelligence — human or artificial — becomes generic.

Large language models can generate remarkably fluent answers, but without being grounded in a company’s specific history, decisions, and operating norms, those outputs often feel shallow or disconnected from reality. They can produce information. They cannot produce insight.

Just as the digital era required investment in data infrastructure, the age of AI will require infrastructure that preserves and activates institutional memory — including historical records, internal documentation, oral histories, and digital knowledge systems that allow organizations to learn from their own experiences. Increasingly, these systems will also inform AI tools themselves, grounding machine-generated insights in an enterprise’s real history rather than generic training data.

How Booz Allen Turned 110 Years Into a Strategic Edge 

When Booz Allen turned 110, CEO Horacio Rozanski didn’t just commission a retrospective. Through executive interviews, storytelling initiatives, and a digital archives platform, the company captured pivotal moments across its history — advising the U.S. Navy before World War II, supporting NASA during the space race — and connected those stories to its current identity as a technology and analytics leader. The effort wasn’t nostalgic. It was operational. 

The Archive Isn’t Missing — It’s Just Scattered 

The deeper problem isn’t preserving the memories of departing executives. It’s preserving the accumulated experience of the institution itself. It is preserving the accumulated experience of the institution itself. That experience, often built over decades, lives in strategy documents, research reports, correspondence, internal publications, photographs, and other records that explain how the organization became what it is.

In many companies, this material is scattered across fragmented digital systems or buried in analog archives that have never been systematically organized. In the age of AI, that presents a strategic vulnerability. AI learns from data. If the knowledge that defines an organization’s experience is inaccessible or lost entirely, those systems will produce incomplete, generic intelligence. The question for leaders is no longer simply whether they will adopt AI — it’s whether they will deploy it in a way that reflects their organization’s hard-won experience.

Target illustrates what’s at stake. The company faces a leadership transition amid declining sales, brand confusion, and growing political pressure. Analysts argue that it has drifted from the distinctive identity that once set it apart — its design-driven merchandising, curated product mix, and cultural positioning that inspired shoppers to jokingly pronounce the brand’s name like a French boutique. What’s less discussed is whether any of that accumulated brand intelligence — the decisions, trade-offs, and creative instincts that built “Tar-zhay” — was ever formally captured. Or whether it simply walked out the door with the leaders who built it.

The challenge for an incoming CEO is not just operational — it is interpretive. Which aspects of the organization’s identity should be preserved? Which strategies have worked historically? Which lessons from past crises still matter?

Before your company deploys its next AI system, ask this: What does that system actually know about how your organization makes decisions? If the answer is “not much,” you haven’t built an intelligent enterprise. You’ve built a very fast amnesiac.

The opinions expressed in Fortune.com commentary pieces are solely the views of their authors and do not necessarily reflect the opinions and beliefs of Fortune.

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Jessica Mathews here, filling in for Allie to give you a quick update on some recent reporting that looks at the pushback that Elon Musk’s companies are getting around the country.

Last week, I wrote about the lawsuit that Baltimore’s mayor and city council had filed against xAI, Elon Musk’s artificial intelligence company. The lawsuit accuses Grok of exposing residents to the risk that any photograph they uploaded—of themselves or of their children—could be ingested by Grok and transformed into sexually degrading deepfakes without their knowledge or consent.

Not long after that lawsuit was filed, the Baltimore Ravens’ football team announced it was walking away from a tunnel proposal it had pitched to Boring Company, for a free tunnel project around its Ravens stadium. And the Baltimore Mayor, a Democrat, said publicly that he wouldn’t have approved it anyway.

The sentiment shift in Baltimore, in particular, was notable, as the city had a decade ago welcomed Elon Musk’s business with open arms.

Here’s more, from the story:

Maryland and Baltimore have historically welcomed Musk’s companies through incentives and partnerships. Former Maryland Governor Larry Hogan, a Republican, was one of the first politicians to publicly get behind a major Boring Company project in 2017, when Boring Company announced it planned to build a high-speed tunnel for autonomous vehicles between Baltimore and Washington, D.C. The Maryland Department of Transportation sponsored the project, and Baltimore’s then-Mayor, a Democrat, had said the project would have “tremendous potential.” 

That posture has shifted since Musk donated $300 million to President Trump’s campaign and took a hands-on role in government through DOGE. Governor Wes Moore, a Democrat, was an early critic of Musk’s work at DOGE, characterizing the firing of thousands of federal workers in 2025 as “arbitrary” and “draconian” during a working session in March 2025 and saying it was cruel. Boring Company president Steve Davis, one of Musk’s longtime trusted fixers, helped Musk run the government department. 

Meanwhile, in Las Vegas—where Boring has had repeated safety and environmental problems—two legislators recently sent a demand letter to Nevada Governor Joe Lombardo, requesting he address “structural failures” in the state’s oversight of Elon Musk’s tunneling startup, which has been digging tunnels below Las Vegas. The two state legislators, Assemblymember Howard Watts and Senator Rochelle Nguyen, sent a letter to the Governor, describing “significant concerns about record integrity, administrative accountability, and structural failures” in Nevada’s workplace safety system and saying that they “require clear action from the Executive Branch.” 

The pushback is largely coming from Democrats and illustrates the challenges Musk’s collection of companies are receiving as the famously impulsive and truculent multi-billionaire has turned himself into a political lightning rod.

See you tomorrow,

Jessica Mathews
X: @jessicakmathews
Email: jessica.mathews@fortune.com

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Good morning. A new report from TD Bank U.S. finds that employees are embracing AI as a productivity tool, but they’re not ready to hand over decision-making authority.

According to TD’s second annual AI Insights Report, released on Tuesday, 83% of employed respondents said they now use AI-powered tools at work, up 20 percentage points from last year. Adoption rose across both employer-provided tools, rising to 75% from 63%, and independently accessed tools, which climbed to 78% from 66%. Respondents who use AI say it helps them work faster, generate ideas more easily, and make decisions more efficiently. Notably, 71% say AI gives them a competitive edge over peers in similar roles.

For CFOs, the signal isn’t just growing adoption. It’s a broader shift in workforce mindset: AI is increasingly being viewed less as a job threat and more as a performance lever. That has meaningful implications for how finance leaders position AI investments and workforce enablement internally.

The report also offers insight into how AI is reshaping expectations in financial services. Just over half of respondents, 55%, say they use AI to help manage their finances, up sharply from just 10% a year ago. TD’s findings are based on a nationwide survey of more than 2,500 consumers.

Even so, surveyed employees draw a clear line around decision rights. Most prefer AI to surface insights and recommendations while humans retain final authority, mirroring broader consumer sentiment around financial services. Just 18% say they would trust AI to make financial recommendations entirely on its own. Comfort was highest when AI supported behind-the-scenes functions such as product or service recommendations, fraud detection, tracking spending, and calculating credit scores.

“Consumers see real value in AI when it simplifies their experience, without losing the human touch,” according to Jo Jagadish, head of digital banking, payments and contact centers at TD Bank U.S.

Trust, however, is gradually building. Sixty-two percent of respondents say they trust AI to provide honest, reliable, and competent information, up from roughly half last year. TD Bank is also investing accordingly: The bank has roughly 2,500 employees working on AI development and has partnered with Columbia University to provide executive AI training for senior leaders.

Sheryl Estrada
sheryl.estrada@fortune.com

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• The late billionaire Steve Jobs is known for being cofounder and CEO of Apple—and introducing the iPhone, iPad, and iMac to the world. However, his time at the computer company that turns 50 years old on Wednesday wasn’t what helped strike gold for his net worth. Jobs actually made the billions in 1995—three years before the iMac hit shelves—after using an unexpected career roadblock to his advantage, with a little help from Tom Hanks and Tim Allen.

“To infinity and beyond!” wasn’t just the catchphrase of Toy Story’s Buzz Lightyear—it was the turning point that turned Steve Jobs into a billionaire.

After a power struggle that forced Jobs out of Apple in 1985, Jobs bought Lucasfilm’s computer graphics division the next year for $10 million. The seller was George Lucas, fresh off creating the Star Wars empire. That small acquisition would soon be renamed Pixar—and would change both Hollywood and Jobs’ fortune forever.

The company got off to a rocky start, with Jobs questioning whether to sell it multiple times, thanks in part to having to personally cover its monthly cash shortfall. But by 1995, Jobs believed Pixar was ready for primetime. In a week’s span in November, it would release its first major film, Toy Story, as well as launch an IPO.

Lawrence Levy, the company’s then-CFO, wrote that it reminded him of the 100-meter sprint in the Olympic Games: a lifetime of training that comes down to a snapshot performance.

“If the world fell in love with Toy Story, Pixar would have a chance to usher in a new era of animated entertainment,” he said in his book, To Pixar and Beyond: My Unlikely Journey With Steve Jobs to Make Entertainment History.

“If it didn’t, Pixar might be written off as another company that tried but never quite hit the mark.”

The IPO that made Jobs a billionaire

As the 80% owner of Pixar, the IPO stakes were even higher for Jobs. If everything went well, he was hoping to finally see some return on his Pixar investment. If everything went south, it might have shut the door on any future collaboration with Disney and led to the waste of a decade of his entrepreneurial life.

Luckily, all expectations were shattered. Pixar’s initial stock price was predicted to reach between $12 and $14, but at the end of the first day of trading, it was worth 175% more, at $39 a share. This was thanks largely to Toy Story, with Tom Hanks and Tim Allen as lead voices, nearly doubling its box office expectations. Jobs’ stake sent his net worth soaring to over $1 billion.

Jobs would later rejoin Apple in 1997, but he remained involved in Pixar as it churned out hit after hit, including Finding Nemo, The Incredibles, and Ratatouille—each bringing in hundreds of millions of dollars worldwide. Disney fully acquired Pixar for about $7.4 billion in stock in 2006. Jobs’ stake was worth about $4.6 billion.

While Jobs is by all means known most for his role at Apple—the tech giant that turns 50 years old on Wednesday—his willingness to follow his instincts with Pixar proves the age-old advice that one key to success is finding your passion—and putting all of your energy into it.

“No matter what you do next, the world needs your energy, your passion, your impatience with progress,” Apple CEO Tim Cook said in 2015. “History rarely yields to one person, but think and never forget what happens when it does.”

Finding fortune beyond their main companies

Jobs isn’t alone in being a business leader who gained significant wealth outside of what they’re primarily known for. Elon Musk has a similar story. 

While the world’s richest person is known today for being the leader of Tesla and SpaceX, that’s not how he first amassed his fortune. Musk sold his first company, Zip2, to AltaVista for more than $300 million. He also made millions through the creation of PayPal, which formed from a merger of Musk’s online financial services company, X.com, with software company Confinity, cofounded by billionaire Peter Thiel.

Similarly, billionaire Richard Branson did not make all his money from being focused on his air and space companies, Virgin Atlantic and Virgin Galactic. The 75-year-old British serial entrepreneur actually became a billionaire in part thanks to his chain of record stores called Virgin Records. It launched in 1971 and later expanded into a music label that featured artists like the Rolling Stones and Janet Jackson. Branson later sold Virgin Records in 1992 to British conglomerate Thorn EMI for $1 billion.

A version of this story originally published on Fortune.com on August 21, 2025.

More on wealth and leadership:

• Warren Buffett says ‘accumulating great amounts of money’ doesn’t achieve greatness—He still lives in a $31,500 Nebraska home and clipped coupons
• Tim Cook says late Apple cofounder Steve Jobs gave him this unforgettable advice before handing over the reins as CEO: ‘Never ask what I would do’
• Despite his $2.6 billion net worth, MrBeast says he’s having to borrow cash and doesn’t even have enough money in his bank account to buy McDonald’s

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Skoda, Urquell Pilsner and Václav Havel. The number of global brands associated with the Czech Republic are few. When Mark Carney, the Canadian Prime Minister, paid homage to Havel, the first democratically elected president of what was then Czechoslovakia, in a speech he made at Davos this year, many turned to Google to refresh their memories. Now, a new player may be added to the list. 

Karel Komárek is a Czech billionaire who started buying stakes in country lotteries in 2011. The Czech Republic’s Sazka was the first, Greek gaming firm OPAP was the second. Renamed Allwyn, the company now also owns lotteries and gaming companies in the U.K., Italy, Austria, and the states of Michigan and Illinois. Its most recent acquisition was PrizePicks, the American fantasy sports operator. 

Komárek is a rare breed. The owner of a Europe-based business (Allwyn’s headquarters are now in Lucerne, Switzerland) which has become a top-two operator in its field globally. In 2024, revenues topped $10bn. A year later, Allwyn’s valuation touched $18.6bn. Only the Irish-American gambling business, Flutter, is bigger. 

Last month, Allwyn was listed on the Athens stock exchange. Now its leaders are eyeing the London and New York exchanges as potential secondary homes. 

Source: Allwyn International Q4 2025 preliminary results

“We are definitely a story of inspiration for many Czech companies to show them it’s possible to grow internationally,” Robert Chvátal, Allwyn CEO, tells me. “Actually, it’s not just possible. It’s mandatory.” 

Swaddled in regulations and operating codes, national lotteries operate a little like utilities companies do—offering stable returns over long contract periods. Add in racier gaming and gambling interests too, and Chvátal argues, you have an attractive mix. 

“Lotteries are great,” he says. “They have scale. But they are fairly mature businesses. It’s a good start. It’s a good base. But if you want to grow further, and if you say ‘We will be listed’, shareholders or investors will ask if there is a growth story. Or is it just a stable, almost utility-like, type of profile, which is more of a yield type of stock?” 

“I say we are actually a combo of both. We are a solid yield—if you take the current stock price to the communicated dividend, it’s a 6% yield, not too bad in euro terms—but, at the same time, because of the product diversification and because of the geographical diversification, we are also a growth story.” 

With the conflict in the Gulf cratering equity markets around the world and fears that investment overstretch could bring the technology hyperscalers to heel, uncomplicated bread-and-butter businesses like lotteries are a flight-to-safety option. 

Whatever the level of geopolitical volatility, millions of people like to buy a chance to win big at astonishingly long odds. When Communist Czechoslovakia banned most lotteries and closed the state-run sports gambling company, Staska, in 1953, illegal gambling flourished. Sazka was launched three years later and a state lottery started in 1957. Even the Soviets couldn’t control the urge for a flutter. 

Read more: Rishi Sunak is giving advice to CEOs on AI. Here are his golden rules

Jokes about Eastern European business standards are now a distant memory (“How do you double the value of a Skoda? Fill it with petrol” has a moldy feel, now that Skoda is owned by VW).  

“What resonates with us, if you recall Mark Carney’s speech, is his reference to the ‘middle powers’,” Chvátal says. “He actually quoted our first president, Václav Havel, and his essay The Power of the Powerless. The middle powers could become relevant.” In its chosen field, Allwyn is more than a middle power. And for Europe, that is too rare an occurrence. 

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If it weren’t for a Volkswagen bus and a calculator, Apple might never have existed.

Five decades ago, the late cofounder Steve Jobs was in his early twenties and strapped for cash, but hooked on the idea that everyone should be able to own a home computer. The only problem? Like many founders, he didn’t have enough money to bring his vision to life.

So Jobs sold off his Volkswagen bus while fellow cofounder Steve Wozniak got money for his programmable calculator, raising $1,300 to pay for the prototype’s parts. The first Apple computer, the Apple I, was born on April Fools’ Day, 1976; on Wednesday, the $3.7 trillion business celebrates its 50th birthday.

And the sacrifice paid off. A local computer dealer placed a $50,000 order for 100 units soon after it launched, with the product mainly bought up by hobby enthusiasts. But it made the entrepreneurial duo enough money to create Apple II for the mass market—the first personal computer to include a keyboard and color graphics. A year after its 1977 debut, it made nearly $3 million. 

“I was worth about over $1 million when I was 23, and over $10 million when I was 24, and over $100 million when I was 25,” Jobs told PBS in 1996. “And it wasn’t that important, because I never did it for the money.”

The days of selling their belongings to fund their fledgling business were long behind them.

From college dropout to $10.2 billion net worth: Jobs’ path to Apple success

Jobs didn’t discover his passion for technology in a college class; at the age 12, the entrepreneur had already found his true calling, and took a massive leap of faith to pursue his dreams. 

A young Jobs thumbed through the yellow pages, and hunted down the phone number of Hewlett-Packard cofounder Bill Hewlett, ringing him up for a favor. At the time, the tween was in need of spare parts to build a frequency counter. But what he received was far better than some nuts and bolts; Hewlett offered Jobs an internship at the iconic $17.4 billion tech company, where he serendipitously met a talented engineer: Wozniak. 

Together, the pair started their first business, illegally selling “blue boxes” that allowed users to make free, long-distance telephone calls. Jobs reminisced about those years in the early 1970s as a “magical” time in his life that sent him on the path to soon create Apple. 

“Experiences like that taught us the power of ideas,” Jobs said in the 1998 documentary Silicon Valley: A 100-Year Renaissance. “If we hadn’t…made blue boxes, there would have been no Apple.”

Jobs later enrolled at Reed College in Portland, Ore., but his days of higher education were short-lived. He dropped out after just one semester, inevitably working for legendary brand Atari as a technician and games designer at just 18 years old. That would be the last time Jobs worked under somebody else; just two years later, Apple I hit the market, and Jobs was well on his way to becoming one of the most visionary tech pioneers in modern history. 

Fast-forward five decades later, and Apple is the second most valuable company in the world. The business sits in fourth place on the Fortune 500, having sold more than 3 billion iPhones, and boasting more than 100 million Mac users globally. 

At the time of his passing in 2011, Jobs was estimated to be worth $10.2 billion. Although he had enough money to buy a whole fleet of luxury cars shortly after founding Apple, selling his Volkswagen proved to be a critical sacrifice in making it to the top.

A version of this story was published on Fortune.com on December 19, 2025.

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• In today’s CEO Daily: Fortune Editor-in-Chief Alyson Shontell sits down with Delta CEO Ed Bastian.
• The big leadership story: Fortune ranks the 100 Best Companies to Work For.
• The markets: A global rally is underway as Trump says the Iran war will end within weeks.
• Plus: All the news and watercooler chat from Fortune.

Good morning. Ed Bastian has been the CEO of Delta Air Lines for a decade and an executive at the company for almost 30 years. As CFO and president, Bastian led the airline through a significant turnaround that began with filing for bankruptcy in 2008. It all paid off: Today, Delta is the most profitable airline in America.

Delta enjoys this title despite the fact that it gives away a chunk of profits to its 100,000 employees every year—and thanks in part to a long-term partnership with American Express, which Bastian has nurtured to be extremely lucrative. Delta-Amex cards are now responsible for over 10% of Delta’s total revenue.

I flew to Delta’s headquarters in Atlanta to interview Bastian for the Fortune 500: Titans and Disruptors of Industry podcast, and we sat among historic planes in the airline’s corporate museum hangar and talked for nearly an hour about his leadership playbook. When we spoke about his turnaround strategy, Bastian cited two other micro-turnarounds that reoriented the company: a brand overhaul and the rebuilding of team culture:

Creating a brand instead of a commodity. Two decades ago, “When you asked people why they chose an airline for their specific flight, 80% of the time it would be whoever had the lowest price,” Bastian told me. “Today, if you ask people why they choose Delta, 80% would say [it’s] because it’s Delta, because of the experience, the brand; 20% is the other stuff. So just a total flip. And so that was the most important thing, getting paid for the great service that our people do.” 

Giving Delta’s people a reason to believe and the responsibility to make it work. “You have to let your people know that you’re supporting them and putting them out front, rather than the management being out front,” Bastian said. “We’re not obsessing on customers, per se, at the leadership levels, because we want to obsess over our own people, so that they can obsess over you as a customer. When your people know that you’ve got their back, amazing things can happen. That had been lost, and bringing that back, and getting their confidence and trust back, was really key.”

Given that latter point, it’s no surprise that Delta is in the top 10 of the newest edition of the Fortune 100 Best Companies to Work For. You can find that list here. 

For more on how Bastian leads, where he sees the airline industry heading, and why AI won’t knock him off his people-first approach at Delta, listen to our full interview here.—Alyson Shontell

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

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Two competing forces are currently shaping the work of people leaders at many major businesses. On the one hand, geopolitical uncertainty and economic volatility are leading to a tightening of purse strings, making it harder to retain and attract top talent. At the same time, the requirements of the modern workplace mean that there has never been such a need for workers with the right skills and attitudes to innovate and embrace the potential of AI and other cutting-edge technologies.  

To address this, we convened a panel of experts to glean their insights on the challenges facing CHROs in 2026 and the practical solutions that can help.  

The Problem: Siloed, Opaque Workforce Decisions  

One of the biggest challenges for people professionals, and one area where the savvy use of technology can really help, is decision-making. Workforce decisions are rarely broken because of poor policy, says Maria Colacurcio, CEO of Syndio, a pay equity software platform. Instead, they often break down in the execution. 

“What happens is, once those policies are set, they go out into the wild,” she says. This could mean that a recruiter needs to close a deal by Friday to get a candidate in or a retention bump gets approved because a specific manager makes a really good case for it. “These decisions happen in massive silos, so, in spite of really good intentions, there are unintended consequences when you can’t see all of these decisions together.” 

This means that it is no longer enough to simply formulate excellent policies once a year and let them go, says Sara Morales, senior vice president for People and Communities at Cisco. “Now, with the pace of change, we need to be proactive and reactive. Culturally, what we’re seeing is an evolution of highly structured teams’ organizational decision-making to much more dynamic and fluid ways of making decisions at speed.” 

Read more: The unspoken rule: is English really the key to success in Europe’s boardrooms?

Dr. Laura Weis, global Human-AI strategy lead at WPP, agrees. “Ways of working are fundamentally changing and you only get value from technologies like AI if we’re moving away from this siloed, waterfall, process-heavy way of working towards something more integrated and cross-functional.” At WPP, this means moving more of the HR function into cross-functional product squads which work together to shape work design.  

Practical takeaway: Break down decision silos by mapping where key workforce decisions (hiring, promotion, pay, performance) are made and introducing shared governance or checkpoints across functions. Move from isolated decisions to connected workflows—ensuring HR, finance, and business leaders are working from the same data and principles. 

The Pressure: Why This Is Reaching a Breaking Point 

This particular challenge is coming to a boiling point due to a confluence of factors. Regulation, AI adoption and workforce expectations are all accelerating simultaneously and this is fundamentally changing the role of people leaders.  

“There are 657 things that leaders are trying to work through every day—maybe even every hour,” says Morales. “To move through that with clarity, leaders need to establish what are the few most important things to focus on.” 

One such important thing, for European Leaders, is the EU Pay Transparency Directive, the measures of which member states must have implemented by June this year. The result of this, says Colacurcio, is a greater need for explainability. “All of your folks now have access to so much more information,” she says. “They’re going to be showing up in a way that requires your people leaders on the front line of these difficult conversations about pay to be able to explain things.”  

Practical takeaway: Shift from annual planning cycles to more frequent, cross-functional workforce reviews, and equip frontline leaders with clear frameworks for explaining decisions—especially around pay, progression, and performance. Prioritization is critical: define the few decisions that matter most and ensure consistency in how they are made and communicated. 

The Misstep: A Fixation on Outcomes, Not Decisions 

One of the tools leaders will reach for when it comes to workforce issues is AI but many fall into the trap of thinking that simply implementing the technology will be enough to solve the problems. Not so, says Weis. 

“It leads to a lot of frustration because people feel like they should generate huge value with these tools,” she says. “But the way we have designed work is totally not suitable for the way of working that needs to happen in order to unlock value with AI.” 

Read more: Fortune on the ground at Mobile World Congress

Weis explains that too many companies are seeing the productivity and efficiency gains AI can bring as a solution to employees being overworked and burned out. Unfortunately, workers under pressure are highly unlikely to change their way of working or experiment with new tools. Instead, if they do use AI it is in relatively unstrategic ways which creates more frustration and increases cognitive load.  

“The story was that AI makes work easier but actually what happened is that AI took away the easy work,” says Weis. “AI is a multiplier. If you have a mediocre performer or team, AI will simply make that worse.” 

Practical takeaway: Don’t treat AI as a quick fix—focus first on redesigning how decisions and workflows operate day to day. Create the conditions for effective AI use by reducing overload, clarifying expectations, and aligning teams on what ‘good’ decision-making looks like before layering in technology. 

The Shift: From Remediation to Prevention 

So, what can people leaders do? “You have to start by collaborating differently,” says Morales. “We have to create space, time and energy for people to learn and think and strategize.” At Cisco, this involves a new practice called Time to Grow where all employees have four hours blocked out in their calendars every month for each of them to go and invest in themselves and develop the skills they will need to be ready for the AI transformation.  

For Syndio’s Colacurcio, the organizations she sees as winning in this area have changed the way they do governance—particularly when it comes to pay. “It’s not governance after the fact, with this big bucket of money that you then have to dole out to fix your mistakes,” she says. “It’s thinking about a manager getting guidance in the moment when a pay decision is being made so you can prevent issues from happening in the first place.” 

At WPP, Weis says it’s a question of embracing a total mindset shift throughout the organization. “We’re moving from a knowledge economy to an innovation economy,” she says. “So we’re trying to get people to act in an innovative and creative way, to continuously reimagine and to question their ways of working. AI gives us speed but it also gives us space and we’re really trying to ensure that space is being used in an effective way, rather than just being absorbed by the system.” 

Practical takeaway: Embed guidance and governance into decisions as they happen, rather than relying on retrospective fixes. This can include introducing real-time decision support, setting clearer guardrails for managers, and carving out protected time for learning and experimentation to build long-term capability. 

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Good morning. On Fortune’s radar today:

• Trump has no good options in war with Iran.
• Markets are pricing in an end to the conflict.
• U.S. job market grinds to a halt.
• Exclusive: AI will cause 31% dip in phone sales, analyst says.
• Anthropic source code leaks.
• The Fed’s Powell is not a dove.

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Most Americans don’t know this: in 1988, the Republican and Democratic parties fired the League of Women Voters — the neutral, nonpartisan organization that had hosted Presidential debates for decades — and replaced them with a commission they run themselves. Many Americans only tunes in to politics during the runup to a Presidential election, which means the Presidential debates are often the pivotal events in the race.

When that organization — the Commission on Presidential Debates, or CPD — was founded it was jointly run by the chairs of the Republican and Democratic national committees. It existed, in practice, to protect the two parties that created it. 

The most notable rule the CPD instituted was requiring any third-party candidate who wants to participate in these nationally televised debates to receive greater than 15% support in at least five national polls — an effectively impossible hurdle. For context, only two third-party candidates have ever exceeded five percent of the popular vote and received federal matching funds since the law providing them was passed in 1974. The bar set by the CPD is triple that. The two major parties have, in other words, constructed a system specifically designed to ensure no one else can compete.

Through nine election cycles it served that purpose until 2024, when it was no longer even needed.  It had been forty years since the debates were hosted by the League Of Women Voters and the two major parties decided to simply negotiate the details directly with the networks.  Notably, they didn’t invite anyone but each other.

Broken government is serious and dangerous stuff. The two major parties fight for control like petulant children wrestling over a television remote. When one of them shakes it free, the loser storms out of the room. Or the Capitol Building.

When their inability to compromise led to a government shutdown in 2011, Standard & Poor’s downgraded this country’s debt from AAA to AA for the first time in roughly a century. That will likely cost future generations trillions in interest payments.

The system has been mostly the same for two hundred and fifty years, but for decades after the fall of Communism there was no existential threat to democracy that forced compromise. When Ronald Reagan and Tip O’Neill couldn’t agree, they didn’t shut down the government — they famously worked it out, because failing to do so risked giving quarter to the Soviets. Once the wall came down, the consequences of not compromising no longer seemed more important than the pursuit of personal power and wealth to our elected officials. Country over party became optional. They chose party.

Is the citizenry pleased with the performance of this duopoly? According to Ballotpedia, in January 2026 the approval rating for Congress sits at around 15% — what pollsters call “the floor,” meaning it is almost impossible to go lower. According to Gallup, since 2010 the approval rating for Congress has almost never exceeded 30%.

To put 15% in context: according to a YouGov poll from roughly a year ago, the approval rating on Adolf Hitler ranges between 11% and 23%, depending on how you interpret the results — 11% of Americans say some of his ideas were “right,” and 12% categorized him as “a bad person who did some good things.” YouGov puts his unfavorable tracker at -88%. Stalin comes in somewhat stronger, with an unfavorable rating of roughly -75% to -80%.

Hitler. Stalin. The U.S. Congress. The polling puts them in roughly the same neighborhood. That sentence should alarm every American.

Most of us have acquiesced to the notion that there is simply nothing we can do about it. I disagree. Things do change. Change often happens when we don’t expect it, or too slowly to observe — but it is inevitable. Just because you can’t see the continents moving doesn’t mean tectonic plates don’t exist. Just because you don’t know that the Republican party was once a third-party movement doesn’t make it untrue. The Whigs would agree — if any of them still existed.

Individual issues no longer matter in an era when we have no functioning political system with which to legislate. That is not an epitaph — it is a call to action. Citizens must push representatives to reverse Citizens United, minimize the effect of money on politics, broaden access to Presidential debates, end the filibuster, dissolve the electoral college, institute term limits, and update the system so it works again.

Whether or not Edmund Burke actually said, “Evil triumphs when good men do nothing because they could only have done a little,” it remains a truism. Change is inevitable, but reform never comes from the top. It comes from the people. More Americans who turn eighteen now register as Independents than join either of the two major parties. They had a good run. We deserve better. Vote Independent. Write your representative. Hold them accountable. Do a little.

The opinions expressed in Fortune.com commentary pieces are solely the views of their authors and do not necessarily reflect the opinions and beliefs of Fortune.

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I know the demands CEOs face because I am one.

Right now, we’re racing to get the right AI tools into our people’s hands so our organizations can grow.

In conversations with other CEOs, they tell me their tech stack is strong. Their training is rolling out. Every IT box is checked. And yet, adoption is slow. The investment isn’t paying off. Frustration and fear are high.

Leaders point to employee readiness as the problem. They want to know: How can I get my people on board?”

Here’s what many leaders miss: People don’t change until their leaders do.

We want our people to be agile, innovative, and ready to “meet the moment.” But while we’re looking at them, they’re looking at us — for clarity, confidence, direction, and care.

This is what stalls success. If adoption is slow, it’s not an AI problem. It’s a leadership problem. AI success isn’t only a test of your technology. It’s a test of your leadership.

Our Great Place To Work® 2025 global workforce study of nearly 10,000 employees across 25 countries shows that 85% of the global workforce has access to AI technology. But only 44% feel excited about using it or trust their employer to use it responsibly.

Employees aren’t lacking tools. They’re lacking trust, clarity, and support. Our survey shows that employees who have received no AI training are enthusiastic about AI if they believe that their leaders will get them trained the right way at the right time. This is all about trust, not training. If people don’t trust their leaders, they feel anxious, unprepared, or left out of decisions that affect them. They worry AI will replace them. That fear doesn’t get solved with software. It gets solved with trust and psychological safety.

This is why so many organizations haven’t scaled beyond pilot projects. They’re stuck, looking outward for solutions — more spending and more tools — and not inward at how they lead.

So, when CEOs ask me, “Why isn’t AI use translating into real business impact?” I answer their question with more questions:

• Do your people trust you?
• Are you addressing fear directly?
• Do people understand how AI helps their careers?
• Are they afraid of losing their job?
• Do they feel safe experimenting and learning?

These are questions I don’t need to ask leaders at the 2026 Fortune 100 Best Companies To Work For®, because I know the experience their people are having. These companies outperform their peers on employee experience — from agility and innovation to leadership behaviors.

At the 100 Best, 81% of employees say their workplace is psychologically safe, compared to 56% at typical workplaces. When people feel psychologically safe, they are 44% more likely to feel confident in their leaders, and more than twice as likely to stay.

High-trust leaders don’t hand people AI tools and hope for the best. They lead. They use AI and talk about it. They explain what’s changing and why. They address fear directly. That doesn’t mean promising there won’t be layoffs. If you do, you’ll lose credibility. Layoffs are part of business, and they were long before AI. But they should be the last resort, not the plan.

If your story is “we cut costs,” you’re missing the point. The best protection against layoffs is growth, and AI should help you do that.

It’s about doing more with the people you have so you can grow your business. Talk to me about how AI is raising revenue per employee, not how much you’ve slashed costs.

The 100 Best leaders focus on what’s effective, not simply efficient — on outcomes, not just usage. Growth, not cuts. Safety, not fear. More humanity, not less. AI is used to make work better for all — not scarier. 

When leaders create that environment for every working person, resistance fades. People believe AI will improve their work, their jobs, and their careers. Trust grows, and business performance follows.

Our research shows AI adoption is 2.5 times more likely when leaders talk openly about AI and encourage its use — and 2.1 times more likely when they explain how it helps employees’ careers. Employees who use AI at least monthly are more adaptable, more committed, and give extra effort.

At Synchrony, No. 1 on the list, employees are nine times more likely to embrace AI when leaders connect it to growth conversations and four times more likely when they understand how AI creates new growth opportunities for the company. With strong communication and training, Synchrony employees report 70% higher innovation.

This is the equation that never fails: Leaders shape the employee experience, and that experience drives business performance. It’s The Great Place To Work Effect.

Five ways 100 Best leaders build trust around AI

Leaders often assume their experience at work mirrors everyone else’s. It doesn’t. The experience worsens as you move down the org chart.

AI is no different. Enthusiasm, encouragement, access, and adoption all drop the further you get from the top.

Too often, AI isn’t reaching frontline workers — not because they’re resistant, but because they’re not getting trust, support, or access from their supervisor, who might not be getting those things from their supervisor.

Executives think they’re communicating clearly about AI. Frontline employees disagree. While 83% of executives say the message is clear, only 37% of frontline workers agree, according to our global survey. Similarly, 81% of executives believe they’re supportive, but only 33% of frontline employees feel encouraged to use AI.

Access tells a similar story. While 82% of executives say their company provides AI tools to help people do their job better, only 48% of frontline managers and 38% of individual contributors say the same.

AI only creates value when it’s used consistently, confidently, and by many people across the organization. Here’s how high-trust leaders close these gaps and make that happen:

1. Dispel the fear

Explain what’s changing — and why.

Two in three frontline workers worry that AI could replace their jobs. When people fear being replaced or don’t know what’s coming, trust erodes. Fear slows adoption and success. Transparency builds trust.

High-trust leaders set clear expectations; share privacy guiderails; and are transparent about what data AI uses, how it’s used, and how it’s protected. They share use cases, wins, and lessons learned from across the organization.

When employees understand the purpose, trust the guardrails, and feel involved in shaping how AI is used in their roles, they are far more likely to use AI. Desk workers with clear AI guidelines are six times more likely to have experimented with AI tools.

Edward Jones developed five guiding principles to help employees understand AI’s purpose and boundaries: human-centered, accountable, trustworthy, and inclusive. The company uses multi-channel updates like “Decisions Unpacked” sessions, town halls, and office hours to get feedback and engage employees.

2. Make learning role relevant

People are more likely to use AI if training is tied directly to their jobs.

Employees with AI training are more than twice as likely to actively use AI in their work compared to those without training, according to our global survey.

At the 100 Best, 85% of employees say training and development furthers them professionally, making innovation opportunities 87% more likely.

At Capital One, employees get personalized genAI learning paths and a skills snapshot so they can identify gaps, upskill, and apply AI in their day-to-day work.

3. Keep humans in the loop

AI should support judgment, not replace it. When employees are involved in decisions that impact their work, they adapt faster and are 41% more likely to embrace change.

Bank of America emphasizes human oversight, transparency, and accountability for AI outcomes across the bank. Navy Federal Credit Union uses AI to augment work under human oversight and is transparent about when AI is involved.

4. Create space for peer learning

People are far more likely to try new technology when they feel supported and part of a trusted group. Curiosity turns into confidence, and confidence drives action.

In our global study, 89% of employee resource group members use AI at least once a month, compared to 67% of non-members at typical workplaces.

Salesforce runs companywide “agentforce” learning days showcasing real examples and organizes collaborative forums for peer-to-peer learning. MetLife uses internal networks and playbooks to spread what’s working across teams, with leaders and ambassadors amplifying success.

5. Share progress

The best workplaces track and share progress around AI use and confidence.  

