Good morning. Corporate America’s relationship with cryptocurrency is far from straightforward, but many finance chiefs are planning to eventually adopt stablecoins and Bitcoin in their finance operations.
Deloittereleased new data this morning from its Q2 2025 CFO Signals Spotlight, which gauges how finance chiefs envision incorporating digital currencies into their operations (CFO Daily received an early look). Only 1% of CFOs surveyed said they do not expect to use crypto for business functions in the long term. Twenty-three percent expect their treasury departments to use crypto for investments or payments within the next two years—a figure that rises to nearly 40% among finance chiefs at companies with revenues of $10 billion or more.
Price volatility is the top concern for 43% of CFOs regarding crypto investment, followed by accounting and control complexities (42%) and a lack of industry regulation (40%).
“Crypto is a unique asset, and the accounting treatment for digital assets seems to be a work in progress,” Steve Gallucci, the global and U.S. leader of Deloitte’s CFO Program, told me. For example, in January, the SEC rescinded earlier guidance on accounting for crypto and then created a task force to develop a new framework, he explained. “Where that task force eventually lands is, at this point, uncertain,” he said.
The survey, conducted June 4–18, polled 200 North American finance chiefs at companies with at least $1 billion in revenue.
The business case for crypto
Stablecoins are typically backed by reserve assets and pegged to traditional currencies, unlike Bitcoin. The survey highlights the appeal of conducting transactions with stablecoins: 45% of finance chiefs cited enhanced customer privacy as the top benefit, followed by improved cross-border transactions. In addition, 15% of respondents said that within two years, their companies will likely accept stablecoin as payment—a percentage that rises to 24% for companies with at least $10 billion in revenues.
“It seems very likely that CFOs will need to have a solid grounding in digital assets, along with treasury and accounting capabilities, and an appropriate understanding of cryptocurrencies,” Gallucci said.
President Trump signed an executive order in March establishing a strategic Bitcoin reserve and a national digital asset stockpile. Subsequently, in June, the U.S. Senate passed legislation regulating stablecoins.
Bitcoin, Ether, and other non-stable forms of crypto can offer certain advantages for treasurers, such as diversifying a company’s investment portfolio. A recent Fortune report examines the rise of crypto in corporate treasuries: 160 firms globally now hold Bitcoin on their balance sheets, including 90 in the U.S., according to Bitcoin Treasuries. Notable names include GameStop, Block, Tesla, and the Trump Media & Technology Group, which is controlled by the president’s family. However, some experts remain skeptical of the trend of firms putting spare cash into crypto.
Taking a longer-term perspective, the CFOs surveyed by Deloitte see possibilities for business uses of both non-stable and stable crypto beyond investments and payments. More than half (52%) of finance chiefs anticipate using non-stable crypto for supply chain tracking, and a slightly smaller percentage (48%) said the same for stablecoin.
With more than a third of CFOs already discussing the use of crypto with their boards, it will be interesting to see which direction organizations take.
Markets in Europe and Asia are broadly up this morning with the exception of China, where stocks fell on news of an unexpected deterioration in manufacturing. S&P 500 futures are up nearly a full percentage point, premarket, suggesting that Wall Street very much liked Fed chair Jerome Powell’s rate-setting speech yesterday. The fly in the ointment? “Downside risks” to the labor market.
U.S. Federal Reserve Chairman delivered an entirely predictable press conference yesterday as he kept interest rates on hold at the 4.25% level and said he would await for more data before considering a possible move downward.
Markets liked it: Europe and Asia are broadly up this morning with the exception of China, where stocks fell on news of an unexpected deterioration in manufacturing. More importantly, S&P 500 futures are up nearly a full percentage point, premarket.
But there was one theme that Powell kept returning to, which isn’t so positive: “Downside risks” to the labor market. Powell referenced this phrase no fewer than six times in his press conference.
“We do see downside risk in the labor market,” he told reporters. “The labor market looks solid. Inflation is above target. And even if you look through the tariff effects, we think it’s still a bit above target. And that’s why our stance is where it is. But, as I mentioned, you know, downside risks to the labor market are certainly apparent.”
That’s actually a pretty good summation of what economists are seeing in the employment data right now. There is close to full employment, but the hiring market is sluggish and some of the good headline numbers are masked by one-off moves in government and education hiring.
Some analysts see U.S. employment getting weaker, not stronger, in the coming months.
“Chair Powell’s reading of the economic data was similar to ours—he highlighted the softer growth pace in the first half of the year, noted that the labor market remains solid but said six times that it faces ‘downside risks,’ and said that inflation is most of the way back to 2% and that a ‘reasonable base case’ is that tariffs will have only a one-time impact on the price level. This suggests that lowering rates soon could be reasonable but is not yet essential,” Goldman Sachs’ Jan Hatzius and his team told clients in a note this morning.
Lawrence Werther and Brendan Stuart at Daiwa Capital Markets noticed the same thing: “We found it interesting that he returned several times to the idea that officials are attentive to risks to the employment side of the dual mandate. He noted that unemployment remained low and that deceleration in hiring and growth of labor force participation suggest that the labor market is in balance, but we did read his comments as pointing to increased concern versus previous statements.”
The jobs number (nonfarm payrolls, to give its technical name) is due out tomorrow. If it comes in weak, expect stocks to react strongly.
“Our forecast is for job growth to weaken in July and for the unemployment rate to tick higher. This will probably increase Federal Reserve concerns about the risks to the labor market, potentially throwing more support behind an earlier rate cut than is in our baseline,” Oxford Economics’ Nancy Vanden Houten told clients.
UBS’s Paul Donovan has a typically pithy observation on why it might be that U.S. companies are moving factories back to America but not actually creating jobs: The new factories are full of robots, not humans: “Several advanced economies, including the US and the UK, have experienced a boom in factory building in recent years. Increasing the size of factory buildings implies more manufacturing activity is taking place inside those buildings. [But] manufacturing employment is not increasing—this investment appears to represent capital for labor substitution,” he said.
Here’s a snapshot of the action prior to the opening bell in New York:
S&P 500 futures were up 1% this morning, premarket, after the index closed down 0.12% yesterday.
STOXX Europe 600 was up 0.14% in early trading.
The U.K.’s FTSE 100 was up 0.52% in early trading.
Sam Altman recently warned that AI-powered fraud is coming “very soon,” and it will break the systems we rely on to verify identity.
It is already happening and it’s not just coming for banks; it’s hitting every part of our government right now.
Every week, AI-generated fraud is siphoning millions from public benefit systems, disaster relief funds, and unemployment programs. Criminal networks are already using deepfakes, synthetic identities, and large language models to outpace outdated fraud defenses, including easily spoofed, single-layer tools like facial recognition, and they’re winning.
We saw a glimpse of this during the pandemic, when fraud rings exploited gaps in state systems to steal hundreds of billions in unemployment benefits. It wasn’t just people wearing masks to bypass facial recognition. It was AI-generated fake identities, voice clones, and forged documents overwhelming systems that weren’t built to detect them. Today, those tactics are more advanced, and fully automated.
I work with over 9,000 agencies across the country. As I testified before the U.S. House of Representatives twice this year, what we’re seeing in the field is clear. Fraud is faster, cheaper, and more scalable than ever before. Organized crime groups, both domestic and transnational, are using generative AI to mimic identities, generate synthetic documentation, and flood our systems with fraudulent claims. They’re not just stealing from the government; they’re stealing from the American people.
The Small Business Administration Inspector General now estimates that nearly $200 billion was stolen from pandemic-era unemployment insurance programs, making it one of the largest fraud losses in U.S. history. Medicaid, IRS, TANF, CHIP, and disaster relief programs face similar vulnerabilities. We have also seen this firsthand in our work alongside the U.S. Secret Service protecting the USDA SNAP program, which has become a buffet for fraudsters with billions stolen nationwide every month. In fact, in a single day using AI, one fraud ring can file tens of thousands of fake claims across multiple states, most of which will be processed automatically unless flagged.
We’ve reached a turning point. As AI continues to evolve, the scale and sophistication of these attacks will increase rapidly. Just as Moore’s Law predicted that computing power would double every two years, we’re now living through a new kind of exponential growth. Gordon Moore, Intel’s co-founder, originally described the trend in 1965, and it has guided decades of innovation. I believe we may soon recognize a similar principle for AI that I call “Altman’s Law”: every 180 days, AI capabilities double.
If we don’t modernize our defenses with the same pace as technological advancements, we’ll be permanently outmatched.
What we desperately need is smarter tools and infrastructure, not more bureaucracy.
