The S&P 500 dipped 0.2% on Friday as investors waited on President Donald Trump’s next move on Iran and a possible rate cut from the Federal Reserve in July.
Markets closed off a lackluster week as the major stock indices either slightly dipped or remained flat on Friday. The S&P 500 posted a daily drop of 0.2% and a weekly decline of 1.3%. The Nasdaq dropped 0.5%, and the Dow Jones was essentially flat with a daily gain of 0.1%.
The end of the short trading week—U.S. markets were closed on Thursday in observance of Juneteenth—came as the White House said Thursday evening that President Donald Trump would decide within two weeks whether to strike Iran. The commander-in-chief had been weighing military action after Israel, a key U.S. ally in the Middle East, began trading missile and drone strikes with the Islamic Republic last Thursday.
“We know exactly where the so-called ‘Supreme Leader’ is hiding,” Trump posted on social media on Wednesday, referring to Iran’s Ayatollah Ali Khamenei. “He is an easy target, but is safe there – We are not going to take him out (kill!), at least not for now.”
A potential U.S. entrance into the conflict between Israel and Iran could heighten tensions in the region and further disrupt oil trade. Oil prices fell on Friday, in a likely sign that traders were relieved that Trump decided to delay conflict with Iran for two weeks.
“That means two weeks of uncertainty for financial markets, but investors are still inclined to see the Middle East conflict as a local, not a global, economic issue,” Paul Donovan, chief economist of UBS Global Wealth Management, said in a Friday analyst note.
Meanwhile, Christopher Waller, a member of the Federal Reserve Board of Governors, said Friday that the U.S. central bank may cut interest rates as early as July. “That would be my view, whether the committee would go along with it or not,” Walker said in an interview with CNBC.
On Wednesday, the Fed decided to hold interest rates steady for its fourth meeting in a row. Meanwhile, Trump has pushed for interest rate cuts since he took office in January. “Uncertainty about the economic outlook has diminished but remains elevated,” wrote the Fed in a Wednesday statement.
While the central bank struck a cautiously optimistic approach to the U.S. economy, some analysts were more pessimistic.
“The slump in single-family construction is deepening, another headwind to activity and employment,” wrote Samuel Tombs and Oliver Allen, economists for Pantheon Macroeconomics, in a Friday research note.
Pope Leo XIV sent a letter to Vatican officials and tech leaders at the Holy See’s conference on AI this week. Leo has made AI a priority of his papacy and has advocated for an “ethical framework” for the governance of AI.
Despite the Vatican’s lack of regulatory power, Pope Leo XIV is increasingly advocating for ethical AI oversight on the part of governments and companies, just a month into his papacy.
The pontiff, who was elected in May following the death of Pope Francis, sent a message dated Tuesday to Silicon Valley executives and Vatican officials on Friday at the Holy See’s second annual conference on AI, ethics, and corporate governance held at the Apostalic Palace in Vatican City.
In his message, published by the Vatican, Leo said AI technology is a great tool but also could be misused and cause harm, especially for developmentally vulnerable children and young people. AI must take into account the uniqueness of the human person in order to operate ethically, he added.
“AI, especially Generative AI, has opened new horizons on many different levels, including enhancing research in healthcare and scientific discovery, but also raises troubling questions on its possible repercussions on humanity’s openness to truth and beauty, on our distinctive ability to grasp and process reality,” he said.
Although the Vatican doesn’t have explicit regulatory power, Sacred Heart University Catholic studies professor Daniel Rober said the Holy See often lobbies foreign governments to advance its agenda.
By making ethical AI regulation a priority, Leo is also sending a message to individual Catholics and Catholic business leaders to take the idea seriously.
“Acknowledging and respecting what is uniquely characteristic of the human person is essential to the discussion of any adequate ethical framework for the governance of AI,” Leo said in the message.
Leo has made ethical AI a priority of his papacy, mentioning it just two days after he became pope in his inaugural address to the College of Cardinals. He is building on the legacy of Pope Francis, who during his time as pontiff established the conference on AI held at the Vatican this week.
Leo is also following in the footsteps of his namesake Leo XIII, who advocated for better working conditions during a period of rapid industrialization in the late 19th century and early 20th century.
“He took the name because he wants to be somebody who is commenting on the way in which technology, both AI and other things, are changing society, and wanting the church to be a voice advocating for humanity and for the human good in those circumstances,” Rober told Fortune.
While Leo advocates for ethical AI—and could be preparing to write a future “encyclical” (or formal letter to all Catholic bishops) on the subject, according to Rober—the debate on how much to regulate AI rages on worldwide.
In the U.S., the absence of federal AI regulation has opened the door to state laws concerning AI, including on intellectual property rights and AI transparency. Still, the Trump administration’s budget bill passed by the House of Representatives in May includes a 10-year moratorium on the enforcement of state and local AI regulation, which threatens the patchwork of laws passed up to now.
Millions more Americans should be taking weight-loss drugs to prevent heart disease, according to the American College of Cardiology.
Exercise and a clean diet aren’t always enough for heart health, the nation’s top cardiology organization said in new recommendations released on Friday. Weight-loss drugs should be used earlier, making them part of the first line of defense for obese patients, the group said.
Novo Nordisk A/S’s Wegovy and Eli Lilly & Co.’s Zepbound should be considered when choosing primary treatments to avert heart disease, the leading cause of death in the US, according to the new guidelines. The popular drugs are more effective than lifestyle changes and have fewer risks than surgery, the nonprofit medical association said.
“We have heard about the myriad of positive influences the drugs possess and to get this sort of props from the ACC is a big win,” Mizuho Securities’ Jared Holz wrote in a note to clients.
Novo’s US-listed shares briefly spiked on Friday after the new guidelines were released, then dropped 1.1% as of 11:22 a.m. in New York. Lilly pared an earlier decline to fall 2.8%.
The ACC’s recommendation is a departure from its previous recommendation that advocated for lifestyle modifications before obesity medications. Patients shouldn’t have to “try and fail” before they are able to get the powerful medicines that have revolutionized weight loss and proven their ability to improve heart health, said Olivia Gilbert, a cardiologist at Atrium Health Wake Forest Baptist Medical Center who led the work on the new guidelines.
She was forthright in saying the change was intended to influence insurance companies and federal programs that decide which prescription drugs to cover. The support of cardiologists could lead more patients to embrace the medicines and signal broader insurance coverage for the drugs from Novo and Lilly, the two main companies vying for control of a market that Morgan Stanley analysts say is hurtling toward $150 billion in peak sales within a decade.
The new guidelines may have sweeping public health and policy implications that could reduce damage from heart disease, “and that’s incredibly exciting,” Gilbert said.
Even so, people should “absolutely not” cancel their gym memberships, according to Gilbert. The drugs will help with weight loss and “if anything that should increase physical activity,” she said. “They’re meant to work in tandem.”
More than 40% of adults in the US are obese, according to the Centers for Disease Control and Prevention. Uncertainty about insurance coverage is a significant barrier to treatment, the ACC said, noting there is “ongoing need to improve access to these therapies.”
