Trump called for the immediate removal of Intel CEO Lip-Bu Tan in a social media post Thursday. The post follows criticism of Tan by Arkansas Senator Tom Cotton, who has questioned his ties to China. Tan was named CEO of Intel in March.
Intel shares were down more than 3% in mid-morning trading Thursday after Donald Trump called on social media for the company’s CEO to “resign, immediately.”
Lip-Bu Tan was named CEO of Intel in March, replacing Pat Gelsinger. Sen. Tom Cotton (R-Ark.) has questioned Tan’s ties to Chinese companies in recent days and has raised concerns about a criminal case at Cadence Design, where Tan served as CEO until 2021 in a letter sent to the company’s chairman Wesnesday.
“The CEO of INTEL is highly CONFLICTED and must resign, immediately. There is no other solution to this problem. Thank you for your attention to this problem!,” he wrote.
Intel did not immediately respond to Fortune‘s request for comment about Trump’s demand.
Reuters has reported Tan has invested at least $200 million in a number of Chinese companies, including some linked to the country’s military. That has led to previous criticism of him from the investment world.
“The simple fact is that Mr. Tan is unqualified to serve as the head of any company competing against China, let alone one with actual intelligence and national security ramifications like Intel and its tremendous legacy connection to all areas of America’s intelligence and the defense ecosystem,” Bastille Ventures partner Andrew King told Reuters.
He was also CEO of Cadence during a period when the company unlawfully exported semiconductor design tools to a People’s Republic of China military university. (Cadence pleaded guilty to those charges and paid a $140 million fine last month.)
Tan’s appointment as CEO at Intel was initially cheered by investors. Shares jumped 10% on the news earlier this year and he was seen as eminently qualified and was the first outsider to ever be named a leader at the company. He has overseen plans to cut 25,000 jobs this year, but the company did surpass analyst expectations in its most recent earnings.
Trump inserting himself into the affairs of leading a non-governmental company is unique, but not without precedent. In 2009, Barack Obama asked the CEO of General Motors to resign, but that was part of a government restructuring plan for the automaker that involved an aid package for GM.
Toyota is sounding the loudest warning bell yet about tariffs. The automaker said it expected its profits to be $9.5 billion lower this year because of the Trump tariffs on cars imported to the U.S. Other major automakers have also warned of multi-billion dollar hits.
As tariffs begin to roll out, Toyota is warning investors that the levies will cut deeply into its profits this year.
The world’s largest automaker on Thursday said it expected its profits to be $9.5 billion lower this year because of the Trump tariffs on cars imported to the U.S. That’s the highest impact estimate any company has given to date.
The company also said it was cutting its full-year operating profit forecast by 16%.
Toyota now says it expects an operating profit of $21.7 billion.
A trade deal secured last month cut the tariff on imported cars and parts from 27.5% to 15%, but that’s still six times higher than Toyota and other automakers were paying at the start of 2025.
Big automakers are more likely to absorb tariffs to keep the cost of their cars steady and avoid scaring off consumers.
“It’s honestly very difficult for us to predict what will happen regarding the market environment,” said Takanori Azuma, Toyota’s head of finance in a briefing.
While Toyota is predicting the largest profit loss due to tariffs, it’s hardly alone in reducing its forecasts. Honda, on Wednesday, said it expects tariffs to cost it roughly $3 billion in profits this year, which is lower than initial estimates. Nissan said it expects a $2 billion hit to profits.
GM, meanwhile, is projecting profits will be between $4 billion to $5 billion lower than expected this year. Ford says its full-year gross revenues will take a $3 billion hit. And Jeep maker Stellantis expects tariffs to increase expenses by $1.7 billion this year.
Palantir CEO Alex Karp may have three degrees to his name—but he’s fed up with higher education. The billionaire took a shot at elite universities, including Harvard and Yale, during his AI firm’s earnings call on Monday, saying degrees don’t matter once you land at Palantir: “This is by far the best credential in tech. If you come to Palantir, your career is set.”
With Gen Z facing an uphill battle in today’s job market, and many facing mounds of student loan debt, a growing number of young people have conceded that pursuing a degree may have been a worthless endeavor—and some business leaders are agreeing.
In fact, top employers today aren’t “even talking about degrees” anymore, the Great Place to Work CEO Michael Bush, previously told Fortune. “They’re talking about skills.”
Now Alex Karp, the CEO of Palantir, is the latest exec to publicly question the value of traditional schooling.
“If you did not go to school, or you went to a school that’s not that great, or you went to Harvard or Princeton or Yale, once you come to Palantir, you’re a Palantirian—no one cares about the other stuff,” Karp said during Monday’s earnings call.
The 57-year-old added that his company is building a new credential “separate from class or background.”
“This is by far the best credential in tech. If you come to Palantir, your career is set,” he said.
Palantir’s hot streak is thanks to workers who want to ‘bend the arc of history’
Palantir pulled in a record $1 billion in revenue last quarter, or 48% year-over-year. The AI analytics company’s stock is now up nearly 600% over the past year, with its market cap rising $12 billion yesterday alone. As of publication, its market cap was around $430 billion.
And according to Karp, the secret to their rise hasn’t been luring workers with a bougie headquarters or scooping up Ivy League talent—it’s bringing together a workforce that isn’t prideful of their fancy college degree, or lack thereof.
It’s a feeling echoed by Shyam Sankar, Palantir’s chief technology officer who just recently joined the billionaires club thanks to the recent increase in company value.
“We are able to attract and retain and motivate people who actually want to bend the arc of history here, work on the problems that drive outcomes,” Sankar said on the earnings call.
Palantir’s disdain for existing methods of education and talent development goes beyond just talk. Karp and fellow Palantir cofounders Peter Thiel and Joe Lonsdale have been supporters of the University of Austin, a new four-year school that prides itself on being centered around free speech and being “anti-woke.”
Fortune reached out to Palantir for comment.
Palantir wants to attract young talent—but also cut its workforce
Palantir is currently hiring for dozens of roles across the company, including in product development and U.S. government roles—alongside multiple positions specifically for interns and new graduates.
This past spring, the company also notably established the Meritocracy Fellowship, a four-month, paid internship for high school graduates who may be having second thoughts about higher education. Program admission is solely based on “merit and academic excellence,” but applicants still need Ivy League-level test scores to qualify. This includes at least a 1460 on the SAT or a 33 on the ACT, which are both above their respective 98th percentiles.
According to Karp, the internship was created in direct response to the “shortcomings of university admissions.”
“Opaque admissions standards at many American universities have displaced meritocracy and excellence,” the Palantir posting said. “As a result, qualified students are being denied an education based on subjective and shallow criteria. Absent meritocracy, campuses have become breeding grounds for extremism and chaos.”
“Everything you learned at your school and college about how the world works is intellectually incorrect,” Karp added to CNBC in February.
Successful interns will be interviewed for full-time roles. “Skip the debt,” the posting read. “Skip the indoctrination. Get the Palantir Degree.”
However, this young talent may be hired just to build programs that will eventually lead to their replacement by AI. Karp admitted this week that he hopes to reduce his workforce by 500 employees.
“We’re planning to grow our revenue … while decreasing our number of people,” Karp told CNBC this week. “This is a crazy, efficient revolution. The goal is to get 10x revenue and have 3,600 people. We have now 4,100.”
Gen X professionals patiently waited their turn for the coveted CEO role, but baby boomers leaders are skipping them in favor of millennials taking the throne. The proportion of Gen X chief executives in the Russell 3000 has steadily decreased—and it may have to do with the “forgotten generation” being hesitant with AI. Meanwhile, Red Lobster, Lime, and Kickstarter have all appointed millennials to the CEO job in recent years.
Many employees put decades of blood, sweat, and tears into climbing the corporate career ladder—but the top rung is missing the “forgotten generation” of workers, and it may be knocked out from their AI hesitation.