Marriott International gives managers data on engagement, learning gaps, and behavior shifts using a dashboard in its learning platform.

Build trust — and they will come

CEOs love to say challenges are opportunities. They are, but not just for our teams. For us, too.

This moment calls on leaders to build trust, reduce fear, and create confidence.

When people trust their leaders, they trust how AI will be used. And trust that layoffs are a last resort.

In business, the workforce grows, and the workforce shrinks; everyone knows that. What your people really want to know is whether you are doing everything you can to help them grow at your organization, or the next one. Your transparent words and equitable actions will inform them.

Let’s be real and enable people to make the world better with AI.

Michael C. Bush is the CEO of Great Place To Work and co-author of “A Great Place to Work For All.” Follow him on LinkedIn, and subscribe to the Great Place To Work LinkedIn newsletter to learn how to boost business performance.

Do you have what it takes to make a Best Workplace list? Find out.

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In 2025 alone, over 11.7 million Instagram posts carried the hashtag #nostalgia, Google searches for “90s movies” had doubled since 2015, and Y2K aesthetic searches had spiked 891% since November 2024.  I had chronicled the growing interest in vinyl, CDs and analog experiences among Gen Z, “this wave of anemoia — longing for a past you never lived — makes perfect sense once you hear Gen Z explain it themselves.”

My conversations with 13- to 25-year-olds revealed the core tension: a longing for a past when they were tech-free and owned their own attention.

“I am nostalgic for a time when I was present, when my generation was between 5 and 10, when we were still doing things in the real world,” shared 19-year-old Nancy, a university student in London, “I don’t remember what I watched yesterday on TikTok, but I remember what I did years ago when I didn’t have a phone.”

“That looked like a better time than today,” she says. That sentiment helps explain why searches for Y2K aesthetics  shot up 891% since November 2024. 

At a recent sleepover, my 15-year-old son and his 14-year-old friend Charlie, driven by a pang of nostalgia, chose to watch the opening ceremony of the London 2012 Olympics on YouTube.  Charlie spoke longingly about a time when he didn’t have a phone. “I felt so free then, not worried about anything like school, just playing. There was no social media. Now I worry about the world, about online hostility and my appearance.”

Nona (25), a marketing professional  in London, shares this feeling of nostalgia for  the pre-Amazon time of friction and waiting — when slowness felt like breathing room, not failure. This digital nostalgia is unique to the digitally native Gen Z, and alien to previous generations like mine. It centres around what some call the “Tumblr era” [between about 2011 and 2014], when smartphones and apps were still a novelty. “My own son mourns the pre-TikTok YouTube era — when content was shared and discussed rather than endlessly, solitarily scrolled.” 

The numbers confirm this is no fringe feeling. Pew Research from 2024 shows that almost half of US 13-17-year-olds (48%) view social media’s effects as mostly negative — up from 32% two years prior — and 44% have actively cut back on smartphone use.  Ipsos polling in the UK shows 72% of Britons support an age-verification law barring under-16s from social media, with strong backing from 18-34-year-olds. Deloitte research documents a parallel surge in app deletions and screentime limits among Gen Z themselves.

That pushback against the perceived digital prison is now a market. Analog and “pre-smartphone” experiences — digital detox cabins, phone-free clubs, dumb phones —  are scaling fast. Unplugged, the UK’s first digital-detox cabin company, has expanded from a handful of locations in 2020 to over 50 in 2026.

Nona  cut her daily screentime from roughly ten hours to two or three after a tech-free Unplugged stay — armed with only a paper map,a Nokia brick phone and her boyfriend’s good company. “[It] made us realize how addicted we are to our phones but also that actually we can very much get away without them,”  she says. “It reminded us how much we value undivided attention — and how much our phones steal it.” 

According to Vertu research, more and more Gen Z adults are reclaiming their reality by switching to dumb phones or maintaining dual dumb-smartphone setups, and spending more time in tech-free or digitally minimalist spaces. Offline movements like Offline Club (launched in Amsterdam, now in 19 cities) and Luddite Club offer tech-free communities  built around presence, not content.

Similarly, apps like Opal help users scale down social media consumption. The category is exploding: the global social-media-blocker app market is projected to grow from $1.47 billion in 2025 to $5 billion by 2035.

Other analog experiences are  booming. Escape rooms, paintballing, and live music are all projected to grow considerably through 2035. 

Government is catching up. From Australia and France to Denmark, Norway, Malaysia, Indonesia, India’s Karnataka and China, governments worldwide are  restricting social media access for minors — accelerating the analog pivot for the next generation.

Gen Z didn’t choose digital overload. They inherited it. But they are now doing something no previous generation has done: deliberately dismantling the attention economy from the inside — one dumb phone, one detox cabin, one conversation, one deleted app at a time. The analog future isn’t a retreat. It’s a correction.

The opinions expressed in Fortune.com commentary pieces are solely the views of their authors and do not necessarily reflect the opinions and beliefs of Fortune.

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He doesn’t know where the toilet paper is. He doesn’t know who the pediatrician is. He has never planned a meal, started a load of laundry, or thought about what time school pickup is. And somehow, none of that is considered a problem. Weaponized incompetence, or the practice of being so helpless that the labor simply falls on someone else, has long been a feature of domestic life.

But Wharton economist Corinne Low has spent years researching the data proving what many women have quietly suspected: it isn’t a quirk, a personality flaw, or a bad habit particular to certain men. It is, at this point, a structural constant. And it’s getting worse as women enter the workforce in greater numbers than their male counterparts and outearn them in greater numbers.

Low, an Associate Professor of Business Economics and Public Policy at the Wharton School who has been at the school since 2014, is the author of Having It All: What Data Tells Us About Women’s Lives and Getting the Most Out of Yours. The book details her research in how the division of labor in the household overwhelmingly falls on women’s shoulders, even as women continued to earn more. For Low, not only have we long moved past the idea of a stay-at-home wife waiting for her breadwinning husband to come home from work or the Marge Simpsons or Betty Drapers of the world, but we now are entering a cultural dynamic where women out-earn, outwork, and outperform their male counterparts, and still are putting in more labor at home.

“Men’s time doing housework is about the same as it was in the 1970s,” she told Fortune, “and that’s true whether or not the woman earns more money or the man earns more money.” That stagnation, she argued, is the central reason women feel like progress has stalled, because it has, at least on one side of the equation.

The assumption based off classical economic theory was that as women earned more, the domestic scales would naturally balance out. More income meant more leverage, the thinking went, and more ability to negotiate a fairer split of the cooking, the cleaning, the laundry, the kids, the pets, the hosting (the whole laundry list), the mental load of running a household. And despite this, Low said, that hasn’t changed even though external factors on labor have.

Working in the office and working at home

Even when a wife out-earns her husband, she still does almost twice as much cooking and cleaning as her lower-earning partner. Low used a real-world scenario from her research: a couple consisting of a nurse and an Uber driver, where the woman earns four times more per hour than the man, and yet, she still carries the heavier domestic load while he logs more hours at work. “The programming is there,” Low explained, describing how deeply ingrained gender expectations lead men to equate contribution with paid work hours, even when the math argues against it. “It would actually be more helpful if he stayed home, took the kids off from daycare so she could pick up a shift as a nurse, and the whole household would be richer.”

There’s also been a dramatic transformation in how Americans parent. Parenting time has exploded since the 1990s, and the burden has not been shared equally. “Working moms today are spending more time with their kids than stay-at-home moms when we were kids,” she said. Men have increased their parenting involvement somewhat, but Low said that doesn’t equate to the effort moms are putting in. When men cite dropping kids at daycare or trading off bedtime stories as evidence they’re doing their part, the data, Low said, te glls a different story. Because overall parenting time has risen so dramatically for everyone, “the gap with their wives has actually widened instead of narrowed. But when it comes to that more routine household drudgery, men’s time has not changed at all.”

Now, with AI reshaping labor markets and displacing the higher-paying, male-dominated jobs in tech and adjacent fields, Low sees the stakes getting higher. The old household logic of he earns more, so she handles more at home is being upended. Low argued that the cultural infrastructure to absorb that shift doesn’t yet exist. That result is corroborated by new economic data proving the trend of the stay-at-home boyfriend is here to stay—and likely permanently. Laura Ullrich, Director of Economic Research at Indeed Hiring Lab, recently authored a report showing for the third time ever, women outnumber men in the workforce, and unlike the last two times (the 2008 financial crisis and Covid-19), this time it’s here to stay.

For Low, that’s troubling because men (who do go to work) are opting for largely male-dominated roles that may not fit today’s workforce—and are keeping the same mentality at home. “I think it is an existential problem for men to learn to step into new roles and to actually pull their weight at home,” she said. “Because suddenly she’s her household’s breadwinner, but he’s claiming he’s useless in the kitchen, and he doesn’t know where the toilet paper is. He doesn’t know who the kid’s pediatrician is.”

When Fortune likened her comments to weaponized incompetence, Low, 41, couldn’t help but agree. Perhaps she is emblematic of Having It All: she spoke with Fortune while on vacation at Disney World, watching her 10-month-old while her eight-year-old was on a ride with her wife.

The consequences of that weaponized incompetence, Low argued, are evident in marriage and birth rates. As women’s earning power grows, their tolerance for an unequal domestic arrangement is shrinking. “When I have my own paycheck, and now I’m seeing men who have been laid off or their jobs have been displaced, why am I going to accept that he’s not going to pull his weight around the house? That doesn’t work for me,” Low said.

What concerns her most is that the current moment is reshuffling economic roles without doing the deeper cultural work. “What I’d like to see is that we are actually reshaping gender roles more deeply, and not just reshaping earning power,” she said. “What’s shifting is earning power, but the deeper gender roles actually aren’t being reshaped.” Until that changes, women will keep doing what Low describes as playing the career game on the hardest possible difficulty setting, with no cheat codes and none of the behind-the-scenes support that makes it look easy for everyone else. 

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The last time an energy crisis pushed Southeast Asia to consider nuclear energy, it led to a $2.2 billion plant in the Philippines that never got switched on.

Half a century later, a new crisis is pressing the region to start thinking about nuclear again. Global oil and gas prices have surged since Iran closed the Strait of Hormuz, the world’s most critical energy chokepoint. Southeast Asia, comprised mainly of net energy importers, has been hit especially hard by rising energy prices, accelerating plans to drive down energy usage. 

On March 23, Vietnam and Russia signed a deal to build a nuclear power plant in Vietnam’s Ninh Thuan province. The plant, set to come online in a decade, will be Southeast Asia’s first modern nuclear power plant. Malaysia, Indonesia, Thailand, and the Philippines have also signaled their intention to build nuclear capacity.

“Previously, the clean energy transition in the region was mainly driven by economic considerations—particularly the growing expectations from companies for access to low-carbon electricity,” Tan-Soo Jie Sheng, a professor at the Lee Kuan Yew School of Public Policy in the National University of Singapore (NUS), tells Fortune. “However, geopolitical shocks like the Iran war bring the energy security dimension back into sharper focus.”

Southeast Asia’s previous attempt to go nuclear

The region’s first attempt at nuclear power, the Bataan Nuclear Power Plant, was built in the Philippines in 1976. Commissioned by President Ferdinand Marcos in the wake of the 1973 oil shock, the plant was completed in 1984 at a cost of roughly $2.2 billion. But the plant was never used, due to accusations of government corruption and waning public support for nuclear energy following the Chernobyl disaster in 1986. 

“Marcos’ successor said that the plant was corruption-tainted—which is true—and claimed it was substandard and too dangerous to operate,” says Julius Cesar I. Trajano, a research fellow at Singapore’s Nanyang Technological University.

In recent years, rising energy demand, spurred in part by an explosion of AI data centers, is pushing several Southeast Asian nations to start reconsidering nuclear energy. In 2024, data centers consumed 415TWh, or 1.5% of the world’s electricity, according to the International Energy Agency; the organization also noted power usage had risen by 12% annually over the past five years.

“Unlike weather-dependent renewables like solar and wind energy, nuclear gives round-the-clock low-carbon electricity,” explains Tan-Soo of NUS. “That matters in Southeast Asia because electricity demand is rising fast, grids are uneven and governments want cleaner power without sacrificing reliability.”

Indonesia added nuclear power to its energy plan last year, with hopes to build two small modular reactors (SMRs) by 2034. Thailand wants to add 600 MW of nuclear generating capacity by 2037. 

Advances in nuclear technology, like SMRs, have made modern nuclear plants safer, according to Alvin Chew, a senior research fellow at NTU. SMRs are reactors of up to 300 MW per unit, which are about one third the size of conventional large reactors. SMRs could be better suited to Southeast Asia, as they can be added to remote areas like islands and be connected to smaller or less-developed grids.

Major challenges

Yet experts caution against being too optimistic about nuclear power, due to gaps in technological and institutional development.

Many SMR designs are still in the early stages of commercialization, so “there is no guarantee they will be cheaper, more mobile and safer,” Ian Storey, a principal fellow from Singapore’s ISEAS-Yusof Ishak Institute, explains. “There are only two experimental SMRs in operation, one in China and one in Russia. The rest exist only on paper.”

Others, like Joshua Kurlantzick, a senior fellow at the Council on Foreign Relations, point to low public acceptance for nuclear. “In most of Southeast Asia, except the Philippines where there is very strong support for nuclear energy, members of the public remain cautious about it, especially in countries like Indonesia which have a history of earthquakes and tsunamis,” he explains.

A 2021 survey from NTU reported low support for nuclear energy among the region’s population. Indonesia was the most receptive to nuclear, with 39% support; Thailand had the lowest share of support, at just 3%.

Public concerns may rise once nuclear projects get started. “The public’s rating of the risks of nuclear energy will likely change dramatically when presented with an imminent reality closer to home,” suggests Catherine Wong, an environmental sociologist from the University of Amsterdam.

Nuclear plants are also capital-intensive and time-consuming to build. “Nuclear is hard to do well,” explains Tan-Soo. “It requires a capable regulator, long-term political continuity, strong utilities, grid readiness, emergency planning, waste arrangements, and financing discipline. For many countries, those institutional requirements are often more difficult than the technology itself.”

Finally, there’s the security dimension. “The 21st century era of drone and cyber warfare makes nuclear power even harder to secure,” Wong suggests. That’s in contrast to more decentralized renewable energy: “You can take out five or even fifty wind turbines, and there will still be hundreds more spread across the country supplying electricity to the population.”

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Women are falling behind on AI adoption, and former Meta COO Sheryl Sandberg knows it. That’s why she’s refocusing her women’s leadership nonprofit, Lean In, on closing the AI gender gap — and installing a 25-year-old to lead the charge.

A new survey of 1,000 U.S. adults from Lean In found that 33% of men use AI daily, compared to 27% of women. While the gap is closing, even small differences could have outsized impacts over time, Sandberg told Fortune.

“We all know that AI is already starting to, and has the power to transform how we work, who’s in the workforce, how we live, how we communicate,” Sandberg said.

On March 24, Sandberg announced Bridget Griswold, a 25-year-old former Meta product manager, as the new CEO of Lean In. Despite public criticism of Griswold’s age and limited nonprofit experience, Sandberg said the nonprofit was looking for an “AI native” with a product background — and Griswold fit the bill.

The appointment comes amid turbulence: the Sandberg Goldberg Bernthal Family Foundation, which includes Lean In, shed a quarter of its staff over the last year through layoffs and voluntary departures, The Wall Street Journal recently reported.

Lean In’s pivot to AI comes as only half of companies are prioritizing women’s career advancement, and more than 30% are placing little to no priority on advancing women of color, according to the organization’s 2025 Women in the Workplace report. Women’s jobs are three times more likely to be automated by AI — and their vulnerability is compounded by underrepresentation in AI leadership and development.

Women are more likely than men to feel threatened, overwhelmed, and like they’re “cheating” when using AI, the study found. They’re also more likely to avoid AI due to ethics and accuracy concerns.

“These are great concerns to have, and it’s awesome that women care about ethics and not cheating. But what’s really concerning is that this might inadvertently cause women to use AI less than men,” Griswold told Fortune.

The survey found that men are 27% more likely to have been praised for using AI, and women are 23% less likely to receive manager support to use it.

“The managers who are encouraging the men to use AI and not the women — they may not even know they’re doing it,” Sandberg said, adding that biases against women are often unintentional. “When you surface those biases, when you tell people, you tell managers, look, that the overall data says you’re encouraging men more than women — that is the first step to correcting that bias.”

New Era at Lean In

Griswold joined Lean In as head of product and AI in January, and by March she had replaced longtime CEO and co-founder Rachel Thomas. She said to accomplish Lean In’s goal of getting more women into leadership, they need to use AI.

“We hope that Lean In can be a place that encourages [young women] to use AI and actually [produces] real results,” she said, adding that she hopes it can be a place where women build their confidence and accelerate their careers.

“We need to make sure that we are focused on helping women of the next generation lead, and product and AI are going to be so critical to that, which is one of the many reasons we’re very lucky that Bridget has stepped into the leadership role,” Sandberg said. 

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Bernard Looney, whose tenure as CEO of BP ended with him embattled in controversy, is entering the AI age as the new CEO of Wyoming-based Prometheus Hyperscale, leading a bevy of data center campus developments in the Cowboy State as well as the Lone Star state of Texas.

Looney, who pushed BP toward renewables in the energy transition, resigned suddenly from that company’s CEO post in 2023 amid a probe by the company into undisclosed personal relationships. Since then, BP has struggled financially, cutting costs and pivoting away from renewables and back to fossil fuels.

Coincidentally, BP’s new CEO takes over April 1. Meg O’Neill, the former Woodside Energy head, becomes the first-ever woman CEO of a Big Oil giant.

Looney became non-executive chair of Prometheus in late 2024. He takes over as CEO from the company’s founder, Trenton Thornock, who will remain a board member.

Prometheus is primarily focused on two flagship data center projects in Wyoming—in Evanston and Casper—with a combined initial capacity of 2.5 gigawatts, enough to power almost 2 million homes. The two projects are expected to cost more than $30 billion.

Prometheus is focused on speed of construction and on cleaner energy, utilizing a combination of behind-the-meter natural gas and battery storage to get projects completed and then utilize more wind, solar and even advanced nuclear power. The data centers are expected to use a proprietary geothermal cooling technology that doesn’t require water, according to the company.

“As artificial intelligence and digital technologies continue to reshape our world, it is crucial that we build the necessary infrastructure responsibly. This is the mission we have set ourselves,” Looney said in a statement, touting Prometheus being at the “forefront of next-generation data center development.”

Prometheus is backed by In-Q-Tel, the venture capital fund backed by the Central Intelligence Agency and the broader U.S. intelligence community, and others, and has power partnerships with Conduit Power, France’s Engie, Sam Altman-backed nuclear player Oklo, and more.

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As Donald Trump searches for an exit to the Iran war, the narrow Strait of Hormuz increasingly looks like a labyrinth in which the commander-in-chief has no good options. 

Any ceasefire or U.S. disengagement that cedes control of the strait risks creating new problems, including potentially triggering a nuclear arms race among Gulf states, experts say. But taking control of the strait militarily requires massive costs and risks, including a strategic invasion that comes short of occupying the country. Trump said March 31 he wants to leave Iran in two or three weeks, hours after he vented against allies to “Go get your own oil!”

Continuing with the status quo, meanwhile—in which the U.S. and Israel pound Iranian targets, while Iran charges multi-million dollar tolls to let select ships pass through the strait—could send the global economy into a recession.

“If this goes on for another two months, we’re in a global recession. There’s no way around it,” Jim Wicklund, a veteran oil analyst and managing director for PPHB energy investment firm, told Fortune, arguing the U.S. is staring down the barrel of a credit crash and sky-high inflation. 

Even a slight opening of the strait would bring only temporary relief. Oil and natural gas prices may fall as more traffic flows through the strait, but they would remain much higher than in February before the U.S. and Israel initiated the war, especially if Iran continues to charge a $2 million toll per vessel. “The whole world won’t stand for a long-term toll,” said Wicklund. “There will be a higher risk premium even if the strait opens tomorrow.”

The U.S. must either put “boots on the ground” to take control of the narrow strait—through which 20% of the world’s oil, liquefied natural gas, and petrochemicals pass—or make some kind of truce that’s unlikely to last, he said. “Trump has to do something, and he has to do something soon.”

Bob McNally, former White House energy adviser under George W. Bush and founder of the Rapidan Energy Group, took it a step further if the U.S. were to walk away without militarily seizing control of the strait.

“That would be a catastrophic setback for U.S. foreign policy interests that would, in my view, transcend even our defeat in Vietnam,” McNally told Fortune. “One would struggle to find a precedent or a parallel for what a defeat that would be.”

Where we are

More than a month into the slog of war, the average U.S. price for a gallon of regular gasoline rose above $4.00 on March 31 for the first time since 2022. California, Oregon, and Hawaii all exceeded $5.

And the impacts remain much worse in the rest of the world where supply shortages are mounting in Asia, and where Europe is now beginning to see scattered fuel shortfalls. This is where demand destruction escalates in April.

On March 30, Trump threatened “completely obliterating” Iranian power and water infrastructure if the strait is not opened—potentially a war crime. One day later, he lashed out at U.S. allies for not helping enough. “You’ll have to start learning how to fight for yourself, the U.S.A. won’t be there to help you anymore, just like you weren’t there for us. Iran has been, essentially, decimated. The hard part is done. Go get your own oil!” he posted on social media.

“We leave because there’s no reason for us to do this,” Trump later told reporters at the White House. “We’ll be ‌leaving very soon.”

With Pakistan and now China increasingly serving as the negotiation mediators, they offered a five-point peace initiative March 31 that included a call to “restore normal passage through the strait as soon as possible.”

Rystad Energy chief economist Claudio Galimberti sees a tenuous peace as the most likely outcome in the coming weeks. After all, only about 5% of the typical traffic is passing through the strait, which is not sustainable.

“It would be a very fragile ceasefire. It’s very unstable,” Galimberti said.

If a ceasefire only allows 50% or less of traffic to resume, then “this would be a very high inflationary scenario” for the world with oil prices likely remaining above $100 per barrel, he said. If it’s almost fully opened under a tolling scenario, then prices would fall further, but still remain well elevated above February levels before the war.

That is why McNally and Wicklund see U.S. boots on the ground as more likely to see the military campaign through. They think Trump is frustrated, but mostly posturing for now.

“What I think is likely is we’re going to see an intensification of combined operations—air, sea, and land—to degrade Iran’s ability to threaten Hormuz traffic,” McNally said.

The doctrine effect

The alternatives are much worse, McNally argued.

“The Arab Gulf countries and Israel would not accept Iran’s long-term domination of Hormuz. I think it would make another conflict just a matter of time. And it’s a conflict the United States would likely get dragged [back] into,” McNally said. “I don’t think it’s a durable scenario where we just sort of leave and say, ‘Hey, cut your deals with Iran. They’re the toll keeper now. Good luck.’”

The geopolitical precedent also would prove awful, McNally said, effectively canceling the Reagan Corollary to the Carter Doctrine. The 1980 Carter Doctrine said the U.S. would intervene militarily to protect its interests in the Middle East against external powers, which was in response to the Soviet Union’s invasion of Afghanistan. The 1981 Reagan Corollary, which came during the Iran-Iraq War, extended the doctrine but also pledged to secure internal stability in the Middle East, especially Saudi Arabia.

“We would be canceling the Reagan Corollary to the Carter Doctrine, and eventually, perhaps the doctrine itself,” he said. “I think eventually a China or Russia would want to step in there.”

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As the bell rang out over the New York Stock Exchange on Tuesday afternoon, it was an unusually beautiful day: 71 degrees, sun pouring on the faces of people swarming through the city. After the brutal cold of winter, it felt like something of a miracle.

The markets had spent the day chasing one of their own.

Iran’s official news agency reported an unconfirmed phone call between President Masoud Pezeshkian and the European Council president, where Pezeshkian said Iran had the “necessary will” to end the war; provided that “essential conditions are met, especially the guarantees required to prevent repetition of the aggression.” The S&P went vertical immediately afterwards. It didn’t matter that Pezeshkian had said nearly the same thing on X earlier this month, or that it wasn’t even clear how big a development this was.

The Nasdaq still snapped back 795 points, recovering nearly half of its total drawdown over the course of the U.S.-Israeli-Iran war in a single day. The S&P soared 2.89%, representing $1.7 trillion alone, recovering about 30% of its total drawdown since the war began. The Ddow also soared 1,125 points. All three indexes had their biggest single-day signs since May.

The incredible thing about the rally today wasn’t the scale of it, but the fragility of what it was built on. 

It started Monday night, when the WSJ reported that Trump had told aides he was willing to end the military campaign against Iran even if the Strait of Hormuz remained closed for the most part. Futures immediately rallied up something like 1.5%. But the same report noted that military options were still being considered, and if the U.S. drew out it would leave other nations to deal with the complex process of reopening the Strait, one of the world’s most critical oil chokepoints where 20% of the world’s oil flows out of.

Trump made his preference clear the next morning with a post calling on allies to gather up their “delayed courage” and deal with the Strait themselves.

 “Iran has been, essentially, decimated. The hard part is done,” Trump wrote. “Go get your own oil!” Soon after, Defense Secretary Pete Hegseth and Joint Chiefs Chairman Gen. Dan Caine held a before-the-bel press conference, where they didn’t commit to either leaving the Strait or defending it, nor any sort of timeline on the war. But they said it was going well, and when the stock market opened, most of the major indexes were rallying above 1%.

Then the confusion began. On Monday, White House press secretary Karoline Leavitt told reporters that talks with Iran were ‘continuing and going well,’ adding that ‘what is said publicly is, of course, much different than what’s being communicated to us privately.’ Then, Iran’s foreign ministry spokesperson said the opposite, that there had been in fact, no direct negotiations with the United States in 31 days of war, only ‘messages’ passed through intermediaries like Pakistan. But that wasn’t enough to dampen the high before Tuesday’s main event.

The oil market looked at the same information and reached a more sober conclusion. Brent crude settled upwards nearly 5% at $118.35 a barrel, its highest close since June 2022, after Bloomberg reported that Iran had struck a Kuwaiti oil tanker in Dubai waters. Oil said war, and stocks said peace, and both closed higher.

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President Donald Trump expressed frustration Tuesday with allies who have been unwilling to do more to support the U.S. war effort, telling them to “go get your own oil” as the conflict with Iran and its closure of the Strait of Hormuz sent average U.S. gas prices past $4 a gallon.

The social media post came after U.S. strikes hit the central city of Isfahan, sending a massive fireball into the sky, and Tehran attacked a fully loaded Kuwaiti oil tanker in the Persian Gulf.

The attacks showed the intensity of the war more than a month after the U.S. and Israel launched it. The conflict has left more than 3,000 dead and caused major disruptions to the world’s supply of oil and natural gas, roiling global markets and pushing up the cost of many basic goods.

Trump, who has vacillated between insisting there is progress in diplomatic talks with Iran and threatening to widen the war, had earlier shared footage of the attack on Isfahan.

Fuel prices rise, rattling global markets

Iran’s stranglehold on the strait, the waterway leading out of the Persian Gulf through which a fifth of the world’s oil is transported during peacetime, has driven up global oil prices, as have Tehran’s attacks on regional energy infrastructure.

Spot prices of Brent crude, the international standard, hovered around $107 a barrel Tuesday, up more than 45% since the war started Feb. 28.

Trump directed blame at U.S. allies like the United Kingdom and France that have refused to enter a war with no clear endgame that they were not consulted on.

“You’ll have to start learning how to fight for yourself, the U.S.A. won’t be there to help you anymore, just like you weren’t there for us. Iran has been, essentially, decimated. The hard part is done. Go get your own oil!” Trump wrote.

He singled out France for not letting planes fly over French territory while taking military supplies to Israel.

France has allowed the U.S. Air Force to use the Istres base in southern France because it had guarantees that planes landing there would not be involved in carrying out strikes.

Allies have refused to get involved

Spain, which has emerged as Europe’s loudest critic of the war, said Monday that it had closed its airspace for U.S. planes involved in the conflict.

Italy recently refused to allow U.S. military assets to use the Sigonella air base in Sicily for an operation linked to the offensive, an official with knowledge of the matter said, confirming a local press report. The official spoke on condition of anonymity because they were not authorized to speak publicly.

Italian Defense Minister Guido Crosetto wrote on X that Italy is still allowing the U.S. to use its bases, adding that there has been no cooling of relations between the two countries.

Journalist kidnapped in Iraq identified

In Iraq, officials said an American journalist was kidnapped, and Iraqi security forces were pursuing her captors.

Al-Monitor, a regional news site covering the Middle East, identified the journalist kidnapped Tuesday in Baghdad as Shelly Kittleson, a freelancer who contributed to the publication. In a statement, Al-Monitor said it was “deeply alarmed” by her kidnapping and stands by her “vital reporting.”

Kittleson has been a longtime freelancer in the region, reporting extensively from Syria and Iraq.

Two cars were involved in the kidnapping, one of which crashed, and a person inside was apprehended. The car carrying the journalist fled, two Iraqi security officials said.

The U.S. State Department said the administration was closely tracking the reports but had nothing further to share. It was not immediately clear if the kidnapping was related to the Iran war.

US has not ruled out ground forces

Trump warned this week that if a ceasefire is not reached “shortly,” and if the strait is not reopened, the U.S. would broaden its offensive, including by attacking the Kharg Island oil export hub and possibly desalination plants.

Speaking at the Pentagon, Defense Secretary Pete Hegseth would not say if U.S. ground forces would enter the war. “We don’t want to have to do more militarily than we have to,” he said.

A ground invasion could alienate Iranians who despise the ruling theocracy and who rose up in mass protests that were crushed earlier this year. Some could see it as an attack on Iran itself and rally around the flag.

A young anti-government activist in Iran said he plans to volunteer with the army if Trump follows through on such threats.

“If the idea of occupying islands or part of my country’s territory is implemented, I will definitely be available as a soldier to defend the Iranian nation,” said the 25-year-old resident of the northern town of Babol, who spoke on condition of anonymity out of fear for retribution.

Imprisoned Iranian Nobel laureate may have suffered heart attack

Supporters of imprisoned Iranian Nobel Peace Prize laureate Narges Mohammadi said she may have suffered a heart attack.

The campaign for her release, citing fellow inmates at Zanjan Prison in northern Iran, said she was found unconscious last week. Mohammadi has a heart condition and suffered multiple heart attacks while imprisoned before undergoing emergency surgery in 2022, her supporters say.

“Despite this medical emergency, and evident indications of a heart attack, authorities refused to transfer Mohammadi to a hospital or allow her to visit a specialist,” the campaign said in a statement.

Mohammadi, 53, was awarded the 2023 Nobel Peace Prize for her decades of activism. She has campaigned for women’s rights and democracy, and against the death penalty.

Iran hits oil tanker as Israel strikes Iran and Lebanon

Israel and the U.S. launched a wave of strikes on Iran, hitting Tehran in the early morning.

The Israeli military said it had launched strikes targeting what it described as Hezbollah infrastructure in the Lebanese capital, Beirut. Defense Minister Israel Katz said Israel plans to control the area south of the Litani River — some 20 miles (about 30 kilometers) north of the border.

Israel invaded southern Lebanon after Hezbollah began launching missiles into northern Israel days after the outbreak of the wider war. Many Lebanese fear another prolonged military occupation.

An Iranian drone hit a Kuwaiti oil tanker off the United Arab Emirates city of Dubai, sparking a blaze that was later put out, the Dubai Media Office said. Authorities said no oil spill resulted.

Four people were wounded by debris from an intercepted drone in Dubai, air raid sirens sounded in Bahrain, while Saudi Arabia said it intercepted three ballistic missiles launched toward its capital. Loud explosions were also heard in Israel not long after the military warned of an incoming missile barrage from Iran.

In Iran, authorities say more than 1,900 people have been killed, while 19 have been reported dead in Israel.

Two dozen people have died in Gulf states and the occupied West Bank. In Lebanon, officials said more than 1,200 people have been killed, and more than 1 million displaced.

Ten Israeli soldiers have died in Lebanon, including the four announced Tuesday, while 13 U.S. service members have been killed.

___

Corder reported from The Hague, Netherlands, and Superville from Washington. David Rising in Bangkok, Abby Sewell and Sally Abou AlJoud in Beirut, Sylvie Corbet in Paris, Amir-Hussein Radjy in Cairo, Qassim Abdul-Zahra in Baghdad and Giada Zampano in Rome contributed to this report.

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Credit delinquency rates are on the rise in states that have legalized sports betting, and it’s impacting Gen Z and millennials the most.

A new working paper from the Federal Reserve Bank of New York found after sports betting was legalized in the U.S., delinquencies among the total population increased 0.3%. While that figure may appear small, when the Fed researchers analyzed the population of just those who participated in sports betting, delinquency rates rose by 10%. 

The New York Fed used an analysis of consumer credit data and defined delinquency rates as being 90 days past due on any credit purchase, such as auto loans or mortgage payments.

“Our findings suggest that sports betting can have dramatic implications for household financial stability,” the authors wrote.

In 2018, the Supreme Court struck down the Professional and Amateur Sports Protection Act effective banning sports betting, opening the door for 40 states to legalize the practice in some form. Since then, participation in sports betting, particularly online, has exploded. Commercial gaming revenue hit a record $78.7 Billion in 2025, according to the American Gaming Association, a 9.2% year-over-year increase. Americans have wagered more than $520 billion on sports since the practice was legalized, and quarterly deposits have risen to $1,250 in 2025, compared to $500 five years ago, the Fed researchers found.

Millennials and Gen Z are particularly vulnerable to negative financial consequences as a result of sports betting. While 22% of Americans have an account with at least one online sportsbook, according to a 2025 Siena College Research Institute Survey, nearly half of men ages 18 to 49 have an account. People under 40 made up the largest share of individuals with credit delinquency, which rose to 26% after legalization, the Fed study found using “back-of-the-napkin” math.

The widespread financial consequences of sports betting

The New York Fed report adds to a growing base of literature showing the financial harms associated with sports betting. A working paper published by the National Bureau of Economic Research in 2024 found household bests increased $1,100 per year in states with legal online sports betting, which was also associated with a 14% decrease in net investments, such as stocks.

A 2025 study analyzing University of California Consumer Credit Panel found average credit scores in states with legal online sports betting were slashed by about 2.7 points and increased the likelihood of bankruptcy by 10%.

“The various outcomes of delinquencies and credit scores [are] just kind of indicating that it seems to be leading to some harm among consumers,” Poet Larson, the study co-author and postdoctoral fellow at the Digital Data Design Institute at the Harvard Business School, told Fortune.

Larson speculates that sports betting has become so popular. Young people, to whom online sportsbooks are marketed toward and who have less accumulated weather than older generations, could be particularly at risk, he said.

These financial effects extend beyond states where sports betting is legal. The Fed study found significant spatial spillover effects, meaning delinquency rose in states where sports betting was illegal, but which bordered legal states. Spillover delinquency rose 0.2% compared to the 0.3% baseline, a result of individuals crossing borders in order to use online sports betting platforms in states where it is legal.

The future of legal sports betting

States that have not yet legalized sports betting may still see similar trends in financial insecurity for reasons beyond spillover effects. The rise in popularity of prediction markets, such as Kalshi—which are legal and regulated by the Commodity Futures Trading Commission (CFTC) as “designated contract markets”—have effectively created a national sports betting market.

A  Citizens JMP report published this month found that in users’ first three months on a prediction market platform, they lost more money proportionate to the amount wagered than on online sportsbooks like DraftKings or FanDuel.

Still, prediction markets are relatively untapped in the U.S., with just 3% of Americans and 8% of men ages 18 to 24 reporting using a platform in the past six months, according to a Ipsos survey of more than 2,3000 adults published this month. Larson suggested the impact of these emerging platforms on financial security with depend on how popular they become.

“Because you have so many people sports gambling, you can start to see appreciable financial harms,” Larson said. “For prediction markets…if it’s small, then we might see financial harm, but it may be kind of difficult to detect.”

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Forget the Fed. Forget nonfarm employment. Forget even industrial production and real income. For Jim Paulsen, the real recession indicator is watching Walmart.