Doctors can determine who is eligible for treatment to ward off heart complications based on body mass index, a calculation involving weight and height, or other risk factors, according to the new guidelines.
The link between obesity and heart health isn’t new, but patients need to lose 10% of their body weight to reduce their cardiovascular risk and 15% to slash related deaths, Gilbert said. Drug therapy may be the best and most accessible way to get there, she said.
Many insurers don’t cover the medicines, which cost around $1,000 for a month’s supply without insurance but are also available at lower prices for consumers who buy them directly with cash. The new ACC guidance could influence negotiations with private insurance companies and Medicare and Medicaid, the US government insurance programs for the elderly and the poor, according to Gilbert. While most Medicare and Medicaid plans pay for weight loss drugs for diabetics, they aren’t currently covered for obesity.
In March last year, the Food and Drug Administration approved Novo’s Wegovy for reducing the risk of cardiovascular death, heart attacks and strokes in patients who are overweight and have heart disease, making it the first of the weight-loss drugs approved for preventing potentially fatal heart issues. While the agency hasn’t yet cleared Lilly’s Zepbound for treating cardiovascular disease, it did cut deaths from heart failure in a late-stage study last year.
Lilly welcomed the change, saying it reinforces the importance of treating obesity early and effectively. Novo applauded the ACC’s move as reflecting “today’s treatment landscape.”
Meta Platforms Inc. is going up-market with its surprise hit smart glasses, rolling out new models with Oakley that are aimed at athletes and include improved video recording.
The company on Friday launched new models based on Oakley’s HSTN design, marking the company’s first expansion away from Ray-Ban for its display-free glasses. Like the original models, the Oakley versions can make and take phone calls, play music, take pictures and video and use Meta’s artificial intelligence to answer questions about the surrounding environment.
The new versions, which start at $399 and go up to $499 for a limited edition model with gold-colored accents, include about double the battery life, video-recording at 3K resolution and water resistance.
“We are increasingly seeing performance use cases with the Ray-Bans like people wearing them on roller coasters, cycling and being around water, so we’re trying to lean into that,” says Alex Himmel, the company’s vice president in charge of wearables, in an interview.
Arriving at its second glasses brand was far from a sure thing. Meta’s first glasses, the Ray-Ban Stories, flopped in 2021. But its follow-up version in 2023 was a massive success, giving the social networking giant a real potential hardware stronghold in the artificial intelligence race.
“It was crazy. Popularity caught us by surprise a bit,” Himmel said. The Ray-Bans were “going to be the last display-less pair of glasses. We said we’ll take two swings at it, and if it doesn’t work we’ll go all-in on augmented reality.”
Instead, beyond the latest Oakley model, the company has a multi-year road map for the display-less category and is planning a follow-up pair of Oakley glasses based on the Sphera design for later this year, according to people with knowledge of the matter. That pair will be aimed at cyclists and have a centered camera. Friday’s model has a camera positioned in the upper corner like the Ray-Ban version.
The display-free glasses are one component of the overall Meta AI hardware strategy. The company is planning to introduce higher-end glasses with a display to view notifications and the camera view finder later this year, Bloomberg News has reported. In 2027, it aims to roll out its first true augmented reality glasses, which will blend digital apps with the real world.
Meta’s form-factor has caught on, with several other technology companies working on competitors. Apple Inc. is planning to introduce its first glasses product at the end of 2026, Bloomberg News has reported. That device will operate similarly to the Meta product but better synchronize with the rest of the Apple ecosystem. Amazon.com Inc. also sells glasses, but their current models lack cameras.
Himmel, who said Meta has sold millions of glasses and has a “nice, increasing multiple” of purchases on a year-over-year basis each week, attributed the increased popularity to the Ray-Bans improving across a large number of “small things.” He said the audio quality and microphones started to surpass standalone earbuds, while the camera and AI quality also improved.
Still, Himmel said battery life remains the “number one complaint” about the Ray-Ban versions. The new Oakley models can run for 8 hours on a single charge, with the charging case holding 48 hours of juice. “You should expect a 40% bump with these” he says, attributing the improvement to new battery chemistry and software optimizations — not larger battery packs.
Like Ray-Ban, Oakley is owned by EssilorLuxottica SA, which calls Oakley its second most popular brand after Ray-Ban. Himmel said Meta will roll out new brands under the EssilorLuxottica portfolio “as fast as we can. “We’re going to have to move very quickly because in the world of fashion, stuff moves very quickly,” he says. “The stuff that is a hit right now might not be a year from now. We need to be fast to hit all the brands that we’d like to.”
The first Oakley model, becoming available for pre-order on July 11, will be the $499 limited edition pair. The $399 versions — which come in grey, black, brown and clear colors — will be released in the coming months. There will be versions with clear, transition and polarized lenses. Like with the Ray-Bans, users can swap the lenses for prescription optics.
Meta is going up-market with its surprise hit smart glasses, rolling out new models with Oakley that are aimed at athletes and include improved video recording.
Today’s kids will likely never understand what it’s like to live without so much technology at their fingertips. From interactive smartboards in classrooms to video chatting daily with friends, there is an unavoidable amount of tech intertwined with everyday life. One of the potentially greatest life-changers for children could be the latest major tech innovation: artificial intelligence.
AI is quickly becoming one of those normal pieces of everyday tech, for parents and kids alike. Just look at Sam Altman, the CEO and cofounder of OpenAI, the company who pioneered ChatGPT, who recently spoke about how AI is a part of his life as a new parent on the first episode of the new OpenAI podcast.
Altman revealed that ChatGPT has been an integral resource as a parent, saying he used it “constantly” for the first few weeks after welcoming his son in February.
“Clearly people have been able to take care of babies without ChatGPT for a long time. I don’t know how I would have done that,” he said. “Now I ask it more questions about developmental stages, because I can do the basics.”
Altman says he spends a lot of time thinking about how his kids will use AI in the future—and isn’t afraid to admit that it will be a big part of their lives, for better or worse.
“My kids will never be smarter than AI,” Altman told the podcast’s host, Andrew Mayne. He also thinks his kids will be fully aware of that fact, and not mind it at all. “They will grow up vastly more capable than we grew up and able to do things that we just, we cannot imagine. And they’ll be really good at using AI,” he added.
As AI becomes more integrated into everything from education to therapy, Altman thinks “kids born now will think that the world always had extremely smart AI,” adding, “They will use it incredibly naturally and look back at this like a very prehistoric time period.”
Ying Xu, an assistant professor at the Harvard Graduate School of Education, has pointed out that while AI can be a useful tool for children’s education, such as AI companions that ask questions to improve children’s comprehension and vocabulary, Xu cautions that it could hinder their language and social development. AI can’t fully recreate the deeper engagement and relationship-building that comes from human interaction, which comes with more nuanced, personalized, and organic conversations that are crucial for kids as they grow.