About 41.5% of CEOs in the Russell 3000 are at least 60 years old, part of the baby boomer generation, up from 35.1% in 2017, according to research by the Conference Board and Esgauge. Meanwhile, the number of millennial chief executives, in their 30s and 40s, has increased from 13.8% to 15.1% over those eight years.
But Gen Xers, entering the senior-level stages of their careers, aren’t seeing that same rise in representation. About 43.4% of people in their 50s are CEOs—a fall from 51.1% during that same period.
While Gen X still represents the greatest proportion of CEOs, they face dwindling opportunities compared to their millennial counterparts. Instead of giving their jobs to the next generation below them, baby boomers are skipping over Gen X in favor of promoting younger talent into their spots.
Much of this change can be linked back to AI’s rising prominence in the workplace, experts say. Nearly all companies are integrating the advanced tech into their business strategies, and millennials by and large have the digital skills to lead that change.
The ‘forgotten’ and unappreciated generation skittish on AI
It’s no secret that AI is here to stay—and CEOs are adamant that the only workers who will thrive are those who embrace the technology. However, older generations are a lot more hesitant to use ChatGPT and other tools compared to digital-native youngsters.
Millennials are leading the way when it comes to embracing advanced technology. About 50% of millennials use generative AI at work, compared to just 34% of Gen X, and 19% of baby boomers, according to a 2024 report from recruitment agency Randstad. Plus, younger workers are more positive about the tech; 55% of millennials are optimistic about AI-driven solutions, as opposed to 37% of Gen X, and 36% of boomers.
While the oldest generation is the least prepared and hopeful when it comes to using AI themselves, they’re looking for successors who are more willing. And millennials perfectly fit the bill: they’re old enough to have industry experience, grew up with the internet, and are more forward-thinking about AI use in business. Gen Z are too young, and Gen X are more skittish on the technology.
But there may be another factor at hand: Gen X is simply being overlooked at work in general. Due to workplace ageism and the expectation they’ll retire soon, Gen X is being passed up on career opportunities. About 22% of employees aged 40 and up say their workplaces skip over older workers for challenging assignments, and 16% say they’ve witnessed a pattern of being passed over for promotions in favor of younger staffers.
The millennials being tapped as CEOs of billion-dollar companies
Billion-dollar companies are already on board with the next wave of millennial CEOs, promoting them to the position in lieu of Gen Xers who waited their turn.
Last August, Red Lobster made history by appointing their youngest CEO in history: Damola Adamolekun. At just 35 years old, he took the reins of the struggling seafood chain, having previously been chief executive of P.F. Chang’s when he was 31, and an investment banking analyst at Goldman Sachs. The millennial CEO marked a fresh new start for Red Lobster’s leadership strategy—and his spirited can-do energy has made him an executive darling admired by fellow CEOs and customers alike.
Project fundraising company Kickstarter also appointed a millennial to its chief executive position in 2022, when he was just 33 years old. Serial entrepreneur and millennial CEO Everette Taylor has since become a force to be reckoned with, making Forbes 30 Under 30 list for his efforts to build equity in the arts and marketing realms.
There’s also electric scooter and bike company Lime, which appointed then-36-year-old Wayne Ting as its CEO in 2020. The millennial had been the chief of staff to Uber’s CEO, also serving as a senior policy advisor for The White House and a private equity associate for Bain Capital.
The ‘forgotten generation’ of Gen Xers are being passed up for the CEO job—now, billion-dollar companies like Red Lobster, Lime, and Kickstarter are tapping millennials to lead the charge.
Crypto investors rejoiced late Thursday morning on news President Donald Trump was set to sign an executive order to make it easier to include alternative assets in employees’ retirement accounts. Bitcoin jumped 2% over the past 24 hours to push past $116,000, and Ethereum, the world’s second largest cryptocurrency, soared 7% to hit about $3,800, according to data from Binance.
The total value of all cryptocurrencies rose almost 2% to $3.9 trillion, per CoinGecko. The rise mirrored the broader surge in the stock market as the S&P 500 notched a slight gain after markets opened before dropping later in the morning.
“This is yet another channel of sustained, long-term demand for Bitcoin that will bid the price higher,” Ryan Rasmussen, head of research at the crypto asset management firm Bitwise, told Fortune.
The rise in the crypto and equities markets follows multiple reports that Trump will sign an executive order Thursday midday that will task the Labor Department to reevaluate guidance for fund managers about whether alternative assets can be included in 401(k)s. These assets can include private equity as well as potential crypto products, including Bitcoin ETFs.
The guidance is tied to the Employee Retirement Income Security Act of 1974, or ERISA, which instructs the Labor Department to set investment standards for retirement and health plans.
Trump’s new executive order will also instruct the Labor Department to work with other regulators, including the Treasury as well as the Securities and Exchange Commission, to align rules across multiple agencies regarding alternative assets’ inclusion into retirement plans.
Beyond the initial price jump, crypto market analysts believe the order, which essentially reinstates a former policy Trump issued in his first term that President Joe Biden rolled back, will lead to further gains in Bitcoin and other digital assets.
The 401(k) market totaled $8.7 trillion in assets in the first quarter of 2025, according to the Investment Company Institute. “This move effectively opens access to Bitcoin and other cryptocurrencies for retirement investors,” said James Butterfill, head of research at CoinShares, another crypto asset manager.
Jake Ostrovskis, an OTC trader at the crypto market maker Wintermute, agreed. “Unlike retail investors, who chase momentum or institutional traders seeking alpha, 401(k) participants typically maintain target allocations through systematic rebalancing—creating sustained, predictable demand flows,” he said.
Bitcoin’s Thursday price jump follows a week of lows in August after the cryptocurrency notched repeatedall-time highs in July, mirroring a corresponding rally in the stock market.
Jake Brukhman is a computer scientist who worked at Amazon and on Wall Street before founding CoinFund, one of the first venture capital firms dedicated to cryptocurrency investing. He is also the latest guest on Fortune’s new podcast Crypto Playbook (available on Spotify, Apple and YouTube) where Brukhman shared his insights based on a decade of investing—and offered some very practical tips for those coming to this market for the first time.
His first piece of advice for newcomers is that it’s safest to choose major cryptocurrencies that have an established track record. Doing so will let investors gain exposure to crypto, and benefit from its upswings, while also letting them stay clear of the hyper-volatility and outright scams that can come with newer projects.
“As a new participant just entering the space, it is absolutely much safer to stick with the big names. You’re not going to go wrong if you are investing in Bitcoin, investing in Ethereum. These are projects that have been around for over 10 years at this point, and have very well established communities and ecosystems,” said Brukhman.
CoinFund had the good fortune to invest in Ethereum when it was just 60 cents, compared to the nearly $4,000 it is trading for today, but his advice still holds.
In the podcast, Brukhman went on to note that, as the crypto industry has matured, a set of norms and guardrails have emerged to ensure blockchain projects are managed responsibly. These new practices focus primarily on token management and creating incentives to align founders and investors.
In the past, most notably during the Initial Coin Offering mania of 2016, blockchain project founders would rush to sell millions of tokens to retail investors—and then fail to follow through with their plans, causing the price of the token to slump or collapse altogether.
Today, Brukhman notes that responsible projects will include governance measures to protect investors and to restrict the distribution of their token supplies over a timeframe of several years. He says that 90% of the crypto projects CoinFund chooses to back have these attributes—which is a pretty clear indication that newer investors should also look for these qualities before putting down their money.
Finally, Brukhman shared that his fund shies away from projects with anonymous founders. While this may seem obvious, it’s worth remembering that the original appeal of crypto for many people was as a new form of money that was not controlled by governments, and that protected the privacy of its users.