Paulsen, the former chief investment strategist at investment research firm Leuthold Group, devised an indicator he dubs the “Walmart Recession Signal” (WRS), which tracks the stock price of Walmart against the S&P Global Luxury Index, a basket of 80 companies producing or distributing luxury goods. He said that since economic downturns are usually felt first by lower-income individuals, an increase in Walmart stock price could indicate a potential economic downturn.

Paulsen wrote in a Substack post that the indicator is now at its highest level since the 2008 Great Recession. “‘Walmart Worries’ just keep multiplying,” he wrote. “It’s currently close to the highest level ever recorded which was during the Great Financial Crisis of 2008-09.”

The central premise of the WRS is this: During economic downturns, consumers tend to shift their spending toward discount vendors like Walmart, and away from luxury retailers. It’s one way households cut down on costs when economic pressure is high. “As economic activity slows and recession risk builds, retailing purchasing patterns tend to gravitate toward discounters like Walmart and away from luxury retailers,” he wrote.

Walmart stock has climbed steadily over the past year, up over 40% year over year to $123.95 as of Tuesday afternoon. While the S&P Global Luxury Index is up over 7.7% year over year to $5,544.98, the price has fallen 13.6% since the beginning of the year.

The economy has sat in an increasingly precarious position as a string of back-to-back shocks has rattled it. A dismal February jobs report revealed the economy unexpectedly shed 92,000 jobs, and the unemployment rate crept up to 4.5%. The Iran war has only added to the economic pressure weighing on Americans as oil and fertilizer prices are skyrocketing. Gas prices just surpassed $4 a gallon. On top of that, the housing market faces a dire affordability crisis, and consumer sentiment remains grim. 

All of these factors are crystallizing into a greater likelihood of a recession. Moody’s Analytics just raised its recession outlook for the next 12 months to 48.6%. That follows an increase from Goldman Sachs, which sets the likelihood to 30%. And EY-Parthenon sets the odds of a recession at 40%.

“I’m concerned recession risks are uncomfortably high and on the rise,” said Mark Zandi, chief economist at Moody’s Analytics. “Recession is a real threat here.”

Walmart’s booming year and heightened recession odds

Walmart, which held the number one spot on the Fortune 500 for 13 years before it was overtaken by Amazon in February, has had a booming year. The company posted revenue of $190.7 billion last quarter, up 5.6% from a year ago. Revenue for the full year was up 4.7% to $713.2 billion. 

Paulsen said the WRS has had a close historical relationship with both annual real GDP growth and the unemployment rate. During successive economic downturns throughout the 90s and 21st century, the WRS rose before real GDP growth collapsed. He adds that every increase in unemployment has been preceded by an uptick in the WRS.

As for the causes of what’s impacting the WRS, Paulsen cites the cratering consumer sentiment, dismal job postings, the impact of the Iran war, among other factors. He also warns that instead of a public credit crisis, the economy may be facing a private credit crisis, as the WRS also has a close historical relationship with the value of private credit.

Yet Paulsen isn’t betting on a recession happening just yet, saying the U.S. may be in the clear this year. 

But he adds “I am becoming more convinced that a significant U.S. economic slowdown is unfolding that will ultimately require additional economic policy accommodation and lower interest rates to arrest.”

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If you’d never heard of the Strait of Hormuz before, you probably have by now. Iran’s effective closure of the waterway, which usually carries about 20% of the world’s oil and gas, has put severe pressure on the global economy.

Now, some analysts are warning a new flashpoint could emerge: the Bab el-Mandeb Strait.

That’s because on March 28, the Houthis, a military group that controls large parts of northern Yemen and is aligned with Iran, entered the war, launching missiles towards Israel for the first time since the war with Iran began.

Yemen is situated on one side of the strait, and the Houthis have previously attacked shipping in the Red Sea, causing major disruption in late 2023 and 2024.

Bloomberg now reports Iran has approached the Houthis to prepare for a similar campaign.

Here’s why all eyes will be back on the Houthis, Bab el-Mandeb and the Red Sea, and what disruption of a second major chokepoint could mean for the world economy.

What is the Bab el-Mandeb Strait?

The Bab el-Mandeb Strait is about 30 kilometres wide at its narrowest point. It is situated between Yemen on the Arabian Peninsula to the northeast and Eritrea and Djibouti in Africa on the west.

Its name literally means “Gate of Tears” in Arabic, after its famously treacherous sailing conditions.

It has become so important because, along with the Suez Canal in Egypt, it allows ships to transit directly between the Mediterranean Sea and the Indian Ocean by passing through the Red Sea and the Gulf of Aden.

Before the Suez Canal’s opening in the 19th century, ships had to travel all the way around the southern tip of Africa to join these two points.

An oil tanker leaving Saudi Arabia to go to the Netherlands, for example, only has to travel 12,000 kilometres if it goes via the Red Sea, compared with more than 20,000 kilometres going south around Africa.

As you’d expect, that’s much faster too. According to the US Energy Information Administration (EIA), a trip between the Arabian Sea and the Netherlands that takes 34 days the long way around is shortened to just 19 days.

What passes through it?

In normal times, as much as 14% of global maritime trade goes through the Bab el-Mandeb Strait.

Detailed data on what passes through the Bab el-Mandeb Strait is somewhat limited. But fossil fuels are a major component.

The International Energy Agency (IEA) estimates that in 2025 about 4.2 million barrels of crude oil and petroleum liquids crossed the Bab al-Mandeb Strait per day. That’s about 5% of global production.

Given most ships use the Suez Canal as well, official data from the Suez Canal Authority allow us to paint a detailed picture of Red Sea shipping.

In the final quarter of 2025, about 40% of the 3,426 ships passing through the Suez Canal transported fossil fuels: (1,330 oil tankers, 88 liquefied natural gas (LNG) ships).

Bulk and general cargo made up another 40% (1,339 ships), typically transporting agricultural commodities such as corn, wheat and soybeans, and also coal and iron ore. Container ships made about 13% of the traffic (459 ships).

Notably, total traffic through the Red Sea has declined considerably since Houthi attacks on shipping in late 2023 and 2024, even though these attacks have largely stopped.

Can the strait be closed?

The Bab el-Mandeb Strait can’t be “closed” entirely. Its narrowest point is still a considerably wide waterway. And unlike the Strait of Hormuz, the Bab el-Mandeb Strait is not a “cul-de-sac”, where the passage is closed at one end with only one way out. Ships can still exit to the Mediterranean via the Suez Canal.

That’s little comfort for those bound for Asia, which would then have to round Africa to do so, adding weeks to the journey.

Notably, Saudi Arabia had already built a “Plan B” to avoid the Strait of Hormuz, called the East-West pipeline. This pipeline connects Abqaiq in the north with Yanbu on the Red Sea, and had already begun pumping oil at almost full capacity in response to the conflict.

But oil bound for Asia from this new exit point still has to pass through Bab el-Mandeb to avoid the long way around, meaning it could be disrupted.

We’ve been here before

To get a sense of how the Houthis could disrupt shipping again, we can look to the most recent Red Sea crisis.

According to the International Maritime Organization (IMO), 67 incidents were recorded between November 2023 and September 2024. Some ships only suffered minor equipment damage. But others faced severe fires, flooding and structural damage after being hit by missiles or drones.

However, there have been relatively few attacks since 2024. And the strait was never totally “closed” per se: some ships continued to pass through throughout the crisis.

The mere threat of attacks

These same tactics would probably apply today. But for shipping companies, the mere threat of attacks may be enough to slow or restrict shipping. There are significant risks to civilian crew, who face a threat to life.

Adding to this, insurance costs could become prohibitive enough to close the route in practical terms. Back in 2024, insurance costs were about 0.6% of the value of the cargo on a ship. After the Red Sea crisis, this rose as high as 2%.

The effective closure of both the Strait of Hormuz and Bab el-Mandeb at the same time would be severely disruptive to global supply chains and the global economy.

Flavio Macau, Associate Dean – School of Business and Law, Edith Cowan University

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While I was leading a tour of the National Air and Space Museum in January 2026, a visitor posed this insightful question: “Why has it taken so long to return to the Moon?”

After all, NASA had the know-how and technology to send humans to the lunar surface more than 50 years ago as part of the Apollo program. And, as another tour guest reminded us, computers today can do so much more than they could back then, as evidenced by the smartphones most of us carry in our pockets. Shouldn’t it be easier to get to the Moon than ever before?

The truth is that sending humans into space safely continues to be difficult, especially as missions increase in complexity.

New technologies require years of study, development and testing before they can be certified for flight. And even then, systems and materials can behave in ways that surprise and worry engineers and mission planners; look no further than Boeing’s Starliner CFT mission or the performance of the Orion heat shield on Artemis I.

Issues with Starliner’s thrusters led NASA to return the spacecraft from the International Space Station without its crew. Unanticipated chipping of the Orion heat shield resulted in years of research, culminating in NASA altering the atmospheric reentry plans for the Artemis II mission.

NASA’s programs also require sustained political will and financial support across multiple presidential administrations, Congresses and fiscal years. As a historian of human spaceflight, I have studied the space agency’s efforts to engage the broader public to convince American taxpayers that their programs hold value for the nation.

NASA is now on the eve of the first crewed flight to the Moon since the Apollo era: Artemis II. A crew of four will conduct a lunar flyby, laying the groundwork, the agency hopes, for a landing on the Artemis IV mission.

The story of NASA’s effort to return humans to the Moon is long and winding, demonstrating the complexities of turning grand ambitions into real missions.

Post-Apollo

In early 1970, with two successful Moon landings on the books, President Richard Nixon sought to reduce NASA’s budget to better align with his administration’s priorities. This decision put the space agency in a difficult position, which ultimately led to the cancellation of three planned Apollo missions to conserve funding for its plans for long-term human activity in low Earth orbit.

NASA repurposed the third stage of a Saturn V rocket to create the first U.S. space station, Skylab, which operated from 1973 to 1974. The space agency used leftover Saturn IB rockets and Apollo command and service modules to send crews to the station.

Over the next three decades, NASA developed and operated the space shuttle. The fleet of space shuttle orbiters supported satellite deployment and microgravity research on orbital missions of up to 17 days. This work was meant to enable future long-duration human missions and provide benefits to people on Earth. For example, data from protein crystal growth experiments have informed the development of medicines.

The space shuttle program facilitated the construction, maintenance and staffing of a continuously inhabited research platform in orbit, the International Space Station. The first modules launched in late 1998.

Where to next?

As the new millennium approached, the Clinton administration tasked NASA to think beyond the space station. What could robots and humans do next in space? And where could they do it? Notably, the White House expressed an interest in locations beyond low Earth orbit.

NASA, it turned out, was well positioned to meet the administration’s request. NASA Administrator Daniel Goldin was already thinking about preparing proposals for the next presidential administration and had recently sponsored a human lunar return study. In 1999, he established a team to investigate new technologies, missions and destinations for the 21st century.

This work took on new significance following the tragic loss of the space shuttle Columbia crew in February 2003. Many people, including those in the new George W. Bush White House, wondered whether the human spaceflight program should continue – and, if so, how.

Administration discussions culminated in Bush’s Vision for Space Exploration in 2004, which directed NASA to retire the space shuttle after the completion of the space station. It called for returning humans to the Moon on a crew exploration vehicle designed for destinations beyond low Earth orbit.

It also called for continuing robotic exploration of Mars and engaging companies and international partners in space. Fifteen years earlier, President George H. W. Bush had also announced a Moon and Mars exploration program, but congressional concerns about cost kept space travelers close to home.

The Constellation program’s legacy

In December 2004, NASA began the process of finding a manufacturer for the crew exploration vehicle. By August 2006, the space agency awarded Lockheed Martin the contract to build the capsule, which it had named Orion – the same Orion planned to carry Artemis astronauts to the Moon.

Years of research, development and testing followed for Orion as well as the Ares I crew and Ares V cargo launch vehicles. Together, these technologies made up the Constellation program.

Constellation had two primary objectives: in the near term, to help transport crew to and from the space station after the space shuttle program ended; in the long term, to enable human lunar exploration.

Building systems that could work in both Earth orbit and around the Moon was supposed to save the time and cost of developing two vehicles. Similarly, adapting space shuttle program hardware could supposedly cut costs.

During the first months of Barack Obama’s presidency in 2009, the administration initiated an independent review of NASA’s human spaceflight plans. The Augustine Committee, chaired by retired aerospace executive Norman Augustine, found that the agency’s ambitions outstripped its limited budget, leading to significant delays. The first Orion spacecraft was likely to arrive after the space station ceased operations.

The committee proposed several paths forward at the current funding level, which prioritized space shuttle and space station programs. An additional annual investment of US$3 billion would allow for human exploration beyond low Earth orbit.

Ultimately, the Obama administration canceled Constellation, but two of its technologies lived on, thanks to U.S. senators from states that would have been affected by cuts.

The NASA Authorization Act of 2010 funded Orion’s continued development, shifting responsibility for space station crew transportation to commercial vehicles. It also directed NASA to develop the space launch system, a redesigned Ares V heavy booster, to send Orion to the Moon. The technical strategy had political benefits, too, preserving jobs in numerous congressional districts by providing continuity for aerospace contractors.

In December 2014, a Delta IV heavy rocket launched the first Orion capsule on a test flight, providing engineers with data on spacecraft systems and the heat shield. By October 2015, the space launch system had completed a critical design review, the last step before manufacturing could begin.

Introducing Artemis

In December 2017, the new Trump administration issued a policy directive shifting the focus of NASA’s human spaceflight program back to the Moon. The space agency would use Orion and the space launch system in a race to meet an ambitious 2024 landing date. NASA officially named the program Artemis in May 2019.

The 25-day Artemis I mission, launched in November 2022, was a major milestone for the program. This uncrewed flight was the first flight of the space launch system and the first to integrate SLS and Orion. It laid the groundwork for Artemis II, which will be the first crewed flight of the SLS.

Over more than 50 years, each new presidential administration has reassessed the place of spaceflight among its priorities, either encouraging or curtailing NASA’s efforts to return humans to the lunar surface.

Each crewed flight requires the alignment of technical expertise, political will and financial support over years if not decades. For the space fans who plan to watch the Artemis II launch, the wait for countdown may feel long. But it’s just a blink in NASA’s long journey back to the Moon.

Emily A. Margolis, Curator of Contemporary Spaceflight, National Air and Space Museum, Smithsonian Institution

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Every society in human history, regardless of geography, language, or economic system, has had to answer the same question: how do you build something with people whose commitment has to be earned?

The answer is trust. It is what makes two strangers decide to do business, compels an employee to give more than what is required, and draws a customer back when they have a reason to walk away. At a time when trust in institutions is at an all-time low, it remains the most valuable asset any institution can hold. Trust is also most fragile at the exact moment innovation is moving fastest, and when the pressure to be the first mover is at its peak.

We live and breathe this reality every minute of every day. One in four Americans has a Synchrony credit card – putting Synchrony at the center of real, everyday financial moments: a broken refrigerator, an unexpected medical bill, a purchase that can’t wait. Every one of those moments is a real decision, for both the customer and us. We either earn their trust, or we lose it, and in financial services, there are no neutral outcomes.

The foundation of Synchrony’s business is trust. We trust consumers by responsibly extending credit so they can buy the things they want and need. We are trusted by our partners to help grow their businesses by underwriting consumers responsibly, without overextending them. And, we are trusted as a means for millions of Americans to build their credit.

We’re excellent at managing credit risk and underwriting. Yet, we disrupted ourselves because we know credit is about more than a single transaction – it can be transformational.

It would have been easy to protect what we were good at, but, instead, we saw a system that could be improved to give more people access to credit. With that in mind, we built PRISM, our proprietary underwriting system that leverages alternative data to expand credit access for people traditional models leave behind. Through this work, Synchrony’s PRISM played a key role, and we’ve approved more than 180 million accounts since January 2018.

If PRISM is about using better data to make smarter decisions, AI is enhancing those decisions at a scale and speed unimaginable a decade ago. That willingness to challenge what we were already good at is the same lens we bring to artificial intelligence. It’s reshaping how we work, how we serve customers, and how we compete.

Even so, technology alone doesn’t create value; it is ultimately people who identify opportunities to build trust. AI helps us scale those insights, act on them faster, and deliver better outcomes. It’s a partnership: people create the vision; technology helps bring it to life.

The model only works, though, when the people running it feel trusted enough to use it well. At Synchrony, 92% of employees say management trusts them without constant oversight. That trust fuels better ideas, faster action, and a culture of continuous improvement.

When employees feel trusted, they also feel accountable. It allows them to try something new. Innovation, including having the freedom, expectation, and permission to experiment with new tools – including AI – creates better outcomes for our partners and consumers. That’s the environment we work every day to create at Synchrony – never getting comfortable, always looking for ways to improve.

We demonstrate this in how we work—and where. We never mandated a return to office, instead offering in-person collaboration. At our Stamford headquarters, the majority of our employees are coming in because they recognize the value they unlock and the connections they build when in person. And, our New York City Experience Center inspires hundreds of partners and employees, serving as a physical manifestation of what’s possible when you bring people, partners, and technology together. It’s not only an office for employees, but an expression of innovation.

While challengers will always exist, we all need to focus on what matters most: continuous improvement for our employees, partners, and consumers, centered around building trust. It’s how Synchrony has risen in the Great Place to Work rankings from #37 in 2021 to the top three. This is how we create value not only for our shareholders but for society.

In the end, innovation is about maintaining the conditions that make trust possible. And the companies that get it right, consistently, are the ones that will endure.

The opinions expressed in Fortune.com commentary pieces are solely the views of their authors and do not necessarily reflect the opinions and beliefs of Fortune.

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The rapper Afroman, famous for his 2000 hit “Because I Got High”, will be speaking at the Bitcoin 2026 conference next month in Las Vegas. The artist, whose given name is Joseph Foreman, is coming off what some are calling the ‘Lemon Pound Cake’ trial victory, in which an Ohio jury ruled earlier this month that he did not defame sheriff’s deputies who invaded his home in 2022. 

The artist went viral this month after prevailing in a legal ordeal that began four years ago when authorities raided his home to search for evidence for drug trafficking and kidnapping, but failed to find any. Afroman then released a song about the raid, with a music video including footage of the officers tearing apart his home and inspecting a lemon pound cake that was in his kitchen. Crypto boosters hailed his legal victory, identifying with the notion of feeling violated by government entities. 

“[Afroman’s] story of standing up to power and winning resonates deeply with Bitcoin’s ethos of sovereignty and financial freedom,” organizers of the conference wrote on LinkedIn. 

With the recent cancellation of Token2049 in Dubai, Bitcoin 2026 in Las Vegas will be one of the biggest crypto conferences this spring. Afroman will join a list of speakers including President Donald Trump’s son Eric Trump, executive chairman of Strategy Michael Saylor, and the chair of the Commodity Futures Trading Commission Mike Selig. 

The crypto industry is looking for reasons to celebrate after a brutal five month stretch. The price of Bitcoin is down about 47% since its all-time high in October to its current price of about $67,000, according to Binance. This tailspin comes despite a friendly regulatory environment under the second Trump administration. 

When announcing Afroman’s appearance at the Las Vegas conference, the event organizers posted, “Vibes are guaranteed to be high.”

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Many parents and kids alike are wondering whether college has the same return on investment it once did. And they have reason to worry: Hiring just hit a level not seen since the economy was “closed down literally” during the pandemic.

Going to college was once seen as a one-way ticket to a successful and lucrative career. Still, there are a growing number of six-figure jobs that don’t require a degree, while entry-level job opportunities for recent graduates remain sparse. 

Some parents are so anxious about today’s job market that they’re exploring alternatives to the four-year degree, with one in three open to the idea of their kids attending a trade school instead, according to late 2025 survey results from Britebound (formerly American Student Assistance), which surveyed more than 2,200 parents of middle and high school students about their attitudes, perceptions, and decision-making regarding their kids’ post-high-school plans. 

The fact that 35% of parents believe career and technical education is best suited for their children represents a major jump—from just 13% in 2019, according to Britebound. While parents still prefer traditional college for their kids, it’s much less so than in the past. The percentage of parents preferring it dropped to 58%—a 16 percentage point drop from 2019.

And another study from Britebound last summer shows it goes both ways: 70% of teens also report their parents are more supportive of forgoing a college education for something different, like trade school or an apprenticeship. 

“Parents are waking up. College doesn’t carry the same [return on investment] it once did, because the cost is outrageous, and the outcome is uncertain,” Trevor Houston, a career strategist at ClearPath Wealth Strategies, previously told Fortune. “Students now face the highest amount of debt ever recorded, but job security after graduation doesn’t really exist.”

The average cost of college in the U.S. is more than $38,000 (including tuition and room and board) per student per year, according to the Education Data Initiative, and the average cost of college has more than doubled this century. Private schools almost always cost more than the average. Meanwhile, more than 4 million Gen Zers are jobless and blame their “worthless” college degrees. 

Trade jobs that pay six figures without a degree

One of the primary reasons trade school is becoming a more popular option for students is its potentially strong ROI, especially as college becomes more expensive and fewer traditional entry-level jobs are available. And many can land recent high school grads six-figure salaries. 

According to the National Society of High School Scholars, some trade jobs that don’t require a college degree and pay six figures include:

• Aircraft mechanics ($135,628)
• Plumbers, pipe fitters, and steamfitters ($132,275)
• Construction managers ($130,000)
• Industrial electricians ($122,500)
• Energy technicians ($115,076)

What’s more, the need for these workers will continue to grow, especially as older generations who work in trades start to retire, Julie Lammers, president and CEO at Britebound, previously told Fortune. 

“An aging workforce in the trades and a surge in demand to meet infrastructure needs, ever-growing real estate demands, and changes to U.S. energy production mean that there are considerably more job openings than skilled workers to fill the need,” she said. 

How much does trade school cost vs. college?

Aside from trade school, students can also pursue apprenticeships, career-training programs, boot camps, industry certifications, and occupational licenses. Many of these are just pennies on the dollar compared with earning a college degree. A coding boot camp can cost as little as $7,000—and that’s just a one-time fee as compared with nearly $40,000 for one year of college. 

These career paths made possible by trade schools, apprenticeships, boot camps, and other training and certification programs were dubbed by IBM as “new-collar jobs.” In October 2017, IBM launched its apprenticeship program to train people for new-collar jobs that prioritize skills over degrees and focus on in-demand job functions like cybersecurity, design, data science, mobile development, cloud, artificial intelligence, and blockchains—all career paths that can also lead to six-figure salaries. 

The Trump administration in late 2025 also announced its Tech Force program, which does not require a college degree or work experience for technology professionals who are willing to serve two-year stints at federal agencies. If you’re accepted to the program, you can earn about $150,000 to $200,000, given the demand for tech professionals in today’s rapidly evolving tech landscape.

“This is a clarion call,” Scott Kupor, director of the U.S. Office of Personnel Management, said in a statement at the time. “If you want to help your country lead in the age of rapid technological advancement, we need you.”

In March, OPM also launched the Early Career Talent Network, a recruitment push for entry-level workers to work for the federal government.

“We’ve got close to half of our population that’s within 10 years of retirement age,” Kupor told Fortune‘s Sasha Rogelberg. “So if you just did nothing else, you’ve got this major demographic challenge of a large number of people who will likely either retire or certainly be retirement-eligible over the near term, without us actually replenishing the pipeline of early-career people coming in.”

A version of this story was originally published on Fortune.com on December 19, 2025.

More on trade school:

• I’ve owned and operated trade schools for 40 years and Gen Z is onto something: They recognize the value of vocational education
• AI boom is fueling demand for skilled trades—and demand for technicians, HVAC workers, and electricians is soaring, with six-figure salaries to match
• ‘College doesn’t carry the same ROI it once did’: 70% of teens say their parents support them going to trade school or getting an apprenticeship

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We’ve all been there: in a work meeting, trying to stop our eyes from glazing over as a colleague spews an endless monologue about “leveraging the company’s adaptive strategy to optimize our value and reinvigorate our operations.” 

That incomprehensible, buzzword-heavy language has a name: “corporate bulls–t.” That’s at least according to Shane Littrell, a cognitive psychologist and a postdoctoral researcher at Cornell University. He studies how people evaluate and share knowledge, and how misleading information shapes people’s beliefs, attitudes, and decision-making.  

As a self-proclaimed BS-hater himself, Littrell defines BS as “dubious information that is misleadingly impressive, important, informative, or otherwise engaging.” It’s easy to mistake BS for the necessary, everyday jargon used in professional settings, but its distinguishing factor is that while the language intends to sound smart or impressive, it fails to be accurate, meaningful, or if at all, helpful, he told Fortune. 

Over four studies with 1018 subjects, Littrell built the “Corporate Bulls–t Receptivity Scale,” a way to measure how attracted individuals are to this type of language and how business savvy they perceive different statements. People who find that buzzword-heavy corporate-speak profound and informative perform worse on measures of workplace leadership and decision-making, but it does not mean people who are more receptive to corporate-speak are bad at their jobs, just that they may not make the best leaders or decision-makers.

It’s not about intelligence or education, Littrell said, who noted the results were uniform between studies where more than 70% of the participants had a bachelor’s degree or higher and those with less education. 

“Part of that has to do with just the environment that you’re in. You have to use that language a little bit just to navigate the workspace,” he said. “Anybody can fall for bulls–t when it’s packaged up to appeal to your biases.” 

The dangers of meaningless corporate-speak 

The workplace is “fertile ground” for BS to fester, Littrell said, when you’re trying to impress your boss and compete with colleagues. 

“These organizational settings are saturated with these authority cues, like job titles, and these power hierarchy structures, and everybody [is] talking about their leadership vision,” he explained. “It makes it especially easy to pass that off as insight. There are always people that are trying to climb the corporate ladder, and in a lot of situations, this type of language is used in a way to try to impress everyone around them.”  

But corporate BS is more than just annoying, Littrell said. It can have a harmful effect on credibility and morale. This can be especially troubling when a leader uses it because it can undermine how employees understand goals, feedback, or decision-making.  

Corporate-speak can also lead to reputational damage and financial cost for companies, Littrell said. He gave the example of a snafu PepsiCo found itself in 2008 after an internal report explaining the company’s $1 million logo redesign leaked online. 

“The Pepsi DNA finds its origin in the dynamic of perimeter oscillations. This new identity manifests itself in an authentic geometry that is to become proprietary to the Pepsi culture,” the company’s design consultant, Peter Arnell Group, wrote in the internal report. “[The Pepsi Proposition is the] establishment of a gravitational pull to shift from a ‘transactional’ experience to an ‘invitational’ expression.” 

This proposal was not only confusing, but also created a lasting internet and media embarrassment for the company. Even the design firm’s founder admitted that “it was all bulls–t.” 

Establishing new norms can stop BS

It doesn’t have to be this way, Littrell said. A simple way companies can reverse course is by rewarding “anti-bulls–t” behavior by making clear communication the norm from the top down. This can stop a cycle where a leader uses convoluted language, and then employees feel like they have to speak that way, too.

He suggests establishing an environment that encourages people who aren’t the leaders to ask more questions, which can nip the impulse to appear like you know everything. “Sometimes people feel a social pressure where they don’t want to look stupid by answering like they think everybody else understands it, and they don’t want to raise their hand and ask a question, because they feel that that might make them look stupid,” he explained. 

Lastly, he encourages companies to reward behaviors like clear communication and asking questions in performance reviews, which he says are very critical for establishing expectations.

“One of the more important conversations is those performance reviews and the way leaders and employees communicate with each other that can cause the most problems, especially in their personal success and the organization’s success.”

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Hello and welcome to Eye on AI. In this edition…Anthropic suffers multiple sensitive data leaks…OpenAI ditches Sora, and loses its deal with Disney…Mistral raises money for AI data center drive…AI could reduce political polarization…and why countries that are late to adopt AI could be in even worse economic shape than you think.

The big news this week was my colleague Beatrice Nolan’s scoop from Friday that Anthropic has trained a new AI model, called “Mythos” (Capybara seems to be the internal code name for the same model), that the company says represents a “step change” in capabilities. Anthropic is particularly worried about the cybersecurity risks the model poses. Ironically, we found out about this new model because Anthropic inadvertently spilled the beans by leaving a draft blog post about it in an unsecured and publicly searchable database—along with other potentially sensitive documents about an upcoming CEO retreat and some internal documents that mentioned employees’ paternity leave.

Now, just today, it appears Anthropic has suffered another major security lapse, accidentally leaking the code of the agentic harness that sits around Claude Code. Bea has more on this latest, and potentially more consequential, data leak here. Meanwhile, Axios reports that the new cybersecurity capabilities of AI models are getting so concerning that Anthropic and OpenAI have both recently told the government about the new dangers of the models they are developing and provided government security experts with early access.

Intern, expert, or dog?

Ok, now, if you own a dog, as I do, there will be moments you’ll recognize that we fundamentally don’t understand how dogs perceive the world.

This week, while walking my dog, I spied a strikingly beautiful cat with an unusual coat. It looked like an orange tabby mixed with gray tabby, with a good deal of white fur thrown in the mix too. I noticed the cat right away, but it was moving across a yard that was elevated from sidewalk level, so my dog couldn’t see it. She could definitely smell it, however. She put her nose in the air and tugged at her leash, pulling her way up the steps that led to the yard.

By the time she got to the top step, the cat had mostly hidden itself behind a nearby flower pot. It stood behind the pot motionless, but with its white head popping above the pot’s edge. It stared intently at my dog and me. I could see the cat quite clearly. But, despite being just 15 feet away, my dog could not. She sniffed the air intently and pivoted first left and then right, but she could not see the cat, even when seemingly looking directly at it.

Eventually, I persuaded my dog to give up her hunt for the unseen, but well-smelled, cat, and continue our walk. But I couldn’t stop thinking about our differences in perception—and how this applies to AI. People often offer executives advice for how they should think about using AI by making analogies to our relationships with various categories of people. Treat AI agents like talented interns, was a popular one a few years ago, in the months following ChatGPT’s debut. A graduate student who is occasionally off their meds, was a colorful variant that Emad Mostaque, the cofounder and former CEO of Stability AI, liked to use. You should treat AI like PhD.-level researchers, was an analogy in vogue last year. (OpenAI CEO Sam Altman was among those talking about this idea.) More recently, people have started saying it is better to regard AI models like wise and experienced, but occasionally still fallible, colleagues. Certainly their performance on certain tough benchmarks of professional tasks, such as OpenAI’s GDPval, would lead one to endorse that idea. Middle managers is another analogy that comes up often.

But the more we learn about the large language models that underpin today’s AI agents, the more clear it becomes how inadequate all these analogies are. LLMs are nothing like people at all. They are far more like other species, like your dog. We can no more understand what and how these LLMs perceive and reach their outputs than we can truly understand the thoughts of our pets.

Actually, it’s worse than this, because unlike with our pets, you can ask an LLM to explain to you what it’s thinking and it will tell you. That sounds like a great thing, much better than the situation with our non-verbal dogs, cats, and turtles. The problem: Researchers have begun probing the activations of the artificial neurons in AI’s digital brains, and these experiments indicate that what an AI model tells you it is thinking—the model’s so-called “reasoning traces”—may or may not actually reflect what it is, in fact, thinking.

So interacting with an LLM is probably the closest thing we’ve had so far to interacting with an alien, one that has some capabilities that far exceed our own, but also has glaring weaknesses, and which can, at times, be just like us—deceptive, dishonest, or dissembling.

Multimodal models see ‘mirages’

This past week has brought yet more evidence of how weird these models are. A paper from researchers at Stanford University showed that multimodal AI models, those that can accept inputs in both text and images (and sometimes audio files too), suffer from a phenomenon they dubbed “mirage reasoning.”

The models will purport to analyze images a user has never actually uploaded to them. When prompted about medical images, but not actually supplied any images, the models will nonetheless offer diagnoses. Weirder still, these assessments are often correct. When the researchers tested the models on benchmarking tests for multimodal AI, the models obtained what the scientists said were “strikingly high scores”—about 70% to 80% of the scores they obtained when they did have access to images. Worryingly, the researchers found the models had a tendency to find evidence of pathologies in the phantom images, showing that the models may have a bias towards diagnosing disease that could lead to dangerous and expensive misdiagnoses if used in real-world medical settings.

The models’ sight is weak; their text pattern finding, unparalleled

The researchers have no clear understanding of exactly why the language models engage in mirage reasoning, or why they can score so highly on the benchmarks even when the images are not provided. But one experiment they conducted does suggest a possible explanation. The researchers fine-tuned a version of the open source AI model from Alibaba, Qwen-2.5, on a public training set for a popular benchmark that is designed to test how well AI models can answer questions about chest X-rays. But they trained it on this set with the accompanying images removed. They picked Qwen-2.5 in part because, at just 3 billion parameters, it is a relatively small model and therefore easy to fine-tune. But more importantly Qwen-2.5 was released a year before the chest X-ray benchmark they were using debuted, which the scientists hoped would minimize the chance that the set of questions actually used for the test itself would have ended up in Qwen-2.5’s initial pre-training data. (This kind of “data leakage” is a real problem for validity of AI benchmarks and a reason they need to be continually updated; otherwise models just memorize the answers as part of their pre-training.)

Nonetheless, this fine-tuned version of Qwen-2.5 outperformed every frontier AI model tested on the normal, image-included version of the X-ray challenge. It also beat the scores of human radiologists by 10%. Again, even though it did not have access to any of the images! The scientist found the model, despite never seeing any images, offered “reasoning traces comparable to, and in some cases indistinguishable from, those of the ground-truth or those generated by frontier multi-modal AI models.”

This implies, the scientists said, that there are hidden patterns in questions themselves, perhaps in their phrasing, or in the structure of how those questions appear in the benchmark test, that are too subtle for any human to detect, but that nonetheless are sufficient to allow the model to guess the answer. This, combined with the researchers other findings, seems to suggest that multimodal models barely use the visual inputs they are given at all and instead lean heavily on linguistic patterns even when being asked to analyze images. It also suggests, alarmingly, that most of the multimodal benchmarks may not provide a good measure of how these models will perform in real-world clinical settings. 

Again, this is totally bizarre and alien to the way humans work. This is like my dog, able to smell the cat, but not see it—while I relied on my sense of sight, but could smell nothing. Our tendency to wrongly anthropomorphize AI models may lead us to misdesign the systems we use to run and govern AI agents, with potentially bad consequences. It also speaks to the way AI systems continue to improve in capability but lag in reliability that I wrote about last week. We need to engineer our AI workflows for alien minds, not our own.

With that, here’s more AI news.

Jeremy Kahn
jeremy.kahn@fortune.com
@jeremyakahn

Before we get to the news, if you haven’t yet read my colleague Sharon Goldman’s magisterial feature story on how construction of Meta’s massive Hyperion data center is upending the lives of people who live in rural Richland Parish, Louisiana, drop whatever it is you are doing right now, and go and read it. Here’s the link. It’s a deeply reported and deeply nuanced portrait of what happens when a community suddenly finds itself living in ground zero for the biggest, most expensive infrastructure build-out in American history. 

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Americans aren’t getting laid off. And they’re not quitting. They’re simply just not getting hired, and the numbers haven’t been this bad since the pandemic closed the economy by force.

The Bureau of Labor Statistics reported Tuesday the hiring rate fell to 3.1% in February, with just 4.8 million hires, the lowest since April 2020. Job openings dropped to 6.9 million, down 358,000 from January. The quits rate held at a low 1.9%, while layoffs also stayed pinned at 1.1%, and retirements fell back near record lows. Everyone, it seems, is staying put, whether in their jobs or in unemployment.

“It’s a brutal job market,” Heather Long, chief economist at Navy Federal Credit Union, told Fortune. “To see that 3.1% hiring rate, the lowest since April 2020, when the economy was closed down literally during COVID—it just underscores how little hiring is going on.”

The comparison to 2020 is what makes this report so jarring. Back then, hiring collapsed because businesses were physically shuttered. Today, unemployment is around 4%, businesses are open, but employers are still barely bringing anyone on.

A ‘locked-out’ market for new hires

Nicole Bachaud, labor economist at ZipRecruiter, wrote in a note it’s a “locked-out market” for new entrants, driven by the combination of stalled hiring and delayed retirements blocking the natural pipeline. 

“Aside from the 2020 dip, the hires level has not been this low since 2014, when the labor market was still rebuilding after the Great Recession,” she wrote.

She also attributed part of the problem to another force majeure: bad weather. Construction and accomodation/food services were the two industries where hiring fell most, and those are the ones most sensitive to weather events. February marked a brutal month across the country, with blizzards and blackouts. 