Other concerns like privacy issues are also arising as AI becomes more common among children, but there could be even more dangerous risks. Earlier this year, a 14-year-old boy took his life after falling in love with an AI chatbot, that led to an urgent warning from the safety nonprofit, Common Sense Media, which stated that these platforms should not be used by anyone under 18.
While Altman recognizes the benefits, he also acknowledges that AI has downsides.
“I suspect this is not all going to be good,” Altman explained. “There will be problems. People will develop these somewhat problematic or very problematic parasocial relationships and society will have to figure out new guardrails. But the upsides will be tremendous.”
Telegram founder Pavel Durov said the over 100 kids he’s fathered will inherit his fortune. That includes the six kids he’s an “official” dad to, at least 100 others born through his sperm bank donations. Each could inherit an eye-watering $132 million from Durov’s estate currently worth nearly $14 billion. Others like Bill Gates, Laurene Powell Jobs, and Guy Fieri aren’t being so generous with their offspring.
Over 100 Gen Apha kids are set to one day become overnight millionaires—and they may not even know it.
That’s because the 40-year-old Telegram founder, Pavel Durov, has six “official” children with three different partners; but he’s also been donating to a sperm clinic for 15 years, which told him he has helped conceive over 100 babies across 12 countries. And luckily for them, they’ve just been included in Durov’s $13.9 billion will, despite potentially not knowing their wealthy biological father.
“I wrote my will very recently,” Durov told French publication Le Point in a recent interview. “I make no difference between my children: there are those who were conceived naturally and those who come from my sperm donations. They are all my children and will all have the same rights! I don’t want them to tear each other apart after my death.”
That means his at least 106 children could each earn around $132 million for being related to the Russian-born entrepreneur. But they’ll have to wait a long time before inheriting that fortune.
“I decided that my children would not have access to my fortune until a period of thirty years has elapsed, starting from today,” Durov continued. “I want them to live like normal people, to build themselves up alone, to learn to trust themselves, to be able to create, not to be dependent on a bank account.”
Give Legacy, a sperm and fertility clinic, tells Fortune whether or not they know they’re set for the windfall from their biological daddepends on whether Durov was a “directed donor,” known to the birth parent, or an “anonymous donor” with tighter regulations.
“Identity verification is reasonably straightforward. Paternity tests can confirm that Pavel is the father,” says Khaled Kteily, CEO of Give Legacy. “Anyone who believes that Pavel is their biological father could submit a sample to verify. Depending on each country’s laws as well as relationships with the birth mother, the child could already be made aware.”
Who is Durov—and what are the controversies with Telegram?
Russian-born Durov founded Telegram in 2013—a messaging app divorced from government-requested censorship. But he had to flee his home country in 2014 after refusing to comply with demands to shut down opposition communities on another popular communications platform he had founded, VKontakte. Once he left, he invested all his energy into building up Telegram.
While boundless free speech can allow diverse political and social opinions to thrive, a lack of moderation on the platform has led to some serious issues.
In August of 2024, the Telegram founder and CEO was placed under formal investigation in France. It was alleged that he was complicit in running a platform that enabled an organized gang to perform illicit transactions. Durov was also accused by French prosecutors of complicity in the organized distribution of sexual images of children on Telegram.
Indicted on six charges in total, he was barred from leaving France without permission during the investigation, but was later authorized to move to Dubai in the United Arab Emirates (UAE), where he holds dual-citizenship and runs his platform. Durov’s lawyer, David-Olivier Kaminski, told BBCthat it was “absurd” to accuse his client of being involved “in criminal acts that don’t concern him either directly or indirectly.”
Telegram has also been criticized for reportedly allowing disinformation and extremism to spread, including neo-Nazi ideologies and pedophilic material.
Fortune reached out to Telegram for comment.
Other CEOs and billionaires with their wealth planned out
When it comes to passing immense wealth down to kids, Durov stands out in a crowd of nepotism-conscious leaders. Microsoft cofounder Bill Gates, worth $176 billion, plans to leave less than 1% of his fortune to his children.
“My kids got a great upbringing and education, but less than 1% of the total wealth because I decided it wouldn’t be a favor to them,” Gates said on the Figuring Out With Raj Shamanipodcast earlier this year. “It’s not a dynasty, I’m not asking them to run Microsoft. I want to give them a chance to have their own earnings and success.”
Philanthropist Laurene Powell Jobs, who was married to late Apple cofounder Steve Jobs, also won’t be forking over her $14.1 billion estate to her kids. And Guy Fieri—one of the wealthiest hosts in food TV history, with a $100 million Food Network contract—said his kids won’t get a dime unless they work for it.
“If you want any of this cheese, you’ve gotta get two degrees,” Fieri said in an interview with Fox News this year. “None of this, that I’ve been building, are you gonna get unless you come and take it from me.”
Over 100 Gen Apha kids are set to one day become overnight millionaires—and they may not even know it, thanks to the tech tycoon Pavel Durov’s new will.
Thousands of private government consultants laid off during the Trump administration’s cost-cutting crusade are increasingly flooding a shrinking labor market.
Job postings among seven of the 10 consulting companies singled out by the General Services Administration for contract cuts are down about 27% since 2023, and about 11% from a year ago, according to data scraped from job boards by labor market analytics firm Lightcast.
“The job market is certainly not great for these people,” said Ron Hetrick, Lightcast’s principal economist. “If they lay off people, they’re probably not going to backfill them.”
Federal government employment shrank by 22,000 in May, bringing jobs lost since January to 59,000, according to the latest jobs report. That excludes those on paid leave or receiving ongoing severance pay. About 75,000 workers took an initial federal buyout deal that will pay them until September, with thousands more in another round of offers.
Recruitment company Beacon Hill has seen “a noticeable increase” in job seekers from the federal space in the first two quarters of the year because of job cuts and internal reorganizations, said Kim Ayers, a regional director who oversees the group’s government services business.
In response to queries about job cuts, Booz Allen referred to comments made during a recent earnings call, where Chief Operating Officer Kristine Martin Anderson said the company expects to “add significant headcount in the second half of the year.” Deloitte said it had nothing more to add to the statement it made in April, when it said it was “taking modest personnel actions based on moderating growth in certain areas, our government clients’ evolving needs, and low levels of voluntary attrition.”
Government contractors support public workers in a wide range of tasks, from producing content and developing software to helping draft regulations and handling administrative tasks. There were about 4.6 million contract workers at the start of this year, the Federal Reserve Bank of Atlanta estimates, compared with 2.4 million directly employed by the federal government, excluding active duty military personnel, postal employees and temporary census workers.
Job postings in Washington, DC, which has the largest concentration of federal workers, were down 17% in April versus Jan. 20, job portal site Indeed found. The biggest declines were in administrative assistance, human resources and accounting positions, typical functions in public agencies.
Specifically, management consulting job postings in the Washington metro area fell 28% between February and May, Lightcast data showed.
While hiring is down, “it’s not non-existent,” Hetrick said in an interview. Companies are looking for individuals with skills to help them effectively use artificial intelligence. This may explain the 171,000 increase in job openings in professional and business services from March to April, according to Bureau of Labor Statistics data, even with 82,000 job cuts during the same period, he said.