The most famous example, of course, is Bitcoin whose founder Satoshi Nakamoto has never disclosed his identity to this day. Satoshi enjoys nearly mythical status among crypto fans for building the first and most successful blockchain, and for acting with complete integrity—but unfortunately, he is the exception not the rule. Subsequent projects run by anonymous founders have typically proven to be scams.
Brukhman says that CoinFund has backed founders whose privacy choices run the gamut from being totally open on social media, to those who shield their identity with pseudonyms. But he says the firm always makes a point to know who they are dealing with before investing.
“From our perspective, we’ve never had to invest in something that had a purely anonymous founder. We never found a project where, you know, it was so important to invest in it that we should have taken that risk on founder anonymity, and so we just haven’t done that,” he says.
Nearly three years ago, Niki Mock, founder of the nonprofit FurnishHopeDC, posted a message on Nextdoor, explaining that she was looking for a gently used bunk bed for a low-income family in Washington, D.C. Not having enough beds meant the family was sleeping on the floor. She recalls receiving a response: “‘I’ll buy one.’”
The message had CEO-style brevity because it came from one: Julie Sweet, chief executive of the consulting firm Accenture. Sweet spends her days advising some of the world’s most influential corporate leaders and running a company with more than 770,000 employees. And on many days, she also makes time for FurnishHopeDC, a community organization that gives new and gently used household goods to families in need of them who live in DC’s Ward 7 and Ward 8.
FurnishHopeDC has outfitted more than 900 homes since it launched five years ago; in the past three years, Sweet is responsible for more than half of the homes the organization has served. She donates at least 10 twin beds, including mattresses and frames, per month to the charity, and has purchased more than 400 bedding bags, which each cost more than $200. Inside these bags are duvets or comforters, covers, sheet sets, pillow cases, pillows, squishmallows (for kids’ beds), and throws. Sweet also donates new, high-end beauty products, toys, and kitchen pots and pans, but most of her energy goes into bedding. “The sheets that she gives us, I swear, are higher quality than the sheets I sleep on,” says Mock.
Accenture CEO Julie Sweet has focused some of her philanthropy on giving bedding to families who need it in the DC area.
Photograph by Mackenzie Stroh for Fortune
Sweet’s focus on bedding is not random or merely a reflection of her personal obsession. The CEO, who grew up in a working-class household in California, sees bedding—and a good night’s sleep—as “critical for adults and kids to be able to be successful,” she told Fortune. A lovely, inviting bed, she said, gives people “a place of refuge each day.”
“[O]ften these families live in cramped quarters, and the only place they can call their own is their bed,” Sweet explained in an email. “Having a good quality bed allows them to sleep better, which is so important for health and being able to have a positive mindset and the strength to do the very hard things they must do.”
The sleep divide is real
Over the past several years, sleep has become a market worth hundreds of billions globally, populated by high-tech mattresses, data-collecting wearables, sleep apnea devices, and more. One-percenters who are busy optimizing every aspect of their diet and lifestyle with an eye to achieving more or living forever are happy to splurge on big-ticket sleep buys. And where CEOs once bragged about getting by with four hours of REM, they have now taken to the Gen Z trend of “sleep-maxxing.”
However, research has shown that not getting enough sleep is a larger problem for people who earn less and live in low-income neighborhoods, not stressed-out white collar workers and executives. The reasons for what some call the “great sleep divide” are varied and complex, but studies suggest that the culprits include stress, being unemployed, or working multiple jobs. Living in crowded circumstances, and in districts with high levels of light and noise pollution and fewer green spaces, can also play a role.
Research has validated a connection between cognitive function and good sleep habits. If you’re extremely sleep deprived, your brain functions about as well as someone who is drunk, which does not bode well for one’s performance at work or school. Having too little sleep can also tank a person’s mood and motivation. Over the long term, good sleep habits are correlated with healthy aging, and poor sleep is now seen as a risk factor for chronic illnesses like heart disease and, for adults in mid-life, dementia.
Meanwhile, the high cost of buying multiple beds and bedding can be a barrier to families outfitting a home, especially for those moving out of homelessness, who are among the families Mock’s nonprofit serves. This year, tariffs appear to be driving the costs of bedding even higher, since the vast majority of bed linens are manufactured overseas.
Better than money
Sweet shops online for bedding to donate and keeps an eye out for sales, Mock explains. “When she sees one, she calls and says, ‘How many of these would you like?’” When President Trump revealed his tariff plans, Sweet got in touch, wondering what she should buy before tariffs pushed prices higher.
The CEO is the only donor who always gives the organization brand new sheets, and the only one selecting prints featuring unicorns, cars, and rocket ships for children, and lush colors for adults. “I can tell she really enjoys that part, picking out the different designs and then imagining what child is getting what,” Mock says. “I have no idea when she has time to do this, because each bag is different.”
The nonprofit fields messages from Sweet at all hours of the day, even when it’s 2 or 3 a.m. in the timezone where Sweet is traveling.
Mock says she and her partner Adriane Herbert sometimes have to explain to people how to use a duvet and duvet cover, because they haven’t had one before, and she has had to convince Sweet to stop including dust ruffles, which can allow bed bugs, mice, and cockroaches to travel too easily.
Every time Mock is there to see a new bed put together, she snaps a photo and sends it to Sweet to show the real person on the receiving end.
“This is so much better than getting money,” says Mock. “She’s putting her time, effort, and obviously, money into it, but it’s really her heart and soul.”
President Donald Trump sent a jolt through the tech industry on Thursday, demanding the immediate resignation of Intel’s chief executive officer, Lip-Bu Tan, and branding him as “highly conflicted.” The call, issued via Trump’s Truth Social platform, follows a request earlier in the week from Republican Sen. Tom Cotton to the Intel chairman, demanding answers about Tan’s ties to China.
“The CEO of Intel is highly CONFLICTED and must resign, immediately. There is no other solution to this problem. Thank you for your attention to this problem!” Trump wrote Thursday morning.
Tan only took the helm at Intel in March 2025, and his appointment was initially welcomed by investors, with Intel’s stock rising as much as 15% following his start. Tan took over from Pat Gelsinger, long considered a star CEO in the chips and semiconductor space, who was reportedly forced out by the board, which had grown frustrated with the former leader in the chips space losing market share to Nvidia.
By late July, Tan sent a memo to employees informing them of significant ongoing layoffs and other cost-cutting measures, and shares were trading below their springtime level by that point. On Thursday, shares fell as much as 3% in premarket trading after Trump’s post.
Why Trump thinks Tan could be ‘conflicted’
The conflict centers on Tan’s financial and professional ties to Chinese companies, particularly those with links to China’s military and technology sector. According to a Reuters investigation in April, Tan—either directly or via his venture funds—has invested at least $200 million in at least 20 Chinese advanced manufacturing and semiconductor firms between 2012 and 2024. The probe identified several companies with links to the Chinese People’s Liberation Army.
These revelations gained new urgency after Sen. Cotton sent an open letter to Intel’s board, also reported by Reuters, questioning Tan’s allegiances and whether the company could be trusted with nearly $8 billion in federal subsidies under the CHIPS and Science Act—money designed to shore up domestic chip fabrication critical to U.S. security, finalized during the Biden administration.
Cotton’s letter demanded to know whether Intel had required Tan to divest any interests in Chinese technology companies or firms tied to China’s Communist Party and its armed forces. The senator referenced not just Tan’s investments, but also his leadership of Cadence Design Systems, a major chip design company. Less than two weeks before Cotton’s letter, in late July, Cadence admitted to violating export rules by providing technology to a Chinese military university and agreed to pay a $140 million fine as a result.