That means layering advanced identity verification, not just facial scans or passwords. It means using real-time data, behavioral analytics, and cross-jurisdictional tools that can flag anomalies before money goes out the door. It also means reviving what has already worked: tools like the National Accuracy Clearinghouse, which flagged billions of dollars in duplicate benefit claims across state lines before it was shut down.
AI is a force multiplier, but it can be weaponized more easily than it can be wielded for protection. Right now, criminals are using it better than we are. Until that changes, our most vulnerable systems and the people who depend on them will remain exposed.
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.
Fed Chair Jerome Powell held interest rates steady yesterday and signaled a cautious approach to cutting, despite growing dissent within the Fed and market hopes for a September move downward. While acknowledging tariff-driven inflation, Powell emphasized that more data is needed before adjusting policy.
In a move that everyone was expecting, U.S. Federal Reserve Chairman Jerome Powell disappointed Donald Trump again yesterday by refusing to cut the base interest rate.
Indeed, a hawkish Powell even used the dreaded r-word (“raise”)—having suggested he is responsive enough to calls to “look through” tariff-induced inflation by not increasing interest rates, a notion which likely would have sent the Oval Office into a fury.
While rates held steady at 4.25% to 4.5%, a split among the Federal Open Market Committee (FOMC) is growing, with two members dissenting. This represents the highest level of friction within the FOMC for more than 30 years.
But despite the pressure—both from within the Fed and externally—Powell struck a cautious tone on cutting. For some time analysts have pencilled in a cut in September, the next meeting of the FOMC.
“Higher tariffs have begun to show through more clearly to prices of some goods, but their overall effects on economic activity and inflation remain to be seen,” Powell told reporters in a news conference following the meeting. “A reasonable base case is that the effects on inflation could be short-lived—reflecting a one-time shift in the price level. But it is also possible that the inflationary effects could instead be more persistent, and that is a risk to be assessed and managed.”
To the point of a one-time price shift, Powell said the FOMC is heeding advice to not letting tariff-related inflation cloud the picture of the fundamentals of the economy.
But while investors had used this argument to lobby for a cut, Powell said the fact he is holding rate steady is evidence of this pragmatism, saying the FOMC is “a bit looking through goods inflation by not raising rates.”
Tabling a rate rise is quite the opposite of what many investors and economists are hoping for, but Powell doubled down: “The economy is not performing as though restrictive policy were holding it back inappropriately.” Investors, therefore, have been left wondering what it will take for the FOMC to cut.
“Fed Chair Powell was much more hawkish than we were expecting at his press conference,” Bank of America’s macroeconomics team wrote in a note seen by Fortune. “He was asked several questions on what it would take for the Fed to cut in September. In response, Powell made it clear that the onus is on the data to justify a September cut.“
They added: “To be clear, hikes are still very unlikely, but Powell argued that the ‘efficient’ way of balancing risks to the dual mandate is to stay on hold because cutting too early introduces the risk of having to raise rates again later.”
Markets were minded to agree with BofA on its take of a hawkish Powell. Equity markets fell following the announcement while treasury yields rose.
Elsewhere, UBS’s Paul Donovan said markets may be seeing through the FOMC dissenters, explaining in a note this morning: “Fed Chair Powell tried to present the two dissenting views as being rationally based, but investors are bound to suspect that the rationale amounted to little more than an excited jumping up and down and shouting ‘pick me, pick me’ in the general direction of the White House. The press conference gave a slightly hawkish tone in anticipating the trade tax inflation yet to come.”
Holding on for September
Despite Powell’s speech eroding some of the confidence in a September cut, analysts are tending to hold on to the hope that a cut will come at the next meeting the month after next.
The Fed chairman gave them some reason to hope, for example saying: “We are also attentive to risks on the employment side of our mandate.”
“The expectation for this meeting wasn’t a rate cut, and I don’t think there would have been much upside to Powell signaling that one was imminent,” wrote Elyse Ausenbaugh, Head of Investment Strategy at J.P. Morgan Wealth Managemen, adding: “The data, as it stands today, isn’t yet calling for one, and a lot could change between now and the FOMC’s next decision point in September.”
Likewise, Goldman Sachs’s chief U.S. economist David Mericle wrote in a note to clients seen by Fortune: “Neither [Powell’s] statement nor the press conference provided any direct hints about the likelihood of a cut in September. In response to a question about the two-cut baseline in the June dots, Powell acknowledged but declined to endorse it, saying that he would not want to substitute his own judgment for the views of other participants, especially with two more rounds of employment and inflation data still to come before the September meeting.”
That being said, Goldman continues to forecast three cuts in 2025: In September, October and December, followed by two more in 2026 to bring the rate down to 3% to 3.25%.
Mericle added: “Powell’s comments today suggest to us that a September cut is certainly still up for debate but not that labor market softening over the next two months is necessarily required, and we continue to see multiple paths to a cut.”
UBS’s global wealth management chief investment officer, Mark Haefele, is minded to agree with a September rate cut—citing the Job Openings and Labor Turnover Survey (JOLTS)revealing declines in both openings and hires, as well as a lower quits rate.
The Conference Board’s consumer confidence survey also noted 18.9% of respondents felt jobs were hard to get in July, suggesting the alarms for labor market weakening may be beginning to chime.
Haefele wrote: “We continue to expect Fed to resume policy easing in September, cutting rates by 100 basis points over the next 12 months. Investors should consider medium-duration high grade and investment grade bonds for more durable portfolio income.”
UnitedHealth Group, America’s largest healthcare company, shocked investors Tuesday by reporting unexpectedly awful financial performance. It’s the second consecutive quarter the company has committed that sin. As a result, UHG is no longer just a company that missed its numbers. It’s something much more rare: A huge enterprise—No. 3 on the Fortune 500—confessing fundamental, long-standing problems endemic throughout the organization that may take years to remedy.
The crisis first manifested in April. UHG was emerging from the trauma of executive Brian Thompson’s high-profile murder in December when the company released first-quarter profits far below Wall Street’s expectations. The stock plunged, slashing over $100 billion from market value within hours. A month later, CEO Andrew Witty abruptly resigned for unspecified personal reasons, and former CEO Stephen Hemsley returned to the job. The stock plummeted again. The next day, the Wall Street Journal reported that the Department of Justice was investigating UHG for possible criminal Medicare fraud. The company said it hadn’t been notified of any such investigation. The stock nosedived yet again.
In less than a month, this corporate giant had lost more than half its value. “This is a stock that every growth-oriented portfolio manager in the world owned for a decade and made money on it like clockwork,” Whit Mayo, an analyst at the Leerink healthcare investment bank, told Fortune at the time. “It’s stunning. It’s unthinkable.”
On July 24, five days before UHG’s second quarter earnings release, the company acknowledged that the Justice Department was conducting criminal and civil investigations of the company over its Medicare billing practices. You can guess what the stock did.
And then came the report of second quarter earnings.
Now, after months of being pummeled by investors, regulators, and media, Hemsley has admitted that UHG needs an exhaustive, stem-to-stern rehab—an extraordinarily audacious goal for an organization of some 400,000 employees. It’s a stark acknowledgement of deep and wide problems. How deep and wide? Hemsley says UHG will change “leadership, our businesses, our culture, approaches and practices, our board, governance and succession oversight…”
Executives now beseech shareholders for patience—quite a change from four months ago, before $330 billion of market cap evaporated. Dr. Patrick Conway, CEO of Optum, one of UHG’s two main divisions, now tells investors, “We know Optum’s performance has not met expectations.” Tim Noel, CEO of the other division, insurance, says, “We are approaching our business with greater humility.”
Hemsley appears to be setting expectations low. He says he does not see profit increasing at all this year. Next year, he sees “solid but moderate” earnings growth. Not until 2027 does he expect “our earnings growth outlook strengthening quickly.”
Even that schedule may not allow enough time. When Hemsley returned as CEO in June, the board of directors gave him a one-time $60-million award of stock options that would vest after three years. That term seemed lengthy for a 73-year-old whose objective was to right the ship. Now, after the latest quarter and the highly ambitious wide-ranging transformation he’s attempting, investors may wonder if three years will be enough.
The $645 million, 390-foot “Breakthrough” superyacht—widely linked to billionaire Bill Gates but reportedly never used by him—is up for sale. It’s the world’s first hydrogen fuel-cell superyacht and boasts luxurious amenities.
If you’re looking to cruise in style à la Microsoft co-founder Bill Gates, now might be your chance.
The $645 million, 390-foot “Breakthrough” superyacht that’s long been linked to the billionaire and philanthropist is up for sale by yacht broker Edmiston.