Some targets of federal contract cuts, including Accenture Plc and International Business Machines Corp., are hiring more than they did last year, Lightcast data showed.
Outside of federal services, demand remains strong for talent in areas such as health care, cybersecurity, artificial intelligence and machine learning, said Emma Long Garber, a vice president overseeing sales and delivery in the Mid-Atlantic for employment company Insight Global.
Hiring could pick up if the Federal Reserve cuts interest rates, boosting business activity, according to Hetrick.
“It would be very difficult to sell your shareholders on why you would be hiring right now,” he said. “But it could improve. Policies change.”
Thousands of private government consultants laid off during the Trump administration’s cost-cutting crusade are increasingly flooding a shrinking labor market.
Billionaire OpenAI CEO Sam Altman warns that AI is rivaling the capabilities of entry-level talent, from interns to PhDs. As Gen Z faces rising unemployment and shrinking job opportunities, experts reveal the jobs that will survive—and how to land one.
AI is on a collision course with young people.
Earlier this month, OpenAI CEO Sam Altman revealed that the technology can already perform the tasks equal to that of an entry-level employee. Now, in a podcast posted just last week, the ChatGPT mastermind went even further—saying AI can even perform tasks typically expected of the smartest grads with a doctorate.
“In some sense AIs are like a top competitive programmer in the world now or AIs can get a top score on the world’s hardest math competitions or AIs can do problems that I’d expect an expert PhD in my field to do,” he told the Uncapped podcast (hosted by Sam’s brother, Jack Altman).
As companies like Amazon have admitted they will soon cut their corporate ranks thanks to AI and Anthropic CEO Dario Amodei warning that the technology could wipe out half of all entry-level, white collar jobs—it begs the question: what jobs will be left for those tossing their graduation caps into the air in the coming years?
A shifting—but not hopeless—job market, experts say
Already, this graduation season has brought one of the toughest job markets for new graduates. The unemployment rate among bachelor’s degree graduates rose to 6.1% in May, up from just 4.4% the month prior, according to most recent data published by the Federal Reserve Bank of St. Louis (FRED). Additional federal data analyzing outcomes by college majors shows that fields linked to AI exposure, including commercial art & graphic design, fine arts, and computer engineering, all have higher unemployment rates—each above 7%.
However, in the tech industry in particular, volatility in the jobs market is nothing new, said Art Zeile, CEO of tech career platform Dice. After all, nearly 600,000 tech employees lost their jobs between 2022 and 2024, according to Layoffs.fyi.
“There is no question that it is a challenging time to be a new graduate entering the job market. We’ve seen some reductions in hiring, especially for entry-level roles, as companies reassess their headcount and look for more specialized skills,” Zeile told Fortune.
“But I wouldn’t hit the panic button quite yet.”
Rather, today’s competitive environment is an opportunity for young people to further sharpen their skills and enter the workforce with a larger focus, Zeile added. It’s a message further echoed by Tiffany Hsieh, director of the Center for Artificial Intelligence and the Future of Work at Jobs for the Future.
“Young people looking for technology or graphic design roles should be thinking about how they upskill, reskill, or pivot, but others in less impacted ones like elementary school teachers and civil engineers need to worry less,” she told Fortune.
The jobs of the future
Even Altman remains optimistic that AI won’t completely terrorize the future of work because, he says, it’ll also open up new opportunities.
“A lot of jobs will go away. A lot of jobs will just change dramatically, but we have always been really good at figuring out new things to do and status games or ways to be useful to each other,” Altman told his brother. “I’m not a believer that that ever runs out.”
The 40-year-old billionaire cited the podcast industry as a space that has grown exponentially in the last decade, and the jobs of the future will simply be ones that sound “sillier and sillier” from our current perspective.
Ziele predicts that in the coming years, more jobs will be centered around AI experience designing; data storytelling, and AI governance, security, and ethical implementation. Those skilled in the development of agentic AI will also be at an advantage.
“Professionals who master agentic AI, which is still in its nascent stages, may become invaluable to companies that want to automate significant chunks of their workflows,” he said.
Some jobs of the future may look like “Frankenstein roles”—like a story designer or human resources designer—that lean on durable skills and pull together various human-centered tasks, according to Hsieh.
While the future remains uncertain, there are still many roles in fields like the skilled trades or healthcare that are growing and are relatively stable from AI, Hsieh added.
“It’s okay to explore different roles in industries you may not have planned on – you will still learn and build skills in any role,” she encouraged Gen Z. “We are all going to need to be more comfortable with career switching and adopt a lifelong learning mindset.”
How to land a job in today’s rocky job market
Landing a job today may feel like an uphill battle, but entry-level roles haven’t disappeared entirely—there are just new strategies required to secure them.
But because AI has made it easier than ever to curate resumes and cover letters, that’s not enough to stand out from the crowd. Hsieh encouraged graduates to focus on their network and portfolio.
“Demonstrated experience is a valuable currency in a world where entry-level roles are scarcer and therefore more competitive,” she said.
“Building MVP tools and solutions with AI for a target industry or to solve a challenge in your community could be a creative way to demonstrate initiative, domain expertise, and durable skills like critical thinking.”
In a sense, the job search should be treated like a personal marketing campaign, Zeile suggested.
“Hiring managers are often looking for potential over experience, so it’s essential to articulate your passion and willingness to learn new skills during the interview process,” he added. “Continuous learning and upskilling, particularly in areas like AI, data analysis, or cloud technologies, can also help to set early-career professionals apart from their competition.”
Aflac says that it has identified suspicious activity on its network in the U.S. that may impact Social Security numbers and other personal information, calling the incident part of a cybercrime campaign against the insurance industry.
The company said Friday that the intrusion was stopped within hours.
“We continue to serve our customers as we respond to this incident and can underwrite policies, review claims, and otherwise service our customers as usual,” Aflac said in a statement.
The company said that it’s in the early stages of a review of the incident, and so far is unable to determine the total number of affected individuals.
Aflac Inc. said potentially impacted files contain claims information, health information, Social Security numbers, and other personal information, related to customers, beneficiaries, employees, agents, and other individuals in its U.S. business.
The Columbus, Georgia, company said that it will offer free credit monitoring and identity theft protection and Medical Shield for 24 months to anyone that calls its call center.
Cyberattacks against companies have been rampant for years, but a string of attacks on retail companies have raised awareness of the issue because the breaches can impact customers.
United Natural Foods, a wholesale distributor that supplies Whole Foods and other grocers, said earlier this month that a breach of its systems was disrupting its ability to fulfill orders — leaving many stores without certain items.
In the U.K., consumers could not order from the website of Marks & Spencer for more than six weeks — and found fewer in-store options after hackers targeted the British clothing, home goods and food retailer. A cyberattack on Co-op, a U.K. grocery chain, also led to empty shelves in some stores.