Skanda Amarnath, executive director of Employ America, an economic strategy firm, said bad weather and health care strikes explain part of the February drop, but not all of it. 

“We can probably attribute 50 to 60% to just kind of the one-offs,” he told Fortune. “But there’s something fundamental at play too.” 

He pointed to reduced immigration as one factor quietly draining dynamism from the system: less population growth means less churn, fewer people switching jobs, and fewer new hires.

Long flagged a more immediate warning sign: hospitality and construction are typically where displaced workers land first, not the places that should be very sensitive to macroeconomic headwinds. 

“Most people, if they lose a job, think, okay, I could at least be a bartender or work at a restaurant,” she said. “And clearly there was a deceleration in that area.”

How the war will impact jobs in America

The JOLTS data is from February, before the U.S.-Israeli campaign against Iran upended global energy markets. With Brent crude hovering above $115 and the Strait of Hormuz effectively closed, the question is whether the labor market’s low-hire, low-fire equilibrium can survive an energy shock. Bachaud warned surging gas prices would hit transportation, manufacturing, retail, and consumer spending—”further pulling back hiring activity in the March data.”

Long said the war could be the final straw in the camel’s back for the labor market. 

“It is not inconceivable that companies go from no hiring to starting to fire in order to make their budgets work,” she said, adding the April jobs report, due in May, “could really be a first big warning sign.”

For the Fed, the report deepens the potential stagflation bind. Amarnath noted inflation has been running a full percentage point above the central bank’s core target and trending in the wrong direction, even before the war. 

“The Fed’s got to be on guard for risks that their policy is not actually tight enough,” he said.

The March jobs report, due Friday, will offer the next read on the labor market. Both economists cautioned against drawing too direct a line from JOLTS to payrolls, but the broader picture is getting harder to wave away. Long said if Friday delivers another weak number, “it’s looking more like some early demand issues are back in the picture. And that’s really nerve-wracking if you’re going to layer the war in Iran on top of that.”

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Billionaire investor Warren Buffett said he has not talked to his longtime friend, Microsoft cofounder Bill Gates, since he was engulfed in a scandal over his alleged ties to Jeffrey Epstein. 

The retired Berkshire Hathaway CEO said it’s been radio silence between the pair since Gates’ involvement with Epstein became clearer earlier this year, following the government’s release of millions of pages of related documents.

“I haven’t talked to him at all since the whole thing was unveiled,” Buffett told CNBC in an interview published Tuesday that included his first public comments on the Epstein files.

“I don’t want to be in the position where I know things,” Buffett added. “I could get called as a witness.” Buffett added he did not want to say much on the topic “until things are resolved.” 

Still, the 95-year-old said he was thankful he had never run in the same circles as the disgraced financier and had never met him.

“If I lived in New York at some party,” he may have run into him, said Buffett, who has lived in Omaha, Neb., for more than 65 years. 

Gates and the Epstein files

Among some of the accusations Gates has faced as a result of the documents released this year are that he allegedly had an affair with Mila Antonova, a Russian bridge player, during his marriage to ex-wife Melinda French Gates. He also allegedly gave Epstein permission to act as a fixer to help negotiate the exit of Boris Nikolic, the chief science advisor for the Gates Foundation and at Gates’ investment firm, then-called Bgc3. Nikolic received a $5 million exit package. Epstein also reportedly played a role in the exit negotiation for Microsoft Windows president Steven Sinofsky, who received $14 million from the company, for which he allegedly paid Epstein a $1 million fee.

“It’s astounding to me that anybody could be that successful as a con person,” Buffett said of Epstein on Tuesday.

In an interview with the Wall Street Journal last year, Gates said of Epstein, “In retrospect, I was foolish to spend any time with him.” More recently, Gates apologized to Gates Foundation staff in a town hall last month and acknowledged having two affairs with Russian women, the Journal reported. Epstein later found out about the affairs, Gates said during the meeting, but the affairs didn’t involve victims of Epstein’s sex trafficking operation. 

“I did nothing illicit. I saw nothing illicit,” Gates said during the town hall. 

The Gates Foundation, for its part, said in a previous statement that a small number of its employees interacted with Epstein to try to secure potential funding for its philanthropy but that “at no time were financial payments made by the foundation to Epstein, nor was he employed by the foundation at any time.” 

A spokesperson for Bill Gates said in a statement to Fortune that the Microsoft cofounder was committed to answering all questions and demonstrating he wasn’t part of Epstein’s criminal activity. Gates, along with seven others, was asked to testify before the House Oversight Committee earlier this month as part of its investigation into Epstein. 

“Gates has acknowledged it was a serious error in judgment to meet with Epstein,” the spokesperson said.

A spokesperson for Buffet did not immediately respond to Fortune’s request for comment. 

Billionaire philanthropy shake-up

The friendship between two of the world’s richest men began in 1991, when Gates’ mother, Mary, invited her son to join her and her friends for a gathering at her home, which Buffett had been invited to by late Washington Post Editor Meg Greenfield. Gates ultimately attended because Greenfield had invited the then-publisher of the Post, Katharine Graham, whom he wanted to meet.

Although Buffett and Gates later said they weren’t particularly excited to meet, they hit it off immediately, leading to a decades-long friendship and close collaboration on the Gates Foundation and the Giving Pledge, which the duo founded with French Gates. French Gates left the Gates Foundation in 2024 and now has her own philanthropic organization, Pivotal, which aims to “accelerate the pace of social progress for women and young people in the U.S. and around the world.”

Still, in recent years, the relationship between the two billionaires has cooled. Buffett stepped down from the Gates Foundation’s board in 2021, saying his “physical participation” was no longer needed for the Foundation to reach its goals, following Gates’s announcement of his divorce. Although Buffett has reportedly donated nearly half of the Gates Foundation’s funding, about $43 billion, he told The Wall Street Journal in 2024 that no more of his money would be donated to the foundation following his death. 

Although he didn’t elaborate as to why he made the decision to cut off the Gates Foundation after his death, Buffett said most of his remaining wealth after his death will go to a charitable trust overseen by his daughter and two sons, whom he “trusts completely,” according to the Journal. 

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There’s a common adage when it comes to sales: Go where the people are.

It seems that’s what Ulta Beauty’s doing after its March 17 launch on TikTok Shop, becoming the first specialty beauty retailer in the country to launch on the platform where scrolling and discovering new products is encouraged. Now, if you’ve ever scrolled through a TikTok video and wondered what foundation that person is using, you can scroll through Ulta in app and purchase it for yourself. 

Ulta’s move onto the platform comes as retailers reconsider what truly is the front door of retail. It also comes as TikTok’s commercial future in America was stabilized following a landmark deal with the Trump administration. 

The backdrop to Ulta’s launch is as much political as it is commercial. Earlier this month, the Trump administration finalized a deal allowing TikTok to continue operating in the U.S. in exchange for a reported $10 billion brokerage fee paid to the U.S. government, according to The New York Times. Investors including Oracle, Emirati investment firm MGX, and Silver Lake (which each own 15% of the company) will pay the U.S. government $10 billion for brokering the deal, $2.5 billion of which was already paid in January. The deal comes as a resolution to years of national security concerns over the app’s Chinese parent company, ByteDance, and effectively resolved the uncertainty that hung over TikTok since 2020, giving brands and retailers a clearer runway to invest in the platform’s commerce capabilities. Ulta announced its expanded TikTok integration just days after the deal’s terms were finalized.

Go where the audience is

TikTok isn’t a place brands are trying to build an audience—it’s where an audience of historic scale is already shopping. It’s also where new possibilities in the consumer space are emerging, including the ability to enhance shopping with AI.

“We are excited about the opportunities, both on social and AI-enhanced commerce platforms, to bring our undeniably Ulta Beauty experience and assortment to life,” Ulta Beauty CEO Kecia Steelman said during the company’s Q4 2025 earnings call. “We will initially launch with a thoughtfully curated assortment of only-at-Ulta brands, which will add another exciting tool to our brand-building playbook.”

It’s uncertain how the AI-enhanced commerce platforms will work. However, Ulta’s approach to TikTok is part of an overarching recognition by the beauty retailer that sees “firsthand how discovery is happening everywhere today–and social platforms play an increasingly influential role in how guests engage with brands,” Lauren Brindley, chief merchandising and digital officer at Ulta Beauty told Fortune in a statement.

“Partnering with TikTok Shop is a strategic and complementary extension of our discovery ecosystem,” she added. “It allows us to meet guests in the moments that inspire them, reduce friction between content and commerce, and drive incremental growth by welcoming new-to-Ulta Beauty shoppers into our community.”

Steelman made similar comments in the earnings call, adding it’s meeting users where they are. TikTok Shop is “where guests can purchase immediately as they engage with content from Ulta Beauty and our brands on the platform.”

The data backs her up. TikTok Shop logged more than 103 billion U.S. searches with e-commerce intent in 2025, and total transaction volume on the platform rose nearly 80% year-over-year, according to data shared directly from TikTok to ModernRetail. There are now 71.4 million active social shoppers on TikTok in the U.S. alone, up 24.5% from 2024, and 45.5% of all U.S. TikTok users made at least one social commerce 

The company has been expanding its use of generative AI, including agentic AI tools and an internal AI Center of Excellence, to personalize marketing across its 46 million loyalty members. The TikTok Shop launch, in that context, is the consumer-facing result of a back-end transformation years in the making.

It also arrives alongside one of Ulta’s strongest recent quarters: $3.9 billion in Q4 2025 sales, an 11.8% year-over-year gain, with comparable sales rising 5.8%. Steelman, who took the CEO role in January 2025 after 11 years at the company, has been clear about the turnaround.

“We had to get our swagger back,” she said. “I felt like we lost our swagger just a little bit, and I feel like we’ve got our swagger back.”

However, some are cautious to laud the partnership out of fear of what has happened time and again with self-conscious users (who are primarily underage) on social media platforms. Yale Medicine dermatologist Dr. Kathleen Suozzi, who has researched the skincare routines and purchases of kids and teens as influenced thanks to social media, questioned if “this strategy is capitalizing on the impulsivity” of a younger cohort, especially given her work while “looking at behavioral patterns in teens and tweens around skincare.”

“I think this really targets teens and tweens in a major way,” Suozzi told Fortune, adding that because TikTok Shop all occurs in app, it’s just that much easier for all users, regardless of age, to impulse buy.

“We see really everything related to social media and kids, it’s that chasing of this idea, this false idea of perfectionism, this representation of what skin should look like, and chasing these beauty ideals that are not realistic or appropriate,” she added. “That’s really what this is feeding into.”

Suozzi mentioned how less sophisticated users might not be able to discern between what is a sponsored ad as compared to a regular user on the app not touching up their appearance. This “comparing your skin to these influencers that have filters and lighting, and the pressure to follow multi-step routines—this is contributing to increased anxiety about your appearance and compulsive product use. And that’s also what this integrated platform is going to feed even more. You see something, you immediately want it, you buy it.”

Beauty’s broader bet on TikTok

Ulta is not alone in recognizing TikTok’s pull on the beauty industry. Although it does not have an official store on TikTok Shop, Sephora previously partnered with the platform to pioneer a creator program connecting emerging brands from its Accelerate incubator with content creators.

Ulta’s TikTok Shop launch takes that conviction further, turning discovery into a direct purchase moment rather than a brand-building exercise. TikTok Shop’s Head of Beauty, Ajay Salpekar, framed the partnership as additive rather than disruptive:

“TikTok is where culture, commerce, and discovery come together in a seamless way, so it makes sense for retailers and brands to be part of our ecosystem,” Salpekar told Fortune in a statement. “For Ulta Beauty, TikTok Shop offers the power of discovery, helping to reach new shoppers for the release of exclusive launches and to support the scale and growth of new-to-market brands.”

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Tiger Woods’ eyes were bloodshot and glassy, his pupils dilated and he had hydrocodone pills in his pocket when interviewed at the scene of his car crash last week in Florida, according to a sheriff’s office report released Tuesday.

Woods’ movements were slow and lethargic, he was sweating as he talked to deputies and told them he had taken prescription medication earlier in the morning, according to the incident report released by the Martin County Sheriff’s Office. Woods told deputies he had been looking at his phone and fiddling with the radio before he clipped a truck in front of him, the report said.

Deputies found two white pills, which were identified as the opioid hydrocodone used to treat pain, in his pocket, the report said.

When asked by a deputy if he took any prescription medications, Woods said, “I take a few.”

The golfer was traveling at high speeds on a beachside, residential road on Jupiter Island when his Land Rover clipped the truck and rolled onto its side, according to the sheriff’s office, which noted Woods showed signs of impairment.

The truck had $5,000 in damage, according to the sheriff’s report.

The truck driver and another person helped Woods out of his vehicle, with the golfer needing to climb out from the passenger side. Neither Woods nor the truck driver were injured.

During a field sobriety test, deputies noticed Woods limping and that he had a compression sock over his right knee. The golfer explained he had undergone seven back surgeries and over 20 leg operations and that his ankle seizes up while walking. Woods, who was hiccupping during the questioning, continuously moved his head during one of the sobriety tests and deputies had to instruct him several times to keep his head straight, the report said.

“Based on my observations of Woods, how he performed the exercises and based on my training, knowledge, and experience, I believed that Woods normal faculties were impaired, and he was unable to safely operate the motor vehicle,” the deputy wrote after the tests.

Woods, 50, is the most influential figure in golf and has become as recognizable as any athlete in the world. The first person of Black heritage to win the Masters in 1997, he has captivated golf fans with records likely never to be broken.

But his injuries kept him from accomplishing more, including those suffered in a 2021 car crash that damaged his right leg so badly he said doctors considered amputation.

At this latest crash, Woods agreed to a Breathalyzer test that showed no signs of alcohol, but he refused a urine test, authorities said. He was arrested and released on bail eight hours later.

Woods’ agent at Excel Sports, Mark Steinberg, has not responded to multiple messages seeking comment. No one from Woods’ camp or the PGA Tour — he is on the board and is chairman of the committee reshaping the competition model — have commented since his arrest.

Woods, who has been involved in many crashes over the years, is charged with driving under the influence, property damage and refusal to submit to a lawful test. He is scheduled for arraignment April 23. Online court records do not list an attorney for him.

Under a change to Florida law last year, refusing a law enforcement officer’s request to take a breath, blood or urine test became a misdemeanor, even for a first offense.

___

AP Golf Writer Doug Ferguson in Jacksonville, Florida, contributed to this report.

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Mark Zuckerberg texted Elon Musk asking if he could assist him with Department of Government Efficiency (DOGE) efforts last year, according to newly released court documents.

The newly unredacted filings are part of an ongoing legal battle between Musk and OpenAI that began in 2024, with the xAI CEO alleging that OpenAI and CEO Sam Altman violated the company’s original mission of developing AI to benefit humanity. In February 2025, Musk submitted an unsolicited $97.4 billion bid to acquire OpenAI and block its conversion into a for-profit entity.

“Looks like DOGE is making progress,” Zuckerberg texted Musk on Feb. 3, 2025, according to an unsealed exhibit. “I’ve got our teams on alert to take down content doxxing or threatening the people on your team. Let me know if there’s anything else I can do to help.”

Musk reacted with a heart to Zuckerberg’s message and responded, “Are you open to the idea of bidding on the OpenAI IP with me and some others?”

Zuckerberg offered to discuss the matter “live,” and Musk suggested he would call the Meta CEO the next day, the filings show.

The communication shown in the filings indicates a thawing relationship between the two entrepreneurs after a decade-long rivalry. In 2016, Meta contracted Musk’s SpaceX to launch a satellite that would have given internet access to individuals in sub-Saharan Africa, but the rocket exploded. Zuckerberg said he was “deeply disappointed” by the failure. In 2023, Musk offered to fight Zuckerberg in a cage match, which did not materialize.

During the time of the interaction in February 2025, Musk was spearheading DOGE, the special advisory created on President Donald Trump’s first day of his second term to eliminate headcount and contracts to shrink the federal budget. Meta donated $1 million to Trump’s inauguration fund in 2020, marking a positive shift in the relationship between the tech company and the administration. The White House last week appointed Zuckerberg to serve on a tech advisory council.

Musk appeared to have favored Meta’s AI models in some of his DOGE-related work. Wired reported in May 2025, citing internal materials, that DOGE used Meta’s Llama 2 to review and classify email responses from federal workers to the January 2025 “Fork in the Road” email offering deferred resignation to employees opposing the administration’s sweeping workforce changes.

Meta declined Fortune’s request for comment.

The ongoing legal dispute

Court filings from August 2025 indicated Musk approached Zuckerberg about assembling a cadre of investors to finance a takeover of OpenAI. According to the documents, neither Meta nor Zuckerberg signed a letter of intent or made a bid for OpenAI.

According to a statement in the filing, Meta was “spending heavily to develop its own Al capabilities” and has been “offering pay packages of $100 million or more to leading Al researchers and attempting to poach OpenAI employees.” 

Meta argued at the time that OpenAI’s request for additional documents was “overly burdensome.”

Altman’s company completed its transition into a more traditional for-profit corporation in October 2025, with Microsoft, its largest external shareholder, gaining a 27% stake in the company and retaining access to its technology through 2032.

In a separate unsealed filing released last week, Musk’s lawyers argued his communications with Zuckerberg should not be included in the litigation.

“Musk’s personal relationships and communications – including with other high-profile individuals – are also tangential and prejudicial,” the lawyers wrote. “Defendants included in their exhibit list for trial, for example, several private exchanges between Musk and Mark Zuckerberg discussing Musk’s political activity and this lawsuit. 

“Those recent communications have nothing to do with Musk’s claims and are nothing more than Defendants’ attempt to stoke negative sentiments toward Musk because of his association with Zuckerberg,” they concluded.

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Gen Zers may be turning their tassels, flying the nest, and securing their first full-time jobs—but many are still bankrolled by mom and dad to stay afloat. Now, it’s leaving both the young generation and their parents feeling the squeeze.

Around 64% of parents with Gen Z children, aged 18 to 28, said that their adult kids still rely on them for money, housing, or other financial support, according to a new survey from Wells Fargo. 

And their continued support has led to a money pinch, as 56% reported that assisting their grown-up offspring is straining their own finances. 

But despite assumptions that Gen Zers are living outside their means, most parents aren’t stepping up to finance the lavish lives of their adult children. 

Emily Irwin, head of private wealth planning at Wells Fargo, tells Fortune that they’re actually helping cover essential living expenses rather than extravagant getaways and shopping sprees. Gen Zers are battling a sluggish entry-level job market, stagnating wages, and high cost-of-living while wanting to financially prepare for the future. And parents don’t want to wait until they pass down wealth at the end of their lives to step in.

“[Adult Gen Z] kids who are receiving the financial support are really in this perfect storm,” Irwin says. “They’re feeling uncertain about their career, their profession, and the stability of receiving a paycheck. They’re combining that with a desire to want to save more than they have even in prior years.”

Why parents are giving Gen Z kids their future inheritance now

Irwin says she’s heard from Wells Fargo clients that they want “their dollars in action during their lifetime, versus simply at death,” and it’s fueling an earlier wealth transfer informed by those who were once in their children’s shoes. 

Parents want to turn the tide on the “big inheritance movement” they once benefited from (perhaps too late) in life, Irwin says.

“Having gone through that cycle themselves, receiving an inheritance in their 50s, 60s, sometimes even 70s, is less impactful,” Irwin explains. “They say to us, ‘We got this and we could have really used it when we were starting a family, buying a home, buying a business, paying down our debt, maybe making a career shift.’”

While fronting rent and loaning money to their kids undeniably puts a strain on their wallets, Irwin observes that the financial stress actually largely stems from “a complete lack of communication.” 

Parents and their adult Gen Z kids aren’t being open about this financial support: how much the children really need, when the assistance might end, and if money needs to be paid back. Without any transparency, financial troubles are bound to bubble to the surface. 

“What I really encourage parents to do is have direct conversations with their children,” Irwin says. “Discuss everything from: Is this a gift or a loan, or some sort of a hybrid? Is there an expectation of it being paid back, and if so, with or without interest?…How long do they plan to be able to give financial support?”

Gen Z’s financial and career predicament 

There’s little question that Gen Z is under immense economic and career challenges. 

Last year, around 58% of students who had recently finished college were still looking for their first job, according to a 2025 Kickresume report. Meanwhile, just 25% of graduates of previous generations—including millennial and Gen Xers—found it hard  to land work after college. 

On the financial front, young people are also struggling. Gen Z’s average FICO score slipped three points to 676—39 points lower than the national average of 715, according to a 2025 FICO report. Erin Stillwell, head of payments at Globant, told Fortune last year that “Gen Z is the first cohort facing high inflation, digital credit, and social-media-driven consumption pressure simultaneously.” 

The “perfect storm” of issues has become so intense it’s even keeping many young people up at night. Around seven in 10 Gen Zers said they couldn’t sleep because they’re so stressed about rising prices, rent, and job security, according to a 2025 report from Amerisleep. Contrary to the belief that the young generation loves to spend and expects a life of luxury, most are simply trying to hold on. 

“I wouldn’t say Gen Z is living outside their means,” Irwin explains. “Gen Z’s a little bit in [a] unique position…The last few years, we’ve had higher inflation—that’s a reality. We’ve had higher interest rates—that’s a reality…[Many] of them feel like there’s instability in their job.”

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As Americans are barely getting by because of inflation, tariffs, and a cost-of-living crisis, saving for retirement can feel like the priority lowest on the totem pole. 

But multimillionaire serial investor and entrepreneur Kevin O’Leary says saving is more important than ever before. 

“What piece of advice do I give my kids over and over and over again about money?” the Shark Tank star questioned in a recent Instagram video. “Don’t spend it. Save it. Invest it. Let it compound. That’s the gift the market gives you.

O’Leary’s golden rule of investing is straightforward. He says to take 15% of every dollar you earn, whether it’s from your paychecks, side hustles, or birthday money from grandma, and put it directly into the market.

“Just let it compound,” he said. 

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For the average American worker who makes $68,000 per year, that simple rule will pay off in the end, he argued.

“If you make $68,000 a year, the average salary, and you do this your entire life, just 15% of your paycheck, you’ll end up a millionaire at retirement at 65,” O’Leary said.

Does Kevin O’Leary’s math check out?

Most national estimates place the average American salary at roughly $66,000 to $69,000 per year. Assuming O’Leary’s estimate of $68,000, the numbers would break down as follows. 

Assuming O’Leary’s 15% rule, an American making $68,000 per year would save about $10,200 per year, or $850 per month. Invested consistently over a 40-year career, say from age 25 to 65, and assuming the S&P 500’s historical average return of roughly 10%, that $850 monthly contribution would grow to approximately $5.3 million by retirement.

Even using a more conservative average return of 7% would still put the average American in millionaire status, with a final portfolio worth around $2.2 million.

While the math works on paper, it’s becoming more unrealistic for average Americans to save that much money each month. 

For workers in the $50,000–$79,999 income bracket, 55% report feeling behind on retirement savings, and this group is among the most likely to lack adequate preparation. The overall personal saving rate as of mid-2025 sits at just 4.4% of disposable income, according to the Bureau of Labor Statistics — meaning someone earning $68,000 saves roughly $3,000/year toward retirement, on average. Among 401(k) participants specifically, Vanguard data show the median total contribution rate (employee + employer) is about 11.5%, though this applies primarily to those with 401(k) access.

For a household earning $68,000 before taxes, take-home pay is about $52,000 to $54,000 after federal and state taxes, leaving just $3,600 per month for other expenses. 

According to RentCafe, the average rent in the U.S. is $1,740 per month, leaving just about $1,860. Then tack on groceries, which Bureau of Labor Statistics data shows can be as high as $400 per month for a single person. (Now we’re down to about $1,460). 

Then there’s student loan payments (averaging $434 per month) and utilities (about $300 per month). That only leaves $726 — not enough to meet the 15% of earnings saved that O’Leary suggested. 

Even if we assume 15% of the average American’s take-home pay of about $52,000, that means they’d have to invest $650 per month (still making them a millionaire by age 65), but that leaves just $150 per month in discretionary pay.

O’Leary argues, though, that younger generations need to stop spending on unnecessary items.

“The best piece of advice I can give anybody: don’t buy stuff you don’t need,” he insisted. “Invest it instead.”

What other investors say 

O’Leary’s advice largely mirrors the advice of index fund investing long shared by Warren Buffett, who has repeatedly said the average investor is best served by putting money in a low-cost S&P 500 index fund and leaving it alone. 

“Put 10% of the cash in short-term government bonds and 90% in a very low-cost S&P 500 index fund. (I suggest Vanguard’s),” Buffett wrote in a 2013 shareholders’ letter. “I believe the trust’s long-term results from this policy will be superior to those attained by most investors—whether pension funds, institutions, or individuals—who employ high-fee managers.”

Suze Orman, financial advisor, author, and podcast host, has also said Americans need to prioritize saving or investing at least 10% of their earnings each year—particularly given longer life expectancies and rising health care costs in retirement. She’s even argued that 70 should be the new retirement age because Americans aren’t financially prepared enough.

“You likely have plenty saved up to breeze through 15 years or so of retirement. But, people, if you stop working in your 60s, your retirement stash might need to support you for 30 years, not 15,” she wrote in 2017.

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The promise of AI-driven productivity has many employees fearing for their heads. But to Marc Andreessen, co-founder and general partner at Andreessen Horowitz, the technology is more of a bogeyman, masking a long-standing business fluke that has quietly lingered in boardrooms for years.

In an interview on the 20VC show with venture capitalist and host Harry Stebbings, the billionaire said AI was the scapegoat for layoffs that are actually a result of overhiring in the wake of the COVID pandemic.

“Essentially, every large company is overstaffed,” he said. “It’s at least overstaffed by 25%. I think most large companies are overstaffed by 50%. I think a lot of them are overstaffed by 75%.” He added, “now they all have the silver bullet excuse: Ah, it’s AI.”

Andreessen’s comments are nothing new for an industry that is pushing back against the “silver bullet excuse” of AI, which some tech leaders including OpenAI’s Sam Altman have coined as “AI washing,” or blaming otherwise normal layoffs on the increased use of AI. 

A long list of business leaders and AI experts have said the labor market is due for a massive upheaval due to AI. Some have already carried out layoffs and attributed them to the tech. Block CEO Jack Dorsey laid off 40% of his workforce in February, saying he thinks “most companies are late” to the AI layoff trend. Australian-American firm Atlassian made a similar move. Meta is also reportedly planning sweeping layoffs thanks to greater efficiency brought about by AI-assisted workers. 

The post-pandemic hiring blitz

Tech companies embarked on a hiring spree in the wake of the COVID pandemic. Following the initial employment shock during the onset of the pandemic, hiring shot up to 8.3 million by May 2020, according to the Bureau of Labor Statistics. The dawn of remote work and the shift to digital opened up a pool of labor that spanned the globe. By June 2022, nonfarm payrolls surpassed pre-pandemic levels. Firms acted like the metaphorical kid in the candy store with talent, grabbing every shiny new candidate that crossed their applicant tracking system, with some, like Amazon, even doubling their headcount between 2019 and 2021. 

But many tech firms have cleaned house following the hiring craze. Amazon has cut nearly 30,000 workers over the past year to reduce layers and remove bureaucracy. In 2023, Google parent company Alphabet cut 12,000 jobs after a pandemic hiring spree. Even Dorsey conceded that some of the Block cuts were thanks to overhiring.

“This entire labor displacement thing is 100% incorrect,” Andreessen said. “It’s classic zero-sum economics.” He said that most coders, for example, are employing AI, which is taking over much of the workload. But that’s not a flashing red light that layoffs are on the way. Instead, it just means more work for those workers as AI boosts productivity rather than cutting labor costs.

The venture capitalist argues that fears of AI-driven mass layoffs stem from the “lump of labor” fallacy, the belief that there is a fixed amount of work in the economy at any given time. “It’s always been wrong, it’s going to be wrong again,” he said.

But recent studies on the impact of AI complicate Andreessen’s assessment. An Anthropic study released earlier this month demonstrated that AI is already theoretically capable of performing the majority of tasks associated with engineering, law, finance, and business. And a study from professional services firm Cognizant mapped out the projected magnitude of AI layoffs this year, finding AI-related job cuts could total more than nine times what they were last year, surpassing 500,000. But that number is still a far cry from the sweeping projections leaders like Anthropic CEO Dario Amodei have made about an AI-related white-collar job apocalypse.

Still, Andreessen thinks AI is a smoke screen for layoffs. He doesn’t believe the technology is sophisticated enough yet to replace human workers.

“AI literally until December was not actually good enough to do any of the jobs that they’re actually cutting,” he said. “It just can’t have been AI.”

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Silicon Valley’s startup culture has long sold itself on alluring perks: cold brew on tap, nap pods tucked between standing desks, and even free slippers for their “no-shoes” offices. The pitch was simple: work hard, but live well while building the next big thing.

But as the race for top AI talent accelerates, startups are increasingly leaning on a far more direct incentive: eye-popping paychecks.

Software engineers at venture-backed startups are receiving median base-salary offers of $200,000—a 25% increase from 2022—according to Levels.fyi. In some cases, newly-minted computer science graduates are fielding offers upward of $300,000 annually, sky-high wages once reserved for seasoned engineers at Big Tech giants, said Chris Vasquez, CEO of startup recruiting firm Quantum. 

“Prior to this, I’d probably never seen anyone over $300,000 on base salaries at seed companies,” Vasquez recently told The Wall Street Journal. Now, “They’re able to take home FAANG [Facebook, Amazon, Apple, Netflix, Google]-level cash comp.”

AI itself is helping fuel the frenzy. New tools are making it easier and faster than ever to build and scale companies, lowering the barrier to entry for budding professionals and intensifying competition for a small pool of elite talent. 

At least in the short term, that’s good news for young engineers entering the workforce—despite broader concerns that AI could eventually significantly shrink the number of traditional tech roles. If salaries alone are any indication, demand for the best of the best talent has never been higher.

The battle for AI talent is raging —so companies are dishing out 7-figure paychecks

After the world’s best AI talent spends a few years fine-tuning their skills, their compensation could even stretch into the seven figures. And as industry insiders note, financial equity can be an even bigger draw than base salary for companies with sky-high ambitions.

Employee stock grants alone can range from $2 million to $4 million at a Series D startup, according to Tim Tully, a partner at venture capital firm Menlo Ventures.

“That was unfathomable when I was hiring research scientists four years ago,” Tully, told Fortune last year, noting that those working on foundational AI and theoretical breakthroughs hold the golden tickets to top-tier companies.

At Big Tech companies, the offers are even more eye-watering as firms pour billions into AI, igniting a nonstop tug-of-war for talent among companies like OpenAI, Meta, Google, Microsoft, and Anthropic.

The most intense battle centers over a small pool of fewer than 1,000 AI research scientists who can build today’s most advanced large language models. OpenAI CEO Sam Altman even said last year that the competition intensified to the point where Meta offered signing bonuses as high as $100 million to lure top talent. The ChatGPT-maker’s average stock-based compensation hit a whopping $1.5 million among its roughly 4,000 employees in 2025—the highest of any tech startup in history—the WSJ reported.

Even with sky-high salary promises, uncertainty clouds the AI job market

The boom comes with a familiar caveat: the odds of survival remain slim. 

For every success story that begins in a garage or dorm room, countless companies stall out—even after making a name for themselves. 

Moreover, not every tech worker is cashing in at the top of the market. While a select group of candidates can command eye-popping offers, most new graduates are still landing more modest—but still sizable—paydays. 

The average starting salary for computer science majors is expected to be around $81,500 for the class of 2026, according to the National Association of Colleges and Employers, up 7% from the previous year.

Taken all together, the numbers point to a job market defined by opportunity and imbalance: companies are paying a premium for the very best talent, even as layoffs remain omnipresent and the future demand for tech workers remains uncertain.

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Spice and flavorings company McCormick announced on Tuesday that it’s combining with Unilever’s foods division, which includes household names like Hellmann’s and Knorr.

The combined company will maintain McCormick’s name and leadership. But upon closing, Unilever and its shareholders are expected to own 65% of the food company’s outstanding equity, amounting $29.1 billion. Unilever would also get $15.7 billion in cash. Meanwhile, McCormick shareholders will own 35.0%.

Unilever and McCormick confirmed they were in talks about a deal earlier this month, with Unilever attempting to streamline its business and focus on beauty and personal care products.

McCormick and its red-capped array of spices is a $15 billion company and the stable of brands it’s adding from Unilever are worth billions more. The companies said on Tuesday that McCormick and Unilever would have a combined revenue of $20 billion for the 2025 fiscal year.

The transaction is expected to close by mid-2027, the companies said Tuesday, pending both shareholder and regulatory approval. The deal excludes Unilever’s food business in India, Nepal and Portugal.

McCormick CEO Brendan Foley said in a prepared statement that the deal “accelerates McCormick’s strategy and reinforces our continued focus on flavor.” He added that McCormick has “long admired Unilever’s foods business, which has a “portfolio that complements our existing business, capabilities and long-term vision.”

Unilever, which is based in London, was founded nearly a century ago when Dutch margarine maker Margarine Unie merged with British soap maker Lever Brothers. The conglomerate now makes dozens of different brands, including Dove soap, Vaseline, Hellmann’s mayonnaise, Liquid I.V. hydration, Axe body spray and Pepsodent toothpaste.

In 2024, Unilever announced it was spinning off its ice cream business, which included the Ben & Jerry’s, Magnum and Breyers brands. That business became the Magnum Ice Cream Co., which is based in Amsterdam. Last year, Unilever sold The Vegetarian Butcher, a plant-based meat brand, and Graze, a healthy snacking brand.

McCormick, based in Hunt Valley, Maryland, has been expanding its portfolio to take advantage of consumers’ growing interest in global flavors and sauces. The 137-year-old company bought Reckitt Benckiser’s food division — including the French’s mustard and Frank’s RedHot sauce brands — in 2017. In 2020, it bought Cholula, a Mexican hot sauce brand.

Shares of both companies rose slightly before the opening bell Tuesday.

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When a business sends money internationally, the process can be slow and expensive. This is the gap that Latitude aims to fill by helping firms make fast and affordable international payments by using stablecoin rails while abstracting away the complexity. 

On Tuesday, Latitude announced that it raised $8 million in a round led by NEA with participation from Lightspeed Faction, Coinbase, Paxos, and Solana Foundation, among others. Cyril Mathew, the startup’s CEO, did not disclose the company’s valuation in an interview with Fortune.

“We really want to make global payments simple for everybody and enable small businesses to reach everyone in the world,” said Vivek Morzaria, who started Latitude along with co-founders Brian Wrightson, and Mathew.  

Latitude’s main product is what it calls Global Payouts, which allows U.S. businesses to make payments to individuals in over 50 countries. When an American firm sends U.S. dollars through Latitude, the startup’s network converts that money into stablecoins and then converts them back into the local currency of the destination. One of Latitude’s clients is Zencastr, a content creator company that has podcasters around the world. Through Latitude’s network, this company can pay its content creators in India and in other countries. 

The startup’s second product serves more crypto-native apps or platforms that want to offer stablecoin access to international users.  For example, if a prediction market company wants to expand internationally to, say Mexico or the Philippines, its users could convert local currency into stablecoins through Latitude’s infrastructure. 

The three co-founders have worked at companies like Uber, Coinbase, Meta, and Stripe. They say that this experience in crypto, tech, and payments has taught them the importance of moving money efficiently around the world. 

Latitude is currently in a beta launch, where it generates revenue through transaction fees. The company has 11 employees. 

Mathew says that Latitude’s competition is traditional banks who facilitate foreign exchange transactions through legacy rails like Swift. The startup says that it has newer, more efficient rails than these institutions. 

Small businesses are “paying too much and getting too little” from the incumbent system, Morzaria says.

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The stock market ripped Monday morning after the White House signaled it may no longer be America’s job to reopen the Strait of Hormuz.

The S&P 500 rose more than 1.5%, while the Nasdaq climbed nearly 2%.

Overnight, a Wall Street Journal report indicated that President Trump would be ready to walk away from the war in Iran; by the morning, Trump all but confirmed the reporting, telling allies on social media that they should “build up some delayed courage, go to the Strait, and just TAKE IT.” 