Jamie Edmiston, CEO of his namesake company, said in a statement it’s “the most extraordinary yacht ever built [and] the one that will change it all.”
Neither Gates nor Edmiston responded to requests for comment from Fortune, but it’s been widely reported across business and industry-specific publications the superyacht was commissioned by Gates just a few years ago.
Dutch shipyard Feadship spent five years building “Breakthrough,” also known as “Project 821,” and it’s large enough to accommodate 43 crew members and 30 guests across 15 cabins. Forbes Australia reported in May 2024 the yacht also features a hospital, library, elevator, movie theatre, pool, hot tubs, steam room, gym, separate owners’ deck with two bedrooms, two bathrooms, two offices, and 14 slide-out balconies.
“The big deal about Breakthrough is that it’s a modern engineering marvel, period,” Brad Hall, CEO of online yacht marketplace Yachtlify, told Fortune.
That’s because the “Breakthrough” is the world’s first hydrogen fuel-cell superyacht. And that’s what makes the superyacht particularly expensive, Heigo Paartalu, CEO of YachtWay, told Fortune.
“Breakthrough—true to its name—is a genuine breakthrough and milestone in innovation,” said Paartalu, who heads up what can be compared to the Zillow for yachts. “It’s the only privately owned vessel powered by hydrogen, and building one demands extreme precision, as any hydrogen leak could be catastrophic.”
Video footage courtesy YachtWay.com.
There are very few shipyards in the world capable of building a vessel like this, Paartalu explained, and he said “it’s no surprise” Feadship pulled it off, as it’s widely considered one of the best shipyards globally.
While most yacht owners prioritize maximum interior space, “Breakthrough” was primarily designed with the climate in mind, Paartalu said. Its engine room takes up significantly more space than traditional yacht propulsion systems.
“It’s a pretty bold, uncompromising choice,” Paartalu added. Gates is also heavily involved in clean energy projects like Breakthrough Energy, which supports early-stage companies developing technologies to reduce greenhouse gas emissions.
And because superyacht builders are backed up with production schedules, anyone looking to buy the “Breakthrough” should be expected to pay a premium, Paartalu said, rather than waiting four-to-five years for a new build.
“Time is priceless at this level,” he said. “Many buyers prefer immediate gratification over a multi-year wait.”
While every superyacht is unique, Paartalu said, in this case, the new owner will be buying more than a boat.
“You’re buying future-forward technology and a benchmark in innovation,” he said. “Add to that a pedigree few can match. And let’s be honest: How often can someone say, ‘I bought Bill Gates’ yacht?’”
Musical artists no longer need to limit themselves to what suits their natural voice. Indeed, anyone with an artistic vision can now develop a singing voice to match it.
At last week’s Fortune Brainstorm AI Singapore conference, Kyogu Lee, founder of AI startup Supertone, demonstrated how his AI-powered tools can alter a person’s vocals.
Supertone’s model takes a voice recording and breaks it down into four different attributes: pitch, loudness, timbre, and linguistic content. A person’s timbre is what reflects their “vocal identity,” Lee explained. By isolating it and altering the other three attributes, Supertone can reconstruct different singing voices that are still unique to each person’s sound.
The tools can even work for those without singing experience—like Fortune Asia editor Nicholas Gordon, whose voice was transformed into a K-pop singer’s through Supertone’s tools.
Supertone’s programs can also create singing voices from scratch. Previously, music producers needed to find human artists whose sound perfectly matches their artistic ideas. Now, they don’t have to “resort to human personnel,” Lee said, since Supertone can easily “design unique voices for each of them.”
But Lee said he wants to work with, not replace, musical artists. “We see creators and artists as co-creators,” he explained. Supertone can help artists to experiment with new genres or styles if they don’t have the natural voice for it. The startup relies on artist feedback to refine and improve its technology.
“Listening is believing,” Lee said. Watch him demonstrate Supertone’s model on the mainstage of Fortune Brainstorm AI Singapore.
In today’s CEO Daily: Diane Brady talks to the CEO of Warren Buffett’s favorite sports shoe brand, Brooks Running.
The big story: Tariff deadline tomorrow.
The markets: Mostly up except for China.
Analyst notes from Wedbush on Apple’s AI strategy, Apollo Management on stablecoins, and Parthenon-EY on GDP.
Plus: All the news and watercooler chat from Fortune.
Good morning. One of the toughest challenges for any company is making a niche brand feel new and cool. That’s especially tough in a market where costs are rising and consumers are spoiled for choice. And yet Brooks Running has been on a tear, with the Berkshire Hathaway subsidiary reporting it had 15% annual revenue growth in the first quarter.
In the latest episode of Fortune’s Leadership Next podcast, CEO Dan Sheridan talks about turning a favorite among hardcore runners into a broader lifestyle brand. It helps that health and wellness has become a priority for consumers at a younger age when brand preferences have yet to be set.
“Gen Z right now is engaging and running earlier than any other generation in the history of fitness,” he says, noting that many started at the age of 11. “If you put one foot in front of the other, you’re our customer.”
Nike, HOKA and plenty of other brands are chasing those feet, too. One reason Brooks can claim to have No. 1 market share in U.S. adult performance running footwear across national and specialty retail channels is its track record of focusing on performance. That’s a hard-won reputation for a 111-year-old company that once manufactured shoes for a broad range of sports, went bankrupt, overextended, reinvented itself and became part of the Berkshire family in 2006 after getting acquired by Fruit of the Loom. Buffett made it a standalone unit in 2012.
Now, Sheridan is trying to expand into new markets while catering to his core customer and contending with tariffs. “We’re so fortunate. We’re owned by who I would call the GOAT of capitalism,” he says, recalling the Oracle of Omaha’s message when he came to Brooks headquarters in 2014: “He said, ‘Berkshire focuses on the long term, and your jobs are simply this, to make sure the brand is stronger at the end of the year than it was at the beginning.’”
And from the late Charlie Munger, Sheridan says learned the importance of “organizations avoiding the ABCs: arrogance, bureaucracy, and complacency.”
As for his own workout routine, Sheridan is more of a yoga aficionado than a hardcore runner—but he does put those Brooks shoes to use. “I joke that I think I was genetically engineered to plow a field and sit on a bar stool, but I love running. It’s a part of my life.”(Here’s a transcript of the episode. You can also listen to our conversation on Apple or Spotify.)
Artificial intelligence is picking up in the workplace. But even with the potential threat of unemployment on the horizon, white collar workers are just happy that they’re less stressed out. New research reveals 4 in 10 say it has provided better work-life balance, reduced stress, and better decision-making.
What would you do if you believed your job was going to be taken by AI in 3 years?
For some, it’s to keep using it.
White collar workers like the short-term gain of work-life balance that AI brings, despite the long-term pain of it possibly taking their jobs by 2028.
Ironically, recent data shows that about 60% of 2,500 white collar tech workers believe their jobs and their entire team could be replaced by AI within the next three to five years, but they’re still using it at least once per day.
Around 7 in 10 workers say it has helped them increase their creativity and productivity, while 4 in 10 say it has provided better work-life balance, reduced stress, and better decision-making.
“Just like the advent of computers, the Internet, or any new kind of transformative technology, I think folks in general tend to kind of lean into learning the tools, and they’re discovering some great benefits,” Dallin Hatch, Head of Communications at Udacity, tells Fortune.
More productivity, creativity, and flexibility
Though AI may come for jobs in the long term, right now, employees are enjoying getting more of their time back.
Philosopher and psychology researcher Frank Martela previously told Fortune, A.I. can be good for the meaningfulness at work, because it makes room to be more creative and efficient in other tasks if it does the mundane ones. “The more A.I. takes care of the boring routine stuff, the more we can concentrate on the exciting, creative, and challenging stuff,” he said.
Reports consistently highlight that Gen-Z is more focused on work-life balance, purpose-driven tasks, and flexibility. So as AI picks up in the workplace, it could be an attractive benefit for the Zoomer generation, who typically try to avoid repetitive tasks or mundane projects.
The shift towards flexibility is already gaining traction among business leaders and could be where the future of work is headed. Microsoft’s Bill Gates says AI may soon automate almost everything, and workers could begin a 2-day work week in less than a decade. Jamie Dimon, CEO of JPMorgan, has also expressed his view that AI will make working less of a priority—placing his bet on a three-and-a-half-day workweek.
But don’t forget the long-term risk
The truth is, nobody knows how AI will affect their job until it happens.
