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Vibe coding company Replit debuted Free Mode today, a new feature powered by OpenAI’s GPT-5.6 Luna model. The joint announcement, shared exclusively with Fortune, heralds an enhanced partnership between the two tech companies that will see them work on several future products, they said.

Although Replit is calling the feature Free Mode, it still requires a paid subscription—$20 per month for the Core tier or $100 per month for Pro. But the idea is to inject more value into these subscriptions, and to remove the stress of burning through AI tokens. A user may, for example, chat, ideate, or run a simple task on Free Mode before tapping into the larger, limited budget of their subscription.

Free Mode is now the default for Core and Pro users, an approach Michele Catasta, the president and head of AI at Replit, calls “radical.”

He said the new service was made possible by OpenAI slashing costs on the Luna model by 80% on July 30.

“A lot of tasks don’t require the frontier-level intelligence,” Catasta says. “It just requires smaller models that are faster and more affordable.” He added that GPT-5.6 Luna is both “very powerful and reliable.”

When the Replit agent determines the task requires a different or more sophisticated model, it automatically re-routes the request “for the duration to get the task done, and then we fall back into Free Mode as soon as possible,” Catasta said.

A race to the bottom or more ROI?

Replit’s new feature is part of a wider trend within the AI industry of companies looking to lower the cost of AI products as enterprise customers are increasingly concerned about the return on investment from their AI spend, and as competition among American AI model builders heats up amid competition from cheap, Chinese AI models.

To that end, OpenAI slashed costs by a whopping 80% on its GPT-5.6 Luna model for developers using the API last month. The price cuts were driven by greater efficiencies in running the model, not an influx of new compute supply, Thibault Sottiaux, Head of Core Products and Platform at OpenAI, tells Fortune.

OpenAI is also working to add more value into ChatGPT. “Month after month we push on the amount of utility you can get for the same dollar amount,” Sottiaux said. “It’s all about using the right tool and the right model for the right outcome.”

OpenAI and Replit tease more joint launches to come

Although developers can typically access many models through Replit, GPT-5.6 Luna is the only model powering Free Mode.

“All I’m going to say is that we’re working more and more closely with OpenAI, and we’re really excited about it,” he said. “This is the first of many launches we’re going to be doing together.”

Replit and OpenAI have been working together for years, with OpenAI noting that Replit was an “early user of GPT-3,” which came out in in 2020. Replit was founded in 2016 by its CEO Amjad Masad. Catasta and Sottiaux said the companies share a vision to make powerful, affordable models accessible to as many people as possible. That includes empowering people without a technical background to vibe code.

OpenAI CEO Sam Altman imagines one day AI will be so ubiquitous it will be considered a public utility, metered to the public like water or electricity, Business Insider reported in March.

“If we can get to a world where anyone with access to the internet can build a product, build a startup, and just kind of get started and get going, I think we’re going to see another renaissance-level entrepreneurial boom like we’ve never seen before,” said Altman in statement concerning the Replit Free Mode announcement.

This story was originally featured on Fortune.com

When I leave my Boston condo every day, I say good morning to the concierge, who works for a contracting company providing staff to residential buildings. When I conduct an interview in a nearby building, the people who clean that office at night are contractors. The person who serves me my lunch sandwich is a part-timer with no career prospects in that job.

When my best intentions to eat well are for naught and I gorge on Doritos, I remember that the tasters PepsiCo hires to test the chips’ addictiveness are contractors.

These are all examples of what I call “disposable jobs.” People who have them work at an employer’s site, but their employer makes no commitment to them regarding career prospects or job security. My research shows that employers treat more than 1 in 3 U.S. workers as disposable. That comes to just under 57 million full- or part-time workers out of the nation’s workforce of 162 million.

I am a labor economist. In my new book, “Disposable Workers: The Transformation of Employment,” I explain why this is happening, what forms it takes, how common it is, what the consequences are for people and for society, and what can be done about it.

3 different varieties

To learn more, I commissioned a nationally representative survey of over 6,000 people in late 2022. I also interviewed nearly 100 workers, employers and policymakers.

I found that there are three categories of disposable workers.

1. Contractors who are employed by a staffing firm but work at a client’s site. Examples include temporary office workers, building cleaners and security guards. Many of these people are poorly paid, but some, such as travel nurses, are highly compensated. My survey shows that these contractors account for 13% of the workforce.

2. Freelancers who work for companies, organizations or agencies without being employees. Examples include Uber and Lyft drivers, food delivery drivers, computer programmers and freelance journalists. In my survey, organizational freelancers represent 5% of the workforce. I don’t include in this category freelancers who work for individual people, such as most dog-walkers and handymen, because my focus is on how employers treat their employees.

3. Marginal workers who are employed by companies, organizations or agencies. They lack career opportunities, and their jobs have high turnover built in. Marginal workers account for 17% of the workforce in my survey.

Marginal work is important due to its magnitude and because although those jobs look standard, they are designed to be disposable.

Who are marginal workers?

Staff attorneys are quintessential marginal employees. They’re hired by law firms as employees, but the central feature of their jobs is that they are not on the promotion ladder to partner. Unlike their career-track counterparts, they have no job security. They are often hired to do the grunt work on a specific case, with the understanding that there is no commitment to keep them on if business lags or the project ends.

Adjunct professors are another good example. This group includes part-timers who teach a small number of courses and full-time contract faculty, but in both cases they lack job security and aren’t on track to obtain permanent, tenured, academic jobs.

In 1970 people with tenure or tenure-track jobs constituted 73% of those teaching at colleges and universities. By 2021 only 32% had that status, and the rest were adjunct instructors or contract faculty.

Part-time marginal workers

Another example of marginal work is part-timers.

Employing part-time workers costs less than having full-timers on the payroll. Part-time jobs pay an hourly wage that is nearly 20% below what workers with full-time jobs earn after age, education, occupation and industry are taken into account. When benefits are considered, the gap rises by another 5%.

A second advantage of part-timers from the employer’s perspective is higher turnover, which provides an easy path to be able to adjust the size of the workforce and which enables them to avoid investing in career development.

When a team of researchers led by professor Susan Lambert interviewed 88 employers that pay low wages, they found that many use part-time work to make their workforces more “flexible.” One manager explained that high churn of part-timers gave the company so much flexibility that they didn’t need temp workers.

“Temp workers: We don’t need them,” he said. “Wait a day for turnover.”

Evidence that employers try to maximize the number of people working for them part time instead of full time and with benefits arose after the Affordable Care Act fully took effect in 2014.

The ACA requires that employers with 50 or more employees either provide them with health insurance or pay for them to buy it, but only for people who work 30 or more hours a week. Otherwise they pay, as of 2026, a penalty of US$3,340 per uninsured employee.

Another team of researchers compared trends in part-time work in three low-wage industries – retail, hotels and restaurants, before and after the ACA rolled out. They found that the use of part-timers increased by 500,000 in the years after the Affordable Care Act was implemented. This suggests that companies add to their part-time ranks to save on the health insurance costs of standard employment.

Forces behind this trend

Why do employers want many of their workers to be disposable?

A primary motive is to save money. Employing freelancers and contractors means they can avoid mandatory benefits such as Social Security contributions and, for larger employers, contributing to the cost of health insurance.

Marginal workers, to be sure, do receive these benefits. But the high turnover built into their jobs means that their employers can invest less in their training and avoid the management costs otherwise associated with layoff severance and fair treatment on the job.

An additional motive for many employers is a lack of respect for what front-line employees can contribute. A 2023 report from the McKinsey consulting firm illustrated this tendency when it asserted that 5% of employees deliver 95% of “an organization’s value.”

This claim, which I believe is inaccurate, still speaks volumes about the attitude of McKinsey and the firms they interviewed regarding the other 95% of workers. They see those employees as disposable.

Less pay and job satisfaction

My survey showed that contractors, freelancers who work for employers and marginal employees all earn less than regular workers do.

In addition, the survey found that contractors and marginal workers are notably less satisfied with their jobs compared with regular workers, whereas freelancers, due to their ability to choose where and when to work, are more satisfied.

The public also pays a price for the use of disposable workers. As examples, researchers have found that hospital infection rates rise when cleaners are contract workers and that the use of contractors leads to a higher rate of industrial accidents.

Paul Osterman, Professor Emeritus, MIT Sloan School, Massachusetts Institute of Technology (MIT)

This article is republished from The Conversation under a Creative Commons license. Read the original article.

This story was originally featured on Fortune.com

Chris Yu will tell you his micromobility company, Also, is much more than an e-bike maker. Its market is every vehicle smaller than a car. 

On Wednesday, the Palo Alto based startup raised a $150 million Series D funding round, Fortune learned exclusively, led by Prysm Capital. Eclipse Capital and Greenoaks also participated. The round pushed the two-year-old startup’s valuation past $1 billion, a big number for a company whose most visible product, so far, is a $3,500 e-bike. 

But what Also actually makes is a small-vehicle technology platform alongside in-house motors, batteries, compute, and software. While the first iteration is in the form of a bike, Also’s technology is designed to be dropped into anything smaller than a car that moves people or goods, such as pedal-assist delivery quads and (eventually) fully autonomous vehicles.

The company spun out of Rivian in early 2025 after running as a stealth project inside the EV maker. Rivian founder RJ Scaringe co-founded the company and has stayed on as chairman of both. The money has moved fast since: $105 million in funding at spinout, a $200 million Series C earlier this year led by Greenoaks with Prysm, and a strategic investment from food delivery company DoorDash. 

The new capital is earmarked specifically to accelerate Also’s autonomous vehicle platform—with the company developing multiple autonomous hardware projects simultaneously for moving both goods and passengers—all built on the EV architecture already underpinning its consumer bike, the TM-B, and its commercial electric delivery quad, the TM-Q. 

“Repurposing a 7,000 pound van, truck or SUV to do across-town trips with one passenger, or to deliver a toothbrush from Amazon or a hamburger on DoorDash, just doesn’t make sense if you’re trying to make that trip as economical and low impact as possible and minimize congestion and time,” Yu told Fortune. “It will become abundantly obvious that different scales and form factors will be the right answer, particularly in these denser metro and suburban environments.”

The goal, he said, is that five years from now  small-form-factor autonomy is a standard and unremarkable part of the transportation mix, alongside self-driving cars.

Also’s latest round is arriving at a rough moment for the category it’s often looped into: e-bikes. Rad Power Bikes went bankrupt; Juiced Bikes collapsed; Porsche quietly walked away from the category altogether. Yet the global micromobility market—which covers e-bikes, e-scooters, and small delivery EVs—is still valued around $50 billion and is projected to more than double by the early 2030s.

Micromobility skeptic David Zipper has pointed to the bankruptcy wave as proof the category is saturated, not underserved. Yu, a former Specialized bike product chief with an aerospace background, pushes back hard on that read: “The performance of existing products within the category is not a signal about the demand and the size of the market, but it is a signal about how hard it is to create truly magical end customer experiences that solve for the existing pain point,” he said, arguing that unreliable batteries and clunky anti-theft locks, not lack of demand, are what’s kept riders on the sidelines.

But where Also stands out beyond being a “nicer e-bike” is on the commercial side. The company’s existing Amazon partnership and its multi-year commercial agreement with DoorDash point toward robots built on the same motors and compute as the consumer bike. 

Yu’s argument is that dense cities will benefit from purpose-built small EVs. Rivian, still a major non-controlling shareholder, factors into that roadmap too, since its growing fleet of on-road vehicles generates the driving data Also will eventually need to train its own autonomy systems. Jay Park, who led the round for Prism, draws a straight line back to why his fund backed Rivian in the first place. “We saw the potential behind wonderfully designed, vertically integrated electric trucks, vans and SUVs,” he said. “Also is applying that same approach to smaller form factor vehicles to address the demands of commercial operators and consumers today.”

The e-bike, in other words, was never really the business.

This story was originally featured on Fortune.com

Shares in Unitree, one of China’s largest manufacturers of humanoid robots, closed their first day of trading by more than 460%, showing strong investor appetite for China’s robotics sector. 

Unitree raised around $900 million in its IPO on Shanghai’s STAR Market, the city’s board for technology startups, at a valuation of $9 billion. After today’s surge, Unitree is now worth around $66 billion, ahead of larger Chinese tech firms like Baidu and JD.com. It’s also worth more than the most valuable U.S. robotics company, Figure AI, which got a $39 billion valuation in a September 2025 funding round.

Unitree reported 1.7 billion yuan ($252 million) in revenue in 2025, with almost 45% of that coming from overseas sales. It also generated 600 million yuan ($89 million) in profit last year. Most of Unitree’s sales go towards research purposes, though some Chinese tech companies and state-owned enterprises are starting to explore using humanoid robots in their operations.

Unitree has been backed by fellow Hangzhou startup DeepSeek, as well as big tech firms like Alibaba, Ant Group and Tencent, as well as several state-backed investment funds. 

Nomura, which gave a “buy” rating to Unitree shares on Wednesday, credited Unitree’s “rapid product iteration and continuous innovation” as the foundation of a “first-mover advantage.”

The Hangzhou-based startup, founded in 2016, has quickly become something akin to a national champion in China’s robotics sector. Synchronized dance performances by its humanoid robots are now a key feature of the CCTV Spring Festival Gala, China’s most-watched TV show. In 2025, Unitree founder Wang Xingxing got a rare invitation to a meeting with Chinese President Xi Jinping, alongside other tech luminaries like Alibaba founder Jack Ma, BYD founder Wang Chuanfu, and DeepSeek founder Liang Wenfeng.

China’s robotics sector, particularly humanoids, is becoming increasingly sophisticated. Days before its listing, Unitree revealed its “Superman” robot, which it claimed could beat human records on jumping height and running speed.

Still, not everyone is convinced by predictions of a coming humanoid robotics boom. “We believe the surge in shipments for robot makers could be illusionary,” HSBC analysts wrote in a mid-July report. “In the absence of a significant improvement in the AI model capability of robot makers, the current humanoid robot shipment upcycle is unlikely to be sustained over the next 1-2 years.”

Chinese AI and hardware IPOs are booming

A large trading-day pop is common for heavily anticipated Chinese IPOs. Mainland Chinese regulators try to keep IPO valuations low to protect retail investors if a newly listed stock fails to live up to the hype.

Shares in ChangXin Memory Technologies (CXMT), one of the world’s largest manufacturers of memory chips, surged by 460% on their first day of trading in Shanghai on July 27, after the company raised over $8 billion in its IPO. The company’s stock has continued to climb since then, and it’s now the most valuable Chinese company, ahead of tech giant Tencent.

One of Unitree’s domestic competitors, UBTech, listed in Hong Kong in late 2023. Another robotics startup, Agibot, is planning its own Hong Kong IPO. 

Other major AI and hardware companies considering an IPO, either in Shanghai or Hong Kong, include LLM developers Kimi developer Moonshot AI and DeepSeek, memory chipmaker Yangtze Memory Technologies, Baidu chip subsidiary Kunlunxin, and Nvidia competitor Moore Threads. 

The U.S. just banned foreign-made robots. Is that bad for Unitree?

In late July, the U.S. imposed a ban on foreign-made robots, citing the risk to national security. (Models already sold in the U.S. are exempt.) That hits a major market for Unitree, which last year generated 18% of its revenue from the U.S. The Pentagon has also placed Unitree on a list of “Chinese military companies,” or firms the U.S. believes has ties to China’s armed forces. 

“Losing access [to the U.S.] could noticeably affect [Unitree’s] revenue growth–particularly because the company has been among the most successful Chinese firms at selling relatively low-cost robots overseas,” wrote Morningstar analyst Kangyuxiao Li on Aug. 18, the day before Unitree’s trading debut.

He adds that robotics firms like Unitree, in addition to losing a “large developed market customer base,” might also lose valuable feedback from U.S. customers that could improve their products.

But the U.S. robotics sector could lose out just as much from Washington’s ban. Without access to cheap Chinese robots and components, robotics startups may struggle to develop and manufacture affordable products. Some U.S. startups are even resorting to carrying Chinese robotics components in their luggage, according to The Information.

This story was originally featured on Fortune.com

At 6:30 a.m. Eastern Time today, the price of oil sits at $93.60 per barrel, using Brent as the benchmark (we’ll explain what that means shortly). That’s an increase of $1.18 since yesterday morning and $27.41 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:

• Strait of Hormuz chaos has incentivized China to use an alternative trade route
• Data center gas plants to boost U.S. power emissions by 20%
• U.S. strategic reserve drawdown may damage the underground caverns storing American oil

Frequently asked questions

This story was originally featured on Fortune.com

Fortune’s Jason Ma here. Thrive Capital founder Joshua Kushner is no stranger to investing in pro sports, but his $12.5 billion deal with former Disney CEO Bob Iger to buy the Los Angeles Lakers vaults him into an elite club with elite benefits.

Kushner previously owned a minority stake in the Memphis Grizzlies, then sold it and bought a small stake in the Miami Heat, which he must sell to buy the Lakers. And earlier this year, he bought a minority a stake in the San Francisco Giants. If the Lakers deal is approved, however, Kushner and Iger will own about 83% of the iconic NBA franchise after the Buss family agreed to sell its share. (Jeanie Buss, however, is legally contesting her siblings’ plan to sell the stake.)

The new owners can bask in the aura of the Lakers’ storied history, celebrity fans, and overall glitz. But there’s another perk: Sports teams have long been considered great tax shelters for wealthy individuals, allowing billionaires to save hundreds of millions of dollars. “It’s a powerful tax shield,” Ram Ahluwalia, founder of Lumida Wealth Management, posted on X over the weekend. “My guess is he is preparing to offset a boatload of carried interest income. If you own a sports team, done correctly, you can get a deduction against income.”

He pointed out that Kushner is likely facing big gains from his holdings in SpaceX, OpenAI, and Stripe. Meanwhile, tax deduction benefits from owning a team are more favorable than owning real estate. By amortizing key assets like media rights and treating other assets as depreciable like contracts and the stadium, team owners can lower their tax bills. That’s possible even as a team appreciates in value while its actual business operations are also profitable.

For example, a team’s roster of players can be counted as an intangible asset that depreciates over time, generating hefty paper losses that offset an owner’s taxable income elsewhere. In fact, as much as 80% of the value of a team is comprised of intangibles. That includes the so-called goodwill that high-quality brands enjoy.

Sports industry analyst Joe Pompliano predicted that as soon as the Lakers deal closes, the new owners will allocate 90% or more of the price tag to intangible assets. “Kushner and Iger will then amortize these assets over 15 years under Section 197 of the tax code, allowing them to deduct the amortization against team income,” he said on X last week.

See you tomorrow,

Jason Ma
jason.ma@fortune.com

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This story was originally featured on Fortune.com

Good morning. On Fortune’s radar today:

• Bond vigilantes blow through Scott Bessent’s red lines.
• Does Iran have Trump cornered?
• The markets: Ugh.
• Robot maker Unitree’s IPO gives it $66 billion market cap.
• This chart might—might!—predict when the AI bubble bursts.
• OpenAI and Anthropic now out-earn Windows and Office.
• Why there are always fewer than 100 emails in Siemens CEO Roland Busch’s inbox.

➡️ Did someone forward you this email? If you would like to receive this information directly, every morning before the markets open in New York, sign up here.

This story was originally featured on Fortune.com

Abu Dhabi’s bid to become a global hub for digital assets got a major boost last week when crypto exchange giant, Coinbase, announced it is establishing an international “tokenization hub” in the emirate. 

Based out of Abu Dhabi Global Market (ADGM), the emirate’s financial centre, Coinbase has been granted a license to arrange investment deals and provide custody for tokenized securities. Custody essentially means safely holding and managing the digital ownership records for assets and is therefore important for giving institutional investors confidence.

Tokenization has been rapidly gaining momentum across traditional finance globally, with major asset managers and banks increasingly bringing funds, bonds, private credit and equities onto blockchain infrastructure.

Abu Dhabi has emerged as a key testing ground for this transition.

ADGM introduced one of the world’s first comprehensive virtual asset regulatory frameworks back in 2018 and has since attracted a steady wave of crypto and tokenization firms looking to establish a regulated base in the region. 

In December last year, the ADGM granted Binance, the world’s largest cryptocurrency exchange by trading volume, a license to operate from the financial centre. CoinMarketCap’s June 2026 data shows Binance’s trading volume stood at $4.74 trillion—equivalent to 39.5% of trading volume across the 11 exchanges it tracks, well ahead of its competitors. 

Over 20 firms now hold active virtual asset licences in the ADGM today. 

For Coinbase, the company is betting that more of the world’s financial system will eventually move onto blockchain—and it wants Abu Dhabi to be at the centre of that change.

“Coinbase locating its international tokenisation hub in ADGM is the kind of licence that turns tokenized securities from a pilot into a market,” UAE-based Adam Popat, CEO of SettleMint, which helps regulated institutions design, issue, and manage digital assets across the full lifecycle on one platform, told Fortune. 

“When a listed U.S. exchange chooses Abu Dhabi for that work, it tells issuers and allocators that the UAE now has the regulatory depth to host global issuance, not only regional experiments.”

Popat relocated from London to the UAE last year to take up the CEO role, having previously served as SettleMint’s CFO. Prior to that, he led Standard Chartered’s adoption of digital assets and blockchain technology. 

“I would say the UAE is one of the leading lights when it comes to tokenization, not just in this region, but globally,” he said. 

“It was very obvious to us that this region was going to be one of the key drivers of the adoption of this technology; there’s a confluence of factors here which are making that possible.”

Popat highlighted the GCC’s ambitious national-scale programs to digitize all aspects of the economy, its deep capital pools, and increasingly, deep pools of talent, as well as a collaborative regulatory environment. 

“That’s a set of ingredients which allows the digital asset agenda to move at pace here. And over the last year that I’ve been here, we’ve definitely seen that play out,” he said. 

“In terms of our client base, pipeline, partnerships—a lot of it is now being driven through this region.”

According to Popat, SettleMint is currently in talks with all the large banks in the UAE which are both exploring and progressing initiatives around tokenizing equities, funds, bonds and deposits. 

He added that tokenization of gold is “a very active conversation” that the company is also currently having with several partners. 

In May, SettleMint signed a strategic partnership with ADI Foundation to develop a digital asset lifestyle infrastructure on ADI Chain, the Foundation’s institutional blockchain, supporting the tokenization of securities under the ADGM’s regulatory framework. 

In doing so, they seek to address a core challenge facing institutional adoption of digital assets: the need for coordinated, regulated infrastructure that connects issuance, trading, settlement, and custody within a single recognized framework.

ADI Foundation is an Abu Dhabi-based organization creating blockchain infrastructure that aims to bring one billion people into the digital economy by 2030.

“The ADI Foundation is one of the organizations coming out of Abu Dhabi, which is building a very ambitious digital asset ecosystem that encompasses a lot of different financial institutions and corporates in the emirate,” said Popat. 

“So, they’ve really bought into the opportunity of digital assets, and we were obviously delighted to have been chosen by them as their lead tokenization and digital asset lifecycle partner for their ecosystem.” 

In July, ADI Foundation announced that ADI Chain had secured a $50 million strategic investment, marking a major milestone for one of the region’s fastest-growing institutional blockchain ecosystems.

The funding is expected to support ADI Chain’s international expansion across the Middle East, Africa and Asia, where governments and financial institutions are increasingly exploring blockchain infrastructure to modernize payment systems, digitize public services and support emerging digital economies.

The ecosystem is also seeing the rollout of DDSC, a dirham-pegged stablecoin developed through a collaboration between First Abu Dhabi Bank, International Holding Company and Sirius International Holding.

The UAE has also been leveraging its sovereign wealth funds to invest in tokenization.  

Last, month, Mubadala Capital, the asset management arm of Abu Dhabi’s sovereign wealth fund, tokenized one of its private-market investment strategies through UAE-based infrastructure provider KAIO on blockchain including Base, with Coinbase also taking an exposure to the fund.

Saudi Arabia, meanwhile, completed its first sovereign-native tokenized title-deed transfer in early 2026, while the Qatar Financial Centre is taking steps to enable real estate tokenization.

In a report published in January this year, global consulting firm Kearney estimated that by 2030, close to $500 billion in assets across the GCC could be represented on blockchain, comprising private markets, funds, bank deposits, public equities, real estate, and commodities. 

Of these, it believes that private markets represent the largest tokenization opportunity for the GCC, which it estimates could reach $154 billion in market size by 2030. 

The firm noted that these asset classes point to a market with significant headroom for growth—one that could hold a meaningful share of the region’s investable assets, reshaping how capital is issued, traded and allocated. 

“This suggests a fundamental shift in market dynamics, and explains why governments, financial institutions, and asset managers are beefing up their digital asset strategies,” it said. 

This story was originally featured on Fortune.com

Welcome to this week’s Fortune Gulf Brief. We’ll be covering:  

• Abu Dhabi lands Coinbase’s big tokenization bet 
• Qatar is building EVs made for the Gulf’s scorching heat 
• Gulf tourism faces an uneven recovery 
• Straitened times for Gulf energy exports  

In a major coup for Abu Dhabi, crypto exchange giant Coinbase has chosen the emirate as its “international tokenization hub” as it looks to bring more traditional financial assets onto the blockchain. 

Coinbase, the U.S.’s largest crypto exchange, will be based out of Abu Dhabi Global Marketplace (ADGM), from where it has been granted a license to arrange deals in investments and securely hold digital assets to facilitate the launch of tokenized securities. These will be backed by real shares and issued under ADGM’s regulatory framework.  

Investors will also be able to hold the assets in digital wallets, eliminating the need for a brokerage account or a correspondent banking relationship.  

“This is the most significant step we have taken yet toward building the infrastructure for a more open, more accessible global financial system,” the crypto exchange said in a statement announcing the decision last week.  

Abu Dhabi is keen to become a major player in that shift. In 2018, ADGM issued one of the world’s first regulatory frameworks for virtual assets.  

The new hub forms part of Coinbase’s wider expansion in the UAE. The company already runs Project Diamond in Abu Dhabi, which focuses on digital debt for institutional investors, while its derivatives business is based in Dubai. 

More broadly, the Gulf has been leveraging its sovereign wealth funds to invest in tokenization.  

Global consulting firm Kearney predicts that close to $500 billion of GCC assets will be represented on blockchain by 2030, led by private markets, funds, and bank deposits.  

You can read my full piece here on how the UAE is building its tokenization industry.   

Melissa Hancock

As ever, thanks for reading, and do keep in touch with your thoughts and ideas. See you next week.
melissa.hancock@fortune.com 

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• In today’s CEO Daily: How CEOs can plan for successful retirements.
• The big leadership story: Bank of America is worried about bonds.
• The markets: Mixed as inflation expectations tick up.
• Plus: All the news and watercooler chat from Fortune.

Good morning. Phil Wahba writing from New York. Earlier this month, I wrote about how more companies, among them Verizon, Boeing and Cracker Barrel, have been hiring CEOs out of retirement, often in times of crisis. But why do these CEOs, who are presumably wealthy enough to never work again, accept a grueling new assignment in their sixth or seventh decades? A new study suggests an answer: They simply weren’t prepared for retirement.  

New data published by Boston Consulting Group (BCG) in early August found that only 40% felt satisfied with their transition from hard-charging CEO to retiree in the first year after making the move. It seems that many CEOs, like millions of other Americans, underestimate the emotional upheaval that comes from suddenly having a lighter schedule, no longer having a role central to their identity, or no longer having the structure that a job gives them.

“Is the decision to get a new CEO job really motivated by value creation where you know a unique skill that you bring that only you can do, or is it … really more fear or vanity?” asks Christine Barton, leader of BCG’s North America CEO Advisory practice.

It can be especially difficult for CEOs who are still relatively young, in their 50s and 60s, who want to stay in the mix. Mary Dillon, former CEO of Ulta Beauty, told me three years ago that when she came out of retirement after a highly successful stint at Ulta to lead Foot Locker in her early 60s, that “I didn’t realize how much I would miss having one big thing to focus on and how much I would miss leading a retail company.”

Here is something companies can help with: Helping CEOs prepare to leave. Having an executive coach is pretty standard now, but Barton says there is a growing niche within the CEO coaching world specifically tailored to helping executives prepare for active retirement and build their legacy.

The survey of former CEOs of companies with at least $1 billion in revenue found that 3 to 4 meaningful activities, such as serving on a board, being an advisor, or teaching, were the sweet spot where one can both still feel needed and useful but not overprogrammed.

Again, self-awareness is key. “The portfolio career can be incredibly exciting, but it has to be intentional, and you have to do real self-reflection on whether or not you’re at that stage,” says Barton.

The BCG report found that after one year, 90% of CEOs were happy with how things went down with their retirement. But Barton says there’s one sure fix for having to lure a CEO back from retirement: Focus on building a robust internal pipeline now, long before your leader is ready to leave. 

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

This story was originally featured on Fortune.com

Good morning,

Save a horse, ride a Pony.ai?

Chinese autonomous driving company Pony.ai is planning to expand beyond its home country. The company announced potential overseas robotaxi ​deployments of more than 4,000 vehicles on Tuesday just as fellow autonomous driving firms fight to commercialize robotaxi services abroad.

The news comes only days after Pony announced an expanded contract with Uber for deployment of more than 2,000 robotaxis in Europe.

Self-driving cars aside, here’s what else happened in tech.

Want to send thoughts or suggestions to Fortune Tech? Drop a line here.

This story was originally featured on Fortune.com

Several major universities had a record-breaking donor year in 2025, including the University of Oklahoma, Florida State University, and the University of Tennessee.

But the University of South Carolina had a banner year, shattering its fundraising record by nearly $100 million. The USC system raised a record $357.6 million in private donations during fiscal year 2026, up from its previous record of $259.7 million just one year before. 

Several large investments led the record-breaking year, including one from the Robert and Janice McNair Foundation, established by the late billionaire Houston Texans founder, who died in November 2018. Janice McNair recently died on July 14, 2026. 

Robert, a 1958 USC graduate, and his wife, Janice, established the McNair Scholars program at USC in 1998. The merit-based scholarship is offered to the top 20 out-of-state students each year entering the South Carolina Honors College.

“Those who demonstrate outstanding academic achievements with a commitment to service and leadership represent our future,” Robert and Janice McNair said in a joint statement published on their foundation’s website. “We are delighted to provide scholarships to these deserving students.” 

In 2026, the Robert and Janice McNair Foundation donated $25 million to USC, part of the couple’s longstanding philanthropic partnership with the university. All in, the foundation has given at least $81 million to USC since 1998, starting with a $20 million gift to launch the McNair Scholars program. Other major gifts included $10 million to sustain the scholars program, $8 million to found the McNair Institute for Entrepreneurism and Free Enterprise, $18 million for more scholar awards, and the $25 million gift this year. 

It’s unclear whether the $25 million gift is going toward just the scholars program. The foundation didn’t immediately respond to Fortune’s request for comment. 

How Robert McNair made his fortune and gave it away 

McNair’s path to billionaire status wasn’t linear. He spent most of his 20s and 30s as a struggling salesman and unsuccessful entrepreneur before breaking through with cogeneration company Cogen Technologies, which grew into the world’s largest privately owned cogeneration company. 

“Many people say I was an overnight success, and I was, after 20 years of struggling,” McNair told Houston Lifestyles & Homes.

The payoff came in 1999, when McNair sold Cogen to Enron for $1.5 billion. He used the windfall to win the NFL’s 32nd franchise, the Houston Texans, for $700 million that same year, and the team began play in 2002. 

But the McNairs channeled their fortune into far more than football. Making education and medical research the cornerstones of their giving, the couple contributed more than half a billion dollars to charity over the decades. 

Robert also served on Baylor College of Medicine’s board of trustees in Waco, Texas, from 1994 until his death, and in 2007, the McNairs gave $100 million to Baylor—tying the largest donation in the school’s history—to fund research into breast and pancreatic cancer, juvenile diabetes, and the neurosciences. The gift helped establish the McNair Medical Institute, and the campus was later named in their honor.

Their reach extended well beyond Texas. The couple seeded programs at USC, Rice University, M.D. Anderson Cancer Center, the University of Texas Health Science Center at Houston, and Texas Children’s Hospital. 

Closer to Robert’s roots, the Robert and Janice McNair Educational Foundation, launched three decades ago for students at his old North Carolina high school, has awarded nearly $9 million in scholarships and transformed college readiness across his hometown of Rutherford County, N.C.

This story was originally featured on Fortune.com

The Strip is one of Nevada’s most concentrated gambling corridors. Sin City casinos there brought in roughly $8.8 billion in gaming revenue in 2025—about $24 million a day—and raked in roughly 56% of the state’s $15.8 billion in total gaming revenue that year. It also saw 38.5 million visitors in 2025, directly supporting more than 250,000 jobs in the area.

So it wasn’t a surprise with Tesla Robotaxi filed an application with the Nevada Transportation Authority (NTA) in June and asked for permits for 5,000 autonomous vehicles to operate within the city. But it was a surprise when the NTA responded a month later, giving the robotaxi arm of Elon Musk’s brainchild a “maximum fleet of ten (10) fully autonomous vehicles.” The permit also confined those 10 robotaxis to an Authority-approved corridor along the Strip and barred speeds above 45 mph. Most importantly for the tourism industry, the permit prohibits passenger pickups within one-quarter mile of the airport “unless authorized by the airport operator and all required governmental approvals have been obtained.”

Every vehicle must be marked “Robotaxi,” riders must be notified before each trip they’re in a driverless vehicle, and operations require “appropriate human supervision” under Society of Automotive Engineers standards. That supervision requirement is a step back from what Tesla runs elsewhere: The company has offered rides in parts of Austin with no safety monitor in the vehicle since January, and Nevada’s language suggests regulators aren’t ready to extend Tesla that same latitude here.

Clark County, which doesn’t issue the permit itself but has to live with what the NTA approves, says the arrangement leaves it managing fallout without a formal role in setting the terms.

“While the Clark County does not authorize this type of transportation on our roadways, we are directly impacted by the operations of the robotaxis,” a county spokesperson told Fortune. “County impacts include several departments such as Clark County Fire, Business License, and Harry Reid International Airport to name a few, and we are working to get our arms around how best to facilitate these types of operations going forward.”

Neither Tesla nor the Nevada Transportation Authority responded to Fortune’s request for comment.

Creating the infrastructure

Tesla had been building toward this before the permit came through. The company is putting $3.1 million into retrofitting a 37,000-square-foot building in the southwest Las Vegas valley, just as it undergoes hiring for Vegas-based robotaxi roles. Unlike Zoox and Motional, both of which lease or partner for their vehicles, Tesla builds the car, writes the self-driving software, and now holds the commercial permit all under one roof.

Tesla isn’t the first company to go through this process, and the terms it got look modest next to what’s already running. Amazon’s Zoox has held permits since 2025, starting under a 65-vehicle cap on a free-rides-only basis. The NTA amended that permit in July this year, two weeks before Tesla’s approval, to allow up to 100 vehicles and paid fares, and Zoox began charging for those rides on Aug. 10, after the National Highway Traffic Safety Administration granted it a two-year federal exemption covering up to 2,500 vehicles nationwide, due to Zoox’s robotaxi having no steering wheel or pedals, putting it outside several federal vehicle safety standards.

In Las Vegas alone, Zoox says its fleet has logged more than 3 million miles and carried nearly a million riders for free since last year; it’s now running roughly 50 cars on the Strip and pricing rides at a “comfort” tier, which is above standard UberX fares. Zoox’s longer track record in Nevada—reporting has put its Las Vegas totals as high as 100 vehicles and 350,000 rides along the Strip—likely explains why the NTA started Tesla at 10 rather than at a larger number: The Authority has effectively used Zoox’s rollout as a template for scaling a new permit up over time.

For now, Tesla’s Las Vegas presence is 10 cars on a quarter-mile-restricted stretch of the Strip, capped at 45 mph, with no word yet on when rides start.

This story was originally featured on Fortune.com

UnitedHealth Group is contesting an Internal Revenue Service proposal to increase its taxable income over how it priced transactions with one of its foreign subsidiaries, a dispute the company disclosed in a quarterly filing in May and repeated in its August filing. 

The notices cover transactions between UnitedHealth and a foreign subsidiary from the 2017 through 2020 tax years, according to the May filing. The IRS is seeking to “significantly increase taxable income” for each of those years, and could seek similar adjustments for later years.

UnitedHealth is not conceding. In its August filing, the company said it believes its tax positions are properly supported and plans to “vigorously contest” the IRS’s proposed adjustments.

This dispute comes amid a broader push from the IRS that began more than a decade ago to scrutinize how American multinational corporations allocate profits between their U.S. operations and foreign subsidiaries.

“This is quite common because the IRS has, since the Obama administration, increased its scrutiny of transfer pricing by U.S. based multinationals who are trying to shift profits out of the U.S. to their foreign subsidiaries,” Reuven S. Avi-Yonah, the Irwin I. Cohn Professor of Law at the University of Michigan Law School, told Fortune.

The agency has fought similar battles with some of corporate America’s biggest names, including Coca-Cola, Meta and Medtronic. Those cases have produced very different outcomes.

“The IRS has won some of these cases and lost others and the sums involved are usually in the billions,” Avi-Yonah said.

UnitedHealth emphasized that the dispute remains unresolved.

“The company has previously disclosed the IRS examination and related tax matters in its public filings and believes its tax positions are properly supported,” a UnitedHealth Group spokesperson told Fortune. The spokesperson said the matters “remain subject to further review and discussions.”

Neither filing names the subsidiary, says where it is based, describes the transactions at issue, or attaches a dollar figure to what the IRS is seeking.

That makes UnitedHealth’s dispute difficult to size. While other transfer-pricing fights have involved billions of dollars, neither the company nor the IRS has disclosed enough to know what transactions the agency is challenging here or how much money is at stake.

A Notice of Proposed Adjustment is issued during an examination. It is a proposal, not a final determination, assessment, or penalty. A company that disagrees can contest it through an administrative process, and unresolved disputes can reach court.

What is transfer pricing?

At issue is the price a company sets on transactions between its own units in different countries. Since those prices can affect how much profit is attributed to each country, they can also affect where taxes are paid.

Section 482 of the tax code allows the IRS to adjust a company’s taxable income if it believes transactions between related businesses were not fairly priced. 

The rule is simple to state but notoriously hard to apply because there is often no unrelated third party doing the same deal to compare against. Two sides can examine the same intercompany transactions and reach different conclusions, leading to disputes that can take years to resolve.

But UnitedHealth’s disclosure does not reveal what kind of transaction triggered the proposed adjustment.

Many major transfer pricing disputes have centered on intellectual property transferred to foreign subsidiaries, Avi-Yonah said. But he cautioned he does not know enough about UnitedHealth specifically to say what the agency is examining.

How big can transfer-pricing fights get?

Coca-Cola shows how large a transfer-pricing disagreement can become.

The beverage giant’s dispute could ultimately involve roughly $20 billion in tax and interest. Coca-Cola has already paid the IRS $6 billion covering tax years 2007 through 2009 while it appeals, and estimates it could face roughly $14 billion in additional tax and interest for 2010 through 2025 if the IRS adjustments upheld by the Tax Court ultimately stand. Its reserve stood at $529 million as of July 3, 2026. 

Meta is also contesting an IRS notice asserting $15.89 billion in additional tax, plus interest and penalties, for its 2017 through 2019 tax years, primarily related to transfer pricing with foreign subsidiaries and other international tax adjustments. The company petitioned the Tax Court in December 2025.

These disputes can outlive multiple corporate and presidential administrations. Coca-Cola’s fight concerns tax years 2007 through 2009, while Medtronic’s began with its 2005 and 2006 tax years and just entered settlement talks this March after two trips to a federal appeals court. Avi-Yonah has written that the Medtronic case will likely take more than 20 years to resolve.

None of these cases predicts where UnitedHealth’s dispute will land. However, they do show how large and how protracted transfer pricing fights can become once they escalate.

What happens next?

If the dispute is not resolved during the examination, UnitedHealth can pursue the IRS administrative appeals process and potentially litigate the matter.

One number in UnitedHealth’s filings offers little help in determining the company’s potential exposure. Its gross unrecognized tax benefits rose to $5.6 billion at the end of 2025 from $4.1 billion a year earlier, but the company cautioned against connecting that figure to this dispute.

A UnitedHealth spokesperson said the $5.6 billion reflects reserves across all of the company’s uncertain tax positions and “should not be interpreted as the amount associated with the NOPAs.” The company declined to say how much of the total, if any, relates to this dispute or to identify the foreign subsidiary involved.

The IRS did not respond to Fortune’s request for comment. The agency is generally barred by federal law from discussing individual taxpayers.

UnitedHealth said in its August filing it believes its reserves for uncertain tax positions are adequate “based on current available information,” and it intends to contest the proposed adjustments.

This story was originally featured on Fortune.com

In 2007, Assaf Rappaport was 24 years old and working inside Unit 81, an elite technology division of the Israeli Defense Forces that builds hardware and surveillance tools. For weeks, a friend had repeatedly badgered him about a 19-year-old soldier he was serving alongside, named Yevgeny Dibrov, insisting Rappaport needed to meet him.

“He kept telling me, this guy is being wasted there, you need to talk to him,” Rappaport told Fortune.

Before the two ever spoke, the friend told Rappaport that Dibrov had once won second place in a regional bout of Chidon Tanach, Israel’s national Bible trivia championship—a contest that requires memorizing scripture well enough to answer detailed trivia questions. Dibrov, who was not religious, entered purely to win. “I said, oh my God, this guy can probably do everything,” Rappaport recalled thinking.

Soon after, the two men spoke on the phone, one of them a teenager, the other already a rising figure inside Israeli military intelligence. They talked about Dibrov’s work, his dreams and aspirations, and whether he was in the right military unit. “By the end of that conversation, I knew I wanted him to be part of my unit,” Rappaport said. It wasn’t until Dibrov joined Rappaport’s command that the two men met face-to-face.

Rappaport became Dibrov’s commanding officer. “He would come in the morning with TheMarker, basically Israel’s Wall Street Journal, and we had terrific discussions and fighting about things unrelated to intelligence and computer science and cyber, but talking about business,” he said. 

Avishag Shaar-Yashuv

In April 2026, ServiceNow paid $7.75 billion cash for Dibrov’s company, Armis, a platform that monitors every connected device on an enterprise network—medical equipment, industrial systems, or other “internet of things” devices—and then flags the ones that pose a security risk.

It was the largest acquisition in ServiceNow’s history and the second-biggest pure startup exit in Israeli tech ever. (By coincidence, Rappaport holds the top spot with Google’s $32 billion acquisition in 2025 of Wiz, a cloud cybersecurity company.)

Dibrov, 38, and his co-founder, Nadir Izrael, split roughly $930 million between them in the exit. Dibrov became general manager of the newly formed Armis business unit inside ServiceNow, with Izrael as group vice president of product and engineering. The two are running roughly the same operation they built a decade ago, just bolted onto a company with a $180 billion market cap and thousands of enterprise customers. 

When news of the Armis deal first leaked to Bloomberg in mid-December, ServiceNow’s stock opened down 9% that Monday. The market reaction mirrored a then-new fear gripping software stock investors: that AI agents would make traditional enterprise software obsolete. By spring, Wall Street had coined the term “SaaSpocalypse.” ServiceNow fell, down as much as 42% in the first four months of 2026, worse than Salesforce over the same stretch.

Amit Zavery, ServiceNow’s chief product officer, doesn’t buy the SaaS doomsday premise. “We did not really believe in this SaaS apocalypse,” he told Fortune, noting that the company was hitting or beating its own financial targets every quarter through the scare.

Rather than treat the moment as a threat, Zavery said ServiceNow saw it as an opening. The acquisition of Armis allowed ServiceNow to fold cybersecurity, IT asset management, and industrial device monitoring into a single platform. “That’s where our thinking was, and that’s how we’re seeing the traction play out very well. Our thesis was accurate, as you can see,” he said.

In May, ServiceNow shares surged 41%, its best performance since going public in 2012. The stock jumped another 8% in late July after second-quarter earnings beat estimates, outrunning Salesforce and Workday in the same rally. Revenue hit $3.99 billion, up 24%, and the company said its AI products had crossed $1 billion in annual contract value.

Asked whether the acquisition helped ServiceNow avoid the worst of the SaaSpocalypse, Zavery didn’t hedge. “It is helping, for sure,” he said, though he was careful to note it’s one piece of a broader strategy, not the whole story. ServiceNow gave Armis and its sister acquisition, Veza, direct credit, folding both into a new unit called Autonomous Security and Risk, and telling investors the combination is “supercharging” its security business.

Inbar Gold

When Dibrov visited New York City in May, he confessed at the West 42nd Street Lifetime Fitness indoor basketball court that he originally planned on playing professionally. “I wasn’t tall enough,” he said, lobbing a three-pointer at the net while dressed in a skin-tight Armani suit. Dibrov is six feet tall, but the way he coifs up his silver-spackled dark hair into a fauxhawk gives him at least a couple of extra inches.

Dibrov was three years old when his family left Ukraine for Israel, part of a wave of post-Soviet-Jewish immigration in the early 1990s. What he remembers vividly about his upbringing is growing up in a household that, for years, couldn’t afford a car, while every other family around him had one. “It always pissed me off,” he told Fortune last May, sitting across from Jeff Horing, the managing director of Insight Partners who made the largest bet of his career on Dibrov. “Even right now, when I’m thinking about it, I don’t care how much I’ve made; I’m going to work harder and continue.”

He now owns several Italian sports cars and is an avid automobile enthusiast. On the basketball court, he complained about the workaday aesthetics of Ferrari’s first electric car before reminding himself that “humility is my most important value.”

They financed each other’s fortunes twice over

Dibrov studied electrical engineering and computer science at Technion, Israel’s top technical university. 

In 2012, Rappaport called Dibrov, who was still finishing his degree, and told him he was starting a cybersecurity company. He wanted Dibrov, then 24, to be the first hire. “I’ll study on Saturday, maybe a bit on Sunday, and all the other time I’ll just work,” Dibrov recalled telling Rappaport. That company, Adallom, protected corporate data stored in cloud software by watching how employees behaved inside a company’s cloud apps and flagging anything out of character, the same instinct for spotting what doesn’t belong that would later define Armis. Dibrov ran Adallom’s business development across Europe, the Middle East, and Asia, despite having no formal sales training. Microsoft bought the company in 2015 for $250 million.

Avishag Shaar-Yashuv

When Dibrov left Microsoft to start his own company in December 2015, he asked Rappaport for one thing: the right to be Rappaport’s first investor in his next venture. Rappaport agreed on the condition that the arrangement run both ways. Rappaport wrote Dibrov a $100,000 first check for Armis. Years later, when Rappaport co-founded Wiz, Dibrov gave him the same sum for his first check there too. The two men effectively financed each other’s fortunes, twice over.