A security breach detected by Victoria’s Secret last month led the popular lingerie seller to shut down its U.S. shopping site for nearly four days, as well as to halt some in-store services. Victoria’s Secret later disclosed that its corporate systems also were affected, too, causing the company to delay the release of its first quarter earnings.
The North Face said that it discovered a “small-scale credential stuffing attack” on its website in April. The company reported that no credit card data was compromised and said the incident, which impacted 1,500 consumers, was “quickly contained.”
Adidas disclosed last month that an “unauthorized external party” obtained some data, which was mostly contact information, through a third-party customer service provider.
Tesla’s robotaxi rollout reinforces CEO Elon Musk’s long-held belief that the future of the company will be in autonomous vehicles. Wedbush analyst Dan Ives said the start of the program could almost double Tesla’s market cap by the end of 2026.
Tesla is on the cusp of a new era in its history, according to bullish tech investor Dan Ives.
As Tesla prepares to launch the early stages of its robotaxi offering in Austin this weekend, the carmaker will make good on its long-held ambitions to enter the ride-hailing business.
Ives, whose Wedbush Securities is often bullish on the tech sector, welcomed the robotaxi launch. “We view this autonomous chapter as one of the most important for Musk and Tesla in its history as a company,” he wrote in an analyst note released Friday.
The idea that Tesla’s self-driving technology would enable it to have a fleet of robotaxis is central to the investment thesis for the company. Its chief executive, Elon Musk, has long outlined his vision of millions of self-driving Teslas shuttling around paying customers as the next phase of the company’s future. Musk has said the company’s aim is to allow Tesla owners to make their cars part of its robotaxi fleet when they aren’t using their cars.
“So, kind of like Airbnb, where you can sort of add or subtract your house or your guest room,” Musk said in January.
The best-case scenario of the robotaxi rollout could essentially double Tesla’s market cap by the end of 2026, Ives said. He predicted that Tesla’s market cap would reach $2 trillion through next year. Tesla’s stock has had a poor year in 2025 so far, declining 15.9% year to date. The company also reported disappointing sales results earlier this year. Tesla shareholders found themselves having to contend with forces far outside their control, such as a souring relationship between the U.S. and China, its two biggest markets, and Musk’s involvement in politics and the Trump administration, which attracted significant scrutiny.
Tesla did not respond to a request for comment.
After the test in Austin, which will start in a geofenced location with about 25 cars, future expansions will be made easier by a favorable regulatory environment.
“We fully expect under a Trump White House these key initiatives will now get fast-tracked as the federal regulatory spiderweb that Musk & Co. have encountered over the past few years around autonomous clears significantly,” Ives said.
The excitement of Tesla’s most bullish investors, however, put off some others. Earlier this month, investment firm Baird downgraded Tesla’s stock from “buy” to “neutral” because it saw the rate at which the robotaxi program would expand as “a bit too optimistic.” Baird also highlighted the public tiff between Musk and Trump as raising uncertainty surrounding Tesla’s future. Argus Research cited the falling-out as the main reason for its own downgrade, which also came this month. Analysts at Argus feared Tesla’s stock was trading on “non-fundamental events,” meaning investors were buying and selling the stock for reasons that weren’t related to its financials.
“Looking ahead, we are concerned that the war of words between President Trump and Elon Musk, along with the expiration of EV credits, could further weaken demand for new Teslas,” wrote Argus analyst Bill Selesky.
Ives, however, saw past the spat. “The BFF/frenemy situation with Musk and Trump has created a soap opera on this front, but ultimately Trump wants the U.S. to stay ahead of China in this AI arms race, and autonomous is a key factor in who wins AI with Tesla playing a major role on robotaxis,” he said. “We expect over the coming months an easing of the federal framework for autonomous with more power going to the federal regulators, with states having less authority on the autonomous rules.”
Tesla’s robotaxi would not be the first autonomous vehicle approved for use in the U.S. Alphabet-owned Waymo is currently available in San Francisco, Phoenix, Los Angeles, and Austin. This week, Waymo announced it had applied for a permit to conduct a test for its autonomous vehicles in New York. Tech giant Amazon also has an autonomous-vehicle initiative called Zoox that is slated to launch in Las Vegas later this year.
A new report called “The OpenAI Files” has tracked issues with governance, leadership, and safety culture at the influential AI lab. Compiled by two nonprofit watchdogs, the report draws on legal documents, media coverage, and insider accounts to question the company’s commitment to safe AI development. As OpenAI pivots toward a more profit-driven model, the report calls for reforms to ensure ethical leadership and public accountability.
A new report dubbed “The OpenAI Files” aims to shed light on the inner workings of the leading AI company as it races to develop AI models that may one day rival human intelligence. The files, which draw on a range of data and sources, question some of the company’s leadership team as well as OpenAI’s overall commitment to AI safety.
The lengthy report, which is billed as the “most comprehensive collection to date of documented concerns with governance practices, leadership integrity, and organizational culture at OpenAI,” was put together by two nonprofit tech watchdogs, the Midas Project and the Tech Oversight Project.
It draws on sources such as legal complaints, social media posts, media reports, and open letters to tryto assemble an overarching view of OpenAI and the people leading the lab. Much of the information in the report has already been shared by media outlets over the years, but the compilation of information in this way aims to raise awareness and propose a path forward for OpenAI that refocuses on responsible governance and ethical leadership.
Much of the report focuses on leaders behind the scenes at OpenAI, particularly CEO Sam Altman, who has become a polarizing figure within the industry. Altman was famously removed from his role as chief of OpenAI in November 2023 by the company’s nonprofit board. He was reinstated after a chaotic week that included a mass employee revolt and a brief stint at Microsoft.
The initial firing was attributed to concerns about his leadership and communication with the board, particularly regarding AI safety. But since then, it’s been reported that several executives at the time, including Mira Murati and Ilya Sutskever, raised questions about Altman’s suitability for the role.
According to an Atlantic article by Karen Hao, former chief technology officer Murati told staffers in 2023 that she didn’t feel “comfortable about Sam leading us to AGI,” while Sutskever said: “I don’t think Sam is the guy who should have the finger on the button for AGI.”
Dario and Daniela Amodei, former VP of research and VP of safety and policy at OpenAI, respectively, also criticized the company and Altman after leaving OpenAI in 2020. According to Karen Hao’s Empire of AI, the pair described Altman’s tactics as “gaslighting” and “psychological abuse” to those around them. Dario Amodei went on to cofound and take the CEO role at rival AI lab, Anthropic.
Others, including prominent AI researcher and former co-lead of OpenAI’s superalignment team, Jan Leike, have critiqued the company more publicly. When Leike departed for Anthropic in early 2024, he accused the company of letting safety culture and processes “take a back seat to shiny products” in a post on X.
OpenAI at a crossroads
The report comes as the AI lab is at somewhat of a crossroads itself. The company has been trying to shift away from its original capped-profit structure to lean into its for-profit aims.
OpenAI is currently completely controlled by its nonprofit board, which is purely answerable to the company’s founding mission: ensuring that AI benefits all of humanity. This has led to several conflicting interests between the for-profit arm and the nonprofit board as the company tries to commercialize its products.