Blue-collar CEOs like Ford’s boss Jim Farley predict that technology could wipe out half of white collar jobs, while emphasizing the “essential economy”. Last month, Amazon’s CEO, Andy Jassy, echoed that sentiment when he said the company’s corporate workforce will shrink as a result of AI.
Already, AI has led to mass layoffs in tech, and workplaces are shifting how they’ll position their staff in the future accordingly.
But, Hatch argues, it could also open the next generation to a whole host of new skills and jobs.
“It’s really hard to know what the future looks like,” Hatch says. “There’s one path right where, you know, it does create more opportunity for people who learn those skills to do more.”
“They may be seeing a path where more of their opportunity to make an impact on the creative and guidance side with an AI tool is now at their fingertips, where before maybe they were so heads down, surface-level work that they weren’t always able to pop up.”
Autonomous vehicles are now a common sight, with robotaxis plying the streets of San Francisco, Los Angeles, Wuhan and Shenzhen. Economies like Japan, Hong Kong and the United Arab Emirates are also exploring their own autonomous taxi services.
Singapore is no different. The government has been looking to launch driverless buses on its main island. WeRide already has a driverless bus plying a short route on Sentosa island, and the ride-hailing firm Grab recently launched a driverless shuttle service between the One-North metro station and its headquarters four kilometers away.
The Grab-operated shuttle, which ferries employees back-and-forth between 2:00pm and 4:00pm each day, is just a pilot, yet CEO Anthony Tan sung the praises of AVs in an earnings call on Thursday.
“We are leaning heavily into the AV opportunity, or what we think of as driverless AV opportunity across Southeast Asia. We are in prime position to support the AV transition over the next few years,” Tan said in response to a question on an earnings call about how quickly Grab anticipates a commercial launch of its driverless offerings.
Grab’s CEO elaborated that the company will continue to build strong relationships with global AV players and OEMs, and touted the platform’s regional reach. Grab is present in eight countries across Southeast Asia.
“We have several pilots planned at the moment,” Tan said, including one with A2Z, a Korean AV manufacturer. He said to “expect to hear [about] more pilots,” which will allow Grab to understand the operational conditions for different driverless vehicle services throughout the region.
While there are concerns that driverless taxis will eliminate jobs, some Southeast Asian transport operators say they struggle to find drivers to meet demand throughout the day. AVs could fill these supply shortages when there are fewer drivers on the road.
Grab’s earnings
Grab reported a profit of $20 million for the quarter ending June 2025, reversing a loss of $68 million for the same period last year. Revenue grew by 23% year-on-year to reach $819 million, driven by gains in Grab’s on-demand and financial services segment.
The company’s financial services segment, while starting from a lower base, was its fastest-growing division. Revenue in that segment grew 41% year-on-year to reach $84 million, while its loan portfolio grew by 78% to hit $708 million.
Grab chief operating officer Alex Hungate was confident that Grab’s loan book could exceed $1 billion by the end of the year, citing its strong product lineup. Loans can be a significant revenue driver for companies like Grab, as non-traditional lenders can charge higher interest rates to cover the increased risk of lending to underbanked customers.
Grab shares, which are traded in New York, are up 0.6% in pre-market trading. The company’s shares are currently up 11.6% for the year thus far.
Yee Wee Tang, Group Managing Director of Operations at Grab (left), Philip Ang, GrabTaxi driver-partner (center), and Ryan (Ho Jin) Kim, Managing Director, Business and International for A2Z at the launch of Grab's AV shuttle in Singapore on July 8, 2025.
As AI reshapes the job market and entry-level roles disappear, Gen Z is facing a challenging employment landscape. Billionaire entrepreneur Mark Cuban said in 2023 one of the simplest yet most overlooked tools for standing out is a positive attitude, starting with a smile. Cuban also has said that being kind and investing in yourself can give young professionals the lead they need in today’s competitive world.
There’s no question, the job market is being revolutionized by the rise of AI technology.
As businesses opt to replace workers and slash entry-level opportunities, it’s creating a crisis among Gen Z. In fact, some 58% of college graduates are still searching for employment a year after receiving their degree, according to Kickresume.
They could do with smiling more in the interview to stand out—that’s at least according to
But for billionaire entrepreneur Mark Cuban, who turns 67 years old today, the power of a positive attitude can go a long way.
“This tip is really, really simple. It’s something all of us would like to receive. Something all of us are capable of doing but most of us don’t. It costs nothing, takes no time, and it’s really easy to do,” Cuban said in a 2023 TikTok video filmed during a break on the set of Shark Tank.
“It’s a mystery to me why people aren’t like this, even though I have to admit back in the day when I started my first business I wasn’t always like this. And what’s the tip of the day? Be nice. Smile. Because smiling takes nothing. And you know what? We’d all rather do business with somebody who smiles. We’d all rather work with somebody who smiles.”
Beyond simply brightening someone else’s day, a smile can also uplift your mindset and approach in business environments, Cuban said.
Being nice sells
It’s not the first time Cuban has said that something as simple as learning to smile can give you a career boost.
In an interview with Vanity Fair in 2018, he reflected on his personal growth over the years.
“I went through my own metamorphosis. Early on in my career, I was like bam, bam, bam, bam, bam — I might curse. I might get mad. I got to the point,” he said. “I wouldn’t have wanted to do business with me when I was in my 20s. I had to change. And I did. And it really paid off. One of the most underrated skills in business right now is being nice. Nice sells.”
As young professionals launch their careers, Jassy said a positive attitude can set them apart from the crowd. It not only makes them more memorable but also helps attract advocates and mentors more quickly.
It pays to invest in you
Cuban also emphasized the importance of self-investment as a cornerstone of success. Dedicating time to improving yourself, whether through education and self-reflection, can pay off in every area of life.
“It may take me a long time, but by putting in the effort, I taught myself technology. I taught myself to program,” Cuban told Men’s Health four years ago. “It was time-consuming—painfully so—but that investment in myself has paid dividends for the rest of my life.”
Investing in yourself not only boosts your confidence in making difficult decisions, speaking up in meetings, and negotiating, but it also sets an example for others, he explained.
“The fact that I recognized that learning was truly a skill, and that by continuing to learn to this day, I’m able to compete, keep up, and get ahead of most people,” Cuban said. “Because the reality is, most people don’t put in the time to keep up and learn. And that’s always given me a competitive advantage.”
Ex-NBA star turned media entrepreneur Gilbert Arenas was arrested alongside six others in what prosecutors claim was a high-end illegal gambling operation that took place at his luxury five-bedroom Mediterranean style home in suburban Los Angeles. Arenas is facing at least five years in prison on the charge; he told authorities previously that he was unaware any illegal gambling was going on in the house, which he had rented out.
Former Washington Wizards guard Gilbert Arenas, 43, also known as “Agent Zero,” was arrested on Wednesday with six other defendants on charges related to what prosecutors claimed was a sophisticated illegal gambling business that operated out of a luxe mansion in suburban Los Angeles.
According to court records, a cornerstone of the illegal poker games was the home Arenas owned on Gable Drive in Encino. Authorities alleged Arenas rented out the estate, which was then staged as a high-end poker den featuring Pot-Limit Omaha, a game similar to Texas Hold ‘em. The poker nights allegedly featured hired chefs, armed guards, valets and a custom felt-topped poker table with “Arenas Poker Club” embossed in all-caps and black and gold.
The indictment alleges that one man in the crew, Israeli suspected organized crime figure Yevgeni Gershman, hired women to work at the games. In exchange for tips, the women served cocktails, provided massages and offered “companionship” to poker players, the indictment states. The women were then required to pay a “tax” of 25% to 35% of their earnings just to be able to work at the games, authorities claim.
Prosecutors alleged Gershman in May 2022 texted a woman to ask her, in code, “whether she was open to engaging in prostitution at his illegal poker game at the Gable House that night.”
Attempts to reach Arenas and Gershman were unsuccessful.
Arenas played in the NBA for 11 seasons on teams such as the Wizards, Golden State Warriors, and Orlando Magic. Following his basketball career, he launched a second act in business, hosting a podcast, No chill with Gilbert Arenas, after starting his own media company with the same name. He also streams a YouTube show weekly that includes NBA personalities, and he’s made multiple investments in real estate ventures in California and Virginia. Arenas married French YouTuber and singer Melli Monaco this year.
Prosecutors claim the poker games differed from friendly card-game nights because the house collected a “rake,” which is a percentage or fixed fee from each pot. The games involved roughly two dozen players and more than a dozen staff members to facilitate illegal gambling, prosecutors said, and operated from September 2021 through July 2022.