The company’s first raise in January 2016 was typical of the early, scrappy years of Israel’s tech startup scene. He worked conference floors to find investors, catching executives as they walked off stage to pitch them. He and Izrael didn’t even have a term sheet when they took their first round. “It was $5 million at an $11 million post valuation. Today people would laugh at that,” Dibrov said. 

Derek Zanutto, a partner at CapitalG, still remembers the moment he decided he needed in at Armis. He and Dibrov had met for barely an hour in Palo Alto, right after Armis closed a then-undisclosed round. Dibrov politely told him that Armis no longer needed the money. Zanutto left the room, made his way to the parking lot, only to turn around and walk back into the building. “Is there any possible way I could put any money in?,” he recalled asking. “Even a tiny amount, just to start a relationship with you.” 

Eventually, Insight Partners acquired Armis in 2020 for roughly $1.1 billion dollars, with $100 million from CapitalG and a rollover from several existing shareholders. The cyber firm, however, continued to operate independently and be managed by Dibrov and Izrael. When ServiceNow bought the company, Insight’s stake was worth around $3.3 billion, representing 43% of the stock, according to TheMarker.

The IPO is cancelled

Armis kept growing in the following years until the company was doing more than $300 million in annual recurring revenue. By August 2025, Dibrov was openly telling employees it was headed toward an IPO. Then, that winter, the plan changed abruptly.

Dibrov recalls he got an out-of-the-blue call from Amit Zavery, ServiceNow’s president and chief product officer, pitching a speculative acquisition while he was on his way to the airport. 

Zavery, who led the acquisition for ServiceNow, told Fortune he’d been following Armis for years. ServiceNow was working on building its own asset-tracking tools before deciding it made more sense to buy the market leader than keep building a competitor from scratch. “As AI becomes prevalent and core to every company’s transformation, the biggest problem customers are facing is security and governance,” Zavery said. “We saw a great opportunity.”

Inbar Gold

John Aisen, senior vice president of product management, security, and risk at ServiceNow, sees it differently. He described the moment he was sold on Armis: On a marathon diligence call, Izrael mentioned a product called Vipr, a highly advanced product that finds security holes in code before hackers can do so. It wasn’t advertised on Armis’ website and, at that point, nobody at ServiceNow knew it existed. To Aisen, that meant Armis was building a range of sophisticated cyber capabilities built to address the industry’s evolving needs. “I’ve been in cyber, directly and indirectly, for 26 years,” he said. “Not only is that product proof, but these two folks, Yevgeny and Nadir, are folks that, one, I’ll have fun building a company with, and two, will add tremendous value to the authentic conversations we need to have with CISOs. That just took me over the edge.”

What Aisen keeps coming back to, though, is a story from earlier in Armis’ existence when Dibrov once got a Dear John letter from a departing customer who he learned was less satisfied with the product than expected and wanted to end the relationship. Instead of sending an account executive to smooth things over, Dibrov booked a red-eye flight himself, showed up in person, and talked the customer back into the relationship by coming up with a plan to resolve any technical issues. “That also sets a very good example for the people who work under you,” Aisen told Fortune. “I’m also willing to do the work that you’re doing, I’m not above you, and if I’m willing to do the work, then you’d better do the work too.”

During the 24 hours Dibrov spent with Fortune in May, he consumed at least five espresso shots while he darted across Manhattan to meetings and even attended Izrael’s religious wedding ceremony to his now-wife via Zoom from the back seat of a Suburban.

At home, his wife, Sharin Fisher, describes a man who always opens the car door for her, calls their toddler “the princess,” and whose voice audibly softens the moment the subject changes to his child. Yet he still closed a funding round from the labor and delivery ward the day after his daughter was born, laptop balanced on his knees, video call running in the hallway outside his wife’s hospital room.

Zanutto worries about exactly this. “He’s so hard-charging, puts in so much effort,” he said. “My advice to him has been, make sure you’re carving out time for yourself too, because you need that. He’s just a little too willing to make sacrifices in service of others.” He calls Dibrov “an unstoppable energizer bunny,” then adds, almost as a caveat, that in seven years he’s never once seen him well rested. “He always looks like he’s in the middle of going from one plane, one meeting, to the next, just charging ahead and fueling himself on shots of espresso,” he said.

Avishag Shaar-Yashuv

Negotiations with ServiceNow began even though some of Armis’ earliest employees had been implicitly promised an IPO payday. Dibrov had to explain, quickly, why the plan had changed. “I talked a lot about, one, that this is something customers really wanted,” he said. “It can be one plus one equals ten from every perspective.” He insists nobody pushed back. Investors, he says, got what amounted to the best internal rate of return of their careers, a fast, outsized payout. Some limited partners, he claims, hadn’t even finished wiring their most recent investment before the returns started coming back.

Morgan Stanley, who advised on the deal, also happened to be one of Armis’ biggest customers. Katherine Wetmur, the bank’s chief information officer of cyber, remembers meeting Dibrov roughly a decade ago at its first Tech Week conference. He was, in her words, “very eager” but “wasn’t ready for prime time yet.” What changed her mind over the following years was his persistence. “He probably at times might have wanted to give up on us, but he stuck with us,” she said.

Alonzo Ellis, Morgan Stanley’s global chief information security officer, said he was impressed that Armis built custom features around the bank’s regulatory needs on a two week turnaround instead of the usual months-long product cycle. “That really stood out,” Ellis said. “You rarely see that in companies.”

The new boss

Everyone in Dibrov’s orbit, though, described the same tension. Dibrov built his identity, and arguably a chunk of Israel’s tech industry’s self-image, on being the founder who doesn’t sell out cheap and doesn’t sit still. Now he answers to a corporate boss for only the second time in his life, working inside ServiceNow’s much larger, bureaucratic machine.

He’s openly uninterested in meshing with corporate culture. “I still act like a startup,” he said. “If there’s any roadblock, I go immediately to Amit and Bill. I don’t care, maybe somebody won’t like it. Well, we don’t have time.” 

ServiceNow, however, isn’t a startup, and Dibrov no longer knows all of the names and faces that surround him. At the time of the acquisition, Armis had approximately 950 employees. Now Dibrov oversees 2,000 employees. 

But for some—like Omri Casspi, the first Israeli NBA player who is now a venture investor—the acquisition is one step towards a much greater future. “I have no doubt in my mind that ServiceNow is going to try to make Yevgeny their CEO at some point,” he said. 

Bill McDermott’s contract as Service Now’s chief executive doesn’t expire until at least 2030. So Casspi may be getting ahead of himself.

Zavery was careful to emphasize no such succession discussions were taking place. Nonetheless, “It’s been only four or five months, but I think all signs point that we made the right decision,” he said.

This story was originally featured on Fortune.com

The bond market is the only major asset class currently pricing risk correctly, according to Johns Hopkins economist Steve Hanke—and what it’s pricing in is ugly. In an interview with Fortune, Hanke argued that President Trump has inadvertently mixed what he called “a deadly cocktail” for Treasuries, and the result is a bond selloff that has already pushed yields past the informal threshold Treasury Secretary Scott Bessent has been trying to defend.

“It’s a deadly cocktail,” Hanke offered. He said “the bond vigilantes have come out of hibernation” in reference to the investors that have served as the scourge of administrations for decades, selling government debt en masse to punish what they see as reckless fiscal or monetary policy, ultimately driving yields higher until policymakers change course. The term was coined by economist Ed Yardeni in a 1983 paper, where he wrote that if fiscal and monetary authorities wouldn’t regulate the economy, “the bond investors will.”

James Carville, Bill Clinton’s chief political strategist, gave the idea a famous endorsement a decade later, saying he wanted to be reincarnated as the bond market: “You can intimidate everybody.”

Hanke said he expects the 10-year yield could climb another 50 basis points, adding that he will be “very bearish” on bonds, “for quite some time.”

Three ingredients in the cocktail

Hanke, a professor of applied economics at Johns Hopkins and a special counselor at the Center for Financial Stability, as well as a Fortune senior contributing columnist, laid out the selloff as the product of three distinct forces, ranked in order of importance.

The first and most important, he said, is monetary. “The first thing is always money.” Hanke pointed to Divisia M4—the broadest and, in his view, most reliable measure of the money supply, produced by the Center for Financial Stability and tracked by monetary economist William Barnett. This is growing at 6.7% year-over-year, above what his own “Golden Growth Rate” of roughly 6%, the pace he sees as consistent with the Fed’s 2% inflation target.

That acceleration follows what Hanke calls the “bathtub” dynamic—a framework he has explained in previous Fortune interviews, likening the supply of money to water into an already full bathtub. The massive pandemic-era liquidity bubble has largely drained out of the financial system, he said, and the tub is now refilling. “It’s going to be a long time until inflation is at 2%,” he said, referring to the Federal Reserve’s target rate of inflation, and he argued that inflation expectations—not just realized inflation—are what drive bond yields, and those expectations are being fed by faster money growth. “The inflation genie’s out of the bottle, and it’s not going back in,” he said.

Wall Street strategists say the breach is rattling the Treasury Secretary directly—and the most concrete evidence is an extraordinary policy action on July 31, the same day the 30-year yield hit 5.27%. The U.S. joined Japan in a coordinated yen-buying operation, the first joint currency intervention between the two countries since 1998. The explicit concern was that a falling yen would push Tokyo to sell a portion of its $1.114 trillion in U.S. Treasury holdings to defend its currency — a dump that would send yields even higher. Bessent’s notepad from a Camp David cabinet meeting visibly listed “Buy Japanese Yen (JPY) $5–10 bil.”

Bloomberg reporting from early August separately described Bessent sending signals that he was eager to keep bond yields from spiking higher, with his focus squarely on the 10-year because it underpins mortgage rates and other consumer borrowing costs. Reuters similarly frames the current yield curve moves as exposing “Trump’s and Bessent’s rate dilemma,” noting the disconnect between where Bessent wants yields and where the market has pushed them.

Hanke argued that dynamic is now fully in play—and that it has already blown through the threshold Treasury Secretary Scott Bessent has been informally defending.

Bessent has said he wants the 10-year yield to carry a “3 handle”—meaning below 4%—and multiple reports describe a widely understood marker around 4.5% on the 10-year and 5% on the 30-year as his effective red line. Hanke called it a “red line” for the Treasury Secretary, adding that it was a consensus view. “It’s reading the tea leaves,” he said, calling it a “commonly understood red line, not unique to Hanke.”

Hanke pointed to a chart he prepared several days earlier on the 10-year yield, arguing that it tells the entire story of the end of the long bull market in bonds, showing that “even before you get to the new Trump administration, the market was under pressure.” The sudden upswing in June 2021 coincides with inflation peaking at 9.1% and the bond vigilantes coming out of their cave, he said.

Stocks are ‘sleepwalking,’ oil is underpriced

Hanke’s broader argument is that the bond market is the only part of the financial system currently pricing risk with any discipline. “The equity market is sleepwalking along,” he said, driven by a “stock market mania,” driven by “AI hype.” He said he believes commodity markets are similarly mispricing risk: crude oil inventories are running toward the bottom of the barrel, in his view, setting up oil prices to “come roaring back” within the next month or two, even though refined products like gasoline and diesel are already reflecting tightness. He attributes shrinking refining capacity to Ukrainian strikes knocking Russian refineries offline and disruption to Middle Eastern refining capacity.

As for whether the equity bubble will deflate, Hanke was careful to hedge: “It’s virtually impossible” to predict when a bubble pops, he said, “with one exception”—if a central bank starts visibly tightening monetary policy and the money supply slows, the odds of a pop rise dramatically. Rising long-term rates, he argued, can function the same way, gradually “letting air out of the stock market” even without a formal Fed tightening cycle.

Hanke pushed back hard on the idea of a “quiet default” by the United States, calling the framing absurd. The U.S. has never defaulted and, in his view, never will, “as long as we have the international currency”—a dynamic he says makes a Venezuela-, Argentina-, or African-sovereign-style default a non-starter. He remains, in his words, “on the side of king dollar,” arguing the currency isn’t going anywhere anytime soon despite the reserve-currency erosion narrative gaining traction elsewhere.

He acknowledged that tariff threats and sanctions policy are corrosive to the dollar’s standing, but argued other forces are pushing the other way: dollar usage in global transactions has actually increased over the past three years. The euro has lost some ground over that period, he said, while the Chinese renminbi has gained share in percentage terms — but from such a small base that the gain is “almost a footnote.” In his framing, the renminbi’s gains are coming largely at the euro’s expense, not the dollar’s. He dismissed “de-dollarization” as a durable trend, pointing out that over the past 120 years there have been only 14 dominant international currencies, and challenges to the reigning one are historically rare—the pound sterling’s loss of primacy to the dollar, tied to Britain’s loss of its colonies, being the closest precedent in living memory. He allowed that pointing to that one episode risks recency bias, but maintained the broader historical pattern still favors continuity over disruption.

Hanke’s closing argument is that the repricing happening in bonds will eventually spread. “When everybody else stops sleepwalking and starts pricing things in properly, there will be adjustments,” he said—adjustments he expects to show up first in equities as the “stock market bubble” starts to deflate. Whether that ends in a sharp pop or a slower deflation, he said, is impossible to call with confidence. But the signal he’s watching most closely is simple: if the 30-year and other long rates keep climbing, that alone could do the work of letting air out of stocks, without the Fed lifting a finger. “The bond vigilantes are always kind of ahead of the curve,” Hanke said, “and I think they are this time.”

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

This story was originally featured on Fortune.com

Wendy’s, the burger chain that asked “Where’s the beef?” and brought the Baconator to burger lovers worldwide, is getting grilled in its returns. The chain, which boasts a market cap of $1.62 billion, is losing customers, closing down stores, and seeing consecutive declining sales—so much so that billionaire activist investor Nelson Peltz may be preparing to take Wendy’s private as it struggles to get customers through the door.  

“Traffic is down, our value proposition has slipped, and franchisee economics are under pressure,” Wendy’s CEO Bob Wright told investors on Wendy’s latest earnings call. “We can’t just do what we’ve always done better. We do have to innovate.”

Peltz’s Trian Fund Management has assembled a consortium that could potentially submit an offer to take Wendy’s private in the coming weeks, according to reports from the Financial Times and Reuters. The group is expected to include Abu Dhabi-based BlueFive Capital and Flynn Group, one of the world’s largest restaurant franchise operators and a major Wendy’s franchisee. 

Peltz has been preparing for a potential takeover as early as February, when Trian said in a regulatory filing that it believed Wendy’s stock was “undervalued” and disclosed the fund was reaching out to possible co-investors about strategic options, including taking the company private. Peltz personally owns roughly a 16.24% stake in Wendy’s while Trian holds roughly 7.85%, which, at over 24% combined, make up Wendy’s largest shareholder.

But a potential buyer would inherit a company whose problems extend well beyond its stock price.

U.S. same-restaurant sales fell 7% in the second quarter, marking the sixth consecutive quarterly decline, while traffic plunged 12.5%, according to Wendy’s second-quarter results and earnings call on Aug.7. Wendy’s withdrew its 2026 financial outlook and cut its quarterly dividend to 7 cents a share.

During the first half of 2026, Wendy’s closed 289 restaurants in the U.S., and that may not be the end of it. “I’m sure there will be additional closures,” Wright told analysts. Part of the problem is that Wendy’s has experienced losses in the quick-service burger category for 17 straight months.

Wendy’s no longer is something “different”

A portion of the traffic decline came as Wendy’s pulled back on discounting and reduced or eliminated breakfast hours at some restaurants, CFO Steve Cirulis told analysts on the company’s second-quarter earnings call. Wendy’s has also historically positioned itself as a higher-quality burger chain, but Wright acknowledged that decisions made in the interest of cost and efficiency had eroded some of the food quality that historically differentiated the brand.

That traffic decline was partially offset by a 5.6% increase in average check during the second quarter, according to Cirulis. 

This is contrary to Wendy’s U.S. President Pete Suerken’s commentary in Fortune from May, in which he argued that the chain’s “fresh, never-frozen” beef and its complicated supply chain (which relies on frequent deliveries, localized sourcing and temperature-controlled shipping) give Wendy’s a competitive advantage that rivals can’t quickly replicate.

“The things that make you different are the things people remember,” Suerken wrote.

But now, Wright says Wendy’s has drifted from some of those qualities, telling investors that decisions made in the interest of cost and efficiency had degraded some of the food quality that set the chain apart.

Wendy’s marketing hasn’t translated into traffic

Marketing hasn’t provided the answer either. Wright said Wendy’s had become “over-reliant on a calendar of one-off promotions and collaborations” rather than telling a consistent story about the brand. Its new chicken sandwich platform and Minions & Monsters movie collaboration failed to deliver the traffic Wendy’s expected last quarter, Cirulis said on the earnings call.

“The real challenge for us has been that underlying traffic trend,” Cirulis said.

The dynamic-pricing controversy was another recent marketing headache. Kirk Tanner, who became CEO in 2024 before Wright took over, faced backlash shortly after taking the job over plans to test “dynamic pricing.”

In February 2024, Fortune reported that Wendy’s planned to spend $20 million rolling out digital menu boards to its U.S. company-operated restaurants while testing dynamic pricing and AI-enabled menu changes. Comparisons to Uber-style surge pricing quickly followed, and Wendy’s clarified that it had “no plans” to raise prices during peak demand.

On the call, Wright also identified inconsistent restaurant operations and pressure on franchisee economics as problems Wendy’s needs to address.

U.S. company-operated restaurants outperformed the broader U.S. system on same-restaurant sales by 280 basis points in the latest quarter, a gap that points to franchisee execution as part of the problem.

Flynn’s involvement in the potential takeover could add a different kind of experience to the ownership group. Flynn Group is one of Wendy’s largest franchisees, operating about 309 restaurants in the U.S., in addition to its locations in Australia and New Zealand, according to the Financial Times.

That would put a major operator with firsthand experience of Wendy’s restaurants alongside Peltz at a time when Wright says franchisee economics are under pressure.

Morgan Stanley cut its price target on Wendy’s from $7 to $5.50, just two days before the FT reported on Peltz’s consortium. Following the news, Wendy’s shares jumped 12%.

This story was originally featured on Fortune.com

The ongoing trade disruptions from the Iran war have enabled China to gain a trade edge, but it requires shipping vessels to brave the Arctic.

On Saturday, the Chinese container shipping company Sea Legend Line  launched its first regular shipping route through the Arctic, traveling a route that’s more than 3,400 miles long along the northern coast of Russia. The vessel went from China’s industrial hub Ningbo—located about halfway between Shanghai and Beijing—all the way to the U.K.’s Felixstowe, about 70 miles north of London. Dubbed the “Ice Silk Road,” the route takes about 20 days to complete, which is just half the shipping time of the route that passes south through the Suez Canal.

Countries have scrambled to find alternative trade routes after the effective closure of the Strait of Hormuz following U.S.-Israeli attacks on Iran in February. Additional disruptions caused by continued Houthi threats to the Bab al-Mandab Strait into the Red Sea have subsequently disrupted traffic through the Strait of Hormuz. This has caused longer transit times as ships look for alternative routes, driving up fuel and insurance costs, as well as unsettling supply chains. U.S. Secretary of State Marco Rubio has even floated the idea of a more permanent global shift away from the Strait of Hormuz as a result of the  trade uncertainty that has hiked energy prices and shaken supply chains.

It seems China may have found a way to dodge this. The country first took interest in the northern sea route (NSR) more than a decade ago in 2013, when Yong Shenge, a Chinese cargo ship, became the first Chinese ship to ever reach Europe on the route. However, the route has remained largely inaccessible because of the volume of sea-ice in the area. 

Global climate change creates a new trade route

Global climate change may have also altered China’s fortune, as warmer temperatures in the Arctic have transformed the NSR from a course only accessible in the warmest months to one traversable for a substantial portion of the year. While there was a 20-year slowdown in the rate at which sea-ice melted in the Arctic, that ended last year as new research from the University of Southampton shows melting levels continuing to increase.

Sea Legend Line made its first successful test voyage through the NSR in October.

“The long-term goal for the Arctic route is to extend the navigable season,” Sea Legend Line chief operating officer Li Xiaobin told Chinese financial magazine Caixin last year. “Our goal is to expand the sailing season from two months this year to three months next year and four months the following year and eventually achieve year-round operations.”

China’s chilly trade strategic

China’s newly leveraged trade route may still produce challenges. In addition to its seasonal accessibility, the NSR is primarily controlled by Russia, which was originally skeptical of Chinese President Xi Jinping’s initial interest in the development of a “polar Silk Road” in 2017. While Russia has relinquished some control of the area to China following its invasion of Ukraine, Russia still plays a key role in Chinese shipping vessels’ passage through the route.

Today, Russian state corporation Rosatom issues permits to sail through the NSR through the Northern Sea Route Administration (NSRA). Rosatom also oversees shipping along the route and provides icebreaker ships to escort shipping vessels along the route.

Still, this alternative trade route could stand to benefit China. Increased use of the NSR could lessen China’s dependence on the Strait of Malacca, the chokepoint connecting the Indian Ocean and the South China Sea through which 80% of the country’s crude oil is imported. China is under threat from the “Malacca Dilemma,” or the threat of a naval blockade of the trade passage during geopolitical disruptions that would roil China’s economic security.

Another available shipping route could help protect Chinese trade, but it’s far from a panacea to risk, Dylan Loh, an associate professor in the Public Policy and Global Affairs programme at Nanyang Technological University in Singapore, told Al Jazeera. More time is still needed to determine if it’s economically feasible, let alone reliable. Last year, only 23 container ships passed through the NSR, a modest increase from 15 in 2024, according to an Allianz Commercial shipping analysis.

“It is an alternative, but we will need more time to observe how feasible it is from an environmental, financial and reliability perspective before we can make a conclusion,” Loh said. “China’s route represents a hedge, not a complete pivot or true alternative for now, as it does not have the predictability that traditional sea routes have.

This story was originally featured on Fortune.com

Arvind Narayanan has spent years puncturing Silicon Valley’s grandest claims about artificial intelligence. The Princeton computer-science professor co-wrote AI Snake Oil, a book that challenges the notion that algorithms can reliably predict who will be a good employee, which patients will get sick, or who might commit crimes. He has also pushed back on the idea that generative AI is about to eliminate vast swaths of white-collar work, calling work something like a “sandwich” whose bun is growing even as the meat shrinks.

But Narayanan does not dismiss the public’s mounting hostility toward AI. He thinks the backlash is real, understandable—and far more complicated than any one thing. It’s a coalition of different fears, he said: “many different kinds of anxieties have all kind of pushed together into one sort of generalized opposition to AI.”

What looks like AI phobia, he argued, is really a collection of anxieties about fear of job loss; distrust of powerful technology companies; anger over the influence of billionaires; concern about environmental costs; unease over the technology’s social effects; and, for younger people, uncertainty over what skills they need to retain in a labor market increasingly built around AI.

Snake oil, redefined

Narayanan’s critique is not that generative AI is useless, or that workers should refuse to use it—and he stressed that his “snake oil” criticism largely does not extend to generative AI. He said he views AI as a potentially transformative technology that knowledge workers can already use to research, challenge assumptions, analyze data, and build software. His warning targets a different class of AI claims: systems marketed as capable of making high-stakes predictions about people.

Hospitals, insurers, human-resources departments, and criminal-justice systems have all adopted or considered machine-learning systems meant to forecast future behavior or outcomes. Narayanan is skeptical of those applications because the future is inherently hard to predict—and because dubious forecasts can drive consequential decisions about hiring, coverage, bail, or policing.

“Generative AI, we do criticize for some of the hype that attaches to it,” he said. “But we’re also very clear that this is a technology that is very useful for every knowledge worker.”

The ‘moral crumple zone’

Narayanan has argued with his sandwich metaphor that the near-term workplace consequence may be more complicated than AI just eliminating jobs: AI can expand the layers of checking, supervision, and verification required to use it responsibly. In adversarial fields such as law, for instance, one side’s AI-enabled productivity can compel the other side to match it, so the total volume of work keeps expanding rather than shrinking.

The bigger risk, he said, may be a workplace in which people still have jobs but are relegated to what he called “janitorial work” — his phrase, but he acknowledged that others had circled the same idea with different words. Monitoring systems perform much of the intellectual labor while workers absorb the blame when something goes wrong.

He also invoked a second term for that arrangement: the “moral crumple zone,” a phrase more widely used in AI-ethics circles. Just as crumple zones in cars absorb impact to protect the vehicle, the person nominally in charge becomes the one punished for the failure of an automated system they lack the visibility or authority to truly control.

“It’s not inevitable,” Narayanan said of that outcome. “There are many design choices throughout the AI pipeline.”

Why programmers and artists see it differently

That prospect helps explain why opposition to AI cannot be reduced to generic anxiety about change, Narayanan said. The same technology can empower one profession and alienate another.

Software developers can work with AI interactively—asking it to find bugs, testing its output, and incorporating suggestions throughout a project. The human stays in the loop. Narayanan calls this a “growth cycle,” as opposed to a “dependence spiral,” in which users delegate mundane tasks but retain the expertise to evaluate the system and do the essential thinking themselves.

For artists, the experience is often starkly different. A prompt produces a finished image, creating the impression that the system has skipped over the human creative process rather than supporting it. “There are genuine reasons, based on the way that AI has been designed, that different professions understandably have very different reactions,” Narayanan said.

Students caught in a bind

AI also poses a distinct problem for the students Narayanan teaches, both undergraduate and graduate. They are expected to become fluent in tools they’ll encounter in the workplace, particularly in computing and other knowledge-intensive fields. But leaning too heavily on AI can deprive them of the foundational skills needed to judge whether a system’s output is actually right.

“They’re in a bind,” Narayanan said. “To what extent should you be using AI versus resisting it to build up your own skills?”

That conflict is especially acute because faculty haven’t settled on an answer — and Narayanan said faculty are often “clueless” and lack “bravery” on the subject. Universities are still working out what a healthy integration of AI into instruction looks like, he added, and that uncertainty itself breeds anxiety among students who feel they have little choice but to adapt.

An optimist, not a booster

Narayanan’s diagnosis isn’t a case for resignation. He described himself as an optimist — not the kind of techno-optimist who believes innovation naturally produces good outcomes if critics and regulators simply get out of the way, but one whose optimism is contingent on people continuing to push back.

“I think tech has generally in the past led to good outcomes,” he said, “but only because there were a lot of people worrying about what could go wrong and because we were able to regulate things in time.”

He has a preferred analogy for where this ends up: AI is going to do for cognitive work what cranes did for physical work. We still build skyscrapers; we just don’t carry the steel ourselves. We could have built autonomous cranes if we wanted to, he said, but we decided that was too dangerous. The person operating the crane still decides where the beam goes.

“It’s never too late,” he said when asked whether AI phobia has hardened into something irreversible. “I think some negative impacts have already materialized, but even those can be reversed.”

The skill he isn’t naming

A less flattering theory, however, is buried in Narayanan’s own case study. He is a tenured computer scientist who has spent decades training himself to break problems into parts, evaluate evidence, and think rigorously before ever touching a keyboard. That is precisely the muscle that he says AI rewards rather than replaces: he uses it “to go deeper,” not “to go faster,” because he knows how to do everything himself. But many of his students—and many professionals in the workforce—can’t go deeper with these tools yet.

When his own children, ages 4 and 7, wanted to learn a new topic, he didn’t need a course or a consultant. He built them a custom app in 15 minutes—one of roughly 50 he has made for them, including a phonics tool that helped his son start reading at age three—because he already understood what good pedagogy looked like and simply used AI to execute it faster. He argued for a world where every parent can design AI-powered tools that help their children learn new things, suited to each parent and each child’s particular style. “That’s a whole big part of my life now,” he said, “and I myself use AI heavily for learning, and every day I come into work feeling like I have superpowers that even the projects that, you know, many of the projects that I’m doing today would have been hard to even conceive of five years ago.”

This is a rare skill set, Narayanan acknowledged. Most people, including plenty of comfortable, credentialed professionals, do not have it. And that may be the least discussed driver of AI phobia: not fear of the technology itself, but a quiet suspicion that the technology will entrench intellectual inequality — because many people do not know how to think the right way to use the tool. Narayanan effectively agreed with this when pressed. It’s not that people fear thinking machines. It’s that AI exposes, in real time, who already knows how to think.

Still, Narayanan insisted that real progress is being dismissed. “I think it’s tragic to me that that story of how it’s giving us superpowers is being missed in all the narratives that are going around.”

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

This story was originally featured on Fortune.com

Experienced CEOs know that brand equity can be a company’s most valuable asset, one that often doesn’t appear on the balance sheet. Companies build trust, credibility, and goodwill over decades through consistent performance.

But as any chief executive knows, the strongest brands are rarely destroyed by their competitors. More often, brands are weakened by a company’s own choices that erode the very qualities that made them successful in the first place.

This principle applies to nations as well. As the United States marks the 250th anniversary of its independence, Americans need to ask not only whether their country remains one of the world’s most influential powers, but whether they have the internal qualities that sustain that influence.

Recent global polling suggests that America’s reputation has weakened. Pew Research Center’s 2026 survey of 36 countries found that a median of just 37% of respondents expressed a favorable view of the United States, compared with 57% who held an unfavorable view. China was viewed more favorably than the U.S. in most of the countries surveyed.

Separately, Gallup polling found that global approval of U.S. leadership fell from 39% in 2024 to 31% in 2025. Approval of Chinese leadership rose from 32% to 36% over the same period. Among NATO allies, approval os U.S. leadership fell 14 percentage points to 21%.

It’s clear that U.S. reputation has taken a hit. But it’s more important to ask whether America’s current policy choices are gradually eroding the sources of what made it influential in the first place.

America’s global standing has never rested solely on its economic size or military capability. Its enduring advantage also comes from its world-class universities, deep financial markets, and leading research institutions. Together, these strengths enabled the United States to attract exceptional people from around the world and give them the freedom to transform industries. Take Google cofounder Sergey Brin, who came to the United States from the Soviet Union as a child. Just this year, Chinese-born mathematicians Hong Wang and Yu Deng, who earned their Ph.D.s at MIT and Princeton, respectively, were awarded Fields Medals for breakthroughs in mathematics; both now teach at U.S. universities. 

In short, the U.S. didn’t become powerful just by being bigger. Instead, it was more magnetic—a trait that has produced extraordinary returns.

According to NAFSA, international students contributed $43.8 billion to the U.S. economy and supported almost 380,000 jobs during the 2023-2024 academic year. The National Foundation for American Policy reported than almost one quarter of all U.S. startups worth $1 billion had at least one founder who first came to the U.S. as an international student; almost 60% were founded by an immigrant.

Recent policy developments risk weakening that American advantage. Expanded visa screening and vetting, restrictions affecting international students from certain countries, greater scrutiny of universities’ foreign funding and research partnerships, and cuts and uncertainty surrounding federal research funding could make the United States less attractive to the world’s most talented students and researchers.

New international student enrolment at U.S. colleges and universities fell 17% in fall 2025, according to the Institute of International Education.

These policies may be founded on legitimate national security, economic, or fiscal concerns. But they come with trade-offs.

Businesses understand the importance of talent. Great companies compete relentless for the world’s best people, understanding that innovation is founded on human capital. Governments that want to lead in artificial intelligence, biotechnology, quantum computing, advanced manufacturing, and clean energy will need to do the same.

If the world’s most talented young people choose Beijing, London, or Singapore over Boston, San Franciscom or Austin, it will mean fewer U.S. startups, a weaker research ecosystem, and a narrow marging of technological leadership.

And once an ecosystem loses its magnetism, it can be hard to get it back. Competitive decline rarely happens from a dramatic collapse, but rather through incremental decisions that gradually make a system less attractive to exceptional people.

The U.S.-China relationship makes this challenge more difficult, yet also more important. The strategic competition between the two largest economies will shape policy for years to come. The answer, however, should be targeted and selective, rather than a blanked suspension.

It’s true that some technologies are too sensitive to share. Some research relationships warrant scrutiny; some foreign investments should be restricted.

But scientific inquiry does not stop at national borders, and many of the world’s most consequential problems, from pandemics and climate change to energy security and food production, cannot be solved by one country working alone.

U.S. universities and companies succeed when researchers can exchange ideas with counterparts around the world. This collaboration also allows U.S. institutions to shape research agendas, set international standards, and remain at the center of global scientific networks.

The policy challenge isn’t about choosing between security and openness, but rather designing policies sophisticated enough to achieve both.

Carefully targeted export controls, rigorous protection of sensitive technologies and transparent research-security standards can coexist with robust academic exchange, joint research on global challenges and continued recruitment of exceptional international talent.  Sustaining carefully designed channels for academic exchange and scientific cooperation, while protecting genuinely sensitive technologies, would strengthen America’s long-term competitiveness.

It would also bolster a defining characteristic of America’s national brand: The confidence that openness, excellence and innovation remain mutually reinforcing.

Confidence matters. A country that believes in its own competitive strength does not need to shut out talented people to protect its position. It sets clear boundaries around what must be protected while remaining open to the people and ideas that can make it stronger.

Successful companies understand this. When competitive pressure intensifies, they do not make themselves less attractive to top talent. They invest more heavily in becoming the employer of choice. They strengthen their culture, research capabilities and opportunities for innovation.

Nations—and the U.S.—should think the same way.

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.

This story was originally featured on Fortune.com

Hello and welcome to Eye on AI. In this edition:

• OpenAI details two week training pause, more security controls following Hugging Face hack.
• Anthropic on course for $65 billion in annual revenue.
• OpenAI debuts ChatGPT for teens.
• Can AI models figure out the rules of the game?

I’m just back from three weeks of vacation. Thanks to my colleagues Bea Nolan and Emily Forlini for holding down the fort here while I was away.

For much of that time, I was engaged in outdoor activities—camping, hiking, kayaking, fishing, running, and swimming—or indoor ones that are not digitally-mediated, such as dining out with family or listening to live entertainment. Sure, my family and I did sometimes use Google Search to look stuff up, and the AI-summarized answers it provided were often impressively detailed and accurate. It was definitely a lot more convenient than having to hunt for information across multiple web pages. But that’s about where my interaction with AI started and stopped. Overall, my three week break was a refreshing reminder of all the ways in which AI has not transformed society and, hopefully, never will.

The big AI news over the weekend was the debate over Dario Amodei’s lengthy post on X defending the company’s approach to both regulation and talking about AI’s many risks. Amodei, who rarely appears on the Elon Musk-controlled social media platform, made the post in response to comments investor Gavin Baker made on the “All In” podcast, which is cohosted by former Trump AI czar David Sacks, himself no fan of Anthropic.

Baker said that he’d been told “by multiple people I trust” that Amodei had said that Anthropic was so confident of both AI’s potential and his company’s position at the forefront of AI development that “Anthropic might be the only private company in the world at some point.” Baker described this as evidence of Anthropic’s “maximalist” vision, in which only it and the U.S. government decided who could access super powerful AI. Meanwhile, Sacks called it “hubristic” and repeated his claims that Amodei’s strategy is “regulatory capture”—where Anthropic uses fear of AI’s risks to persuade the government to enact stringent regulation on the technology that only Anthropic can easily comply with, eliminating competition from other AI startups or open-source models.

Baker went on to criticize Amodei for fueling the public’s overwhelmingly negative perception of AI, a factor that has played into opposition to data center construction around the U.S. Baker worries this negativity is making business difficult for AI companies and also fears it will imperil American leadership in the technology. He called on Amodei to present a more positive image of AI.

Amodei hits back

Anthropic denies Amodei ever said anything like what Baker claims. “Complete and utter nonsense,” Sasha de Marigny, Anthropic’s chief brand and communications officer, replied on X. (Sacks later pointed out that Amodei himself did not directly address Baker’s claim.) Meanwhile, Amodei posted on X that he thinks Silicon Valley libertarians such as Baker tend to see all regulation as slowing technology down and resulting in regulatory capture, whereas others “outside of this bubble” see regulation as constraining corporate power and benefitting “ordinary people.” Amodei said he thought both positions oversimplified things and that “it’s complicated and really depends on what the ‘regulation’ consists of.”

Amodei said Anthropic tries “very hard to make proposals that disadvantage (slow down) frontier AI companies while *advantaging* smaller competitors.” He noted that many of the regulations it has favored either contained specific exemptions for companies below a certain revenue threshold or that spent less than a certain amount on model training, or were designed only to apply to cutting-edge models, while exempting less-capable ones.

He said he did believe AI naturally tended to concentrate economic power, because of the compute requirements to train and serve powerful AI models, but that this was very different from saying that only one or a few companies would exist in the future. And he said open source models only partly addressed this concentration of power, since they still required compute to train and run. He said he favored “rules of the road” that would “leave room for open-weights models while also addressing the specific risks that they bring.”

As for Baker’s criticism that his own statements were responsible for turning the public against AI, Amodei said “I don’t think [the public’s negative view of AI] is primarily caused by me or any other AI leader warning about AI’s risks. I think it is fundamentally a crisis of trust.” He said he didn’t think the AI industry could win back that trust with “a glitzy marketing campaign with a positive spin.” Instead, he said AI companies actually had to deliver on the positive benefits of AI—such as actually curing cancer. “I think by far the most accurate criticism of AI companies including Anthropic is that we haven’t yet delivered on our big promises to benefit the world,” he wrote. “That is totally on us, and I think it’s the criticism you should be making, instead of all this stuff about messaging and marketing.”

A DMV for AI? What’s wrong with that?

Amodei’s post resulted in lots more back-and-forth between critics and defenders on X. On the regulation point, Sacks wrote that creating any kind of regulatory agency for AI–he called it “a DMV for AI”—would hobble the U.S. tech sector, “create long queues as AI models wait for testing and approval” and “handicap the U.S. relative to China, which will not adopt the same constraints.” Sacks also wrote that “Dario believes frontier AI is too powerful to distribute; we believe it is too powerful to centralize.”

My own take is that Dario is right to call out the false dichotomy in Sacks’ AI regulation narrative. As Stuart Russell, the UC Berkeley computer scientist, frequently quips, a sandwich shop in San Francisco has to comply with more regulation than OpenAI or Anthropic (that’s less true after the passage of California’s state level law on frontier AI last year but it’s still true at the federal level). Does regulation somewhat limit the number of restaurants? Sure. But there’s still plenty of competition. There’s more than 3,000 restaurants in San Francisco.

Now, do larger restaurant chains have an easier time complying with the rules? Probably—there are some economies of scale to compliance and, yes, the big chains have lobbying muscle and political connections that most mom-and-pop shops don’t. But is the public better served from having some food safety regulations and labor regulation and product liability laws rather than none? Of course it is. And I would argue the same goes for the auto industry. For all of Sacks’ maligning of the DMV, most people support the idea of licensing drivers and periodically inspecting vehicles to make sure they are road-worthy. Is there some concentration in the auto industry? Sure, but regulation is not the primary reason.

As for the idea that regulation sets the U.S. back in a technological race with China, it is important to remember that China already has some AI laws, around data labeling and identifying AI-generated content, that are stricter than those in the U.S. It is also the case that if what the U.S. cares about is the national security implications of powerful AI, then it could exempt models developed specifically for national security purposes from the rules. (Although this is probably a bad idea—see WarGames or Terminator. It’s useful to remember we managed to win the Cold War while also having fairly strict regulation around the manufacture and transport of nuclear material. I am not sure having safety rules around the development of frontier AI should be any different.)

With that, here’s more AI news.

Jeremy Kahn
jeremy.kahn@fortune.com
@jeremyakahn

Before we get to the news, just a reminder to check out our new vodcast, Fortune AI Weekly. This week, Bea Nolan and Emily Forlini discuss Meta CEO Mark Zuckerberg’s 6,000-word manifesto, leadership changes at OpenAI, and talk to Lovable co-founder and CEO Anton Osika about he startup’s $13.3 billion valuation and $400 million Series C funding. You can check out the vod here on YouTube.

This story was originally featured on Fortune.com

Long before becoming a Hollywood mainstay with a market cap of over $315 billion, Netflix was struggling to stay afloat. After the dot-com bust, the then-DVD rental company was forced to make its first major round of layoffs in 2001, cutting roughly one-third of its workforce. 

For Netflix cofounder Reed Hastings, the experience drove home a lesson about how to think about a company: It may be a tight-knit team, but it isn’t a family.

“People respect great teams, and they respect families and how we operate,” Hastings recently told Semafor. “But if you describe yourself as a family at a company, you better not ever do a layoff. You would never lay off two of your kids, right? Then people get very cynical if you say it’s a family but don’t operate that way.”

Netflix soon found a path forward, capitalizing on the rise of DVD players—pivoting to a subscription-based DVD delivery service—and going public in 2002. But Hastings argued that getting too close makes employees feel protected, even when their performance falls short. 

“We realized, wow, maybe we should do a one-third layoff every year,” the 65-year-old said. “And of course that’s impractical—but we said, how about if we keep the bar high and really think about us as a championship sports team rather than a family.”

Hastings, who has an estimated net worth of $4.4 billion, served as Netflix’s CEO from 1999 to 2023. He then became chairman but stepped down earlier this year.

Netflix managers use a ‘keeper test’ to identify top talent—and ‘part ways quickly’ with employees they wouldn’t fight to keep

Like most major companies, Netflix has endured rounds of layoffs throughout its history. But Hastings said the goal hasn’t been simply to cut costs or reduce headcount. It’s about making sure the company has the right roster to compete—and making changes when it doesn’t.

“If you say it’s like a championship sports team and we’ve got all these competitors and we want to win the championship, then people understand why the coaches make changes throughout the year to try to do their guess of the best way to win the championship.”

Today, Netflix defines success by performance, not seniority, tenure or loyalty. Managers are also expected to regularly apply what Netflix calls its “keeper test” to their employees.

“We expect leaders to be strong developers of talent,” it says on the Netflix website. “And to ensure they have the right player at every position, we ask them to apply what we call the ‘keeper test’—asking ‘if X wanted to leave, would I fight to keep them?’ Or ‘knowing everything I know today, would I hire X again?’ If the answer is no, we believe it’s fairer to everyone to part ways quickly.”

Netflix pairs high expectations with flexibility. Salaried employees aren’t bound to traditional 9-to-5 work schedules or even a prescribed vacation calendar. Netflix also offers unlimited paid time off and parental leave.

“While time away may be observed differently depending on your location and role, we believe in taking the time you need so you are bringing your best to work,” Netflix’s website says.

From Airbnb to Shopify, CEOs are pushing back on the ‘company as family’ mentality

Hastings is hardly alone in concluding that the family-business metaphor can create problems—particularly when companies have to make difficult decisions about their workforce.

Airbnb CEO Brian Chesky has admitted he learned that lesson during the pandemic. As he laid off roughly 25% of his workforce, he told employees he had a “deep feeling of love for all of you.” Looking back, he said he realized the language blurred an important distinction.

“I wrote that letter fairly quickly,” Chesky said on the ReThinking podcast in 2024. “I didn’t have a lot of time, and so I wrote what I felt, and that’s what I felt, and I was pretty emotional when I was writing it. And it is true that a company’s not a family. In fact, we had to make that pivot.”

“We used to refer to ourselves as a family, and then we did have to fire people, or they’d have to leave the company, and you don’t fire members of your family,” he added.

Shopify CEO Tobi Lütke reached a similar conclusion. In 2021, he warned managers against describing the e-commerce company as a family, arguing that doing so could make it harder to hold employees accountable.

“The very idea is preposterous. You are born into a family. You never choose it, and they can’t un-family you,” he said in a letter published by Business Insider.

Lütke specifically pushed back against employees using the term “Shopifam,” especially among younger employees.

“The dangers of ‘family thinking’ are that it becomes incredibly hard to let poor performers go,” he added. “Shopify is a team, not a family.”

This story was originally featured on Fortune.com

Thirteen former or current Penn State University students were criminally charged Monday on allegations they participated in a cocaine-trafficking ring that involved two fraternities, authorities said.

Two of them, who were the main suppliers, made routine trips to Philadelphia and New York to get large amounts of cocaine, according to the Pennsylvania Attorney General’s Office. The cocaine was then packaged mainly at the Sigma Chi and Delta Upsilon fraternity houses off-campus and distributed primarily to Penn State students, the office said.

Part of the operation included indoctrinating some pledges who were joining the fraternities by having them cut and bag the cocaine, Pennsylvania Attorney General Dave Sunday said Monday at a news conference.

“This is very serious criminal conduct. There was nothing junior or childlike about this type of conduct,” Pennsylvania Attorney General Dave Sunday said Monday at a news conference. “This was an upper level trafficking organization for this region in Pennsylvania.”

A total of 14 defendants — 13 of whom were Penn State University students at or around the time of the alleged crimes in 2023 and 2024 — were charged Monday. At least four of the defendants are current students, according to the attorney general’s office.

Four defendants face charges of felony corrupt organizations, conspiracy and other offenses, while a fifth is charged with felony conspiracy and other crimes. Eight other student-aged defendants are charged with misdemeanor counts, like possession. One defendant, who is the father of a student, is accused of tampering with evidence and hindering the investigation.

Penn State University said in a news release that the university is placing Delta Upsilon on interim suspension while the college investigates the incident.

Sigma Chi is not recognized and operates outside of Penn State’s oversight, according to the university.

Delta Upsilon Executive Director Justin Kirk said in a statement that the international fraternity was aware of the allegations and that those involved who had ties to Delta Upsilon were expelled or suspended if they did not resign.

“We will continue to work closely with the university on any investigative efforts,” Kirk added.

The Sigma Chi headquarters in Evanston, Illinois, did not immediately respond to a request for comment.

The majority of defendants facing felony charges were arraigned Monday morning, Sunday said at the news conference.

This story was originally featured on Fortune.com

Home Depot’s sales improved during its second quarter as customers focused on smaller projects during the summer months with the U.S. housing sector still mired in a slump.

Revenue increased to $47.86 billion from $45.28 billion, edging out the $47.24 billion that Wall Street had expected, according to a survey by FactSet.

Globally, sales at stores open at least a year, a key indicator of a retailer’s health, climbed 1.7%. In the U.S., comparable store sales rose 1.3%.

“We saw broad based demand across the business as customers continued to engage in smaller projects,” Chief Financial Officer Richard McPhail said in prepared remarks Tuesday.

Customer transactions slipped 1% in the quarter, but the amount shoppers spent rose to $92.50 per average receipt from $90.01 a year earlier.

Healthy spending on smaller projects during the quarter is encouraging, said Neil Saunders, managing director of GlobalData.

“From our data, the number of smaller projects undertaken during the quarter increased by 1.5% over the prior year,” Saunders said in an email. “This may sound unimpressive, but it represents a step change from the declines of previous periods.”

But Saunders also pointed out a potential weakness that is impacting almost all businesses where credit is sometimes required.

“The number of bigger-ticket projects undertaken remains down, falling by 2.1% over last year,” he said. “Concerns around financing and a previous lack of moving activity both remain major drags on the bigger-ticket segment.”

Homeowners that are currently considering taking out loans using home equity are realizing that it is considerably more expensive now compared with the ultra-low rates Americans could count on in the early 2020s. A home project that seemed within reach at a 4% to 5% borrowing rate looks a lot more daunting at 8% or higher.