“You’ll have to start learning how to fight for yourself, the U.S.A. won’t be there to help you anymore, just like you weren’t there for us,” Trump wrote on his social media platform, Truth Social.

Meanwhile, the average price of gas in the U.S. crossed $4 a gallon Tuesday, up more than a dollar from $2.98 on February 27, the day before the war began. It’s the first time gas prices have crossed the $4 threshold since 2022, when Russia’s invasion of Ukraine triggered an energy crisis. At the same time, Trump’s approval rating is tanking, with Nate Silver putting it at -16.7, a record low for his second term and worse even that Joe Biden’s -11.7 at the same point in his presidency.

Throughout the war, the White House has catered its messaging to the stock market, which is desperately trying to hold onto its years-long rally, even as consumer costs climb. And while Americans face pain at the pump, Southeast Asia is confronting fuel shortages that are forcing people to work from home or even wear short sleeves to conserve air conditioning.

As Trump continues to optimize for the American market, he reinforces a type of “America-first” trade, where those who are invested win while other nations absorb the cost. Recently, Gulf allies have implored Trump to continue the war until the Iranian regime is fully crippled, and they are unable to fund their proxies or continue to hold the Strait as a point of leverage. JPMorgan CEO Jamie Dimon echoed this view during an interview with Brian Kilmeade on Fox News on Tuesday morning, saying that “it’s much more important that this be successfully completed than what the market does.”

“We should all hope that these bad people, that we win this thing and clean up the straits and that Iran is no longer a threat to everybody,” Dimon said.

However, the White House, on multiple fronts, has tried to tamp down expectations for the Strait of Hormuz. White House Press Secretary Karoline Leavitt confirmed Monday that reopening the Strait of Hormuz is not one of the “core objectives” Trump has set for the military campaign, and Defense Secretary Pete Hegseth reinforced the message Tuesday morning at a very friendly presser at the Pentagon, listing the destruction of Iran’s missiles, drones, and navy as the mission’s goal, but not Hormuz.

“This Strait of Hormuz issue is not just a United States of America problem,” Hegseth said.

Leavitt added Tuesday that once the war is over, gas prices “will plummet back to the multi-year lows American drivers enjoyed before these short-term disruptions.”

The stock market appeared to read Trump’s post as deescalation: if the U.S. pulls out, it removes the worst-case scenario of a prolonged ground campaign that sends oil even higher. But walking away doesn’t solve the underlying problem; the price of oil also climbed Tuesday as West Texas Intermediate now sits at $103 at the time of writing, nearly double where it started this year. BlackRock CEO Larry Fink warned this week that oil could hit $150 and cause a global recession if Iran remains a threat to Hormuz after the war ends.

The damage to the real economy is already compounding. Ultimately, even as the U.S. leverages its strategic reserves, oil is a global commodity, and as commodities researcher Rory Johnston likes to say, “a barrel of oil lost anywhere is a barrel of oil lost everywhere.” Oxford Economics cut its global industrial growth forecast to 2.5% this year, warning that energy-intensive sectors like transport, utilities, and petrochemicals face severe cost spikes and production declines. Their senior economist Nico Palesch warned in a note Tuesday morning of the potential for “supply chain disruptions on par with what was seen in the Covid-19 pandemic” if the strait’s closure isn’t resolved. 

The United Nations Development Programme also warned Tuesday that the war could push up to 4 million people in the Middle East into poverty, with the region facing GDP losses of $120 billion to $194 billion. More than 3,000 people have been killed across the Middle East since the war began: 1,900 in Iran, 1,200 in Lebanon, 19 in Israel, and 13 U.S. service members.

Meanwhile, on the other side of its mouth, the administration keeps ramping up its threats on Iran. Trump shared a video on Truth Social Monday night showing a massive ammunition depot in Isfahan being hit by American bombers, an attack Hegseth confirmed involved 2,000-pound bunker busters to destroy missiles. The chairman of the Joint Chiefs added that the U.S. has begun flying B-52 bombers over Iran, aircraft capable of carrying nuclear weapons.

On the ground, thousands of special operations forces—Navy SEALs, Army Rangers, Marines—are in the region. Hegseth said strikes will intensify if no deal is reached with Iran soon, while Trump himself has threatened to “obliterate” Iran’s power plants, oil wells, and Kharg Island—and “possibly all desalination plants,” which millions of people across the Middle East depend on for drinking water. Human Rights Watch has said bombing them would constitute a war crime. Asked about it, the chairman of the Joint Chiefs said only that the military would run any such target through its “normal procedures.”

Meanwhile, Iran has little incentive to negotiate. Daily ship traffic through the strait has fallen roughly 90% to 95% since the war began. Iran’s parliament has approved a plan to formalize tolls on vessels passing through, codifying its control over the chokepoint, which it has already reaped the benefits of: Iran is earning far more per barrel than before the war. With those sorts of incentives to keep it closed, Tehran might not be in the negotiating mood.

No other country has stepped up to take charge of opening up the Strait. Trump railed against allies on Truth Social, particularly France, which he said has been “VERY UNHELPFUL” as they blocked Israeli planes carrying fuel from flying over their airspace. “THE USA WILL REMEMBER!!”

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A U.S. government panel was due to convene Tuesday for the first time since 1992 to consider exempting oil and gas drilling in the Gulf of Mexico from the Endangered Species Act due to unspecified national security concerns, a move critics say could doom a rare whale species and harm other marine life.

Nicknamed the “God Squad” by groups who say it can decide a species’ fate, the Endangered Species Committee comprises several Trump administration officials and is chaired by Interior Secretary Doug Burgum.

Republican President Donald Trump has made increased fossil fuel production a central focus of his second term. He wants to open new areas of the Gulf off the Florida coast to drilling, and has proposed sweeping rollbacks of environmental regulations disliked by industry.

Defense Secretary Pete Hegseth notified Burgum on March 13 that an Endangered Species Act exemption for oil and gas drilling in the Gulf was “necessary for reasons of national security,” according to a court filing from the administration.

Government officials have not disclosed the rationale for the request, which came amid global oil shocks and soaring energy prices brought on by the Iran war. Experts say the administration must specify the military need that would endanger a species to make a case for the national security exemption.

The Gulf of Mexico is one of the nation’s top oil-producing regions. It accounts for more than 10% of crude pumped annually in the U.S., plus a small share of domestic natural gas production.

But the Gulf also has been the scene of environmental disasters such as BP’s Deepwater Horizon blowout in 2010 that killed 11 workers and spilled 134 million gallons (500 million liters) of oil. A spill in the Gulf earlier this month spread 373 miles (600 kilometers), contaminating at least six species and polluting seven protected natural reserves.

The Trump administration in mid-March approved BP’s new $5 billion ultra-deepwater drilling project in the Gulf.

Environmental groups sought unsuccessfully to block Tuesday’s meeting. They claimed an exemption would doom the rare Rice’s whale to extinction. Only about 50 remain in the Gulf.

A judge who struck down the environmentalists’ request suggested it was premature since officials had not yet acted on the proposed exemption.

A 2025 National Marine Fisheries Service analysis determined the Gulf oil and gas program was likely to harm several species of whales, sea turtles and Gulf sturgeon that face potential harm from ship strikes, oil spills and other impacts.

The Endangered Species Committee was established in 1978 as a way to exempt projects from the Endangered Species Act, which makes it illegal to harm or kill species on a protected list, if no alternative would provide the same economic benefits in a region or if it was in the nation’s best interest.

The panel has convened just three times in its 53-year history and issued only two exemptions. The first was in 1979 to allow construction on a dam on the Platte River in Wyoming, home to the whooping crane. It last met in 1992, allowing logging in northern spotted owl habitats in Oregon. That exemption request was later withdrawn.

Its latest meeting follows a federal judge’s ruling on Monday that struck down attempts during Trump’s first term to weaken rules for endangered species.

The panel’s members include the secretaries of agriculture, interior and the Army, the chairperson of the Council of Economic Advisers, and the administrators of both the Environmental Protection Agency and the National Oceanic and Atmospheric Administration.

The Associated Press left email and telephone messages with Interior and Defense Department officials requesting comment.

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The scene is right out of the 1950s with students pecking away at manual typewriters, the machines dinging at the end of each line.

Once each semester, Grit Matthias Phelps, a German language instructor at Cornell University, introduces her students to the raw feeling of typing without online assistance. No screens, online dictionaries, spellcheckers or delete keys.

The exercise started in spring 2023 as Phelps grew frustrated with the reality that students were using generative AI and online translation platforms to churn out grammatically perfect assignments.

“What’s the point of me reading it if it’s already correct anyway, and you didn’t write it yourself? Could you produce it without your computer?” said Phelps.

She wanted students to understand what writing, thinking and classrooms were like before everything turned digital. So, she found a few dozen old manual typewriters, in thrift shops and online marketplaces, and created what her syllabus simply calls an “analog” assignment.

It might be premature to say that typewriters are making a comeback beyond Cornell’s campus. But the revival is part of a national trend toward old-school testing methods like in-class pen-and-paper exams and oral tests to prevent AI use for assignments on laptops.

Typewriters bring ‘old days’ taste of doing one thing at a time

Students arrived for class on a recent analog day to find typewriters at the desks, some with German and some QWERTY keyboards.

“I was so confused. I had no idea what was happening. I’d seen typewriters in movies, but they don’t tell you how a typewriter works,” said Catherine Mong, 19, a freshman in Phelps’ Intro to German class. “I didn’t know there was a whole science to using a typewriter.”

Like a rotary phone, the manual typewriter appears simple but is not intuitive to the smartphone generation. Phelps demonstrated how to feed the paper manually, striking the keys with force but not so hard the letters would smudge. She explained that the dinging bell signifies the end of a line and the need to manually return the carriage to start the next line. (“Oh,” said one student, “that’s why it’s called ‘return.’”)

“Everything slows down. It’s like back in the old days when you really did one thing at a time. And there was joy in doing it,” said Phelps, who brings in her two children, aged 7 and 9, to serve as “tech support” and ensure no one has their phones out.

Students welcomed having fewer distractions

The assignment carries lessons beyond simply how to use a typewriter, which is the whole point.

“It dawned on me that the difference with typing on a typewriter is not just how you interact with the typewriter, but how you interact with the world around you,” said computer science major Ratchaphon Lertdamrongwong, a sophomore, whose class had to write a critique of a German movie they’d watched.

In the absence of screens, there are no notifications to distract you as you write, and without every answer readily available at his fingertips, he asked his classmates for help, which Phelps heartily encouraged.

“While writing the essay, I had to talk a lot more, socialize a lot more, which I guess was normal back then,” Lertdamrongwong said, referring to the typewriter era. “But it’s drastically different from how we interact within the classroom in modern times. People are always on a laptop, always on the phone.”

Without a delete key and the ability to correct every mistake, he paused to think more intentionally about his writing.

“This might sound bad, but I was forced to actually think about the problem on my own instead of delegating to AI or Google search,” he said.

Manual machines were a workout for pinky fingers

Most students found their pinkies weren’t strong enough to touch-type, so they typed more slowly, pecking at the keyboard with their index fingers.

Mong, the freshman, faced an added challenge with a recently broken wrist, requiring her to use just one hand. The self-described perfectionist was initially frustrated with how messy her page looked with odd spacing between certain letters and misspellings. (Phelps told students to backspace and type ‘X’s over errors.)

“This thing I handed in had pencil marks all over it and definitely did not look clean or finished. But it’s part of the process of learning that you’re going to make mistakes,” said Mong, who found the assignment of typing a poem “fun and challenging.”

She embraced the odd spacing and played with the visual boundaries of the page to indent and fragment lines in the style of poet E.E. Cummings. It took several sheets of paper and many mistakes, all of which Mong saved.

“I’m probably going to hang them on my wall,” Mong said. I’m kind of fascinated by typewriters. I told all my friends, I did a German test on a typewriter!”

___

The Associated Press’ education coverage receives financial support from multiple private foundations. AP is solely responsible for all content. Find AP’s standards for working with philanthropies, a list of supporters and funded coverage areas at AP.org.

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I was 48 years old when I left my job and enrolled in the Entrepreneurial Studies program at Stanford.

Most people at that stage of their careers are trying to reduce risk, not introduce it. They have steady income. They have dependents. In tech, the unspoken assumption is that if you were going to take a big swing, you should have done it already. I decided to swing anyway.

For most of my career, I watched Silicon Valley celebrate a particular kind of ambition: the kind that belongs to the young. We applaud founders who drop out of school, and prodigies building in dorm rooms. Those stories are real and extraordinary. But beneath them is a quiet counter-narrative: the idea that reinvention later in life is unusual, and that seasoned operators who know an industry’s flaws intimately and set out to fix them are somehow the exception.

When I speak with seasoned executives considering school or startups, the hesitation is rarely about ability or potential. It’s about perception. Risk after 40 is more often dismissed as a “midlife crisis” than embraced as a calculated choice. That’s not just unfair—it’s economically shortsighted.

What Two Decades in the Industry Taught Me

Before Stanford, I spent decades in enterprise storage. Early in my career, I joined a small company and was sent to help expand the business across Asia Pacific. I had to sit across from customers in markets like Japan and speak as the company’s storage expert—except I wasn’t, not at the beginning. I had to learn fast. I had to admit what I did not know. There were plenty of moments where I was right at the edge of my capability.

Over time, those uncomfortable moments compound. One day you wake up and realize you actually do understand the system. You know why certain architectures fail—you have seen enough cycles to recognize patterns. By my late forties, I had that pattern recognition on autopilot. What I no longer had was the spark that discomfort once fueled.

A friend who had gone through the Sloan Fellowship at Stanford suggested I apply. His advice was simple: put yourself back in an environment where you are not the expert, and be deliberate about what comes next.

I applied. I was accepted. I was the oldest person in the program.

Shortly after the program began, I received a call from an engineer I had worked with years earlier. He had developed a new approach to cloud file access that challenged deeply held assumptions about how storage systems needed to work. He showed me a prototype that defied what conventional wisdom said was possible.

At 28, I probably would have rushed in. At 48, experience pushed me to slow down and test it from every angle before moving forward. We spent months pressure-testing the idea before fully committing. After graduation, we started pitching investors and were rejected 33 times. That’s not easy, but I had watched enough cycles to know that investor consensus and customer reality are not always aligned. We kept on.

The conviction to persist did not come from blind optimism. It came from having watched this problem surface repeatedly over two decades. I had seen the clunky workarounds. I had sat through the budget conversations. I knew this pain was structural, not temporary. Eventually, we found an investor who saw it the same way.

Today, LucidLink serves thousands of companies—including Paramount, Adobe, Shopify, and Spotify—and has grown into a global business last valued in 2023 at $390 million. We won an Emmy last year for transforming the way entertainment gets made.

I do not tell this story to suggest that starting a company at 48 guarantees success. It does not. I tell it because that company would not exist if I had accepted the commonly held idea that my window had closed.

Why This Is a Business Problem, Not a Cultural One

As AI reshapes white-collar work, more professionals will reach inflection points. Some will be displaced. Others will realize that the roles they mastered are evolving faster than expected. Economic pressures are simultaneously pushing many to extend their working lives. Later-stage reinvention will become more common, not less. The question is whether the tech ecosystem treats that reinvention as an asset or a liability.

Age bias is usually framed as a cultural problem. It is also a business problem. We lose out when experience is dismissed. When later-stage operators are subtly discouraged from building, we narrow the range of problems being addressed. In industries like infrastructure, healthcare, media, and enterprise software, depth matters. Pattern recognition matters. Having lived through downturns matters.

This is not an argument against young founders. Many transformative companies were built by people in their twenties. It is an argument against assuming that innovation belongs to a single demographic. Ambition doesn’t expire. Experience, combined with a willingness to be uncomfortable again can be a competitive advantage.

If we want the next generation of companies to solve harder, more systemic problems, we should normalize career reinvention at every stage. Not because it feels inclusive, but because it makes economic sense.

Some of the most important companies of the next decade will be built by people who have already had one or two careers. The real risk is not that they try and fail. It’s that they decide, before they even begin, that they’ve already missed their moment.

The opinions expressed in Fortune.com commentary pieces are solely the views of their authors and do not necessarily reflect the opinions and beliefs of Fortune.

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Michael White got a call a few weeks ago from someone in Italy who was offering to provide any insight he could about how the Florida Panthers do business.

The caller was Bill Zito, the Panthers’ hockey operations president.

And that’s when White knew he’d fit in as the team’s business operations president.

The Panthers officially announced White, who has spent a 25-year career working in the technology and guest experience worlds, as their new business chief on Tuesday. He will oversee “all business aspects,” the team said, of its four facilities — Amerant Bank Arena, Baptist Health IcePlex, Panthers IceDen and War Memorial Auditorium.

White said the idea to work alongside Zito, the architect of the team that won Stanley Cup titles in 2024 and 2025, was a major factor. Zito called him last month from Italy, where he was part of the leadership for the U.S. men’s hockey team that won gold at the Milan Cortina Olympics. They’ve been off and running ever since.

“We clicked automatically. Our first meeting was supposed to be 30 minutes, went an hour and a half and we probably could have talked another two hours,” White said. “And we just stayed in touch throughout the process. I would say that we’re off to a really great start together and he was one of the primary reasons I came over here. He’s one of one, a legend, but also somebody that you want to partner with.”

White came to the Panthers after most recently serving as Chief Product Officer at Amazon’s autonomous vehicle company, Zoox — helping to develop an autonomous robotaxi. Zambonis still require drivers when they touch up the ice at hockey rinks, but the Panthers said White’s ability to launch strategies in many ways helped set him apart.

“After a diligent and comprehensive search, we are confident that Michael is the right fit to lead our organization into continued success,” said Michael Viola, part of the Panthers’ ownership family. “He brings to our club a proven record in consumer experience, partnership growth and product development for some of the world’s most successful companies and invaluable capabilities of organizational leadership and visionary innovation.”

It won’t take long for White to tackle one key issue for the Panthers’ future. The team has until the fall of 2028 to propose development plans to Broward County officials for property that surrounds Amerant Bank Arena, where the team plays games.

White has also worked for The Walt Disney Company in several senior leadership roles, even playing a role in the execution of the restart of the 2019-20 NBA season that was played in a bubble on the Disney campus near Orlando, Florida, after the COVID-19 pandemic essentially stopped the world in its tracks.

He introduced himself to the majority of the Panthers’ employees on Monday.

“The organization is world-class,” White said. “My previous job was great. Then I met the Violas and I’m like, ‘Wow, this is fantastic. Unbelievable ownership.’ Obviously, the winning that the team has done, and Bill’s done, the culture … it just permeates through. I just met 300 of the front-office folks and everyone literally introduced themselves and you could just feel the culture. For me, it’s a little bit of a listening journey to start and then we’ll see what we can do next. It’s a fantastic foundation and we’ll look for areas where we can amplify that.”

White is replacing Matthew Caldwell, who stepped down as Florida’s business head in August to become CEO of the NBA’s Minnesota Timberwolves and the WNBA’s Minnesota Lynx.

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One of the world’s rarest whales lives in only one place: the Gulf of Mexico, where the Trump administration wants to expand oil and gas drilling that scientists fear could push the giant mammal to extinction.

Endangered Rice’s whales live their entire lives in the gulf, where they’re vulnerable to vessel strikes, noise pollution, oil spills and climate change -– all of which could increase with more drilling, scientists said. Other animals, including threatened manatees and endangered sea turtles, also could be put at risk, experts said.

As the Iran war pushes energy prices sharply higher, Defense Secretary Pete Hegseth invoked national security in seeking an exemption from endangered species laws, which make it illegal to harm or kill species on a protected list.

The Interior Department on Tuesday will consider the request at a meeting of the seldom-used Endangered Species Committee — nicknamed the “God Squad” because it can approve federal projects even they could cause extinction. The department did not immediately respond to an email seeking comment.

What is known about the Rice’s whale?

It’s the only whale species that lives year-round in the Gulf of Mexico, where there are fewer than 100 — and possibly fewer than 50 — left, scientists said.

Recognized as a distinct species in 2021, the Rice’s whale is usually found in a narrow area in the northeastern part of the Gulf, in waters 100 to 400 meters deep.

They’re fairly picky eaters, diving to the gulf floor for fatty fish — mainly silver-rag driftfish — during the day and then resting close to the surface at night, meaning that they are “quite living on the edge,” said Jeremy Kiszka, a biological sciences professor at Florida International University.

That’s because they undertake strenuous dives for a specific kind of food that also might be affected by more drilling and other changes in the gulf, and they’re vulnerable to vessel strikes at night, Kiszka said.

How else could oil and gas drilling put them at risk?

Noise could disrupt the whales’ foraging behavior, while increased global warming — tied to the burning of fossil fuels, including oil and gas — could change where their prey fish live, Kiszka said. The whales also are susceptible to pollution, with a significant portion of an already-small population believed to have been killed by the 2010 Deepwater Horizon oil spill.

“What we see today is just a species … that is unlucky in many ways: small home, specialized diet and living in a place that is not easy in the first place,” because of human impacts, Kiszka said.

Many climate change impacts are “baked in,” meaning they will persist even if fossil fuels were eliminated today, said Letise LaFeir, chief of conservation and stewardship at the New England Aquarium.

But the Trump administration proposal “is just compounding the immediate risks locally and the longer term risks,” LaFeir said.

What about other species?

Although a government filing specifically mentions Rice’s whales, other threatened and endangered animals also could be harmed by oil spills or other dangers, scientists said.

“The ocean is connected, so when there is this kind of action somewhere else, it does have implications across the waters,” LaFeir said.

For example, hundreds of sea turtles — including endangered Kemp’s Ridley and loggerheads — are rescued and rehabilitated every year before they are released into the Atlantic Ocean and swim for their nesting grounds in the gulf, she said.

Michael Jasny, director of the Natural Resources Defense Council’s marine mammal protection project, said consequences could be far-reaching.

“It’s … sea turtles, it’s manatees, it’s whooping cranes, it’s various seabirds, it’s Rice’s whales, it’s sperm whales, it is endangered corals,” he said. “It is every endangered or threatened species in the Gulf of Mexico.”

What is the ‘God Squad?’

It was established in 1978 as a way to exempt projects from Endangered Species Act protections if a cost-benefit analysis concluded it was the only way to achieve net economic benefits in the national or regional interest.

The seven-member committee is led by the secretary of the Interior, with five other federal officials and with affected states getting one shared vote. Five votes are required for an exemption.

The committee has only issued exemptions twice. The first was for construction of a dam on a section of the Platte River considered critical habitat for whooping cranes, though a negotiated settlement won significant protections that led to overall ecosystem improvements. The second was for logging in northern spotted owl habitat, but the request was withdrawn after environmental groups sued, arguing that the committee’s decision was political and violated legal procedures.

Jasny fears the Trump administration wants to eliminate rigorous scrutiny of future exemptions and “turn this … into a thing that could be invoked at any time, almost for any purpose.”

If it can be done for drilling in the Gulf, he said, “why not California? Why not Alaska?”

“If you can declare an emergency to just kill sea turtles and manatees and whales in the Gulf, you know no species is safe.”

___

The Associated Press’ climate and environmental coverage receives financial support from multiple private foundations. AP is solely responsible for all content. Find AP’s standards for working with philanthropies, a list of supporters and funded coverage areas at AP.org.

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Democrats’ hopes of reclaiming the U.S. Senate are colliding with a fight within their own party.

In Maine, Senate Minority Leader Chuck Schumer has thrown his weight behind Gov. Janet Mills in a crucial race, but some of his Senate colleagues are backing insurgent candidate Graham Platner in a rebuke of his strategic vision. A similar dynamic is playing out in other battlegrounds, including Michigan and Minnesota, where progressives senators are endorsing non-establishment candidates.

At stake is more than any single race. Democrats are fighting over whether the party’s traditional playbook still works in a country that elected Donald Trump for a second time — and whether leaders like Schumer should remain in charge.

“Clearly there’s a disagreement of strategy here,” said New Mexico Sen. Martin Heinrich, who has endorsed Platner.

He added that “the business-as-usual calculation for what is going to be successful in a given election cycle does not necessarily, in my view, meet the moment.”

The divide reflects a Democratic base frustrated after the last presidential election, when President Joe Biden ran for a second term despite widespread concerns about his age. He dropped out and endorsed Vice President Kamala Harris, who lost to Trump.

Nan Whaley, a Democratic strategist in Ohio who ran for governor four years ago, said the debate is no longer about progressive or moderate.

“It’s really about, who do you trust? Establishment or not establishment,” she said. “And frankly, the establishment hasn’t given us a lot to trust these past few years.”

‘A rebuke of Schumer’

In Maine, Schumer and the Democratic Senatorial Campaign Committee, or DSCC, have backed Mills, a 78-year-old moderate in her second term.

Platner, a veteran and oyster farmer, quickly won the backing of Sen. Bernie Sanders, I-Vt., just days after launching his campaign. His bid has since gained momentum despite scrutiny over past controversial comments and a tattoo resembling a Nazi symbol.

In recent weeks, Heinrich, Arizona Sen. Ruben Gallego and Massachusetts Sen. Elizabeth Warren have endorsed Platner as he builds support on Capitol Hill. Heinrich and Rhode Island Sen. Sheldon Whitehouse held a fundraiser for him, too.

Gallego, a first-term senator who won a battleground race in 2024, downplayed the endorsements as a broader critique of party leadership.

“Senate leadership didn’t back me at the beginning. So I didn’t take that as a critique,” Gallego said.

Michigan also has a contentious primary, with three high-profile candidates. State Sen. Mallory McMorrow has said she would not support Schumer as the caucus leader if Democrats regain the majority, and she’s been endorsed by four senators.

Abdul El-Sayed, running further to the left, has been endorsed by Sanders and has also run on an anti-establishment platform.

U.S. Rep. Haley Stevens has aligned with establishment figures, working with a former DSCC executive director and securing support from two senators.

Democratic strategist Lis Smith said the endorsements in races like Maine and Michigan are “as much as a rebuke of Schumer as it is an endorsement of these candidates.”

“It’s pretty uncommon for sitting senators to endorse against the Senate leader,” Smith said. “Senators are reading the tea leaves and are getting feedback from the grassroots that they are dissatisfied with Schumer’s performance as leader.”

In Minnesota, an open-seat race has similarly emerged as a test of the party’s direction. Rep. Angie Craig is seen as the centrist candidate in the primary, with endorsements from House Democratic Leader Hakeem Jeffries and Rep. Nancy Pelosi. Lt. Gov. Peggy Flanagan, the more progressive candidate, has been backed by Sanders, Warren and others, including Minnesota Sen. Tina Smith, who is vacating the seat.

“She understands that right now what we need are fierce fighters, people who are willing to stand up to the status quo,” Smith said in her endorsement.

‘The election may impact’ Schumer’s time as leader

Some tensions trace to March 2025, when Schumer voted with Republicans to end a government shutdown, drawing backlash from Democrats who argued he did not push hard enough against Trump’s agenda.

Later that year, Democrats held firm in a record-long shutdown fight, helping regain some ground with activists and progressives. But divisions resurfaced when a group of moderates ultimately sided with Republicans, fueling renewed frustration with party leadership even as Schumer opposed the move.

Since he became Senate leader in 2017, Schumer’s record in elections has been mixed. He led Democrats back to the majority in 2020 and expanded it in 2022 but lost ground in both 2018 and 2024.

“Leader Schumer’s North Star is taking back the Senate and is pursuing a path to do just that,” said Allison Biasotti, a spokesperson for Schumer.

He’s recruited high-profile candidates this year in tough Senate races, such as Alaska, Ohio and North Carolina. Maeve Coyle, communications director for the DSCC, said Schumer “created a path to win a Democratic Senate majority this cycle” with the recruitment.

“Senate Democrats overperformed in the last four election cycles and in 2026, we will win seats and flip the majority,” she added.

David Axelrod, who served as a top strategist for President Barack Obama, said that being Senate leader is never easy, and that Schumer “has been under fire for some time, particularly from progressives in the party.”

Schumer’s time as leader, Axelrod added, is likely directly linked to the outcome of the 2026 midterms.

“There’s questions as to whether he’ll run in 2028. There’s even questions as to whether he might be challenged as leader,” he said. “I think the results of this election may impact that.”

For now, Schumer’s caucus is tentatively standing behind him. None have explicitly called for him to step aside. But discontent has lingered, with some openly questioning whether the party needs a new direction.

“How people did politics in the 1990s is going to feel different than in the 2020s,” said Heinrich.

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For decades, the image of the software developer has been one of a solitary architect hunched over a glowing integrated development environment (IDE) and terminal, translating complex business logic into thousands of lines of syntax. Success was often measured by a developer’s ability to act as a living dictionary of commands and a precise debugger of semicolons. But we are entering a new era. The introduction of agentic tools and AI-assisted “vibe coding” is fundamentally transforming the developer workflow. We are witnessing the rise of the “Supervisor Class” — a shift where the developer’s primary value is no longer the manual production of code, but the high-level orchestration of autonomous agents.

The Rise of the Supervisor Class

The developer’s role is moving to a higher plane. Previously, a workflow involved understanding a business need, drafting high-level and low-level designs, and then typing out every single line of code. Today, the last two steps are largely handled by agents. A developer now prompts a system with goals and requirements, allowing the agent to complete the task.

In this new reality, the terminal is becoming a more powerful tool than traditional UI builders because it acts as the central hub for overseeing autonomous loops. The developer no longer just writes; they review, refine, and direct. The core value proposition has shifted from the rote memorization of syntax to the application of high-level judgment.

The Death of Syntax and the Birth of Agent Skills

In this reimagined workflow, remembering 50 or 60 specific terminal commands is no longer a bottleneck. While fundamental knowledge of what these commands do remains necessary, the need to memorize granular syntax is fading. In its place, the industry is adopting agent skills — modular, natural-language instructions that teach an agent how to bridge its own knowledge gaps.

Agent skills solve one of the most persistent frustrations in early AI coding: the “forgetting” problem. Standard prompts are transient, and large language models (LLMs) suffer from limited context windows; once a conversation gets too long, the model loses its edge. Agent skills act as a modular, indexed framework — much like the chapters of a book — allowing an agent to pull in only the specific knowledge it needs for a task. This allows developers to build a persistent “second brain” within their project repositories, ensuring that if an agent learns a best practice or a project-specific architectural rule once, it retains it going forward.

Vibe Coding with Guardrails

The shift toward vibe coding has its skeptics. Without structure, vibe coding can lead to low-quality AI output, the so-called “slop,” producing code that looks right but fails to meet production security or performance standards. The new architecture of collaboration requires reimagining the Software Development Life Cycle (SDLC) with built-in guardrails. Enterprises are now embedding linters, security scanners, and deterministic workflows directly into the agentic loop.

The need for a structured foundation is why the myth that SaaS platforms are irrelevant is at odds with enterprise reality. When developers vibe code an entire architecture from scratch, they inadvertently create a massive hidden tax: a sprawling surface area of raw code that they must then maintain, secure, and operate. The resulting management overhead — spending elite engineering time correcting outputs and paying the high token costs of ungrounded prompts — eventually outweighs the initial speed of creation.

Agentic SaaS platforms provide the necessary metadata and secure infrastructure that allow agents to execute tasks — from billing support to promotional queries — with the accuracy required for production. Agent skills are still valuable. When deployed within a platform where the security and scalability foundations are already established, agent skills become a massive accelerator for developers to rapidly build high-value capabilities on top of the platform.

Managing a Team of Sub-Agents

The modern developer’s daily life is increasingly spent managing a flat team of specialized sub-agents. Rather than one monolithic AI agent, developers are orchestrating sequential or parallel workflows between agents specialized in front-end code, security reviews, or testing.

We see this shift in how organizations are already scaling. Lennar, one of the largest homebuilders in the U.S., now deploys 1.1 million agentic workflows per month to help keep more customers engaged, increase conversion rates, and shorten the sales cycle. Similarly, paper tablet maker reMarkable launched its first AI agent in just three weeks; it has resolved more than 10,500 customer inquiries with an NPS score that matches its human support team.

For companies like these, the supervisor class of developers isn’t just writing code; they are building the skills and orchestration layers that allow these agents to function as a seamless extension of the workforce.

From Productivity to Quality: The New Metrics

If an agent can generate 1,000 lines of code in ten seconds, lines of code and raw velocity are no longer meaningful metrics for a developer’s productivity. In fact, more code often means more surface area for bugs.

We must shift our focus to the Agentic Work Unit, — the discrete task accomplished by an AI agent. At Salesforce, our own agentic implementation highlights this shift. Our support agents now handle 96% of cases autonomously, and we’ve saved over 50,000 seller hours by letting agents handle the “admin” of sales.

For developers, the Agentic Work Unit means measuring how they can leverage agents to solve complex problems with minimal friction. Success should be measured by software quality: Have we reduced the bug count? Is the architecture more resilient? Are we shipping features that actually solve user problems, rather than just filling repositories?

By moving away from token consumption as a metric and toward work quality, we empower developers to focus on what humans do best: exercise judgment, apply empathy to user needs, and design systems that are built to last.

The Enduring Need for Human Intent

We are in the early days of this transition, reminiscent of when developers first began sharing modules on Node Package Manager (NPM) or Maven. Soon, we will see global “Agent Skill Exchanges” where developers share modular agent instructions for everything from technical blogging to SEO and complex algorithmic logic.

The future belongs to the developer who masters the ability to break down human expertise into reusable agent skills. By stepping into the role of the supervisor, developers aren’t being replaced. They are finally being freed from the drudgery of syntax to focus on the one thing AI cannot replicate: the high-level judgment required to build the future of software.

The opinions expressed in Fortune.com commentary pieces are solely the views of their authors and do not necessarily reflect the opinions and beliefs of Fortune.

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As of 8:30 a.m. Eastern Time today, oil is trading at $110.69 per barrel, based on the Brent benchmark we’ll explain in a bit. That’s 41 cents below yesterday morning’s level—but about $35 higher than where it stood a year ago.

Will oil prices go up?

No one can say for sure where oil prices will go next. Many forces shape the market—but at the core, it’s still about supply and demand. When risks like a potential recession or war ramp up, oil prices can change direction quickly.

How oil prices translate to gas pump prices

When you buy gas at the pump, you’re covering more than the cost of crude oil. You’re also paying for every step in the process, including refineries, wholesalers, taxes, and the markup your local gas station adds.

Even so, crude oil has the biggest influence on what you pay, often making up more than half the cost per gallon. When oil prices jump, gas prices usually climb right along with them. But when oil falls, gas prices often slip much more slowly—a pattern sometimes called “rockets and feathers.”

The role of the U.S. Strategic Petroleum Reserve

If an emergency hits, the U.S. keeps a backup supply of crude oil called the Strategic Petroleum Reserve. It’s mainly there to protect energy security during crises, such as sanctions, catastrophic storm damage, even war. It can also help cushion the blow when supply shocks send prices soaring.

It’s not meant to solve long-term problems. Instead, it provides quick relief for consumers and helps keep vital parts of the economy moving, like essential industries, emergency services, and public transit.

How oil and natural gas prices are linked

Oil and natural gas are two of the world’s primary energy sources. A big change in oil prices can affect natural gas by extension. For example, if oil prices increase, some industries may swap natural gas for some segments of their operations where possible, which which increases demand for natural gas.

Historical performance of oil

When looking at how oil performs, two main benchmarks stand out:

• Brent crude oil is the main global oil benchmark.
• West Texas Intermediate (WTI) is the main benchmark of North America.

Of the two, Brent gives a better picture of global oil performance because it prices a large share of the world’s traded crude. It’s also the go-to for tracking oil’s historical trends. In fact, even the U.S. Energy Information Administration now relies on Brent as its primary reference in its Annual Energy Outlook.

If you look at the Brent benchmark over several decades, oil has been far from stable. It has experienced sharp rises tied to wars and supply cuts, along with steep drops linked to global recessions and oversupply (called a “glut”). For example:

• The early 1970s delivered the first major oil shock when the Middle East slashed exports and placed an embargo on the U.S. and others during the Yom Kippur War.
• Prices fell in the mid-1980s due to lower demand and an influx of non-OPEC oil producers joining the market.
• Prices surged again in 2008 as global demand grew, but then crashed alongside the global financial crisis.
• During the 2020 COVID lockdown, oil demand plummeted like never before—pushing prices below $20 per barrel.