The original plan to resolve this—to spin out OpenAI into an independent, for-profit company—was scrapped in May and replaced with a new approach, which will turn OpenAI’s for-profit group into a public benefit corporation controlled by the nonprofit.
The “OpenAI Files” report aims to raise awareness about what is happening behind the scenes of one of the most powerful tech companies, but also to propose a path forward for OpenAI that focuses on responsible governance and ethical leadership as the company seeks to develop AGI.
The report said: “OpenAI believes that humanity is, perhaps, only a handful of years away from developing technologies that could automate most human labor.
“The governance structures and leadership integrity guiding a project as important as this must reflect the magnitude and severity of the mission. The companies leading the race to AGI must be held to, and must hold themselves to, exceptionally high standards. OpenAI could one day meet those standards, but serious changes would need to be made.”
Representatives for OpenAI did not respond to a request for comment from Fortune.
Shares of the first publicly-traded stablecoin company Circle continued to surge on Friday after the Senate passed legislation that would establish a regulatory framework for stablecoins, a type of cryptocurrency designed to maintain a value in line with the U.S. dollar, earlier this week.
Shares of Circle are up 53%, soaring from $148 to $227, since the market opened on Wednesday after the legislation passed in the Senate on Tuesday night. Shares of other crypto-related companies increased on the news with Coinbase, the leading crypto exchange in the U.S., gaining 20% since Wednesday.
The legislation, known as the GENIUS act, is a first-of-its-kind bill that would establish regulations and consumer protections for stablecoin companies, including full reserve backing, monthly audits, and anti-money laundering compliance. After passing in the Senate, it will be sent to the House of Representatives for a vote and potential revisions.
Circle issues USDC, the second-largest stablecoin by market cap behind Tether’s USDT. Circle CEO Jeremy Allaire expressed his support for the bill in a post on X after the Senate vote on Tuesday night.
“History is being made, as the US Senate passes the GENIUS Act, taking us one step closer to breakthrough legislation being signed into law that will drive U.S. economic and national competitiveness for decades to come,” he wrote.
The surge in Circle’s stock price comes weeks after the company’s debut on the stock market under the ticker CRCL. After pricing its shares at $31, CRCL opened on the New York Stock Exchange at $69. Within its first day on the market, the company’s shares soared to a high of $103.75 before closing at $82.23, showcasing strong retail demand for access to the stablecoin industry.
Since 2021, stablecoins have become increasingly popular outside of the U.S. as a means to settle cross-border transfers and protect assets against inflation. Crypto firms, however, have long complained that the U.S. stablecoin industry has been hindered by a lack of clear regulations, especially under Biden-era Securities and Exchange Commission (SEC) chair Gary Gensler who initiated dozens of investigations and enforcement actions against crypto companies.
The Senate’s passage of the GENIUS act was aided by President Donald Trump’s vocal support of the broader crypto industry. In addition to pushing for Congress to pass the stablecoin bill, Trump has established a national Bitcoin reserve, pardoned crypto criminal Ross Ulbricht and appointed SEC officials that have ended a number of lawsuits against crypto companies.
With support from the U.S. president and increasing regulatory clarity, mainstream corporations are considering implementing them into their payment structures, including Meta, Google, AirBnB and X.
The Dallas Cowboy Cheerleaders have received a 400% raise. This comes after years of battling for higher wages. The higher salary was revealed on a Netflix docuseries.
NFL Cheerleaders, by and large, don’t earn a lot of money. But the Dallas Cowboys cheer squad will be pocketing a lot more in the 2025 season.
The cheerleaders disclosed in the latest episode of America’s Sweethearts, a Netflix docuseries about the squad, that they would receive a 400% raise starting this year.
The Cowboys cheerleaders did not disclose hard numbers about the salary increase. Nor did they discuss what they were making previously.
It’s the end of a long fight, though. In 2018, former cheerleader Erica Wilkins sued the team for unfair pay, saying she received $7 per hour and a flat fee of $200 per game. That case was settled out of court the following year and hourly wages had not gone up considerably in the years in between.
One former cheerleader told The New York Times she made $15 an hour and $500 for each appearance in 2024. Cheerleaders with more experience earn higher amounts. That brings salary levels to $60 and higher per hour.
The Netflix series, which gave the squad a new burst of popularity, focused somewhat on the financial struggle of members in its first season, showing the need of many to hold full-time jobs in addition to their duties to the team. (That includes several hours of rehearsals each week, attending 10 home games each season, halftime performances, and special appearances.)
They do not receive health insurance through the team, but do have access to a team doctor and physical therapist.
“We got our contracts and probably wrongly assumed that it maybe would have been different, just because of everything that was on TV,” cheerleader Kylie Dickson says on the show. “The world was kind of telling us, ‘Girls, fight for more.’”
Hormel is suing Johnsonvlle, alleging a former employee supplied trade-secret recipes and market intelligence. Last year, Americans spent $8.5 billion on sausages and hot dogs.
Call it a brat battle or a sausage subterfuge. Whatever the label, there’s a standoff brewing in the sausage world.
Hormel is suing its archrival Johnsonville, alleging a former employee left with trade-secret recipes and market intelligence and brought them to the competitor.
“The sausage market is increasingly competitive, and improper use of confidential, proprietary and trade-secret information, or wrongful competition or solicitation, could cause a manufacturer significant competitive economic disadvantage,” the suit reads.
Hormel also accuses another former employee of trying to lure other Hormel employees to Johnsonville after he changed jobs, violating a non-solicitation agreement.
Hormel, which alleges Johnsonville did not cooperate when sent a letter outlining the “unlawful behavior” of the two former employees, is asking for the return and deletion of confidential data as well as unspecified monetary damages.
Hormel, in a statement, said it “does not typically comment on pending litigation, but we do believe that our complaint speaks for itself.” Johnsonville did not immediately reply to a request for comment about the suit.
Sausage is a big business in the U.S. Last August, the Dallas Federal Reserve’s Texas Manufacturing Outlook Survey noted there had been modest growth in the dinner sausage category, which is usually a sign of a weakening economy. Last year, Americans spent $8.5 billion on sausages (and hot dogs, which are a form of sausage) in U.S. supermarkets, according to the National Hot Dog and Sausage Council.
(Another fun fact: Los Angeles consumes more hot dogs than any other city, purchasing more than 27 million pounds of them in 2024.)
Millions of Gen Z are unemployed—and thanks to AI-induced cuts to corporate entry-level roles, landing that first job is about to get tougher. Look no further than the viral donut hack that helped one jobless 25-year-old stand out in Silicon Valley.
We’ve heard from a Gen Zer who waitressed at a major tech conference just to get her CV into the hands of hiring managers and a graduate who cold emailed her dream employers with the subject line, “proposal to hustle”.
Now, another unusual way to grab hiring managers attention is going viral: Sneaking your resume into a box of donuts.