While the average long-term U.S. mortgage rate fell slightly for the first time in six weeks, it is still up from last year and borrowing costs remain steeper than they were a year ago.

The U.S. housing market has been in a slump dating back to 2022, the year mortgage rates began climbing from historic lows that fueled a homebuying frenzy at the start of this decade.

Sales of previously occupied U.S. homes slowed again in July as record prices and the highest mortgage rates in a year prove to be an insurmountable hurdle for many prospective buyers. Existing home sales fell 1.7% last month from June, the National Association of Realtors said last week.

Home prices continue to rise and hit unprecedented levels for the month of July, NAR said. The U.S. median sales price increased 2% from a year earlier, to $434,100.

For the three months ended Aug. 2, Home Depot earned $4.77 billion, or $4.79 per share. A year earlier the home improvement retailer earned $4.55 billion, or $4.58 per share.

Excluding one-time items, earnings were $4.92 per share. That’s much better than the $4.73 per share that Wall Street predicted.

Home Depot also announced Tuesday that it is launching express delivery nationwide. The service will get orders to customers within three hours or less. It will be available for a small flat fee in the U.S., with no subscription or membership required.

The Atlanta company has posted solid back-to-back quarterly performances this year though many Americans have struggled to buy a home. Despite the solid performance, Home Depot stuck with its earlier sales growth guidance for fiscal 2026 of between 2.5% and 4.5%. It also left unchanged its expectations that comparable sales will be flat to up 2%.

Home Depot said that its outlook includes tariff refunds, which are expected to partially offset higher fuel, energy, and other product input costs throughout the year. Last year, the company said that it didn’t expect to raise prices because of tariffs, but executive Billy Bastek said at the time that some products that were on Home Depot shelves may disappear.

The company’s stock rose 2% before markets opened.

This story was originally featured on Fortune.com

President Donald Trump has been taking credit for new federal data that shows U.S. prescription drug prices fell 0.8% in July and are down 3.1% from a year ago, the steepest year-over-year drop since 1963.

The plunging prices, the White House said, resulted from the Republican president’s “most favored nation” drug deals with pharmaceutical firms and the TrumpRx website, which it said are “delivering real relief to American families and putting patients first.”

The real picture is more complicated, said drug pricing experts, who noted that other factors, including a law from Democratic President Joe Biden’s time in office that allowed Medicare to negotiate with pharmaceutical companies, are potentially more significant contributors to the latest consumer price index figures.

Also at play, they said, are generic and biosimilar products that have come onto the market, offering competition that drives down the price of expensive brand-name and biologic drugs. In addition, the prescription drug price index measured by the Labor Department and released last week doesn’t directly reflect how much consumers pay — it measures how much pharmacies get paid for the drugs, both by insurers and consumers.

“It’s difficult to know in one number what’s going on beneath the hood,” said Juliette Cubanski, a vice president and director of the Program on Medicare Policy at the healthcare research nonprofit KFF. “I don’t think we can attribute this price reduction to any one specific policy change or initiative.”

Here’s what to know about the decline in prescription drug prices:

Competition and policy both contribute to changing prices

Drug pricing experts said both market competition and various policy changes have influenced prescription drug prices in recent years.

On the market side, “when big blockbuster products face generic competition, their prices fall,” said Dr. Benjamin Rome, a health policy researcher at Harvard Medical School.

For example, he said, various biosimilar drugs have arrived on the market to treat the same autoimmune conditions as the brand-name drug Humira, offering similar treatment at a lower cost.

Similarly, competition has led to price reductions for Stelara, a popular biologic medicine that treats chronic inflammatory conditions, said Stacie Dusetzina, a professor of health policy at Vanderbilt University School of Medicine.

Biden-era federal policies also likely played a role — most notably the 2022 Inflation Reduction Act, which for the first time allowed Medicare to haggle with drugmakers over the cost of the top-selling prescription drugs in the program.

New prices for the first 10 of those negotiated drugs launched in January, a change Cubanski, Rome and Dusetzina all said likely made an impact on aggregate prices. The Trump administration has carried forward those negotiations, as mandated by law, and projects additional savings on prescription drugs in the years ahead.

A new Trump administration policy lowering the price of GLP-1 weight loss drugs for certain eligible Medicare enrollees could also be playing a role in driving down prices, the experts said. But that went into effect in July, so only its first month is reflected in the data.

It’s hard to measure the impact of MFN deals and TrumpRx

Trump has sought to attribute the drop in prescription drug prices to his “most favored nation” deals to bring U.S. pharmaceutical prices to the same level as other developed countries.

Drug pricing experts said the actual impact of those deals so far is unclear, since the contracts with drug companies have not been made public and the models designed to put MFN policies into practice in federal health programs have not gone into effect yet.

“These policies are under development and have not affected payers in the index,” Dusetzina told The Associated Press in an email. “Ultimately, I believe that the change is likely to be more directly related to the IRA’s policies and the Medicare drug price negotiation program than it is to current policies.”

Experts lauded TrumpRx, the White House’s website funneling Americans to the best deals on a variety of prescription drugs, for bringing a helpful resource and more price transparency to the public.

But they said it’s unclear how many Americans are making use of the service. In addition, many of the brand-name drugs it has featured are cheaper with insurance or have lower-cost generic versions sold elsewhere.

The White House said the website has generated $700 million in savings for patients but didn’t explain how it reached that figure. Democratic Sen. Elizabeth Warren of Massachusetts last week questioned that claim in a letter to the Trump administration, saying Health Secretary Robert F. Kennedy Jr. has admitted that TrumpRx doesn’t store patient, health or prescription information.

“Without this information, the accuracy of any claim of savings made by the Trump administration is unreliable,” she wrote.

Many consumers still face high drug costs – and rising health costs overall

Even as the consumer price index shows a year-over-year drop in drug prices, experts warned consumers aren’t necessarily seeing that in their budgets.

That’s because the Labor Department’s figures measure not what consumers pay directly but what pharmacies are paid by insurers and consumers. Insurers often eat much of the cost, and what patients pay can depend on a variety of factors, including whether they are insured and what plans they have. Plus, some Americans still rely on expensive drugs that don’t have cheaper alternatives yet.

Higher health spending and federal policy changes are also resulting in higher insurance premiums and out-of-pocket costs for many Americans. That could mean even as drug prices decline, they’re paying more for healthcare than they once were.

“A price measure like the CPI is not going to adequately capture consumers’ experience with healthcare and prescription drugs and other hospital services, the same way it would for groceries and gas and other tangible services that people go and pay for at the store,” Rome said.

This story was originally featured on Fortune.com

Good morning. Finance skills are topping the list of what companies need most as AI takes center stage.

Executive search firm Heidrick & Struggles has released its 2026 Skills Index, unveiling a top 15 most in-demand skills list based on its proprietary data. Financial controls, accounting, and audit rank first, followed by project management, then financial planning, analysis, and modeling. Program management office leadership, and process optimization round out the top five—a lineup that reflects what companies need most during leadership change, transactions, and transformation: clarity, execution, and stability.

“The external environment is certainly a major factor behind financial controls, accounting, and audit ranking as the number one most in-demand skill,” Sunny Ackerman, global managing partner of on-demand talent at Heidrick & Struggles, told me. Companies are navigating economic uncertainty, a highly selective capital environment, market volatility, and rapid technological change driven by AI, Ackerman said.

“When companies are managing many competing priorities at once, financial leadership becomes critical,” she said. Experienced leaders who can strengthen financial operations, improve visibility, and create greater confidence in the numbers and how to move the business forward are in demand.

It stood out to me that no AI-specific skill appears anywhere in the top 15 most in-demand list, even though the report names “turning AI ambition into operating results” as a top business priority. However, that’s not a sign companies have deprioritized AI. It’s a sign AI is being built into every function.

“This is one of the most interesting findings in the data,” Ackerman said. “Organizations are no longer approaching AI as a standalone technology initiative.”

AI’s success depends on more than the technology itself—it requires strong data foundations and clear governance, she explained. In looking at the skills experiencing the fastest growth in the firm’s 2026 Skills Index, “AI” doesn’t emerge as a distinct category. Heidrick & Struggles sees advanced analytics increase by 350%, database architecture and data management grow by 150%, and process optimization and transformation rise by 147%.

“The biggest takeaway is that organizations aren’t simply looking for AI specialists,” Ackerman said. “They’re looking for leaders who can connect data, technology, and business operations to drive outcomes.”

That means companies aren’t asking “who understands AI?” so much as “who can use it to make analytics sharper, data more reliable, and operations more efficient?” AI has moved from a hiring category to an operating expectation.

Finance’s growing role as the interim fix

The index also points to a broader shift toward interim leadership, and finance sits at the center of it. Heidrick & Struggles’ 2026 High-End Independent Talent report found that interim CFO roles account for 51% of all interim leadership requests—by far the largest share of any C-suite function.

“This underscores the critical role finance leaders play during periods of uncertainty and change,” Ackerman said, “because of their ability to provide the visibility, financial discipline, and strategic guidance organizations need to navigate complexity with confidence.”

Read together, the data tells a consistent story: execution, not experimentation, is what companies are staffing for. And increasingly, that means finance leaders who can fold AI into the fundamentals rather than treat it as a separate initiative.

Sheryl Estrada
Sheryl.Estrada@fortune.com

This story was originally featured on Fortune.com

Los Angeles Lakers governor Jeanie Buss is legally contesting her siblings’ plan to sell the family’s remaining 17.8% minority ownership stake in the team to Josh Kushner and Bob Iger, according to a letter obtained Monday by The Associated Press.

ESPN and The Athletic first reported that the siblings had voted to sell the family trust’s remaining interest in the 17-time NBA champion team purchased by their father, Jerry Buss, in 1979. The decision would end Jeanie Buss’ tenure as the Lakers’ governor because that job requires at least 15% ownership of the team.

Jeannie Buss’ attorney, Adam Streisand, wrote to representatives for her five siblings to state that any decision to sell the family trust’s ownership stake could not be “effectuated without approval of the current co-trustees, Jeanie, Janie and Joey Buss.”

The letter further states that the co-trustees “are bound to vote the Los Angeles Lakers, Inc. shares to ensure that the minimum 15% ownership requirement is maintained in order to ensure that Jeanie Buss may remain Controlling Owner. Any attempt by the co-trustees to do otherwise, and any attempt to aid or abet the co-trustees as such, would constitute a breach of trust, breach of fiduciary duty and be in contempt of court.”

Jeanie Buss has been the Lakers’ governor since Jerry Buss’ death in 2013, and she led the family’s decision to sell a controlling stake in the Lakers to Dodgers owner Mark Walter last year at a valuation of $10 billion. Walter, who is under federal investigation for tax issues, abruptly reached a deal earlier this month to flip the Lakers to Kushner and Iger at a valuation of $12.5 billion, another record for a pro sports team.

Venture capitalist Kushner and former Disney CEO Iger are reportedly buying about 65% of the team from Walter. They would own about 83% if they reach a deal with the Buss siblings — and Jeanie Buss would lose the governor role that she had been slated to keep at least through 2030 under the deal with Walter.

The Buss siblings have been in frequent conflict since their father’s death, with Jeanie firing Jim from his job as the Lakers’ head of basketball operations in 2017, followed a week later by a lawsuit against her brothers amid an attempt by Jim and Johnny to oust Jeanie from her role as the Lakers’ controlling owner.

Not all of the six Buss siblings were in favor of the sale to Walter, and Joey and Jesse were fired from their front-office jobs with the team last November.

The siblings say they voted this month to sell their family’s remaining interest in the Lakers, but Jeanie Buss claims any vote is void. ESPN reported that Jeanie Buss was the only sibling who didn’t support the final sale.

“We have decided as a family to sell the remaining Buss Family Trust shares to the Bob Iger group as part of the ongoing transaction,” the Buss family said in a statement. “We love the Lakers, Laker fans and will continue to support Los Angeles, but it is time to use this opportunity to move on and exit gracefully while we still can.”

In his letter, Streisand said Joey and Jesse Buss have leaked information to ESPN for many years “for the malicious purpose of doing harm to the Los Angeles Lakers so long as Dr. Buss’s chosen successor, Jeanie Buss, carries out her father’s wishes.”

Jerry Buss was a chemist and real estate investor who bought the Lakers, the NHL’s Los Angeles Kings and the Forum arena from Jack Kent Cooke for $67.5 million. The Lakers quickly entered a renaissance in which they became known for their flashy “Showtime” style of play while winning five NBA titles between 1980 and 1988 behind Magic Johnson and Kareem Abdul-Jabbar.

While the NBA and professional sports became increasingly more corporate, the Lakers remained essentially a family business despite their massive profile and steady success. Jerry Buss and the Lakers have employed many of the basketball world’s greatest players and coaches of the past five decades, and Kobe Bryant led the Lakers to five additional championships between 2000 and 2010 before LeBron James added the 17th in 2020.

The sale agreement with Kushner and Iger still must be approved by the NBA’s board of governors, and the process could take months.

This story was originally featured on Fortune.com

OpenAI is launching a version of ChatGPT designed for teenagers — the first generation to grow up with artificial intelligence — who are already using it for schoolwork, questions about daily life and even companionship.

The San Francisco-based company says ChatGPT for Teens, which launches Tuesday, is tailored for kids aged 13 to 17 with stronger protections including content restrictions around things like suicide, self-harm and romantic or sexual chats. It also provides homework and study support designed to help students learn rather than spit out answers and school essays.

The idea is to guide teens toward healthy AI use in an age-appropriate environment, the company said.

“We want to treat teens like teens, which means that we have to make sure that we’re showing up with the right developmental stage when we’re not either talking down to them or treating them like kids, but we’re also making sure that they’re not exposed to material that they shouldn’t be exposed to,” said Ann O’Leary, vice president of global policy at OpenAI.

Risks abound in widespread teen usage of AI chatbots

Parents, educators and child development experts have been sounding alarms over children’s use of AI chatbots, which have been blamed for facilitating cheating on schoolwork and even suicide. And while even adults can fall victim to anthropomorphizing AI and developing unhealthy relationships with it, teenagers’ brains are not yet fully developed and they can be particularly vulnerable.

Last year, research from a watchdog group found that ChatGPT would tell 13-year-olds how to get drunk and high, instruct them on how to conceal eating disorders and even compose a heartbreaking suicide letter to their parents if asked. In interactions with researchers posing as vulnerable teens, ChatGPT typically warned against risky activity but went on to deliver startlingly detailed and personalized plans for drug use, calorie-restricted diets or self-injury.

In the U.S., more than 70% of teens are turning to AI chatbots for companionship and half use AI companions regularly, according to a 2025 study from Common Sense Media, a group that studies and advocates for using digital media sensibly.

OpenAI CEO Sam Altman has said that the company is trying to study “emotional overreliance” on the technology, describing it last year as a “really common thing” with young people.

For users of ChatGPT for Teens, the chatbot is prevented from suggesting it has personal feelings toward the user or implying that it is conscious or experiences emotions, according to OpenAI. That’s in addition to blocking romantic or sexual chats.

“We went through and identified what are the hypothetical cues that a model could give that might make a teenager kind of develop a relationship to it,” said Allison Mishkin, head of child development at OpenAI.

A new version of the chatbot expands safety protections

OpenAI doesn’t verify users’ ages, but it already uses age assurance to estimate if someone is under 18 based on factors such as their types of queries. If someone is identified or identifies themselves as a minor, they are automatically placed into the teen version of the chatbot. This is similar to Meta’s approach to teen accounts on Instagram, which have stricter content, chat and privacy restrictions than regular accounts.

To use parental controls, both the teen user and their parent or guardian have to opt in. But O’Leary said the idea with the teen chatbot is to “make sure that this is safe, even if you don’t use parental controls.” Parents with linked teen accounts can set “quiet hours” when their teen can’t access ChatGPT, and receive safety notifications in limited high-risk situations, such as the possibility of a user hurting themself.

“We are adding additional notifications related to eating disorders, while limiting what is shared and focusing on moments when offline support may matter most,” OpenAI said.

For homework help, OpenAI said the teen chatbot is designed not to give easy answers but to guide students to come up with answers on their own. The company already offers a version of ChatGPT for teachers, and tailoring a model to help kids with studying and homework could give OpenAI more ways to bring its product to schools.

“We continue to also invest in expanding interactive learning because research shows that people learn more effectively when they actively engage and struggle with concepts,” Mishkin said.

This story was originally featured on Fortune.com

The U.S. and Canada are negotiating in an effort to reach a truce on tariffs before a 12:01 a.m. Wednesday deadline set by U.S. President Donald Trump.

If no deal is reached, Trump has threatened to impose 50% tariffs on $20 billion worth of Canadian products, ranging from hockey sticks to tongue depressors.

″We are negotiating,” Canadian Prime Minister Mark Carney told reporters Monday, speaking in French. “The negotiations are very intense and delicate. This is not the time to talk about negotiations in public.”

The two countries have wrangled for decades over trade, poking each other over sore spots like Canadian softwood lumber imports and U.S. access to Canada’s protected dairy market.

Somehow they still managed to remain friends, allies — and trading partners. Canadian soldiers fought alongside Americans in Afghanistan after 9/11. The 5,525-mile U.S.-Canada border is undefended, and nearly 330,000 people and $2 billion dollars’ worth of goods cross it every day; 800,000 Canadians live in the United States.

Trump’s belligerent approach to dealing with Canada marks an extraordinary departure from the traditionally cooperative relationship between the two countries. Trump has hit Canadian goods with tariffs — in a push to bring manufacturing back to the United States — and has repeatedly made inflammatory comments about turning Canada into America’s 51st state.

The Canadian public is fed up. A petition to expel the U.S. ambassador, a Trump ally, has collected nearly 218,000 signatures since July 21. It accuses Ambassador Pete Hoekstra of having “normalized’’ Trump’s talk of annexing Canada, among other things.

Looking for an off ramp

Nearly 72% of Canadian goods exports last year went to the United States. And the Trump administration might be wary of imposing a hefty new tariff — paid by U.S. importers who try to pass along the cost to consumers via higher prices — ahead of November’s midterm elections. American voters are already frustrated with the high cost of living.

“I don’t think either side really wants these tariffs to come into effect,’’ said Ryan Majerus, a partner at King & Spalding and a former U.S. trade official. “There’s a pretty strong push on both sides to find an off ramp here.’’

Majerus said the United States is aiming to get Canada to buy more U.S. military equipment, including F-35 fighters; to take part in Trump’s “Golden Dome’’ missile defense; and to give the United States more access to critical minerals, thereby reducing America’s reliance on tenuous supplies from geopolitical rival China.

The Canadians would like relief from U.S. tariffs on steel and aluminum as well as softwood lumber, which America says receives unfair government subsidies.

Trump relies on Smoot-Hawley to go after Canada

Trump has made tariffs the centerpiece of his second-term economic agenda. Last year, he imposed double-digit import taxes on almost every country on earth, justifying them by declaring the longstanding U.S. trade deficit a national emergency. The Supreme Court in February ruled that he’d overstepped his authority, striking down those tariffs and setting the stage for the federal government to pay refunds to importers.

Trump immediately looked for other ways to rebuild his tariff wall. Last month, he imposed import taxes of 10% to 12.5% on 59 countries and the European Union — which together account for 99% of U.S. imports — for allegedly failing to have or to enforce restrictions on imports made from forced labor.

Then he reached back to the Great Depression to find a cudgel with which to whack Canada, one of his favorite targets.

Trump invoked Section 338 of the Tariff Act of 1930 to impose 50% tariffs on products that account for about 5% of Canadian exports to the United States.

Nearly a century ago, with the U.S. and world economies in collapse, Congress passed the 1930 tariff law, imposing hefty taxes on imports from around the world. Known as the Smoot-Hawley tariffs, for their congressional sponsors, they are notorious among economists and historians for limiting world commerce and making the Great Depression worse.

Section 338 tariffs have never been used before. U.S. trade negotiators traditionally have favored another tool, Section 301 of the Trade Act of 1974 — the provision Trump invoked for last month’s forced-labor tariffs.

Section 338 authorizes the president to impose tariffs of up to 50% on imports from countries that have discriminated against U.S. businesses. Unlike Section 301 sanctions, no investigation is required. Nor is there any limit on how long the tariffs can stay in place.

In announcing the Section 338 tariffs, Trump claimed that Canada discriminates against American exports of autos, alcohol and cheese. Trump is angry because Canada and China were the only countries that punched back with retaliatory tariffs of their own when he slapped levies on their products last year.

“If a country retaliates against us, we’re obviously not going to tolerate that,” U.S. Trade Representative Jamieson Greer told reporters Friday at the Iowa State Fair. “We’ll take action. My sense is the Canadians, they want to have a more conciliatory approach, but we’ll see.”

New leverage to renegotiate USMCA

The U.S. is renegotiating a North American trade pact — the US-Mexico-Canada Agreement — that Trump strong-armed America’s neighbors into accepting in his first term. The threat of Section 338 tariffs gives the United States leverage to seek fresh concessions from Ottawa.

“From Carney’s perspective, you need (USMCA) to be renegotiated,” said Christopher Gundermann, fellow in the economics program at the Center for Strategic and International Studies. ”You can’t renegotiate it with a massive trade war going on.”

But the Canadian public’s furor over Trump’s policies may limit Carney’s ability to cut a deal. Canada could retaliate again if the new 50% tariffs take effect, potentially aggravating a trade fight.

Canada’s government “cannot look like it is simply caving to the Trump administration’s demands,’’ said Daniel Béland, a political science professor at McGill University in Montreal. “Making further concessions without getting something meaningful in exchange would probably lead to a strong backlash … The risk is for the Carney government to make Canada look weak and, therefore, even more vulnerable to future trade and geopolitical bullying on the part of the Trump administration.”

Dominic LeBlanc, Canada’s minister for U.S. trade, met with Greer on Monday. He was tight-lipped afterward.

“The work is continuing,’’ he said. “We continue to do our job.’’

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Gillies reported from Toronto.

This story was originally featured on Fortune.com

When Marisa Mender-Franklin walks through any of the nine flower farms she runs in Memphis, Tennessee, her first thoughts are of gratitude. Partly for the flowers and the bees, but mostly for the support of her neighbors.

That’s because members of her local Facebook Buy Nothing group shared their unused yards and gardens with her, allowing her to achieve her dream of owning a flower shop and working as an urban flower farmer.

“None of this would be possible without an immensely supportive community,” she said.

Her post read, ‘Flowers in need of a garden’

In 2020, at the height of the COVID-19 pandemic, Mender-Franklin was a teacher planning her wedding.

“I thought it would be fun to grow and design my own wedding flowers,” she said. So, the lifelong gardener planted “every square inch” of the tiny yard in front of her rental home with seeds and added pots along the walkway and on the porch.

The experience fortified her lifelong dream of working with flowers, she said, “but I didn’t own land or have a path to owning land.”

As a member of the Buy Nothing group, she had noticed members offering unwanted furniture, household goods and other items free to people who needed them.

“Somebody once posted looking for a French horn for their kid, and within six hours, they had one,” she said. “If the group can do that,” she reasoned, “then certainly there’s someone who has a garden they can’t use and would let me grow flowers there.”

In her post, she expressed her desire to grow and sell flowers, and promised to be a good tenant and provide the owner with weekly bouquets. “Within 5 minutes, my phone started pinging like crazy,” she said. Within a week, she had received 40 offers of free places to grow flowers.

That first year, 2021, Mender-Franklin selected four plots. Members of the online group began dropping off cardboard and vases on her porch.

“People even volunteered to help weed or plant,” she said.

Today, she runs her flower business full-time. She owns the Midtown Bramble and Bloom flower shop, oversees the nine farm plots of various sizes and employs 10 people. Last year, the business held 57 workshops, and provided flower arrangements for 44 weddings and large events.

The inspiration was a Canadian flower gardener

Mender-Franklin said she knows of similar land-share situations in other cities. She was inspired by the example of Sarah Nixon, who, from 2001 to 2021, planted flowers in neighbors’ yards in Toronto and sold weekly flower-bucket and arrangement subscriptions. Nixon also sold flowers at farmers’ markets and a specialty grocery store, and provided flowers for weddings.

She started her business, My Luscious Backyard, the analog way, by leaving letters of introduction in neighbor’s mailboxes that proposed the barter of land use in exchange for upkeep of their gardens.

“I was obsessed with growing flowers for my own enjoyment, and my own backyard was full,” said Nixon. “But I noticed some of my neighbors begrudgingly mowing their lawns and not seeming to use their properties.”

The arrangements can be mutually beneficial

In Memphis, Mender-Franklin’s team transformed the lawns and neglected gardens into beds and rows of flowers. Along with the bouquets and other perks, the homeowners are able to enjoy flower gardens without the responsibility of maintaining them.

The agreements are formalized with leases that spell out everything from boundaries to water costs.

Karen Golightly, who owns one of Mender-Franklin’s original plots, said she didn’t hesitate when she saw the post on the Buy Nothing group. The weekly bouquets she receives are lovely, she said, “but the biggest benefit is that it created a community for me.”

“We have a garden walk in the neighborhood, and I’ve come to know other neighbors and gardeners that I wouldn’t otherwise know. And, of course, there’s Marisa’s staff and Marisa, as well,” Golightly said.

One of the first plots that Mender-Franklin worked on came with no water source, she said. She offered to pay the homeowner next door to run a water line over from his faucet, and he, a gardener, set it up for her.

“People like to help make dreams come true. It’s that feeling of connection that we all really need,” she said. “So often when we talk about community, we view it in terms of helping other people. And we forget that being part of an equal community means that you also have to ask for help.”

To give back, Mender-Franklin launched the Flowers for Good program, which donates flowers to local organizations, schools and charities. Her shop has a free seed library for vegetables and native wildflowers.

“It’s such a gift to the community to have their land turned into a farm,” said Nixon. “And all the pollinators, birds and wildlife change the area.”

“It’s also a lot of work,” she added.

Mender-Franklin knows that to be true. “We run on community,” she said. “Well, community and LaCroix and an unhinged belief in our ability to figure it out.”

How you can start a land-sharing network

If your flowers or vegetables are in search of a garden, these online resources can help:

Regional and local gardening groups and buy-nothing groups on social media can link neighbors willing to share tools, harvests or garden beds.

Matchmaking services such as Shared Earth and My Gardens Spot connect those seeking land on which to farm or garden with landowners seeking to share property.

___

Kristin M. Hall contributed to this story from Memphis, Tennessee.

___

Jessica Damiano writes weekly gardening columns for The Associated Press. She publishes the Weekly Dirt Newsletter. Sign up here for weekly gardening tips and advice.

This story was originally featured on Fortune.com

Kimie Smothermon begins each day greeted by the squeals, chirps and purrs of nearly 400 guinea pigs.

Depending on who you ask, tending to the daily barrage of guinea pig needs can be either a fairy tale or a horror show. For Smothermon, it’s often a mix of both.

“If I could figure out how to get out of this at this point, I probably would,” Smothermon joked. “But I do believe that to a certain extent, I probably wouldn’t get out of bed if I didn’t have this.”

Smothermon is the owner of the Guinea Pig Sanctuary, in Salisbury, Massachusetts, roughly 40 miles (64 kilometers) north of Boston. On any given day, 350 to 400 guinea pigs are housed in a modest workspace, split into cages stacked from the floor to ceiling.

The space is cramped and chaotic as volunteers and visitors squeeze past each other between the rows of cages in a converted office space. People constantly move throughout the space cleaning out cages and checking on any sick animals.

But there’s also joy. The squeals from the little piggies about to eat lettuce and other vegetation often spark laughter, while others cuddle and comfort some of the guinea pigs. Each animal has a name prominently displayed outside their cage, as volunteers tick off their personalities.

Maui is friendly and gives kisses. Gritty is older, but shy. Rio has spunk and likes to run around. They all remember the smell of their caretakers and gravitate toward their favorites.

“They’re very sensitive animals,” said Janet Woodman, a volunteer at the nonprofit. “I personally think they are probably the best therapy animal next to a horse.”

Smothermon’s operation is one of the handful of animal rescues in the U.S. devoted solely to taking in abandoned guinea pigs — filling a need as people become overwhelmed with the responsibilities required to take care of these pets. The sanctuary additionally offers boarding for guinea pigs when their owners are traveling, as well as encouraging rehoming of the animals when they can.

Measuring between 8-10 inches (20.32-25.4 centimeters) long, these small beasts originally came from South America derived from the Cavia porcellus species, according to the Smithsonian’s National Zoo. After being domesticated in 5,000 B.C., there are now 13 different breeds that are distributed as both pets and for food.

According to Smothermon, guinea pigs often need to be adopted in pairs. They’re social and can’t be kept in cages full time.

Within minutes of opening the sanctuary earlier this year, an older woman walked through the door carrying two cages needing to “surrender” her guinea pigs. The woman’s husband had become sick, she explained to Smothermon, and she couldn’t properly take care of both him and her pets.

Smothermon hugged the woman and waived the usual fee.

“I tell people, just bring them here,” she said. “If that’s what you need to do, I’ll take on the responsibility.”

Other days, Smothermon is fielding calls from across the U.S., asking if she can take 11 piggies from Illinois, seven from Texas, and 97 from New York — where nearly half are expected to have babies.

It’s a constant stress that Smothermon never imagined would consume her life. It initially began when her grandson, Alex, brought home a guinea pig. Alex had fallen into a fire as a child and experienced health problems, causing him to avoid most animals up until he was 12, when he discovered it was safe to interact with guinea pigs.

From there, Smothermon said, her family became a resource to take in abandoned guinea pigs. The family ran the rescue out of their New Hampshire house until a fatal fire burned it down in 2019. The fire resulted in the loss of Smothermon’s other grandson, two dogs and dozens of guinea pigs.

The tragedy sent Smothermon into a depression, but when her family was living out of a hotel as they looked for a new home, people still kept dropping off guinea pigs that needed help.

Seeing the need gave Smothermon and her family the focus and motivation to continue Alex’s dream, and eventually they relocated to Massachusetts.

Smothermon says the work is hard. She only gets a handful of days off a year, but the constant drumbeat of needing to take care of hundreds, if not thousands, of guinea pigs keeps her grounded.

“If I don’t get up, they don’t eat and they can die. So even though it’s not a choice, I have to,” she said.

This story was originally featured on Fortune.com

Once a day now, I force myself to make an old-fashioned phone call.

Not a Zoom. Not a Teams meeting. Not a recorded conversation with an AI notetaker quietly humming in the background.

Just a phone call.

I do it because afterward I have to reconstruct the conversation from memory. I have to remember what was said, identify the themes, connect the dots, and then summarize it for my AI agents. In other words, I make myself do the work first. The technology comes second.

It’s a small habit, but one I’ve adopted because I’m thinking a lot about the doom-and-hype cycle we’re in with AI. Every conversation seems to swing between extremes. AI is either the second coming of the Industrial Revolution—unlocking unprecedented productivity and entirely new industries—or it’s about to eliminate every job, drain our resources, and leave us hiding on remote ranches while robot towers patrol the horizon.

The truth, as it usually is, is somewhere in the middle.

Oddly enough, I’ve been thinking about all of this through the lens of a novel I just finished, Yesteryear.

The book follows a social-media “trad wife” who suddenly wakes up in 1855 and has to become a real one. What struck me wasn’t the time travel. It was the way the novel exposes our tendency toward extremes.

It presents two narratives for a woman’s life. Devote yourself entirely to your family and lose yourself in the process. Or climb the corporate ladder, answer to men in power, sacrifice everything for your career, and end up just as depleted.

As the CEO of a company—and the mother of seven—I know firsthand that neither story has to be true.

Ironically, it was my 19-year-old daughter, Sofia, who urged me to read the book. We came away with the same conclusion: there has to be a middle path.

You can see her generation searching for one.

If my generation graduated hoping for internships at Merrill, McKinsey or Morgan Stanley,, hers is starting businesses that pressure-wash garbage cans. The start-up ideas they come up with are rarely glamorous. But that’s the point. They’re optimizing for autonomy—for control over their schedules, their work, and their lives. I sometimes wonder whether it was our obsession with extremes that pushed them toward the middle.

A few weeks ago, Fortune published two essays from the two of us, side by side. We wrote them independently and didn’t read each other’s until they were finished.

Mine was titled, “Three Times the CEO I Was a Year Ago.” Hers: “I Don’t Want AI to Think for Me.” She was deeply skeptical of AI. I was unabashedly optimistic.

In the weeks since our essays ran, I found myself thinking less about what AI will do to the economy and more about what it might do to me.

What parts of my own thinking am I outsourcing?

What skills, painstakingly developed over decades, could quietly begin to atrophy?

For me, the answer is listening.

Throughout my career, my greatest advantage has never been that I took the best notes. It was that I listened deeply enough to synthesize ideas in real time—to hear patterns, connect concepts, and ask the next question.

Today, every meeting can be recorded. Every conversation can be transcribed, summarized, analyzed, and critiqued by AI.

The temptation is to stop paying full attention because the machine is.

That’s the habit I’m trying to resist.

So once a day, I go analog.

I make a phone call that isn’t recorded. Then I force myself to reconstruct it afterward before I ever ask AI for help. I’m the one who has to remember. I’m the one who has to summarize. I’m the one who has to explain the through-line.

Only then do I hand it over to my agents.

It’s my way of exercising a cognitive muscle I don’t want to lose.

Because the most human part of listening isn’t transcription. It’s noticing. It’s sensing hesitation. It’s recognizing what wasn’t said. It’s connecting ideas before anyone else sees the pattern.

If we all stop participating because AI will “catch us up later,” who is actually left in the conversation?

Perhaps that’s the middle path AI is asking us to find.

Not rejecting the technology.

Not surrendering to it.

But using it in ways that make our own thinking stronger instead of weaker.

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.

This story was originally featured on Fortune.com

AI is transforming how work gets done, automating or accelerating many of the tasks that have long defined the early years of a professional’s career. That shift is playing out across even the most technologically advanced industries, including ours.

It raises questions every employer should be asking: what will we expect from early-career talent, and what will they expect from us?

At Citadel Securities, our answer starts with how we already work. From day one, we ask new colleagues to own hard problems, form a view, and drive it – not to shadow, not to wait their turn. AI amplifies that model. It clears away the mechanical parts of the job and puts more of the interesting work – judgment, ownership, building – into the hands of the people just starting out.

That’s why what increasingly separates the 0.18% who get an offer from everyone else isn’t coding ability, or GPA, or which quant competitions they’ve won. It’s something AI can’t replicate, but something AI can accelerate – building.

Builders are people who identify problems no one assigned them to solve, organize people and ideas around solutions, and take responsibility for making things happen. Those qualities have always mattered – and in the age of AI, they’re becoming even more important, particularly for new graduates. 

Of course, technical excellence still matters. Our work depends on outstanding engineers, quantitative researchers, and traders. But as AI becomes increasingly capable, technical expertise alone is no longer enough to stand out. Employers are now evaluating early-career candidates the way they have long evaluated leaders: based on curiosity, problem-solving ability, communication skills, and the initiative to build.

So how should students prepare for this new environment? 

Build something.

The specific pursuit matters less than the fact that you chose it yourself. Build a business. Create an app. Launch a campus organization. Organize a community initiative. Pursue original research. Turn a hobby into something bigger. The common thread is self-direction.

Projects like these teach lessons that classroom assignments rarely can – they require you to navigate ambiguity and persist without someone else defining every step. Those experiences build judgment, resilience, and confidence.

Pursue mastery.

The strongest candidates aren’t the ones with the longest list of activities. They’re the ones with genuine passion who go deep because they cared enough to keep improving.

Employers notice people who have challenged themselves, overcome setbacks, and demonstrated the discipline to keep learning and improving over time.

Use the tools. 

Use AI tools every day – just as much in your extracurricular pursuits as your core classroom work. The goal is not simply proficiency with AI. The goal is to use it to create, experiment, and solve problems on a scale that simply wasn’t possible before. 

In doing so, you will develop the judgment to know when to rely on AI tools, when they will fall short, and how to combine these capabilities with your own thinking to produce better outcomes – qualities employers will increasingly look for as they recruit new talent. 

That’s why I believe we are entering the golden age of builders.

As AI takes on more routine work, talented people will have more leverage than ever before. They’ll be able to test ideas faster, solve larger problems earlier in their careers, and create meaningful impact with fewer barriers to getting started. That means more interesting work from the outset, a shorter path from idea to implementation, and earlier opportunities to lead. 

That’s what makes this moment so exciting. Every industrial revolution has reshaped the workforce while also creating entirely new opportunities for those willing to adapt. The professionals who succeed in this environment will be the builders – and their advantage will only grow.  

Builders have always stood out. Today, AI is giving more people, earlier in their careers, the opportunity to become one.

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.

This story was originally featured on Fortune.com

For most of American history, financial adulthood arrived with a recognizable set of keys: the house keys, the car keys, the filing cabinet where you kept the insurance paperwork. The timing was fairly predictable—late 20s, early 30s at the outside. Then it took a while longer to get the keys.

A new survey from fintech company Chime, which commissioned a poll of 3,000 U.S. adults as part of its Millennial Money Report, suggests the answer is yes, in a specific and measurable way. Eighty-four percent of millennials say their 30s triggered a fundamental shift in how they think about money: what success means, how to measure it, and whether the old benchmarks still apply. The mindset recalibration that used to accompany the first mortgage and the first kid now arrives on its own schedule, decoupled from the milestones that used to produce it automatically.

“Eighty-four percent of millennials said that their 30s prompted a reevaluation of objectives and goals,” Aaron Terrazas, an independent economist who led the survey, told Fortune.

The report spans 2,000 nationally representative millennials, divided into three equally sized cohorts — elder, core and younger — with comparison samples of 500 Gen X and 500 Baby Boomers. Terrazas described the split within the millennial generation itself as one of the sharpest findings. Both ends of the generation are technically the same generation. But on nearly every financial attitude measured, they behave like different ones.

The fault line runs through 2008

Millennials born before 1991 came of age directly into the financial crisis and those born after watched it happen as kids. The divergence in outcomes is visible in the data, according to Terrazas and the Chime study.

Older millennials are far more likely to have taken on extra income out of pure survival instinct—42% of elder millennials say a single paycheck simply wasn’t enough, compared to 31% of younger ones. About one-third of what the report calls “post-1991 millennials” lean into “peer solidarity,” the study says, finding they say they feel about the same as everyone, but only 23% of their recession-scarred older counterparts feel that way.

Core millennials, born from 1987 through 1991, sit at the hinge. Too young to have entered the workforce at the crash’s trough, they nonetheless came of age during the long, grinding recovery — then hit parenthood, mortgage decisions and peak career years just as the pandemic and rising interest rates arrived. They are the generation for whom the old sequence of education, advancement and homeownership may have still looked plausible, until it didn’t.

Younger millennials, born from 1992 through 1996, are more likely to describe renting as freedom — 31% compared with 24% of elder millennials — and more likely to retain faith in the traditional career ladder, at 27%. But they are also the most likely cohort to report that a job loss or debt reality check triggered their financial mindset shift in their 30s: 33%, compared with 24% of elder millennials. The optimism is real. So is the math.

Census Bureau and CDC data on delayed marriage and first births similarly reframe a single generational story is, on close examination, two overlapping financial cultures split by a crisis. Median age at first marriage has risen steadily, now over 30 for men and 28 for women, up from the early 20s in 1975, according to the most recent Census data. First births show a parallel, if not identical, postponement: The mean age of first-time mothers rose from 26.6 in 2016 to 27.5 in 2023, per the CDC. That widening interval between adulthood’s traditional milestones—school, work, housing, marriage and children—has become one of the clearest measures of how financial insecurity is reshaping family formation.

On the housing front, Harvard Joint Center for Housing Studies has documented how sharply the cost-burden of housing has risen, finding a record high of cost-burdened renter households in 2024. Total U.S. household debt reached $18.8 trillion as of the most recent New York Fed data, with mortgage debt at $13.1 trillion, auto loans at $1.7 trillion, and credit card balances at $1.26 trillion.

The first-time homebuyer median age has also risen, to the remarkable number of 40 years old as of 2025, per National Association of Realtors data—while first-time buyers accounted for just 21% of purchases, the lowest share in the survey’s history. Buyers increasingly rely not only on savings but on retirement assets and help from family or friends to make a down payment. Fortune has previously reported younger millennials trying to save for a home disproportionately cite student loans, high rent and credit-card debt as obstacles—a three-way squeeze that many older millennials were able to navigate before housing costs and borrowing rates rose further.

The counterintuitive part

What makes the Chime survey surprising is what it says about where the delay actually leads. Forty-nine percent of millennials say they’re better off financially than they were five years ago—more than Gen X (43%) or baby boomers (40%). Thirty percent describe themselves as financially successful by their own definition, a modest but real edge over both older generations (25.8% for Gen X and 26.6% for baby boomers). Only 14% flatly say they are not financially successful, compared with 24% of Gen X and 26% of boomers.

“The surprise in this report,” as the Chime authors put it, “isn’t the math. It’s that most of them don’t quite believe it yet.” These findings align with consumer confidence data from the Conference Board, which found earlier this month that baby boomers and Gen Xers are far more miserable about the economy than younger generations.

That dissonance runs just below the surface. Forty-one percent of millennials say their financial reality frequently fails to match how their life appears to others—the highest of any generation. The two most common words millennials volunteer to describe their current financial situation are “behind” and “overwhelmed” (both at 20%), though “cautiously optimistic” runs close behind at 19%. The gap lives almost entirely in backward comparison: 24% say they’re behind where their parents were at their age, while just 14% say they’re ahead. When measured against their peers, the largest group says they’re doing about the same, which suggests the anxiety is not about actual standing but about a template that no longer fits.

The 30s are where the template breaks. Terrazas pointed to an unpublished cross-tab from the survey he found revealing: The share of millennials who said they had stopped comparing themselves with others rose from about 9% among the youngest cohort to 15% among core millennials and 17% among the oldest.

“This is the decade when people come to terms with where they are in life,” he said.

A different definition of winning

Part of what changes is the definition of success itself. Asked to name their top marker of financial achievement, 39% of millennials chose “supporting loved ones”—ahead of homeownership (32%). For baby boomers, the top answers are growing investments (33%) and a fully funded emergency fund (32%): private accumulation, essentially.

The one aspiration that hasn’t moved is homeownership. Millennials still rank it as the single biggest status symbol among people their age (40%), well ahead of work flexibility or a nice car (both 26%). Only 14% say they never wanted to own a home—lower than Gen X (24%) or baby boomers (19%). Terrazas sees no near-term relief.

“I don’t think millennials should reasonably expect easing housing pressure” even as they move into their 40s, he said. The oldest baby boomers turn 80 this year, and won’t typically start downsizing until their mid-80s, meaning the inventory constraints that have locked millennials out of the market have another decade to run.

The soup, not the salad

Asked for a simple explanation, Terrazas resisted.

“The explanations are more soup than salad,” he said. “You can’t disentangle the specific pieces. They all kind of blend together.”

Higher long-term interest rates, a changing labor market, the pandemic’s disruption of early career formation, the demographic drag of a graying population—each is real, none is sufficient alone. What is consistent across all of them, he said, is the external triggers that used to produce financial adulthood—a first mortgage, a first child, navigating your family’s health insurance for the first time—now arrive later, and the internal shift follows.

“It’s not just those experiences,” he said. “It’s how you had to navigate health care for a newborn or pediatric care,” or learn to do your own taxes, deal with your mortgage. “There are these two sources that shape our views: formative experiences and our stage of life.”

Thirty percent of millennials say they’re financially successful by their own definition. Twenty-four percent say they’re behind where their parents were. Both numbers are true at the same time, which is perhaps the most accurate summary of where this generation actually stands: rewriting the scorecard mid-game, not quite sure yet whether they’re winning by the new rules, and not fully convinced the old ones are gone.

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

This story was originally featured on Fortune.com

This was a headline I’d been waiting to see.

“Boiler room raised $74 million selling retirees SpaceX, Anduril, Anthropic, and Perplexity while reaping ‘massive hidden fees,’ SEC claims,” my colleague Amanda Gerut wrote last week, outlining a case that the SEC has brought against a Long Island-based financial firm it’s calling a pre-IPO “boiler room.”

At the center of the SEC’s allegations, The Spaventa Group, run by former broker Andrew Spaventa. The complaint, filed Friday, is a doozy: The SEC is alleging that Spaventa and his firm had a force of more than 100 agents, making thousands of phone calls, to sell shares in pre-IPO darlings—with no hidden fees. The companies the agents were (again, allegedly) selling were the sexiest private company names out there, including Anduril, Anthropic, Perplexity, and SpaceX (before its IPO).

That there was an alleged boiler room scam running in the tri-state area, amid a legendary, AI-fueled run-up in the private markets isn’t surprising. (I’ve written extensively about the absolute exuberance—and likely fraud—that’s bound to emerge from this time, as investors chase phantom Anthropic shares, and the secondary market is both massive and unregulated). What is surprising is here the scale that the SEC says the scam hit, as Fortune’s Gerut wrote: 

“More than 800 people bought in. Most were retail investors, and more than 650 put in $100,000 or less, while over 100 were retirees, according to the Securities & Exchange Commission. The alleged boiler room raked in more than $74 million for 11 private funds run from offices on Long Island and New Jersey over the course of four and a half years from December 2020 to June 2025. 

Despite the promise of no rip offs from “unnecessary fees,” investors paid on average 46% more for their positions than Spaventa’s own companies paid to get them, the SEC alleged in a complaint filed on Friday in the Southern District of New York. In some cases, the premium ran as high as 91%. Investors allegedly had no idea the markups were so high.” 

Freeze frame; 800 people buying in, most with $100,000 or more, with more than 100 retirees, to the tune of an eventual $74 million—that’s a real scale-up from the last high-profile pre-IPO fraud chase the SEC brought this year, when the regulator brought a case against Giovanni Pennetta, alleging he’d misappropriated $10 million investor dollars while selling fraudulent shares of companies like Anduril. (Pennetta ultimately pled guilty to one count of wire fraud.)

Importantly, Spaventa denied the SEC’s claims when my colleague reached him by phone. 

But I’ll be following this case as it goes on—and others like it. Because regardless of how the Spaventa case plays out, we haven’t heard the last of the SEC on the chaotic swirl of demand that’s led to the increasingly public private markets. 

See you tomorrow,

Allie Garfinkle
X: @agarfinks
Email: alexandra.garfinkle@fortune.com

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This story was originally featured on Fortune.com

Good morning,

Spirit Airlines may have gone bankrupt, but its data lives on. 

Google has reportedly purchased Spirit’s trove of operational and customer data as part of the carrier’s bankruptcy wind-down, scooping up years of booking patterns, pricing behavior, and customer service logs to help train its AI. 

Almost ironically, the budget airline famous for charging extra for literally everything—carry-ons, seat selection, printing your boarding pass at the counter—is now cashing in on the one thing it never charged for, the data it collected watching customers try to avoid those fees.