Broader political context
Trump’s demand comes just one day after he announced plans to impose a 100% tariff on imported computer chips, part of his broader economic campaign against reliance on foreign—especially Chinese—technology, with America’s lead in chips a key tension point. Trump’s comments are also stoking new leadership drama for Intel, which has already cycled through several CEOs and directors in recent years amid fierce competition from Nvidia, AMD, and Samsung.
The dustup threatens to further destabilize Intel at a critical moment. The company, which once dominated the global chip market, has been battling to regain its competitive edge in artificial intelligence processors and advanced semiconductor manufacturing. Just days before Trump’s remarks, Intel said it was separating its networking division to streamline its operations under Tan’s leadership.
Intel has pledged $100 billion toward U.S. chip manufacturing and packaging, with major projects in Arizona, Ohio, Oregon, and New Mexico. The company received almost $8 billion in direct CHIPS Act funding for these expansions. Companies including Micron Technology, Samsung and Apple have also have pledged large-scale investments for American manufacturing.
Several former board members of Intel criticized the company’s performance in a commentary for Fortune earlier this week, arguing that “U.S. advanced semiconductor manufacturing has been withering for some time,” wrote Charlene Barshefsky, a former U.S. Trade Representative, Reed Hundt, a former chair of the Federal Communications Commission, James Plummer, a former Dean of Engineering at Stanford, and David Yoffie, a professor at Harvard Business School. “The once-leading Intel appears to be dropping out of the race. Missed deadlines, poor execution, and a misguided strategy to retain manufacturing within Intel while also serving as a foundry for its fabless chip competitors resulted in a dearth of customers.”
Intel did not immediately respond to a request for comment.
For this story, Fortune used generative AI to help with an initial draft. An editor verified the accuracy of the information before publishing.
The Canadian government is finally taking legal action for applicants who are stuck sitting in radio silence after multiple rounds of interviews. Ghosting has gotten so bad that experts in recruiting are warning applicants not to believe hiring managers who say “we’re putting an offer together”—they would rather breadcrumb them than call back out of fear. Now, companies in Ontario will be forced to inform candidates about their hiring status.
There’s some good news for struggling Gen Z job applicants who are chasing recruiters for an answer: the era of ghosting may slowly be coming to an end. In Canada, at least.
Viral videos from job-seekers are circulating all over TikTok, and candidates are all commiserating on one thing: they’re burnt out from a tough white-collar job market, before even getting started with their careers. Frustrated Gen Zers are showing off their spreadsheets, showcasing their hundreds of applications, and airing out that they’re going through several interview rounds just to end up getting ghosted. This viral video of a job-hunter showing her rejections even racked up over a million views.
But there may be some hope going forward for the generation that’s knocking out hundreds of applications with AI—if they’re in Canada.
Starting January 1, companies in Ontario with at least 25 employees will be forced to inform candidates about their hiring status within 45 days of their interview, or the last interview if there were multiple. Employers also will have to disclose whether a vacancy is actively being filled and whether AI is being used to screen and select candidates.
Some states in the U.S. have similarly attempted to pass legislation on ghosting and ghost jobs. In 2024, a New Jersey state legislator announced that it would fine employers up to $5,000 for failing to give candidates an estimated timeline for when a vacancy will be filled, and remove job listings within two weeks of filling the role. The proposed bill also requires companies to disclose when ads are posted for roles that don’t exist. But the New Jersey Business and Industry Association opposed the bill on behalf of employers on the grounds of higher costs and “impracticality.”
9 out of 10 workers say they’ve been ghosted—here’s why it’s happening
A poll found that nine out of 10 workers say they’ve been ghosted by recruiters, with a majority of employees responding that they would rather hear anything than nothing at all. A separate Glassdoor study found that around 27% of applicants never even heard back after completing a final round interview.
They are being left in the dark as to why they’re getting ghosted so often—but Anna Papalia, career influencer and author of Interviewology, tells Fortune that the reason it’s so rampant is that nobody is holding recruiters accountable.
Having previously worked as a director of talent acquisition for Conner Strong and Buckelew, she says hiring managers are too scared to tell applicants they didn’t get the gig, and overall, employers have the upper hand in today’s job market.
“We need this law. We need it in America. We need it everywhere,” Papalia says. “They’d rather breadcrumb [applicants] and play these mind games, or they just truly lack any courage or bravery.”
Papalia compared applying for work in a job-seeker’s market to selling a house in a time of low or high demand. Since there’s a surplus of applicants on the market, the chances of job-seekers landing their dream role becomes increasingly more difficult. In the meantime, her advice is to apply to as many jobs as possible.
“If you’re selling a house in a seller’s market, you don’t do anything at your house, and you’ll get 40 offers,” Papalia continues. “If you’re selling it in a buyer’s market, you have to get it staged, you have to get it repainted, and you have to make it the best it could possibly be.”
Her advice for Gen Z? Don’t believe anything a company says until they make you an offer— even when they say things like “we’re putting an offer together” or “you’re our number one applicant.”
Ghosting could be damaging to employers
Not only does ghosting discourage applicants in the short term, but it could damage the company’s reputation in the future.
A study found that 80% of job-seekers would not consider applying to a role at the same company that did not update them on the status of their application.
“When you are treated really well in an interview process, you tell your friends and family you gain a certain respect for that organization,” Papalia says.
“When you’re ghosted and when you’re treated like you’re disposable, you feel like sh–t, and that company’s reputation is then on the line. And right now, companies aren’t thinking very deeply about how they treat their candidates, how it really affects people.”
In today’s edition: Jane Fraser’s meeting with Trump, some dark horse candidates for Fed chair, and a startup pivot that led it to WeightWatchers.
– Peoplehood pivot. Two years ago, SoulCycle cofounders Julie Rice and Elizabeth Cutler launched another business. It was called Peoplehood, and it was billed as a way for people to work on their relationships—a kind of unofficial group therapy that captured the spirituality that drew people to SoulCycle classes with an element of leadership coaching and self-reflection.
Over the past several months, Peoplehood quietly pivoted to a new model: support groups for people taking GLP-1 medications.
Now, Peoplehood is shutting down and the company’s assets have a buyer: WeightWatchers. The original, 62-year-old weight-loss community network, WeightWatchers itself recently came out of bankruptcy under a new CEO, lightened its long-burdensome debt load, and unveiled its strategic direction. Two years ago it acquired Sequence, a telehealth platform for prescribing GLP-1s. Now WeightWatchers plans to offer new options like menopause support.
WeightWatchers didn’t disclose the financial details of the transaction, but it’s acquiring Peoplehood’s tech and platforms and bringing on Rice as chief experience officer (Rice was a longtime member of the WeightWatchers board). She’s bringing three employees with her (at one point, Peoplehood had as many as 60 but slimmed down to a sixth of that); Cutler isn’t joining WeightWatchers. (“She’s happy to send this baby off,” Rice says.) Peoplehood had raised funding from the venture firm Maveron.
“Community is what has underpinned this business throughout and it is as important, if not more important today than it’s ever been,” says WeightWatchers CEO Tara Comonte.
Peoplehood’s GLP-1 pivot, while surprising to some, came out of finding product-market fit, Rice says. People enjoyed coming to the community for other reasons—”We tried Peoplehood, we tried couplehood, we tried motherhood, we tried singlehood,” Rice says—but they stuck around longer when it was about weight loss. “It was just stickier. It just was,” Rice says. Community was at its most powerful as a tool to support “habitual change.”
SoulCycle cofounder Julie Rice is selling the assets of her latest startup Peoplehood to WeightWatchers.
As chief experience officer, Rice will lead WeightWatchers’ expansion of its longtime support groups into a virtual model. In 2024, WeightWatchers had $786 million in annual revenue and ended the year with 3.3 million subscribers. WeightWatchers will continue to offer a mix of groups, some focused purely on GLP-1 users, a place to discuss topics like understanding the science of the medications, dealing with side effects, eating while taking the therapies, and supporting weight loss through exercise and strength training. As WeightWatchers attempts to keep up with fast changes in this category—an oral weight loss medication is on the way—Rice will steer efforts to evolve communities. She says her biggest lesson from her years building Peoplehood is that “people just want to be together.”