To sum up, oil’s historical performance has been anything but smooth. Again, it’s heavily influenced by wars, recessions, OPEC whims, shifting energy policies, and much more.

Energy coverage from Fortune

Looking to stay up-to-date regarding the latest energy developments? Check out our recent coverage:

• India seeks U.S. help to produce more oil and wean itself off Russia, Middle East reliance
• S&P set for another loss following worst week since Iran War began as oil keeps climbing
• Trump said the Iran war was ‘very complete’ three weeks ago. Oil has surged 50% since

Frequently asked questions

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U.S. gas prices jumped past an average of $4 a gallon for the first time since 2022 on Tuesday as the Iran war pushed fuel prices to soar worldwide.

According to motor club AAA, the national average for a gallon of regular gasoline is now $4.02 — over a dollar more than before the war began. The last time U.S. drivers were collectively paying this much at the pump was nearly four years ago, following Russia’s invasion of Ukraine.

The price is a national average, meaning drivers in some states have been paying well over $4 a gallon for a while now. Prices vary from state to state due to factors ranging from nearby supply to differing tax rates.

Since the U.S. and Israel launched a joint war against Iran on Feb. 28, the cost of crude oil — the main ingredient in gasoline — has spiked and swung rapidly. That’s because the conflict has caused deep supply chain disruptions and cuts from major oil producers across the Middle East.

Motorists around the world are also coping with higher gas prices due to the war. In Paris, for example, gas is at 2.34 euros per liter ($2.68), which is about $10.27 a gallon.

Expensive gas could drag on the economy and drive up other prices

Higher gas prices are impacting consumers and businesses as many households continue to face wider cost of living strains. And as drivers pay more to cover necessities like gas, many may be forced to cut their budgets in other places.

More expensive fuel can also push up other spending, from utility bills to the price of many goods consumers buy each day.

Consumer prices and the cost of living already have become flashpoints in this midterm election year, with Democrats especially hammering Trump and Republicans as the GOP tries to hold majorities on Capitol Hill. A recent AP-NORC poll found that 45% of U.S. adults are “extremely” or “very” concerned about being able to afford gas in the next few months, up from 30% shortly after Trump won the 2024 presidential election with promises to lower costs.

In the immediate future, analysts point to groceries, which have to be restocked frequently and could also see price hikes as businesses’ transportation costs pile up.

But hauling other cargo and packages has also been impacted. The United Postal Service, for example, is seeking a temporary 8% added charge on some of its popular products including Priority Mail.

U.S. diesel prices — the fuel used for many freight and delivery trucks — is now going for an average of $5.45 a gallon, up from about $3.76 a gallon before the war began, per AAA.

If the war drags on, it’s possible that those prices could tick up even higher. Most tanker movement in the key Strait of Hormuz, where roughly one-fifth of the world’s oil typically sails through, remains at a halt. That’s led to cuts from major producers in the region who have no way of getting their crude to market. Meanwhile, Iran, Israel and the U.S. have all struck oil and gas facilities, worsening supply concerns.

Reserves open in an effort to cut prices

In a search for some relief, the International Energy Agency pledged to release 400 million barrels of oil from emergency stockpiles of member nations. That includes the U.S., despite Trump initially downplaying the need for reserve oil.

The Trump administration has also eased sanctions to free up some oil from Venezuela, and temporarily Russia. The White House also says it’s waiving maritime shipping requirements under a more than century-old law, known as the Jones Act, for 60 days.

It’s not yet clear if those efforts will bring relief for consumers. A lot of factors contribute to gas prices.

Refineries buy crude oil in advance, meaning some could be work with more expensive oil for a while, and it will take time for any new supply to trickle down to consumers.

And while steep crude prices are a leading driver behind today’s surge, U.S. gas prices typically tick up a bit at this time of year. More drivers are hitting the road and trying to fuel up while they can, so there’s higher demand. Warming weather also brings a shift to summer blend fuel, which is more expensive to produce than winter blend.

The US is an oil exporter, but it’s still affected by global prices

The U.S., which is a net oil exporter, hasn’t seen as stark a shock as other parts of the world that rely more heavily on fuel imports from the Middle East, notably Asia. But that doesn’t mean America is immune to price spikes.

Oil is a globally-traded commodity. And most of what the U.S. produces is light, sweet crude — but refineries on the East and West coasts are primarily designed to process heavier, sour product. As a result, the country also needs imports.

Escalating geopolitical conflicts have disrupted oil flows and contributed to a surge in gas prices in the past. The U.S. average for regular gasoline climbed to its highest level of more than $5 a gallon in June 2022, nearly four months after the Ukraine war began and world leaders imposed sanctions against Russia, a leading oil producer.

Prices at the pump later fell from that record. Before Tuesday, per AAA data, the national average had stayed below the $4 mark since mid-August of 2022.

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Associated Press journalists Angela Charlton in Paris and Bill Barrow in Washington contributed to this report.

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Gulf allies of the United States, led by Saudi Arabia and the United Arab Emirates, are urging President Donald Trump to continue prosecuting the war against Iran, arguing that Tehran hasn’t been weakened enough by the monthlong U.S.-led bombing campaign, according to U.S., Gulf and Israeli officials.

After private grumbling at the start of the war that they were not given adequate advance notice of the U.S.-Israeli attack and complaining the U.S. had ignored their warnings that the war would have devastating consequences for the entire region, some of the regional allies are making the case to the White House that the moment offers a historic opportunity to cripple Tehran’s clerical rule once and for all.

Officials from Saudi Arabia, United Arab Emirates, Kuwait and Bahrain have conveyed in private conversations that they do not want the military operation to end until there are significant changes in the Iranian leadership or there’s a dramatic shift in Iranian behavior, according to the officials, who were not authorized to comment publicly and spoke on the condition of anonymity.

The push from the Gulf nations comes as Trump vacillates between claiming that Iran’s decimated leadership is ready to settle the conflict and threatening to further escalate the war if a deal is not reached soon.

All the while, Trump is struggling to rally public support at home for a war that’s left more than 3,000 dead across the Mideast and is shaking the global economy. Yet the U.S. leader is sounding increasingly confident that he has the full support of his most important Mideast allies — including some that were hesitant about a new military campaign in the lead-up to the war.

“Saudi Arabia’s fighting back hard. Qatar is fighting back. UAE is fighting back. Kuwait’s fighting back. Bahrain’s fighting back,” Trump told reporters on Air Force One on Sunday evening as he made his way to Washington from his home in Florida. “They’re all fighting back.”

The Gulf countries host U.S. forces and bases from which the U.S. has launched strikes on Iran, but have not joined the offensive strikes.

Gulf allies support the war to varying degrees

While regional leaders are broadly supportive now of the U.S. efforts, one Gulf diplomat described some division, with Saudi Arabia and the UAE leading the calls for increasing military pressure on Tehran.

The UAE has emerged as perhaps the most hawkish of the Gulf countries and is pushing hard for Trump to order a ground invasion, the diplomat said. Kuwait and Bahrain also favor this option. The UAE, which has faced more than 2,300 missile and drone attacks from Iran, has only grown more irritated as the war grinds on and the salvos threaten to tarnish its image as the safe, pristine and monied hub for trade and tourism of the Mideast.

Oman and Qatar, which historically have played the role of intermediary between the long economically isolated Iran and the West, have favored a diplomatic solution.

The diplomat said Saudi Arabia has argued to the U.S. that ending the war now won’t produce a “good deal,” one guaranteeing security for Iran’s Arab neighbors.

The Saudis say an eventual war settlement must neutralize Iran’s nuclear program, destroy its ballistic missile capabilities, end Tehran’s support for proxy groups, and also ensure that the Strait of Hormuz cannot be effectively shutdown by the Islamic Republic in the future as it has during the conflict. About 20% of the world’s oil flowed through the waterway before the war.

Achieving those goals would require a sharp course correction by the theocracy that has been in charge of the country since the 1979 Islamic Revolution or its removal.

Senior Emirati officials, meanwhile, have become more pointed in their rhetoric toward Iran.

“An Iranian regime that launches ballistic missiles at homes, weaponizes global trade and supports proxies is no longer an acceptable feature of the regional landscape,” Noura Al Kaabi, a minister of state at the UAE’s Foreign Ministry, wrote in a column published Monday by the state-linked, English-language newspaper The National. She added: “We want a guarantee that this will never happen again.”

The White House declined to comment for this story about the deliberations with Gulf allies. But Secretary of State Marco Rubio on Monday underscored that the U.S. and its Gulf Arab allies are in sync about Iran.

“They are religious zealots who can never be allowed to possess a nuclear weapon because they have an apocalyptic vision of the future,” Rubio said of Iran in an appearance on ABC’s “Good Morning America.” “And all of their neighbors know that, by the way, which is why all of their neighbors have been supportive of the efforts we’re conducting.”

Saudi crown prince urges US not to let up

Crown Prince Mohammed bin Salman, the kingdom’s de facto leader, has told White House officials that a further defanging of Iran’s military capabilities and clerical leadership serves the long-term interest of the Gulf region and beyond, according to a person who has been briefed on the conversations.

Still, the Saudis are sensitive to the fact that the longer the conflict goes on the more opportunity Iran has to carry out strikes on the kingdom’s energy infrastructure, the heartbeat of its oil-rich economy.

A Saudi government official underscored that the kingdom ultimately wants to see a political solution to the crisis, but its immediate focus remains safeguarding its people and critical infrastructure.

Iran’s foreign minister early Tuesday insisted Tehran’s attacks on the Gulf Arab states only target U.S. forces, even after assaults have hit civilian targets.

“Iran respects the Kingdom of Saudi Arabia and considers it a brotherly nation,” Iranian Foreign Minister Abbas Araghchi wrote on X, sharing a photo purportedly showing damage to an American aircraft at a Saudi air base. “Our operations are aimed at enemy aggressors who have no respect for Arabs or Iranians, nor can provide any security. … High time to eject U.S. forces.”

Trump, in recent days, has sought to spotlight that most of the Gulf countries have stood in lockstep with his administration as the U.S. prosecutes the war, noting how they’ve coalesced in the thick of crisis as he criticizes NATO allies for not joining the U.S. in the fight.

On Friday, he heaped praise on Bahrain, Kuwait, Qatar, Saudi Arabia, and United Arab Emirates for showing “bravery” as the war has unfolded.

The president, speaking at an event in Miami sponsored by the Saudi sovereign wealth fund, was particularly effusive about the Saudi crown prince, hailing him as a “warrior” and a “fantastic man.”

Trump also alluded to the fact that the Gulf countries were hesitant about his and Israeli Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu’s decision to launch the war, but have since rallied.

“They weren’t thinking this was going to happen, nobody was,” said Trump, referring to Iran launching thousands of retaliatory salvos around the Gulf. “And they turned against them and really became very powerfully aligned. And they were with us, but they weren’t with us very obliquely. They were with us.”

Will Gulf allies join the fight?

Trump has yet to call on Gulf nations to take part in offensive operations.

One factor may be that the administration might have calculated that it’s not worth the complications that come with crowding the skies with additional militaries beyond Israel.

Three American fighter jets were mistakenly downed by friendly Kuwaiti fire in the first days of the conflict in the midst of an Iranian air assault. All six crew members safely ejected from the F-15E Strike Eagles.

And six American service members were killed on March 12, when their KC-135 refueling aircraft crashed in western Iraq.

Another factor is that only UAE and Bahrain are among the Gulf states that have formal diplomatic relations with Israel, adding a layer of complication to their calculus, notes Yasmine Farouk, the Gulf and Arabian Peninsula project director at the International Crisis Group

But Iran has warned it will attack its neighbors’ critical infrastructure, including desalination plants used to provide drinking water to the region, if Trump follows through on his threat to strike Iran’s power plants if it doesn’t open the Strait of Hormuz by April 6.

“The absence of a clear objective, the absence of the trust that the United States is really going to go until the end and finish the jobs … it’s making some of them reluctant,” Farouk said. “But if there is a consequential or mass casualty (event) in one of those countries, then it would be justified for them to become a belligerent.”

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Magdy reported from Cairo and Mednick reported from Tel Aviv, Israel. AP writers Darlene Superville aboard Air Force One and Josef Federman in Jerusalem contributed reporting.

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As the Iran war intensifies, President Donald Trump has prioritized efforts to calm the financial markets — trying to keep oil prices from exploding upward, stocks from cratering and interest rates from surging.

When the markets have flashed danger, Trump has been quick with a social media post or a remark to claim the war he launched last month could soon end. He’s publicly declared that the markets are doing better than he expected, even with the S&P 500 stock index declining over the past five weeks and the global oil benchmark up roughly 60%.

“I thought oil prices were going to go up higher than they are now,” Trump said at a Friday investor summit. “And I thought that we would see a bigger drop in stock. It hasn’t been that bad.”

With the Iran war, the White House has largely refrained from messaging more aggressively to voters about the economic consequences — choosing instead to try to contain any damage in the financial markets, which have swung wildly on the prospects of ceasefire or escalation in what has become a high-stakes guessing game about Trump’s next moves.

The Republican president showed the extremes of his messaging Monday before the U.S. stock market opened, writing in a social media post that great progress had been achieved on peace talks with Iran while also threatening civilian infrastructure such as desalination plants if a deal wasn’t reached “shortly.”

The White House sees the stock, energy and bond markets as a way to indirectly reach voters. Trump has staked his economic agenda on cheap prices at the pump, robust gains in 401(k) accounts and cheaper mortgage rates.

But that messaging appears to be wearing thin as the president’s various pronouncements have done little to change the reality that a large chunk of the world’s energy supplies is stranded by the conflict. Just 38% of U.S. adults approve of how he’s handling the economy and only 35% support him on Iran, according to a March survey by The Associated Press-NORC Center for Public Affairs Research.

The president has tried to dictate to markets instead of talking directly to Americans

Gene Sperling, a top economic adviser in the Democratic Clinton, Obama and Biden administrations, said voters can make a direct connection between prices at the pump and Trump’s choice to attack Iran. He said “simplistic jawboning” to the markets is insufficient for a public that is stuck paying the price as gasoline soars past $4 a gallon nationwide.

“Most advisers would say the president has to speak directly to the American people and fully acknowledge the economic pain that his policy has so directly caused in a short amount of time and make the case for why the national security concerns justify it,” Sperling said. “Instead, you have a strategy of not recognizing or even dismissing people’s economic pain.”

White House press secretary Karoline Leavitt on Monday called the oil price increases a “short-term fluctuation.”

Trump’s strategy of giving mixed messages has started to work against him, said Jeffrey Sonnenfeld, a professor at the Yale University School of Management and co-author of the new book “Trump’s Ten Commandments: Strategic Lessons from the Trump Leadership Toolbox.”

“The uncertainty is now soaring,” Sonnenfeld said. “As the messaging to calm markets with false reassurances is having diminishing credibility in financial markets, so, too, has Trump diminished public confidence.”

Trump’s desire for flexibility on the war limits his ability to offer clarity

Trump has embraced having flexibility in how he chooses to conduct the war, even though this has muddled his stated objectives.

During a Cabinet meeting Thursday, he said Iran was “begging” for a deal even as he threatened further military action — all the while maintaining that any economic damage to the U.S. would reverse itself.

On Friday after the markets closed, he extended his deadline for Iran to open the Strait of Hormuz, a key waterway for the flow of oil, saying he would hold off on bombing Iran’s energy plants in the meantime.

Treasury Secretary Scott Bessent said Monday on Fox News Channel’s “Fox & Friends” that Iran was letting some tankers through the Strait of Hormuz and that the “market is well supplied” because countries are releasing their strategic petroleum reserves and sanctions have been removed for Russian and Iranian oil already on tankers.

“We are seeing more and more ships go through on a daily basis as individual countries cut deals with the Iranian regime for the time being,” Bessent said. “But over time, the U.S. is going to retake control of the straits, and there will be freedom of navigation, whether it is through U.S. escorts or a multinational escort.”

Graham Steele, a Biden-era Treasury official, said Trump’s messaging techniques “can work temporarily, but they have diminishing returns, over time,” if they’re detached from actual policies and results.

“We saw a lot of the volatile market reactions initially, when he kept announcing these things and then walking them back,” Steele said. “The market reaction now is just a steady trend upward in prices,” he noted, adding that markets are “not responding to it in the same way anymore.”

Confidence in the economy and Trump is fading without clear results

The University of Michigan’s Index of Consumer Sentiment on Friday fell to a reading of 53.3 in March, its lowest level since December. Joanne Hsu, director of the surveys of consumers, pointed to the financial market volatility “in the wake of the Iran conflict” as reducing confidence in the economy for households with middle and higher incomes.

Hsu noted that the survey indicated that people do not expect the higher energy costs and stock market declines to persist, but that could change if the war “becomes protracted or if higher energy prices pass through to overall inflation.”

Gus Faucher, the chief economist at PNC Financial Services, stressed that low levels of consumer sentiment do not automatically signal a recession. But he said consumers would have to see lower gas prices, a steady stock market and decreased mortgage rates to feel better about the economy, which likely means a definitive resolution to the conflict rather than a series of pronouncements by Trump.

“The proof is in the pudding,” Faucher said. “People need to see some substantive improvements before they feel better about conditions.”

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U.S. President Donald Trump on Monday threatened widespread destruction of Iran’s energy resources and other vital infrastructure, potentially including desalination plants that supply drinking water, if a deal to end the war is not reached “shortly.”

Iran, meanwhile, struck a key water and electrical plant in Kuwait, and an oil refinery in Israel came under attack. A drone hit a Kuwaiti oil tanker in Dubai waters, causing a fire that authorities were working to control early Tuesday, the Dubai Media Office said.

Israel and the U.S. launched a new wave of strikes on Iran, as the war raged with no end in sight.

Trump’s new threat came in a social media post. Earlier comments to the Financial Times suggested American troops could seize Iran’s Kharg Island oil export hub. Trump has repeatedly claimed to be making diplomatic progress — though Tehran denies negotiating directly — while ramping up his threats and sending thousands more U.S. troops to the Middle East.

Trump told the New York Post that the U.S. is negotiating with Iran’s parliament speaker, Mohammad Bagher Qalibaf. The former Revolutionary Guard commander, who has taunted the U.S. on social media, dismissed the talks facilitated by Pakistan as a cover for the latest American troop deployments.

Trump says diplomacy is going well but threatens major escalation

In a social media post, Trump said “great progress is being made” in talks with Iran to end military operations. But he said if a deal is not reached “shortly,” and if the Strait of Hormuz is not immediately reopened, the U.S. would broaden its offensive by “completely obliterating” power plants, oil wells, Kharg Island and possibly even desalination plants.

The strait is a crucial waterway through which a fifth of the world’s oil is shipped in peacetime.

The laws of armed conflict allow attacks on civilian infrastructure such as energy plants only if the military advantage outweighs the civilian harm, legal scholars say. It’s considered a high bar to clear, and causing excessive suffering to civilians can constitute a war crime.

A 22-year-old resident of Karaj, near Tehran, said his area lost power for several hours overnight following nearby strikes.

“I was really scared. I thought that they’d hit the power plants and that we are not going to have power anymore,” he said, speaking on condition of anonymity out of security fears.

Iran says US demands are ‘excessive, unrealistic and irrational’

The U.S. already has targeted military positions on Kharg. Iran has threatened to launch its own ground invasion of Gulf Arab countries and to mine the Persian Gulf if U.S. troops set foot on its territory.

Iranian Foreign Ministry spokesman Esmail Baghaei said Tehran had received a 15-point proposal from the Trump administration containing “excessive, unrealistic and irrational” demands, while denying there had been any direct talks.

Qalibaf, the parliament speaker Trump says he is negotiating with, said Iranian forces were “waiting for the arrival of American troops on the ground to set them on fire and punish their regional partners forever,” according to state media.

Twice during Trump’s second term, the U.S. has attacked Iran during high-level diplomatic talks, including with the Feb. 28 strikes that started the current war.

Iran attacks Israel and Gulf infrastructure

Sirens sounded at dawn near Israel’s main nuclear research center, a part of the country that has been targeted repeatedly in recent days. Israel’s military also said it had taken out two drones launched from Yemen, where the Iran-backed Houthi rebels entered the war on Saturday with their first missile attack.

Iran kept up the pressure on its Gulf Arab neighbors: Saudi Arabia intercepted five missiles targeting its oil-rich Eastern province; a fireball erupted over Dubai, United Arab Emirates, as a missile was intercepted; and in Kuwait, an Iranian attack hit a power and desalination plant, killing one worker and wounding 10 soldiers, the state-run KUNA news agency reported.

An Emirati official signaled that the UAE wants more than just a ceasefire.

“An Iranian regime that launches ballistic missiles at homes, weaponizes global trade and supports proxies is no longer an acceptable feature of the regional landscape,” Noura Al Kaabi, a minister of state at the UAE’s Foreign Ministry, wrote in a column published by the state-linked, English-language newspaper The National.

She added: “We want a guarantee that this will never happen again.”

NATO air defenses intercepted a ballistic missile over Turkey that was fired from Iran, Turkey’s Defense Ministry said, in the fourth such incident since the start of the war. Iran has denied firing the previous missiles. Turkey is taking part in mediation efforts.

Israel launched a new wave of attacks on Iran, saying it was striking “military infrastructure” across Tehran. Explosions were heard in the Iranian capital, and Iranian state media reported that a petrochemicals plant in Tabriz, in the north, sustained damage in an airstrike.

Peacekeepers killed in Lebanon, where Israel is battling Hezbollah

The U.N. Security Council planned to convene an emergency session Tuesday after officials said three peacekeepers in southern Lebanon had been killed in less than 24 hours. The meeting was scheduled after a request from France.

The U.N. peacekeeping mission in the region where Israel is battling the Iran-backed Hezbollah did not say who was responsible for the deaths overnight and into Monday.

Two of the peacekeepers were killed when an explosion of “unknown origin” destroyed their vehicle, and a third was killed earlier when a base for the peacekeeping mission, known as UNIFIL, was hit by a projectile. All three peacekeepers were from the Indonesian army, U.N. officials said.

The Israeli army said it was reviewing the deaths to determine if they resulted from Hezbollah activity or Israeli fire, noting that they “occurred in an active combat area.”

An Israeli airstrike on a Beirut suburb killed one person and wounded 17, including four children, according to Lebanon’s Health Ministry.

Over the weekend, Israeli Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu said the military would widen its invasion, expanding the “existing security strip” in southern Lebanon.

In Iran, authorities say more than 1,900 people have been killed, while 19 have been reported dead in Israel.

Two dozen people have been killed in Gulf states and the occupied West Bank. In Lebanon, officials said more than 1,200 people have been killed, and more than 1 million have been displaced.

Ten Israeli soldiers have died in Lebanon, while 13 U.S. service members have been killed in the war.

Oil prices rise again as concerns of global energy crisis grow

Iran’s attacks on the energy infrastructure of the region and its stranglehold on the Strait of Hormuz have threatened global supplies of oil, natural gas and fertilizer. They have sent fuel prices skyrocketing and given rise to growing concerns about an energy crisis.

Trump has said that Iran agreed to allow 20 oil tankers through the Strait of Hormuz starting Monday as “a sign of respect.” There was no information on whether those ships were actually moving.

Brent crude oil, the international standard, was trading around $115 Monday, up nearly 60% from when the war started.

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Boak reported from Washington and Corder from The Hague, Netherlands. Associated Press writers David Rising in Bangkok, Collin Binkley in Washington, Amir-Hussein Radjy in Cairo, Melanie Lidman in Tel Aviv, Israel, and Sally Abou AlJoud in Beirut contributed to this report.

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The software-as-a-service (SaaS) doomer headlines may have peaked in February—but if you check out the dealmaking data, SaaS has been looking alive. 

For the final quarter of 2025, enterprise SaaS M&A hit $83.7 billion in total value, recent PitchBook data found. This was across 245 deals, a slight drop in deal count quarter-over-quarter, but a nearly 24% leap in deal value. All in, this means that 2025 was the biggest year for enterprise SaaS M&A since the fever pitch of 2021. 

On its face, perhaps not what you were expecting. We’re a few weeks removed from February’s so-called SaaSpocalypse. In the 24 hours following the release of Anthropic’s Claude Cowork AI, software stocks in the public markets cratered: $285 billion in market value violently vanished overnight. (Since, some of the hardest-hit, including Salesforce, Adobe, and Workday, have evened out or rebounded—though all remain down year-to-date.) 

The SaaSpocalypse, ultimately, was a knee-jerk, existential reaction to where AI is (slowly, in many contexts) dragging the tech stack. And this round of PitchBook data is a reminder that the “death of SaaS” story, while a nightmare for public market multiples, is actually not a hindrance in the slightest to private market dealmaking.

“The SaaSpocalypse is accelerating M&A rather than slowing it down, and I expect enterprise SaaS M&A to remain highly active in 2026,” said Derek Hernandez, PitchBook senior research analyst, via email. “The sharp compression in public software multiples has made take-privates meaningfully cheaper for PE sponsors who were already deploying record capital. Additionally, M&A involving PE-backed enterprise SaaS surged over 100% YoY in 2025 to $89 billion. What we’re seeing is that flight to defensibility.”

Still, the SaaS spoils are very concentrated. These Q4 M&A numbers are bolstered by 17 multi-billion mega-deals, which comprised more than 75% of the total deal value for Q4. The largest deals included IBM’s $11 billion Confluent acquisition and Permira and Warburg Pincus’s $8.4 billion Clearwater Analytics deal. (Notably, strategics really showed up in Q4, as corporate M&A soared quarter-over-quarter by 168.5%, reaching $51.8 billion.)

It’s probably also not an exaggeration to say: We could very well be entering a golden moment for SaaS deals. The public markets’ agony may for the foreseeable future make assets less expensive, while AI urgency remains high. 

For the record, I do think the “death of SaaS” on some level is real. It doesn’t pertain specifically to the Salesforces or the Workdays of the world (they will certainly be around at the end of the decade). But the SaaS-era, ARR-reliable, seat-selling way of doing business? That’s certainly on its way out. And as it goes, the deals will flow.

See you tomorrow,

Allie Garfinkle
X: @agarfinks
Email: alexandra.garfinkle@fortune.com

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Treeline wants to rebuild corporate IT from the ground up, starting with the everyday headaches most workers barely notice until something breaks.

The San Francisco–based startup has raised a $25 million Series A led by Andreessen Horowitz to build what it calls a “modern IT operating system,” an AI and software-first alternative to the decades-old managed services firms still powering most corporate IT. The round comes as global IT spend is expected to climb above $6 trillion in 2026.

“Basically every business in the world needs some form of IT management,” Peter Doyle, CEO and cofounder of Treeline, told Fortune. Most companies, he notes, can’t afford a full in-house department, so they outsource to a managed service provider—one of roughly 40,000 firms in the U.S. alone that handle everything from onboarding employees to fixing the Wi-Fi. The product those providers sell, as he sees it, is fundamentally “people and tools.” Teams of technicians stitch together dozens of point solutions to monitor environments, provision laptops, and respond to tickets, he says.

Treeline’s bet is to flip that model. Instead of starting with people and layering in software, it starts with a unified software and AI layer, then brings technicians for judgment and oversight. The company says its AI agents now augment or directly resolve 98% of customer requests, and speed up employee onboarding from 20 minutes to 2 minutes.

“What it takes is not being afraid to keep technicians and people in the loop,” Doyle says. “I’m not saying that we should replace technicians. We should empower them.” 

Treeline uses its technicians‑in‑the‑loop model to automate lower level work like password resets so specialists can focus on “the really important tasks,” Doyle says.Doyle comes to the problem as an investor turned founder and operator. He previously spent about a decade in venture capital at Accel, backing IT infrastructure and security companies like Pagerduty, Heptio, and ServiceChannel. When we started Treeline, he thought building a better tool and selling it into that channel would be enough. “Within the first 10 days, we realized that wouldn’t work. We actually needed to fundamentally change how this industry operates,” he told Fortune.

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“World class.” “Consistent.” “Focused relentlessly on performance.” Blackstone President and COO Jon Gray is speaking from his New York office, and you could be forgiven for thinking he’s referring to the strategy that has helped turn his firm into the world’s largest alternative investment manager, now boasting $1.3 trillion in AUM (assets under management).

But actually, he’s talking about golf. Or rather, a golfer—the one Blackstone just hired to be its first ever brand ambassador. And in choosing Tommy Fleetwood, the 4th highest-ranked golfer on the PGA Tour, Blackstone did set out to find someone that embodied the firm’s ethos. “He’s such a compelling figure, he’s a self effacing, good high-integrity human being who also happens to be outstanding at what he does,” effuses Gray, who calls Fleetwood “world class, both as a professional and as a human being.” 

The terms of the deal were not disclosed, but they will involve Fleetwood wearing Blackstone’s logo in the coveted “front of hat” position when he plays in tournaments around the world, and perhaps a little mixing and mingling with Blackstone clients at events designed to reach clients in a more relaxed setting than a conference room. 

Fleetwood is the British golfer who is known as one of the most likable players on tour. He previously held the uncomfortable record of having the most top five finishes on the PGA Tour without a win—an excruciating 30. But last year when he finally broke the streak and won the Tour Championship in August, it was a moment that showcased grit and glory, transcending sports. The New York Times dubbed 2025 “the year of Tommy.”  

Gray says the pairing came about via Blackstone partner Joe Baratta, who runs the firm’s private equity business, and had a preexisting relationship with Fleetwood. “He came to us and said, ‘Hey, look, [Tommy’s] got a contract that’s coming up with Nike and he’s thinking about potentially making some changes. Would we have an interest?’”

Underpinning the deal, of course, is Blackstone’s quest to raise its profile in the highly lucrative—and increasingly competitive—private wealth business. Gray says the business is about $300 billion, or roughly one-fourth of the firm’s total AUM. Blackstone primarily provides retail investors with access to alternative investments such as real estate or private credit, in which they give up instant liquidity in exchange for higher returns. That makes Blackstone’s client base mostly financial advisors who recommend those asset classes to their clients, as well as family offices and high-net-worth individuals. 

Gray points out that Blackstone’s institutional investors like pension funds tend to have about one-third of their assets in private vehicles. But if you look at individuals—even very affluent individuals—they’re only about 1%-2% allocated to private assets, “and yet their time horizons look very similar,” he notes.

Is Gray worried about the current souring mood towards private credit, which has weighed on Blackstone’s stock this year? He acknowledges the noise, and admits that the for the economy overall, “the picture in the near term looks cloudy.” But he says his investors want returns over years and decades, not days. “It’s not what’s going to happen next week, it’s what’s going to happen in five, 10, 20 or 30 years,” that matters he says.

The ability to absorb stress and transcend losses are also themes that are all too familiar to golfers. So is Gray considering picking up a set of clubs now that Fleetwood will be repping the firm? The answer: Not yet. “I’m a Type-A person, so if I do something, I want to be really, really good at it,” he says. With a punishing travel schedule, taking it up anytime soon isn’t the cards. “For right now, I’m focused on work and family, and I love that Tommy is focused on golf.”

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Steve Klinsky has spent 25 years building New Mountain Capital into one of private equity’s most respected firms, with $60 billion in assets under management across hundreds of portfolio companies. His investment record speaks for itself: a supply chain software company he bought for $600 million sold for over $8 billion. A life sciences firm he backed went public at a $3 billion gain. The firm often says that it has never had a portfolio company go bankrupt.

But ask Klinsky what he’s most excited about right now, and he’ll tell you about a website.

ModernStates.org—the online home of his Modern States Education Alliance—has quietly reached 800,000 people and given away the equivalent of 25,000 free years of college credit, all without spending a dollar on advertising. And Klinsky says that’s just the start.

“It’s just getting started,” he said in a recent interview on Goldman Sachs’ Great Investors podcast, noting that it’s all happened without a single dollar spent on advertising.

“There’s $1.7 trillion dollars of student debt,” Klinsky said when speaking about what motivates him, a notable philanthropist. “It’s an unreal number.”

The Idea Is Elegantly Simple

Modern States didn’t invent anything new, Klinsky explained to Alison Mass, Goldman’s chair of Investment Banking, Global Banking and Markets. It built on a little-known but decades-old program called CLEP exams—College-Level Examination Program tests administered by the College Board, the same organization behind the SAT. The exams cover dozens of subjects, from college algebra to American literature, and have existed for 50 years. Pass one, and most U.S. colleges and universities will award you the credit—no tuition required.

The problem was that almost nobody knew about them, and even fewer could afford to prepare for them properly.

Klinsky’s solution: hire the best professor in each of the 32 subjects, build a free online course for every one, and post them at ModernStates.org. Students get free coursework, free readings, and free practice questions. If they pass, Modern States even picks up the $100 CLEP exam fee.

The math is striking.

“If you’re Abe Lincoln and you’re totally impoverished but you’re ambitious, you can get a year of college this way and save a year of time and $30 grand of money,” Klinsky said.

Why a Billionaire PE Founder Is Doing This

Klinsky, whose net worth Forbes estimates at $4.9 billion, didn’t arrive at education philanthropy through guilt or optics. His path there is personal.

Growing up in Detroit, his older brother Gary—seven years his senior—tutored him relentlessly after school. “It was incredibly meaningful in my life,” Klinsky said. Gary died of a genetic illness while Klinsky was just in graduate school at Harvard. And in 1987, when Klinsky made partner at his first major PE firm, Forstmann Little, in New York City, one of his first acts was to create afterschool centers in the most crime-ridden neighborhoods nearby, named in Gary’s memory. They’re still running today.

That hands-on experience in East New York—a neighborhood that at the time had more murders than the entire state of Nebraska—convinced him the problem with America’s most underserved students wasn’t the kids. It was the system. “When I would go visit the school,” he said, “the kids were fantastic. The teachers were fantastic.”

Charter schools came next. Then a deeper focus on higher education. Then Modern States.

Redemption of an Industry

Klinsky’s philanthropy is harder to dismiss when you consider where he came from. He is, by his own acknowledgment, a character in Barbarians at the Gate—the classic business book that became the defining indictment of 1980s private equity excess, chronicling the savage $25 billion RJR Nabisco buyout (then the largest in history) and the era of debt-fueled, fee-gorged dealmaking that made Wall Street a cultural villain for a generation.

He was there. He saw it up close. And he spent the next 40 years building something deliberately different.

New Mountain Capital was founded on a explicit rejection of the old model—less debt, no financial engineering, only non-cyclical industries, and a relentless focus on actually improving the businesses it buys. Klinsky has made the case publicly for years, including as chairman of the American Investment Council, the trade group representing all 5,000 U.S. private equity firms, and in a Harvard Business Review piece laying out how his firm grew a sleepy supply chain software company from $600 million to over $8 billion in value.

“Private equity has gone from a form of finance into a form of business,” he told Mass on the Goldman Sachs podcast. His free-college initiative, in that light, isn’t a detour from Klinsky’s Wall Street identity but another expression of what he’s always done: find something broken, rolled up his sleeves, and built something better.

Just Getting Started

Despite its scale, Modern States remains one of philanthropy’s best-kept secrets. Klinsky attributes its growth entirely to word of mouth—800,000 users found it organically, proof of concept for a model he believes can grow far larger.

At a moment when student debt has become one of the defining anxieties of a generation, the program’s timing couldn’t be more relevant. Even in-state tuition at universities trying to hold costs down—like Purdue in Indiana—runs roughly $33,000 a year, Klinsky noted.

Modern States won’t solve the student debt crisis alone. But for 800,000 people who’ve already used it, it may be the most practical solution anyone has actually delivered.

For this story, Fortune journalists used generative AI as a research tool. An editor verified the accuracy of the information before publishing.

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Good morning. When Barbara Larson stepped into the role of EVP and CFO at Workiva in January, she wasn’t entering unfamiliar territory. She had used the company’s financial reporting platform at Workday and VMware and had advocated for it. So, when the opportunity came to join Workiva, she says the decision was uncomplicated.

“I love this stage of the company,” Larson told me. It’s the high-stakes push to scale. “We’ve guided to $1 billion in revenue this year.”

Workiva (NYSE: WK), which offers an AI-powered platform for governance, risk, compliance, and sustainability, reported $885 million in total revenue for fiscal 2025, a 20% year-over-year increase, with subscription and support revenue growing 22%. For the full year 2026, total revenue is expected to be in the range of $1.036 billion to $1.040 billion. Among the company’s more than 6,600 customers are Hershey, Slack, and KeyBank, according to its website.