The indictment lays out a complicated allegedly criminal enterprise centering around the games. Gershman, 49, allegedly handled the day-to-day, while Arenas allegedly collected rent and fees through an agent. West Hollywood man Arthur Kats, 51, allegedly served as the go-between, authorities said, collecting thousands of dollars in rent payments and setting up the house for game nights. Four others were charged, according to court documents, including Evgenni Tourevski, 48, of Tarzana; Allan Austria, 52, of West Hills; Yarin Cohen, 27, of Tarzana; and Ievgen Krachun, 43, of Tarzana. The indictment states that crew allegedly managed the actual operations, recruiting players and handling money.
Authorities said Tourevski allegedly handled dealers, texting contacts in his phone saved as “Frankie Poker Dealer” and “Dealer Poker” to arrange croupiers for the table games. Austria allegedly managed security, bringing in armed guards and texting photos of games while they were in progress. Cohen allegedly handled the finances, texting the others with data showing the amounts of the rakes, “taxes,” and expenses, the indictment states. Krachun allegedly worked as a “chip runner” who tracked wins and losses, distributed poker chips, and paid workers, court records show.
Federal agents raided the Encino mansion in July 2022, the indictment states, and Arenas allegedly tried, at that point, to distance himself from the poker games. In a petition to recover money seized in the raid, Arenas claimed he “was not involved in whatever was going on at the party.”
The indictment includes text messages allegedly showing that Arenas was aware of pot-limit Omaha games and that he at one point contemplated filming a YouTube episode at one of the games for his channel, Gil’s Arena, which has more than 1 million subscribers.
The defendants face five years on each of the charges.
Tourevski, Austria, Cohen, Kats, and Krachun could not be reached for comment.
Former Washington Wizards player Gilbert Arenas addresses the media before the game between the Washington Wizards and the Miami Heat at Capital One Arena on November 18, 2022 in Washington, DC.
The world population is still growing every year. The amount of farmland is not. That means farmers will need to find ways to use their limited land more efficiently. AI could help, according to agriculture executives.
“Humanity does not have enough food to put on the table for everybody,” Feroz Sheikh, chief information and digital officer of the Syngenta Group, said at the Fortune Brainstorm AI Singapore conference last week. “By 2050, we will need 600 million hectares of additional land. That is almost four times the agricultural land in Europe.”
Syngenta has built a network of Modern Agriculture Platform, or MAP centers, in China to help solve this problem. The centers use digital agricultural systems—technology like drones, robots, and AI—to help local growers maximize their farmland’s potential. “Simple advice can really help improve the yield for these farmers,” Sheikh explained.
Malaysia-based Agroz Group is also leveraging AI to help farmers. The company created “Copilot for Farmers” by training an AI model on their standard operating procedures. Junior growers can take a picture of a plant they are growing, and Agroz Copilot will identify whether it’s healthy or not. Founder and CEO Gerard Lim described it as “a tool that puts the power of most senior and experienced growers in the palm of your hands.”
Additionally, Lim noted that he sees robotics as the next phase for the Agroz Group after agentic AI is perfected. “Humanoid robots will work in our indoor farms and in our greenhouses probably by next year,” he predicted
Japanese firm AGRIST is already using robots to improve harvesting efficiency on farms.
Today’s agricultural robots still aren’t as efficient at harvesting fruits and vegetables as humans. Yet farmers “don’t need a perfect robot,” explained Junichi Saito, AGRIST founder and CEO. And AGRIST’s robots have the advantage of being cheap, costing around $10,000, as well as being able to work 24 hours without sleep or food.
Robots are needed “for solving the issue of shortage of labor” in farming, Saito said. His vision is for “AI and the robot and human being [to] collaborate with each other to make the world happier.”
Former NBA star Gilbert Arenas was arrested Wednesday along with five other people, including a suspected member of an Israeli organized crime group, on suspicion of hosting illegal high-stakes poker games at a Los Angeles mansion owned by Arenas, federal prosecutors said.
All six defendants are charged with one count of conspiracy to operate an illegal gambling business and one count of operating an illegal gambling business, according to a statement from the U.S. Attorney’s Office. They were all scheduled to be arraigned Wednesday afternoon.
Arenas, 43, is also charged with making false statements to federal investigators, the statement said. He is named in the indictment as ”Agent Zero,” a nickname from his playing days with the Washington Wizards.
Arenas appeared in court Wednesday afternoon in downtown Los Angeles and was released on a $50,000 bond after pleading not guilty to the charges. His trial is scheduled for Sept. 23.
His attorney Jerome Friedberg said outside the courthouse that he hadn’t had much time to speak with his client and couldn’t comment on the case.
“At this point in the case, he is presumed innocent, right?” Friedberg said. “He has the same right as any other citizen to that presumption and that’s how he should be treated.”
The other five defendants are residents of Los Angeles ranging in age from 27 to 52. Among them is a 49-year-old man described by prosecutors as “a suspected organized crime figure from Israel.”
The indictment says that from September 2021 to July 2022, the defendants staged the home in the Encino neighborhood to host “Pot Limit Omaha” poker games and other illegal gambling activity. The poker players paid a “rake,” a fee charged as a percentage or fixed amount from each hand gambled, court documents claim.
One of the defendants hired young women who, in exchange for tips, served drinks and provided massages and “offered companionship” to the poker players, according to prosecutors.
“The women were charged a ‘tax’ – a percentage of their earnings from working the games. Chefs, valets, and armed security guards also were hired to staff these illegal poker games,” the statement said.
The Israeli man faces separate charges including marriage fraud and lying on immigration documents. He is suspected of conspiring with a 35-year-old Los Angeles woman to enter into a sham marriage for the purposes of obtaining permanent legal status in the U.S.
If convicted, the defendants would face a statutory maximum sentence of five years in federal prison for each count, prosecutors said.
Arenas averaged 20.7 points during an 11-year career with four teams, most notably a seven-plus season stint in Washington from 2004-11.
Charismatic and mercurial, Arenas — who counted “Agent Zero” (representing his number) and “Hibachi” for the way he could heat up during a game among his many nicknames — was a three-time All-Star, a gifted scorer and one of the key cogs in a handful of Wizards teams that enjoyed modest success in the mid-to-late 2000s.
Yet Arenas’ run in Washington ended in disgrace. Arenas and teammate Javaris Crittenton were suspended for the balance of the NBA season in January 2010 following a locker-room incident in which both players pulled guns on each other.
Arenas returned to play briefly for Washington the following season before being traded to Orlando. He then bounced to Memphis in 2011, coming off the bench for 17 games before stepping away to play in the Chinese Basketball Association in 2012-13. He never returned to the NBA.
His son, Alijah Arenas, was a Los Angeles high school basketball star who is a highly touted freshman player for the University of Southern California. His college career is on hold pending knee surgery and rehab is expected to take months, the school said last week.
Microsoft said Wednesday that annual revenue for its flagship Azure cloud computing platform has surpassed $75 billion, up 34% from a year earlier.
The Azure cloud business is a centerpiece of Microsoft’s efforts to shift its focus to artificial intelligence, but until Wednesday the company hadn’t disclosed how much money it makes.
The revelation came in the software giant’s end-of-year earnings report, one that also showed a 24% spike in the company’s quarterly profit that beat Wall Street expectations and pleased investors wary about Microsoft’s ongoing construction of costly new data centers needed to meet cloud computing and AI demand.
“We continue to scale our own data center capacity faster than any other competitor,” CEO Satya Nadella said on an investor call, boasting that the company now has more than 400 of the sprawling facilities across six continents.
Microsoft’s fiscal fourth-quarter profit was $34.3 billion, or $3.65 per share, beating analyst expectations for $3.37 per share.
It posted revenue of $76.4 billion in the April-June period, up 18% from last year. Analysts polled by FactSet Research had been looking for revenue of $73.86 billion.
Microsoft launched Azure more than a decade ago, but the service has increasingly become intertwined with its AI ambitions, as the company looks to sell its AI chatbot and other tools to big business customers that are also reliant on its core online services.
It still trails behind its lead competitor, Amazon Web Services, which reported $107.6 billion in revenue for its fiscal year that ended in December.
Building the infrastructure to power cloud and AI technology is expensive, and Microsoft has looked for savings elsewhere. It announced layoffs of about 15,000 workers this year even as its profits have soared.
Nadella told employees last week the layoffs were “weighing heavily” on him but also positioned them as an opportunity to reimagine the company’s mission for an AI era.
Still, the overall workforce numbers haven’t changed. The company said it employed 228,000 full-time employees as of June 30, the exact same amount it reported a year ago, though slightly more of them are now U.S.-based and fewer of them are in product support roles or consulting services.