Back in 2016, when Lukas Yla uprooted to San Francisco from Lithuania to chase his big tech dreams, he quickly realized landing a job in Silicon Valley was easier said than done.
Lightning struck while taking a bite into a freshly baked artisanal doughnut. Who could resist opening a box of the tasty treats?
So just like that, the millennial marketing specialist with five years experience under his belt, got to work making a Deliveroo-style uniform, a list of his dream employers and a secret memo for inside the donut boxes. Yla then spent more than a week hand-delivering the donuts to every company on his wish list in the disguise.
“I ended up delivering 50 boxes, addressed to the heads of marketing,” he told the BBC at the time. “Often, the receptionist would immediately pass the doughnuts straight to the recipient. Sometimes, they were called to reception: I could hand over the doughnuts and explain why I was really there.”
When they’d eventually open the box, they’d be greeted with the message: “Most resumes end up in trash. Mine—in your belly,” alongside his resume and a link to his LinkedIn profile. To increase his chances of success, he even leaked the extreme measures he was taking to the press.
The marketing hopeful scored at least 10 interviews. However, he tells Fortune that he failed to secure a work visa and so continued growing his career in Europe and has since worked as a director at Uber’s rival, Bolt.
Years later, Yla’s stunt is going viral all over again. A sign of just how bleak the job market has become, social media users are reviving his resume-in-a-donut-box hack as inspiration for desperate job seekers.
“Brilliant marketing, and a reminder that sometimes breaking the rules (with style) is exactly what it takes,” one Facebook post, which has racked up around 90,000 likes, writes.
Bagging an entry-level role has never been harder—so Gen Z needs to get creative
Millennials are the most educated generation in history, with Gen Z closely following behind. Yet their financial prospects and chances of getting hired are significantly dimmer than those of Gen X graduates.
And athough the landscape of internships has changed, with some offering six-figure salaries—a far cry from the unpaid coffee fetching days millennials (myself included) will remember. Actually landing a foot in the door after school or college is looking increasingly impossible.
Just 10 years ago, 94% of students had either landed work or gone into further education in the one year after graduating, according to data from the U.K. Department for Education. In 2024, just 59% of grads had full-time jobs 15 months after graduating. Many are turning to unemployment benefits to survive.
Likewise, over 4 million American Gen Zers are currently jobless. In China, the government has said that as of February, 1 in 6 young people are unemployed.
It’s no wonder over half (57%) of the class of 2025 reports feeling pessimistic about starting their careers, according to a survey for 1,925 members of the cohort from job platform Handshake. That’s an increase from 49% the prior year.
Gen Z job seekers are getting creative—and it’s working
The Gen Zers who are winning the war for work are thinking outside the box with hacks like Yla’s to gain a competitive edge.
After six months of failed efforts to land a gig, one young job-seeker named Basant Shenouda told Fortune she tracked what conferences recruiters were going to, and volunteered at them to have a chance to hand out her résumés. She ended up landing an internship at LinkedIn.
Another Gen Z candidate, Ayala Ossowski, wore her university’s baseball cap at her pizza joint job, and pitched her experience when customers asked about it. She wound up securing a gig at Cisco.
“The market is so saturated with such incredible talent that it takes some creativity in order to stand out from the crowd,” Ossowski told Fortune.
– Founding story. Forty percent of female founders say that macroeconomic conditions have hurt their businesses—and 46% say that political uncertainty in the U.S. is a direct threat, too. But amid the challenges of tariffs, weakened consumer confidence, and political attacks on diversity and inclusion, female founders see opportunity in other areas—namely, AI.
The early-stage VC firm Graham & Walker gathered these results from a survey of 180 female founders of “VC scalable” startups in North America.
Fifty-six percent of all-female founding teams see “more opportunities” because of AI, compared to only 46% of mixed-gender founding teams who say the same. This report speculates that female founders—who also cite fundraising as, still, a major challenge—could be looking at AI as a way to scale with less capital and avoid some of those fundraising challenges. Seventy-one percent of founders surveyed said raising their last round was harder than they thought it would be. Forty percent of founders still say their gender was a top factor in that difficulty. In 2024, according to Pitchbook, teams including female founders raised 27% more capital than the year prior, with $38 billion closed—but across 13.1% fewer deals than 2023.
Other fundraising challenges include “shifting goalposts”—with norms changing for early-stage funding and early-stage investors expecting founders to meet benchmarks that might have previously been reserved for Series A.
Fourteen founders in the survey specifically called out their experiences with female investors. Many of the concerns they raised are likely related to the pressure those female investors are under. One founder surveyed said female investors are “harder to win over” and “require every box to be checked,” while another said that they’ve pitched women who have “no real ability to do deals.”
The Most Powerful Women Daily newsletter is Fortune’s daily briefing for and about the women leading the business world. Today’s edition was curated by Nina Ajemian. Subscribe here.
Job candidates are getting lost in a flood of applications as AI supercharges hiring, so hiring platform Greenhouse is trying out a new tool for job seekers that borrows from an unlikely source: dating apps.
Dating platforms like Tinder, Bumble, and Hinge offer users a limited number of “super likes,” “super swipes,” or “roses” they can give to potential love interests. These are automatically bumped to the top of the recipient’s feed, making it more likely they’ll see the sender’s profile.
Greenhouse’s feature works in a similar way—users can designate one application per month to a company as their “dream job,” which Greenhouse says makes their application more visible to the hiring company’s recruiting team. The feature also allows candidates to fill out their profile in a more complete way than users who don’t use the feature.
“It’s really an attempt by us to get job seekers themselves to be part of the solution by getting people to put more energy, more intention into their search,” Jon Stross, president and cofounder of Greenhouse, tells Fortune. “In exchange, employers are able to focus on the candidates who want their positions the most.”
More than 1,200 companies on Greenhouse’s platform have signed up to use the feature so far, including Everlane, Flexport, and Guild. And around 7,000 candidates have taken advantage of it, the company says. People who have used the “Dream Job” feature get a new role within an average of 20.5 days, compared to the 35 to 50 day average of people who don’t, according to the company. The feature is free to use.
Only time will tell how Greenhouse’s “Dream Job” will pan out. But it’s a great example of how a very different recruiting landscape is forcing companies to rethink how they do business. And as the jobs market becomes more and more unmanageable, we’re likely to see other organizations look for new ways to sift through a deluge of résumés.
Happy Friday everyone, it’s finance editor Jeff Roberts pinch-hitting for Allie. Since I moved to Southern California two years ago, I’ve been struck by the region’s thriving venture capital scene—one that seems to fly under the media radar compared to Silicon Valley and New York. I recently spoke to a longtime veteran of the scene, Adam Winnick.
Winnick is a lively guy and has that all-important VC quality of being able to convene influential people. I first encountered him last month at a dinner for members of the Medici Network, a crypto-focused institutional investor conference, that brought together everyone from startup founders to bankers to representatives of Ivy League endowments and sovereign wealth funds.