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• In today’s CEO Daily: KB Home CEO Rob McGibney on the art of personalization.
• The big leadership story: The ‘Jamie premium’ edges JPMorgan closer to $1 trillion valuation.
• The markets: Down as crude oil futures rise.
• Plus: All the news and watercooler chat from Fortune.

Good morning. When Rob McGibney became CEO of KB Home on March 1, he knew there would be tough days ahead. In his first earnings call, he had to report a 23% decrease in year-over-year revenue to $1.08 billion while net income had shrunk 70% to $33.4 million; in his second, revenue was down 27% to $1.1 billion while earnings dropped 75% to $27.3 million. The stock is down since he took over. Borrowing costs are relatively high. Consumer confidence is relatively weak. And the specter of inflation, oil prices and higher construction costs doesn’t help.

There are a lot of things that McGibney can’t control. I spoke with the 26-year veteran of KB Home about what he’s doing to change the things he can.

First is more focus on built-to-order homes, which accounted for 73% of net orders in the second quarter, up from 57% last year. Consumers typically pay more for such homes and are less likely to cancel or demand discounts, but customized homes also mean longer waits at potentially higher mortgage rates. “We’re not forcing that buyer to pay for things that they don’t value, allowing them to put the things in the home that they really do value and care about,”  McGibney told me. “We allow people to personalize the home not just for the fit, finish, function and features but also to their budget … If [you’re] making that choice for the buyer, invariably you just get something wrong.”

Second, he wants to woo more first-time buyers, the average age of whom is now 40. (The median age of U.S. homebuyers has gone from 39 to 59 over the past 15 years.) McGibney acknowledges that people are marrying and having kids later, but he thinks expectations of “quick gratification” also come into play. “We’re seeing first-time buyers who are making $140,000 a year, have a 740 FICO score and put down $70,000. If you go back a decade or so, FICO scores were much lower and incomes were certainly lower,” he said. “When I bought my first house, we had to go through some pain. It was hard to save money for a down payment … but there’s some sacrifices to make that first step but people who make it have significantly more wealth generation capability over time.”

The two are interconnected in that Gen Z buyers were raised on personalization. “My kids grew up wanting personalized Nike custom ID shoes; they go to Chipotle and get to personalize what goes on that burrito … It stands to reason that they want the ability to personalize what’s going to be the largest purchase they’ve made up to that point in their life.” That said, he acknowledges that there’s little he can do to change the reality that many younger buyers can’t—or feel they can’t—afford to buy a home. “We as a company, or me as a CEO, can’t change the math,” he said. “But we’re working aggressively to get as far down that K (in the K-shaped economy) as we can by offering better affordability. It gets back to controlling what we can control.”

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

This story was originally featured on Fortune.com

The billionaire Oculus and Anduril founder Palmer Luckey says he’s living proof the American Dream is alive and well. He went from a teen college dropout who was living in a trailer to selling his first company to Facebook (now, Meta) for $2 billion by just 21 years old—and he says that rags-to-riches rise could only happen in America.

“I was a 19-year-old kid working a minimum wage job with no college degree, living in a 19-foot camper trailer, and Peter Thiel gave me a million dollars when nobody else would to start Oculus,” Luckey told the Hoover Institution. “That’s not happening in China, I’ll tell you that.” 

The now 33-year-old said “there’s a million complaints” about opportunity drying up in the U.S. “Oh, you can’t get a break in America. Blah, blah, blah, blah.” 

Indeed, AI is cutting 16,000 U.S. jobs a month, and many Gen Zers can’t even land a summer job at an ice cream shop right now. But Luckey says his own story—and those of countless other founders just like him—proves that America is still the golden land of opportunity.

Palmer Luckey went from a homeschooled teenager building VR headsets to a $5 billion net worth

While homeschooled, 17-year-old Luckey started building a virtual reality headset in his family’s garage: the Oculus “Rift” VR headset. 

After raising $2.4 million on the crowdfunding site Kickstarter two years later, he dropped out of California State University, hired a handful of employees, and rented an office space to launch his virtual reality startup.

Although Luckey missed the application window for the famous Thiel Fellowship, his prototype still caught the attention of PayPal cofounder Peter Thiel, who invested in Oculus through his venture firm, Founders Fund.

Thiel’s investment paid off almost immediately. Just one year later, in 2014, Facebook acquired Oculus for $2 billion. But the partnership didn’t end there. 

In 2017, Thiel and Founders Fund backed Luckey again, this time in a very different kind of startup: Anduril, a defense tech company building autonomous weapons systems and surveillance technology for the U.S. military. Founders Fund led Anduril’s first funding rounds, and the company has since grown into one of the most valuable defense startups in the world, now worth $61 billion. 

His latest venture? Erebor Bank. 

A tech-focused bank he cofounded with Joe Lonsdale (co-founder of Palantir Technologies), it plans to offer crypto-collateralized loans and other services tailored to startups in AI, crypto, defense, and advanced manufacturing. It has once again received major financial backing from Thiel’s Founders Fund and has already hit a $9.5 billion valuation.

Meanwhile, Luckey’s own net worth is already over $5 billion.

Americans are leaving in record numbers. These founders say they’re making a mistake.

Americans are fleeing the U.S. in record numbers. The U.S. recorded a net negative migration of between 10,000 and 295,000 people in 2025—the first time in at least 50 years that more people moved out than moved in, according to The Brookings Institution. 

Up to 405,000 left voluntarily, pushed by a volatile political climate and a cost of living that is squeezing even high-earners on six-figure salaries. 

But Luckey isn’t the only self-made founder pushing back on the idea that opportunity in America has dried up.

Arvind Jain, the ex-Google engineer who cofounded two billion-dollar companies, including his most recent AI startup Glean, left a small town in northern India in 1986 with nothing but an engineering degree. And he insists those leaving the U.S. are making a huge mistake. 

“There are certain things in the U.S. today that are challenging,” Jain previously told Fortune. “But I think it remains the land of opportunity. It remains the place where entrepreneurship is celebrated.”

He’s far from alone. Several of America’s biggest companies today are run by people who moved to the U.S. and built major fortunes here.

Jensen Huang was born in Taiwan and briefly raised in Thailand before immigrating to the U.S. at age 9. His first job was washing dishes at Denny’s, and he went on to found Nvidia—now the world’s most valuable company. His cousin, AMD chair and CEO Lisa Su, also immigrated from Taiwan at age 3 and turned the struggling chipmaker into an $876 billion AI powerhouse. 

Dan Rogers, CEO of work management platform Asana, left the U.K. for a better career in the U.S. He planned his Stateside move from age 14, working his way through Dell, Microsoft, Amazon Web Services, Salesforce, and ServiceNow before landing the top job in San Francisco.

And his explanation for why he flew thousands of miles and uprooted his entire life to be in the Bay Area is basic math; he told Fortune: “I looked at the Fortune 50 AI list, 30 of the 50 are in the Bay Area. There is this inordinate concentration—and because of that concentration, it is self-reinforcing.”

Ambitious people know where the hottest companies are, so they flock there. Investors follow. And the cycle feeds itself, keeping the region the No. 1 destination for anyone hoping to turn an idea into an empire.

“Silicon Valley was, and is once again, with the AI companies, a real magnet for something special, for people that want to have an outsized impact,” Rogers added. “The hive of activity, the obsessiveness, the quality of talent, the access to funding and new ideas is second to none.”

This story was originally featured on Fortune.com

Two of Queensland, Australia’s most prominent philanthropists died within just days of each other. 

Roy Thompson, who built his fortune as a publican and property developer, died on Aug. 7, only eight days after his wife, Nola Thompson, had passed from Stage 4 ovarian cancer. The couple was married for 69 years, had eight children together, and donated tens of millions of dollars to charity, particularly in the Sunshine Coast region of Queensland. 

“His prognosis was a broken heart,” their son Peter Thompson told Sunshine Coast News.

While no confirmed net worth figures exist for the couple, they were often described as multimillionaires who deliberately avoided a luxurious lifestyle. 

“I’m 87, can’t live forever, can’t take it with you, so why shouldn’t you give it to people where you’ve made the money?” he told the Catholic Leader in 2021. “I’ve made a lot of money here and why not give it back?”

By 2018, they had donated $15 million to the University of the Sunshine Coast, including a $7 million building to house the Sunshine Coast Mind and Neuroscience—Thompson Institute, a mental health research center. Their gifts locked in scholarships and bursaries for students through 2075. The institute also houses the Nola Thompson Centre for Advanced Imaging, named for his wife.

Their generosity extended well beyond the university. In 1979, Roy launched the Sunshine Coast Rescue Helicopter Service. The couple gave $2 million toward the Wishlist Centre, affordable accommodation for patients and families across from the Sunshine Coast University Hospital. And in April 2021, they entrusted more than $5 million to the Buderim Foundation to establish the Thompson Charitable Fund. Roy Thompson was also recognized in the Order of Australia for his service to the community.

“Roy and Nola in very real, humble ways, helped to change the face of philanthropy on the Sunshine Coast,” Brendan Hogan, CEO of hospital charity Wishlist, told Sunshine Coast News.

The couple was also named Queensland Higher Education Philanthropists in 2017, but they shunned the spotlight. 

“We’re not social people,” Nola told My Weekly Preview when Roy was named to a Companion of the Order of Australia in 2018. “You won’t see them swanning around the social circuit—despite their standing as two of the Sunshine Coast’s biggest philanthropists,” the outlet noted. 

Living humbly and paying it forward

Roy encouraged others of means to follow suit. 

“There are a lot of people that have a lot more money than they need and I think it’s up to them to start giving,” Roy told My Weekly Preview. “Let’s face it, they can’t take it with them.”

The couple lived humbly, which was a nod to Roy Thompson’s beginnings. He grew up in a single-income household with a father working in local gasworks. 

“Things were not much better for the Thompsons in the 1970s, when Roy and Nola brought up their eight children on a modest builder’s wage,” said House of Representatives Member Andrew Wallace in 2018 remarks. “But in the end Australia rewards hard work, imagination and commitment.”

Roy Thompson went on to work in real estate and “had a great deal of success creating or transforming a host of Sunshine Coast landmarks,” Wallace added, including Chifley’s Hotel, which was a famous landmark and entertainment hub in the 1980s. He built the hotel in 1972 and sold it in 1978 to Stewarts Hotel Group, then bought the Mooloolaba Hotel and other Sunshine Coast developments that ultimately cemented his fortune, much of which went toward philanthropy.

Roy’s son said gratitude drove the giving. 

“Ninety percent of all his donations were distributed on the Sunshine Coast,” Peter Thompson told Sunshine Coast News.

This story was originally featured on Fortune.com

Concerns are growing that the de-facto tolling of the Strait of Hormuz could trigger a domino effect for key shipping bottlenecks worldwide, creating more global inflation and effectively killing key components of international maritime law.

As Iran insists on some form of fee structure for traversing the now-infamous strait—and the U.S. increasingly seems unable to prevent it—the rising expectation is that other nations may insist on new fees elsewhere, such as Asia’s Strait of Malacca, Europe’s and Africa’s Strait of Gibraltar, as well as key waterways impacted by Russia’s war in Ukraine.

“I think that the ‘freedom of the seas’ is dead,” said Michelle Brouhard, head of policy and geopolitical risk for the Kpler energy intelligence firm.

“The way that we’ve known maritime security is moving into a new era, and the rules are still getting rewritten,” Brouhard told Fortune. “It’s going to look different than what we’ve seen before. It’s going to be expensive; it’s going to be inflationary; and it’s also going to create a lot of benefits for people who start onshoring industrialization.”

The so-called freedom of the seas is the centuries-old recognition that maritime transit and commerce should be free and open to all. The “absolute freedom of navigation” was insisted in Woodrow Wilson’s famed “Fourteen Points” statement of peace to end World War I. That legality is carried today through the U.N. Convention on ​the Law of the Seas.

In that vein, “The post-World War II order is burning to the ground,” Brouhard said. This trend was already in the works with President Trump’s return to office and the so-called ‘Donroe Doctrine’ emphasizing regionalism and control over the Western Hemisphere. “It’s just accelerating now with the [Iran] war,” she added.

Shipping companies, insurance firms, and more would certainly oppose tolling structures—they’re already threatening to cancel coverage on vessels that pay tolls or involuntary fees—but that doesn’t mean they can prevent them, she said.

Iran is demanding a 5% or 7% service fee per barrel of oil that would generate close to $20 billion annually, and that’s not even counting fees on other cargoes, such as natural gas, petrochemicals, helium, fertilizer, and container cargoes. While analysts are skeptical that such high charges would come to fruition, many see a fee system of some kind as inevitable.

And Brouhard believes it’s increasingly an inevitably that more fees will be charged for cargoes to move through other straits as other nations seek to capitalize, such as Malaysia and Indonesia in the Strait of Malacca and Morocco with the Strait of Gibraltar.

“Once Iran said they were going to charge a fee—if they charge a toll—then everyone is going to charge a toll,” Brouhard said. “This is one of the last known natural resources that someone can make money off of. Imagine if you’re Malaysia, you’re a relatively poor country. Now, all of a sudden, you can charge a toll. You’re going to be a relatively rich country. Morocco could become a richer country,” she said.

“It’s an entirely new commoditized asset that didn’t exist before.”

New world order

There is an ongoing debate in energy and geopolitical circles as to whether some kind of fee structure—even a so-called voluntary one—is an inescapability or a leveraging tactic to win Iran the economic freedoms from sanctions it desires.

Bob McNally, former White House energy advisor under George W. Bush and founder of the Rapidan Energy Group, believes Iran would likely settle for tiny, voluntary service fees, similar to what already exists at the Strait of Malacca.

“We look at the whole question of Hormuz tolls as mainly an Iranian bargaining chip that they’re willing and able to give up for big sanctions relief and other things,” McNally said. “We just don’t think heavy-handed Iranian tolls are going to be the future. That could be wrong.”

Another argument is that Iran’s oil-producing neighbors, the Gulf Cooperation Council (GCC), may opt for regular payments to Iran—instead of a per-vessel fee system—to keep Hormuz open, said Gregory Brew, senior analyst for Iran and energy with the Eurasia Group. 

“My expectation has been that money will be delivered to the Iranians in some way, shape, or form,” Brew said. “It will likely come from the GCC states, and it will likely come in the form of voluntary fees that are meant to cover the costs of managing the strait.”

And that is very different that the miniscule, voluntary fees in Malacca, he said.

“I think the [Malacca] comparison will be made to frame the agreement in Hormuz as legal and acceptable,” Brew added. “The difference will come in the quantity of funds delivered. The Iranians won’t accept a nominal, minor amount. They’ll want something more substantial, and the GCC will likely have to deliver them what they want.”

Indonesia and Malaysia already have publicly flirted with tolling the Strait of Malacca this year but have also insisted they’ll avoid doing so for now.

Even though it would have violated the freedom of navigation, Brouhard said there’s an argument that the U.S. should have worked with Turkey and others to make Russia pay tolls through the Bosporus Strait as punishment for invading Ukraine—instead of capping the prices of Russia’s oil and gas sales.

Making Russia’s oil the most expensive in the world would have punished Russia more than making its oil the cheapest and benefitting the oil buyers, especially China, she said.

In such a way, Brouhard said, there’s an argument that the “freedom of the seas” is no longer ideal for the modern world.

“Freedom of the seas makes sense in a world where everybody’s friends with each other. But, in a world like now, where there are a lot of hostilities, and you have the rising power of China, maybe freedom of navigation doesn’t make sense,” Brouhard said.

As such, this would hasten onshoring and the building up of domestic supply chains. But it would also prove inflationary for essentially everything. In the case of oil though, tolls charged on cheaper oil on open straits would prove less costly than the oil spikes of today, she said. And worldwide tolls would also apply to container ships—essentially all exported goods—and not just oil and gas tankers.

“Everything that we’ve seen that has been inflationary has been on commodity prices,” Brouhard said. In a world of tolls on straits, “You’re going to have higher prices on the transit of container goods. And 90% of global trade happens on the water. It’s not just commodities, it’s everything. All global trade is happening on the water.”

This story was originally featured on Fortune.com

Defense giant L3Harris forced out chairman and chief executive Chris Kubasik, 65, over the weekend after a board investigation revealed that he had violated the company’s code of conduct. 

The $50 billion aerospace-and-tech company did not provide any detail about what Kubasik did to violate the code, but specified it did not involve financial reporting, controls, customer relationships, or operations. Kubasik, who has served as CEO since 2021, resigned from the L3Harris board and all of its subsidiaries and affiliates.The abrupt departure comes 14 years after Kubasik was fired from another leading defense contractor, following an ethics investigation that determined he had a relationship with a subordinate employee.

Under the terms of the separation agreement between Kubasik and L3Harris struck on Sunday, Kubasik leaves with no severance or bonus, and as part of the deal he forfeited all his outstanding equity awards, stripping him of two option grants and other awards that could have paid him $45 million in cash and equity. 

Kubasik will still hold onto some of his options that can net him stock worth about $23 million, as well as more than 200,000 shares of stock in L3Harris that he already owns, valued at nearly $57 million. L3Harris has paid Kubasik compensation valued at $66.3 million during the past three years, including $25.6 million in fiscal 2025. During his tenure, L3Harris had a close relationship with the Trump Administration’s Department of War. In April, L3Harris subsidiary Aerojet Rocketdyne made a deal for a $1 billion government investment into the missile-propulsion business L3Harris plans to take public. L3Harris also delivered a 747 to the White House to serve as an interim Air Force One in June, after modifying the gifted jet from Qatar’s royal family.

The separation disclosure says the L3Harris board decided to reach a deal with Kubasik to get him to leave rather than trying to fire him for cause. Kubasik did not admit to any violation of the company code of conduct, and the deal expressively forbids any of the parties or their representatives from making public statements “inconsistent” with Monday’s disclosure. The board appointed Sam Mehta, 53, as Kubasik’s immediate replacement. Mehta had been leading L3Harris’ space and mission systems and communications and spectrum dominance segments. Lewis Hay II, formerly the lead independent director on the board, will become independent chairman.

L3Harris’ stock fell more than 4% on Monday following the company’s shotgun CEO transition. L3Harris reaffirmed its full-year 2026 guidance across revenue, growth, and operating margin and other metrics.

“Chris has overseen significant transformation during his tenure at L3Harris, and he has built a strong team to carry the business forward,” said Hay in a statement. “However, our values guide the actions we take each day as The Trusted Disruptor and are at the center of everything we do. The Board and Chris have agreed that implementing our succession plan today is the right thing to do. We thank him for his service.”

Kubasik’s ouster comes 14 years after he had to leave Lockheed Martin following an ethics investigation there confirmed a “close personal relationship” between Kubasik and a subordinate employee. Kubasik was serving as vice chairman, president, chief operating officer, but had been appointed to take over as CEO at the defense contractor in 2013. Weeks before he was supposed to take the reins, Kubasik was forced to resign. He was replaced then by Marillyn Hewson, who served until she moved into the executive chairman role in 2020. 

Lockheed paid Kubasik $3.5 million as part of a separation agreement when he left, but L3Harris was even more stringent, despite the amount he’s walking away with. 

According to the terms of his deal with L3Harris, Kubasik forfeited his 2026 bonus and he wasn’t eligible to get $9.3 million in cash severance or separation payments. He also had to give up unvested restricted stock and performance shares, and $7.6 million in options, meaning he’ll walk away from at least $45 million on the table. That figure could have stretched to $62 million if L3Harris had paid out at the maximum for performance over the next two award cycles. 

The L3Harris board still has the right to claw back his options if undisclosed misconduct including fraud, sexual assault, embezzlement, quid pro quo sexual harassment, securities violations, or material regulatory violations is established down the line by a court ruling. 

L3Harris did not respond to requests for comment. Attempts to reach Kubasik were unsuccessful.

This story was originally featured on Fortune.com

Being part of a millionaire—or even billionaire—family might sound like a dream. But according to Malcolm Gladwell, extreme wealth can actually rob children of something important: the motivation to succeed on their own.

“I would rather have a dad who made $100,000 than a billion,” Gladwell said in a 2009 lecture at Microsoft that has recently resurfaced on social media. “I think that having a father with a billion dollars would actually be quite crippling to your motivation, and so that’s an advantage that’s actually a disadvantage.”

For Gladwell, who has amassed an estimated $30 million net worth through his work as a journalist, bestselling author, and podcaster, the point isn’t that every child needs to grow up struggling to make ends meet. Rather, there’s a sweet spot between financial hardship and extreme abundance: enough money to provide stability and opportunity, but not so much that a child never has to experience the constraints, disappointments, and work that shape ambition.

The 62-year-old expanded on that idea in his 2013 book, David and Goliath: Underdogs, Misfits, and the Art of Battling Giants. In it, he interviewed one of the “most powerful people in Hollywood,” whom he left unnamed—and the executive made a similar argument.

“My own instinct is that it’s much harder than anybody believes to bring up kids in a wealthy environment,” the person said. “People are ruined by challenged economic lives. But they’re ruined by wealth as well because they lose their ambition and they lose their pride and they lose their sense of self-worth. It’s difficult at both ends of the spectrum. There’s some place in the middle which probably works best of all.”

Paying thousands of dollars for elite education might backfire, according to Gladwell

Education more broadly offers another example of how an advantage can become a disadvantage, with Gladwell questioning whether elite schools always provide the educational advantage their price tags suggest.

“I would love to know on a systematic analysis of why it is the case that you’re better off going to that school than learning how to cope in a far more heterogeneous, rough-and-tumble public school environment,” he said in the 2009 lecture. 

Beyond price, he always has argued that success isn’t always determined solely by raw ability. Relative standing matters, too—which means surrounding yourself exclusively with high-achieving peers can sometimes work against you.

“If you’re interested in succeeding in an educational institution, you never want to be in the bottom half of your class. It’s too hard,” Gladwell said on the Hasan Minhaj Doesn’t Know podcast last year. “So you should go to Harvard if you think you can be in the top quarter of your class at Harvard. That’s fine. But don’t go there if you’re going to be at the bottom of class. Doing STEM? You’re just gonna drop out.”

There is also evidence that extreme privilege can come with real pressures and pitfalls.

Columbia University researchers found in a 2005 study that children from upper-class families can exhibit elevated likelihoods of substance use, anxiety, and depression in part thanks to excessive pressures to achieve and isolation from parents.

“The American dream spawns widespread beliefs that Ivy League educations and subsequently lucrative careers are critical for children’s long-term happiness,” the researchers wrote. “In the sometimes single-minded pursuit of these goals, let us not lose sight of the possible costs to mental health and well-being of all concerned.”

Growing up without wealth is often also a major motivator

On the opposite end, many business leaders have said coming from humble circumstances became a source of motivation rather than a limitation.

Ulta Beauty CEO Kecia Steelman is one example. She previously told Fortune that she grew up “poor, hungry, and determined” in rural Iowa. After getting pregnant as a teenager, she got a job as a floor associate at Target making $8 an hour and began climbing the retail ranks. Last year she was named CEO of Ulta—the country’s largest beauty retailer with some 1,500 stores.

“Being really grounded and humble with my beginnings, I wouldn’t change that,” Steelman said.

Former PepsiCo CEO Indra Nooyi has similarly credited her upbringing and early struggles with shaping her work ethic. She arrived in the U.S. in the late 1970s to study graduate-level management at Yale University. To pay for her degree, Nooyi worked the midnight-to-5-a.m. shift as a dormitory receptionist before heading to class each morning.

Looking back, Nooyi said the U.S. offered something that mattered more than an easy path to success: the possibility of creating one.

“I remember back in the old days people would say they thought the streets might be paved with gold,” she said. “Maybe they weren’t paved with gold, but they were paved with the possibility of ambition.”

Nvidia CEO Jensen Huang has similarly argued that learning to endure a little struggle—and developing the ability to work through challenges—is part of what separates successful people from the rest.

“Let the suffering come to you a little bit at a time,” Huang said last month at Y Combinator’s Startup School 2026. “Don’t imagine how hard it’s going to be and let all of that turn into anxiety and not doing something about it. You want to imagine in your head, ‘How hard can it be?’”

This story was originally featured on Fortune.com

The burger wars has a new contender for the throne: Burger King. 

The fast-food giant has reclaimed its place as America’s second-largest burger chain, overtaking Wendy’s and trailing only McDonald’s in sales.

The results demonstrate that Burger King’s multi-year renovation and marketing campaign may be paying off. 

“Burger King U.S. was a standout performer this quarter with our elevation strategy driving another major step forward in sales and expanding our outperformance versus the industry to the high single digits,” Restaurant Brands International CEO Joshua Kobza said in the parent company’s Q2 earnings call this month. “I’m incredibly proud of what our teams and franchisees have accomplished so far this year.”

At the center of the strategy is Burger King’s most popular menu item: the Whopper. In February, Burger King announced its first major makeover of the sandwich in nearly a decade. The new version includes a glazed bun, reformulated mayonnaise, and a sturdy new box. This month, the chain reported a 20% increase in sales since the revamped version debuted. 

The upgrade package cost franchisees an estimated $4,000 a year, but Burger King urged operators not to pass that expense directly to customers, according to CNN. That decision matters in a competitive fast-food market where customers have grown intensely sensitive to price. 

McDonald’s is chasing the same value-conscious customer, but its efforts have been bumpier. CEO Chris Kempczinski acknowledged that a crowded calendar of menu launches and promotions had complicated restaurant operations and blurred the company’s affordability message. 

Wendy’s faces a more severe challenge. The fast-food chain experienced six consecutive quarters of declining sales. Its U.S. same-store sales sank 7% in the latest quarter, while Burger King’s jumped 8.5% and McDonald’s ticked up 0.8%. 

In a recent Q2 earnings call, Wendy’s CEO Robert Wright blamed “quality degradation, challenges around our value offerings, inconsistent operations and marketing that is not driving customers to our restaurants” for Wendy’s failure. 

The chain’s woes have drawn the attention of activist investor Nelson Peltz, who is preparing a proposal to take Wendy’s private, backed by BlueFive Capital and Flynn Group, according to the Financial Times.

Tom Curtis: customer service rep and president

While Wendy’s customers have been flocking to competitors, Burger King has benefited from a unique approach to customer service as well as a not-so-secret weapon: its own president. 

In February, the company announced a phone number that lets customers call or text Burger King President Tom Curtis directly with feedback. Burger King said Curtis will personally take as many calls as possible and that every message would be reviewed and answered to inform decisions across the business. 

“Guests are our most important advisors,” Curtis said in a statement. “We’re grateful that they provide the feedback that is shaping our brand today and in the future.”

In May, he said he had personally responded to 1,800 calls, part of more than 70,000 customer communications received by the company. Curtis credited that feedback with helping shape changes to the Whopper and broader restaurant upgrades.

While he’s not the first executive to lend out his phone number to the public, the campaign debuted the same month that McDonald’s CEO came under fire for a viral video posted to his personal social channels promoting the chain’s new Big Arch burger.

Viewers mocked Kempczinski’s taste test for his small bite and for referring to the sandwich as a “product.” Comments under the post included “I deleted the McDonalds app after watching this,” and  “Not a single calorie was consumed in this video.”

Burger King posted a video of Curtis taking a rather large bite of the Whopper, followed by his commentary: “only one thing missing, a napkin.” Burger King told NBC News the video was unrelated to Kempczinski’s taste test, which was posted a week prior.

This story was originally featured on Fortune.com

Venture capital firm Andreessen Horowitz is the focus of a Justice Department antitrust probe over whether its investment partners are improperly serving on the boards of competing artificial intelligence companies, according to people familiar with the matter. 

The companies at issue include Databricks Inc., one of the most valuable privately held technology companies in the world, and Fivetran Inc., both backed by the VC firm, according to the people, who asked not to be named discussing a confidential matter. Andreessen Horowitz co-founder Ben Horowitz serves on the board of Databricks, and partner Martin Casado is a board member of Fivetran. Both companies help businesses collect, organize and analyze massive troves of data.

Casado was also on the board of a similar company dbt labs, which was acquired by Fivetran in June. The Justice Department conducted a months-long review of the deal, first announced in October, said the people, but ultimately cleared it unconditionally. 

The nearly year-old investigation, which hasn’t been previously reported, was opened around the same time as the merger review and has continued after the deal was completed, the people said. 

Spokespeople for Databricks and the Justice Department declined to comment. Spokespeople for Andreessen Horowitz and Fivetran didn’t respond to requests for comment.

Resolving such investigations typically requires that directors step down from one of the competing boards. And companies targeted by the Biden administration did just that, with directors on some dozen boards, including Live Nation Entertainment Inc. leaving their positions to resolve the conflict.

White House Connections

The investigation of Andreessen Horowitz, which has closely aligned itself with the second Trump administration, is particularly noteworthy. The company has forged ties to the White House and its tech portfolio stands to benefit from the minimal regulatory policies that some of Andreessen Horowitz’s team is pressing in Washington. 

Horowitz and the firm’s other co-founder, Marc Andreessen, each donated millions of dollars in 2024 to a group aligned with then presidential candidate Donald Trump. And the firm has been a key voice on AI policy, successfully pushing the administration to remove many safety guardrails on the use of the technology, Bloomberg News has reported. Later in 2024 Horowitz also gave $2.5 million to a super PAC that supported Democratic presidential candidate Kamala Harris.

Read More: Andreessen Horowitz’s Rising Influence Over Trump-Era AI Policy

The Justice Department hasn’t made any final decisions on how to proceed with the investigation, which could end with no action, the people said.

The investigation also represents a continuation of a key Biden-era focus on a rarely invoked 1914 law against so-called interlocking directorates, where individuals or entities sit on boards of directors for two companies that directly compete with one another. 

Under then Assistant Attorney General Jonathan Kanter, the DOJ forced directors to resign from a number of boards to resolve such concerns. In 2021 then Endeavor Group Holdings CEO Ari Emanuel stepped down from the board of Live Nation. And in 2022 and 2023 directors from more than 10 other companies exited boards as well.

Competing Boards

In the Andreessen Horowitz probe however, it’s the involvement of the firm itself on competing boards, since more than one individual director is at issue. While the law is worded to apply to companies as well as individuals and a handful of courts have agreed, it could still provide an avenue for the firm to challenge any allegations by the government. 

As of January, Andreessen Horowitz had $90 billion in assets under management, making it one of the richest venture capital firms in the world. The firm recently raised a $15 billion fund, its largest haul ever, to invest across the startup ecosystem. Andreessen Horowitz has poured billions into AI upstarts, including backing companies like coding startup Cursor, which was just acquired by SpaceX and voice AI company ElevenLabs. The firm also is a major investor in SpaceX, which went public in June, and has backed OpenAI, which is looking to go public in the near future.

Databricks is another IPO contender within Andreessen Horowitz’s portfolio. Horowitz is sitting on billions of dollars in potential returns due to his continued lead investments in the company, dating back to a $14 million fundraising in 2013. Databricks last week announced $5 billion in funding at a $190 billion valuation.

This story was originally featured on Fortune.com

Strategic oil inventories have researched a 40-year low, and experts warn their continued depletion could damage the underground caverns where the reserves are stored.

Last week, the Strategic Petroleum Reserve (SPR) plunged below 300 million barrels for the first time since the 1980s, when the reserves were being filled, according to the Department of Energy. That pool is expected to drain further to 243 million barrels as the U.S. releases 172 million barrels to manage severe supply disruptions and rising energy costs due to the Iran war.

Those reserves are kept in 60 salt caverns across two sites in Texas and two sites in Louisiana, each thousands of feet underground and have a total storage capacity of 714 million barrels. But as oil is drained from these reserves, the integrity of the caverns may be imperiled.

“I don’t know anyone who believes we can go below 300,” Amos Hochstein, a senior energy advisor for former President Joe Biden, told CNBC on Saturday. “I know plenty of people who think we can’t get near 300 because physically you will damage the caverns where the oil is stored.”

The Department of Energy denied Hochstein’s claim the changing inventory levels risk harming the caverns.

“The caverns are always full. All that changes is the ratio of oil and water that is filling them,” DOE chief spokesperson Ben Dietderich told Fortune in a statement. “President Trump and [Energy Secretary Chris Wright] are responsibly managing the SPR as the critical national security asset it was designed to be, helping stabilize oil markets and protect Americans from supply disruptions.” 

The health of the caverns as political ammo

Both Republicans and Democrats have used the status of the caverns as political ammo on issues surrounding the SPR. In 2025, Wright testified to the House Energy and Commerce Subcommittee on Energy that President Donald Trump’s efforts to replenish the SPR were hampered by more than $100 million in necessary repairs to the reserve’s facilities. The restoration, he argued, was a result of the quick drawdown of reserves following the Biden administration selling nearly 200 million barrels in 2022 and 2023 to steady global energy costs amid Russian’s invasion of Ukraine.

“The immediate thing we need to do is finish the repairs on the Strategic Petroleum Reserve,” Wright said in testimony. “It was drawn down so quickly, and that causes some damage to the infrastructure itself. Those repairs are ongoing, and it costs a nontrivial amount of money to repair the SPR.”

As of May, most of the SPR’s caverns were in “very good condition” following the drawdowns, according to a report from the Government Accountability Office (GAO) released to the public in June. However, the GAO warned “every drawdown cycle expands cavern volume and reduces the spacing between caverns within the salt dome, which ultimately reduces their long-term viability.”

Concerns about the future health of the caverns

Engineering experts, indeed, still have concerns about the longevity of the caverns given the repeated drawdown of the SPR. Siddharth Misra, an associate professor of petroleum engineering and geophysics at Texas A&M University, explained that when the caverns were constructed in the 1970s and ‘80s, they were designed to have an initial 25-year lifespin, engineered to handle just five drawdowns and refills. Instead, the facilities have endured dozens of releases in that timeframe. 

During these drawdowns, the total fluid volume inside the facilities must always remain at 714 million barrels, meaning operators must pump fresh water into the facilities to keep pressure stable, Misra noted. The water “aggressively dissolves the salt walls,” widening the cavern and thining the walls separating the adjacent chambers. Moreover, pumping so much cool water inside the caverns, which naturally have a higher temperature, can result in thermal shock, causing large pieces of salt to fall and break, potentially damaging the extraction pipes within the cavern.

“From an engineering and geomechanical standpoint, these concerns are highly valid,” Misra told Fortune in an email. “Salt is a highly dynamic rock type, and aggressively altering the fluids, pressure, and temperatures inside these deep caverns directly threatens their structural integrity.”

Despite the Department of Energy saying the minimum amount of oil to operate the SPR is 70 million barrels, Misra said the current reserve levels still present a real risk to the reserves, which will hit their legal limit of 252 million barrels in about three months if extraction moves at a conservative pace of 500,000 barrels per day. There’s also increased risk of physical damage, he said, including a layer of an oil-water-impurity sludge rising near the ceiling intake of the extraction system, which can destroy the surface pumps, as well as dissolution of the salt wall and thermal shock.

“We should be highly concerned about the integrity of the caverns anytime crude inventories drop below 300 million barrels,” Misra said. “At these depleted levels, the reserve physically loses its ability to pump oil at the rapid emergency speeds it was built to achieve without risking severe structural damage.”

This story was originally featured on Fortune.com

President Donald Trump has repeatedly signaled he’s in no hurry to reach a deal with Iran as he pivots from all-out war to a campaign of economic pressure.

After 40 days of heavy bombing and two more weeks of daily attacks, the U.S. is now relying on a naval blockade to force Iran to fully reopen the Strait of Hormuz and return global oil markets to normalcy.

But the regime has plans to go into attack mode soon if there’s no diplomatic progress, forcing the U.S. back into major combat just as vulnerabilities have emerged in its own military.

Iran has shifted from a defensive stance to a “fully offensive” ​one, a senior Iranian official told Reuters on Monday, citing the stalemate with the U.S. on talks.

Unless the U.S. implements the June ceasefire deal in a few weeks, Iran will launch a “timely and precise” ​attack to break the blockade, the official warned.

“Iranian entities must be prepared to escalate tensions ​in the Strait of Hormuz and wider region, as Iran will be ready to make ⁠decisions and take action on difficult decisions,” the official added.

The threat comes after Iran recently reorganized its military to be more aggressive as factions in the government abandon hopes for negotiations.

Sources told The Wall Street Journal Arab intelligence detected preparations for a wider war, including the deployment of Iranian commanders, weapons, and intelligence to regional militias aligned with the regime.

Iran’s Islamic Revolutionary Guard Corps has also drawn up plans for more escalation, such as sabotaging internet cables in the Persian Gulf, fomenting unrest in neighboring states with large Shia populations, and even a potential ground assault in Kuwait, the report added.

“There is also a widespread view in Iran that the main war has not yet begun,” Mohammad Hassan Sangtarash, a Tehran-based defense analyst close to the Iranian government, told the Journal. “What we have seen so far is increasingly interpreted through the lens of ‘salami-slicing’ tactics—limited, incremental escalation designed to weaken capabilities before a larger confrontation.”

Despite seeing its conventional forces decimated by the U.S.-Israeli bombardment earlier in the war, Iran has seen its tactical situation improve recently.

Iran has developed new missiles that are better at evading air defenses, making U.S. military assets and allied oil infrastructure around the region more vulnerable.

The U.S. military has also expended much of its interceptor stockpile, which is now so low it reportedly factored into Trump’s decision to call off a major re-escalation of war.

In addition, even maintaining the naval blockade has strained U.S. forces as the U.S.S. Abraham Lincoln aircraft carrier struggles with mental health and supply issues amid a record-long time at sea. Another carrier is on the way to take its place, but other ships performing blockade operations are likely facing similar logistical concerns.

The conditions could be ripe for Iran to test U.S. resolve. And given the harm the U.S. blockade was causing, Iran wasn’t expected to stand idly by, especially now that it has more military leverage to exploit.

Majidreza Hariri, the head of the Iran-China Joint Chamber of Commerce, recently admitted the U.S. blockade will eventually inflict more economic damage than actual war.

To avoid this, he urged the regime to do whatever it takes to end the blockade, “whether through negotiation, supplication, threats, or even war.”

“We must also eliminate the perception in the U.S. that it can resort to such an action whenever it wants, and make it understand that the consequences of such a move could be severe,” Hariri added.

This story was originally featured on Fortune.com

One Gen Z high school dropout with two tech businesses to his name has just become Europe’s youngest self-made billionaire following a breakout investing round—before even turning 30. James Dacombe, the 25-year-old serial entrepreneur behind AI chip-making firm Olix and brain monitoring startup CoMind, just hit a personal net worth of over $1 billion. 

Dacombe launched his London-based firm Olix just two years ago, which tripled in value since February and raised $312 million from investors earlier this month, boosting the company’s market cap to $3.3 billion. It also pushed the bank account of Dacombe, who owns an estimated 30% stake in the company, over the billion-dollar threshold. 

Meanwhile, Dacombe also owns a 12% stake in CoMind—a company he created in 2017, and still leads—raised $102.5 million in August last year, which contributes to his eye-watering net worth. 

The British Gen Z founder is just one of 11 self-made billionaires in the world under 30 years old, and one of four who don’t live in the U.S. 

How James Dacombe became a billionaire

Dacombe was destined to build. He began programming apps and websites at just 13 years old, attending private school Ashville College in Harrogate, North Yorkshire, before taking his A levels in physics, math, economics, and business. But the then-teenager knew the academic life wasn’t for him.

So at 17 years old, Dacombe dropped out of high school to scale his budding company: CoMind. And four years later, he’d take on a major opportunity to accelerate his business. 

The founder then took the Thiel Fellowship: a two-year competitive program established by Palantir cofounder Peter Thiel that grants budding entrepreneurs $250,000 to skip college and pursue their entrepreneurial passions. 

It’s a fellowship that has kick-started the careers of billion-dollar successes like ScaleAI’s Alexandr Wang and Lucy Guo—and now, Dacombe can add his name to the list of success stories. 

“An advantage of starting my business so young was naivety,” Dacombe told The Sunday Times in 2024. “You don’t have the scar tissues from what hasn’t worked, so you just try a lot of things. Fortunately, some of them work.”

Fortune reached out to Olix and CoMind for comment.

The tech revolution is minting Gen Z billionaires 

The tech revolution is breaking market cap records and minting billionaires at a breakneck pace. And the workforce’s youngest generation is leveraging their tech savvy to found unicorn companies before even hitting their 30s. Now, Gen Z founders are constantly beating each other out in being the youngest self-made billionaires in the world. 

In the explosion of the internet era, Mark Zuckerberg quickly floated to the top as the youngest self-made billionaire. He built Facebook out of his college dorm room—a company now known as the $1.5 trillion titan Meta—and hit a net worth of $1 billion in 2008 at just 23 years old. He held the spot for several years before being overtaken by his slightly younger Facebook cofounder Dustin Moskovitz, who reached the 10-figure threshold in his mid-twenties.

Other tech visionaries have since swooped up the spots. 

In 2015, fellow college dropout Evan Spiegel, the cofounder of Snapchat, took the throne when he became a billionaire at 24. Now, AI is generating a tidal wave of wealth that’s flowing into the pockets of Gen Zers; the sector minted more than 50 new billionaires in 2025 alone, as investors funneled over $200 billion into the industry, and AI start-ups were on the receiving end of 50% of funding worldwide. 

Over the past year, U.S. AI start-ups have created 19 billionaires with a combined fortune of $59.3 billion, according to a March 2026 Bloomberg analysis.

In 2022, ScaleAI raised $325 million at a $7.3 billion valuation, catapulting  then-24-year-old entrepreneur Wang to the youngest self-made billionaire spot. Wang’s fellow cofounder, Guo, later surpassed Taylor Swift in becoming the youngest woman to hit the eye-watering net worth, and has since passed the baton to Kalshi cofounder Luana Lopes Lara. Shayne Coplan, the founder and CEO of prediction market giant Polymarket, later held the world title at 27 years old. And less than a month later, a new Gen Zer would assume his spot at the top. 

In 2025, Mercor’s 20-something founders Surya Midha, Brendan Foody, Adarsh Hiremath all became billionaires after the company was valued at $10 billion in a private funding round last October. They’ve since held onto their status as the youngest self-made billionaires, boasting net worths around $1.9 billion to $2.2 billion. Young tech founders are accumulating wealth at a dizzying pace—and Mercor’s founders say the wealth still feels somewhat abstract. 

“It’s definitely crazy,” Foody told Forbes after hitting the $10 billion valuation last year. “It feels very surreal. Obviously beyond our wildest imaginations, insofar as anything that we could have anticipated two years ago.”

This story was originally featured on Fortune.com

Keeping your email inbox under control can feel like a full-time job in itself—with endless streams of messages making it difficult to separate what actually matters from the noise. Roland Busch, the CEO of Siemens, has a decisively minimalist approach: skipping email etiquette in favor of efficiency.

“I try to keep my inbox below 100. If you have more than 100 emails in your inbox, you lose the overview of what’s actually on your plate,” Busch told Business Insider. “I accomplish this by answering messages quickly and using a few words.”

Oftentimes, those few words are simply “OK” or “No.”

“I make it simple and fast. My team is trained to communicate this way. If I need to write something longer, I dictate my response while walking through the office.”

That same emphasis on efficiency extends to how the 61-year-old manages his time with his direct reports. Rather than scheduling recurring one-on-one meetings, the leader of the $256 billion German engineering company—No. 143 on the Fortune Global 500—keeps his door open and lets his executives come to him when they need to.

“Because I value efficiency, I don’t have recurring meetings with my direct reports. I tell them, ‘You come to me whenever you need me,’” Busch said. “It could be five times a week or once a month. I don’t need to entertain people, and they don’t need to entertain me.”

From physicist to CEO of Germany’s largest publicly-traded company 

Busch joined Siemens in 1994 and spent nearly three decades climbing the ranks before becoming CEO in 2021. During his tenure at the helm, Siemens’ stock has more than doubled, and the engineering giant is now the largest company in Germany and third-largest in Europe by market capitalization.

But Busch said the biggest influences on how he leads didn’t come from traditional leadership backgrounds like obtaining an MBA from business school. Instead, he holds a Ph.D in physics, and his first role at Siemens was researching energy technologies including fuel cells, offshore wind, photovoltaics and high-temperature superconducting transmission lines.

That scientific training has been core to how he approaches the complexity of running a global company, he said.

“As a CEO, you’re always making decisions with incomplete and ambiguous information. Physics taught me how to de-layer a problem, separating the core issues from the less important ones,” Busch told BI. “Once you isolate the core variables, you have a much better chance of making the right decision.”

Fortune reached out to Siemens for further comment.

Meetings are increasingly a thorn in the side of CEOs—with Jensen Huang and Jamie Dimon cutting them back

Busch isn’t the only CEO pushing back against the traditional meeting-heavy corporate calendar.

Nvidia CEO Jensen Huang has said he similarly eliminated one-on-one meetings with his dozens of direct reports.

“I don’t do one-on-one’s with any of them,” Huang said at the Stanford Institute for Economic Policy Research summit in 2024.

His rationale is rooted in transparency: there shouldn’t be much he tells an individual executive that he wouldn’t want the rest of the company to know, he said.

“In that way, our company was designed for agility,” Huang added. “For information to flow as quickly as possible. For people to be empowered by what they are able to do, not what they know.”

Southwest Airlines CEO Bob Jordan has also warned that executives can mistake a packed calendar for productivity.

“When you first start, it’s easy to confuse busyness and going to meetings with leadership,” Jordan said on a panel of CEOs at the New York Times DealBook Summit last year. “…Because what we all find, I’m sure, is there’s no time to ‘work,’ and you confuse going to meetings with the work.”

Jordan has since made it a goal to keep his calendar clear every Wednesday, Thursday and Friday afternoon, giving himself time to focus on work outside of meetings.

“It’s so that you can work on things you need to work on. You can think about what’s important right now. You can call people you need to talk to,” he added.

But few CEOs have been more vocal about their disdain for bad meetings than JPMorgan Chase CEO Jamie Dimon. In his 2024 letter to shareholders, Dimon offered a blunt prescription for what he sees as a major drag on corporate productivity: “Kill meetings.”

He reiterated the point at Fortune’s Most Powerful Women summit last fall, arguing that employees should give meetings their full attention rather than multitask.

“None of this nodding off, none of this reading my mail,” Dimon said. “If you have an iPad in front of me and it looks like you’re reading your email or getting notifications, I tell you to close the damn thing. It’s disrespectful.”

This story was originally featured on Fortune.com

Amid the tensions spurred by President Donald Trump’s proclaimed desire to annex Greenland, one Texas driller made plans to create an oil boom along the Danish territory’s sparsely populated east coast. But those aspirations are now facing repeated delays in the face of regulatory and community pushback.

The first test well was slated to be drilled this summer with a camera crew overseen by producer Phil “Dr. Phil” McGraw to document the effort. As local opposition escalated and permitting slowdowns took hold, the drilling was delayed to the winter—upon the government’s request—and now, after an additional kerfuffle this week concerning the movement of drilling equipment, the project was further pushed back until the end of 2027, essentially an 18-month delay.