Promises of a leaner approach have been welcomed on Wall Street, especially as Microsoft and other tech giants are trying to justify huge amounts of capital spending to pay for the data centers, chips and other components required to power AI technology.
Google said after releasing its earnings last week it would raise its budget for capital expenditures by an additional $10 billion to $85 billion. Microsoft’s chief financial officer, Amy Hood, said she expects capital spending for the July-September quarter to be $30 billion.
Microsoft didn’t disclose Wednesday to what extent sweeping U.S. tariffs are affecting its revenue, but its annual report lists tariffs among a number of risks the company faces.
“Increased geopolitical instabilities and changing U.S. administration priorities create an unpredictable trade landscape,” the company said. It also said the “volatility of U.S. tariffs has triggered economic uncertainty and could impact cloud and devices supply chain cost competitiveness.”
Whether it serves as a chill escape from the onslaught of the real world or simply a way to beat vacation doldrums, a viral Roblox game about gardening has become the surprise hit of the summer.
Grow a Garden, created by a 16-year-old in a few days, has shattered records for the most concurrent players of any game in history, beating out video games that take years and millions of dollars to develop.
And there’s no one to shoot, fight or race. If your last attempt at cultivating vegetables was FarmVille in 2010, don’t worry — your tomatoes will grow even if you never water them.
Grow a Garden is as simple as its name suggests — players can fill a plot of land with plants and animals, harvest and sell, trade or steal each others’ bounty. The game is low stress, with an aesthetic reminiscent of Minecraft and a soundtrack of soothing classical tunes such as Mozart’s Rondo Alla Turca playing in the background. Its popularity has further cemented Roblox’ place not just in the gaming world but in popular culture — for better or for worse, it’s where the kids hang out.
“The word I keep hearing used over and over to describe this particular game is that it’s chill, which is just such a nice alternative. I get a lot of sort of that Animal Crossing vibe from it. You know, like you can check in, you can check your gardens, you can get some new seeds, you can plant them,” said Becky Bozdech, editorial director at the nonprofit Common Sense Media. “I have an 11-year-old son who (plays it) and he says to him the big difference is that a lot of games have a big giant objective that you have to do, but in Grow a Garden, you can just kind of hang out and do what you want.”
Coincidence or not, Grow a Garden soared to popularity around the same time that Take-Two Interactive announced it would delay the launch of its wildly anticipated Grand Theft Auto 6 until next year. In late June, the gardening game logged 21.6 million concurrent players, surpassing Fortnite’s previous record of 15.2 million according to Roblox. Analysts who follow Roblox’s stock say Grow a Garden is helping boost the company’s revenue and will push the company’s quarterly earnings numbers above Wall Street’s expectations.
While it’s not clear if the GTA audience flocked to this simple gardening game to pass the time until then, the timing reignited the age-old debate about who gamers are and what titles are taken seriously by the video game establishment. It happened with Candy Crush, with puzzle games, with Animal Crossing. Are people who play cozy games true gamers? Or is the title reserved for the folks who shoot enemies in Call of Duty or drive around creating mayhem in GTA?
“There’s a huge percentage of gamers that play Roblox and the actual industry just views it as like this esoterically immature platform of weird gameplay habits,” said Janzen Madsen, the New Zealand-based CEO and founder of Splitting Point studios, which acquired the game from its teenage creator. “Well, I actually think in five years this is what player expectation is gonna be. And because you guys haven’t embraced it, like you’re not gonna know how to make games.”
To start growing your garden, you’ll need a Roblox account. The game will start you out with an empty plot and some money — sheckles — and a starter seed. From there, you can plant seeds, harvest and sell your crops and buy more seeds, animals or tools for your garden. While it is possible to play the game without spending real-world money, it will take longer. Once you sell enough crops, you earn money to buy more expensive seeds beyond basic carrots and blueberries.
“For me, I just, I really want to get all the rarest stuff. I’m a completionist, so I want everything and that’s what’s fun for me,” said Leah Ashe, a YouTuber who plays Grow a Garden and other popular games to an audience of 5.3 million. “It’s really cool because you can come together because the seed shop is global, so everybody’s shop is the exact same. So you can work with other people and be like, ‘Oh my gosh, the sugar apple is in stock. Get online!’ The seed shop updates every five minutes, so there’s always something pulling you back into the game.”
For Roblox, which has faced a backlash for not doing enough to protect kids on its gaming service, Grow a Garden has served as something of a reprieve — along with new safety measures such as chat restrictions and privacy tools.
New players get help from more established peers who send them gifts and let them know when rare seeds become available in the seed shop.
Bozdech said that “if you have the right supervision and guidance,” Roblox can be a positive experience for kids, allowing them to create their own designs or practice coding, for instance.
“Something like Grow a Garden, particularly, is a nice opportunity maybe for parents and kids to play together,” she said.
And perhaps the slow cultivating of a magical garden can benefit parents too.
“It’s hitting a nerve, you know?” Bozdech said. “People need an escape from the world, I think we all do.”
If you read the typical 2025 mass layoff notice from a tech industry CEO, you might think that artificial intelligence cost workers their jobs.
The reality is more complicated, with companies trying to signal to Wall Street that they’re making themselves more efficient as they prepare for broader changes wrought by AI.
A new report Wednesday from career website Indeed says tech job postings in July were down 36% from their early 2020 levels, with AI one but not the most obvious factor in stalling a rebound.
ChatGPT’s debut in late 2022 also corresponded with the end of a pandemic-era hiring binge, making it hard to isolate AI’s role in the hiring doldrums that followed.
“We’re kind of in this period where the tech job market is weak, but other areas of the job market have also cooled at a similar pace,” said Brendon Bernard, an economist at the Indeed Hiring Lab. “Tech job postings have actually evolved pretty similarly to the rest of the economy, including relative to job postings where there really isn’t that much exposure to AI.”
The template for tech CEO layoff notices in 2025 includes an AI pivot
That nuance is not always clear from the last six months of tech layoff emails, which often include a nod to AI in addition to expressions of sympathy.
When he announced mass layoffs earlier this year, Workday CEO Carl Eschenbach invited employees to consider the bigger picture: “Companies everywhere are reimagining how work gets done, and the increasing demand for AI has the potential to drive a new era of growth for Workday.”
Autodesk CEO Andrew Anagnost explained that a need to shift resources to “accelerate investments” in AI was one of the reasons the company had to cut 1,350, or about 9%, of workers.
The “Why We’re Doing This” section of CrowdStrike CEO George Kurtz’s announcement of 5% job cuts said the cybersecurity company needed to double down on AI investments to “accelerate execution and efficiency.”
“AI flattens our hiring curve, and helps us innovate from idea to product faster,” Kurtz wrote.
It’s not just U.S. companies. In India, tech giant Tata Consultancy Services recently characterized its 12,000 layoffs, or 2% of its workforce, as part of a shift to a “Future-Ready organization” that would be realigning its workforce and “deploying AI at scale for our clients and ourselves.”
Even the Japanese parent company of Indeed and Glassdoor has cited an AI shift in its notice of 1,300 layoffs at the job search and workplace review sites.
AI spending, not replacement, is a more common factor
Microsoft, which is scheduled to release its fourth-quarter earnings Wednesday, has announced layoffs of about 15,000 workers this year even as its profits have soared.
Microsoft CEO Satya Nadella told employees last week the layoffs were “weighing heavily” on him but also positioned them as an opportunity to reimagine the company’s mission for an AI era.
Promises of a leaner approach have been welcomed on Wall Street, especially from tech giants that are trying to justify huge amounts of capital spending to pay for the data centers, chips and other components required to power AI technology.
“It’s this sort of double-edged sword restructuring that I think a lot of tech giants are encountering in this age of AI, where they have to find the right balance between maintaining an appropriate headcount, but also allowing artificial intelligence to come to the forefront,” said Bryan Hayes, a strategist at Zacks Investment Research.
Google said last week it would raise its budget for capital expenditures by an additional $10 billion to $85 billion. Microsoft is expected to outline similar guidance soon.
The role of AI in job replacement is hard to track
One thing is clear to Hayes: Microsoft’s job cuts improve its profit margin outlook for the 2026 fiscal year that started in July.
But what these broader tech industry layoffs mean for the employment prospects of tech workers can be harder to gauge.
“Will AI replace some of these jobs? Absolutely,” said Hayes. “But it’s also going to create a lot of jobs. Employees that are able to leverage artificial intelligence and help the companies innovate, and create new products and services, are going to be the ones that are in high demand.”