“This is a really new category. It is really hard to find information. Your best friends won’t tell you that they are taking these medications,” Rice says. “What I’ve seen in these rooms is that people want a teacher. They want a best friend who will tell them where they’re buying their protein and which brands they like the best. And they want a cheerleader. They want somebody who’s saying, ‘You’re doing it right, you’re doing a great job.’ I think these rooms can be all of those things for people. They can be a classroom, a support system, a confidant.”
Crypto may soon be a part of your 401(k). President Donald Trump plans to sign an executive order Thursday midday to allow employees access to alternative assets like Bitcoin ETFs or private equity in their retirement accounts, according to a senior White House official, who asked for anonymity.
The order will direct Labor Secretary Lori Chavez-DeRemer to reexamine her department’s guidance on what assets are allowed in retirement accounts. The asset rules are informed by a decades-law known as the Employee Retirement Income Security Act of 1974, or ERISA, which sets minimum standards for most employer-sponsored retirement and health plans, including 401(k)s.
Trump’s order also will instruct the Department of Labor to work with other federal agencies, including the Treasury and Securities and Exchange Commission, to collaborate on whether the regulators should implement complementary changes to their agencies’ policies.
In addition, the order asks the SEC to allow investors access to alternative assets into retirement plans the agency monitors.
Bloomberg was first to report that the order will be signed on Thursday.
In the last year of Trump’s first term in 2020, the White House directed regulators to evaluate whether alternative assets should be allowed in retirement accounts. That guidance was later rolled back under President Joe Biden.
But, during Trump’s second term, his administration has weighed for months whether and when to reinstate the old guidance. Thursday’s signing will be a boon for private equity and other alternative asset managers. It also delivers another victory to the crypto industry, whose ETFs, funds, and other financial products have largely been avoided by traditional retirement fund managers.
Under Trump, his administration has slashed regulatory red tape and opened up the markets for crypto companies, who were large donors to the president’s reelection campaign. He’s signed an executive order to establish a Bitcoin and digital assets reserve. His administration also eliminated the Department of Justice’s crypto enforcement.
Trump has also pushed Congress to pass two bills to create regulatory frameworks for the industry. Trump has already signed in July one bill, which regulates cryptocurrencies called stablecoins, into law. The House has passed another piece of legislation that regulates crypto markets more broadly. That bill awaits a vote in the Senate.
Trump’s executive order opening up retirement accounts to alternative assets also potentially benefits his business empire.
Over the past year, the president and his family have dived headfirst into crypto. Just before his inauguration, the 47th president launched his own memecoin, or cryptocurrency whose value is simply propelled by its ties to a joke or celebrity.
For the one in five Americans who still live in rural areas, remote work isn’t a luxury, it’s a lifeline. And more and more of these would-be workers will be at risk unless we can summon the collective will to make remote job opportunities available to them.
Now here’s the good news: A majority in rural regions are ready to seize these opportunities—provided we find innovative ways to give them a chance.
That’s the upshot of fresh research that Generation, the non-profit I run, recently commissioned. We went into the field knowing that midcareer and older workers everywhere – though they are a growing portion of the labor force – are more likely to struggle with long-term unemployment. And knowing also that long-term, persistent poverty is far more prevalent in rural counties than urban counties.
To learn more about this especially challenged subset, we partnered with YouGov to survey more than 500 individuals aged 45 or older who reside in rural areas across 17 states that make up the Appalachia and Delta regions. Almost half were currently unemployed.
We started by confirming what we suspected: Many of these folks are hurting. A house repair, a health emergency, car trouble: such all-too-likely unbudgeted costs are disasters waiting to happen. Sixty-one percent of the individuals aged 45+ whom we surveyed say they would not be able to cover an unexpected expense of $1,000. In fact, 37% do not have enough money to cover their daily needs, and another 32% are just making ends meet. Only one in four say they can meet their needs and save for the future. Unemployment, when it strikes, is a deep hole to fall into. And 45% of the unemployed in our survey have been out of work for more than two years.
Nor was it surprising to find that on the supply side, local economies simply aren’t creating enough jobs. More eye-opening was the way persistent precarity has shaped our respondents’ expectation of what constitutes a good job. Asked to define a “high-quality job,” their answers had nothing to do with the levels of education or technical skills required. Instead, they focused on three essentials: competitive wages, predictable full-time hours and steady employment. Using those basic criteria as their definition, only 6% told us that the area they live in supports “many” such high-quality jobs, while 35% said there are “few or none.”
It was when we began probing for solutions that things got really interesting. One possible option—expecting large swathes of unemployed or under-employed rural
workers to move to where the good jobs are—proved a non-starter. Only 24% in our survey consider relocation a “somewhat likely” option, while just 8% say they would be “very likely” to relocate if a better opportunity came along. That inertia reflects a powerful mix of uncertainty about the potential financial burdens a move entails and certainty about the high emotional cost of abandoning deep ties to families and community. It’s consistent with a broader decline in geographic mobility in the U.S., which recent Brookings Institution research says has hit “historic lows.”
Barring a surge in direct investment in rural America, then, what remains? Just one option: Expanding remote work opportunities. Among the multiple factors that any company would need to consider before making such an investment, we focused on one key variable, the willingness of the local workforce to try something new. And here our survey results offered a big upside surprise.
Specifically, even though 71% of all respondents have not participated in any formal job training or skills development programs in the last three years, 50% told us they are interested or very interested in learning new skills to advance their careers. Even more – 75% – say they would take courses or learn new skills to make themselves more competitive for remote work opportunities.
Seizing those opportunities won’t be easy. Even after companies convince themselves of the business case, they will still need to hone their ability and that of their vendors and partners to create online training programs that are cost-effective, that convey agreed-upon credentials, and that are clearly relevant to securing jobs—all issues that our respondents identified as critical. Any future public funds invested in training will also need to address these concerns.
Still, here’s at least one deeply rooted social problem that doesn’t require a grand new policy program to meet it. Rural midcareer and older workers, our survey confirmed, are ready and willing to gain the skills needed, if and when the opportunity appears.
At the moment, though, the backlash against remote work is spurring a decline in such jobs. As a first step we need to broaden our current debate about the pros and cons of remote work and look beyond the impact on corporate culture, productivity and employee well-being. Yes, managing those trade-offs is complex. But it’s also largely a big city concern.
For rural Americans, the stakes in finding profitable ways to expand remote work are about something far more fundamental—access to today’s job market that otherwise seems sure to leave them even further in the lurch.
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.
President Donald Trump is rapidly tightening his grip on institutions that have long been thought to operate independently of the White House.
Last week, he fired Bureau of Labor Statistics Commissioner Erika McEntarfer, just hours after the agency released a dismal July jobs report. He plans to appoint someone in her place that he deems “more competent.” Days earlier, Trump announced plans to name the next Federal Reserve chair “very soon,” months before current Fed Chair Jerome Powell’s term is set to expire. The move gives Trump an unusual opportunity to shape the direction of the central bank well ahead of schedule.
Some critics have warned the back-to-back shakeups represent a broader trend of the second Trump presidency, one of weakened political independence of key financial bodies—an essential feature of U.S. liberal democracy.
To explore what this shift means for business leaders, Fortune spoke with Francis Fukuyama, one of the world’s leading scholars on democratic institutions.
A familiar warning from the 1970s
“Trump’s philosophy is that everything is political,” Fukuyama said. “Either you’re with him or against him—and if you’re against him, you shouldn’t be in government.”