Courtesy of Workiva

Larson brings more than two decades of financial leadership experience. She most recently served as CFO at SentinelOne and previously spent nearly a decade at Workday, ultimately becoming CFO. She also held senior roles at VMware, TIBCO Software, and Symantec.

Many companies are still drowning in data across disparate systems, a pain point Workiva is designed to address, Larson said. “I’ve spent my entire career in finance,” Larson said. You’ve got your data working either for you or against you—there isn’t a middle ground, she said. If you’re running AI across fragmented systems or unreliable data, you aren’t accelerating insight; you’re just accelerating the wrong answers, she added.

Regulatory pressures are intensifying, Larson noted, with shifting requirements and a changing geopolitical backdrop making compliance a moving target. Workiva’s approach is to ground AI within the customer’s own data, standards, and context, so output isn’t merely “plausible” but actionable and defensible, she said.

That applies to internal users managing SEC reporting, Sarbanes-Oxley compliance, enterprise risk management, and sustainability disclosures, as well as external auditors using the same platform. Larson points to SEC risk factor drafting: when new standards or risks emerge, AI itself being a prime example, teams can draft disclosures and benchmark them against peers within a controlled environment.

Larson’s role also reflects a broader shift in what it means to be a CFO in 2026. The job, she says, looks nothing like it did five years ago.

That includes a dual mandate on AI: CFOs must drive adoption across the enterprise while transforming their own finance organizations. At Workiva, Larson is partnering with the CIO and executive team to identify where AI can drive faster outcomes and create leverage for shareholders, she said. In fiscal 2025, Workiva delivered more than 600 basis points of non-GAAP operating leverage alongside 20% revenue growth, a trajectory she aims to continue.

As a mentor, Larson’s advice is grounded in her own biography. Growing up moving frequently, she learned to embrace change, be adaptable, and stay curious—principles that apply to the age of AI.

“If you are going to be a really strong finance leader, you have to understand the broader business,” she said.

Sheryl Estrada
sheryl.estrada@fortune.com

Quick note: CFO Daily marked five years on March 28! Over the years, I’ve had the opportunity to speak with hundreds of finance chiefs across industries. It has been fascinating to report on the evolution of the CFO role and the future of the finance organization. A special thanks to Fortune’s executive editor Lee Clifford, who has worked with me from the beginning. And thank you for your readership.

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AI models are affirming people’s worst behaviors even when other humans say they’re in the wrong, and users can’t get enough. 

A new study out of the Stanford computer science department and published in the journal Science revealed that AI affirms users 49% more than a human does on average when it comes to social questions—a worrying trend especially as people increasingly turn to AI for personal advice and even therapy.

Of the 2,400 who participated in the study, mostly preferred being flattered. The number of test subjects more likely to use the sycophantic AI again was 13% higher compared to those who said they would return to the non-sycophantic chatbot, suggesting AI developers may have little incentive to change things up, according to the study.

While sycophantic chatbots have been previously shown to contribute to negative outcomes such as self-harm or violence in vulnerable populations, the Stanford study shows it may also be extending some effects to everyone else.

The study found subjects exposed to just one affirming response to their bad behavior were less willing to take responsibility for their actions and repair their interpersonal conflicts while also making them more likely to believe they were right.

To obtain this result, researchers conducted a three-part study in which they measured AI’s sycophancy based on a dataset of nearly 12,000 social prompts which they ran through 11 leading AI models including Anthropic’s Claude, Google’s Gemini, and OpenAI’s ChatGPT. Even when researchers asked the AI models to judge posts from the subreddit AITA (Am I The Asshole) in which Reddit users had said the poster was wrong, the large language models still said the poster was right 51% of the time.

The study’s lead author and Stanford Computer Science Ph.D. candidate Myra Cheng said the results are worrying especially for young people who she said are turning to AI to try to solve their relationship problems.

“I worry that people will lose the skills to deal with difficult social situations,” Cheng told Stanford Report.

The AI study comes as government officials decide how involved regulators should be with overseeing AI. Several states, including Tennessee and Oregon, have passed their own laws on AI in the absence of federal regulations. Still, the White House last week put out a framework that, if taken up by Congress, would create a national AI policy and would preempt states’ “patchwork” of rules. 

To test human reactions to sycophantic AI, researchers studied the reactions of just overn2,400 human participants interacting with AI. First, 1,605 participants were asked to imagine they were the author of a post based on the AITA subreddit which was deemed wrong by other humans on the subreddit but deemed right by AI. The participants then either read the sycophantic AI response or a non-sycophantic response that was based on the human feedback. Another 800 participants talked with either a sycophantic or non-sycophantic AI model about a real conflict in their own lives before being asked to write a letter to the other person involved in their conflict.

Participants who received validating AI responses were measurably less likely to apologize, admit fault, or seek to repair their relationships. Even when users recognize models as sycophantic, the AI’s responses still affect them, said the study’s co-lead author, Stanford computer science and linguistics professor Dan Jurafsky.

“What they are not aware of, and what surprised us, is that sycophancy is making them more self-centered, more morally dogmatic,” Jurafsky told Stanford Report.

Surprisingly, in the Stanford study, when the researchers asked the study’s human subjects to rate the objectiveness of both sycophantic and non-sycophantic AI responses, they rated them about the same, meaning it’s possible users could not tell the sycophantic model was being overly agreeable.

“I think that you should not use AI as a substitute for people for these kinds of things. That’s the best thing to do for now,” said Cheng.

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Jamie Dimon has a warning: The American Dream is in trouble. And he’s putting JPMorgan Chase’s money where his mouth is.

The bank’s chairman and CEO on Tuesday unveiled the “American Dream Initiative” (ADI), a sweeping multi-year effort to expand economic opportunity across the United States. The announcement marks one of the most ambitious community investment programs in the bank’s 225-year history—and comes with a pointed message from its chief executive about the state of the country.

“The American Dream is alive, but it’s slipping out of reach for too many people—and for future generations,” Dimon said in a statement. “This slows economic growth, hurts communities and prevents many people from getting ahead.”

The initiative will span six focus areas: small business growth, affordable housing, financial health, careers and skills, healthcare access, and support for local institutions. But JPMorgan is leading with its biggest strength—small business banking—as the initial centerpiece of the program.

The nation’s largest lender to small businesses says it currently serves 7 million such firms and intends to grow that number to 10 million over the next several years. A representative for JPMorgan told Fortune that the 10 million figure is projected to be hit within five years. To get there, the bank is committing nearly $80 billion in lending to small businesses over the next decade, including direct loans and capital channeled through Community Development Financial Institutions (CDFIs) as well as mission-driven lenders. This is above the baseline figure, JPMorgan confirmed to Fortune.

JPMorgan also plans to hire 1,000 additional small business bankers across its 5,000-branch network and nearly double its corps of Senior Business Consultants to 150, with targeted expansion in markets like Atlanta, Philadelphia, Los Angeles, and San Francisco.

“Small businesses are essential to economic growth and opportunity in communities across America,” said Ben Walter, CEO of Chase for Business. “We are supporting entrepreneurs by combining local, on-the-ground engagement with the scale, capital and expertise of the nation’s leading small business bank—so they can start, grow and scale in the communities they call home.”

Through its Coaching for Impact program, JPMorgan plans to mentor and graduate nearly 115,000 small business owners in more than 80 cities over the next 10 years, marking an eight-fold increase from the program’s 2020 launch. On the financial literacy front, the bank aims to reach roughly 5 million customers, students, and small business owners with financial education, up from 1 million over the past five years.

The ADI also takes aim at the regulatory burden. JPMorgan says it will advocate for policies to eliminate $100 billion in red tape costs under the SBA’s Made in America Manufacturing Initiative.

Alabama is among the first markets getting a deeper investment. The bank has operated in the state for more than 50 years and plans to triple its Chase branch count there to 35 by 2030, including new locations in Decatur, Foley, and Trussville. It will also open its first Community Center in the state, designed to host financial workshops, skills training, and small business pop-ups.

“JPMorgan Chase has been helping Alabamians pursue their American Dream for more than 50 years, and we know we have a role to play in the decades ahead,” said Brian Lamb, the firm’s head of Specialized Industries.

Nearly a decade of JPMorgan initiatives

The American Dream Initiative is also positioned as a complement to JPMorgan’s previously announced $1.5 trillion Security and Resiliency Initiative, which targets investments in manufacturing, energy, infrastructure, and healthcare—industries the firm views as critical to America’s long-term competitiveness. Together, the two programs reflect Dimon’s thesis that national economic strength and broad-based community opportunity are inseparable goals.

The American Dream Initiative is the latest chapter in a long JPMorgan playbook of large-scale, branded community investment programs—each one bigger than the last. It arguably started with Detroit, when JPMorgan made a landmark $200 million investment in the city’s economic recovery when it filed the largest municipal bankruptcy in U.S. history in 2013. The firm later described it as “one of our most comprehensive and integrated business and philanthropic investments to date,” and the model it developed there became the blueprint for everything that followed. The Detroit bet combined lending, philanthropy, and policy advocacy under one roof, exactly the structure ADI now deploys nationally.

In 2018, JPMorgan scaled the Detroit model into AdvancingCities, a $500 million, five-year initiative to drive inclusive economic growth in cities that had been left behind. The program awarded multimillion-dollar grants to cities including Miami, Philadelphia, Chicago, Louisville, and Baton Rouge, with investments focused on small business lending, affordable housing, and workforce development. The firm relaunched AdvancingCities again in 2025, suggesting the model has enough institutional support to persist across cycles.

JPMorgan’s most politically charged initiative came in October 2020, in the aftermath of George Floyd’s death, when the firm pledged $30 billion over five years to close the racial wealth gap among Black, Hispanic, and Latino communities. By early 2024, Dimon reported the firm had surpassed $30 billion in progress and announced plans to embed the programs into regular business lines, essentially graduating the initiative into standard operations. Admittedly, a large portion of that $30 billion was driven by existing products like homeownership refinancing and affordable rental housing preservation, and ADI may take similar form today.

The bank, which held $4.4 trillion in assets as of Dec. 31, said it will continue announcing new investments, partnerships, and policy solutions across all six focus areas in the months ahead.

For this story, Fortune journalists used generative AI as a research tool. An editor verified the accuracy of the information before publishing.

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If someone told you that your current trajectory was taking you toward “slow agony,” you might sit up and take notice. Yet this is exactly the warning many have ignored following the publication of the Draghi report.

Formally known as The Future of European Competitiveness, the report was published in September 2024 and authored by former European Central Bank President Mario Draghi. Its findings are stark. Draghi, who also served as Italy’s prime minister, states that, without radical reform, the European Union is set to slip into economic and geopolitical decline.

However dire the warnings, they came as little surprise to European business leaders, many of whom have been grappling with stringent regulations, economic turbulence, and the demands of the AI age for years now.

Something must change. But in a market comprising more than 44 countries, and hundreds of companies that have been operating for over a century, making the necessary changes at speed is no easy thing.

Competitiveness crunch

Draghi’s report highlights several reasons why Europe’s competitiveness is faltering.

Although it focuses solely on the European Union, many of the bloc’s problems overlap with those of non-member countries, such as the U.K. The first major issue is Europe’s rapidly widening innovation gap. As the United States and China make leaps forward in high‑tech sectors such as artificial intelligence and quantum computing, many of Europe’s brightest startups are choosing to set up shop elsewhere, frustrated by the lack of funding. Recent research by Amazon Web Services (AWS) shows that as many as four in 10 European startups would consider relocating outside Europe to scale.

But the picture is more nuanced than a straightforward decline. “We see European AI adoption reaching a tipping point,” says Tanuja Randery, vice president and managing director of AWS EMEA. “We’ve reached a milestone with over half of European businesses using AI.” The issue, she explains, is not whether companies are adopting AI but how they are using it: “There are some companies that are experimenting deeply, embedding advanced AI into their processes—then you have those who are simply experimenting at the edge.” The challenge for Europe, she says, is that progress on deeper adoption “hasn’t really moved—it’s stayed pretty flat.”

Another reality plaguing the AI industry is the extremely high cost of energy in Europe. Electricity on the continent can be two to three times as expensive as it is in the U.S., with natural gas prices up to five times as high.

The situation is exacerbated by Europe’s vast and fragmented energy networks, with thousands of different providers across each of its countries, making it almost impossible to distribute renewable energy efficiently.

Then there is the subject of much heated debate: regulation. Draghi states that EU regulatory barriers constrain growth and advocates for simplification of the General Data Protection Regulation (GDPR) and EU AI Act; fewer reporting requirements for businesses; and a shift to more innovation‑friendly regulation.

Regulation meets reality

This is an opinion heartily shared by many European business leaders, including Erik Ekudden, chief technology officer at telecoms giant Ericsson.

“The EU set out with strong ambition in the area of consumer protection, but some of these regulatory tools are not helping,” Ekudden says. “You need to lead with innovation; you can’t lead with regulation. We have to dial back this inclination to regulate something before it’s even been innovated.” The ubiquity and strictness of regulation has real business impacts. AWS research found that, currently, 42% of IT budgets are spent on compliance alone.

For Ekudden and his colleagues at Ericsson, the issue is not just over‑regulation but a lack of consolidation across Europe. The existence of so many regional telecoms operators may be precisely what is preventing competitiveness on a global stage.

“In the U.S., there are basically three main operators,” explains Per Narvinger, Ericsson’s executive vice president of business area networks. “In India, there are two very dominant ones and two more. In China you have three. In Europe—I lose count.”

He points out that, like mobile networks, AI is an industry of scale. To train algorithms, you need a massive amount of data, and in a market as fragmented as Europe, “it will be both complicated and expensive for every small operator to do the same as large operators in other continents.”

For Yael Selfin, chief economist at KPMG U.K., this tension reflects something philosophically important and deeper than policy missteps. “Europe values stability, protection, and quality of life, whereas in the U.S. profit growth has a stronger value,” she says. “These values drive some of this discrepancy.”

What enables growth?

There are those, however, who do not see regulation as a stifling force. Shail Deep, chief operating officer for EMEA and APAC at global financial data and technology company Experian, believes that regulation is what enables great innovation.

“The first reaction [to regulation] is often, ‘Oh, there are more guardrails; how are we supposed to innovate?’” she says. “But if you think about regulation first, then when we start innovating, we can move faster… We won’t have to keep returning to square one because there were risks associated with a project which were not initially considered.”

For Deep, regulation such as the EU AI Act has brought vital clarity to companies in high‑risk industries, where consumer trust is paramount. “It gives our clients confidence in terms of how AI is being used,” she says. “We have a lot more explainability about our solutions.” This, too, has a direct business impact. “If clients trust us, there is more adoption of our solutions.”

She points to other areas across financial services where European regulation has allowed for greater clarity and safer innovation, including open banking and buy‑now, pay‑later systems.

Speed is, of course, the crux of the matter when discussing European competitiveness. Although Deep believes regulation has largely been a force for good, she does think it could move faster. “Sometimes we come up with guidelines by having these long consultative periods, which take two to three years. We need to regulate faster.”

Competing the European way

The picture for European business is by no means bleak, however. The heritage some see as a drawback speaks to endurance and resilience. Ericsson is celebrating its 150th birthday this year, while Experian’s roots stretch back nearly two centuries. The average age of a Fortune 500 Europe brand is 109 years old. No company can survive that long without understanding the power of the pivot. The key here, again, is speed.

“In periods of rapid change, there is a lot of opportunity for companies that adapt fast, both in the adoption of technology and in entering new markets,” says Selfin.

Some, particularly those in heavily regulated industries, are embracing an “if you can’t beat ’em, join ’em” philosophy. The European pharmaceuticals sector is one of the continent’s most successful, employing around 900,000 people and generating a trade surplus of €200 billion. Many of pharma’s biggest players, including AstraZeneca, Novo Nordisk, and Novartis, have opted to design for regulation, not around it, and have been working with the EU on reforms.

The result of this collaboration is new legislation, which comes into force in 2026. The new rules are designed to profit both business and society by fostering greater innovation, improving patient access to medicine, and tackling major public health challenges. Perhaps the most business‑critical element is the introduction of EU pharmaceutical regulatory sandboxes, which will allow developers to test disruptive products not currently covered by existing regulation.

Looking beyond consolidation

For many organizations, the simple truth of the matter is that success for European businesses requires them to look outside Europe. “Individual European markets are relatively small,” says Selfin. “If you really want to scale, you need to look beyond.”

It is true too, however, that the diversity of European countries can create opportunities not only through merger‑led consolidation but also by creating mutually beneficial partnerships.

The European Commission’s Battery Alliance aims to create “an innovative, competitive, and sustainable battery value chain in Europe,” uniting businesses across the supply chain, from raw material suppliers to manufacturers.

Then there are longer‑lived examples. Airbus’s consortium model was established in 1970, bringing together aerospace players from France, Germany, Spain, and the U.K. to challenge U.S. aviation dominance. The result has been eight commercial aircraft models capable of competing with those of Boeing, which in turn has sent Airbus to No. 41 on the most recent Fortune 500 Europe list.

Building for many Europes

Europe’s fragmentation can also offer untold opportunities for innovation and creativity. Deep explains there is often one solution for all of Experian’s North American clients but multiple offerings for customers in different European countries. “Some of the solutions that work in Italy don’t get the same response in Spain,” she says. “That’s why we have such a rich portfolio of products and solutions that we offer to clients.” Indeed, Italy has proved to be one of Experian’s most innovative markets because of how the country has implemented EU regulations. “It puts clients on the same page as us regarding what is permissible,” she says. “This makes the cocreation of products much easier and helps us to move faster.”

Brands can also use Europe’s many markets as a testing ground for ideas which may resonate in non‑European regions. Ikea has long adapted its product range and store experience to meet local needs. When designing for the often‑cramped reality of living in cities such as Paris or London, it created a blueprint for space‑saving furniture that works just as well in tiny Tokyo apartments or modest New York City walk‑ups.

Above all, it is worth remembering the potential inherent in Europe’s businesses, whichever strategies individual players embrace to stay competitive.

Experts agree that Europe is well placed in terms of skills, technical knowledge, and businesses—both small and large—which continue to innovate in spite of the challenges. Randery’s view reflects this optimism. “Europe’s got a ton of momentum and a ton of opportunity,” she says. “But I’ll tell you this—we’ve got to act now.” The real question, then, is not whether Europe can escape Draghi’s “slow agony,” but whether it can accelerate without abandoning the stability that has long defined its strength.

Brain drain

Percentage of European startups saying they would leave Europe for the following reasons:

This article appears in the April/May 2026: Europe issue of Fortune with the headline “Is Europe too slow for the AI age?”

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In 2025, Olympian Eileen Gu was one of the world’s highest-paid female athletes. Bringing in a reported $23.1 million, she was in the top five, she confirms with a wink.

After February’s Milan-Cortina Olympics, the 22-year-old athlete, who competes for China, became the most decorated Olympic freeskier in history, with six Olympic medals to her name.

Gu was recently honored by the women’s media platform the Shift as a woman shifting culture—in Gu’s case, in sports. At the Shift’s inaugural gala at Harvard Art Museums, she told Fortune what advice she would give to other women seeking to reach similar professional—and financial—heights in their own fields.

“Redefine what the boundary lines are,” she said. “Sometimes we think that the only options are being a big fish in a small pond or a small fish in a big pond, but my advice is to create your own pond. For me, that took the form of doing sports, skiing, and education all at the same time and doing it in a way that no one’s done before.”

“Women are naturally multifaceted,” she added. “Find what makes you you and amplify that and create your own pond.”

Gu also reflected on advice she would give her younger self. Not taking herself so seriously is her top piece of wisdom for young Eileen.

“I was always kind of a precocious young child, but in a way that manifested as always thinking that I was older than I was. When I was 8 or 9, I was like, ‘I’m too old to be doing this.’ But you’re never too old or too young or too anything to be doing anything.”

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Most Americans can’t pass the U.S. citizenship test. Surveys put that number at roughly two in three. What’s more alarming: most Members of Congress are barely more informed about the document they swore an oath to protect.

That ignorance has a price tag—$39 trillion and climbing.

What the Framers Actually Built

The Constitution ratified in 1789 is a short, deliberately limited document. Its preamble runs just 52 words. Seven articles and ten amendments follow. 

The Framers—55 delegates, most educated in Latin, Greek, and classical rhetoric—weren’t building a government to run people’s lives. They were building a cage for government power.

About 20% of the Constitution itemizes things that the federal and state governments may not do. Only 10% is concerned with positive grants of power. The remaining 70% is structural: who holds power and how it must be exercised.

Separation of powers wasn’t a governing philosophy—it was a shield for citizens against the state.

The Amendment Escape Valve Congress Is Ignoring

The familiar route: Article V includes Congress to pass passing a proposed amendment with by at least a two-thirds vote in each chamber, then 38 states ratify it. All 27 existing amendments went this way.

The lesser-known route: if two-thirds of states (34) apply, Congress shall call a convention to propose amendments. Those amendments still require ratification by 38 states— so there’s no risk of a runaway rewrite of the founding document.

39 States Asked. Congress Looked Away.

Here’s where congressional failure becomes indefensible. By 1979, 39 states had active applications for Congress to call an Article V convention to propose a fiscal responsibility amendment, but Congress failed to act.A majority of the 50 states still have active applications that remain in limbo. The Federal Fiscal Sustainability Foundation (FFSF) has documented this (we both serve as board members). 

The state-created National Federalism Commission confirmed it in September 2025. Those findings were entered into the Congressional Record at a December 2025 hearing before the Constitution Subcommittee of the House Judiciary Committee. Congress has still done nothing.

Since 1979, total federal debt has exploded from under $1 trillion to over $39 trillion and continues to rise rapidly That’s the direct cost of this abdication.

A Bill Exists. Use It.

House Budget Committee Chairman Jodey Arrington’s H.Con.Res.15 would call exactly the kind of limited Article V convention the states have been requesting for nearly five decades—one narrowly focused on a fiscal responsibility amendment.

Members of Congress took an oath to protect and defend the Constitution. Article V doesn’t give them discretion here—calling a convention when 34 states apply is a nondiscretionary duty. Ignoring it isn’t just bad governance. It’s a breach of constitutional obligation. It’s time to keep the oath.

The opinions expressed in Fortune.com commentary pieces are solely the views of their authors and do not necessarily reflect the opinions and beliefs of Fortune.

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When Nordstrom went private last year, the move was seen by industry analysts as a way to let the founding family make the changes needed to rejuvenate its sagging department store business without being hemmed in by Wall Street’s short-term focus on profits.

Nearly a year later, co-CEOs Peter and Erik Nordstrom, great grandsons of the retailer’s founder, say they don’t miss the distraction of being a public company. Indeed they hint that Nordstrom won’t return to the stock market anytime soon—if at all.

As reported by Fortune last week, Nordstrom’s revenue rose 7% in 2025 to $15.9 billion, slipping past a high watermark from 2019 and finally recovering from the hit to sales from the COVID pandemic and turmoil in the luxury market.

How going private gave Nordstrom freedom from Wall Street

While the chaos at Saks Fifth Avenue and Neiman Marcus have given it a huge opening, Nordstrom has also helped its own cause by upgrading stores, spending a lot of money on merging databases, and expanding its inventory. All that costs money, and the shareholder focus on profits and margins would probably have hurt Nordstrom shares if it were still a public company. Wall Street generally sees department stores as a mature business, and will let such companies invest only so much to reinvent themselves.

“When you’re a public company, your scorecard is your stock price, and that has a lot to do with the results you generate,” Pete Nordstrom says. “If the investment community doesn’t think very highly of department stores, which they don’t, your multiple goes down.” As a company leader, responding to that takes time away from tending to the core business, he adds: “You end up spending a lot of time on things that aren’t exactly what your business is.”

Like other luxury retail businesses, Nordstrom hit a rough patch coming out of COVID as people stopped buying nicer clothes for in-person events and going to the office. What’s more, its Rack discount chain struggled to define its market niche, and its expansion to Canada turned into an expensive failure.

To be able to re-engineer the 125-year-old family business as they saw fit, the Nordstroms. tried in 2017 to go private but failed, before ultimately succeeding in 2025. In a $6.25 billion deal that took the company off the stock market after 54 years, the Nordstroms teamed up with Mexico’s El Puerto de Liverpool department store, an operator of multiple chains. The Nordstrom family now owns a majority 50.1% stake.

Still, being private isn’t a license to let laxness creep in. And Nordstrom faces other strictures: The company took on some debt, for example, which requires the company to hit certain milestones.

Why Nordstrom’s family owners aren’t in a rush for an IPO

“We do think being private on the edges helps us with improved focus as some noise gets removed,” says Erik. But he added: “I’ve never complained about being a public company. The main upside for us is that it was a forcing mechanism to get our story very clear.”

There are other advantages to being public: It can make attracting talent easier thanks to more easily traded shares that can be offered as a bonus. It also makes raising money easier and could be a way for the Nordstroms and their Mexican partners to cash in on the improvements the business is seeing. And indeed, if Nordstrom keeps up its strong performance, it is inevitable that investment bankers will knock on the door, telling the family and Liverpool what a bonanze the IPO could generate. So while Nordstrom is not even one year into being private, many expect this large and successful of a company to eventually go public again at some point.

Stacey Widlitz, president of consulting firm SW Retail Advisers, suggests that if the chain manages to address its problems while it has the leeway to do so, a Nordstrom IPO is a real possibility: “If they get all these things right and have the right leadership, there is no reason why in several years, we won’t see them go back to the public market.”

Pete Nordstrom feels differently. When asked if the family would take Nordstrom public again, he says flatly, “I doubt it.” Though, he quickly adds, “never say never.” The fundamental question, Pete says, is “to what end?”

“Our goal is not financial engineering,” he says. “Our goal is to serve customers well in an enduring and compelling way.”

And as he mentions more than once, there’s a responsibility to the family’s legacy. Nobody wants to be “the generation of Nordstroms that screwed it up.”

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The humble org chart isn’t usually blamed for holding back innovation. But as companies push their employees to adopt AI, LinkedIn executive Aneesh Raman thinks the relationships that structure most workplaces are what’s holding things back.

“The org chart was built in the industrial age to bring order, predictability, and stability to rapidly growing organizations,” says Raman, LinkedIn’s chief economic opportunity officer and co-author of a new book on the future of work. “Companies need to let that go, as it’s going to hold back innovation.”

Instead of waiting for top-down transformation programs, Raman argues, executives will need to get comfortable with workers figuring out AI on their own, even if those experiments cut across departments and job descriptions. “Where you’re going to see the real returns on AI isn’t just a new workflow around AI, but rather new work around human capability,” he says.

Raman, a former CNN war correspondent and Obama speechwriter, is the co-author of Open to Work: How to Get Ahead in the Age of AI, alongside Linkedin CEO Ryan Roslansky. The book draws on LinkedIn data and case studies of early adopters to offer what he calls a “how-to-human-with-AI” playbook that tries to counter the “fatalism” that dominates most conversations about AI’s effect on employment.

Courtesy of LinkedIn

He urges workers to think about their work, and how AI relates to it, in three categories. The first bucket covers activities AI already does today, like generating code, running quick analyses, or writing a first draft to inspire someone else’s writing. The second bucket are experiments to create something new with AI. The final bucket involves using the time saved from the first bucket, and the lessons learned from the second bucket, to start using AI as a group.  “What are you doing with other people?” he asks.

“It’s going to be a worker-led transition, and so companies are going to have to figure out how to let individuals start to move into this new era in their day-to-day work,” Raman says. “We have more autonomy than we often think in terms of pushing for what we want to do that might push our work to the next level.”

What skills will matter in the AI workforce?

LinkedIn is in the middle of a pivot to what it calls a “skills-first approach” to hiring and employment. In theory, employers are looking for specific skills and capabilities—and proof that potential hires have those skills—instead of just looking at a list of job titles on a resume. LinkedIn is also integrating AI into its own product, such as a new AI agent to help with hiring.

But as AI’s capacity to automate knowledge work grows, there’s still confusion over what skills employees will need. Take coding: For more than a decade, universities and policymakers told young people that learning to code was the surest path to a high-paying job. That advice looks less certain in the age of “vibe-coding”: Claude developer Anthropic now sees computer and math careers as leading the way in terms of current and possible coverage by AI.

Raman, for his part, thinks computer science isn’t obsolete. Instead, employers need to look at the broader skills a degree like computer science provides. “A computer science degree doesn’t just teach coding alone. It teaches complex thinking, organizational design, and structures of systems” he points out. 

Workers, at least in the U.S., aren’t convinced they will come out ahead. A CBS News poll released last week reported that two thirds of Americans believe that AI will decrease the number of jobs; around the same share don’t believe that tech companies will use AI in appropriate ways.

AI could get more traction in Asia, where populations are more comfortable with AI. A Pew Research Center survey from October found lower rates of concern among Asia-based respondents than Western ones. For example, just 16% of South Koreans reported being “more concerned than excited” about AI, the lowest share among the 25 countries Pew surveyed; the U.S., in contrast, had the highest share, at 50% reporting concern.

More recently, Chinese consumers have flocked to install OpenClaw, the open-source AI agent framework, on their devices, and local governments are rushing to support “one-person companies,” or AI startups trying to build new products. 

 “There’s a hunger in Asia, not just among companies but also among workers, to learn about these tools and put them to use,” Raman says. “There’s an entrepreneurial culture in a lot of countries in Asia.”

Time to adapt

Still, Raman is sympathetic to workers concerned about automation. “There was a career ladder, and there was extreme clarity about what you had to do to get on each rung of that ladder,” he says.

But he’s optimistic that, ultimately, employees will be better off as AI starts to dismantle the ways companies traditionally organize and reward their talent. “Very few people have ever had real control over their career,” he says. “Because of AI, I think we’re about to have the first generations at work that have more control over their career than any who’ve come before.”

But what if someone doesn’t want to be an innovator at their job? What if someone wants to do their responsibilities and earn a stable wage?

Raman’s answer to those people is direct: “Nobody is coming to save any individual but themselves.” 

Change is coming, like it or not. “It’s just a question of when this change hits you, and how hard it hits you,” he says. 

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A year after firing thousands of probationary employees, the Trump administration indicated it needs more early-career workers to sustain the federal workforce.

“We’ve got close to half of our population that’s within 10 years of retirement age,” Scott Kupor, director of the Office of Personnel Management (OPM), told Fortune. “So if you just did nothing else, you’ve got this major demographic challenge of a large number of people who will likely either retire or certainly be retirement-eligible over the near term, without us actually replenishing the pipeline of early-career people coming in.”

On Monday, OPM launched the Early Career Talent Network, a recruitment push for entry-level workers to join the federal payroll. Spanning across finance, human resources, engineering, project management and procurement roles, it will offer young workers the chance to dip their toes into government work, without the commitment of decades in the public sector, according to Kupor.

Early-career individuals—those with five to seven years of experience—make up only about 7% of the 2 million civilian federal workforce, compared to more than 20% of the broader U.S. workforce, he said.

The recruitment push comes as Gen Z has entered into a stagnant labor market that’s particularly punishing to early-career individuals. According to an analysis from the Federal Reserve Bank of New York, the unemployment rate for college graduates ages 22 to 27 reached 5.6% at the end of 2025, above the 4.2% overall unemployment rate at the time and up from 4.2% unemployment for college graduates in mid-2023.

The hiring spree is a departure from the Trump administration’s early efforts to reduce the federal workforce, particularly entry-level employees. In the first days of his second term, President Donald Trump tapped Elon Musk to spearhead the Department of Government Efficiency (DOGE) to slash contracts and cull headcounts, with the initial goal of cutting $2 trillion from the federal budget. 

OPM was effectively DOGE’s executing arm. From January 2025 to January 2026, the federal workforce saw 386,826 workers depart from the government, including about 17,000 from reductions in force. Thousands of those employees were probationary, meaning they held their position for less than one year. The vast majority of the individuals who left the federal workforce either resigned or retired.

About 122,000 employees also joined the federal workforce, a 55% decrease from 2024, according to a Pew Research Center analysis. As a result, the federal workforce has seen a net reduction of 264,000.

Musk claimed DOGE saved $200 billion, but a Cato Institute report in December calculated that a 10% cut in the workforce would result in a savings of only about $40 billion. 

Even DOGE employee Nate Cavanaugh said in a January deposition that DOGE failed to reduce the federal deficit.

The federal workforce, transformed

Kupor said he sees the cuts and hirings as part of the same mission: “We’re reshaping the workforce to make sure that we have the right talent for the right roles.”

“A huge push is around technology, for example,” he added. “That’s an area where we don’t have all the skills we need to do the modernization efforts that we’d like.”

In December, the Trump administration launched the U.S. Tech Force, an initiative hiring 1,000 engineers and specialists to work with private-sector tech companies to build out AI infrastructure within the federal government. The employment program has a two-year duration for each cohort and is geared toward early-career professionals. 

That came after DOGE’s gutting last year of the U.S. Digital Corps and the General Services Administration’s 18F program meant to improve the government’s technological efficiency.  

Kupor said the U.S. Tech Corps is a way to scale up and learn from previous initiatives. OPM launched a similar recruitment program with NASA earlier this month.

“We need people with modern software development. We need people with modern AI understanding. We need data science,” he said.

But many federal workers see the transformed government workforce differently, with some saying the headcount cuts have made it harder for existing employees to complete their jobs efficiently.

“This is going to be probably the roughest filing season we’ve had since the pandemic,” one IRS employee told Fortune, adding that the agency has been short-staffed and that ongoing burnout from greater workloads had the potential to impact the quality of internal reviews.

A 2025 Best Places to Work in Federal Government survey found a precipitous drop in job satisfaction as well as lower confidence that the workplace was free of favoritism and political coercion. The survey based its questions on OPM’s previous Federal Employee Viewpoint Survey (FEVS), which it did not administer last year. Kupor said the survey had a smaller sample size, about 11,000 federal employees, and its results should not be generalized.

Instead of administering the FEVS survey, OPM offered quarterly “pulse” surveys. The survey item with the highest mean score was “Understand Work Alignment with Agency Goals,” while the lowest was “Recommend agency as good place to work.”

An anonymous OPM employee not authorized to speak to the press told Fortune a handful of employees admitted to answering pulse survey responses more positively than they really felt, expressing concerns around lack of trust and that their responses were being surveilled. The employee said other employees didn’t complete the survey because of methodological limitations, such as no questions with open-ended responses.

Kupor said he understands not all employees will be on board with the mission of the administration.

“There’s no question that when you do the changes in the order of magnitude, we’re doing it fully understandable that there are some people who are not fully bought off on those changes,” he said.

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India imports nearly 90% of its crude oil—largely from Russia and the Middle East. With geopolitical trouble making both of those sources less reliable and leaving it vulnerable, the world’s most populous country is inviting more foreign investment to help it boost its domestic oil and gas supplies, a top energy executive from India told Fortune.

While India is acquiring more alternative supplies to help it ride out the war in Iran, it typically imports most of its oil from Saudi Arabia, Iraq, and Russia. At present, those Russian barrels are flowing only under a temporary waiver from the U.S., after President Trump had used higher tariffs to get India to stop buying from Russia.

As part of reforms to open the country up to more domestic oil and gas exploration, India is seeking to attract $100 billion in investment by 2030. Recently, the chairman of India’s top private oil and gas producer, Cairn, made the trek to Houston for the CERAWeek by S&P Global conference with government officials to meet with many of the top American companies specializing in shale and offshore drilling.

Billionaire industrialist Anil Agarwal, who chairs mining giant Vedanta Resources and its subsidiary, Cairn Oil & Gas, said he personally made the trip “with a shopping list to spend $5 billion.”

India remains “vulnerable” and lacking in energy security until it can produce at least 50% of its own oil, Agarwal told Fortune. He believes India can grow to produce enough oil to meet 30% of its domestic demand within a few years. He wants to help create a “mini Houston” in India.

“It’s a greater opportunity to be an explorer in India because India is fundamentally oil rich, as far as the reserves are concerned,” he said. “But you have to do the exploration, make investment, and this is the great opportunity to develop the hydrocarbons in India.”

India may have surpassed China as the world’s most populous nation, but it produces less than 1% of the world’s oil and gas. India also imports more than half of its natural gas.