He pointed to Meta Platforms, the parent company of Facebook and Instagram, which is on a spree of offering lucrative packages to recruit elite AI scientists from competitors such as OpenAI.
The reports published by Indeed on Wednesday show that AI specialists are faring better than standard software engineers, but even those jobs are not where they have been.
“Machine-learning engineers — which is kind of the canonical AI job — those job postings are still noticeably above where they were pre-pandemic, though they’ve actually come down compared to their 2022 peak,” said Bernard, the Indeed economist. “They’ve also been impacted by the cyclical ups and downs of the sector.”
Economists are watching for AI’s effects on entry-level tech jobs
Tech hiring has particularly plunged in AI hubs such as the San Francisco Bay Area, as well as Boston and Seattle, according to Indeed.
But in looking more closely at which tech workers were least likely to get hired, Indeed found the deepest impact on entry-level jobs in the tech industry, with those with at least five years of experience faring better.
The hiring declines were sharpest in entry-level tech industry jobs that involve marketing, administrative assistance and human resources, which all involve tasks that overlap with the strength of the latest generative AI tools that can help create documents and images.
“The plunge in tech hiring started before the new AI age, but the shifting experience requirements is something that happened a bit more recently,” Bernard said.
Microsoft, which is staking its future on AI in the workplace, has also had its own researchers look into the jobs most vulnerable to the current strengths of AI technology. At the top of the list are knowledge work jobs such as language interpreters or translators, as well as historians, passenger attendants, sales representatives, writers and customer service representatives, according to Microsoft’s working paper.
On the other end, leading in work more immune to AI changes were phlebotomists, or healthcare workers who draw blood, followed by nursing assistants, workers who remove hazardous materials, painters and embalmers.
Federal Reserve Chair Jerome Powell gave little indication on Wednesday of bowing anytime soon to President Donald Trump’s frequent demands that he cut interest rates, even as signs of dissent emerged on the Fed’s governing board.
The Fed left its key short-term interest rate unchanged for the fifth time this year, at about 4.3%, as was expected. But Powell also signaled that it could take months for the Fed to determine whether Trump’s sweeping tariffs will push up inflation temporarily or lead to a more persistent bout of higher prices. His comments suggest that a rate cut in September, which had been expected by some economists and investors, is now less likely.
“We’ve learned that the process will probably be slower than expected,” Powell said. “We think we have a long way to go to really understand exactly how” the tariffs will affect inflation and the economy.
There were some signs of splits in the Fed’s ranks: Governors Christopher Waller and Michelle Bowman voted to reduce borrowing costs, while nine officials, including Powell, favored standing pat. It is the first time in more than three decades that two of the seven Washington-based governors have dissented. One official, Governor Adriana Kugler, was absent and didn’t vote.
The choice to hold off on a rate cut will almost certainly result in further conflict between the Fed and White House, as Trump has repeatedly demanded that the central bank reduce borrowing costs as part of his effort to assert control over one of the few remaining independent federal agencies.
Powell has in the past signaled during a news conference that a rate move might be on the table for an upcoming meeting, but he gave no such hints this time. The odds of a rate cut in September, according to futures pricing, fell from nearly 60% before the meeting to just 45% after the press conference, the equivalent of a coin flip, according to CME Fedwatch.
“We have made no decisions about September,” Powell said. The chair acknowledged that if the Fed cut its rate too soon, inflation could move higher, and if it cut too late, then the job market could suffer.
Major U.S. stock indexes, which had been trading slightly higher Wednesday, went negative after Powell’s comments.
“The markets seem to think that Powell pushed back on a September rate cut,” said Lauren Goodwin, chief market strategist at New York Life Investments.
Powell also underscored that the vast majority of the committee agreed with a basic framework: Inflation is still above the Fed’s target of 2%, while the job market is still mostly healthy, so the Fed should keep rates elevated. On Thursday, the government will release the latest reading of the Fed’s preferred inflation gauge, and it is expected to show that core prices, excluding energy and food, rose 2.7% from a year earlier.
Gus Faucher, chief economist at PNC Financial, says he expects the tariffs will only temporarily raise inflation, but that it will take most of the rest of this year for that to become apparent. He doesn’t expect the Fed to cut until December.
Trump argues that because the U.S. economy is doing well, rates should be lowered. But unlike a blue-chip company that usually pays lower rates than a troubled startup, it’s different for an entire economy. The Fed adjusts rates to either slow or speed growth, and would be more likely to keep them high if the economy is strong to prevent an inflationary outbreak.
Earlier Wednesday, the government said the economy expanded at a healthy 3% annual rate in the second quarter, though that figure followed a negative reading for the first three months of the year, when the economy shrank 0.5% at an annual rate. Most economists averaged the two figures to get a growth rate of about 1.2% for the first half of this year.
The dissents from Waller and Bowman likely reflect jockeying to replace Powell, whose term ends in May 2026. Waller in particular has been mentioned as a potential future Fed chair.
Michael Feroli, an economist at JPMorgan Chase, said in a note to clients this week if the pair were to dissent, “it would say more about auditioning for the Fed chair appointment than about economic conditions.”
Bowman, meanwhile, last dissented in September 2024, when the Fed cut its key rate by a half-point. She said she preferred a quarter point cut instead, and cited the fact that inflation was still above 2.5% as a reason for caution.
Waller said earlier this month that he favored cutting rates, but for very different reasons than Trump has cited: Waller thinks that growth and hiring are slowing, and that the Fed should reduce borrowing costs to forestall a rise in unemployment.
There are other camps on the Fed’s 19-member rate-setting committee — only 12 of the 19 actually vote on rate decisions. In June, seven members signaled that they supported leaving rates unchanged through the end of this year, while two suggested they preferred a single rate cut. The other half supported more reductions, with eight officials backing two cuts, and two — widely thought to be Waller and Bowman — supporting three reductions.
The dissents could be a preview of what might happen after Powell steps down, if Trump appoints a replacement who pushes for the much lower interest rates the White House desires. Other Fed officials could push back if a future chair sought to cut rates by more than economic conditions would otherwise support.
Overall, the committee’s quarterly forecasts in June suggested the Fed would cut twice this year. There are only three more Fed policy meetings — in September, October, and December.
When the Fed cuts its rate, it often — but not always — results in lower borrowing costs for mortgages, auto loans and credit cards.
Some economists agree with Waller’s concerns about the job market. Excluding government hiring, the economy added just 74,000 jobs in June, with most of those gains occurring in health care.
“We are in a much slower job hiring backdrop than most people appreciate,” said Tom Porcelli, chief U.S. economist at PGIM Fixed Income.
U.S. fashion retailer American Eagle Outfitters wanted to make a splash with its new advertising campaign starring 27-year-old actor Sydney Sweeney. The ad blitz included “clever, even provocative language” and was “definitely going to push buttons,” the company’s chief marketing officer told trade media outlets.
It has. The question now is whether some of the public reactions the fall denim campaign produced is what American Eagle intended.
Titled “Sydney Sweeney has great jeans,” the campaign sparked a debate about race, Western beauty standards, and the backlash to “woke” American politics and culture. Most of the negative reception focused on videos that used the word “genes” instead of “jeans” when discussing the blonde-haired, blue-eyed actor known for the HBO series “Euphoria” and “White Lotus.”
Some critics saw the wordplay as a nod, either unintentional or deliberate, to eugenics, a discredited theory that held humanity could be improved through selective breeding for certain traits.
Marcus Collins, an assistant professor of marketing at the University of Michigan’s Ross School of Business, said the criticism could have been avoided if the ads showed models of various races making the “genes” pun.
“You can either say this was ignorance, or this was laziness, or say that this is intentional,” Collins said. “Either one of the three aren’t good.”
Other commenters accused detractors of reading too much into the campaign’s message.
“I love how the leftist meltdown over the Sydney Sweeney ad has only resulted in a beautiful white blonde girl with blue eyes getting 1000x the exposure for her ‘good genes,’” former Fox News host Megyn Kelly wrote Tuesday on X.
American Eagle didn’t respond to requests for comment from The Associated Press.
A snapshot of American Eagle
The ad blitz comes as the teen retailer, like many merchants, wrestles with sluggish consumer spending and higher costs from tariffs. American Eagle reported that total sales were down 5% for its February-April quarter compared to a year earlier.
A day after Sweeney was announced as the company’s latest celebrity collaborator, American Eagle’s stock closed more than 4% up. Shares were volatile this week and trading nearly 2% down Wednesday.
Like many trendy clothing brands, American Eagle has to differentiate itself from other mid-priced chains with a famous face or by saying something edgy, according to Alan Adamson, co-founder of marketing consultancy Metaforce.