The dinner took place at Avra in Beverly Hills. Having attended more than a few of these things, one thing I noticed—aside from the excellent Mediterranean food—was just how normal it felt. There was a time when everyone at a crypto event saw themselves as an outsider, and the VC industry viewed crypto venture capitalists as a different breed playing a different game.
I’m not sure that’s the case anymore. Crypto investing now feels like just another stream in venture capital, though some obvious differences remain—especially when it comes to getting paid. Unlike the traditional model where VCs obtain a bushel of shares from a startup, and then wait seven years, the crypto VC world is more liquid and revolves around tokens not stock. (If you want a closer look, check out this deep dive on the topic by Leo).
In the early days, the mix of crypto and venture capital resulted in some pretty egregious behavior—think VCs filling their bags with tokens tied to half-baked projects, and then dumping them onto retail investors. Lately, though, the adoption of stricter lock-up periods has curbed some of the worst abuses, and the expected arrival of clear regulations should improve things further.
For his part, Winnick is a big advocate for the token model. “It’s a powerful incentive mechanism to bootstrap network effects. Just because people misuse them today or didn’t know what to do with them early on doesn’t mean they’re not going to be used in the future,” he observes.
Tokens are likely to become a more common feature of the VC landscape if, as Winnick predicts, the worlds of traditional tech and crypto move closer together. If this convergence is indeed taking place, Winnick says the winners will be those who can figure out how to combine the mature tech stack and broad business networks of so-called Web2 with the highly technical and less capital intensive dynamics of Web3.
Winnick, a former banker, and his cofounder Kamel Mokeddem, a former Oracle exec, appear to be cracking the code on crypto investing. The IRR for the inaugural $45 million fund at their firm Finality Partners was 69% at the end of last year, and boasts Series A investments in promising crypto staking projects like Eigen Layer and Babylon. Meanwhile, though it’s early days, the fund’s second vehicle Liquid Fund is up 12% this year at a time when many other funds are posting flat or negative returns for the first part of 2025.
While Finality Partners is dwarfed by the giants of the crypto VC world like a16z and Haun Ventures, the traction its partners have gained suggest they’ve found a lane of their own—an achievement Winnick attributes to his willingness to give blunt advice and be directly accessible to the firm’s portfolio companies.
As always, Term Sheet is curious to hear your thoughts. Do you think the worlds of crypto and traditional VCs are coming closer together? And finally, in reading up for this column, I came across a New York business reporter who described the L.A. venture capital scene as more “passive aggressive.” Fair?
Good morning. Some modern CFOs now view marketing as a growth center rather than a cost center. Yet, despite this shift in mindset, marketing is still taking a back seat at many companies, squeezed by trade tensions, economic uncertainty, and cautious consumer spending.
New research from McKinsey highlights the evolving role of the chief marketing officer (CMO) and argues that better alignment between the CMO, CEO, and CFO is key to finding new growth opportunities. However, achieving this alignment is easier said than done. When accountability for the customer is unclear, and everyone in the C-suite is responsible for growth, often no one truly is.
McKinsey’s analysis of Fortune 500 executive teams, based on publicly available data, reveals a telling trend: companies with a single customer- or growth-focused executive, such as a CMO, grow up to 2.3 times faster than companies with multiple roles sharing those responsibilities.
But simply appointing a CMO isn’t enough. “Pull the CMO back to the center, have them align with the CFO, and get everyone moving in the same direction,” McKinsey recommends. Without clear ownership and support, even the most talented CMO can’t deliver their full potential.
Despite its strategic importance, marketing is often sidelined. According to Spencer Stuart, the percentage of Fortune 500 companies with a CMO dropped from 71% in 2023 to just 66% in 2024.
One challenge: CMOs often struggle to clearly communicate the value and costs of marketing to their finance counterparts. The most successful marketing organizations use sophisticated systems and agreed-upon KPIs to demonstrate the financial impact of their investments, McKinsey finds. This data-driven approach helps get CFOs onboard.
Retail is one sector where this alignment is increasingly evident. Ulta Beauty CFO Paula Oyibo, for example, recently told me that the company’s partnership with Beyoncé’s Cécred hair care line as a natural fit—highlighting how marketing and partnerships can drive growth.
Similarly, Mandy Fields, CFO of e.l.f. Beauty, believes in the power of collaboration between finance and marketing. “Oftentimes they’re at odds because finance looks at marketing as an expense,” she told me. “We have taken a different approach, seeing marketing as a sales driver, and that has proven to work for us.” For the full year 2024, e.l.f. Beauty delivered 28% sales growth and a 26% increase in adjusted EBITDA.
Kory Marchisotto, chief marketing officer at e.l.f. Beauty, recently told me that from the first day she and Fields met, “we just knew that, whatever was going to happen around us, there was this common respect and admiration for each other’s career.”
As McKinsey puts it, for growth strategies to succeed, C-suite leaders must truly view marketing as a strategic function.
Surprise commentary from a Chinese state-owned media outlet helped to send shares of Pop Mart, the toy store behind the buzzy Labubu dolls, down by 3.6% in Hong Kong trading Friday.
People’s Daily, a state media outlet, published an article on Friday criticizing the practice of selling “blind boxes,” a practice where chains sell mystery boxes that contain an unknown item from a larger collection. Blind boxes rely on the element of surprise and artificial scarcity, as shoppers buy boxes in the hope of getting a rare item. The practice is also well-suited to social media, as customers host unboxing videos for mass audiences.
While Pop Mart was not mentioned by name, the store chain relies on “blind boxes” for its toy sales. The toy chain’s shares are now down by just over 12% for the week.
In its article, People’s Daily warned that blind boxes could lead to youth addiction and called for stricter regulation of the practice. In 2023, China banned the sale of blind boxes to children under the age of 8.
In addition, Morgan Stanley on Wednesday noted that the bank had removed Pop Mart from its China and Hong Kong focus list, replacing it with insurance company PICC P&C, according to CNBC.
Pop Mart’s shares have risen by almost 500% over the past 12 months. Now valued at $40 billion, the toy store chain dwarfs Hello Kitty-owner Sanrio, worth about $12 billion. That optimism ties to both the success of its Labubu doll line, touted by celebrities like Dua Lipa, Rihanna, and Blackpink’s Lisa, as well as hopes that young Chinese will spend more on “emotional consumption,” spending big on hobbies even if they cut back on everyday items.
Wang Ning founded the first Pop Mart store in 2010, and the chain soon grew on the back of its own toys, like the Molly doll line. The company debuted on the Hong Kong stock exchange in late 2020.
Last year, Pop Mart reported 13 billion Chinese yuan ($1.2 billion) in revenue, a 107% increase. Profits increased by 204% to reach 3.3 billion yuan ($460 million).
Wang’s personal net worth has surged alongside Pop Mart’s shares. He’s now China’s 10th-richest person, according to Forbes estimates.
Small, fuzzy and baring sharp teeth, Chinese toymaker Pop Mart's Labubu monster dolls have taken over the world, drawing excited crowds at international stores and adorning the handbags of celebrities such as Rihanna and Cher.
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