Oil drilling is especially sensitive in Greenland where there’s a climate change-related moratorium on licensing, though the Texas company is essentially operating by means of a grandfathered loophole. The situation has become more delicate still as the White House repeatedly signals it wishes to take over the massive icy territory in order to tap petroleum and critical minerals.

But Robert Price, the CEO of Texas-based Greenland Energy, exclusively told Fortune he is disappointed but undeterred, and he remains as bullish as ever about Greenland’s oil prospects.

“It was very frustrating. We’ve had some ups and downs in the last week or so,” Price said. “We actually had much of the equipment being mobilized. And when we got word from the government, we shut down the mobilization. We had a drilling rig in in Calgary that was en route to Montreal. So there were some sunken costs. A lot of those costs will be able to be used for the next drilling season.”

Wall Street was disappointed though. Since going public in March on the Nasdaq Global Market, Greenland Energy’s market cap has plunged nearly 85% down to about $54 million. But Price insists the company is stable.

“We preserved a lot of cash on hand. Financially, we’re still very sound,” the veteran oilman said.

The Greenland government requested the company drill in the winter instead of the summer for environmental purposes. “The birds have already migrated. The tundra will not be disturbed. We’ll be able to go literally over it when it’s iced up,” Price said.

On the downside, helicopter evacuations and harsher weather are trickier during the winter months. “The winter can be unpredictable in the Arctic Circle, and so we do worry about the health and safety of our people if someone got injured, being able to get them out,” Price added.

Even then, the hope was to drill this winter, and not more than a year from now.

“We had indications from the government that we’d get our permits soon and then, as it turned out, they wanted to take their time,” Price said. On the bright side, at least now, “We have a real clear timeline on the permitting,” he added.

And the goal of extracting many billions of barrels of oil remains intact. “This one [test] well could be up to 2.9 billion barrels of oil. So the prize is still there, and the upside is still there. The timing is the only thing that’s changed.”

Long time coming

The long history of Greenland oil is rife with decades of trial and error.

Fresh off the massive Prudhoe Bay oil discovery in Alaska in the late 1960s, the Atlantic Richfield Co., better known as ARCO—later acquired by BP—identified offshore Greenland as a top oil prospect in the 1970s.

ARCO and others spent more than $100 million on seismic surveying and assessments of Greenland with plans to develop oil and gas in the territory. But, after some initial drilling pilot programs were unsuccessful, dreams of Greenland’s black gold fell by the wayside when the oil industry infamously went bust in the 1980s. Smaller efforts popped up in Greenland over the years, but nothing came to fruition. The UK’s Cairn Energy—now Capricorn Energy—abandoned the most recent drilling effort in 2011 after mixed, mostly failed results.

Nearly all of these projects were offshore though, and Greenland Energy is taking an onshore approach. Despite decades of geological study, eastern Greenland’s Jameson Land Basin remains completely undrilled until potentially next summer.

Price believes Jameson could be the next Prudhoe Bay. And a defunct British company is his potential path to seeing that dream come true.

London-based White Flame Energy was founded over a decade ago to explore for oil and gas in Greenland. No development came to pass, but the company critically won three licenses for exploration in the Jameson basin. The licenses received three-year extensions in 2024. Later that year, U.K.-based 80 Mile acquired White Flame. And Price’s company partnered with 80 Mile to take over the grandfathered licenses—the only ones in Greenland that haven’t expired.

Earlier this year, a reverse merger deal was finalized to take Price’s company public. changing the name to Greenland Energy in the process. Price’s team leads the operations while 80 Mile keeps a 30% stake in the project.

The drilling pilot project was progressing but then came a new dispute with the government over a permit—or lack thereof—to recently move drilling equipment to the region. The Greenland government believed the oil company was trying to proceed without due permission, but the company says it was a misunderstanding

The government said it issued a “strong warning” with an additional “warning that all future logistical matters must be advised and approved by the mineral resources authority—before they are carried out.”

Price said they realized late in the process that its permit to move equipment onto the site expired at the end of 2025. As the renewal was pending, the company made a deal with the Greenland Airports authority to store equipment at the nearby Nerlerit Inaat Airport. Instead, it turned out they needed an additional permit from the government’s minerals authority—and not just the airport.

Everything is squared away now, Price insisted, and there should be no further delays.

“There’s a lot of time now to make sure that we get it right,” Price said.

As for the Dr. Phil-hosted documentary? It’s on pause and up in the air.

This story was originally featured on Fortune.com

Size isn’t everything in China’s IPO markets.

Unitree, perhaps China’s most famous humanoid robotics maker, is in the middle of an initial public offering on Shanghai’s STAR market, the city’s board for tech startups, with a trading debut expected for this week. Then, later this week, the fast-fashion platform Shein will reportedly start its own IPO in Hong Kong, with shares potentially debuting as soon as Aug. 28, according to Reuters.

Shein’s IPO dwarfs Unitree’s, with the fast fashion giant hoping to raise as much as $3 billion, roughly three times what Unitree is targeting. And yet Unitree’s IPO is getting most of the attention: Retail investors are scrambling to buy into the company, and secondary markets are predicting a massive jump in valuation after the startup’s debut. 

Unitree may be smaller and younger compared to Shein, which has a decade of global expansion under its belt. But in the eyes of investors, the robot maker is the more exciting bet, as appetites shift to AI and hardware, and away from e-commerce and internet platforms. 

A robotics boom

Unitree, founded by Wang Xingxing in 2016, has become a fixture in China’s pop culture, thanks to its robots’ dance routines at the CCTV Spring Festival Gala, China’s most-watched television broadcast.

Unitree is raising 6.1 billion Chinese yuan ($904 million) in its IPO, at a market valuation of around $9 billion. The company claimed last week that the retail portion of its offering was more than 8,000 times oversubscribed. 

The company reported 1.7 billion yuan ($252 million) in revenue last year, a fourfold increase from its revenue in 2024. Almost 45% of the company’s revenue came from overseas sales. Unlike many of its peers, Unitree is also profitable, with net income of 600 million yuan ($89 million) in 2025.

Over 70% of Unitree’s humanoid robots go to academic and research institutions, though some Chinese state-owned enterprises and major manufacturers are dabbling with using robots from Unitree and other robotics startups.

Fellow robotics company UBTech, which is already listed in Hong Kong, posted a net loss of $104 million last year; U.S. labs like Boston Dynamics and Figure AI are also unprofitable.

Unitree is part of a broader wave of Chinese robotics manufacturers that are dominating the industry, not just in humanoid robots but also in quadrupeds, household robots, and industrial machines.

Smart Analytics Global, a Californian research firm, calculated that Chinese firms were responsible for 97% of all humanoid robots shipments in the first half of the year. That same report notes that Unitree isn’t even the market leader any more; that title goes to Agibot, a Shanghai-based rival that’s currently preparing for a Hong Kong listing later this year. 

That dominance is spurring concern in Washington. The U.S. Federal Communications Commission in late July banned imports of foreign-made humanoid and quadruped robots. “These devices could create supply chain vulnerabilities that could disrupt U.S. economic and national security,” the FCC said in its announcement. 

Shein’s long road to an IPO

Shein’s IPO is significantly larger than Unitree’s. Media reports from the Financial Times and Reuters suggest that Shein is targeting a valuation between $25 billion and $30 billion. That figure would mark a deep discount from the $64 billion valuation Shein fetched in 2024, let alone the $100 billion valuation it got in 2022.

According to its prospectus, Shein generated $41.2 billion in revenue last year, up from $38.8 billion in 2024. It earned about $2 billion in profit. Europe is now Shein’s largest market, making up 35.4% of its revenue, compared to 24.1% from the U.S.

Growing protectionism is squeezing Shein’s profits. Shein long benefited from “de minimis” rules, which exempted small packages from customs duties. The U.S. eliminated these exemptions last year, and Europe followed suit in July. 

“Although it remains too early to fully assess, it is possible that trends in the EU could be generally in line with or exceed the impact observed in the U.S. after the removal of the U.S. de minimis exemption,” Shein admitted in its IPO prospectus. 

Shein’s long path to an IPO might also have done damage to its valuation. The company first pursued a New York listing, following in the footsteps of other Chinese tech giants like Alibaba and Baidu. Yet U.S. officials raised concerns about allegations of forced labor in Shein’s supply chain and the platform’s handling of customer data.

Shein even moved its headquarters to Singapore in order to smooth its path to a U.S. listing—an attempt at “Singapore-washing”—to no avail. 

The company then considered a London IPO, yet Chinese regulators never gave approval for Shein’s overseas listing. That left Hong Kong as the last option.

It may also be that Shein’s time has passed. E-commerce boomed during the pandemic, when shoppers, flush with stimulus cash, splurged on new items. Now, rising protectionism and inflation have made growth harder for global e-commerce platforms. 

Investor attention is instead shifting to AI infrastructure and hardware. Last month, ChangXin Memory Technologies (CXMT) raised $8.6 billion in its own Shanghai STAR Market IPO. Shares surged by as much as 530% on their first day of trading; the chipmaker, the world’s No. 4 producer of dynamic random-access memory, is now the most valuable Chinese company, ahead of Tencent.

Several other AI companies are considering IPOs in either Shanghai or Hong Kong, including AI developers DeepSeek and Moonshot AI as well as chipmaker Yangtze Memory Technologies Corp.

This story was originally featured on Fortune.com

Beijing is pushing back against U.S. accusations that several other economies, including several in Southeast Asia, are part of a “shadow transshipment network” that funnels Chinese-made goods to the U.S. while obscuring their country of origin.

On Thursday, the White House’s Office of Trade and Manufacturing Policy released a report titled “The Great Transshipment Scam,” which claimed that rerouting Chinese-made goods through a network of 40 different jurisdictions cost the U.S. as much as $303 billion. 

A Chinese embassy spokesperson in Washington D.C. said the country “firmly opposes” the over-stretching of national security justifications to suppress Chinese enterprises, and warned that it would take the steps necessary to safeguard its own interests.

Other governments named in the report, including the European Union and the Southeast Asian nation of Singapore, are also pushing back. Arianna Podesta, the spokesperson of the European Commission, said that while the EU continues to engage with the U.S. on both tariff and non-tariff issues, its rules framework and regulatory autonomy are not “up for negotiation”.

On Aug. 15, Singapore’s Ministry of Trade and Industry (MTI) also reiterated that it “takes trade compliance seriously”. In response to queries from The Straits Times, MTI emphasised Singapore’s commitment to upholding its reputation as a trusted international business hub, adding that it “does not condone businesses using their association with Singapore and using fraudulent and dishonest means to circumvent or violate the laws and regulations of other countries”. 

What is transshipment?

According to the Center for Strategic and International Studies (CSIS), a Washington-based think tank, transshipment is the movement of items from country A to country C, with an intermediate stop in country B. This changes a good’s country of origin, which may have implications on how it is treated once it reaches its final destination. 

Customs officials are generally only concerned with transshipment if there was little-to-no value added in the intermediate stop, essentially slapping a new label on a finished good. The White House’s report complains that this illegal transshipment could involve “relabeling, repackaging, re-invoicing, minor processing, false country-of-origin claims, or other actions intended to secure tariff treatment that would not apply if the goods’ true economic origin were declared.”

However, since the first Trump administration slapped tariffs on Chinese imports in 2018, many companies now route their supply chains through third countries like Vietnam and Mexico, using them for final assembly of goods made with Chinese components. As these activities involve some amount of value-added, and so customs enforcement consider the final good to be a product of that third country, and not of China.

According to the White House Council of Economic Advisers, potential illegal transshipment currently takes place in the range of $34.2 billion to $89.6 billion. The White House claims that 450,000 jobs have been displaced, annual GDP has been slashed by $113 billion to $150 billion, and federal revenue losses range between $19 billion and $26 billion, due to what it deems “illegal transshipment.”

Who’s named in the White House report?

The White House’s report names 40 economies allegedly involved in China’s “shadow transshipment network”.

This includes eight regions under Tier 1, which the U.S. has labeled as “diversified scale leaders”, or nations which see large absolute volumes of China-linked goods, where “illegal transshipment risk may be embedded within broad legitimate trade flows”. They include several long-time U.S. allies, including Canada, Japan, South Korea, Taiwan, Israel and Europe. (The other territories listed under this tier are Mexico and India.)

Six economies are listed under Tier 2, which the U.S. pegs as “scale leaders with significant economic integration with China”, through input sourcing, logistics systems and regional rerouting channels. They include Brazil, Malaysia, Indonesia, Thailand, Turkey and Vietnam.

The bulk of the 40 nations are classified under Tier 3, or what the U.S. labels as “small, opportunistic Chinese targets”, which see lower absolute transshipment volumes but have “specific weak-link advantages” like low-cost labor and free zones. This tier includes Southeast Asian countries like Singapore, Myanmar and the Philippines, Central Asian nations like Uzbekistan and Kazakhstan, and South American nations like Argentina, Chile and Colombia.

What’s next?

Despite a long list of accusations, the White House’s report did not specify any action to be taken against China and the 40 other economies. It did, however, highlight the U.S.’ plans to develop an “AI-enabled detective border”, which will ingest and analyze global trade data to identify illicit transshipment activities.

Globally, analysts including Song Seng Wun, an economic adviser at Singapore-based fintech company SDAX, also say that simply being named to the list is a form of pressure, even if the U.S. does not take further regulatory or enforcement actions.

“By naming Singapore, the U.S. is putting compliance pressure on the region’s largest gateway and signaling that scrutiny will extend to major transshipment hubs, not only manufacturing centers,” Song told The Business Times.

This story was originally featured on Fortune.com

At 6:30 a.m. Eastern Time on August 14, 2026, oil was priced at $89.53 per barrel with Brent serving as the benchmark (we’ll explain different benchmarks later in this article). That’s a loss of 75 cents compared with yesterday morning and around $22.30 higher than the price one year ago.

Will oil prices go up?

It’s impossible to forecast oil prices with detailed precision. Many different elements affect the market, but ultimately it boils down to supply and demand. When worries about economic recession, war, and other large-scale disruptions increase, oil’s path can shift fast.

How oil prices translate to gas pump prices

Gas prices at the pump don’t only track crude oil. They also include what it takes to refine and move that fuel, the taxes layered on top, and the extra markup your local station adds to stay in business.

Since crude oil generally makes up a majority of the per-gallon cost, changes in its price have an outsized impact. When oil surges, gas prices typically rise in tandem. But when oil retreats, gas prices often lag on the way down, a trend sometimes described as “rockets and feathers.”

The role of the U.S. Strategic Petroleum Reserve

In case of emergency, the U.S. has a store of crude oil known as the Strategic Petroleum Reserve. Its primary purpose is energy security in case of disaster (think sanctions, severe storm damage, even war). But it can also go a long way toward softening crippling price hikes during supply shocks.

It’s not a long-term answer and is more meant to provide temporary relief, assisting consumers and keeping critical parts of the economy running, like key industries, emergency services, public transportation, etc.

How oil and natural gas prices are linked

Both oil and natural gas are key sources of the energy we use every day. Because of this, a big change in oil prices can affect natural gas. For example, if oil prices increase, some industries may swap natural gas for some segments of their operations where possible, which increases demand for natural gas.

Historical performance of oil

To gauge oil’s performance, we often turn to two benchmarks:

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

Between these two, Brent better represents global oil performance because it prices much of the world’s traded crude. And, it’s often the best way to track historical oil performance. In fact, even the U.S. Energy Information Administration now uses Brent as its primary reference in its Annual Energy Outlook.

Looking at the Brent benchmark across several decades, oil has been anything but steady. It’s seen spikes due to factors such as wars and supply cuts, and it’s also seen crashes from 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 lower demand and more non-OPEC oil producers entering the industry.
• Prices spiked again in 2008 with increased global demand, but it soon plummeted alongside the global financial crisis.
• During the 2020 COVID lockdown, oil demand collapsed like never before—bringing prices below $20 per barrel.

All to say, oil’s historical performance has been anything but smooth. Again, it’s hugely 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:

• A small Texas company’s bid to create a Greenland oil boom is delayed but undaunted
• The Philippines needs ‘power of all sorts’ to build energy security after nationwide crisis
• BofA to plow $250 billion into critical infrastructure projects

Frequently asked questions

This story was originally featured on Fortune.com

When US President Donald Trump first targeted the Canadian auto industry with tariffs it cost Linda Hasenfratz her status as a billionaire. 

The majority of Hasenfratz’ net worth is concentrated in Linamar Corp., the auto parts and industrial equipment manufacturer her father founded and she’s run for more than two decades. After the first round of tariffs was announced last year — including levies on autos specifically — Linamar’s stock plunged and her fortune dipped to around $800 million. 

But now Linamar’s shares have rebounded to near record highs, and Hasenfratz’ net worth has hit $1.8 billion, according to the Bloomberg Billionaires Index. These changing fortunes may point to both a limit to Trump’s ongoing trade assault on Canada, and a potential way forward for the country’s beleaguered manufacturers.

“Tariffs are very much a short-term problem,” Hasenfratz, 60, who is Linamar’s executive chair, said in an interview with BNN Bloomberg Television. “The vast majority of our business, there’s absolutely no tariff.”

Shares of the Guelph, Ontario-based company have climbed about 27% this year in Toronto — outpacing the 16% advance of the benchmark S&P/TSX Composite Index — despite a one-day dip on Thursday after reporting second-quarter earnings that fell short of analysts’ estimates.  

Hasenfratz didn’t respond to a request for comment about her net worth or the company’s performance.

Tariff Free

Key to Linamar’s success over the last year has been that auto parts are exempt from the 25% tariff applied to assembled vehicles, so long as the parts are compliant with the existing trade deal between the US, Canada and Mexico. That means products that account for more than 60% of Linamar’s earnings are sold tariff free.

While Trump declined this year to renew that existing trade deal, it remains in place for another 10 years. The new round of 50% tariffs Trump is currently threatening against a range of other Canadian goods also leave auto parts out. 

While the US administration has been explicit in its hopes to reshore Canada’s vehicle assembly plants, doing the same with Canada’s much bigger parts manufacturing industry would be costly for both US car makers and consumers. 

“On the parts production side I see it very hard for that to be displaced wholesale from Canada to the US,” said Jonathan Goldman, a Bank of Nova Scotia analyst who has a hold equivalent on Linamar’s stock. “Even if somebody else did make it you can’t just go across the street and get it. You have to redesign the entire car cause it all works together.”

With the tariff threat to its business diminishing, Linamar has been able to turn the disruption to its advantage. It has made three acquisitions in recent years, two in Germany and one in the US, from companies thrown into distress by the industry’s broader upheaval. That’s added some technological capabilities to Linamar’s product portfolio, while helping boost sales to a record in the most recent quarter. 

And Hasenfratz has indicated she’s open to more.

“The tariff situation is also adding stress to an already stressed supply base,” she said on a May conference call. “This is leading to acquisition opportunities for us, as you’ve seen us act on, and the pipeline of distressed companies just continues to grow.”

Dividend Payouts

Linamar was founded in 1966, a year after Canada signed an agreement with the US that removed tariffs on cars and auto parts traded between the two nations. Hasenfratz’s father, Frank, came up with the name by combining the first names of his two daughters and his wife, and the newly christened Linamar’s breakthrough contract was with Ford Motor Co.

In 1994 the North American Free Trade Agreement integrated the two countries’ auto industries further and by 2002 Hasenfratz took over as chief executive officer from her father. 

She expanded Linamar’s auto parts business globally while also diversifying into heavy agricultural equipment and the kind of industrial lifts used to repair wires and lighting in warehouse ceilings. These other businesses now account for nearly 40% of earnings. 

While stock investors often apply a discount for this kind of diversification, Hasenfratz has maintained it makes Linamar’s cash flows more stable because weakness in one industry can be offset by strength in another. And she and her family have benefited from that stability in the steady dividend payouts they’ve collected for decades, amounting to millions of dollars a year. The accumulated dividends now account for about 13% of Hasenfratz and her family’s net worth, according to Bloomberg calculations. 

While Linamar’s agricultural equipment business is currently suffering from a downturn, its industrial lift sales are booming. The narrower, battery-powered rigs Linamar makes have become favored by builders of artificial intelligence data centers in the US, giving the company’s investors indirect access to the booming AI market.

The company is also exploring other areas, including defense, robotics and power generation.  

“They can run a manufacturing process just about as good as anyone,” said Will Guy, an equity analyst who follows Linamar’s stock for Veritas Investment Research Group in Toronto. “They have been able to leverage that into other industries, and they have ambitions to expand that into further industries as well.”

This story was originally featured on Fortune.com

Futures are mixed ahead of a big week for major retailers as new questions emerge about the state of the U.S. consumer, a major engine powering the American economy.

The S&P 500 edged 0.1% higher, while Dow Jones Industrial Average futures slipped 0.2%. Nasdaq futures gained 0.5%.

U.S. stocks hit an all-time high last week despite some recent downbeat data about jobs and, most notably last week, retail spending.

Americans unexpectedly pulled back on retail spending in July by the biggest amount in more than a year, according to the Commerce Department data released Friday

Walmart and Target both post second quarter earnings this week, with Target surging under new CEO Michael Fiddelke, a 20-year company veteran who took over in February. Home improvement companies Home Depot and Lowe’s also report quarterly earnings this week.

The entire sector is wrestling with stubbornly high inflation and customers that are laser focused on prices.

The weak jobs and retail data has diminished the odds of any interest rate hike from the Federal Reserve. That’s good for markets because it lowers the cost of credit, but it may also suggest slowing growth at a time when inflation is elevated.

The Fed has no good tool to fix a stagnating economy and high inflation at the same time, making so-called “stagflation” a worst-case scenario.

The Fed is set to report minutes from its July meeting on Wednesday, which will provide more details about its thinking on interest rates.

Oil prices rose Monday with Iran saying it is working with Oman on a plan to manage the transit of ships through the Strait of Hormuz.

Global oil supplies have been squeezed because about 20% of the world’s crude is transited through the strait on a typical day. Iran effectively shut down the strait after it was attacked by the U.S. and Israel in late February.

Brent crude, the international standard, rose 1.1% to $89.50 per barrel, while U.S.

In European trading, Germany’s DAX dipped 0.9% at 26,416.57, while the CAC 40 in Paris lost 0.2% to 8,622.43.

Britain’s FTSE 100 gained 0.1% to 10,751.53.

Tokyo’s Nikkei 225 index gained 0.7% to 69,220.25 after the Japanese government reported the economy grew slightly faster than forecast in the April-June quarter. In quarterly terms, the economy grew 0.3% in the second quarter of the year.

The U.S. dollar fell to 159.17 Japanese yen from 159.32 yen. The euro rose to $1.1600 from $1.1588.

This story was originally featured on Fortune.com

A Venezuelan mogul who minted a fortune selling power turbines and pumping oil has emerged as the Trump administration’s fixer for promoting “America First” deals for favored US companies, as Washington moves to exert more influence in the resource-rich South American country.

Alejandro Betancourt, an entrepreneur with a checkered history who controls Venezuela’s leading independent oil producer, is helping the US administration identify promising energy assets, assess operational bottlenecks and make industry connections, according to people familiar with his role.

Betancourt is working to facilitate a US strategy to tap smaller American wildcatters as established oil majors have largely balked at investing there. Several preliminary agreements have been reached in recent months with companies including Lionheart Capital and Pacific Coast Energy Co., known as PCEC.

Bloomberg’s reporting on Betancourt is based on interviews with his business associates, government officials and advisers familiar with his work. They requested anonymity because they didn’t want to be identified discussing confidential matters, feared retribution or were not authorized to speak publicly on the matter.

The tycoon’s emergence as a central figure offers insight into how Washington is stepping up efforts to encourage US companies to pump Venezuelan oil and invest $100 billion in a country President Donald Trump describes as the 51st state. More than seven months after the US captured Nicolás Maduro, blessed his replacement and declared Venezuela open for business, significant oil deals remain elusive, held up by complex negotiations with state-owned Petróleos de Venezuela SA and sanctions constraints. 

In the absence of competitive bidding, progress is opaque. That’s given Betancourt tremendous sway in Venezuelan oil circles, the people said, in spite of years of investigations in Europe, the US and Venezuela over allegations of corruption, money laundering and tax fraud. He has denied any wrongdoing and was never charged with a crime.

Until recently, Betancourt avoided US soil out of concern over the American probe, people familiar with the matter said.

Betancourt himself is also a top oil player in Venezuela. His North American Blue Energy Partners, or NABEP, pumps about 200,000 barrels of crude a day from fields around Lake Maracaibo and the Orinoco Belt, according to a person familiar with the matter. That makes it Venezuela’s second-largest private-sector producer behind Chevron Corp. 

Last week, a party close to Betancourt agreed to buy the minority stake in NABEP held by Harry Sargeant III, according to people familiar with the transaction. Sargeant, a Florida oil magnate, had come under fire from Venezuelan opposition figures and US allies for allegedly propping up Maduro. Shortly after the NABEP deal was signed, the Treasury Department notified Sargeant’s attorney that it had blocked the assets of his offshore holding company. 

Betancourt declined to comment. Sargeant couldn’t be reached by telephone or email for comment through his Florida-based holding company Global Oil Management Group. NABEP didn’t reply to a request for comment. 

Betancourt, who has powerful friends in Caracas, Washington and Moscow, recently began traveling frequently from his London home to Venezuela, according to people familiar with his schedule. He regularly meets with senior officials, including US-supported acting President Delcy Rodríguez and her foreign policy adviser Félix Plasencia, and hosted a dinner for a US congressional delegation, according to people with knowledge of the meetings. 

Venezuela sits atop some of the world’s largest proven crude reserves and, from the 1950s through the 1970s, was among the world’s biggest petroleum exporters, transforming Caracas into one of Latin America’s richest capitals. Production later climbed above 3 million barrels a day before decades of neglect, corruption, expropriations, economic collapse and US sanctions sent output plunging.

Trump played up the industry’s potential in the days after Maduro’s capture. While the administration justified the nighttime raid as an effort to dismantle international narcotics trafficking, Trump said US companies would pour in to rebuild the infrastructure, production would soar and gasoline prices would fall, giving Republicans a win on a key checkbook issue ahead of midterm elections in which control of Congress is up for grabs. 

But most of the biggest US oil companies, including ExxonMobil Holdings Corp. and ConocoPhillips, remain skittish years after Venezuela expropriated their assets. So Betancourt is helping the administration steer opportunities toward the wildcatters, who are less risk-averse, and private investors, according to people familiar with the matter.

The White House described US relations with Venezuela as “extraordinary” for both sides. “We are dealing very well with President Delcy Rodríguez and her representatives. Oil is starting to flow, and large amounts of money, unseen for many years, is greatly helping the people of Venezuela,” the White House said in response to a request for comment, without directly answering questions about Betancourt’s role. 

Betancourt long operated largely behind the scenes. His role has come into sharper focus over the last month as deals began to come to fruition and Mauricio Claver-Carone, a former special envoy for Latin America who later served as an unofficial adviser on Venezuela, stepped back from the portfolio, according to people familiar with the matter.

Claver-Carone, who is close to Secretary of State Marco Rubio, helped assemble many of the people involved in executing the Trump administration’s Venezuela strategy, including Betancourt. While Claver-Carone is now less involved, many of those figures remain active, the people said.

Betancourt rose to prominence in the oil sphere by transforming NABEP from a small operator into one of the country’s leading producers. While many foreign companies reduced their footprint over the past decade amid the political turmoil, NABEP boosted production as much as 10-fold. Before leading NABEP, in the mid-2010s Betancourt invested in an operator in Colombia’s largest oil field, Rubiales. He then returned to Venezuela to partner with former Russian officials in Petrozamora, a joint venture in Lake Maracaibo.

Together with Sargeant, Betancourt also helped pioneer a more flexible contractual structure with PDVSA that has since become the model for many of the agreements now on offer to new investors, the people said.

Betancourt’s current work includes efforts tied to PCEC, a little-known California-based company that recently signed agreements to operate fields in Lake Maracaibo and the Orinoco Belt. PCEC has an agreement with NABEP for local procurement, one of more than 30 such relationships on the ground intended to help the firm reach its goal of pumping Venezuelan oil, the company said. 

PCEC doesn’t disclose its investors, but it has financing from banks and trading houses, the company added.

Betancourt’s influence has grown despite repeated legal controversies inside and outside Venezuela. 

Known in Venezuela as one of the bolichicos — entrepreneurs who amassed fortunes during former President Hugo Chávez’s rule — Betancourt co-founded Derwick Associates, which won billions of dollars in emergency power equipment contracts beginning in 2009 during years plagued by chronic blackouts.

Derwick ultimately came under scrutiny by investigators in Venezuela, the US and Spain who suspected ties to money laundering schemes involving PDVSA funds. The company and Betancourt denied the allegations. 

Venezuelan authorities closed their probe without bringing charges, according to local media reports at the time. The Justice Department didn’t respond to a request on the current status of its investigation. Spanish investigators this year shelved their case, but newspaper El Pais later reported it was reopened. Officials at Spain’s high court didn’t reply to a request for comment on the status of the case against Betancourt.

Bloomberg reported in 2019 that lawyer and former New York Mayor Rudy Giuliani helped represent Betancourt in a meeting with the Justice Department. Betancourt was never named in public court documents tied to the investigation. 

This story was originally featured on Fortune.com

The train was sitting just outside a depot in Memphis when the bandits made their move. 

Emerging from a black Kia Soul under the cover of darkness, the three men clambered on top of CSX Corp. railcars. They broke the container locks and grabbed more than $20,000 of items, including women’s clothing destined for a Belk department store, Lazer Blocks toys and two cases of Fre non-alcoholic chardonnay. The thieves filled their vehicle and hid the rest in a nearby wooded area, planning to come back for it later.

The November theft was the type railyards had experienced dozens of times over the past few years, but this time, AI-powered cameras were being used to watch the heist. A task force focused on railroad crime leapt into action.

The team — led by the Tennessee Bureau of Investigation with the assistance of federal, state and local agencies, along with the Tennessee National Guard and CSX’s own police force — launched a plane that tracked the vehicle for 11 miles. Officers swooped in a few hours later as one of the perpetrators was unloading boxes of stolen goods, and two other men were arrested separately over the following days, according to police records reviewed by Bloomberg News.

Train robberies are a trope of cowboy Westerns, associated with 19th-century outlaws like Jesse James, Butch Cassidy and the Reno Gang. But the modern incarnation is largely a product of the pandemic, with theft quadrupling from levels seen before 2020. Once lockdowns began, criminal gangs that had relied on the drug trade saw their supply chains disrupted just as stay-at-home requirements boosted demand for physical goods. So the gangs pivoted to theft, focused on the rail hubs located in urban bottlenecks including Chicago, Los Angeles and Memphis.

Criminals nabbed more than $200 million of goods from 75,000 thefts on US freight rail networks in 2025, according to an industry group that represents CSX, BNSF Railway Co. and Union Pacific Corp., among others. In January last year, a BNSF train was robbed of about 1,985 pairs of unreleased Nikes worth more than $440,000, according to a filing in US District Court in Phoenix. And police in Los Angeles discovered $1.5 million of stolen cargo including goods from Milwaukee Tool during a raid. A CSX spokesperson said more than $900,000 of tires alone have been stolen from trains across its network since the start of 2023.

In response, the major freight carriers are joining with local police, the Federal Bureau of Investigation and corporate security teams, investing millions of dollars in monitoring technology, drones, barbed-wire fencing and other improvements. It’s all meant to defeat the crime rings that are often armed with nothing more than hydraulic bolt cutters, preying on railroads as a reliable source of easy-to-steal merchandise.

“These gangs can steal tens of thousands worth of goods in minutes, not to mention the damage that can be done to the trains,” Sean Douris, the chief of police at CSX, said in an interview.

For the most part, these aren’t armed holdups but instead more like storage-facility break-ins. Industry efforts over the past decades to improve efficiency and maximize profit mean that trains sometimes stretch as long as 3 miles, and often operate with just two crew members. Criminals have studied the lengthy and predictable stop times as the trains approach depots, a prime time to strike.

The gangs working around Memphis are primarily the Gangster Disciples, alongside the Crips and Almighty Vice Lords, according to CSX. A criminal complaint filed in US District Court in Arizona alleged that transnational criminal networks based in Sinaloa, Mexico, were behind a recent spate of thefts in the Southwest. In Chicago, perpetrators are a mix of opportunists and more sophisticated networks often tied to street gangs.

Thieves have occasionally tried to steal items as large as cars, only to find they are too well secured to get out. They principally target smaller, high-dollar items that can be sold to individuals and small businesses or through online marketplaces. Investigators say that electronics, luxury clothing and alcohol are top targets. Automobile tires are a lucrative niche; thieves liquidate the stolen goods through independent dealers and repair shops.

The thefts, besides sometimes terrifying staff, are a drag on the train operators’ bottom lines. The carriers are generally liable for any goods lost up to a certain dollar amount; the customer typically buys insurance for any value that exceeds that threshold.

To counter the problem, the rail companies are investing heavily. Union Pacific has spent more than $30 million on security projects since January 2023, including drones with thermal imaging capabilities and AI-enhanced cameras — along with 41,000 linear feet of cement walls, barbed wire and cross fencing around rights-of-way and rail yards.

BNSF, which also has its own 200-person police force and K9 units, is investing in electric fencing, masonry walls and cut-resistant barriers to help fight theft.

At CSX’s Leewood Yard depot in Memphis, what once was a mostly open site now more closely resembles a fortified Army base. The company has spent more than $7.5 million putting in about 14,000 feet of Amiguard 7700 series fence with razor wire ribbon more than 15 feet high.

There are 30 surveillance cameras that use AI software to support real‑time monitoring and investigations, helping identify cars used by thieves even when they swap out license plates.

“The investments we’ve made in people and technology mean we’re finally catching up with the criminals,” Douris said. “AI cameras and our partnerships with other agencies have allowed us to arrest people we’d previously have no hope of getting.”

CSX has also changed its timetables to keep trains moving through high-risk areas of the city and cut down on times when the railcars are essentially sitting ducks. The combined efforts have seen rail thefts drop 80% in the Memphis region year on year, the company said.

Gangs have also adapted their tactics. They have switched from mobile phones to walkie-talkies and are focusing on trains that have stopped farther outside the city. In one new strategy bedeviling CSX, thieves are leaping from bridges onto the moving trains when they slow down to travel through areas with restricted speeds.

In Chicago, massive railyards in the city’s South and West sides are prime targets.

In August 2024, thieves raided a Union Pacific train stopped on Chicago’s West Side, taking TVs and other electronics and loading them into waiting vehicles even after overmatched police arrived. Two months later, local media reported that at least a dozen people ransacked another of the company’s trains. Video showed a chaotic scene, with men carrying packages pulled from railcars to cargo vans parked nearby.

California investigators say railroad thefts in the state are tied to transnational gangs. As the Trump administration’s crackdown at the southern border choked off human smuggling operations, the syndicates increased train robberies, according to Rich Daniel, an assistant chief of police at BNSF who oversees operations in Southern California. The cartels also sometimes force trafficking victims already in the US to pay back their debts by helping with the heists, he told industry professionals at a cargo theft conference in Monrovia, California, last year.

While low-level thieves generally target stopped trains, more sophisticated gangs sabotage tracks or cut brake lines in an effort to strand trains in remote locales where they’re easy to rob, he said.

“The advantage to this is they can stop the trains where they want to stop,” he said.

One frustration for investigators is that punishment for stealing from trains tends to be fairly minor unless the suspects are caught with a gun or were otherwise violent. Many charged with simple theft are released on bail. In cities like Memphis, Los Angeles and Chicago — where violent crime and homicide are the top priorities for the district attorneys’ offices — getting burglary cases before a judge can be a lengthy and difficult process.

US railroads have lobbied heavily on the issue, and in May the House passed the Combating Organized Retail Crime Act with bipartisan support. The bill has been championed by David Valadao, a Southern California Republican congressman whose district includes a BNSF-owned rail line that’s a frequent target of thieves. He often sees the aftermath — dozens of torn-apart boxes littered alongside the tracks.

“People will jump on, they’ll break things open and they’ll start throwing packages off the side and having their buddies pick them up along the way,” he said in an interview. “When I talk to law enforcement about it, they say that’s normal.”

Valadao co-sponsored the bill, which equips law enforcement with stronger legal tools. Among other measures, it allows for criminal forfeiture of stolen goods, expands money-laundering statutes, and aggregates theft values to justify stiffer charges. It also creates a group within the Department of Homeland Security to coordinate law-enforcement efforts. Valadao is optimistic about the bill’s chances in the Senate, noting support from Charles Grassley among others.

“It’s got bipartisan and bicameral buy-in and one of our pushes with leadership is to focus on things that have bipartisan support,” Valadao said. “So we would hope it would make it forward.”

Back in Memphis, the alleged perpetrators of that November heist have been charged with felony burglary and theft. While some train thieves get away with a slap on the wrist, at least one defendant in this case is facing a potential prison sentence as long as 15 years because the value of the stolen goods exceeds $10,000. The Shelby County District Attorney is preparing to seek a grand jury indictment against each man.

This story was originally featured on Fortune.com

Good morning. When Cava recently reported second-quarter results, the numbers told a story of a fast-casual Mediterranean restaurant defying industry gravity: revenue up 31.3% year over year to $365.4 million, same-restaurant sales up 9% on 5.3% traffic growth, and shares jumping more than 10% in response last week. I also talked with CFO Tricia Tolivar about how the finance organization itself is changing.

As her team prepped for the Aug. 11 earnings call, they leaned on AI tools built into Cava’s proprietary data platforms, Cava Core and Cava Current, to run Q&A preparation and business analysis, Tolivar told me. She sees AI more as a way to make her team sharper and faster as internal advisors. And Tolivar sees opportunities to lean into AI to make the lives of employees on the front line at restaurants easier and streamline processes.
 
“But we believe in human connection,” she added. AI’s job, in her telling, is to clear friction from the restaurant floor, not replace the people running it. Cava plans to hire 2,500 new employees this year even while scaling automation. It’s a distinction worth watching as more consumer brands face pressure to prove AI ROI without downsizing the workforce that drives their hospitality branding.

Cava also launched “Flavor Your Future,” a campaign designed to support career growth within the company as it continues its rapid expansion. One of the newest components is an assistant general manager position, Tolivar said. The role, which currently exists in about 70% of the restaurants, aims to build a bigger bench of future general managers and leaders, she said.

Cava opened 17 net new restaurants in Q2. This expansion brought its total footprint to 476 locations nationwide. The company is on track to open a total of 75 new restaurants this year.

I asked Tolivar about prices. Cava raised menu prices just 1.4% to 1.5% at the start of 2026, kept base bowl prices flat, and has undercut CPI by nearly half for several years, she said. “As we move through the rest of the year, we are not anticipating any further price increases at this time,” she added.

Regarding the menu, the chain added salmon this quarter, which Tolivar said met expectations and reinforced Cava’s stake in the seafood side of the Mediterranean diet. Most recently, it rolled out Harissa barbecue pita chips, which she thinks are best dipped in the garlic dressing.

Sheryl Estrada
Sheryl.Estrada@fortune.com

This story was originally featured on Fortune.com

Hayden Panettiere, star of popular television series including “Heroes” and “Nashville,” has died. She was 36.

Panettiere’s father, Skip, announced the actor’s death in a statement provided to ABC News on Sunday.

“It is with profound sadness that we share the tragic passing of our beloved Hayden. She was an incredible light and a force of nature who brought immeasurable love and joy to all who knew her — and to the millions who watched her onscreen,” his statement said.

No cause of death was announced, and a publicist for Hayden Panettiere did not immediately respond to an email from The Associated Press.

Panettiere, who would have turned 37 on Friday, began her career as a child actor in commercials and soap operas.

Her role as a cheerleader with superpowers in “Heroes” propelled her to fame in 2006, with the series revolving around the mantra “Save the cheerleader, save the world.”

“I think ‘Heroes’ is really hot because it’s just a really great combination of everything that people love — they love reality, they love sci-fi and things like X-Men where they get to dream of something bigger,” Panettiere told The Associated Press in 2008. “And at the core of it are these human stories that people can relate to, very rugged. And it’s just grabbed everyone in every age group.”

She went on to win three Teen Choice Awards for that role and was a Grammy Award nominee for a children’s spoken word album recorded a few years after the release of the animated movie “A Bug’s Life.”

Panettiere later played a brash country upstart opposite Connie Britton on “Nashville,” which aired on ABC for four seasons before being canceled and revived on CMT. She did her own singing in the show, which scored some hits on country charts, spawned U.S. tours and earned Panettiere two supporting actress Golden Globe nominations. Panettiere had 11 songs recorded for “Nashville” appear on Billboard’s Hot Country Songs charts during the show’s run, including two featuring Britton.

Panettiere’s younger brother, Jansen, who was also an actor, died of a heart condition in 2023, at age 28.

She had been open about her struggles with alcohol addiction and depression, including after the birth of her daughter with Ukrainian boxer Wladimir Klitschko in 2014.

In an interview with podcaster Jay Shetty after her memoir came out in May, Panettiere talked about the custody arrangement for her 11-year-old daughter, who lives full-time with Klitschko in Ukraine. News of the 2018 decision prompted headlines about Panettiere giving up custody of her daughter.

“I think there’s been this very common misconception that I just gave up my child,” she said. “That could not be farther from the truth.”

Panettiere said Klitschko suggested their daughter live with him full-time when the child was 2, as Panettiere struggled with mental health challenges and addiction. She said she was in a “horrible cycle for years of battling depression and anxiety and alcoholism and substance abuse” while “just trying to find my way back, my way out of the darkness.”

She entered rehab in 2015, while filming “Nashville.”

“I was the one who put myself in the first treatment center. I was drowning,” she said in a 2023 interview with Women’s Health magazine.

On Shetty’s podcast, Panettiere recalled the explosion of her fame when she was cast on “Heroes,” including the first time she was tracked by the paparazzi. When she’d imagined the moment as a younger actress, she’d planned to look chic.

Instead, she said, “it was just sheer terror.”

Panettiere also appeared in two of the “Scream” movies, starred as the title character in the 2009 film “I Love You Beth Cooper” and played the young daughter of a football coach in “Remember the Titans.” She had spoken positively about her experience filming “Remember the Titans,” saying she felt so similar to the character she played — Sheryl Yoast, the opiniated, football-loving daughter of Will Patton’s Coach Bill Yoast.

This story was originally featured on Fortune.com

The next time you call an Uber ride or order food delivery with an app, there’s a good chance that the gig worker you meet is getting government benefits.

In 2025, companies such as DoorDash, Lyft and Uber had the most workers receiving Supplemental Nutrition Assistance Program benefits among all major employers, according to a new Government Accountability Office report. This marks a major shift from 2020, when an earlier GAO survey found that Walmart and McDonald’s took the top spots for SNAP recipients.

That finding may appear surprising to most Americans, who usually see platform-based work as a side hustle to earn extra cash. In fact, these jobs are becoming more essential as a primary source of income, even as they fail to cover basic food and medical expenses for gig workers.

As a scholar of urban politics, I consider this finding an important part of the broader picture revealed in a survey of more than 1,000 Michigan residents that my institute conducted with the Michigan Metro Area Communities Study.

Roughly 22% of total respondents had engaged in gig work, and about half of those said gig work was essential or important to meeting their basic needs.

At the same time, safety net programs – paid for by taxpayers – are filling the gap when platform companies hire low-wage workers without offering traditional benefits.

Flexibility as a double-edged sword

Major gig-work platforms, including Uber and Lyft, often describe their jobs as an opportunity for workers to earn income on their own terms and hours.

In this respect, they’re right. In our survey, 9 in 10 workers said they valued the flexibility, and more than two-thirds reported positive experiences overall.

But gig workers also named pressing concerns, especially about transparency, pay and benefits.

The issue, then, isn’t whether workers want flexibility, but whether flexibility allows them to get by in today’s economy.

In fact, gig work may be supplemental, but it isn’t always optional. With nearly half of all Americans saying they struggle to make ends meet, gig work is likely to increase as a source of financial survival.

At the same time, these platforms aren’t substituting for traditional employment. We found that relatively few gig workers – only 6% – reduced hours or left another job to pursue other gig work.

And when gig work becomes a necessary source of income, the lack of benefits – from health insurance to disability insurance to workers’ compensation – reflects a shift in who is turning to the safety net. If major platforms won’t pay a living wage or provide adequate benefits on the grounds that it’s the price of “flexibility,” government programs often fill the gap.

In other words, taxpayers are helping foot the bill to compensate gig workers.

Medicaid enrollment surge

The Government Accountability Office report also showed that gig platforms are collectively now the third-biggest U.S. employer with workers on Medicaid, the public health insurance program for low-income and disabled Americans. By contrast, in 2020 they didn’t make the top five.

What’s more, recent changes to Medicaid are likely to exacerbate conditions for gig workers. President Donald Trump’s sweeping tax and immigration bill passed in 2025 included provisions for the many states that had expanded Medicaid over the past 15 years. Under the new rules, Medicaid recipients face new and tougher work requirements that demand 80 hours of work or school per month to maintain coverage.

Gig work counts toward the requirement, but gig workers who work for multiple platforms may have trouble proving eligibility. For example, app interfaces have different formats for reporting hours, and gig workers don’t receive a standard pay stub with total hours worked.

They also lack a traditional employer contact or a supervisor who would allow for easy verification. And their total hours worked don’t always account for wait times, while fluctuations in user demand can make income unpredictable.

As is the case for Medicaid recipients more generally, the complexity and paperwork of the new work requirement may deny them coverage, regardless of whether they work 80 hours per month. These extra hurdles are likely to push more Medicaid recipients off the rolls and toward other social programs as medical bills surge and their overall finances become even more strapped.

This loss of coverage may also lead to even more dire consequences, such as increased hospitalizations that can result when uninsured people forgo basic or preventive care.

Is portability the answer?

In some states, lawmakers are starting to address the growing trend of gig platforms using government benefits to outsource benefit costs. Portable benefits offer one promising response.

Under this model, platform companies or users of gig apps contribute to worker-owned benefit accounts that follow workers across platforms. In our survey, 61% of gig workers supported this idea, as did more than half of other kinds of workers.

Two states already provide some important lessons from existing models.

In New York state, the Black Car Fund, initially established for taxi and limo drivers, has covered gig drivers since 2014. It’s a nonprofit, state-authorized benefits fund that’s managed by a board consisting of industry representatives, including drivers.

Enrollment in that program is automatic for all gig workers and taxi drivers, with benefits paid for through a passenger surcharge collected instantly via fares. It made headlines in 2023, when the state secured a US$328 million settlement after Uber and Lyft withheld pay and benefits from workers. That settlement included mandatory paid sick leave, minimum pay and other benefits.