That approach, he said, directly conflicts with the liberal model of governance: one built on an “impersonal, nonpartisan bureaucracy” that is managed by technical experts. In ultra-complex, wealthy economies like the United States, Fukuyama argues, that model is essential for long-term stability.
Trump appears to be disinterested in that vision, Fukuyama said. He has floated the idea of appointing himself as Fed chair and continuously threatens Powell in a bid to challenge his authority. Rather than deferring to experts, Trump has signaled a desire to steer economic decisions from the executive branch.
Yet, institutions like the Fed are designed to resist this kind of interference. Their role is to be insulated from the drama of political cycles, particularly when it comes to interest rates, where short-term cuts could help a president win reelection but drive long-term inflation.
While Fukuyama said past presidents have respected those guardrails, Trump’s direct and hostile pressure on the central bank is “unprecedented.”
He compared the moment to the early 1970s, when President Richard Nixon repeatedly pushed the Fed to slash interest rates ahead of his reelection campaign. The Fed Chair at the time capitulated, a move that helped trigger the decade’s hyperinflation.
“That era is very comparable to what’s happening now,” Fukuyama said. “We have so many examples of what happens to countries without independent central banks.”
He cited cases from Latin America and sub-Saharan Africa in the 1980s, where politically captured central banks helped skyrocket prices.
The problem for CEOs and investors, Fukuyama warned, is that if the next Fed chair is more willing to follow Trump’s preferences, the effects may not be felt right away.
“If Trump were to fire Powell tomorrow, people wouldn’t feel the impact for two, maybe three years,” he said. “People may not connect that political act to the economic pain they’re feeling.”
That delay, he added, creates fragility. “You can appear to get away with a lot while you’re actually doing a lot of damage.”
The risks of politicizing data
Fukuyama said Trump’s firing of McEntarfer carries a different, but equally serious risk: the politicization of official statistics. He pointed to Argentina in 2007, when then-President Néstor Kirchner dismissed a government statistician whose inflation reports clashed with the government’s narrative.
“Magically, inflation went down,” Fukuyama said. “Everybody knew that this was just completely politically based and not credible.”
He warned that once credibility is lost, it’s hard to get it back. “That’s the risk we face when we start chipping away at the independence of these neutral experts.”
Why CEOs should keep their distance
For business leaders, the incentive to stay neutral may not be clear. Fukyuama noted how some executives have attended exclusive Trump fundraising dinners, including events where investors in Trump’s cryptocurrency were offered personal access to the president.
But Fukuyama warned that getting too close to political figures often backfires.
“It’s hard to run a predictable, modern business when politics gets too involved,” he said. “In the old days, if you had to bribe a politician to get your way, that was a very inefficient system.”
He also cited Elon Musk as an example of how overt politicization complicates a company’s public image. By politicizing his brand, Musk alienated the exact market he hoped to sell cars to.
The lesson, Fukuyama added, is that CEOs are better off operating within a stable, depoliticized system. “The more predictable the rules, the easier it is to do business.”
Dean Leitersdorf and I are on Zoom, watching a Sabrina Carpenter music video.
In “Taste,” Carpenter and Jenna Ortega comically feud in over-the-top fashion—complete with chainsaws, machetes, and camp. But we’re not watching the original. In real-time, the video is transfigured into a snowy animated wonderland, courtesy of an AI model called Mirage. The model was built by Decart, an AI lab focused on interactive experiences that Leitersdorf cofounded and leads. The site calls Mirage a “world transformation model,” but Leitersdorf prefers “livestream diffusion model”—“a way better name,” he says.
“Look, I’m a Lego man!” Leitersdorf laughs as we scroll through other possibilities on Mirage. Effusively, Leitersdorf shows me what it would look like to turn his video into “Zombies!” mode, flying through “cabincore” and steampunk modes. In “World of Wizards” mode, he shows me how mundane objects—like pens—appear as spell-casting beams of light.
This is both fun and games, and entirely serious—Leitersdorf, who cofounded the company with Moshe Shalev in 2023, has long been clear about the depth of his ambition: He wants Decart (yes, named with the philosopher in mind) to be a trillion-dollar company.
“We’re here to build a billion-user consumer app,” said Leitersdorf. “It can’t be that ChatGPT is the last thing a billion people will install on their phones. It just can’t be. The next thing a billion people install on their phones needs to be a Decart product… So, the vision is this: A billion-user company that completely changes how people interact with tech. We do it through building one of the best AI labs in the world. One day, it’ll be top five, top three, and then number one. And we do this with a very small but very fun, talented team.”
Decart has closed a $100 million Series B, valuing the company at $3.1 billion, Fortune has exclusively learned. Sequoia Capital, Benchmark, and Zeev Ventures, all existing investors, participated in the round, with new investor Aleph VC also joining. This round undoubtedly marks a valuation leap—previous reports pin Decart’s valuation at $500 million. (The company didn’t comment on specific numbers.) What’s more, Leitersdorf says the raise was wholly unnecessary—despite raising $153 million in the last 11 months, Decart has spent less than $10 million of its investors’ money.
Nevertheless, Decart remains far from its trillion-dollar goals. But Leitersdorf—born in Israel, raised in Palo Alto, and who earned his doctorate by 23—approaches that ambition with a hard-charging, exuberant confidence.
“Give it five years, 10 years,” said Leitersdorf. “If it works, that’s incredible. And if it doesn’t, you had the best five years of your life. It took a year for us to say it out in the open. And people definitely told us, once we said it publicly, ‘You guys are crazy.’ I say, let them call us crazy.”
And to be clear, it does sound crazy—though not quite as crazy as it would have even a few years ago. Trillion-dollar companies didn’t exist at all (at least, not in modern financial markets) until 2018, when Apple first crossed the mark. Today, depending on fluctuations, there are between eight and 10 trillion-plus companies in the world by market cap. The goalposts are moving in the markets, and the landscape of the Internet is also about to change.
Leitersdorf has a clear view about how the Internet is changing post-ChatGPT. Pre-ChatGPT, he says, consumer Internet use could fall into four categories—knowledge, e-commerce, communication, and creativity (or, if you like, fun). His case: With the rise of AI, the first three categories are already en route to being completely transformed by AI agents and chatbots. That leaves creativity and fun, where Decart believes it can make an impact, said Leitersdorf.
“Think about Netflix, Minecraft, Instagram, TikTok, that’s all a huge portion of the internet,” he told Fortune. “It accounts for more than half the internet, both in time spent and in dollars. And AI still hasn’t completely made its mark. Our TikTok feeds are flooded by AI cats. But that’s not really a new experience. We’re still doing lots of the same things we’ve done for years, opening apps we’ve long opened and engaging with them the way we always mostly have.”
Leitersdorf added: “Over time, we won’t just be seeing Sabrina Carpenter videos. The experience itself will change.”
OpenAI update… OpenAI is reportedly set to hit a valuation of $500 billion, and—also reportedly—today the company’s GPT-5 is expected to see its release.
ICYMI… The second episode of the Term Sheet Podcast is live! Our next guest: Taylor Otwell, CEO and founder of Laravel—the company’s $57 million raise from Accel last year was one of our most-read Term Sheets of 2024. Listen here.
A sharp downgrade to U.S. jobs data has shifted sentiment at the Fed, with top officials like Neel Kashkari and Mary Daly now signaling support for rate cuts amid signs the labor market is weakening. Economists, including Wharton’s Jeremy Siegel, expect the first cut in September—and warn that if Powell delays, political blowback could threaten the Fed’s independence.
For the majority of 2025, analysts and investors have begrudgingly backed the stance of Jerome Powell and the Federal Open Market Committee (FOMC). Looking at the same economic data as the Fed, they have thus far drawn the conclusion that it hasn’t been time to cut.
Until now—or more specifically, until Friday.