Cairn has ambitious plans to increase its production capacity from roughly 110,000 barrels of oil per day to 500,000 barrels daily over the next several years. Close to 70% of the vast country has never been explored for potential oil or gas reserves.

India is becoming friendlier to domestic oil and gas production and foreign investment, with legal reforms eliminating some barriers, and Cairn aims to take advantage, Agarwal said. More than 70% of India’s industry is still comprised of state-owned companies. “That mindset is changing,” Agarwal said, arguing that businesses should be run by businesspeople.

Cairn already works with top U.S. oilfield services companies, including Halliburton and Baker Hughes, but the company also is looking for exploration joint venture partners. The government’s current round of bids for onshore and offshore exploration blocks has been extended to the end of May.

Lots of opportunities remain with newer technologies, including the onshore Digboi, Assam region, which was the birthplace of India’s oil sector, but has little activity today. “There is hardly any production there,” Agarwal said.

India counts quadruple the population of the U.S. and rising, and its middle class is growing. “This will be the highest [energy] demand in the world,” he said.

Agarwal sees aligned entrepreneurial spirits between the U.S. and India. “The collaboration between America and India is very strong. We think alike, we work alike, and we can adjust with each other and trust each other,” he said. “America is very important for us. America can give us all the technology.”

India and Vedanta also are eager to partner more with the U.S. on critical minerals to help the U.S. build up supply from partners outside of China. Vedanta is strong in the production of copper, zinc, rare earths, and much more.

“I use the words, ‘Drill, baby, drill’ for the hydrocarbons, and I use the words, ‘Dig baby dig,’ for the minerals,” Agarwal said with a laugh.

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Federal Reserve Chair Jerome Powell delivered a pointed message to the next generation of workers last week: stop worrying about artificial intelligence and start learning to use it.

Speaking before nearly 400 students at a Harvard economics class in a wide-ranging conversation moderated by Professor David Moss, Powell acknowledged that Gen Z is entering one of the more challenging job markets in recent memory—and said AI is both part of the problem and the solution.

Moss put Powell on the spot immediately, asking on behalf of the students in the room: “They’re entering into an uncertain time—an economy where new job formation is lower for many reasons. In particular, jobs that were plentiful a couple of years ago for students coming out of college are no longer so. And AI sits as this remarkable technological transformation that is both promising and existentially threatening.”

Powell said he and his colleagues at the central bank were “well aware of the current situation for students coming out. It’s a time of very low job creation. And also you have AI going on.” Allowing that something “more longer-term, more secular” is probably happening around technology and AI, he was direct: “there’s no denying it’s a challenging time to enter the labor market.”

Powell also cited low job creation, shifts in immigration policy, along with the disruptive force of new technology. But rather than counsel caution, he pointed students toward the tools disrupting their future careers. “I think you’re in a situation where you need to invest the time to really master the use of these new technologies, and that should stand you in good stead.”

Powell spoke from personal experience. “My observation is that these large language models make people much more productive,” he said. “I feel like it’s making me more productive, because I can learn things really quickly.” He added that conversations with his son and others in the workforce had reinforced that view: for those who learn to use AI well, it is an amplifier, not a threat.

The AI washing wave is already here

The remarks come at a delicate moment. The U.S. unemployment rate remains low, but Powell was candid that the headline figure offers little comfort to recent graduates struggling to land their first jobs. New college hires that were plentiful just a few years ago have grown scarce, he noted, as companies assess what work can be automated.

Powell all but confirmed that many large companies are eager to follow Block CEO Jack Dorsey’s lead and lay off thousands of workers, a practice that some, including OpenAI CEO Sam Altman, call “AI washing.” He said that “major U.S. companies—and we talked to a lot of those people who run those companies—they’re all looking at what they can do” in terms of staff reductions. “The truth is, they can take out a lot of jobs that can be automated by a very smart large language model. They just can, and they will, because their competitors are doing it and they can’t afford to have higher costs than their competitors.”

Still, Powell pushed back against fatalism. He cited the historical pattern of technological disruption—stretching back to the invention of the loom—as evidence that new tools, however threatening in the short term, ultimately raise productivity and living standards.

Jerome Powell on the Luddite era

Powell put on his econ nerd hat for a second, citing all the similar technological advances throughout the history of modern capitalism. “If you look back through history—to generalize, this has been going on for a couple hundred years, since the loom was invented, right, to put all the people who were doing weaving out of business. But in all cases, it has wound up raising productivity and raising living standards—as long as the society keeps producing people who have the skills and aptitudes to benefit from that technology.”

Powell predicted “that will be the case here,” when it comes to AI—just a new version of the loom. “It may take some patience and all that,” he said, “but in the longer term, this economy is going to give you great opportunities. And just be a little optimistic about that.”

The crucial question, though, is just how much longer that longer term ends up being. When mechanical weaving displaced textile workers in 19th-century England, after all, the transition was brutal, sparking the Luddite movement of displaced workers destroying the machines that had taken their jobs and giving economic historians. What if the “long term” is the whole lifespan of the Gen Z generation?

That was exactly Moss’ follow-up question: does longer term mean 10, 20, or even 40 years? “You know,” Powell responded, “it’s so hard to say.” All the AI adoption that he sees happening in the 2020s is focusing on existing middle management, back-office jobs, and Powell speculated that fluent AI users should be unaffected by this, while admitting that he didn’t know the answer. “There can be a period during which it’s challenging,” he acknowledged to the professor, “and this may be one of those. But nonetheless, I would just say it’s out there and it’s out there to be done. And I would be, medium and longer term, very optimistic about this economy compared to any other economy.”

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Fannie Mae and Freddie Mac, the two government sponsored businesses designed to prop up mortgages, ripped on Monday after billionaire investor Bill Ackman told investors in a late Sunday X post to stop worrying about the war in Iran and start buying.

“Some of the highest quality businesses in the world are trading at extremely cheap prices,” Ackman wrote. “Ignore the MSM. One of the most one-sided wars in history that will end well for the U.S. and the world. And we have the potential for a large peace dividend.”

Then he added, almost as an aside, that “Fannie and Freddie are stupidly cheap. Asymmetry at its best. They could be a 10X and it could happen soon.”

Ackman’s tweet was the only obvious catalyst as Fannie Mae surged as much as 41% in Monday trading, while Freddie Mac climbed as much as 34%. These were the largest single-day moves for each stock since May of last year, when Trump floated the idea of privatizing the two entities. 

Ackman’s post clearly touched a nerve. Investors are feeling “extreme fear” according to CNN’s Fear & Greed Index as the Iran war, now in its sixth week, wreaks havoc on markets. Oil prices are spiking on threats to the Strait of Hormuz, which Iran’s semiofficial Fars News Agency reported will be used as a toll and blocked off to Israel, and American stocks sold off last week and again on Monday. But Ackman’s message to anyone watching their portfolio bleed: get over it.

Many investors seemed to take that confidence at face value. But Ackman isn’t a neutral source, in fact, he’s the single biggest beneficiary of the trade he’s recommending. Pershing Square Capital Management is the largest common shareholder in both companies, holding more than 210 million shares combined. He’s been in the position for over a decade and has helped lead the charge to get Fannie and Freddie privatized.

The timing also might raise eyebrows, as Monday is the last trading day of Q1 2026, which matters for hedge funds. The price a stock closes at on the final day of the quarter is the price that shows up in performance reports to investors. A 40% pop in your largest position on that exact day is, at minimum very convenient.

Ackman has previous in this regard. On December 30, 2024 — the second-to-last trading day of Q4 — he published a detailed thesis calling the GSE trade his best idea for 2025. That post got 4.9 million views and sent shares surging by similar margins.

Still, the valuation disparity that Ackman is pointing to is genuinely striking. Fannie printed $14.4 billion in net income last year, while Freddie printed $10.7 billion. Their combined market cap before Monday’s move was roughly $10 billion, meaning both companies earn more than twice their market value annually.

Michael Burry, of “Big Short” fame, also encouraged Ackman and responded to his post, writing that he “cannot emphasize enough how rare this is in this market.” Burry also added extra thoughts on the housing market in a different post, where he blamed Fannie and Freddie’s long-time conservatorship for keeping the housing supply low, in addition to what he called artificially low interest rates and 6 to 7 trillion in “helicopter cash” during the COVID-19 pandemic.

“Government created the problem and now maintains policies that prevent free markets from reaching a solution, not the least of which is keeping the GSEs inefficiently run while in conservatorship,” Burry wrote. 

The bullish case for the GSEs, that the Trump administration will privatize the two via IPO, potentially by the end of the year, has been the thesis since they went under government conservatorship in 2008, and it has never materialized. Fannie topped out at around $15.30 in September 2025 due to peak privatization optimism sparked by Ackman and his allies. Even after Monday’s rally, both stocks remain down nearly 60% from that peak. At the ResiDay housing conference in November, White House housing director Bill Pulte said that a decision on the IPO would happen sometime by the end of that quarter or early this year, but that decision has yet to come.

Some critics, like UCLA economist Wesley Yin, argue that a rushed privatization process could raise borrowing costs and risk recreating the conditions that fueled the Great Recession; namely, allowing for-profit companies with access to risk-free government backed borrowing. He raised questions about whether the government would truly risk repeating that mistake. 

In his December post, Ackman acknowledged the uncertainty with some legalese.  “There remains a high degree of uncertainty about the ultimate outcome so you should limit your exposure to what you can afford to lose if you choose to invest,” he wrote. 

That caveat was gone Sunday night. Ackman wrote, “ignore the bears.”

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There are an estimated 938 billionaires in the United States. To put that into context, that’s about two full Boeing 747s (each one holds 416 passengers). Or, that’s about half of the seats in The Broadway Theatre (which has 1,763) seats, where you can now catch The Great Gatsby. It’s also the average size of the U.S. college graduating class, and just 1.1% of the 82,500 seats at MetLife Stadium.

Regardless of how you view that 938 number, there’s one overall resounding agreement people have: most voters want billionaires to pay their fair share. With two separate billionaire tax proposals now gaining traction (one nationwide and one in California specifically), a new poll from UC Berkeley’s Institute of Governmental Studies quantifies just how much the average American thinks the rich should pay up.

The survey, released this month in partnership with the Los Angeles Times, found that 52% of California’s registered voters support a proposed one-time 5% tax on the net worth of the state’s roughly 200 billionaires, while 33% oppose it. 

Responses fell along ideological lines. Seventy-two percent of Democrats back the tax, and so does 51% of no-party-preference voters. But more than seven in 10 Republicans and strongly conservative voters oppose it.

California’s ballot initiative

The California Billionaire Tax Act didn’t come from a politician but from a union. SEIU-United Healthcare Workers West, representing 120,000 healthcare workers, filed the ballot initiative in October 2025 with a specific crisis in mind: federal Medicaid cuts threatening to strip healthcare from more than 3 million working-class Californians.

To design the tax, the union tapped UC Berkeley economist Emmanuel Saez, who calculated that American billionaires currently pay just 1.3% of their wealth in taxes, down from 3.1% under President Ronald Reagan. 

The bill would impose a one-time, 5% levy on the worldwide net worth of any individual worth more than $1 billion who was a California resident as of Jan. 1, 2026, paid in annual installments of 1% over five years. The Jan. 1 cutoff was designed to prevent the exodus that critics predicted and that at least six billionaires—including Google co-founders Larry Page and Sergey Brin—had attempted before the deadline passed.

The revenue is projected to be at $100 billion over five years and would flow 90% into healthcare, with the remaining 10% into education and food assistance. The measure still needs nearly 875,000 valid signatures by June 24 to reach the November ballot.

Bernie’s federal tax on billionaires

There’s a separate measure to initiate a similar 5% tax on billionaires nationwide. Sen. Bernie Sanders (I-Vt.) and Rep. Ro Khanna (D-Calif.) have proposed the “Make Billionaires Pay Their Fair Share Act” which would impose a 5% annual federal wealth tax on individuals worth $1 billion or more.

In its first year, the revenue would fund one-time $3,000 checks for households earning under $150,000, covering roughly three-quarters of the country. And like the California tax, the bill would address the $1.1 trillion in Medicaid and ACA cuts, in addition to capping childcare costs at 7% of household income, and establishing a $60,000 minimum salary for public school teachers.

The richest man alive, Elon Musk, has countered that taxing every billionaire at 100% barely dents the $39 trillion national debt. But the billionaire tax isn’t trying to fix the debt—it’s an attempt to address healthcare cuts. 

A separate measure for a $30-an-hour minimum wage

The billionaire tax poll landed in the middle of something already moving: a $30-an-hour minimum wage campaign. It’s co-led by One Fair Wage, the national advocacy group whose president, Saru Jayaraman, helped convene 140 labor and community leaders in Los Angeles last June to declare a new era for the wage movement.

“We all agreed that the fight for $15 is long gone,” Jayaraman told Fortune. “It’s time for a new kind of frame.”

What emerged was the concept of a living wage for all, pegged to what the MIT Living Wage Calculator says it actually costs to live, with no carveouts for tipped workers.

Since then, $30-wage bills have been introduced in New York City, Hawaii, and Los Angeles. Bills for $25 per hour are advancing in DC, Maryland, Pennsylvania, and federally. Twenty states remain stuck at the federal floor of $7.25, unchanged since 2009.

Two sides of the same coin

The billionaire tax and the $30-wage campaigns share more than timing — they share a target.

“We see these two things in California go hand in hand,” Jayaraman said. “There are two parts to the same plan. Billionaires should pay tax like everybody else to help contribute to society, and they should pay their employees, whose labor they profit from, enough to survive.”

She added: “Right now, billionaires are paying nothing. They should pay their fair share.”

“Minimum wage is by far the most popular issue out there right now,” Jayaraman said. “But the billionaires tax is a close second.”

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Even amid the torrent of disquieting news from the Middle East in recent weeks, an Iranian suggestion that it might start offering safe passage to oil tankers that paid in Chinese yuan, instead of the U.S. dollar, raised eyebrows.

Sourced to an anonymous Iranian official, the threat sparked a spate of warnings that Tehran might use its control of the Strait of Hormuz not to just threaten the world’s access to petroleum, but also upend the dollar-based international monetary system. By striking a blow against the petrodollar, Iran could initiate the unraveling of the dollar’s dominance, itself a linchpin of U.S. power—or so the argument goes. Those citing such ominous scenarios envisioned other possible dangers, including the debilitation of America’s security guarantees to Saudi Arabia and other Gulf oil exporters.

“The conflict could be remembered as a key catalyst for erosion in petrodollar dominance, and the beginnings of the petroyuan,” with potentially “significant downstream effects to…the dollar’s role as the world’s reserve currency,” Deutsche Bank analysts warned in a report last week.

The war’s consequences will doubtless be serious—but not for the dollar. The U.S. currency’s success rests on robust foundations, and Iran’s petroyuan gambit looks to be just the latest of many episodes in which alarmism over the dollar’s primacy has proven misplaced. Even if the petrodollar system weakens, it would matter little: As massive as world oil markets are, the reasons for dollar dominance lie elsewhere.

The greenback’s status stems from two features that no other currency can match. First is the depth, breadth, and liquidity of U.S. financial markets, in particular the market for Treasury bills and bonds, which can be bought and sold in enormous volumes without causing significant movements in price. This attribute is crucial in a financial crunch, when firms are scrambling to ensure that they can obtain the cash needed to meet obligations coming due.

The second feature is America’s open capital account—that is, the freedom to move money across U.S. borders virtually unimpeded. Many countries have open capital accounts but, importantly, China doesn’t. And no country, even open ones, has the U.S. market’s depth and breadth.

Having defied obituary writers on numerous occasions, the dollar continues to play a role in international transactions far out of proportion to the U.S. economy’s size. It accounts for well over half of foreign currency reserves held by central banks, and a similar share of export invoices for cross-border trade, as well as international bank loans and bond issuance. Network effects entrench its status; everybody has an incentive to use the dollar because so many others do.

Nowhere is the extent of the dollar’s entrenchment more evident than in the working of the little-known but gigantic market for foreign exchange swaps. In this market, global firms—multinational corporations, banks, insurance companies, securities dealers, and pension funds—shield themselves against currency fluctuations. According to the Bank for International Settlements (BIS), the amount of outstanding swaps currently stands above $100 trillion, with some 90% involving the dollar. (Far lower percentages involve the euro, Japanese yen, and other currencies.) This reflects the myriad ways in which the greenback is used for lending, borrowing, and investing.

So why are so many people obsessed with the petrodollar? It mostly comes down to a narrative that is only loosely grounded in facts. As the story goes, in the mid-1970s, the U.S. struck a bargain with Saudi Arabia, offering military aid and protection to the ruling House of Saud, in exchange for a Saudi promise to only accept dollars for oil and invest the proceeds in U.S. Treasuries. That set a precedent for other oil exporters to follow.

Those on the ground at the time remember things differently. One of the few foreigners allowed to live in the desert kingdom then was David Mulford, a young investment banker hired in 1975 by the Saudi Arabian Monetary Agency (SAMA), the nation’s central bank, as an adviser. In his 2014 memoir, he recalled how a team of six professionals struggled in SAMA’s dilapidated headquarters to manage “a portfolio growing at $5 and later $10 billion every thirty days,” relying on a single, sluggish telex machine for communicating with the outside world.

It turns out that oil was already predominantly priced in dollars and, as Mulford explained, Saudi Arabia had little choice but to plow its revenue into dollar-denominated assets. According to Mulford, who later became a U.S. Treasury undersecretary and ambassador to India, “In most markets outside the U.S. in those days a currency trade of just $10 million was enough to move markets, so there were practical limitations on the amount of currency diversification that we could achieve.” Furthermore, “purchases of German [bonds], or Japanese yen bonds, or Dutch guilder bonds, or Swiss franc notes were just not possible in the sizes common in the U.S. market.”

In other words, it was the American market’s unique depth, breadth, and liquidity—and not some secret deal—that led the Saudis to choose the dollar.

Petrodollars were a major reason why the greenback internationalized in the 1970s and the decades thereafter, as much of the income received by oil exporters was deposited in dollar accounts at banks around the world, primarily in Europe. But they are a much less significant factor in the global dollar market today.

While 44% of earnings from oil sales were deposited in offshore dollar bank accounts during the 1970s, that figure shrank to 27% by the early 2000s, noted Jess Hoversen, chief economist at Column, a San Francisco financial services firm, citing research from the IMF. The percentage is now in single digits, she estimates, as oil exporters’ earnings today are directed toward domestic development and sovereign wealth funds, which in turn are invested heavily in international stock markets and startups.

But the dollar market has surged even as the petrodollar took a step back. Hoversen pointed out that the offshore dollar credit market stood at $2.5 trillion in 2000, and hit $14.2 trillion by last year. “This tells us that the dollar is very structurally resilient,” she writes.

The debate about dollar dominance will continue to rage, as the Trump administration shakes investor confidence with actions like attacking the independence of the Federal Reserve. But barring much more serious self-inflicted wounds, the dollar will keep its place at the top of the currency league table for the foreseeable future—even if Iran demands oil payments in yuan.

The opinions expressed in Fortune.com commentary pieces are solely the views of their authors and do not necessarily reflect the opinions and beliefs of Fortune.

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Federal Reserve Chair Jerome Powell offered a sobering assessment of America’s fiscal health on Monday, telling a Harvard economics class audience that while the nation’s $39 trillion debt load is not immediately dangerous, the path the country is on demands urgent attention from lawmakers.

“The level of the debt is not unsustainable,” Powell said during a wide-ranging conversation before roughly 400 students, “but the path is not sustainable. It will not end well if we don’t do something fairly soon.”

The remarks extend a consistent warning Powell has sounded for years, that while the the debt level is manageable in the short term, the fiscal trajectory absolutely is not. His comments also came as the average national gas price neared $4 per gallon amid a war in Iran that shows no signs of resolving soon, despite President Trump’s inconsistent noises about a potential end to hostilities.

Powell was careful to draw a distinction between the stock of debt and its trajectory, noting that the U.S., as the world’s reserve currency issuer and home to the deepest capital markets on earth, can sustain a large debt load in ways smaller economies cannot.

The remarks came in response to a student question about at what point the size of the U.S. debt breaks “the point of natural systems of repayment.” Powell acknowledged that no one knows exactly where that breaking point lies—pointing to Japan as a country carrying a far higher debt-to-GDP ratio than the U.S.—but said the direction of travel was unambiguous.

“What’s clear is that our debt is growing much faster. The federal government debt is growing substantially faster than our economy,” Powell said, “and that ratio is going up. And in the long run, that’s kind of the definition of unsustainable.”

Net interest payments on the national debt are now projected to exceed $1 trillion in fiscal year 2026—nearly triple the $345 billion the government paid in 2020. In the first three months of the current fiscal year alone, interest payments reached $270 billion, already surpassing the nation’s defense spending for the same period. Those are real constraints on real budget choices. But they are constraints, not collapse—and conflating the two distorts the policy conversation. Debt held by the public is projected to surge from 101% of GDP today to 120% of GDP by 2036, eclipsing the post-World War II record, according to projections by the Congressional Budget Office.

Seeking balance

Importantly, Powell did not call for paying down the debt outright. The fix, he suggested, is more modest—and more achievable, if there is political will. “We don’t have to pay the debt down,” he said. “We just need to have primary balance and begin to have the economy actually growing more quickly than the debt.”

The Fed chair was careful to note that fiscal policy is explicitly not within his jurisdiction. “This is not the Fed’s job, of course,” he said, and he acknowledged with a touch of dry humor that his warnings tend to fall on deaf ears in Washington. “I pretty much limit myself to those high-level points, which essentially everyone ignores.”

To be sure, Powell is not wrong that America’s debt trajectory is unsustainable on paper. But that has been the verdict for decades—and the sky has stubbornly refused to fall. Also, his preferred solution of achieving primary balance, so the economy grows faster than the debt, will be difficult, to say the least. In practice, closing a structural primary deficit of the U.S. government’s current size means either raising revenues significantly, cutting spending in politically explosive areas like Medicare and Social Security, or banking on growth rates that history suggests are optimistic. But as Powell noted, the Fed chair is explicitly not responsible for solving the problem.

The broader context of Powell’s remarks made clear the stakes for the central bank. Powell has spent his tenure fiercely defending the Fed’s political independence, insisting throughout the conversation that the Fed must “stick to our knitting” and resist pressure to deploy its tools for purposes beyond maximum employment and price stability. A fiscal crisis that forced the Fed’s hand would represent exactly the kind of mission creep he has warned against.

Powell made those boundaries explicit when describing his philosophy of Fed governance. “There’s always a time when an administration looks and says, ‘It would be good to use that tool for something else,’” he said. “It happens all the time. And we just have to be in a situation where we’re not trying to work against any politician or any administration, but we have to be careful to stick to what we’re doing.”

There’s also an irony in Powell warning about debt sustainability while leading an institution whose own policies made cheap borrowing the path of least resistance for years. As JPMorgan warned in its 2026 outlook, there could be “a less straightforward path to reduce the U.S. government’s debt load”—in part because of the interplay between Fed policy and Treasury financing needs. Bridgewater’s Ray Dalio has described one possible endgame as an economic “heart attack,” with government investment crowded out by debt service obligations. That’s a serious concern, but that’s an argument for smart fiscal reform, not for treating Powell’s Harvard remarks as a five-alarm fire.

Former Fed Chair Janet Yellen struck a similar tone in January, warning that the ballooning debt could reduce the Fed’s ability to address unemployment and inflation, while noting that legislators were not “adequately acknowledging the risks.” The chorus of credible voices is real. So is the risk of that chorus becoming cover for cuts that disproportionately hurt the Americans least able to absorb them—a tradeoff Powell’s remarks, however honest, did not address.

The debt deserves serious attention. But serious attention means honest accounting of tradeoffs, not just a clean soundbite from Cambridge telling lawmakers to act “fairly soon,” with no guidance on how, and no acknowledgment that acting too aggressively could be just as destabilizing as the debt itself.

Powell’s term as Fed chair expires in May 2026. His fiscal warning, which was offered not from a podium in Washington but to a room of Harvard students, may prove to be among the clearest statements of his tenure: the debt level is survivable, but only if the trajectory changes. “It will not end well,” he said, “if we don’t do something fairly soon.”

For this story, Fortune journalists used generative AI as a research tool. An editor verified the accuracy of the information before publishing.

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If you’ve spent a lot of time in the past year looking at your bank account balance, you’re not the only one. Nearly all Americans are rethinking their finances as money anxiety increases, according to a new study from Wells Fargo. 

A survey of more than 3,700 U.S. adults found that 86% of respondents said they made changes in what, where, and how they buy, and two-thirds said they have delayed spending or payments. 

People are looking to take charge over their finances and feel more positive when they sense they’re in control, Emily Irwin, head of Private Wealth Planning at Wells Fargo, told Fortune. 

Meanwhile, 84% said they’d rather give up social media for a year compared to just 16% willing to say goodbye to banking apps from Robinhood, Nerdwallet, and traditional financial institutions.

It follows a trend of more Americans trying to be more intentional with their money in a moment where “they feel like their financial lives are messy,” Irwin said. 

“They want to kind of check in on their finances,” she explained. “They want to minimize distractions or minimize temptation—positive ones sometimes—but still temptations, nonetheless. And they want to be able to maintain focus on what their intention for their money is, both short-term and long-term.” 

Turning to social media and AI for financial advice

As people try to take more control of their finances, they’re looking beyond traditional banking for advice. Gen Z is increasingly turning to social media to decide where to put their money, the study found, with 44% relying on YouTube videos and 34% turning to Instagram or TikTok. 

In addition, nearly one-fifth of U.S. adults reported using AI in the past year for financial advice, and twice as many Gen Z adults said they used it. Among the AI users, about 80% said they use it for financial education, like learning the difference between a traditional and Roth 401(k)s, and three-fourths of people ask about financial strategy, Irwin said. 

Two-thirds of people who asked AI for money advice acted on its suggestions, according to the study. Of those in that group, 90% said that the advice was profitable or worthwhile. However, questions remain if AI advice leads to long-term profitability, Irwin said. 

“AI is a wonderful resource to be able to get education, to be able to ask those questions that maybe, you’ve always been a little bit confused on, or you want to learn more about,” she said, but added people should be cautious when AI offers strategic plans. “I would ensure that before there’s implementation of a strategy, even if it’s profitable, that someone understands what all the alternate paths would be in order to appropriately put a strategy in place.”

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To non-Canadian eyes, Air Canada CEO Michael Rousseau’s decision to post a message of condolences in English following the airline’s deadly crash at New York’s LaGuardia airport may not seem all that noteworthy. After all, Rousseau has acknowledged himself the limitations of his French. And this was an extremely emotionally fraught moment: In the first Air Canada accident to involve fatalities since 1983, the March 22 runway collision between a plane and a fire truck killed two pilots and injured dozens of others.

Amid such a tragedy, the ensuing outcry over the CEO’s language choice might look like a tempest in a teapot. But Canadians understood immediately why Rousseau’s decision to speak English (other than a “bonjour” and a “merci”) caused such an affront. It has now led to his retirement from the company later this year, as announced on Monday. (A spokesman for Air Canada said, “Mr. Rousseau has reached a natural retirement age” and added that the company’s succession planning had been underway internally for some time.)

Air Canada is headquartered in Montreal, a majority French-speaking city, the largest in Quebec. It’s a region where matters of language are often a third rail in public life. For many Québécois, French is not just a means of communication but a core marker of identity—which helps explain the intense emotional reactions when they feel it is sidelined in official settings.

Rousseau’s message was meant to offer condolences for the deaths and sympathy for the injured—and also to reassure the company’s rattled 37,000 employees and put the spotlight on the heroism of the pilots and crew. He expressed Air Canada’s “deepest sorrow for everyone affected,” and called it a “very dark day here at Air Canada.”

But those messages were overshadowed by the flap over his language. As a former Crown corporation (Canadian jargon for government-owned business) Air Canada is subject to the nation’s Official Languages Act, meaning it is required by law to communicate in both English and French. So it was baffling to many that Rousseau, a Canadian, would not realize that a 3-minute, 45-second video in English would be a big faux pas. Making matters worse: The flight originated in Montreal, so it certainly had many francophone passengers and crew members among the injured, in addition to one of the pilots who died.

Montreal Mayor Soraya Martinez Ferrada called it “disrespectful of the francophone community.” And even Canadian Prime Minister Mark Carney weighed in, slamming Rousseau for his “lack of judgment and lack of compassion.” “We proudly live in a bilingual country, and companies like Air Canada particularly have a responsibility to always communicate in both official languages,” Carney told reporters.

Rousseau himself acknowledged the flub and said last week that he was “deeply saddened” that “his inability to speak French had diverted attention from the profound grief of the families and the great resilience of Air Canada’s employees.”

Why effort matters more than perfect pronunciation

Though speaking in heartfelt way can be hard for someone using a second language, many executives of multinational companies do nonetheless make the effort (even if their public relations staff typically crafts the message). Politicians too: New York Mayor Zohran Mamdani has made videos in Spanish, Arabic, and Hindi—often including footage of him struggling with his lines—to the delight of immigrant voters who appreciate the effort, even if he’s butchering the pronunciation.

This wasn’t Rousseau’s first time creating a language kerfuffle as CEO of Air Canada. In 2021, soon after taking the reins, Rousseau proudly noted in a speech to the Montreal Chamber of Commerce that he had been easily able to live in the city for more than a decade without learning French. (He grew up in Eastern Ontario, a part of the country with a sizeable francophone minority.)

During the ensuing P.R. crisis, he apologized and pledged to learn French. Bloomberg reported that Rousseau had taken 300 hours of French lessons since 2021, so it’s anyone’s guess why he couldn’t have cobbled together at least a couple of sentences in the mother tongue of many of Air Canada’s stakeholders. (Some commentators suggested that for his compensation of $9.4 million last year, learning conversational French shouldn’t be too much to ask.) Before Air Canada, he spent years as a senior executive of the retailer Hudson’s Bay.

The Air Canada board—which should perhaps have nudged Rousseau along in his French studies—said on Monday that French skills would be a key factor in choosing the next CEO. (Though Rousseau has won credit for guiding Air Canada out of the pandemic, shares are down 33% since he became CEO.)

The language debates permeate many aspects of Quebec life: A few years ago, controversy erupted when the hallowed Montreal Canadiens hockey team hired an anglophone coach who was unilingual. He didn’t last long.

The business risk of offending your home market

Some of Rousseau’s defenders in the Canadian commentariat have raised fair questions about whether a CEO of a global business really needs to speak French, whether such a requirement narrows the talent pool too much, and whether any of this should even be the government’s business.

But ultimately, Rousseau’s inability—or perhaps even unwillingness—to learn French, was just bad business. Angering politicians or columnists is one thing. But 23% of Canadians are native French speakers. Given all the competition in the airline industry, and choices travelers have, offending anyone is dangerous.

Emotional intelligence, empathy, and the ability to read the room are essential skills for CEOs today. Others have learned that lesson the hard way years before Rousseau did: Remember when cloud computing company PagerDuty’s CEO Jennifer Tejada quoted Martin Luther King Jr. in a memo announcing mass layoffs in 2023 and had to apologize? Or howBP CEO Tony Hayward grumbled “I’d like my life back” after an oil spill caused by the company?

Perhaps Rousseau should get credit for not using AI to mask his lack of linguistic fluency. But authenticity, even if expressed in broken French, is the best approach when it comes to soothing nerves and expressing sympathy.

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Leslie Sherman-Shafer, an Uber driver in the San Francisco Bay Area, likes to start each shift with a full tank of gas.

It used to cost her around $25 to fill up her Toyota Corolla. She’s spent closer to $40 since the Iran war began and pushed up the average U.S. price for a gallon of regular gasoline by $1. Sherman-Shafer, a retired dental office assistant who picks up Uber passengers five days a week, said she’s putting in extra hours to cover the difference.

“We don’t get reimbursed for gas. We rely on the generosity of the tip,” Sherman-Shafer said. Some passengers have tipped more to compensate for higher gas prices, but most don’t tip at all, she said.

Driving a car, van or truck is a big part of many Americans’ workdays. Nearly 27% of civilian workers cited driving as a physical demand of their jobs last year, according to the U.S. Bureau of Labor Statistics. Millions of drivers use personal vehicles for their work, from delivery and ride-share providers like Sherman-Shafer to self-employed electricians, nannies, home health care aides and real estate agents.

As the war enters a fifth week and continues to disrupt global oil supplies. many of those workers are now scrambling to make ends meet. The national average price for gas reached $3.99 per gallon on Monday, up 34% from a month earlier, according to AAA.

“With everything going up, it’s impossible to save a dime,” Sherman-Shafer said.

Some companies compensate employees for using their own vehicles, including the cost of gas. In the U.S., the Internal Revenue Service sets a standard mileage rate every year that businesses and private contractors can use to calculate tax deductions. Alpine Maids, a housekeeping company based in Denver, pays cleaners the 2026 federal reimbursement rate of 72.5 cents per mile for the distance they drive to clients’ homes.

But with gas prices spiking, that money is not going as far, said Chris Willatt, a former geologist who now runs Alpine Maids.

“Our maids drive their own cars, so it’s kind of like their paycheck got smaller,” Willatt said. “They’re all upset.”

Willatt said he reduced how often maids must report to the office, from daily to once a week, and rejiggered cleaning assignments so employees aren’t driving as far between clients. If gas prices climb further, he said he might increase what he charges customers so he can pay workers more.

Molly Kenefick, the owner of Doggy Lama Pet Care Inc. in Oakland, California, said she recently raised her gas reimbursement rate to 80 cents per mile for 15 employees who use their own vehicles to pick up dogs and take them for hikes around the Bay Area. The rate increase will stay in place until gas prices in their area drop below $5 for at least a month, she said.

Kenefick said she planned to raise prices for the company’s services in May. But she doesn’t want to increase them too much because she’s worried she’ll lose clients. So Kenefick is also dipping into her savings to pay for gas.

“The economy is hard for people. Everybody’s under strain,” she said. “I can take some of the load and the company can take some of the load, provided this doesn’t go on too long.”

Ride-hailing and food delivery platforms that rely on gig workers don’t reimburse drivers for gas, but some are offering temporary incentives in response to rising gas prices. DoorDash, Uber, Lyft and Instacart are providing more than the usual cash back on gas purchases for drivers who use company-branded debit cards. DoorDash and Instacart are giving a weekly fuel payment to drivers who travel 125 miles or more making deliveries.

Sarah Noell, who spends about 20 hours a week making deliveries for DoorDash in Lynchburg, Virginia, said the measures help somewhat. But she said she’s noticed more customers declining to add tips to their orders as gas prices have increased.

Noell has started refusing any order that won’t average out to $1 per mile, including the $2.50 per order she gets from DoorDash. That cancels out many users who aren’t tipping or give only small tips.

“It takes nearly double the cost to fill my tank,” Noell said. “Ten dollars used to get me a decent amount. Now it only gets me 3 gallons.”

Owners of diesel-powered vehicles have seen even steeper fuel price increases since the war started on Feb. 28, affecting drivers around the world.

Drivers of diesel-powered “jeepneys” in the Philippines, went on strike for two days last week to protest their higher costs. In France, dozens of buses and trucks drove slowly on the Paris ring road Monday to demonstrate their concerns about rising diesel prices. Drivers and businesses want the French government to provide aid to mitigate the impact.

“The major difficulty right now is finding our balance on our business since we sold services with the vehicles at a certain price for diesel that was much cheaper. And we’re not going to ask customers to pay that difference,” Sarah Bahezre, manager of the bus transportation company Ulysse Cars, told The Associated Press.

Average U.S. diesel prices climbed 44% over the last month, according to AAA.

A few weeks ago, Rachel Hunter paid $3.62 a gallon to fill the single diesel truck used by Cactus Crew Junk Removal & Thrift Store, a Phoenix business she and her husband co-founded. The same fuel now costs $6.09 per gallon in Phoenix, according to AAA.

The truck carries all kinds of heavy cargo, from slabs of solid maple bowling lanes to loads of concrete paver tiles. So fuel costs quickly add up, Hunter said, particularly with a truck that only gets 12 or 13 miles to the gallon.

Hunter has started quoting prices that reflect the jump in prices. She worries she’s in a “vicious circle” that could hurt the business if oil prices remain high.

“We don’t want to get a bad name for being overpriced,” she says. “I’ll be able to explain it where people can understand, but it doesn’t mean they can afford it.”

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