This model has effectively shifted some of the burdens of lower-wage gig work from taxpayers to users. A centralized pool of cash gives the Black Car Fund significant purchasing power, allowing it to offer drivers full workers’ compensation as well as varying levels of health, dental and disability coverage that drivers can chose from.

Platform companies don’t contribute money at present, but if they did, they could make these benefits even more generous.

A different approach in California

As a contrasting example, California shows how much policy design matters.

The state opted to work with tech companies when it crafted Proposition 22, which sought to provide delivery and ride-share drivers limited benefits while preserving their independent contractor status. Passed in 2020, it left implementation to the platform companies and offered a narrower set of benefits that aren’t fully portable across platforms.

The California model also has more barriers toward getting benefits. For example, tech companies only count “engaged hours” toward the minimum required to access benefits, which doesn’t account for time waiting for assignments. And because the system isn’t truly portable, gig workers who work for different platforms have more trouble qualifying.

One study found that only 10% of California drivers are receiving the healthcare stipend that the law established.

The central role of tech platforms in determining who’s eligible has become a flash point, with unions and labor rights groups reporting widespread problems with access and eligibility. In New York, on the other hand, a neutral third party determines eligibility and adjudicates payouts.

While these states have taken different approaches, I believe policymakers should remember that they don’t need to treat flexibility and worker protections as mutually incompatible. In the absence of universal federal benefits for gig workers, local and state officials can find ways to ensure that social costs aren’t shifted to the public through tax dollars and to workers through greater financial insecurity.

Jacob Lederman, Associate Professor of Sociology, University of Michigan Flint

This article is republished from The Conversation under a Creative Commons license. Read the original article.

This story was originally featured on Fortune.com

Good morning!

Most HR leaders say culture is one of their most important assets. Ask them to define it, though, and the answers can get fuzzy fast.

Marcus Collins, a marketing professor at the University of Michigan, learned this after asking chief people officers and recruiters to try. “It was so many abstractions, so much jargon, and honestly, it was a plethora of nothingness,” he said.

So Collins set out to develop a definition, based on the premise that leaders can’t attract or retain the right people for a culture they can’t articulate. He found that the problem starts with what many companies erroneously think defines culture: their values.

HR leaders often conflate values and beliefs, says Collins. Beliefs as the truths companies hold about the world; values are what they consider important. Culture starts with the former.

Collins urges HR heads to ask themselves: What do we believe? Are our behaviors a reflection of those beliefs? If beliefs and behaviors don’t align, Collins says leaders should start by addressing that disconnect.

Consider Wells Fargo. In the early 2000s, employees opened unauthorized accounts for customers due to immense pressure to meet aggressive sales goals. The company espoused  values like trust and integrity, Collins said, but its behavior reflected a different underlying belief, which was that employees were expected to outperform.

That disconnect is why Collins argues that culture isn’t perks or rituals but, rather, the fundamental beliefs that guide how a company operates. Patagonia, for example, has long organized itself around a commitment to minimizing its impact on the planet. Collins advises leaders to identify their own North star and probe whether their actions reflect it.

“The push to CHROs is to first challenge the way you see the world,” he said. “Widen the aperture of how [CHROs] think about what culture is so they can fully engage in it.”

Kristin Stoller
Editorial Director, Fortune Live Media
kristin.stoller@fortune.com

This story was originally featured on Fortune.com

As a neuroscientist who studies raccoon and rats, I see the viral story of Jimothy the raccoon as a compelling tale of an animal overcoming disability and surviving in the wild.

Jimothy, the unique-looking raccoon living in Seattle, became an internet celebrity over the course of a week in July 2026, thanks to a viral Instagram post that has amassed millions of views and thousands of comments cheering for the proverbial underdog. Jimothy has even been honored with a city proclamation.

Something about him was obviously different. His body and tail were unusually short, and his back was curved. Although Jimothy hasn’t been officially examined by a veterinarian, he’s thought to have a form of a rare cervical vertebral malformation called short spine syndrome. A handful of cases have been seen in dogs. These animals are born with a condition that prevents their vertebrae from fully developing. With less physical space in the body, organs are crowded into a smaller space than usual and can lead to mobility issues.

Adaptations are necessary for these animals to navigate their environments and secure the necessary resources for survival. How did Jimothy overcome the odds and emerge as a survivor?

The sophisticated raccoon brain

Although it’s easy to imagine a pet dog that’s under the close care of human pet parents surviving a challenging condition such as short spine syndrome – the probability of a disabled or injured wild animal successfully living in the uncertain outdoors is a different story.

Even for healthy raccoon, it’s a challenge to survive the harrowing time of being a helpless newborn. Up to half of young kits die without emerging from the natal den. If an individual raccoon is among the fortunate to leave the den as a juvenile or young adult, life’s challenges don’t stop there. Typically there are no safe zones that are reliably protected from predators.

To survive, raccoon have to be vigilant, persistent and physically agile to navigate the physical and mental challenges of life in the wild. In fact, it’s so dangerous out in the wild that many raccoon only live two to five years, even though they have the capacity to live for around 12 years in captivity.

It’s difficult to imagine how Jimothy has navigated life’s challenging terrain to survive in the wild. However, if any mammal can transcend the limitations of a disability, raccoon would be at the top of my list.

Very few studies have been conducted on the raccoon brain, but my lab’s limited research has revealed the neuroarchitecture of a complex and sophisticated brain. Raccoon have exceptionally high neuron densities, resembling those of small primates. More neurons lead to greater flexibility in behavior, a characteristic that is likely facilitating Jimothy’s survival.

My team also identified the presence of specialized and fast-conducting brain cells called von Economo neurons, which are typically located in the areas of the brain involved in emotional, social and internal processing in people.

And perhaps the neuroevolutionary pièce de résistance of the raccoon: their hands. The forepaws of raccoon are extremely dexterous and sensitive, and occupy a large portion of their brain’s motor cortex, like that of people. This investment in hand movement takes raccoon learning abilities to the next level – explaining why Toronto paid roughly US$24 million to develop raccoon-proof trash bins.

These brain capabilities likely give Jimothy some neural backup as he navigates narrow fences, climbs trees, searches for food and scopes out places for rest and refuge.

Jimothy’s mom as hero

Equally impressive as Jimothy’s own adaptations is the continuous care provided by his mother.

As challenging as the raccoon mother’s role is while raising her young, raising a kit with special needs likely requires extra energy and patience. For raccoon families, the mother is very much a single parent. Not only does she not have help from the father, but she often moves the litter to different dens to escape the threat of males potentially harming the kits. She also needs to be an efficient forager to prevent excessive time away from her vulnerable offspring.

Unlike many mammals whose young become independent soon after weaning, raccoon mothers continue taking care of their kits for much longer. Although nursing typically ends around 16 weeks, raccoon youngsters often remain with their moms for up to nine months. From weaning to leaving the natal den, maternal raccoon take their family through something like homeschooling.

One of my favorite examples appears in the PBS documentary “Raccoon Nation,” where a raccoon mom takes her kits on a field trip to teach them how to collapse their spines to slide past a wooden garage door. For hours, she models the behavior for her young – then observes their attempts, catching them when they fall and nudging them to try again.

It’s apparent that Jimothy’s mother was no exception to the prototypical raccoon mother – serving as nurturer, protector and teacher. Based on the videos of older Jimothy running across a field, navigating fences and exploring his world, it appears that his mom’s hard work resulted in a remarkable return on her investment.

Evolutionary perseverance

Even though the odds were stacked against Jimothy from the day of his birth, he persevered.

Jimothy is being celebrated for being different. But, in my opinion, the most interesting aspects of his story are two remarkable evolutionary achievements that all mammals share: a brain capable of adapting to an imperfect body and other life challenges, and a patient and caring mother or guardian who translates her offspring’s capabilities into abilities.

Jimothy’s mom celebrated his value long before his video debut and viral following.

Kelly Lambert, Professor of Behavioral Neuroscience, University of Richmond

This article is republished from The Conversation under a Creative Commons license. Read the original article.

This story was originally featured on Fortune.com

Good morning. On Fortune’s radar today:

• Trump sides with Kim Jong Un on Pacific war exercises.
• Markets: buoyant.
• Amazon’s Prime Day is now so big it exerts a macroeconomic effect all on its own.
• The world’s chokepoints, ranked by risk.
• The increasing pace of tech layoffs.
• Selena Gomez, alleged venture-capital villain.

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This story was originally featured on Fortune.com

Sporting red-white-and-blue sneakers and a matching bedazzled manicure ahead of Florida’s primaries on Tuesday, Rep. Debbie Wasserman Schultz smiles and tells voters she is “running for reelection to Congress.”

That’s true — with a caveat. Wasserman Schultz is seeking her 12th term by running in a new district after Republicans scrambled the state’s congressional map earlier this year.

The fallout pushed Wasserman Schultz, a former national party chair with powerful ties in Washington, to cross district lines from her Fort Lauderdale exurb and be the only white candidate in an area of Broward County that has helped send Black Democrats to Congress since 1992. That’s yielded an uncomfortable fight following the U.S. Supreme Court decision that gutted the Voting Rights Act provisions undergirding minority voting strength and effectively cleared Old Confederacy states, including Florida, to reshape House districts.

“For her to come in like this is just another Broward seat, it’s a complete erasure of our history, our fight for Black access,” said former Rep. Sheila Cherfilus-McCormick, 47, who is Black and resigned from the seat in April while facing an ethics investigation but now wants it back.

Another Black candidate, 27-year-old progressive organizer and substitute teacher Elijah Manley, said Republicans’ redistricting ploy is not Wasserman Schultz’s fault. But she “had other options,” Manley added, including running in her new home district, which was gerrymandered to include the more conservative Gulf Coast.

“Instead, she stabbed us in the back, trying to take away Black representation,” Manley said, pointing to Congressional Black Caucus warnings that it could lose more than a quarter of its 60-plus members this fall.

Wasserman Schultz, 59, is by far the best funded out of five Democratic candidates and benefits from Florida rules that do not require a majority to win primaries.

She argued that she can ably advocate for the whole region after representing wide swaths of Broward as a state and federal legislator across three decades. “I’m not air dropping myself into this district,” she told The Associated Press. “I have represented diverse communities. I know how to tailor my service to them and represent a district more broadly.”

A win by Wasserman Schultz would be a rarity

President Donald Trump started pushing Republican-run states to redraw House boundaries last year to help preserve the party’s fragile majority. Florida Gov. Ron DeSantis responded with an effort that clusters southeast Florida Democrats together, intending to reduce five Democratic seats to three. Broward, the state’s most Democratic county, situated between Miami-Dade and Palm Beach, now has just one presumed-Democratic district anchored in and around Fort Lauderdale.

Nationally, white lawmakers typically hold some of the 115-plus House seats where the voting-age population is majority non-white. Wasserman Schultz does it in her existing north Broward-Palm Beach district, which was drawn after the 2020 census to be 42% Hispanic, 18% Black and about 6% Asian American. White voters compose the remaining third.

But a white lawmaker is a rarity for majority or plurality Black districts, like the new Florida 20th. The district is 42% Black, 23% Hispanic and 4% Asian, the rest white. The Black share includes a large Caribbean population, most notably Haitian Americans.

Going into November, an Associated Press analysis found that Wasserman Schultz is the only white Democrat positioned to represent any of the remaining districts with a Black majority or plurality.

Cherfilus-McCormick said she can win, despite losing Black constituents she previously represented in Palm Beach County. She dismissed concerns over federal criminal charges accusing her of stealing $5 million in federal disaster funds. She has pleaded not guilty and has denied alleged violations of House rules.

The criminal case and redistricting fit together, she insisted, and “the people see what’s going on — them trying to silence the only Haitian member of Congress and take away our voice.”

Manley, though, was more circumspect about Wasserman Schultz’s status as the favorite. He mused about upsetting the veteran congresswoman on Tuesday yet looked ahead to the 2028 elections, hoping Black Democrats rally around one candidate rather than four. The current field also includes former 2 Live Crew rapper Luther “Uncle Luke” Campbell and real estate broker and former local elected official Dale Holness, who are Black.

Von Howard, a Black resident of Plantation, said the choice was wrenching. He declined to disclose his vote but said he wanted someone who “understands the totality of the district.”

“If you’re not of the people, and you just want this for the clout, in some instances, that could be a turnoff,” the 47-year-old said.

Broward NAACP President Marsha Ellison was more direct, without endorsing any candidate.

“The whole mission was to take away Black power, so we don’t have representation to understand our lived experience,” she said. “That may not be important to Debbie, but it’s certainly important to us.”

There’s a debate over what representation means

Wasserman Schultz said she occasionally hears those concerns from voters. Her response is that “lived experience matters, but experience broadly matters” as well.

She notes her Appropriations Committee seat, which could be even more influential should Democrats win a House majority. She recalls programs impacting Black communities she helped create and fund since her first years in the Florida Legislature.

“I fight every single day to help improve the lived experience of the people that I represent,” she said.

Wasserman Schultz also said she’s worked to connect across race and culture in Broward. Because of her existing district makeup, “I spent six years learning Spanish,” to converse with individuals and in town halls, news conferences and interviews broadcast on Spanish-language stations.

“Out of respect,” she said, “anything I can do to inspire people’s confidence that the person representing them understands them.”

Wasserman Schultz is a recognizable figure

Several times outside of early voting sites, Black, white and Hispanic voters waved or stopped to talk to the congresswoman. Among them were Broward County sheriff’s deputies who wanted photos and a trio of women who lamented they had been drawn into a new Republican-leaning district.

Yusdefs Delgado, a naturalized citizen from Colombia, told Wasserman Schultz that he enjoys her social media posts but wants to hear more about policy and less about the president.

“We know Trump sucks,” he told her, smiling and confirming that he voted for her. “I don’t agree with her on everything, but she’s closest to where I am, and I trust her to try to do the right thing for us,” Delgado explained later.

Cherfilus-McCormick and Manley said that’s not enough given the environment after the Supreme Court decision, Trump’s attacks on diversity initiatives and his push to rewrite how the U.S. tells its history on race and racism.

“We’re not at a place in this country where we can be completely colorblind politically,” Manley said. “We’re just not.”

Wasserman Schultz said the new district “is drawn in a way that the plurality population has the ability to elect the person of their choice” — language that alludes to the now-diminished Voting Rights Act. Voters, she said, can “consider all of the qualities that matter to them.”

As for putting herself on the ballot again, she remained unapologetic.

“Trump and DeSantis did this to our community,” she said, adding, “I’ll be damned if I’m going to let them steal Broward’s political power, de-unify us and prevent us from standing up for our community’s values.”

___

Associated Press journalist Matthew Klein contributed from Washington.

This story was originally featured on Fortune.com

A Massachusetts mayor was arrested Friday and charged with fraudulently obtaining a pandemic loan and using the money to fund his election campaign as well as pay off high-interest mortgages on several of his properties and personal taxes.

Lawrence Mayor Brian DePena was charged Friday with one count of wire fraud and one count of money laundering.

DePena, 61, is accused obtaining a COVID-19 small-business loan worth $1.5 million for his tire sales business. Rather than using the money for the business, DePena allegedly spent more than $880,000 to pay off high-interest mortgages on various businesses and put $90,000 into his mayoral campaign fund ahead of the 2021 election. DePena has been mayor since 2021 and previously served on the Lawrence City Council.

Ted Docks, the special agent in charge of the FBI’s Boston Division, accused DePena of “cashing in on a public health crisis and blatantly defrauding a government program meant to keep businesses afloat during the pandemic.”

“When elected officials misuse federal funds for personal gain, they’re breaking the trust of their constituents — and breaking the law,” Docks said in a statement. “Together, with our partners, the FBI will continue to doggedly pursue anyone who defrauds the federal government. You’ll be prosecuted to the fullest extent of the law, and that ‘easy money’ won’t seem so easy after all.”

DePena made an initial appearance in federal court in Boston Friday afternoon. DePena was released after agreeing to several conditions, including turning over his passport and not seeking any loans without court approval.

After leaving court, DePena’s lawyer Carlos Apostle repeatedly responded with “no comment” to questions. DePena, who is a citizen of the United States and Dominican Republic, responded with “God bless” when asked if he would resign. He made no other comments.

In 2020 and 2021, DePena obtained a government disaster loan for Tenares Tire Services Inc., a tire sales and automotive services in Lawrence. During the pandemic, the Small Business Administration offered loans to qualified business that were suffering financial losses.

He used a loan of $150,000 for the business. A year later, prosecutors say, DePena’s mayoral campaign was running short of cash, he owed back taxes and was under pressure to pay back high-interest loans on several of his properties in Lawrence. He then requested several increases to the government loan and allegedly used $1.5 million to cover those expenses unrelated to his tire business.

If convicted on the wire fraud charge, DePena faces up to 20 years in prison, three years of supervised release and a fine of up to $250,000. He faces a sentence of up to 10 years in prison, three years of supervised release and a fine of $250,000 if convicted on the money laudering charge.

This story was originally featured on Fortune.com

Accounting is not a very physical job, but tell that to the KPMG gnomes who just spent weeks lugging around gold bars in a secret Swiss cavern. This came after stablecoin giant Tether tapped the Big Four firm to carry out an audit of its reserves, which includes around 150 tons of bullion that back the company’s popular gold token. “It was a heavy-lifting exercise,” CEO Paolo Ardoino tells me of the audit, which not only confirmed that, yes, the gold is all there, but that Tether’s overall reserves exceed its liabilities by $6.8 billion.

The KPMG audit should finally put to rest one of crypto’s longest-running conspiracies: That Tether’s $183 billion supply of USDT stablecoins is not properly backed, and that the company would one day pull the mother of all rug pulls. So much for that. While hyper-secretive Tether is unlikely to win a prize for corporate transparency any time soon, the KPMG seal of approval means the media can turn to more interesting questions—like what the company plans to do next. For starters, it’s notable that, like many others in the blockchain world, Tether is trying to shake the “crypto” label.

“It’s been a while since we’ve considered ourselves crypto. I think that we are both a digital dollar company and a digital gold company,” says Ardoino, adding that Tether now has over 650 million worldwide users. The bulk of these are in regions like Africa and South America, where governments have repeatedly debased national currencies, and prompted their citizens to seek out sturdier assets like Tether’s dollar and gold offerings instead.

Now, Tether is accelerating plans to expand far beyond financial services, and transform itself into a platform capable of delivering technology and infrastructure. In the last two years, it has invested heavily in fields like decentralized communication, farming, and a network of solar-powered kiosks that provide off-grid electricity for a few dollars a month. Next up is basic AI services.

Ardoino points out that, even in the poorest countries, nearly everyone has a cell phone on which it’s possible to run a simple AI model. The upshot, he says, is that it’s possible to build a series of AI applications aimed at the developing world, where many of Tether’s existing customers reside. Tether’s applications are not going to deliver cutting-edge frontier models, of course. Instead, Ardoino says the point is to provide basic AI tools across a series of verticals—health, finance, sports, and so on—that will let anyone use the technology in their everyday life.

Ardoino didn’t explain the business model for this endeavor, but presumably, it would entail customers spending a few bucks a month using Tether’s stablecoin, or another form of digital payment, in order to access AI. If this comes to pass, it would be a fitting evolution of blockchain’s original promise: To build decentralized global technology networks where anyone can participate. At a time when the world’s political systems are under massive stress (you can read Ardoino’s take here on where it’s all going), these networks will likely grow in importance.

“My fear is this, right? We have already a huge wage gap that […] is creating an instability in society ….This cannot become a wealth gap multiplied by an intelligence gap,” Ardoino warns. Definitely something to think about.

Jeff John Roberts
jeff.roberts@fortune.com
@jeffjohnroberts

This story was originally featured on Fortune.com

Good morning,

It was another tough week to be Phoebe Gates. 

Bloomberg’s latest investigation found Gates and cofounder Sophia Kianni knew for seven months that their AI shopping extension, Phia, was quietly taking credit for sales it never drove—not just the 24 hours the company initially claimed. The trick, called “cookie stuffing,” had Phia silently hijacking checkout pages to swap in its own referral code over legit ones, until Bloomberg revealed the practice in tests of more than 50 sites. 

Phia says it killed the feature, is reversing bad transactions, and is hiring a compliance chief. Whether that’s enough to keep the startup afloat, and what Gates’ path forward resembles, remains to be seen . 

Here’s what else happened in tech this weekend.

Want to send thoughts or suggestions to Fortune Tech? Drop a line here.

This story was originally featured on Fortune.com

• In today’s CEO Daily: What Japan teaches us about climate change reaction.
• The big leadership story: Is there more than one AI bubble?
• The markets: Rising higher as volatility eases.
• Plus: All the news and watercooler chat from Fortune.

Good morning from Japan, where my son and I have been traveling the past two weeks. We landed in Tokyo amid 102.4-degree heat (39.1°C), which almost made it kokushobi or a “cruelly hot day”—a designation introduced in April to warn the public when temperatures rise above 40 degrees Celsius. There’s also the torrential rainfall this summer, including last week’s historic downpour in Chiba Prefecture that stranded travelers, disrupted power, and killed at least 8 people. But Japan is not just a nation having another frighteningly hot summer—it has become one of the world’s most advanced climate-adaptation labs, one U.S. leaders and companies may look to as temperatures climb here.

It’s a tough battle, even in a country that’s long been used to dealing with earthquakes, eruptions, tsunamis, typhoons, heat waves and floods. Almost every Japanese household has access to air conditioning while only a fifth of European households do, which a new Swiss Re report warns has left much of the continent ill-equipped to handle the shock of current heat waves.

One challenge for Japan is changing office culture, which has long expected men to dress in suits while women are expected to wear stockings and formal skirts. Despite a city government campaign to encourage workers to wear polo shirts and shorts to the office this year amid record-breaking heat and the Iran energy crisis, I saw plenty of men in jackets and ties.

The government strengthened workplace heatstroke-prevention rules last year, requiring employers to have reporting, cooling and medical-response procedures in place. And employers are stepping up. Contractor Obayashi Corp. shifted construction work from 7 a.m. to 1 p.m. at heat-exposed sites this summer, instead of the usual 8 a.m. to 5 p.m. schedule. Seibu Railway has installed air-conditioned rest areas with refrigerators, and companies are issuing cooling garments, salt tablets, fans, and heat-monitoring devices. And Japan’s growing use of robots in agriculture to supplement its shrinking population of farmers carries the added advantage of creating workers immune to heat.

Of course, rescheduling work hours or sports tournaments, much like shifting crops or fishing practices amid warming oceans, doesn’t address the fundamental issues contributing to more extreme weather or reduce the overall risks. Allianz estimates countries like France, Italy and Spain could face cumulative heat-related GDP losses of up to 7% by 2030.

While the business case for dealing with climate change is obvious, the growing impact coincides with silence from the private sector, especially in the U.S. Maybe that’s because of the rollback of climate-change policies in Washington, a backlash against ESG or sensitivity about the growing emissions toll of AI. Japan didn’t feel it could afford to wait for the world to agree on climate change before adapting to it. The question for U.S. business leaders is, how much heat can they take before they start to do the same?

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

This story was originally featured on Fortune.com

Some of the world’s most powerful tech billionaires think your next job posting could come from another planet. Elon Musk, Jeff Bezos, and Sam Altman have all predicted a future where humans live and work in space. Now, Voyager Technologies founder and CEO Dylan Taylor is backing them up—and he’s putting a very soon timeline on it. 

According to Taylor, you could be commuting to the moon within a decade. 

“Humans will definitely be living and working in space,” the billionaire space exec exclusively told Fortune. 

“The next step would be the moon. That’ll happen in the 2030s—probably early 2030s,” Taylor added. “We’ll have a moon base, people living and working on the moon. You’ll be able to look up at the moon and see lights on the moon.”

Technically, Taylor points out that a tiny portion of humanity is already working in space at the International Space Station, which has had “humans continuously up there for 26 years.” But the CEO added that the industry is “working actively” on scaling that up from a handful of trained astronauts to the general population.

As for what jobs will eventually exist up there? Taylor points to resource mining, orbital data centers, and power grid construction—work he doesn’t think humanoid robots can fully replace. “You’re not going to be able to program Optimus to do everything on the moon,” he added. “You’re going to have to have humans to figure it out.”

Unlike the moon, Mars is humanity’s backup plan—not its new home

Taylor isn’t just speculating from the sidelines. Despite making millions before even 30 and running public companies across electronics, finance, banking, and real estate, he started again at 37 to chase his childhood dream: working in space. 

In 2007, Taylor became an angel investor in Space Adventures. He was also an early investor in Relativity Space, along with Mark Cuban. In 2017, he founded his first space venture, Space For Humanity, a nonprofit that plans to purchase seats on commercial spaceflight for people who wouldn’t typically have access. And then two years later founded Voyager—and that bet paid off last year, when the company went public on the NYSE, hitting a $3.8 billion valuation, and turning Taylor into a billionaire at 53. Fortune reviewed a summary of his financial records, which verifies his billionaire status.

Voyager is now building the replacement for the International Space Station and holds multiple NASA contracts. Taylor himself has even flown to space on a 2021 Blue Origin flight—and became the 606th human to go to space.

But Mars, he said, is a different story entirely: “Just because it’s so much further away. Radiation is so much more of a bigger problem.” 

For the majority of us regular folk, Taylor doesn’t see Mars becoming our new home—unless a major catastrophe hits Earth. “I agree with Elon (Musk) that we want to have some diversification, in case something really bad happens here—an asteroid or something like that,” he explained. “The moon really isn’t sufficient diversification. The moon and the Earth are really the same planetary system.” 

Who actually goes, he says, will mostly come down to who wants to. 

“A lot of people don’t want to live on Mars,” he said, adding that he’s not one of them. “I’d rather do the adventure. We’re all on a one-way trip, whether we know it or not. It’s just where you want to end up.”

And he believes enough people think like him that you could eventually end up with a town or city on the Red Planet.

“They have the adventurer gene, which I think I have,” Taylor added. “There’s enough people that would do that that you could start a small colony—but this whole notion that we can create an entire civilization, terraform ours, it’s going to take a long time to do that.”

Elon Musk, Jeff Bezos, and Sam Altman have made similar predictions about space and work

It’s not just Taylor who’s predicted that you could be applying for jobs and a mortgage from another planet in the future.

Musk, Tesla CEO and the richest person on the planet, has single-handedly been one of the most influential leaders in pushing for 21st-century space accessibility. After all, he’s the cofounder and CEO of $1.8 trillion SpaceX, which has worked hand in hand with NASA to advance space exploration. He thinks humans will be on Mars as soon as 2028—but it’s worth noting his past predictions haven’t always hit the mark. In 2016, Musk said he wanted to send humans to Mars by 2024, but it didn’t happen.

Bezos, meanwhile, has predicted that by 2045, “millions of people” will be living in space—and robots will commute on our behalf to the moon.

“I don’t see how anybody can be discouraged who is alive right now,” the Amazon and Blue Origin founder said on stage at Italian Tech Week 2025. “If you need to do some work on the surface of the moon or anywhere else, we will be able to send robots to do that work.”

And in less than 10 years’ time, OpenAI’s CEO Altman says college graduates will be working “some completely new, exciting, super well-paid” job in space. The ChatGPT creator even said that he’s jealous of young people because his generation’s early-career jobs will look “boring” and “old” by comparison.

This story was originally featured on Fortune.com

US federal investigators probing Mark Walter are focused on four entities that acted as intermediaries for loans issued by the Guggenheim Partners chief executive’s insurance companies to other companies also within his business empire, the Wall Street Journal reported. 

Federal prosecutors and the Securities and Exchange Commission are looking into whether Walter or the businesses he controls committed fraud by concealing financial connections while borrowing billions from the insurers, Bloomberg News has previously reported. 

The investigators have narrowed their focus to Miami-based ABS Capital, investment firm Amistad Financial, commercial real estate broker Bradford Allen and Hudson Trading, the Wall Street Journal said. 

Bloomberg News previously reported federal prosecutors’ inquiries about Hudson Trading. 

This story was originally featured on Fortune.com

The BBC asked a U.S. court for help in getting documents and testimony from members of U.S. President Donald Trump ‘s family in connection with his $10-billion defamation lawsuit against the British broadcaster, a court document showed.

Lawyers for the BBC argued that Ivanka Trump, her husband Jared Kushner, and Donald Trump, Jr. have “personal knowledge” and likely have records relevant to elements of Trump’s claims against the broadcaster, according to a filing Friday in federal court in Florida.

The broadcaster has been unable to serve subpoenas because the three have Secret Service protection and other security personnel around them, the filing says.

Trump filed the lawsuit in December seeking $10 billion in damages from the BBC, accusing it of defamation as well as deceptive and unfair trade practices.

The allegations center on the way a 2024 documentary edited a speech Trump gave on Jan. 6, 2021, before protesters attacked the Capitol in Washington. The lawsuit accuses the BBC of “splicing together two entirely separate parts of President Trump’s speech” to “intentionally misrepresent the meaning of what President Trump said.”

It added that the editing was “a brazen attempt to interfere in and influence” the 2024 U.S. presidential election.

The BBC has apologized to Trump for the misleading edit, but said it had not defamed him.

The latest court filing said that Trump’s family members had knowledge of issues that were relevant to Trump’s argument “that it would be materially false to imply that he incited violence” on Jan. 6, 2021.

It cited that Donald Trump, Jr. and Ivanka Trump were both present in the Oval Office when Trump was still revising his speech, adding that Donald Trump, Jr. spoke directly with his father after violence had broken out at the Capitol.

The filing says the BBC asked Trump to accept the subpoenas on his daughter and son-in-law’s behalf or to direct the Secret Service to allow the subpoenas to be served, but he refused. The broadcaster asked the court to allow the subpoenas to be served by email and certified mail.

The judge has given Trump’s legal team until Friday to respond to the BBC’s request.

Trump’s legal team said that “the BBC is simply trying to distract away from their own obvious liability.”

“The BBC intentionally defamed President Donald J. Trump, and now the BBC is seeking to harass him, his family, and supporters by abusing the deposition process,” according to the team.

A trial has been provisionally set for February in the case.

Last week, a federal judge in Florida granted Trump a temporary reprieve from an order that he provide details of his business empire’s financial performance as part of the lawsuit.

U.S. District Judge Roy Altman agreed to put that order on hold while he considers an amended complaint from Trump that would narrow his claim that he suffered damage to both business and reputation.

This story was originally featured on Fortune.com

JPMorgan Chase & Co.’s Jamie Dimon warned UK Chancellor of the Exchequer John Healey in a call last week against higher taxes on banks as Prime Minister Andy Burnham’s government prepares its budget for October, the Financial Times reported.

Dimon said higher taxes often drive away jobs, citing a decline in finance jobs in New York that he blamed in part on the city’s tax burden, the report said, citing unidentified people briefed on the conversation.

Burnham has left the door open to increasing bank taxes in the budget as strong profits in the financial industry spur calls, including from organized labor, to increase levies on lenders.

Dimon reiterated his criticism of the UK’s bank tax surcharge in recent weeks, saying an increase could drive capital away. “If you have a uncompetitive tax system, capital leaves your country,” Dimon said on the Master Investor Podcast with Wilfred Frost, as part of a conversation on July 16.  

This story was originally featured on Fortune.com

Anthropic cofounder and CEO Dario Amodei pushed back on the notion that he’s responsible for the public’s overall sense of doom around AI, but acknowledged there are trust issues.

In a lengthy post on X on Saturday, which is unusual as he generally stays away from social media, he first addressed AI regulation, describing a false choice between those who argue it leads to regulatory capture and concentration of power versus those who think widely distributing AI, including via open models, is the best way to keep the technology in check.

Amodei pointed out that institutions like the court system can decentralize power, while noting Anthropic has been in favor of policies that slow down frontier AI companies and also give smaller rivals an advantage.

Still, he conceded that AI is structurally a technology that tends to concentrate power. But that’s not because of regulation. Instead, he attributed it to AI scaling laws, referring to how a model’s performance improves as resources used to build it increase. Open-weight models are a bit better but merely shift the concentration of power to those with the most computing capacity and chips.

“By contrast I think the right ‘rules of the road’ can simultaneously (a) address AI’s cyber/bio/alignment risks, (b) institutionally constrain the power of the frontier AI companies, and (c) leave room for open-weights models while also addressing the specific risks that they bring,” Amodei wrote, adding that he supports creation of a FINRA-like entity and the Trump administration’s stance on AI testing.

Then he tackled his rhetoric about AI and denied that he has been overly negative, pointing to essays he’s written that equally present the technology’s risks and benefits. Social media clips, however, often characterize his statements as excessively gloomy to get clicks, Amodei added.

To be sure, the Anthropic CEO famously predicted AI could wipe out 50% of white-collar jobs. But more recently, he toned down the warning and called AI a multiplier of output, not a destroyer of jobs. OpenAI CEO Sam Altman has similarly pivoted his messaging, as both companies head for IPOs.

In his X post, Amodei agreed that the public has a negative view of AI, which he considers a big problem, but didn’t place the blame on himself or any other individual AI executive.

“I think it is fundamentally a crisis of trust. I think that ordinary people don’t trust companies, governments, or the tech industry and always suspect that we are cooking up some new way to screw them over,” he explained.

Such distrust has been around for decades, and a marketing campaign won’t undo it, Amodei said, cautioning that an ad that says AI will cure cancer would likely be dismissed as deceptive.

“The thing that will work is actually curing cancer,” he added. “I think by far the most accurate criticism of AI companies including Anthropic is that we haven’t yet delivered on our big promises to benefit the world.”

For its part, Anthropic is trying to improve trust by producing such results, namely by doing more in the fields of biology and medicine, according to Amodei.

There are “early glimmers” of what could be incredible results, he teased. But until there are actual accomplishments, he vowed to avoid making empty promises and instead honestly address AI risks in the meantime.

“Honesty is the right thing on the merits, and in terms of public credibility and trust it is no worse than, and may in fact be better than, an approach that ignores or distracts from risks which people instinctively understand are real,” Amodei concluded.

This story was originally featured on Fortune.com

Middle Eastern oil producers are pressing ahead with shuttling large volumes of crude out of the Persian Gulf, helping keep a lid on prices and assuaging fears of an energy-driven inflation spike, even as the Iran war drags on.

The trade of ferrying oil through the Strait of Hormuz undetected to transfer the barrels onto tankers in the Gulf of Oman is running at full tilt, despite recent attacks on vessels, people with knowledge of the shipments said. 

The incognito crossings of the world’s most vital energy chokepoint have become a major lifeline for global markets that were bracing for a much worse supply shock when the Iran war broke out. For producers in the region, the situation is far from normal, however, with ships subject to repeated hostility even though they have some military protection, the people said.

The shuttling has been ongoing for months, but tracking how much oil those “dark” ships are moving is a challenge for traders and analysts alike because vessels are protecting themselves by giving little clue about their locations. The volumes are running higher than market estimates of 4 million barrels a day, the people said, without specifying by how much. They spoke on condition of anonymity given the sensitivity of the matter.

Before the Iran war, about 20 million barrels a day crossed Hormuz, roughly a fifth of the world’s oil supply. Last week, US Energy Secretary Chris Wright said that 9 million barrels a day crossed Hormuz over the previous seven days — a figure that surprised many traders and would be on the high end of estimated flows, at almost half of pre-war rates. 

The embattled shipments are one of the reasons that Brent oil futures have spent much of August trading between $80 and $90 a barrel, traders and analysts say. That’s far from the most alarming levels foreseen at the onset of the conflict if the Iran war lingered through the summer. Some were bracing for $150 oil. 

The dark shuttle transits have combined with pipeline workarounds, stockpile releases and reductions in demand across the world to limit the economic hit from the war.

“Despite the repeated targeting of our vessels, we are determined to continue meeting our responsibility to safely deliver energy to global markets and to meet our customer commitments and needs as much as possible,” the United Arab Emirates’ state oil giant Abu Dhabi National Oil Co. said in response to a request for comment for this story. “Like other energy companies in the region, we continue to bear the direct consequences of unprovoked attacks on our people, our ships and our facilities — attacks that place employees, contractors and seafarers at increased risk while disrupting critical energy flows.”

In addition to the UAE, barrels from Iraq, Qatar and Kuwait have all been ferried through Hormuz, according to vessel-tracking data compiled by Bloomberg, as well as Kpler and Vortexa data.

The shuttle trade shows up clearly outside the Strait of Hormuz off the coast of Oman, where around 150 ships from giant oil tankers to bulk commodity carriers are floating — compared with roughly 40 in January, based on data from the European Union’s Sentinel 1 satellite. Many are waiting for cargo transfers from the vessels that are sailing in and out of Hormuz with their transponders turned off.

People with knowledge of the UAE’s shipments said there was little indication of a slowdown, even after it reported more Iranian attacks on its ships in recent days. Adnoc has already sold about 135 million barrels of crude to buyers across the world and issued another round of sales last week.

Still, exporting large amounts of oil in the middle of a war is far from straightforward. The people with knowledge of Hormuz transits said there had been more incidents involving vessels than were publicly recognized, including both attacks on merchant ships and defensive actions by western forces targeting vessels that harass freighters trying to cross the waterway. 

They offer a reminder that the cost of keeping energy prices low across the globe isn’t without risk — several seafarers have died transiting Hormuz and there are a growing number of regional oil spills. One appeared in satellite images in the Gulf of Oman last week, but there was no sign of where it came from, underscoring the clandestine nature of transits.

Since the beginning of the conflict, 23 of Adnoc’s vessels have been attacked while transiting Hormuz, resulting in one fatality and 20 injuries to crew members, the company said, adding the impact was also felt by businesses and households around the world. 

“An attack on the infrastructure that keeps energy flowing is not simply an attack on a company,” it said. “The disruption in the Strait of Hormuz is inflicting profound damage far beyond those directly impacted in this region.”

Read more: Oil Spills Show Cost of Moving Middle East Barrels

The attacks can occasionally delay shipments, and while hold-ups are usually brief, they add to market uncertainty, buyers in Asia said. 

Saudi Shipments

One country that hasn’t yet been shuttling large volumes of its own barrels is Saudi Arabia. However, there are tentative signs of more activity from the kingdom’s ports inside the Persian Gulf, now that its alternative Red Sea route is being threatened by Yemen’s Iran-backed Houthi militants.

Two ships were seen loading at Saudi Arabia’s giant Ras Tanura export hub in the Gulf last week, while the nation’s tanker company Bahri has been steadily positioning vessels off Oman’s coast, where the transfers from shuttling vessels are carried out. In total, 16 supertankers are there now, with three more on the way in the coming days. Collectively they can haul 38 million barrels. 

Oil producer Saudi Aramco declined to comment. Bahri didn’t respond to a request for comment.

Elsewhere, a handful of companies have recently been buying Iraqi barrels and shuttling them out of Hormuz, providing an outlet for one of the Gulf countries that has struggled most to move its barrels during the war.

In addition, vessel-tracking data compiled by Bloomberg, as well as Kpler and Vortexa data, show that cargoes from Qatar and Kuwait have also left Hormuz under shuttling arrangements. 

Insurers say that they’re seeing a steady stream of requests for business from a range of Gulf producers, too. 

“It’s a dark trade,” said Pankaj Khanna, chief executive officer of Heidmar Maritime Holdings Corp. “It’s the only option right now as not all owners are willing to take the risk.”

This story was originally featured on Fortune.com

Charlotte Touzalin was still a young teenager when she began struggling with weight gain, abnormal periods and unwanted facial hair — the same puzzling symptoms that plagued her mom for decades and that no doctor could piece together.

“I’d go home and I’d cry,” said Touzalin, an 18-year-old college student from Colorado. “I didn’t understand why all this weight was coming back or why my friends didn’t have to shave their faces and I had to.”

Touzalin and her mom, Anne Schultz, were finally diagnosed with polyendocrine metabolic ovarian syndrome, a hormonal condition affecting 1 in 8 women worldwide. But unlike her mom, Touzalin is beginning young adulthood with new hope after taking part in a study testing blockbuster GLP-1 drugs as a treatment.

A small but growing body of research shows that these obesity medications may also work for the disorder known as PMOS — not only by promoting weight loss but also by improving insulin resistance, hormone balance and ovulation. These things are key to the disease, which used to be called polycystic ovary syndrome but was renamed earlier this year to shift the focus away from ovaries and cysts.

“We need to do a better job taking care of it,” said Dr. Melanie Cree, who has led three studies testing GLP-1 drugs for PMOS including the one Touzalin joined. “We are finding them incredibly effective and really exciting for improving symptoms in women with this condition.”

PMOS is a mysterious and maddening disease

Touzalin and her mom’s long, frustrating journey with PMOS is common.

Diagnosis often takes years because symptoms overlap with other conditions, vary widely and may be dismissed by doctors. The disorder tends to run in families, and many but not all women affected carry excess weight. But there’s no known cause or specific treatment, just symptom management such as taking birth control pills to regulate periods and keeping weight in check with diet and exercise.

Two hormones are key drivers of PMOS: insulin, which acts like a key to let blood sugar into cells, and testosterone, which among other things helps maintain sexual desire, bone density and muscle mass.

Most women with PMOS, regardless of their body size, have insulin resistance, which means this hormone doesn’t work as well as it should, said Cree, PMOS clinic director at Children’s Hospital Colorado. In many women, the high insulin can go directly to the ovaries, spurring them to make more testosterone and leading to problems like skipped periods, severe acne and even beard growth.

Schultz, 43, didn’t even know the condition existed when she first began having irregular periods and bloating around age 18. In addition to struggling with the same symptoms as her daughter, she had problems with her ovaries and numerous miscarriages, which are more common with PMOS.

Schultz received various diagnoses before learning she had PMOS around the same time as her daughter, who faced a similar medical runaround.

Schultz recalled talking about Touzalin’s symptoms with a pediatrician who was seeing her for what they thought was primarily an issue with binge eating and ADHD.

Schultz told the doctor: “There’s gotta be something else going on here.”

Touzalin said she felt “heard for the first time” when a nurse practitioner began piecing things together a few years ago. Cree definitively diagnosed her last year.

“It was like a godsend,” said Schultz, tearing up. “We finally had an answer and some kind of a path for her.”

In Cree’s study, Touzalin gave herself shots of semaglutide weekly for 10 months. The abnormal hair growth slowed and her periods normalized. For the first time, she felt full after eating and stopped gaining weight constantly.

“I became a happier version of myself,” she said. “I felt like a normal person.”

While research on GLP-1s for PMOS continues, insurers put up barriers

Touzalin’s results weren’t unique. Early data from the study, published in June in the journal Fertility and Sterility, said eight of 11 participants completing the trial lost at least 10% of their body weight. The median weight loss among them was about 42 pounds; the median drop in testosterone was 52%. Six women had more periods and four of them went to monthly periods.

In all three of Cree’s studies, women on GLP-1s lost more weight than those in control groups, and levels of testosterone, blood sugar and insulin dropped. While the study involving Touzalin looks at semaglutide shots, the other studies examined semaglutide pills in one and exenatide shots in the other.

Other studies globally have shown similarly positive results. Although the studies are small, some researchers say GLP-1s are already showing promising potential for targeting metabolic issues in PMOS. Others say the evidence remains uncertain, and more studies are underway.

As research continues, more and more doctors are prescribing the drugs “off label” for PMOS and seeing improvements in their patients. But insurance coverage is often a problem because the drugs are not approved to treat the condition.

“I use these medicines a great deal,” said Dr. Rana Malek, an endocrinologist with the University of Maryland Medical System.

Among patients with insulin resistance, she said she usually uses them to help with weight loss.

Doctors stress that results vary. GLP-1s don’t work for everyone and can have side effects, like nausea and constipation. If people stop taking them, weight can return.

Still, they can help a lot of PMOS patients, Malek said, and it’s frustrating that many can’t get them because of insurance issues. Not only are they unapproved for PMOS, some insurers don’t cover them for weight loss.

Touzalin recently ran into this barrier herself. After finishing her study participation, she no longer gets free GLP-1s and had to go off them in June.

Schultz is determined to get her back on them. She’s fighting with her insurer and has a backup plan to get medications through a drug company program. She’d also like to try GLP-1s for her own PMOS, but said her daughter comes first.

Touzalin hopes for a day when any PMOS patient can get the treatment if she needs it.

“It’s something that could help a lot of other people,” she said.

This story was originally featured on Fortune.com

Adm. Brad Cooper, the top U.S. military commander in the Middle East, visited the USS Lincoln in the Arabian Sea during a 10-day tour in the region that concluded on Saturday, U.S. Central Command said.

Israel said its strikes in southern Lebanon, which killed at least 11 people, targeted two Hezbollah commanders. And a Hamas delegation is in Cairo on Sunday for Gaza ceasefire-related talks with Egyptian officials.

Here’s a look at the latest developments on Sunday in the Iran war and the wider Middle East. Full coverage can be found here.

US Central Command chief visits aircraft carrier

Adm. Cooper visited the USS Lincoln in the Arabian Sea as reports have emerged of mental health and supply issues aboard the long-deployed aircraft carrier. The Lincoln arrived in the Middle East in January and has been supporting the U.S. war against Iran, including the blockade on Iranian ports. Its deployment has included a record-setting uninterrupted time at sea of more than 240 days.

Extended deployments of carriers – which can have more than 5,000 sailors and Marines on board – have raised concerns about the impact not only on the ships but on service members.

“History will record this deployment as one of the most operationally intense and consequential of the modern era,” Cooper said of the Lincoln strike group in a statement released Saturday.

Cooper also went to Bahrain, Iraq, Israel, Jordan, Saudi Arabia, and the United Arab Emirates to meet with civilian and military leaders, according to the Central Command statement.

The U.S. Navy’s blockade was in response to Iran’s asserting control over the Strait of Hormuz after the war started on Feb. 28 with U.S. and Israeli strikes. About one-fifth of the world’s traded oil and natural gas passed through the waterway at the mouth of the Persian Gulf before then.

Talks between the U.S. and Iran have stalled while Iran is in discussions with Oman about how to manage the strait that runs between them and had been considered an international waterway.

Israel targets two Hezbollah commanders in Saturday’s strikes

Israel’s military said it targeted two Hezbollah commanders in strikes in southern Lebanon on Saturday, in the deadliest attacks since a trucebetween Israel and Iran-backed Hezbollah went into effect in June.

Lebanon’s Health Ministry and state news agency said at least 11 people were killed in two strikes.

Israel’s military said early Sunday morning that the latter strike killed Abu Hassan Alaa, whom it described as a “senior commander” for Hezbollah who had taken part in attacks against Israel’s soldiers in southern Lebanon as well as led militants who targeted Israeli soldiers and civilians over several years.

Earlier, Israel’s military had said the strike on Ansar killed Ali Samir Al-Haj Hassan, also described as a Hezbollah commander, adding that his family was with him, but was not targeted.

Israel and the Lebanese government announced a “framework agreement” in late June, laying out a plan for Israeli forces to withdraw from southern Lebanon in exchange for Hezbollah’s disarmament. It envisions steps toward an eventual peace agreement between the countries, which remain technically at war nearly 80 years after Israel’s establishment.