Late last week’s bombshell jobs report from the Bureau of Labor Statistics threw the dual mandate of the Fed (inflation at 2% and maximum employment) into sharp focus. The labor market is doing considerably worst than previously realized, to the tune of 258,000 jobs stripped from earlier estimates and unemployment pushing up to 4.2%.
Neel Kashkari, president of the Minneapolis Fed, is generally seen as a hawkish member of the Fed but said in an interview yesterday it may now be time to cut: “There’s two categories of data that I’m focussed on: There’s a bunch of data that I know and that I’ve got confidence in, and there’s data that I don’t know and we’re not going to know for a while.
“The data that I think we know is that the economy is slowing … and that means in the near term it may become appropriate to start adjusting the federal funds rate.”
He was echoed by San Francisco Fed president Mary Daly, who told the Anchorage Economic Summit yesterday in prepared remarks: “My own assessment is that the risks to our employment and inflation goals are roughly balanced. Inflation, absent tariffs, has been gradually trending down, and with a slowing economy and ongoing restrictive monetary policy, should continue to do so. Tariffs will boost inflation in the near term, but likely not in a persistent way that monetary policy would need to offset.
“At the same time, the labor market has softened. And I would see additional slowing as unwelcome, especially since we know that once the labor market stumbles, it tends to fall quickly and hard. All this means that we will likely need to adjust policy in the coming months.”
Meanwhile Federal Reserve Governor Lisa Cook told a Boston Fed event the jobs report “concerning”, adding “these revisions are somewhat typical of turning points.”
More importantly, neither Presidents Kashkari or Daly—or Governor Cook—were among the dissenters a the July meeting. With Governor Chris Waller and FOMC member Michelle Bowman already lobbying for a cut, the ranks of those on the dovish end of the spectrum are growing by the day.
“Pricing of a September Fed rate cut ticked up from 90% to 95% amid the shifting rhetoric, with 60bps of cuts priced by the December meeting (+2.0bps on the day),” noted Deutsche Bank’s Jim Reid to clients on Thursday morning.
While 2-year treasuries bumped slightly on the news, yields are still moving higher in the long term with 10-year up to 4.24% and 30-year up to 4.8%.
Per the FedWatch tool from derivatives platform CME Group, 93.4% of the market is expecting the base rate to go down to 4% to 4.25% in September—down one click on the current rate. Only 6.6% of investors expect a further hold.
Goldman Sachs did have a potential counter to this seemingly foregone conclusion. Chief U.S. economist Jan Hatzius, wrote earlier this week his call is three consecutive cuts of 25 points in September, October, and December (followed by two more 25bp cuts in 2026H1), but cautioned: “A delay is possible if upcoming reports show bigger-than-expected price hikes and a rebound in the labor market.
“But a 50bp cut in September is also possible if the unemployment rate rises again in the August employment report or initial jobless claims increase from their still-low level. Even after Friday’s front-end rally, our funds rate forecast remains below market pricing, especially on a probability-weighted basis.”
Could have been two
Had the Fed learned of he “bombshell” jobs report in real time, Professor Jeremy Siegel believes the Fed would have not only cut this month, but by two clicks.
The emeritus professor of finance at The Wharton School of the University of Pennsylvania wrote in a column for WisdomTree, where he is senior economist, that the Fed may have even been tempted to lower by 50bps.
“My view following Chair Powell’s press conference last week was that Powell was too hawkish, even before we knew about Friday’s data,” Professor Siegel wrote. “I expect the first 25 basis point rate cut at the September 18th FOMC meeting, followed by identical moves in November and December, taking the fed funds rate to 3.58% by year‑end.
“A slower cadence, a “firm but flexible glide‑path”, keeps the committee’s hawks on board while acknowledging that real activity is cooling; first‑half real GDP averaged only 1.2% at an annual rate, and forward indicators such as continuing claims are inching higher.”
Professor Siegel, like many other economists, are looking to the Jackson Hole Symposium later this year for hints of an about-turn on monetary policy.
But even then, Professor Siegel—like some other notable economists—still believe Fed chairman Jerome Powell should step down before his term is up.
“The Fed’s independence has long been one of the cornerstones of a well-functioning U.S. economy,” Siegel noted last month. “But in today’s politically charged environment, that very independence could face a greater threat if Powell remains in place and the economy falters in the second half of the year … If growth slows and Powell hasn’t moved aggressively enough on rate cuts, Powell will become the scapegoat.
“In that case, a Republican-led Congress, already skeptical of the central bank, could impose serious structural restrictions, including changes to the Fed’s governing mandate or the president’s power to remove the Chair. We must remember: the Fed is a creature of Congress. It has no constitutional status, and its rules can be rewritten.”
Good morning. As CFO responsibilities have expanded in recent years, turnover among finance chiefs has also increased, prompting companies to raise pay.
For example, CFO salary increases remain steady at public companies: In 2024, the median base salary increase for CFOs was 4%, while CEOs saw no uptick, matching trends from 2023, according to Compensation Advisory Partners. In 2022, median base salary increases were 3.8% for CFOs and 2.9% for CEOs.
However, a study titled “Delegation and CFO Retention: Evidence from Chief Accounting Officers on the Executive Team” suggests that workload—specifically related to accounting—is also a driver of CFO turnover, indicating that companies should look beyond pay to attract and retain finance chiefs. The study was conducted by researchers from the University of Arizona, the University of North Florida, and the University of Iowa.
The researchers focused specifically on the delegation of accounting. They argue that, unlike other responsibilities a CFO may have, such as digital security or risk management, accounting remains a significant task for all public company CFOs given their requirement to certify financial statements.
The study examined data from U.S. public companies between 2004 and 2019, focusing on instances where the CFO delegated accounting duties to a chief accounting officer (CAO) or controller who is recognized as an executive officer.
The key finding: Companies where CFOs delegate accounting responsibilities experience at least an 18% reduction in CFO departures. Delegating accounting enables CFOs to devote more time to higher-level priorities like corporate strategy, digital transformation, and human resources. In contrast, CFOs who manage both detailed accounting and broader strategic duties are more likely to suffer burnout and leave their roles.
This research aligns with the trend of the CAO role emerging as an elevated, strategic leadership position. More companies today seek CAOs who are not just technical accounting experts but also key business partners and infrastructure builders, according to Spencer Stuart. As the CFO role evolves, accounting leaders increasingly take on expanded responsibilities, including tax and operational improvements across the business, the firm notes.
Overall, the “Delegation and CFO Retention” study points to the value of delegation—not only for retaining CFOs, but also for building leadership depth and strengthening companies over time. And I think AI is also poised to help share this workload.
U.S. economic data is “uniformly bad to ugly” right now and the country stands “at the precipice of recession,” according to Moody’s Mark Zandi but investors are bullish, driving up stock prices—especially in tech—because they are anticipating that the Fed will cut interest rates later this year. However, the Fed may be forced to hold back due to inflation from President Trump’s tariffs. Traders seem to be ignoring the macro risks today—global markets were broadly up as were S&P 500 futures this morning.
S&P 500 futures were up 0.74% this morning after the index itself closed up 0.73% yesterday. A lot of that jump came from tech stocks: The Nasdaq Composite closed up 1.21% after a blowout earnings call from Palantir, which added another 3.62%.
The current bullishness on Wall Street is a stark contrast to what economists are seeing in the macro data. Last week’s dismal jobs report being the most recent aspect of that. “We got what I would call an economic data dump last week, lots of data. And they were all uniformly bad to ugly,” Mark Zandi, Chief Economist of Moody’s Analytics, said on The Concord Coalition podcast “Facing the Future.”
Zandi added later, “I set off the alarm bells this weekend in that post, just because once I really sat down and started looking at all the data, I go ‘Oh, gosh! This economy is really struggling to move forward.’ And thus, ‘at the precipice of recession,’ I think, applies.”