Adamson said the Sweeney campaign shares a lineage with Calvin Klein jeans ads from 1980 that featured a 15-year-old Brooke Shields saying, “You want to know what comes in between me and my Calvins? Nothing.” Some TV networks declined to air the spots because of its suggestive double entendre and Shields’ age.
“It’s the same playbook: a very hot model saying provocative things shot in an interesting way,” Adamson said.
Chief Marketing Officer Craig Brommers told industry news website Retail Brew last week that “Sydney is the biggest get in the history of American Eagle,” and the company would promote the partnership in a way that matched.
The campaign features videos of Sweeney wearing slouchy jeans in various settings. She will appear on 3-D billboards in Times Square and elsewhere, speaking to users on Snapchat and Instagram, and in an AI-enabled try-on feature.
American Eagle also plans to launch a limited edition Sydney jean to raise awareness of domestic violence, with sales proceeds going to a nonprofit crisis counseling service.
In a news release, the company noted “Sweeney’s girl next door charm and main character energy – paired with her ability to not take herself too seriously – is the hallmark of this bold, playful campaign.”
Jeans, genes and their many meanings
In one video, Sweeney walks toward an American Eagle billboard of her and the tagline “Sydney Sweeney has great genes.” She crosses out “genes” and replaces it with “jeans.”
But what critics found the most troubling was a teaser video in which Sweeney says, “Genes are passed down from parents to offspring, often determining traits like hair color, personality and even eye color. My jeans are blue.”
The video appeared on American Eagle’s Facebook page and other social media channels but is not part of the campaign.
While remarking that someone has good genes is sometimes used as a compliment, the phrase also has sinister connotations. Eugenics gained popularity in early 20th century America, and Nazi Germany embraced it to carry out Adolf Hitler’s plan for an Aryan master race.
Civil rights activists have noted signs of eugenics regaining a foothold through the far right’s promotion of the “great replacement theory,” a racist ideology that alleges a conspiracy to diminish the influence of white people.
Shalini Shankar, a cultural and linguistic anthropologist at Northwestern University in Evanston, Illinois, said she had problems with American Eagle’s “genes” versus “jeans” because it exacerbates a limited concept of beauty.
“American Eagle, I guess, wants to rebrand itself for a particular kind of white privileged American,” Shankar said. “And that is the kind of aspirational image they want to circulate for people who want to wear their denim.”
A cultural shift in advertising
Many critics compared the American Eagle ad to a misstep by Pepsi in 2017, when it released a TV ad that showed model Kendall Jenner offer a can of soda to a police officer while ostensibly stepping away from a photo shoot to join a crowd of protesters.
Viewers mocked the spot for appearing to trivialize protests of police killings of Black people. Pepsi apologized and pulled the ad.
The demonstrations that followed the 2020 killing of George Floyd by a white police officer in Minneapolis pushed many U.S. companies to make their advertising better reflect consumers of all races.
Jazmin Burrell, founder of brand consulting agency Lizzie Della Creative Strategies, said she’s noticed while shopping with her cousin more ads and signs that prominently feature white models.
“I can see us going back to a world where diversity is not really the standard expectation in advertising,” Burrell said.
American Eagle’s past and future
American Eagle has been praised for diverse marketing in the past, including creating a denim hijab in 2017 and offering its Aerie lingerie brand in a wide range of sizes. A year ago, the company released a limited edition denim collection with tennis star Coco Gauff.
The retailer has an ongoing diversity, equity and inclusion program that is primarily geared toward employees. Two days before announcing the Sweeney campaign, American Eagle named the latest recipients of its scholarship award for employees who are driving anti-racism, equality and social justice initiatives.
Marketing experts offer mixed opinions on whether the attention surrounding “good jeans” will be good for business.
“They were probably thinking that this is going to be their moment,” Myles Worthington, the founder and CEO of marketing and creative agency WORTHI. “But this is doing the opposite and deeply distorting their brand.”
Melissa Murphy, a marketing professor at Carnegie Mellon University’s Tepper School of Business, said she liked certain parts of the campaign but hoped it would be expanded to showcase people besides Sweeney for the “sake of the brand.”
Other experts say the buzz is good even if it’s not uniformly positive.
“If you try to follow all the rules, you’ll make lots of people happy, but you’ll fail,” Adamson said. “The rocket won’t take off. ”
Treasury Secretary Scott Bessent said Wednesday that the Trump administration was committed to protecting Social Security hours after he said in an interview that a new children’s savings program President Donald Trump signed into law “is a back door for privatizing Social Security.”
Bessent said Wednesday evening that the accounts created under Trump’s tax break-and-spending cut law “will supplement the sanctity of Social Security’s guaranteed payments.”
“This is not an either-or question: our Administration is committed to protecting Social Security and to making sure seniors have more money,” Bessent said in a post on X.
Bessent’s remarks about privatizing Social Security, which he made at a forum hosted by Breitbart News, were striking after Trump’s repeated promises on the campaign trail and in office that he would not touch Social Security. It also reignited an issue that has dogged Republicans for years.
The White House did not respond to a request for comment.
Democrats quickly seized on the comment as a sign the GOP wants to revive a dormant but unpopular push to privatize the long-running retirement program.
“A stunning admission,” Senate Democratic leader Chuck Schumer said in a Senate speech. “Bessent actually slipped, told the truth: Donald Trump and government want to privatize Social Security.”
The idea of privatizing Social Security has been raised by Republicans before, but quickly abandoned. Millions of Americans have come to rely on the certainty of the federal program in which they pay into the system during their working years and then receive guaranteed monthly checks in their older age.
Privatization proposals would shift the responsibility for the retirement savings system away from the government and onto Americans themselves. Through personal savings accounts, people would need to manage their own funds, which may or may not be enough to live on as they age.
Under the GOP’s “big, beautiful bill,” as the law is called, Republicans launched a new children’s savings program, Trump Accounts, which can be created for babies born in the U.S. and come with a potential $1,000 deposit from the Treasury.
Much like an individual retirement account, the Trump Accounts can grow over time, with a post-tax contribution limit of $5,000 a year, and are expected to be treated similarly to the rules for an IRA, and can eventually be tapped for distribution in adulthood.
But Bessent on Wednesday allowed for another rationale for the accounts, suggesting they could eventually be the way Americans save for retirement.
“In a way, it is a back door for privatizing Social Security,” Bessent said while speaking about the program.
The Treasury Department later issued a statement that said, “Trump Accounts are an additive government program that work in conjunction with Social Security to broaden and increase the savings and wealth of Americans. Social Security is a critical safety net for Americans and always will be.”
Ever since the George W. Bush administration considered proposals to privatize Social Security more than 20 years ago, Republicans have publicly moved away from talking about the issue that proved politically unpopular and was swiftly abandoned.
In the run-up to the 2006 midterms, Democrats capitalized on GOP plans to privatize Social Security, warning it would decimate the program that millions of Americans have come to rely on in older age. They won back control of both the House and the Senate in Congress.
The Democrats warned Wednesday that Bessent’s comments showed that Republicans want to shift the government-run program to a private one and are again trying to dismantle the retirement program that millions of Americans depend on.
“Donald Trump’s Treasury Secretary Scott Bessent just said the quiet part out loud: The administration is scheming to privatize Social Security,” Tim Hogan, a spokesperson for the Democratic National Committee, said in a statement.
“It wasn’t enough to kick millions of people off their health care and take food away from hungry kids. Trump is now coming after American seniors with a ‘backdoor’ scam to take away the benefits they earned,” Hogan said.
The Social Security program has faced dire financial projections for decades, but changes have long been politically unpopular.
Social Security’s trust funds, which cover old age and disability recipients, will be unable to pay full benefits beginning in 2034, according to the most recent report from the program’s trustees.
Those officials have said those findings underline the urgency of making changes to programs.
Trump, attuned to Social Security’s popularity, has repeatedly said he would protect it.
Throughout his 2024 presidential campaign, Trump repeatedly said he would “always protect Social Security” and said his Democratic opponents, President Joe Biden and Vice President Kamala Harris, would destroy the program.
During the 2024 primary, he accused other Republicans who have expressed support for raising the age for Social Security of being threats to the program.
Trump said in an interview with NBC’s “Meet the Press” in December after he won the presidential election that “we’re not touching Social Security, other than we might make it more efficient.”
His White House this year said Trump “will always protect Social Security.”
Social Security Administration Commissioner Frank Bisignano, a Wall Street veteran, was asked at his confirmation hearing in March about whether Social Security should be privatized. He said he’d “never heard a word of it” and “never thought about it.”
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