Hezbollah has refused direct talks and wasn’t party to the U.S.-mediated deal.

Hamas delegation is in Cairo for Gaza ceasefire talks

A Hamas delegation, chaired by the group’s leader Khalil al-Hayya, is in Cairo Sunday for Gaza ceasefire-related talks, the group said. Al-Hayya met with Maj. Gen. Hassan Rashad, head of Egypt’s intelligence service, Egyptian state-run media reported.

Al-Hayya reiterated Hamas’ commitment to implement U.S. President Donald Trump’s peace plan in Gaza “end the suffering of the residents of the Gaza Strip and to begin the reconstruction process,” al-Qahera News television reported.

The talks come as mediators push for the implementation of a roadmap that calls for the disarmament of Hamas and other Palestinian militant groups in Gaza, the withdrawal of Israeli forces from the area, as well as handing over power to Palestinian technocrats.

Israel’s Netanyahu has rejected Trump’s latest plan to advance the stalled ceasefire in Gaza, saying Israel will not withdraw from any of the roughly 60% of the territory it controls until Hamas has been completely disarmed — something the militant group controlling the other 40% has long resisted.

It wasn’t immediately clear whether al-Hayya would meet with Trump’s son-in-law and negotiator Jared Kushner, the Board of Peace’s high representative Nickolay Mladenov, or executive board member and former British Prime Minister Tony Blair, who are scheduled to travel to Israel and Egypt this week.

Iran says Qatar is holding 3 of its pilots

Qatar’s armed forces captured and are holding three Iranian pilots who went missing in March when their jets were downed, the Missing Persons Committee of Iran’s Armed Forces General Staff said. Qatar, however, denied it.

Iran’s state TV reported on Sunday that the committee’s commander responded by urging Qatar to allow Iranian Air Force experts to conduct a field investigation.

Saturday’s statement alleged that Qatar had not allowed the pilots to meet or communicate with families or Iranian officials handling their cases. A spokesperson with Qatar’s foreign ministry, Majed Al Ansari, denied the claims and indicated on X that the pilots had been shot down and that Qatar’s search and rescue teams found the remains of one.

This is the first known case in the war where Iran has said a regional country is holding its fighters. Tehran has repeatedly targeted countries in the region with missiles and drones that are hosting U.S. military bases.

This story was originally featured on Fortune.com

Tech leaders have consistently warned AI is already as good as entry-level workers and it could halve white-collar jobs by 2030. So it’s no wonder they’re eyeing up jobs in health care, which offer low unemployment rates, the potential to earn over $200,000, and are unlikely to be replaced with robotic doctors and nurses anytime soon. 

But there’s one thing they should know before filling out medical school applications: Pursuing job security doesn’t necessarily guarantee job satisfaction.

That’s because 2025 research from shift work platform Deputy, which surveyed 1.28 million users, ranks doctors, paramedics, and even chiropractors as the unhappiest workers.

In fact, doctors’ offices and medical clinics recorded the highest levels of dissatisfaction, with nearly 38% of respondents saying they’re unhappy in their jobs. Chiropractors and staff in critical and emergency services weren’t far behind.  And if you include animal health roles, 4 out of the 5 worst jobs for happiness in the UK right now are in healthcare.

Despite health care’s reputation for meaningful work, these roles are often more likely than most to leave workers burned out and ground down by long hours and high stakes.

“Staffing shortages, emotional strain, unpredictable rosters, and an ageing population are cited as key contributors to declining morale,” the report highlighted.

Top 10 unhappiest industry sectors, per the research

1. Doctors Office/Medical Clinic – 37.84%
2. Animal Health – 17.95%
3. Chiropractors – 12.93%
4. Critical & Emergency Services – 12.05%
5. Call Centres – 12.00%
6. Catering – 8.60%
7. Delivery and Postal Services – 6.97%
8. Care Facilities – 6.22%
9. Cleaning Services – 5.80%
10. Private Services (Chefs, Gardeners etc) – 5.62%

Gen Z may be happier in hospitality jobs

What’s perhaps most surprising is that jobs many recent grads might have once looked down on—like fast food or waitressing roles—are emerging as a safer bet for a more satisfying career.

Hospitality fared well in Deputy’s study, making up half of the 10 happiest job sectors, despite the sector’s reputation for high stress, unsociable hours, and low pay. 

Hospitality jobs dominated the happiness rankings. Sit-down restaurant staff (89.7%), fast food and cashier restaurant workers (82.9%), food pop-up teams (82.5%), and café or coffee shop employees (82%) all reported some of the highest job satisfaction scores of any sector.

Florists, childcare workers and cleaners also reported notably high levels of job contentment.

What makes these roles so satisfying? The report suggests it’s less about pay or prestige, and more about the day-to-day experience: “These roles may benefit from clearer routines, manageable workloads, and stronger team camaraderie, highlighting the emotional value of operational structure and positive workplace culture.”

Although probably not at the top of most graduates’ dream career list, separate data also show wage growth for bartenders and baristas is outpacing that of desk workers.

Top 10 happiest industry sectors, per the research

1. Tobacco, E-cigarette and Vape Stores – 93.4%
2. Sit Down Restaurants – 89.7%
3. Fast Food/Cashier Restaurants – 82.9%
4. Florists – 82.9%
5. Food Pop-Ups – 82.5%
6. Cafes/Coffee Shops – 82%
7. Dentists – 81.8%
8. Childcare/Community Centres – 78.4%
9. Catering – 75.3%
10. Cleaning Services – 64.3%

A version of this story originally published on Fortune.com on August 31, 2025

Read more on the future of work from Fortune’s Orianna Rosa Royle:

• Forget the four-day workweek: Despite what Bill Gates and Elon Musk predict, the CEO of the world’s largest workspace provider says it’s not happening
• Forcing staff back to the office is an outdated ‘factory-style’ approach, says CEO
• AI won’t steal your job—but it might cut your paycheck, Europe’s central bank says
• Elon Musk shares 4 bold predictions for the future of work: Robot surgeons in 3 years, immortality, and no need for retirement savings

This story was originally featured on Fortune.com

A small investment made at the right moment has the power to launch ordinary people to millionaire status. All it took was $1,000 and an out-there idea for Jeffrey Sprecher, the founder and CEO of Intercontinental Exchange, to set his business on a path to becoming a $85 billion behemoth.

“I had this idea that you should be able to trade electric power, buy and sell electric power, on an exchange,” Sprecher recalled at the Rotary Club Of Atlanta earlier this year. But there was a huge caveat: He “had no idea how to do that. I’d never worked on Wall Street, I never traded.” 

At the time, Sprecher had heard that Continental Power Exchange—owned by Warren Buffett’s electric utility company, MidAmerican Energy—was about to go bankrupt. Despite Buffett’s business pumping $35 million into it, the company was still struggling. And so Sprecher saw this as an opportune moment to swoop in and pursue his entrepreneurial vision. 

“I bought the company for a dollar a share, and there were a thousand shares,” he said. “So I bought it for $1,000, and I used that as the basis to build Intercontinental Exchange.”

Thanks to his quick thinking and business savvy, Sprecher currently boasts a net worth of $1.2 billion. But the journey to the top was not very glamorous. 

Living in a 500-ft studio and driving a used car while scaling the business 

That measly $1,000 investment made back in 1997 served as the launchpad for Intercontinental Exchange, founded just three years later. A small team of nine employees set off to build the technology in 2000; setting up shop in Atlanta, Sprecher and his staffers went all-in on building the business up from its former demise. 

It was all hands on deck, and even as the founder and CEO, Sprecher was doing the menial labor to keep everything in order. With money being tight, the entrepreneur lived in a small apartment and drove a used car to the office to keep Intercontinental Energy afloat.

“I bought a 500-foot, one room studio apartment in Midtown…I bought a used car that I kept and I’d go into the office from time to time,” Sprecher explained, adding he “took the trash out, shut the lights out, answered the phone, bought the staplers and the paper for the photocopier. That was the way the company started.”

Nearly 26 years later, the company boasts a market cap of $85 billion and a team of more than 12,000 employees—and has proudly owned the NYSE for over a decade. 

Entrepreneurs who made a key investment at the right moment

Some of the wealthiest entrepreneurs made their billions by spotting the perfect window to invest small and earn big. 

Take Kenn Ricci, as an example: The serial American aviation businessman and chairman of private jet company Flexjet is a billionaire thanks to his intuition to buy a struggling business four decades ago. After being put on leave from his first pilot job out of the Air Force, he turned a sticky situation into a 10-figure fortune.

“I worked for [airline] Northwest Orient for a brief period of time. I get furloughed. Unemployed, back living with my parents,” Ricci told the Wall Street Journal in a 2025 interview, reminiscing on how he made his first $1 million.

But instead of throwing in the towel, he spotted a golden opportunity. Ricci took a contract pilot job at Professional Flight Crews, and one of the companies he flew for was private aviation company Corporate Wings. The budding businessman was intrigued when its owners put the business up for sale at $27,500 in 1981—and jumped on the opportunity to buy it. By the early 1990s, the business was pulling in $3 million a year.

But people don’t need to buy and scale a company to make a worthwhile investment; millennial investing wiz Martin Mignot became a self-made millionaire thanks to his ability to spot unicorn companies before they make it big. One of his biggest wins was an early investment in Deliveroo—back when the business was just a small, London-based operation. 

“They had eight employees. They were in three London boroughs. Overall, they had a few thousand users to date, so it was very, very early,” Mignot told Fortune last year. “They didn’t have an app. Their first website was pretty terrible and ugly, if I’m frank, but the delivery experience was incredible.”

Lo and behold, Deliveroo grew to become a $3.5 billion company with millions of global customers. And as a partner at Index Ventures, Mignot is part of a team reaping billion-dollar rewards from forward-thinking investments in tech businesses including Figma, Scale AI, and Wiz. Aside from his day job, Mignot has also strategically put money towards iconic European start-ups including Revolut, Trainline and Personio. Before he was even 30, he solidified himself as a notable investor—and advised others that “It’s about owning equity, that is the key.”

A version of this story was published on Fortune.com on January 16, 2026.

This story was originally featured on Fortune.com

ActivTrak’s Productivity Lab tracked 120,620 employees over three quarters and found something counterintuitive: the optimal level of AI adoption maturity for most employees may be somewhere in the middle between shallow AI usage and full automation.

Most leaders I know are tempted to build their AI adoption strategy as if every employee should be an AI super user. Buy the most powerful tools, push everyone toward the deepest integration, maximize adoption maturity and assume productivity will skyrocket. 

The most recent data from ActivTrak’s Productivity Lab complicates that idea. Productivity and work-health metrics rise as employees move from little or no AI use to regular, task-level adoption, with healthy utilization peaking at 75%. But once AI becomes embedded in workflows, healthy utilization drops about 5 percentage points — to levels statistically indistinguishable from employees who barely use AI.

The right level of AI adoption maturity depends on the work being done and the business objectives it supports. 

Why moderate AI maturity may be sufficient for most

Traditional AI adoption metrics track licenses or login counts, which measure deployment but offer little clarity into how AI impacts the work being done. Typical AI maturity models measure an organization’s overall progress toward deeper AI adoption. Our Productivity Lab takes a different approach, using behavioral data to document how AI actually changed the way people work, and categorizing them into three stages of maturity that reflect true operational progression.

The Lab tracked the same 120,620 employees across 1,009 organizations for three consecutive quarters from Q4 2025 to Q2 2026. The data showed 27% of employees used AI like a search engine to answer questions and summarize information (Stage 1, Research Assistance). 14% used AI to draft content, generate ideas and complete routine tasks that they then validate and finalize (Stage 2, Task Execution). Only 2% reached the stage where AI becomes an integral part of day-to-day workflows (Stage 3, Workflow Integration). Overall, AI users remain a minority at 43% of employees studied.

Stage 2 is where AI eliminates repetitive work — for example, allowing a sales rep to generate a quote from five systems with a single prompt instead of manually compiling the information. That’s where healthy utilization peaks, and where most organizations should be focused.

AI consumption is not equal to AI maturity

Most AI maturity models were built to reward consumption. They aim to qualitatively measure how much, not how well. As a consequence, they tend to reinforce the perception that “most” usage is best. That assumption leads to two specific risks.

One, organizations may lose sight of runaway costs. More mature usage means more powerful models, more tokens, more infrastructure. If the task or role doesn’t require it, you’re just spending money you could invest elsewhere.

Two, organizations may unwittingly foster operational disconnect. Employees sprinting ahead may generate sophisticated AI workflows that optimize individual tasks but without improving broader processes. If the workflow hasn’t been redesigned around business goals, all you’ve done is produce more AI slop, faster. 

In both cases, the answer is more visibility into how AI transforms work for your organization.

Why most organizations are stuck in high adoption and low maturity

1. Organizations roll out AI tools without investing equally in guidance for employees.

Here’s an example from ActivTrak: When our operations team noticed Anthropic costs rising, they dug into the data to understand why. They discovered employees routinely using the newest, most powerful model to rewrite customer emails — a task that didn’t require that level of sophistication. That led us to create an internal reference to help employees match the right model to the right task. The problem wasn’t the output; it was defaulting to the most powerful model for every job — the AI equivalent of hiring a superstar to do work that didn’t need one.

2. Organizations sprint to pilot AI without first slowing down to see how work currently flows. 

Before implementing AI tools, organizations must take the time to map workflows — so the right investments are being made in the right places. Consider how work happens now, and what would change if AI did the work. Traditional business principles still apply: everyone fits a role and everyone has strengths and weaknesses.

Resist the urge to implement one massive department-wide initiative in favor of addressing small workflow fixes. Build, measure and learn to find the optimal sweet spot. 

The durability finding — why the target decision is consequential

Defining maturity targets is a leadership responsibility because AI adoption is a durable change. Productivity Lab data shows 82% of employees who adopted AI kept using it. But once people move past casual use, they continue to use it quarter after quarter, and almost no one who goes deep ever comes back. 

The level of adoption I push my team toward is the level of adoption they’ll likely stick with. So if I drive everyone to the deepest tier, I may be locking them into usage where productivity gains stall out and costs exceed benefits. 

The question isn’t only how we increase the 2% who integrate AI into workflows. It’s also how to coach the 27% of novice users to reach task assistance fluency.

The prescription — right tool, right role, right stage

We need to cut through the noise that’s in the market right now to get to a more level-headed place about what problems we’re trying to solve. No single maturity model or AI tool should define AI strategy. Strategy depends on the makeup of your company, the type of work you’re doing and the goals you’re trying to achieve. A lean AI-native company may need most people functioning alongside embedded AI workflows and agents, whereas an established business may find AI task assistance is more than enough competitive advantage and requires less operational disruption.

Discipline is critical. Without intentionality, maturity often brings unmanaged costs, misaligned workflows and locked-in behaviors that are rarely reversible. The model companies want you to consume is as much AI as possible. Our job as leaders is to not dismiss the fact that AI can be a competitive advantage, because it absolutely is. But it’s only a competitive advantage if you know how to accurately invest in and use the right tools to do the right job.  

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.

This story was originally featured on Fortune.com

It’s 2026, and the $124 trillion Great Wealth Transfer has begun. As baby boomers phase out and pass on the fortunes they’ve built to subsequent generations, a lot will change.

Namely, the old ways of philanthropic giving won’t work on younger generations, and that could be a huge problem for nonprofit organizations.

“The older generations are disproportionately providing the majority of the philanthropic dollars,” despite the Great Wealth Transfer already being fully underway, Steve Isom, chief operating and financial officer of nonprofit software company Bloomerang, told Fortune. “Everyone knows about the transfer of wealth that has happened. It’s going to be record-setting, and I think that a lot of nonprofits feel a bit paralyzed in how to tackle that problem.”

On the surface, it may be confusing why more money flowing could be a problem. But it’s because community-based nonprofits have built deep relationships with the “pillars of the community”—in other words, wealthy baby boomers, Isom explained. But the further you get from baby boomers, the lower the interest in philanthropic giving.

“The level of connection tends to wane,” said Isom, who gave the example of an organization where he’s based in Omaha, Neb. He said being involved in philanthropic giving for that organization in the 1960s and 1970s was very much a “who’s who” in town. And those same people who gave to that organization are still its major donors today.

“Now, those donors’ kids are less involved, and then those donors’ kids are like not involved at all,” he said. “So I think the challenge is how are you introducing these next generations, and what programs do you have that are pulling in the younger generation?”

And a lot of this trend has to do with a sense of belonging, trust, and community. Bloomerang’s 2026 Giving Signals Report, conducted with The Harris Poll among more than 1,000 U.S. donors and 400 fundraising leaders in March, shows millennials and Gen Z care most about giving because it makes them feel as if they are “part of something.”

That sense of belonging matters most to millennials, who the report actually pegs as the most active generation of donors right now. Three-quarters of millennials plan to give more this year than last, while just 49% of Gen X and 36% of baby boomers said the same. This is evidence of the Great Wealth Transfer in action, but it doesn’t mean they’re giving the most dollars or have become the major donor class, so to speak. 

But that’s why the Great Wealth Transfer matters so much in philanthropy: Millennials stand to gain more than any other generation, according to wealth management firm Cerulli Associates. So understanding how to reach millennials and Gen Z early will translate into more dollars down the road.

That money won’t land evenly. More than half the total will come from the roughly 2% of households that are already high-net-worth or ultra-high-net-worth, the Cerulli report shows. Isom sees that concentration up close in Omaha, where he said family foundations account for about double the national average of nonprofit funding in Nebraska. 

“You can kind of go to five families, and they support a lot,” he said.

Donors want the receipts

So what nonprofit organizations desperately need to do is reconfigure how and when they involve community members if they’re hoping to build long-term donors.

A big factor is building trust in organizations, especially when discretionary spending is more precious amid inflation, stagnant wages, and a higher cost of living. 

“Donors are ready to trust nonprofits, but they want to see the receipts more,” Isom said. “A bit more trust, but verified.” 

While the Bloomerang report shows 85% of active donors trust the organizations they donate to to use funds effectively and 97% say those organizations appear aligned with what they care about, building that trust takes time—but they want evidence their donation was worthwhile.

According to the report, 94% of donors said they’re motivated to give when an organization tells them exactly where their money goes, and 90% said the same about hearing the impact of their gift. In one test, donors chose a specific pitch of “$50 buys a week of groceries” versus a generic “every dollar makes a difference” by 88 percentage points, which illustrates that specificity in impact makes a difference.

And Isom actually runs his own test each year. On Giving Tuesday, he donates to 25 of Bloomerang’s 24,000 customers and watches what happens after the gift.

“The range of experience is shocking,” he said. Some call that day to say thank you and spell out what the gift will fund, but from others it’s crickets. “[If] you don’t feel that connection, that feedback loop isn’t there, and you’re just going to fall out,” Isom added. 

Some of it comes down to why people give in the first place. Isom pointed to the slow death of workplace giving campaigns, which came during the era of giving as an obligation. That doesn’t work anymore in a younger, more remote workforce. 

“People don’t feel compelled as much,” he said.

So the nonprofits that survive the Great Wealth Transfer, he argues, are the ones planting seeds now by stewarding volunteers and earning smaller donations now before they ever write a major check.

“I need to solve for today. But I also have to build for tomorrow,” Isom said about how nonprofit organizations should be thinking now. 

This story was originally featured on Fortune.com

Talking to a chatbot might make you feel better about the conversation, but it may also leave you feeling lonelier. 

That’s the finding of a new experiment out of Munich-based global economic research network CESifo, which tracked more than 12,000 French adults over the course of four weeks, and found having conversations with sometimes sycophantic AI chatbots left people thinking the conversation went better than it would have otherwise gone with a human.

For 28 days, half of the 12,365 people in the study were tasked with holding personal conversations with AI chatbots, while the rest went about their normal days. At the end of the month, the three researchers found the group that was typing their personal narratives with chatbots rated the “conversations” as enjoyable and even more pleasant, on average, than the control group.

However, the same group also self-reported their loneliness rose, just as their life satisfaction fell, and depressive affect ticked up, in comparison to the control group. They also had more meals alone and spent less time in-person with friends and family per week. 

“I would imagine that in some cases an AI conversation may reinforce grievances or prolong rumination, leaving someone slightly less inclined to go out, call somebody, or have dinner with another person,” Louis Fréget, one of the three researchers behind the experiment, told Fortune.

The working paper is one of the largest causal tests yet of a proposal  tech leaders have been making—that AI chatbots can help with the loneliness epidemic. Meta’s CEO Mark Zuckerberg has argued that most people want more social connection and that chatbots could help, and a KPMG survey found that 99% of professionals surveyed were interested in  a chatbot that could become a close friend at work. 

Technology takes on the loneliness epidemic

The format of the interaction also matters, since interacting with an AI interface doesn’t feel as fulfilling because it doesn’t know the person the way another human would, according to Nicholas Epley, a University of Chicago behavioral scientist who studies social connection.

“The data here suggests that having a conversation with a chatbot doesn’t get that sense of being known by another person like you get in a conversation, and therefore also doesn’t create any meaningful sense of connection because, in the end, there’s nothing there,” Epley said

This is an ongoing debate, with researchers, workers, and users landing in very different places. One loneliness researcher warned that AI is about to make the epidemic worse, pointing to a study where first-year college students who texted daily with a chatbot built to act like an “ideal friend” showed no drop in loneliness — while those paired with a random human peer did. With more than a billion people worldwide reporting loneliness, according to Gallup, and former Surgeon General Vivek Murthy calling it an epidemic, AI chatbots have moved into that gap. Some users have taken that further still, forming romantic attachments to chatbots — a pattern psychotherapists worry could deepen isolation rather than ease it.

Accordingly, people can feel the difference between talking to a chatbot and another person, even if the conversations are pleasant with the former. 

“When you form social connections using typed language, so like text messages or chatting or email, those social connections don’t evoke as many positive emotions, and they’re also not as strong as those that we develop face to face,” Valeria Pfeifer, an Assistant Professor of Psychology and Counseling the University of Missouri–Kansas City, told Fortune recently. She’s the author of a recent study that found we’re saying 30% fewer words than we did two decades ago, and technology is one of the major reasons why.  

“Even if they’re similar in their depth or intensity, they don’t tend to have the same kind of psychological implications,” Pfeiffer said of texts or written communications. 

Still, the study joins a small but growing body of research on AI and loneliness, and it’s leading to real-world results. One pilot program in New York had nearly 1,000 older adults interact with an AI chatbot and reported a decline in loneliness. But Nancy Berlinger, a bioethicist at the Hastings Center for Bioethics, previously told Fortune that talking to a chatbot can’t replace in-person connection even if there is temporary relief.

“It’s not going to replace all of that richness of relationships, but it’s not nothing,” Berlinger said. 

This story was originally featured on Fortune.com

Just like generations of 20-somethings before them, Gen Zers are being criticized for failing to adapt to traditional workplace norms. Some bosses complain about a lack of office etiquette and the high expectations they bring with them, while a vocal cohort say the digital natives are bringing valuable skills and a fresh approach to work. George Brasher, SVP and managing director, North America for $27 billion tech giant HP, says that the Gen Z label of lacking interpersonal skills is a myth. Now, they’re driving massive business wins with their work ethic.

“I’ve got a reasonable population of Gen Z folks in my team, and I find people with great ability to listen, great ability to build that trust, to build that relationship, and then to understand really what customers need,” Brasher tells Fortune. “I don’t see that at all.”

HP employs about 55,000 workers globally, and believes that the youngest generation of employees is leading the charge in creating a more “interconnected, inclusive, and conscientious world.” They drive innovation with their tech savvy, build communities with their digital-first approach to collaboration, and treat work-life balance as a non-negotiable. The HP executive says that growing up in the digital era is their superpower; not only are their AI skills making them more skilled on the job, but it’s translating to a better quality working life.

“Gen Z and millennials have the highest use of AI, highest use of the technology,” Brasher continued. “The fact that they’re digital natives—and AI natives—really puts them in a great position…to have that use of technology that will give them a healthy relationship with work.”

College students turning their tassels and taking on 9-to-5 jobs are typically AI natives, Brasher adds, which “positions them very well” within the tough entry-level job market. More than one million U.S. job postings even required AI-related skills as of last year, a 66% increase from 2024, according to a 2026 PwC analysis of Lightcast data. Being well-acquinated with the tools is the key to success in the newest era of tech: “I think everybody coming into their initial career into companies needs to make sure that they’re the best prepared for that,” Brasher advised. 

Leaders at Colgate, Stripe, and LinkedIn agree that Gen Z has in-demand tech skills

Stereotypes stick, and some bosses have already made up their minds on Gen Z workers. Oscar-winning star Jodie Foster slammed the young staffers she encountered on the set of True Detective as being “really annoying, especially in the workplace.” And fellow actress Whoopi Goldberg claimed that Gen Zers “only want to work four hours” yet expect to live in comfort.

But business leaders like Brasher are looking past the tropes and unlocking the power of a generation built for the AI era.

The CHRO of $73 billion giant Colgate-Palmolive hit back that young staffers aren’t the career sloths some typecast them to be. Sally Massey credits Gen Z as being ambitious and incredibly tech savvy—critical skills that the consumer products company behind Colgate toothpaste and Irish Spring soap is looking for in talent. 

“[Gen Z] have grown up with technology. They’ve grown up in a very different way than some of the other generations in the organization,” the CHRO told Fortune earlier this year.

“They bring with them new ideas, new perspectives, curiosity,” Massey added. “They’re pushing us to get better and to do things differently—I think it’s great.”

And last year Emily Glassberg Sands, the head of data and AI for Stripe, revealed that she’s all-in on hiring recent graduates at the $159 billion financial services company. Just like Massey, she singled out Gen Z’s tech adaptability as one of the in-demand skills she’s looking for in Stripe employees. They “have the cutting-edge skills” and are up-to-date on the latest tools to help them hit the ground running.

LinkedIn cofounder Reid Hoffman agrees that Gen Z’s AI fluency could be their biggest advantage in a tough entry-level job market. The billionaire entrepreneur said that young people are part of “generation AI”; as digital natives who grew up with advanced technology at their fingertips, they are in the best position to leverage that skill. It may be Gen Z’s ticket to landing a job. 

“Bringing the fact that you have AI in your tool set is one of the things that makes you enormously attractive,” Hoffman said in a video on his YouTube channel last year.

This story was originally featured on Fortune.com

In an era where personal identity is often transformed into a brand and creativity into a strategy, Candace Bushnell has taken a different path. Not because she couldn’t move in that direction, but because she chose to remain, above all, a writer.

Sex and the City, the column that began in The New York Observer in 1994, has become one of the most recognizable cultural narratives of recent decades, influencing the way women talk about themselves, their choices, and their place in the world. And yet, for her, this success never functioned as an end point, but rather one of the many facets of her journey. Instead of being confined, her writing has continued to evolve, from best-selling novels such as Four Blondes, Trading Up, and Lipstick Jungle, to new narrative forms that test the boundaries between the private and the public.

Perhaps this is because, for her, creation is not the result of a strategy, but of an inner need. Of a constant urge to observe, process and transform experience into narrative – whether this happens in the solitary process of writing or in front of a live audience. It is no coincidence that, almost three decades after her first major success, she chose to return to the stage with a one-woman show that functions as a more direct, almost confessional version of her journey.

With True Tales of Sex, Success and Sex and the City, which was also presented in Athens on April 17, Candace Bushnell appeared in front of an audience, bridging the past and the present, but also the individual and the collective. It is a reminder that the stories that stand the test of time are not necessarily those designed to be “great”, but those that are told with honesty.

On the occasion of her presence in Greece, the iconic author spoke to Fortune Greece about the timelessness of writing, the importance of an authentic voice, and what it means to continue to evolve creatively, even when you have already left your mark. (This is republished in Fortune with permission.)

You started writing about a very specific world, your own world, and yet your experiences became a thing with global resonance. When did you realize that something so personal had acquired universal power?

I started writing when I was 19 and I was always writing about my world, about New York and the women who lived there. When I started the Sex and the City column in The New York Observer, one of the decisions I made was to write about things that I thought could only happen in New York.

Very quickly, however, it turned out that these things were happening everywhere. It was, in essence, social anthropology, and that’s something that can be translated to almost every major city.

I think I first realized that the writing was transcending New York when people in Los Angeles started sharing the column with each other. That was really where it all started. Then, of course, the TV series came along and took it much further, but that didn’t happen overnight either. It was probably around 1999 or 2000 that I felt like something had really taken off.

Many people today would describe what you have built as a strong personal brand. Did you ever view it that way?

I have often been told: “You have been a brand for 20 or 30 years.” But I do not agree with that, because I do not see myself as something inanimate. I am a human being. What I do is dedicate my time to creating, to producing something that, at least until now, even in the age of AI, only a human being can really do; and that is writing.

I never built myself as a brand in marketing terms. I did not seek to develop anything beyond my works in that way. Yes, some of my books have been adapted for television, but I never approached myself as a marketing “machine”.

I, in essence, just do my job. I do not put my name on buildings or product lines, nor do I have that type of business “umbrella.” For me, the focus has always been on the work itself and my creative expression.

In a world where attention is often fleeting, what do you think makes a work truly stand the test of time?

Ideally, the work speaks for itself. Of course, everyone needs marketing these days, that’s the reality, but when you’ve created something strong enough, that acts as a signal in itself. The public comes to you because they know who you are and have seen what you have created.

Of course, there are always those who are better at turning ideas into larger business ventures, and today many have found ways to commercially exploit worlds like Sex and the City with “recipes” that didn’t exist back then. The landscape has changed. But in the end, I still believe that it all comes down to whether the work has something original and true in it.

How can someone create something that is truly their own, today, in the age of AI?

First of all, I think that creativity is something deeply unique. I’m not worried about AI, because I know that it can’t replace what I can do, and that is true for creative people in general.

Creativity is about combining elements, recognizing patterns, and transforming them into something original. AI can, perhaps, imitate a style; it could probably write something that resembles my own style, but essentially it would be limited to reproducing it. I, as a human, can evolve; become a better writer, think differently, introduce new elements into my work.

This authentic creative process is human. At least as of today, I don’t think AI can replace it. I would, of course, like to learn how to use it as a tool, but when it comes to true originality, I still believe that it belongs to humans.

When Sex and the City went from writing to television, how did you experience that transition? And how different is the degree of control that a creator has in these two media?

I think it is important to understand that television and books are two completely different things. Television has different demands and its own logic, and there are people who work exclusively in that medium.

I was on the writing team for Sex and the City for the first two seasons, but then a $1 million deal came up to write two books. That was much more profitable financially, but more importantly, it was what I really wanted to do, which was to write books. So, this was my choice.

Books and cinema are closer to one another because they have a beginning, a middle, and an end. Television, on the other hand, has to be ongoing and, because of that, it requires a mechanism that keeps the story moving, with characters starting in one place and ending somewhere else. In books, my feeling is often that people do not change that radically. It is a completely different structure and a different mindset.

So yes, I had an initial involvement, but my energy was always directed towards books.

What is your creative process in practice when you start writing a book?

Writing a book, for me, is mostly about discipline. I mean, at least six hours a day, six days a week, sometimes seven. There are periods when the work can last for up to ten hours per day. At the end of the day, you just have to sit down and do it.

It is a lot like playing a musical instrument. It takes practice, endurance, and consistency. You cannot passively wait for inspiration, you have to show up every day and try.

As for ideas, you need to have a deeper sense of both your material and your characters. The main question is whether these characters can support a big narrative, that is, whether they have the depth to “hold” 100,000 words. It is not something that can be easily explained, because it is an internal, mental process: you create a world in your mind and then channel it on paper. You have to, essentially, enter that creative space and manage to stay there.

We talk a lot about “reinvention,” especially in long-term careers. How do you view that concept?

I do not really think in terms of “reinventing oneself.” In fact, the message at the end of my one-woman show is that when you reach 60, it is not about reinventing but rather about inventing yourself.

I do not think that people really reinvent themselves. This is a catchphrase that has become fashionable, but to me it does not really mean anything. We are who we are, and what really matters is accepting that and allowing it to express itself. That was the advice I got when I was in my 20s and was starting to write: just keep doing what you are doing and be true to yourself.

Sometimes, culture “meets” you and responds to what you create. Sometimes, you are so ahead of your time that people are not ready to understand it yet. Then, you just hope that, at some point, they will. So, for me, it is more about timing than reinvention.

Your narration is now being transferred to the stage. How did that transition come about and what did it give you creatively?

The show came about because someone I met said to me: “I think you can do a one-woman show.” It was not something that I had planned, but during the pandemic I wrote something and thought: why not? Let’s give it a try.

That’s where it all began. Our first performance was in a small theater and then it went off-Broadway in New York. It was an exciting experience because, on the one hand, it was something different from what I was used to and, on the other hand, it was not completely foreign to me. As a writer, I had been doing readings and public appearances since the mid-1990s, so it felt more like a natural progression than a radical change.

Actually, I feel very comfortable on stage; it comes naturally to me. A lot of people say, “Oh my God, I could never do that,” but for me it is easier than writing a book. And this is the paradox: people think that being on stage is harder, when in fact writing a book is much more demanding.

You have spent years writing about women, relationships, and modern life. How different do you feel the younger generations’ experience is today?

One of the reasons I created the one-woman show was because people kept asking me the same things about Sex and the City: Did I really have three female friends like the ones on the show? Did I have a wardrobe like Carrie Bradshaw’s? How did I get into writing the column? So, the show answers a lot of these questions.

As for younger women today, I feel like the more I hear about their experiences, the more I understand that yes, things are very different. 25 years have passed, dating apps are here and individuals have access to a lot more people than they used to. But at the same time, everything seems less romantic. It seems harder to make meaningful connections; there is more disappointment and more negative experiences.

When I was younger, in the 1980s and the 1990s, there was still excitement, a romantic anticipation around meeting someone and the feeling that something beautiful could happen. Today, when I talk to younger women, I often hear about “one bad experience after another”. Maybe it is my algorithm’s fault, but even what I see online has a more negative connotation around dating. It’s a different world altogether.

Speaking of power today, what do you think makes a woman truly powerful?

I think that success requires, above all, being motivated and constantly striving. It is a fact that some people have more energy than others, while some people have a special aura or a heightened awareness of their potential. But in the end, it all comes down to how you make the most of the cards you’ve been dealt.

We all start with certain givens, and the power lies precisely in the ability to make the most of them.

Is there a woman who inspires you personally?

Martha Stewart. I see her every now and then in New York and she is truly special. She has so many different talents and has created so many opportunities. She is 83 years old now, which is incredible, and yet she is still working, doing everything. She is also a very kind and friendly person. So yes, I would say that Martha Stewart inspires me.

This story was originally featured on Fortune.com

“Conscious unbossing” got its name a couple of years ago, when a Robert Walters survey found most young professionals didn’t want to become middle managers. Whether Gen Z actually acts on it is a fair question. Plenty of them still take the manager job, and I get it, the raise for managing is 11% versus 7% for staying an individual contributor, per Glassdoor. But the instinct is real. I know because I had it too, and I’m a former CMO.

Senior people are stepping off the management track and going back to doing the work themselves. From the outside it looks like a demotion, so people don’t advertise it. In tech, where the data is best, it already has a name: SignalFire calls it the “Super IC,” and top individual contributors are starting to get paid like directors. Most of the examples are engineers. I came at it from marketing.

I spent years climbing, from product marketing all the way up to CMO, with a 65-person team at the peak. Then I chose to give up the team and go back to doing the work myself. Today I’m the founding marketer at AGI Inc., and I run the entire function myself, more of it than I ever could with a team behind me. I write my own copy, build my own decks, and own every channel. In the last 4 months, I’ve taken two major partnership announcements from first draft to live, run a full rebrand and rolled it out, and marketed three product directions at once: enterprise, developers, and product-led growth, each with a different audience.

The pace is the part that still surprises me. When I needed a partner newsletter recently, I built the whole thing myself, design and system, in 4 hours, work that used to mean a brief, a designer, and a week of waiting. I’ve run 16 events in the last three months, 10 of my own and 6 co-hosted with partners, each of which used to take a team of three or four, and one of them brought in 4 new hires. I don’t miss running the org.

Managers everywhere seem to be feeling some version of this. Gallup measured manager engagement falling from 27% to 22% in a single year, the biggest one-year drop they’ve ever recorded. The job stopped being worth it for a lot of people.

I’m not the only one who made this move in public. Elena Verna, one of the best-known growth leaders in tech, gave up the head of growth role at Lovable late last year to go back to hands-on work. Then she shipped an enterprise pricing page by herself, in hours. That page used to take a product manager, a designer, and an engineering team. She has a name for people like us, the “high-impact IC”: usually an ex-leader who can carry a project from idea to shipped, alone.

Here’s what changed. The old career math said your worth scaled with your headcount, because you needed the bodies to get anything done. AI broke that. In Microsoft’s latest work trend report, two-thirds of people using AI said it frees them up for better work, and more than half said they’re making things they couldn’t have made a year ago. That’s my experience exactly. With AI, I get through what used to take a whole team.

Early in your career, the raise data is right, and becoming a manager is still the fastest way to get paid more. At the senior level that stops being true. I used to be valued for how many people reported to me. Now I’m valued for how good I am at the work itself. In tech, that’s already showing up in comp, with the best individual contributors starting to out-earn the managers above them.

What did I get back? Sharper instincts, because you can’t feel what’s working from a status meeting. You feel it when you’re in it. And time for the thing I’ve always been best at, which is connecting people and ideas. That job is the same whether I’m running a marketing org or a 10,000-person community.

The same AI that lets me skip a management layer also lets me skip the junior hire. The grunt work I used to hand a 23-year-old is the work AI does now, and that grunt work was how the 23-year-old learned the job. PwC found entry-level roles in AI-heavy fields are seven times more likely to ask for senior skills. New-grad hiring in tech is down about 65% since 2019, and marketing hiring is down 36%, per SignalFire. Stanford’s payroll data shows early-career workers in the most exposed jobs down 16%. Running lean works for me. The 23-year-old never gets the chance to learn.

If I ran a company, I’d stop treating management as the only way up. Some of your best people would rather stay in the work than run a team, and now they actually can, so give them a senior track that pays and carries real weight. And I’d rebuild the bottom rung on purpose. Hire young people to run the AI, check it, direct it, catch what it gets wrong, so they build judgment in a couple of years instead of ten. Otherwise, you save money now and have no one to promote later.

Gen Z gave this a name, but people much further into their careers are making the same choice, to do the work instead of managing it. And once you’re back in the work, it stops feeling like a step backwards at all.

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.

Juliana Chyzhova is a GTM strategist with a decade of experience marketing AI products: at Skylum (Luminar), Aftershoot, and now AGI Inc. She co-founded Catalyst Bay, a 10,000-member SF community of founders, operators, and investors, and runs it as a real go-to-market channel. Its stages have featured speakers from OpenAI, Anthropic, JP Morgan, SVB, Deel, Respeecher, and Liquid AI. Across 2026 events: 85,000+ impressions and 3,600+ signups. She created the Audience-Led Launch framework.

This story was originally featured on Fortune.com

The man behind the world’s largest digital encyclopedia talks to Fortune Greece, republished with permission.

There are few digital platforms that have become as quietly indispensable as Wikipedia. With no ads, no subscriptions, and none of the noise that typically accompanies anything “big” on the internet, it has been operating for nearly a quarter of a century as the most stable knowledge infrastructure of the digital world. Behind it stands Jimmy Wales, a founder who seems almost stubbornly resistant to the logic of Silicon Valley.

Today, in an environment where truth is constantly questioned, artificial intelligence is reshaping our relationship with knowledge, and trust in institutions is at historical lows, Jimmy Wales appears almost unconventional. He doesn’t make any reference to disruption, nor does he promise technological “revolutions.” Instead, he insists on something far simpler—and far more difficult: the pursuit of transparency, verification, and group responsibility.

The story of Wikipedia is now well known. What matters more today is not how it began, but how it endured—and what it means to remain relevant in an ecosystem that evolves faster than ever. There is something oddly reassuring about talking to someone whose creation has become so deeply embedded in our daily lives that it’s hard to remember what the world looked like before it. It’s not just the scale of the project. It’s his commitment to principles that sound obvious, but in practice feel almost radical.

At a time when information is becoming increasingly “easy,” Jimmy Wales insists that understanding remains a deeply human process—one of the most hopeful messages not only for the future of Wikipedia, but also for the future of knowledge itself.

Wikipedia has shaped how billions of people access and understand knowledge. Nearly 25 years on, how has it managed to remain sustainable without ads or paywalls?

The model has worked very well from the beginning, and we see no reason to change it. We have incredibly strong support from the public. The average donation to Wikipedia is about $10, we have millions of donors, and many of them give year after year.

This model also brings important advantages. We are not dependent on advertising revenue, nor are we under pressure to chase sensational headlines to drive traffic. That allows us to remain calm and consistent – and that matters.

You’ve argued that tech companies should be paying to train their AI models on Wikipedia’s content. If Wikipedia becomes a core data source for AI, how do you ensure it remains a public good?

One of Wikipedia’s defining features is that all of its content is freely licensed, similar to open-source software. Anyone can use it, modify it, and redistribute it, for commercial or non-commercial purposes, at no cost.

We don’t charge AI companies to use our data, and under our licensing model, we couldn’t. What concerns us is how that data is used. When the use of Wikipedia puts a significant burden on our infrastructure, it needs to be done in a more structured and fair way, through systems we can manage.

It’s not reasonable for our millions of donors, who contribute an average of around $10, to subsidize large technology companies. They are supporting our mission.

That said, things are moving in the right direction. Most major AI companies are beginning to recognize that they need to be fair to Wikipedia. At the same time, our mission is free knowledge for everyone. In that sense, it is a good thing for AI to be trained on Wikipedia data. I wouldn’t want to use an AI trained only on X. It would be a very stupid and angry AI.

Wikipedia was built on a model where users search, read, and evaluate information. Today, AI delivers ready-made answers. Does that concern you, in the sense that it might make people more passive towards information?

I use AI extensively, and in my experience, it actually makes you more active, not more passive. Instead of simply reading a travel article, for example, you can ask questions, go deeper, and explore a topic in more detail. The same applies to programming, which I do as a hobby. I’m not particularly skilled, but AI helps me understand concepts—as long as you use it properly, asking for explanations and following up with more complex questions.

Of course, not everyone will use it that way. It’s a complex picture. But overall, I don’t think AI leads to passive consumption of knowledge.

So, the issue isn’t just the technology, but how we use it. What does human collaboration still do better than AI when it comes to reliable knowledge?

One of the core problems with AI today is what we call “hallucinations.” Large language models work by predicting the next word based on what came before, choosing what seems most likely. The results can be impressive. We’ve all seen AI produce responses that sound coherent and reasonable. But that doesn’t mean it actually understands reality or facts.

In practice, the more obscure the topic, the higher the error rate. If you ask about someone like Taylor Swift, the answer will probably be accurate. But if you ask about a lesser-known subject, the model may start inventing things—because it wants to provide a complete and confident answer.

That’s why we don’t allow AI to be used to write Wikipedia articles. It can support parts of the process, and that will likely increase in the future. But at the level of final authorship, the error rate is still too high.

How does Wikipedia protect itself from AI-generated or plausible but incorrect information?

Wikipedia operates on strict sourcing standards. Much of our time is spent discussing the reliability and quality of sources. If someone adds information without proper sourcing, it is immediately challenged. Other editors ask where it comes from, and if it proves false, the edit is quickly reverted. Repeated violations can lead to bans.

Detecting AI use is difficult. What matters is the quality of the work. That’s why we discourage using AI to write articles—it often introduces information that sounds plausible but isn’t true.

And that’s the real challenge. These systems don’t produce obviously absurd errors. They produce errors that sound entirely believable. If an AI claimed Taylor Swift was the first person on Mars, you’d immediately dismiss it. But if it gets a relative’s name wrong or invents a plausible album, you might not notice. That’s what makes it difficult.

What happens when a new editor adds incorrect or poorly sourced information?

Typically, the edit is reverted, and other users ask for clarification.

There was a case in the German Wikipedia where someone was adding book references using ISBN numbers. At first, the errors seemed like typos, but eventually, it became clear the books didn’t exist. The user explained that they were new and had used an AI tool to generate references, without realizing it could fabricate ISBN numbers or books.

That’s the danger: the output looks convincing but is entirely false. In that case, it was a good-faith mistake. The user apologized and wasn’t banned. But if they had continued, they would have been.

What are the most common mistakes Wikipedia editors make?

For newcomers, the biggest mistake is not understanding the need for neutral writing. Wikipedia is not X. The goal is a calm, balanced presentation of information. Sourcing is equally important—especially high-quality sources.

As for the size of the community, it’s hard to measure precisely. Someone who makes one edit isn’t necessarily part of it. But among regular editors, there are roughly 60,000 to 80,000 globally. A smaller group of around 5,000 highly active users does most of the work.

Wikipedia operates in a highly polarized geopolitical environment. How difficult is it to defend against coordinated influence?

Some of these challenges have always existed. There will always be people trying to push an agenda, and we deal with that continuously. But the bigger issue today is the decline of local media and journalism. It’s becoming increasingly difficult to document the history of smaller communities.

In many parts of the world, it’s easier to write about a city in 1975, when there was a local newspaper, than today, when there may be none. That’s a real problem, and we don’t yet have a solution.

The broader decline in public discourse is a societal issue, but it doesn’t affect Wikipedia in the same way. We still rely on quality journalism and credible sources, and we’re careful about how we use them.

In a world where political and social polarization has become the new normal, do you think we can return to a more balanced public discourse?

It’s a good question. This period is certainly unusual, though I’m not sure there has ever been a truly “normal” time. A friend of mine used to say, “I’m always waiting for life to get back to normal so I can do certain things—but it never does.” He was talking about everyday life with kids, but there’s truth in that.

It may feel like things were calmer a few years ago. I often point to the era of John McCain and Barack Obama—there were disagreements, but also a level of respect. I think we can return to something like that, because people want it. There’s real dissatisfaction with the current toxic environment. The question is how—and that’s exactly what my book, The Seven Rules of Trust, is about.

English-language Wikipedia has enormous influence over how the world understands events, people, and histories. How do you address bias, and how do you ensure that smaller languages, such as Greek, are not left on the margins?

Wikipedia operates in more than 300 languages. Some communities are small, but there are more than 100 that are particularly active and vibrant, including the Greek one. There is constant communication among users across different language editions. English often serves as a common language, but in many parts of the world, local languages remain just as critical. The idea of neutrality is discussed and developed collectively, as a global principle that runs through the entire project.

At the Wikimedia Foundation, we study how this principle is applied across different linguistic environments. In some smaller editions, there is not yet a formally written neutrality policy – not because neutrality is rejected, but because it has not yet been codified. That also shows the different nuances the concept of neutrality can carry.

One example I often use is the question of who invented the airplane. In the English-speaking world, the answer is almost obvious: the Wright brothers. In other countries, however, the story may be different. And in reality, the history is more complex than we tend to think. This points to something essential: very often, we carry biases without even realizing it. Wikipedia works precisely as a mechanism that brings those different perspectives to the surface, allowing for a fuller account of reality.

Even in highly conflicted environments, this approach works. If you compare, for example, the Russian and Ukrainian Wikipedias, you’ll see that, despite the differences, they are surprisingly similar in their effort to explain events. And that is something we can be very proud of.

Can Wikipedia help people understand the perspective of “the other side,” even when they deeply disagree with it?

Absolutely. One of the most valuable things Wikipedia can offer is that, in times of conflict, it allows you to understand the other side’s point of view. You may still disagree, but at least you understand the reasoning behind it.

I remember a striking experience in Taiwan. A young volunteer, who was accompanying me to a series of meetings, explained that he had grown up in a strongly nationalist environment, where he had been taught that people from mainland China had been brainwashed and did not understand the facts. Through his involvement with Wikipedia, he came into contact with users from mainland China. And, as he told me, although he still disagreed with them on many issues, he could now understand where their views were coming from.

For me, that is a meaningful step toward understanding. You don’t have to agree with someone. It is enough to recognize them as a human being with reasons and arguments. From there, a real conversation can begin – and that is fundamental.

In your book, The Seven Rules of Trust, you write that transparency is hardest precisely when an organization has something to hide. What does that mean for a CEO who needs to protect the company’s reputation while also preserving public trust?

That is exactly where the difficulty lies. Transparency is important, but it becomes truly critical when you have something to hide. When something goes wrong, the temptation to cover it up or avoid responsibility is strong. But that is a choice that rarely works in the long term. People – customers, partners, employees – can forgive a mistake. What they do not forgive easily is denial and dishonesty.

The story of Airbnb is a good example. When a crisis of trust broke out after a property was damaged, the company’s initial response was defensive and inadequate. Very quickly, though, they realized that without trust, there is no sustainable business model. They took responsibility, admitted the mistake, and made meaningful changes. That shift proved decisive for their trajectory.

It takes courage to say, “We got it wrong.” Once you choose to deny it or cover it up, the problem doesn’t shrink – it multiplies.

Do you see more fear or pride among today’s leaders when it comes time to admitting a mistake?

We definitely see it, and in an almost pathological way. At the same time, we can also see the results, because people no longer trust their leaders.

In reality, admitting a mistake would be far more effective. When a leader takes responsibility, people are willing to say, “Okay, move forward and do better.” By contrast, persistent denial and excessive pride undermine credibility and, ultimately, push the public even further away.

At a time when many companies struggle to keep employees engaged and connected to their mission, Wikipedia relies on thousands of people who contribute voluntarily. What keeps this ecosystem alive?

One of the seven rules in the book is to have a clear reason for existing. In our case, that purpose is simple and very specific. Many companies also have a strong core of values. The challenge is being able to express it clearly. When that happens, decision-making becomes easier: everyone knows why the organization exists, and it avoids being pulled in random, opportunistic directions.

Even in a seemingly “simple” field – say, making cardboard boxes – there can be real substance. If you define your goal as making the best possible products in an area the world genuinely needs, then you have a clear direction. And when that direction is clear, it aligns everything: decisions, priorities, and ultimately the way an organization operates.

Alternative knowledge models are now emerging alongside Wikipedia, based more on AI and less on human curation. Elon Musk, for example, argues that machines can be more objective than humans. How do you respond to that?

I don’t think that’s true. Elon argues that his model can be more neutral than Wikipedia. In practice, however, it seems to align with some of his own, rather unusual, political views. And to me, that is not neutrality.

The core issue is transparency. We don’t know how the content is produced, what data the AI has been trained on, or what instructions it has been given. Without that visibility, trust becomes extremely difficult. You can use it to understand a particular view of the world. But that is not the same as an objective account of reality.

Wikipedia has strict criteria regarding who is considered “notable.” What does “notability” really mean to you?

I’ve always thought the term “notability” is not ideal. It sounds as if we are judging whether someone is important or worthy of attention. My mother is very important to me, but that doesn’t mean she should have a Wikipedia entry.

In reality, what matters to us is verifiability. Are there sufficient, reliable, independent sources that allow us to write a responsible biography? If the only source is your personal blog, that is not enough. You can write anything, but is it true? Is it complete? Are key facts missing? Ultimately, that is the core criterion. Not how “important” someone appears to be, but whether the information can be documented in a reliable way.

There are people who may not be widely recognizable, but who have made meaningful contributions to science, public life, or a specific field. How does Wikipedia approach them?

Of course. If we take scientists as an example, some are widely known and there are many sources about their lives and work. Others, equally important, are recognized mainly through their scientific work, and the available sources are different in nature.

In any case, if someone has made a meaningful contribution and there is sufficient, reliable information to document it, even in the form of a short biography, then they deserve to be on Wikipedia. Contribution matters, but only when it can be documented in a reliable way.

How do you imagine Wikipedia over the next 25 years, in a world where technology and the way we consume information are constantly changing?

Broadly speaking, the path remains steady. Wikipedia has existed for almost 25 years and, looking ahead to the next 25, I don’t see its core changing: it will continue to function as an encyclopedia, serving the same purpose.

Of course, technology will evolve. Artificial intelligence will increasingly be used as a tool to support the work of editors, not as a substitute for human judgment. The way people search for and consume information will also change. Still, Wikipedia’s fundamental mission remains unchanged: the reliable and free dissemination of knowledge.

On a personal level, I approach things with the same philosophy. I focus on what I find interesting and meaningful at any given moment, whether that has to do with Wikipedia or broader questions around trust, technology, and society. What motivates me is curiosity and the opportunity to work on ideas that have real impact. And above all, I still enjoy it.

This story was originally featured on Fortune.com

This is a conversation with Fortune Greece CEO Tasos Zachos, reprinted with permission.

The second act of artificial intelligence will not be judged by models alone. It will be judged by how economies manage to turn technology into real productivity. After almost two years of impressive demonstrations and incessant discussions around large language models, the global economy is entering a new phase. The question is no longer who has the most powerful AI tool, but which organizations — and which countries — have the skills, leadership and infrastructure to harness the technology at scale. That is, to become the region’s Frontier AI leaders.

In Southern Europe, this transition is already underway. Greece, Portugal, Italy and other markets in the region are trying to move from simply adopting AI tools to creating an ecosystem that combines human capital, universities, startups, the public sector and modern digital infrastructure.

“I see Greece as more than a market; I see it as an innovation hub,” Charles Calestroupat, Microsoft’s Vice President for Southern Europe, told Fortune Greece. Responsible for 17 markets in the region, he believes that the country now has several of the ingredients needed to evolve into a regional AI hub: an increasingly mature innovation ecosystem, public digital initiatives such as mAigov, growing investments in cloud and data centers and, more importantly, people with the right skills.

If skills are the foundation of this transition, then the role of large organizations becomes decisive. In this context, Microsoft, through the GR for GRowth initiative, has already contributed to the training of 100,000 people — professionals in the public and private sectors, as well as students and unemployed — in digital skills, in pursuit of a transition that will be essentially inclusive. The aim, as highlighted by this strategy, is not only to accelerate the digital transformation, but also to ensure that no one is left behind. “Greece ranks 1^st in terms of the use of AI by Gen Z in Europe,” says Charles Calestroupat, who also points out that everything will be determined by the ability of organizations to redesign the way they work, invest in the skills of their people, and build the required trust for AI to produce measurable business value.

From individual initiative to corporate infrastructure

The Work Trend Index Report for 2025 is indicative of the direction of change globally, but especially for Southern Europe. 46% of organizations worldwide automate workflows through AI agents and 82% of leaders plan to integrate them within 12-18 months. Despite this development, a hierarchical gap emerges, as 67% of executives claim that they are familiar with advanced AI tools, compared to only 40% of employees, highlighting the need for equal training and access. Especially for Southern Europe, the integration of AI agents is an opportunity for digital transformation and the bridging of the productivity gap, requiring the transition from experimentation to systematic use, especially for frontline employees. Success depends on investing in structural reskilling, transforming employees into managers of autonomous digital assistants.

“AI is not just an assistant. It is an enabler, in the sense that you can think of your work as if you were the boss of agents, which means there are three phases. The first phase is really about being assisted by AI to complete a task. The second phase is about using agents to accomplish specific end-to-end tasks. And the third phase is about creating teams of agents that remain under the control of a human, and you manage them. This is the best way to create value at the company level,” says Calestroupat.

Becoming a Frontier Firm

What successful organizations that want to be at the forefront of AI (Frontier Firms) do is, first, change the way they design their work, that is, change their processes to accommodate AI. They don’t just try to apply AI to previous processes – they change them. Second, they focus AI deployment on core business processes to make sure they get tangible business value from AI deployment. And finally, they organize data governance, which means that they deal with everything related to privacy, security, data protection and quality, in order to ensure that AI can be based on reliable data.

“Being successful means being able to measure tangible business outcomes. So, start with a vision and top-down strategy, and then focus on the top business priorities. And make sure you have solid AI governance with data protection compliance,” adds Microsoft’s Vice President for Southern Europe.

The obstacles that have to be overcome, and demand for AI skills

In the effort to integrate artificial intelligence to increase productivity, there are still significant obstacles. One of the most important is the transformation paradox, which is observed mainly in Europe.

Calestroupat commented: “65% of people are afraid of being left behind in terms of AI transformation … at the same time, 45% think that it is better for them to stay in a safe zone and not try to fail. And only 13% believe that their organization will value the fact that they adopt a learn – test – fail mentality. So, we really need to build cultures that will accelerate learning and a mindset of transformation.”

The paradox of transformation starts with the companies themselves and the structure of the market in Southern Europe, which mainly consists of SMEs. In some cases, these SMEs are looking for specific skills and cannot find them yet, in others the overall demand for new skills still remains low.

The above is already reflected in labor market data. According to Intellectica’s Skills Demand-Supply Intensity Index (SDSI), the largest skills shortages in Greece are currently found in Cloud & DevOps, cybersecurity, software engineering and AI. Although the demand for AI skills remains lower than in other European markets, such as Portugal and Cyprus, this picture mainly reflects the lower level of adoption of AI by Greek companies. Intellectica believes, however, that this lag can be turned into an advantage, giving workers and organizations time to invest in upskilling before demand increases significantly, especially with the support of a broader innovation ecosystem.

The infrastructure powering AI

The growth potential in the region remains significant. But skills alone are not enough. The AI ​​economy also requires a new generation of high-performance, data storage and low-latency infrastructure – from data centers and cloud infrastructure to energy networks and international connectivity networks.

For Microsoft in particular, Athens is being upgraded to a central administrative hub for the whole of Southern Europe. The Greek office, which up until recently managed Greece, Cyprus and Malta, has taken over, under the leadership of Yanna Andronopoulou, the management of a total of 12 markets, including the entire Adriatic region and Bulgaria. This transforms Athens into a regional hub. In addition, an investment of €1 billion is underway to create a complex of three data centers in Eastern Attica, which will form the Azure Cloud Region Greece Central, the company’s first integrated cloud region in the country.

The presence of the American technology giant in Eastern Attica is one of the strongest signals of the region’s transition to a new digital infrastructure map for SE Europe. The geographical location of the region, the energy infrastructure and access to international telecommunications networks create the conditions for the formation of a new digital corridor, which includes investments from all over the world.

Among the most important investments is the new AI-ready data center of EDGNEX Data Centers, a joint venture of PPC Group and DAMAC from UAE. At the same time, US firm Digital Realty has already created the largest data center campus in Greece, with more than €400 million in investments and four facilities in Attica and Crete. The company positions Greece as a strategic hub connecting Europe with the Eastern Mediterranean, Asia and North Africa, using exclusively renewable energy sources.

Additionally, new international investors are entering the market. Apto, an investment vehicle of Pimco, in collaboration with Dromeus Capital, is planning the Data Center Olive hyperscale project, worth up to €770 million, which will add significant computing power to the Greek market over the next decade.

Taken together, these developments are creating the conditions for Southern Europe to move from AI ambition to AI execution. Βy creating organizations that can transform into Frontier Firms, incorporating predictive intelligence and autonomous digital assistants, investing in structural reskilling of staff so that employees can safely guide AI tools, and ensuring that investments in “local” data centers continue. In other words, by turning the theory of Frontier Transformation into direct business action.

This story was originally featured on Fortune.com

Harvard Management Co. disclosed a $2.2 billion stake in SpaceX, showing how the university’s endowment has profited from an early bet on Elon Musk’s giant rocket company.

Harvard reported it holds the position in its 13F filing on Friday, revealing it’s one of the largest endowment holders of the stock. Space Exploration Technologies Corp. is the largest single stock disclosed in the filing, which shows Harvard held $4.3 billion of US equities. Harvard oversaw $57 billion as of June 2025, the latest publicly available figure. 

SpaceX’s record-breaking initial public offering in June has boosted returns for college endowments that made investments through venture capital firms, sometimes more than a decade ago. 

Others that have profited include the University of California’s investment arm, which reported in a filing this week a position worth about $1 billion, as well as the University of North Carolina and Washington University in St. Louis.  

Harvard’s holdings potentially reflect both directly owned shares and distribution from private funds. Patrick McKiernan, a spokesman for Harvard Management, declined to comment on individual investments. 

The gains from SpaceX, which currently has a more than $1.8 trillion valuation, come at time when US university finances are constrained from threats to federal research funding, a smaller pool of college-age students due to demographic changes and muted returns from private equity. Endowment funds with more than $500 million returned a median of 18.9% before fees in the year ended in June, according to Wilshire Trust Universe Comparison Service.

SpaceX shares have fluctuated since the company debuted at $135. Shares fell 0.9% on Friday, closing at $140.

Money managers overseeing more than $100 million in US equities have to file a 13F form within 45 days of the end of each quarter to list their holdings in stocks that trade on US exchanges.

This story was originally featured on Fortune.com

Alibaba Group Holding’s open-weight models have accumulated more than 3 billion global downloads in the past six months, eclipsing Meta Platforms Inc., Alphabet Inc. and domestic peers to become the world’s No. 1 artificial-intelligence model.

Qwen, Alibaba’s family of AI models, has open-sourced more than 460 models and its ecosystem has spawned 300,000-plus derivatives, the Chinese technology company said in an emailed statement. Google, part of Alphabet, had 418 million downloads while Meta stood at 227 million in 2026, according to popular open-source AI hub Hugging Face Inc., which published a state of open models report on Aug. 14.

Open models can be downloaded, customized and used as building blocks for new AI products, making adoption a gauge of which technologies developers are choosing to build on. That has made download and derivative-model figures one measure of influence in the US-China AI race, as Chinese developers including Alibaba push capable models that are relatively cheap and easy to adapt. Qwen’s rise suggests that strategy is gaining traction beyond China.

Qwen along with Moonshot AI Inc, DeepSeek and Chinese AI model builders are replicating frontier performance, seeking to bridge the gap with closed models in US, such as OpenAI Inc. and Anthropic PBC. Export controls on chips and AI systems, such as the brief ban on overseas access to Anthropic’s Fable 5 model this summer, don’t appear to be putting the brakes on Chinese competitors.

Alibaba’s download data for Qwen makes it “one of the largest foundations of the open AI ecosystem,” the Hugging Face report said. The Hangzhou-based cloud, e-commerce and AI tech company is making gains over local rivals DeepSeek, Moonshot Kimi and MiniMax as well as US models. 

“Qwen has become part of the default workflow for developers deciding what models to fine-tune and deploy,” the report said.

A broad model family can create a self-reinforcing ecosystem: more developers adopt the models, more derivative versions are built, and that in turn draws in new users. Alibaba has bolstered that cycle by distributing Qwen through its cloud platform to enterprise customers in markets including Southeast Asia and Africa, giving it a reach that many rivals lack.

US tech giants are responding. In recent weeks, Meta and Nvidia Corp. have released new open AI models as competition for developers intensifies.

This story was originally featured on Fortune.com

Treasury Secretary Scott Bessent says the US is getting ready to squeeze Iran with unprecedented economic pressure, a claim critics greeted with skepticism given the country is already subject to a naval blockade and thousands of sanctions.

While the Trump administration hasn’t said what it’s planning to do, there are still pressure points that Bessent’s Treasury Department could hit. The main challenge is that targeting the remaining options risk blowback on the US economy. 

“Unless the president decides to prioritize addressing the Iran threat over all other issues, and namely China, it’s unlikely any action they take is going to materially change Iran’s calculus,” Bloomberg Economics analyst Chris Kennedy said.

Below is a look at a few options. They’re far from exhaustive and it remains unclear which, if any, the administration will pursue. Officials could combine several of these measures or opt for a different approach altogether.

China Ties

China buys more than 90% of Iran’s oil exports. Penalties on entities that facilitate these purchases would directly reduce Tehran’s oil revenues.

Washington has already sanctioned some Chinese teapot refineries and firms since the US started the war against Iran in late February. But so far, the US has stopped short of targeting the major Chinese banks that finance the trade.

GLOBAL REACT: Bessent’s Iran Threats Face China Constraint

The risk is that hitting Chinese companies or financial institutions risks worsening tensions with Beijing ahead of a planned meeting between President Donald Trump and Chinese leader Xi Jinping. There’s also an economic tradeoff, since curtailing Iranian barrels would remove discounted crude from the global market and could lift already elevated oil prices.

In May, China ordered domestic companies not to comply with US sanctions on five refiners, while its biggest banks were caught between Beijing’s directive and the risk of losing access to the US financial system.

Exchange Houses

There are a number of exchange houses in countries such as the United Arab Emirates that help Iran repatriate funds. Once Iran makes its oil sales, it still needs exchanges and intermediaries to convert payments — often received in Chinese yuan — into currencies Tehran can actually use.

Treasury has already demonstrated that it sees this as a vulnerability, sanctioning some Iranian exchange houses, as part of Bessent’s “Economic Fury” campaign, for allegedly helping to launderbillions of dollars in foreign currency.

Such a move would keep Iran from accessing many of its funds, but Iran has spent years building alternative channels to move money outside the formal financial system. Cutting off individual exchange houses will likely push transactions toward new intermediaries, currencies or digital assets, rather than stopping them altogether.

Iran’s Trading Partners 

The US could threaten secondary sanctions on any entity doing even limited business with Iran, similar to the approach Trump took toward North Korea in 2017. That could force foreign companies and banks to choose between doing business with Iran and retaining access to the US financial system, potentially extending Washington’s leverage well beyond entities directly involved in Tehran’s oil trade.

Such a move could put additional pressure on Russia and China, but also on companies and financial institutions in countries around Iran’s borders — including US partners like Turkey — that maintain significant commercial ties with Tehran.

Trump has already floated a version of this approach, threatening 25% tariffs on countries conducting business with Iran. So far he hasn’t followed through.

Overseas Assets

The US could go beyond freezing Iranian government assets and try to confiscate assets already under US jurisdiction, drawing on a step the Bush administration took after the 2003 invasion of Iraq.

However, the pool of Iranian state assets actually within US reach may be limited. And confiscating them would be legally and diplomatically more complicated than simply freezing them. Much of Iran’s overseas wealth is held in third countries and Washington would need cooperation from foreign governments to seize it.

Shadow Fleet

While a US naval blockade has reduced traffic to Iran’s ports, the US may consider a more comprehensive effort. That could target not just individual vessels, but also the companies, terminals and other infrastructure that enables those shipments. The US has already sanctioned vessels and some entities involved in this so-called shadow fleet. 

This story was originally featured on Fortune.com

Anthropic PBC is telling prospective investors its second-quarter revenue jumped at least 14-fold versus the same period a year ago, according to documents seen by Bloomberg News.

The Claude chatbot maker reported a preliminary revenue figure of more than $11.5 billion in its latest completed quarter, compared to $787 million in the corresponding period in 2025, and $4.73 billion in the first quarter of this year, the documents show. The second quarter of 2026 saw Anthropic report positive adjusted operating income, according to the documents.

Deliberations are ongoing and the figures could be revised. A representative for Anthropic declined to comment.

The rapid growth comes as the company battles its longtime rival OpenAI to win over corporate customers. Once considered an underdog in the artificial intelligence race, Anthropic has seen a surge in professionals adopting its software to streamline tasks including coding.

Anthropic’s annualized revenue or run rate crossed $47 billion in May. OpenAI has an annual run rate of over $40 billion, Bloomberg News reported, though the two figures may not be calculated the same way.

Read More: OpenAI’s Revenue Run Rate Tops $40 Billion Ahead of IPO

The company is meeting with investors ahead of its potential mega-IPO, people familiar with the matter said in July. Anthropic filed confidentially for a listing, and is working with Morgan Stanley, Goldman Sachs Group Inc. and JPMorgan Chase & Co. on the IPO, Bloomberg News has reported.

Anthropic is seeking to tap the public market’s ample funding capacity to maintain its lead over OpenAI and others, as AI companies spend hundreds of billions of dollars to develop the most cutting-edge models.

An IPO this fall would see Anthropic debut not only before OpenAI but also before DeepSeek, the Chinese AI firm that has been grabbing an increasing share of the market for the technology. DeepSeek is preparing for an IPO and could file as soon as this year, people familiar with the matter have said.

Read More: DeepSeek Is Said to Prepare for IPO Filing as Soon as This Year

The AI race has fired up the IPO market, with listings this year raising $256.4 billion, excluding blank-check firms and other financial vehicles, according to data compiled by Bloomberg. That’s the most raised in a year since 2021, the data show.

This story was originally featured on Fortune.com

Jane Street posted roughly $15 billion of losses in July — its first monthly slump in about a decade — as AI-focused hedge fund Situational Awareness swooned and dragged down asset prices across equity markets, according to a person familiar with the matter.

Jane Street, which invests in Situational Awareness and directly invests in AI ventures, suffered a rare and severe downturn amid volatile stock markets. The company’s investment in the hedge fund, as well as wrong-way bets in Asian equity markets, drove part of the losses, said the person, who asked not to be identified citing private details.

“July was a bad month,” Turner Batty, a Jane Street partner, said in an internal note.

Still, the firm has generated more than $40 billion of net trading revenue so far this year, more than it did in all of 2025 when it set a Wall Street record, the person said.

“Despite the large year-to-date increase in trading capital, the recency of these losses has caused us to locally be more selective about risk,” Batty said. “We’ve closed a significant portion of our risk in the specific areas we lost on in July, and have also reduced risk-taking in other strategies.”

The market maker described the impact of the debacle at Situational Awareness while seeking to refinance billions of dollars of debt, according to the Financial Times, which earlier reported the loss.

Jane Street was rattled by Situational Awareness and the equity market turmoil as it was preparing to issue $14.6 billion of bonds this week to overhaul its debt load. It’s a stumble for the market maker that invested early in some of AI’s biggest players, including Anthropic PBC and CoreWeave Inc., adding to profits from its business handling thousands of trades within milliseconds. 

In July, Situational Awareness faced margin calls after AI bets soured, leading the hedge fund to strike a deal with Ken Griffin’s Citadel to offload a big chunk of its public equity book. While the last-minute transaction helped the fund recover, the initial stumble led to a dwindling of assets.

Jane Street said Situational Awareness’ drawdown left its stake flat on the year, but noted that the investment is still up over the life of the bet. 

Read More: Silicon Valley Rallies Around AI Whiz Kid After Fund’s Near Miss

Jane Street has been setting record after record in recent years, including $39.6 billion of trading revenue for 2025. While the figure includes gains on long-term investments as well as the work handling trades, it surpassed Wall Street peers including Goldman Sachs Group Inc. and JPMorgan Chase & Co. 

Read More: Jane Street Snatches Wall Street Crown With Record-Breaking Haul

In Jane Street’s latest debt deal, investors including Pacific Investment Management Co., Capital Group and Fidelity bought in, which was issued across three bonds, filings show. The refinancing allowed the market maker to fund technology infrastructure and expand its trading strategies, Bloomberg previously reported.

The new fixed-rate deal, led by JPMorgan Chase & Co., is part of Jane Street’s plan to repay its floating-rate loans and revamp its $11 billion capital stack. 

Batty said in the internal note that the desks have reduced exposures in strategies that contributed to volatility.

“Our positions currently seem appropriate for our present risk tolerance,” he said. “Market volumes have been strong, and we’ve continued to make improvements to our short time horizon strategies, that trading seems more profitable than ever.”

This story was originally featured on Fortune.com

Nvidia Corp. on Friday disclosed a nearly $21 billion stake in Elon Musk’s SpaceX and a $30 billion one in Intel Corp. 

The AI chipmaking giant had about 122.8 million shares in SpaceX as of June 30, according to a regulatory filing made Friday. It held about 214.8 million in Intel. 

The disclosure marks the first time that Nvidia has given the value of its SpaceX position since it invested in Musk’s artificial intelligence startup xAI, which was folded into SpaceX ahead of an unprecedented public debut earlier this year. Nvidia had put as much as $2 billion into xAI in 2025 by way of a financing that included equity and debt in a special purpose vehicle designed to buy its processors for xAI’s massive computing project, Bloomberg reported at the time. 

The value of Nvidia’s stake in Intel has skyrocketed from just three months earlier when it was worth roughly $9.5 billion, based on regulatory filings. That investment dates back to last year when Nvidia agreed to invest $5 billion in Intel and announced the two would co-develop chips for personal computers and data centers in what was seen at the time as a surprise move that would prop up an ailing archrival. 

Nvidia also had stakes in Coherent Corp., Generate Biomedicines Inc., Nebius Group NV, Nokia Corp. and Synopsys Inc. as of June 30. 

This story was originally featured on Fortune.com

Iran and Oman appear to be edging closer to a deal on how the Strait of Hormuz should be managed, agreeing on routes through the key waterway that’s proved a major stumbling block in efforts to end almost six months of war between the Islamic Republic and the US. 

The finalization of a “shipping map” forms part of a broader accord to govern traffic through the strait and constitutes an independent arrangement between the two states that will uphold their sovereignty and ensure the safe transit of vessels, Defa Press cited Iranian Foreign Ministry spokesman Esmail Baghaei as saying. The state-run news agency didn’t spell out whether ships will be charged transit fees or what security arrangements would be made for them, saying another phase of talks would be held. 

The move follows a series of attacks in Hormuz, through which a fifth of the world’s oil and gas transited before the war. The US wasn’t party to its negotiation and is unlikely to agree to terms that don’t restore free passage along the route linking the Persian Gulf to the Gulf of Oman and the Arabian Sea. 

The price of Brent crude, the global benchmark, rose almost 6% this week as hopes faded of a quick resolution to a deadlock that’s disrupted the flow of oil and other key commodities to global markets. There had been some 65 confirmed incidents involving vessels in Hormuz and the broader Middle East during the conflict and 17 seafarers had died as of Aug. 11, according to the International Maritime Organization.

Attacks have continued since then, with the UK Maritime Trade Operations saying on Saturday that it had been notified of a projectile striking the hull of a bulk carrier. And two Abu Dhabi National Oil Co. vessels were struck while transiting Hormuz on Thursday and another was hit on Friday evening, according to reports from the United Arab Emirates’ state-run WAM news. 

Meanwhile, the US is readying new economic measures to force Tehran to capitulate in the war, which began when America and Israel launched air strikes against the Islamic Republic on Feb. 28 and has claimed thousands of lives — most of them in Iran. 

President Donald Trump told Fox News on Friday that the US plans to hit Iran’s economy hard and he didn’t care if the conflict ends before the November US midterm elections, which will hinge on voter perceptions of the economy. 

In a speech on Long Island Friday, Trump said a US blockade of Iranian ports was a “wall of steel” that enabled Washington to effectively govern Hormuz. “Pretty soon I’ll be declaring the Hormuz strait a territory of the United States,” he said.

Iranian Foreign Minister Abbas Araghchi said an agreement with Oman wouldn’t translate into the strait’s reopening. 

That “is a separate issue. It depends on fulfilling other conditions that the US must abide by for it to take place,” he said on his Telegram channel on Saturday. While Iran is in contact with mediators from Qatar and Pakistan, who are passing messages between Tehran and Washington, “this does not constitute negotiation. We have not yet made a decision to resume negotiations with the US,” he added. 

Trump has struggled to find an off-ramp to the war and his push for renewed economic pressure on Iran comes as the US faces a shortfall of key munitions and mounting domestic opposition to an expanded military campaign.

Iran’s economy has already taken a major hit, with much of its industrial capacity damaged and crude exports severely curtailed by the US blockade, but waves of sanctions have failed to force it to bend on its nuclear program or relinquish control over the strait.

It’s unclear exactly what meaningful additional measures the US could implement without resorting to secondary sanctions on buyers of Iranian oil, such as China. That would likely spark retaliatory action from Beijing and spark more global energy price uncertainty.

Volatility in the Middle East extends beyond the US-Iran conflict. Israel continues to clash with Hezbollah in southern Lebanon and Hamas operatives in Gaza, while the Houthis have attacked ships in the Red Sea. All three groups are backed by Iran. 

Lebanese Prime Minister Nawaf Salam said the Israeli military staged a series of attacks on his country on Saturday, including intensive airstrikes and shelling, that claimed the lives of at least nine people and injured 11. The situation was “of utmost gravity” and undermines efforts for stabilization, he said in a post on X.

Read More: Israel Withdraws Troops From Lebanon Towns in Test of Truce 

The Israel Defense Forces earlier said it had hit Hezbollah infrastructure in the Nabatieh and Ansar areas in southern Lebanon in response to action by the militia, and that it would continue operations to counter threats against its soldiers and nationals.

“Responsibility for dealing with any military structures, if they exist on Lebanese territory, lies exclusively with the Lebanese state,” Salam said, adding that those who had been killed couldn’t be considered military targets. 

The latest upsurge in violence threatens to derail a US-brokered ceasefire between the Israeli and Lebanese governments that provides for Hezbollah’s disarmament. It also envisions the IDF eventually withdrawing from territory it has occupied and that the Lebanese army will step in to maintain security.  

This story was originally featured on Fortune.com

 It is among the most famous phrases in presidential history: “ The buck stops here.” Except with President Donald Trump, it almost never does.

Concerns about a weak economy and still-high inflation? His predecessor, Joe Biden, saddled him with that, he says, even though the Democrat has been out of office for 18-plus months and despite Trump once promising an immediate turnaround.

The problem-plagued revamp of the Lincoln Memorial Reflecting Pool? That was marred by vandalism, the Republican president insists, even though the office of a prosecutor he put in the job has said the damage was due to shoddy workmanship.

The increasingly unpopular war in Iran that has kept oil prices high, Trump’s approval rating low and sent shock waves through the global economy? Actually, this was Trump making up for timid earlier presidents who, he argues, squandered nearly 50 years of opportunities to curb Tehran’s nuclear ambitions.

Pithy slogans aside, all modern presidents shift responsibility onto others to some degree, frequently blaming the commander-in-chief who preceded them, Congress — or both. But Trump has taken it to a new level, effectively embracing a de facto political strategy of being in charge of everything but responsible for nothing when things go badly.

“Taking responsibility being a characteristic of presidential leadership — or any kind of leadership — is absolutely true,” said Nicole Anslover, a history professor at Florida Atlantic University and author of “Harry S. Truman: The Coming of the Cold War.”

Trump’s tendency to point fingers at others is increasingly in the spotlight before November’s midterm elections, when Republicans are trying to retain control of Congress. His unwillingness to accept blame sometimes leads him to deny that there are problems at all, and could leave GOP leaders in tight races with little reassurance for voters that their concerns are being addressed.

The White House counters that Trump is working to correct long-festering challenges, not simply throwing up his hands and ignoring them.

The president is “rightfully addressing the failures of his predecessors while taking action to deliver big wins for the American people,” spokesperson Taylor Rogers said, pointing to a series of policies that she said Republicans can run on, including tax cuts, efforts to lower prescription drug prices, cracking down on immigration and the U.S.-Mexico border, increasing domestic energy production and a strong stock market.

Ducking responsibility dates to Trump’s first term

Truman famously kept a “The Buck Stops Here” sign on his desk as president. That came from “pass the buck,” which, according to Truman’s presidential library, dates to frontier times, when poker players would pass a buckhorn handle knife to the person whose turn it was to deal the cards.

“The president, whoever he is, has to decide,” Truman said during his farewell address in 1953. “He can’t pass the buck to anybody. No one else can do the deciding for him. That’s his job.”

The understanding of the phrase has broadened over the years to include taking responsibility for the outcome of tough decisions. Trump used to espouse similar beliefs, saying back in 2013 that in running a business, “Whatever happens, you’re responsible. If it doesn’t happen, you’re responsible.”

Accepting the 2016 presidential nomination, Trump said, “Nobody knows the system better than me, which is why I alone can fix it.” But as president, he has often suggested that the solution and blame rest elsewhere.

“The buck stops with everybody,” Trump said in 2019, during a lengthy government shutdown. In 2020, on the same day he declared the coronavirus pandemic a national emergency, he said, “I don’t take responsibility at all” for a lack of COVID-19 testing.

Anslover said Truman took full responsibility for dropping atomic bombs on Japan even though he was not informed that the U.S. was developing such weapons until his predecessor, Franklin Delano Roosevelt, died.

John F. Kennedy saw his approval ratings rise after he acknowledged he was to blame for the failed Bay of Pigs invasion in Cuba. Ronald Reagan said he was sorry for any involvement he may have had in the Iran-Contra scandal even while saying he wasn’t sure he was to blame. “The buck stops here with me,” he said then.

At his final news conference in early 2009, George W. Bush listed a series of mistakes he had made, including failing to find weapons of mass destruction in Iraq. His successor, Barack Obama, said, “I screwed up,” after his nominee for health chief, Tom Daschle, withdrew because of unpaid back taxes.

Presidents before Trump “really usually take accountability,” Anslover said.

‘We inherited a total catastrophe,’ Trump says

The president acknowledged in a recent Punchbowl interview that voters are angry, but he said they are not mad at him but at congressional Republicans.

Trump believes his party can hold its congressional majorities after November, but he was clear that if Republicans lose, it won’t be his fault — echoing his comments before the 2018 midterms that he would not accept blame if his party lost control of the House, which it did.

Trump’s approval rating on the economy, once seen as among his strongest issues, has fallen throughout his time in office, from 40% in March 2025 to 32% in July, according to Associated Press-NORC Center for Public Affairs Research polling. About 6 in 10 U.S. adults say Trump’s economic policies have made economic conditions worse, according to Pew Research Center polling.

“The public certainly expects the president to be concerned about, and focused on, making life more affordable,” Republican pollster Frank Luntz said.

Trump instead points to Biden, under whom inflation hit a four-decade peak of 9.1% in 2022 as the pandemic was still roiling the world economy, before declining to 2.7% by November 2024. Last month, pressured by the Iran war, it was 3.4%.

“When we took office, we inherited a total catastrophe,” Trump said at a recent rally, later adding, “I inherited those high prices, just so you understand.”

Andrew Bates, a Democratic strategist and former Biden White House spokesperson, noted that Trump no longer mentions his campaign promise to “immediately end inflation” on Day One.

“He may not remember having made those promises, but swing voters sure as hell do,” Bates said.

Trump has shown the same pattern with Iran and the Reflecting Pool

The president has characterized the Iran war as “a little excursion” or “detour.” To play down how long it has lasted, he frequently notes that U.S. wars in Vietnam and Afghanistan dragged on for years, though the Iran conflict — which he initially said would be over in four weeks to five weeks — is now in its sixth month with no clear end in sight.

Trump has sought to shift blame to the past on the Reflecting Pool, falsely suggesting that Biden and Obama spent “hundreds of millions of dollars” trying unsuccessfully to fix it.

But Trump’s main defense has been vandalism. And, so far, at least four cases alleging that, including the most prominent case against an Olympic canoeist, have been dropped because of a lack of evidence.

Anslover said that, after 11-plus years in politics, Trump has proved he is not afraid to violate norms of presidential comportment. Lots of his core supporters do not seem bothered.

“For many Americans, it has either been a shift in how they view the presidency, or, like with so many things, they just feel empowered to say, ‘These are my priorities. My priority is not the facts,’” she said.

This story was originally featured on Fortune.com

A sales force of more than 100 agents allegedly cold-called thousands of prospective investors with sleek, scripted pitches for shares in the most exclusive private tech companies in the world, including SpaceX, Anduril, Anthropic, and Perplexity, while promising repeatedly there would be no hidden fees.

The agents worked for The Spaventa Group (TSG), a Long Island financial firm founded by Andrew Spaventa, a former broker who spent years selling pre-IPO investments before founding TSG in 2020. 

More than 800 people bought in. Most were retail investors, and more than 650 put in $100,000 or less, while over 100 were retirees, according to the Securities & Exchange Commission. The alleged boiler room raked in more than $74 million for 11 private funds run from offices on Long Island and New Jersey over the course of four and a half years from December 2020 to June 2025. 

Despite the promise of no rip offs from “unnecessary fees,” investors paid on average 46% more for their positions than Spaventa’s own companies paid to get them, the SEC alleged in a complaint filed on Friday in the Southern District of New York. In some cases, the premium ran as high as 91%. Investors allegedly had no idea the markups were so high. 

 “Unsolicited calls and high-pressure sales tactics are the calling cards of so-called boiler room operators. They get you on the phone and then hit you with the hidden fees,” said Sheldon L. Pollock, associate director of the SEC’s New York regional office.

All told, the SEC claimed the accused companies and Spaventa collected $23 million in undisclosed fees. More than $12 million of that went to pay commissions to the sales agents who made the calls, the complaint stated, while Spaventa made at least $4 million. He allegedly spent it on a home purchase, renovations, personal travel, and luxury car payments. 

Reached by phone, Spaventa, 40, denied the allegations in the complaint and said he planned to defend himself against the SEC’s accusations. The SEC charged Spaventa along with three entities he controls—TSG, TSG Capital Advisors, and TSG Alpha Partners—with fraud and violating securities and broker-dealer registration provisions. 

The alleged scheme

According to regulators, the investments all flowed through Spaventa. TSG and another company Spaventa owns called TSG Invest Ventures allegedly bought the positions first, then resold them to Spaventa’s funds at a higher price, which the funds then passed on to investors.

For example, the complaint states that Fund 8 held Anthropic, acquired at $32.62 to $41.53 per share and sold for $58.50, a 41% to 79% markup that raised $5.8 million in 2024. Funds 10 and 11 held Perplexity AI, bought between $340.72 and $389 and sold at $495 for a markup between 27% and 45%. Fund 2 held SpaceX, which Spaventa purchased for $595 and sold for $975. Anduril appeared across three funds at markups between 29% and 57%. None of the companies are accused of any wrongdoing. 

The SEC said Spaventa was the sole owner of the company selling the shares to the funds, and the funds buying them were managed and advised by entities he owned and controlled. Because of that structure, Spaventa needed written client consent, which he allegedly never got, according to the SEC.

The funds also had no board of directors that could have consented to certain transactions, and no third party evaluating the purchases and transfers to ensure the funds got an arm’s length deal. The SEC also claimed that Spaventa allegedly backdated some of the fund equity transfer agreements after SEC staff began an inquiry in 2023. 

According to the complaint, Spaventa allegedly coached his sales squad, many of whom were not registered while several had been previously suspended or barred by regulatory agency Finra. They earned commissions of about 10%, but a handbook Spaventa allegedly approved told them never to use that word, and to say “referral fee” instead. 

If a sales prospect asked what the fund paid for the shares, agents were allegedly coached to tell investors, “I’m not sure, but that’s not information I’m privy to.”

The handbook also allegedly directed sales agents to offer up phony descriptions of how the fees worked. 

“Unlike other firms, we have no hidden fees,” the agents were told to tell investors, according to the complaint. “So the price we tell you is the price of the investment.”

The script for selling Anduril told agents to say, “When you make money, we make money. If you don’t make money, we don’t make money.”

However, the markup was allegedly collected from the investor’s money as soon as the investment in the funds closed. Agents also allegedly cited returns of 200% to 1,000% and a track record of success in Airbnb, Palantir, and SoFi, when the funds had never held any of those investments, the complaint states. 

TSG’s marketing allegedly said the firm bought existing shares directly from shareholders and insiders looking to sell, and that there would be no dilution to the company. The SEC said that more than 90% of the funds’ holdings were stakes in other private pre-IPO funds that claimed to hold these shares. The allegedly undisclosed arrangement added a second layer of fees on top of the initial layer, and layered in additional risk to the funds, the complaint stated.

Spaventa has not yet filed a response in court. The SEC is seeking disgorgement, civil penalties, and a permanent bar from the securities industry. The majority of investors have not recouped their investments in the funds, according to the complaint.

This story was originally featured on Fortune.com

Phoebe Gates wants to build her AI shopping company while keeping one thing out of her pitch deck: her last name. The 23-year-old youngest daughter of billionaire Microsoft founder Bill Gates and philanthropist Melinda French Gates has raised more than $43 million for Phia, which is now valued at around $185 million. 

But she’s determined for the venture to stand on its own, with “no ties to my privilege or my last name,” Phoebe Gates told Yahoo Finance’s Opening Bid Unfiltered podcast in an episode published in February. 

“I have a chip on my shoulder,” she said, describing her drive to prove she can win over private equity in Silicon Valley based on merit, not inheritance or legacy. 

Phoebe Gates’ comments came during the resurfacing of her father’s connections to Jeffrey Epstein, although representatives for Bill Gates have repeatedly denied his involvement and any related accusations. Phoebe Gates didn’t comment about the allegations, but French Gates earlier this year said her ex-husband “has to answer” for Epstein files mentions just weeks after it was revealed she had received $8 billion toward her philanthropic organization, Pivotal, as part of her divorce settlement.

Phoebe Gates did acknowledge her father’s business success, saying: “From my dad, I’ve really learned that your team is the core of what you’re building. You can’t do anything without an incredible team.”

But this week, Bloomberg reported Phoebe Gates has been under her own fire. She her cofounder and Stanford University roommate Sophia Kianni reportedly pushed for features in the e-commerce startup’s software that took credit for sales it didn’t drive, which is a practice called “cookie stuffing.” In July, the company claimed it had only known about the situation for 24 hours, but Bloomberg‘s latest investigation shows they had known about it for seven months, according to people familiar with the matter.

For a July investigation, Bloomberg, which tested the extension across more than 50 websites alongside Capital One Shopping and independent researcher Ben Edelman, Phia silently opened a background tab during checkout and injected its own referral code, overriding legitimate referrals from other publishers in violation of many affiliate networks’ policies.

“Any features causing misattributions were immediately removed over a month ago on July 7,” a Phia spokesperson told Bloomberg for its most recent investigation. “We are reviewing every transaction, we are fully committed to and have already begun issuing all transaction reversals to brand partners as a result of any misattribution, and we are hiring a head of compliance to make sure something like this never happens again.”

How Phoebe Gates paved her own path

Phoebe Gates cofounded Phia, an AI shopping assistant, with Kianni. The shopping assistant plugs into browsers like Chrome and Safari to compare prices and surface deals across tens of thousands of retail and resale sites in real time. It essentially serves as your own personal deal finder: Say you’re looking at a $200 dress from Anthropologie, Phia can find and compare prices at secondhand sellers to help customers find a better price. 

“Our target consumer is a young woman who’s hustling. She shops like a genius, but she doesn’t want to waste her time doing it,” Gates told Fortune’s Most Powerful Women editor Emma Hinchliffe in April 2025.

The New York–based startup launched its app in 2025 grew quickly, garnering hundreds of thousands of downloads in its first months as investors pile into AI “agents” that automate digital tasks. A $35 million funding round this year led by Notable Capital, with participation from firms including Kleiner Perkins and Khosla Ventures, pushed Phia’s valuation to about $185 million less than a year after an initial $8 million seed round.​ 

Gates and Kianni first brainstormed startup ideas in their Stanford dorm room, cycling through concepts before landing on a consumer tool that included Gates’ interest in women’s empowerment (likely modeled after her own mother) and Kianni’s sustainability focus. 

In line with Gates’ insistence she builds her own venture without the benefits of her last name, the young founder hasn’t taken money from her parents for Phia. Instead, she’s insisted on raising outside capital even as some investors remain fixated on her personal life instead of her business venture. 

Gates and Kianni have said the topic of their potential future children has come up in meetings before, which was understandably frustrating for the entrepreneurial duo. But French Gates—a women’s rights activist—gave Gates some stern advice: “Get up or get out the game.”

“We’ll have investors ask us all the time, ‘Well, what happens when you two go have babies?’ And I remember one time crying about that. I called my mom, and she was like, ‘Get up or get out the game, sis.’ I was like, damn,” Gates said on an episode of the Call Her Daddy podcast published in April 2025.

It’s now a saying Gates reminds herself of when navigating meetings with investors, all while attempting to buck any nepo baby accusations. This isn’t just another legacy project, Gates argues. 

“The chip on my shoulder is not only proving myself but building something, you know, novel and unique that consumers actually love,” she said.

A version of this story was published on Fortune.com on February 21, 2026.

More on Most Powerful Women:

• Ex-PepsiCo CEO Indra Nooyi worked from midnight until 5 a.m. as a receptionist to pay for her Yale degree—and she says ‘respect went up’ because of it
• JPMorgan built a pipeline of female CEO candidates that was the envy of Wall Street. How did it fall apart?
• MacKenzie Scott alone accounted for one-third of America’s $19.2 billion in megagifts last year

This story was originally featured on Fortune.com

As inflation continues to simmer and economic uncertainty rattles consumers, Starbucks CEO Brian Niccol says he has the solution to ensuring the coffee chain doesn’t suffer from customers pulling back on their $6 or $7 lattes.

Niccol said during the Fast Company Innovation Festival last year he does not believe a rocky economic landscape will offset Starbucks’ gains because of his company’s “commitment to craft and quality” and “great customer experience.” 

The Starbucks CEO is nearing the two-year mark of his tenure helming the coffee giant and the anniversary of his “Back to Starbucks” plan meant to return the company to its roots as a cozy “third space” where customers can leisurely sip their beverages.

At the core of Niccol’s vision is not just rebuilding a desire among customers to linger in stores longer, but to build connections with baristas through a series of personal touches like hand-written notes scribbled on coffee cups. His vision also includes leaning on automation behind the counter and a pared-down menu to give baristas more face time with patrons.

“When I ask people, name me a great customer service company, I usually get a blank stare,” Niccol said at the time. “That tells me, right off the bat, there’s a huge opportunity to be the defining customer-service company.”

“There is tremendous value in being a world-class, customer-service company combined with great craft, great quality food,” he added. “When you look at putting those two things together for the price that we will have to charge for it, I think it will turn out to be invaluable.”

Returning to a ‘third space’

Nearly two years into the “Back to Starbucks” experiment, the company has seen signs of success. Starbucks reported in July a 7.9% increase in global comparable sales year-over-year and a 3.5% year-over-year increase in the average ticket, indicating customers don’t mind spending a little more. Net revenues of $9.3 billion decreased 1%, but exceeded expectations. The company’s stock is up nearly 24% year-to-date.