So if the economy is fragile, why are investors buying? Because they are expecting the Fed to step in with interest rate cuts to rescue their bets. (Cheaper money generally turns into stronger demand for equities.)
Goldman Sachs is currently predicting there will now be three rate cuts this year: “A weak US labour market report last Friday (August 1) has raised market concerns over the US economic outlook, driving a significant front-end-led rally in US rates. We see room for this repricing to continue, as our baseline expectation remains for the Fed to cut rates three times this year, and two more times in H1 next year, and we see room for market pricing to shift in excess of that,” Tadas Gedminas told clients in a note seen by Fortune.
His colleague Vickie Chang says that the fundamentals—a bad labor market and declining consumer enthusiasm—are essentially being ignored by stock traders today. “The core risk to growth pricing is something that threatens the market’s belief that it can look through current weakness and discount the prospect of recession,” she said in a research note.
So, cuts from the Fed are in the mail, right?
Not so fast. Zandi is gloomy about that, too. President Trump’s tariffs and his restrictive immigration policy “raise inflation and weaken economic growth. So if you’re at the Fed and you have a dual mandate to maintain full employment, economy, and low and stable inflation that gets pretty difficult. How do you respond to that? And the answer is, you do nothing, and that’s exactly what the Fed’s doing.”
He’s also predicting a bond market sell-off so … fingers crossed, everybody!
Here’s a snapshot of the action prior to the opening bell in New York:
S&P 500 futures were up 0.48% this morning, premarket, after the index closed down 0.73% yesterday.
STOXX Europe 600 was up 0.5% in early trading.
The U.K.’s FTSE 100 was down 0.33% in early trading.
HPE’s $14 billion Juniper Networks acquisition faces renewed uncertainty despite DOJ approval, amid online conspiracy theories and political objections. A federal judge may review whether the merger is in the public interest due to controversy over a reversal of the DOJ’s position to favor the deal. Also, somehow Laura Loomer is involved, and no one knows why. HPE’s stock is down, and CEO Antonio Neri remains under pressure from activist investor Elliott Management, which holds a $1.5 billion long position in the shares.
When Hewlett Packard Enterprise CEO Antonio Neri won a reversal from the U.S. Department of Justice, allowing HPE’s $14 billion acquisition of Juniper Networks to go ahead, he could have been forgiven for thinking his troubles were behind him.
Instead, HPE has been dragged into one of those weird MAGA conspiracy theories that orbit President Trump’s White House. Even Laura Loomer, the vituperous online Trump activist, somehow got involved.
Given that the DOJ dropped its opposition to the merger (it previously complained it would reduce market competition), Neri could reasonably have expected the federal judge overseeing the litigation to waive the deal through.
But because the DOJ’s sudden reversal got the gears whirring inside the brains of multiple online sleuths, resulting in an objection letter from Senator Elizabeth Warren, it is suddenly more likely—perhaps not probable, but plausible—that Judge P. Casey Pitts will hold a “Tunney review” that may overturn the deal.
A “Tunney review” is a judicial proceeding that asks whether a proposed merger is in the public interest. The Tunney Act was created in in the 1970s in reaction to President Nixon’s meddling in the M&A market.
A negative Tunney review would be a defeat for Neri, who is fending off activist Elliott Management, which bought a $1.5 billion stake in the company and demanded seats on the board in part because it believes HPE stock is being held down by execution errors on Neri’s watch. Neri could lose his job if things do not go his way, sources have told Fortune.
How did HPE get here?
For its part, HPE believes it has done nothing wrong, and that it has simply prevailed in a routine judicial process.
“HPE is confident our acquisition of Juniper Networks is in the public interest and will promote further competition in the enterprise WLAN market,” the company told Fortune. “The transaction was appropriately approved with certain remedies by the U.S. Department of Justice, and it was unconditionally approved by 13 other antitrust regulators around the world. We respect the role our regulators play in maintaining competitive markets and appreciate the professional and constructive way in which the DOJ engaged with us in approving the deal.”
But several online corporate dirt diggers, including Matt Stoller, Francine McKenna, Lever News and Capitol Forum, drew attention to personnel changes at the DOJ immediately prior to its approval of the deal. Two DOJ lawyers on the case appear to have been removed from it, according to Semafor. Now HPE is on the front page of the Wall Street Journal as Exhibit 1 in the narrative that lobbyists are undercutting the MAGA antitrust agenda by making off-the record promises about new jobs in the U.S. (HPE denied that, too.)
It is this person that Stoller and his online colleagues believe is a lobbyist responsible for changing the minds of Attorney General Pam Bondi and her chief of staff, Chad Mizelle, and thus reversing their opposition to the deal.
Following that, Loomer used X to insist that HPE had paid consultants allied to President Trump $1 million each to engage in “influence peddling.” Loomer later deleted the post. Sources previously told Fortunethey didn’t understand why Loomer was paying attention to the deal.
The Lever published a claim that “In a last-minute effort to save face … intelligence authorities intervened to rubber-stamp the deal because of national security reasons, a claim that never appeared in any of the DOJ and HP’s legal briefs.” In fact, HPE did cite national security in its July 7 certification of the proposed judgment approving the deal. (You can see it here on page 2.) The national-security angle is that by combining HPE and Juniper it creates a larger market share for a U.S. company in places where the alternative might be Huawei, which many Western governments regard as a Chinese Communist Party asset. (Huawei has repeatedly denied that allegation.)
The next step is up to Judge Pitts. It is not clear cut that Pitts will rubber-stamp the DOJ’s decision. Pitts is a Biden appointee who previously worked at a public interest law firm—and he may therefore be sceptical that Trump’s DOJ went from fierce opposition to “whatever” so quickly.
His ruling is likely months away.
The DOJ told Fortune: “The Department has consistently reiterated that resolution of this merger was based only on the merits of the transaction,” according to spokesman Gates McGavick.
Meanwhile, HPE stock has not reacted well to all the gossip. It remains down 5.7% year to date compared to the S&P 500 which is up 8%. Elliott’s stake is a long position—meaning they want shares to rise. And they are more than willing to replace the CEO if they do not get what they want. Hence the pressure on Neri.
President Donald Trump said Wednesday that he will impose a 100% tariff on computer chips, raising the specter of higher prices for electronics, autos, household appliances and other essential products dependent on the processors powering the digital age.
“We’ll be putting a tariff of approximately 100% on chips and semiconductors,” Trump said in the Oval Office while meeting with Apple CEO Tim Cook. “But if you’re building in the United States of America, there’s no charge.”
The announcement came more than three months after Trump temporarily exempted most electronics from his administration’s most onerous tariffs.
The Republican president said companies that make computer chips in the U.S. would be spared the import tax. During the COVID-19 pandemic, a shortage of computer chips increased the price of autos and contributed to higher inflation.
Investors seemed to interpret the potential tariff exemptions as a positive for Apple and other major tech companies that have been making huge financial commitments to manufacture more chips and other components in the U.S..
Big Tech already has made collective commitments to invest about $1.5 trillion in the U.S. since Trump moved back into the White House in January. That figure includes a $600 billion promise from Apple after the iPhone maker boosted its commitment by tacking another $100 billion on to a previous commitment made in February.
Now the question is whether the deal brokered between Cook and Trump will be enough to insulate the millions of iPhones made in China and India from the tariffs that the administration has already imposed and reduce the pressure on the company to raise prices on the new models expected to be unveiled next month.
Wall Street certainly seems to think so. After Apple’s stock price gained 5% in Wednesday regular trading sessions, the shares rose by another 3% in extended trading after Trump announced some tech companies won’t be hit with the latest tariffs while Cook stood alongside him.
The shares of AI chipmaker Nvidia, which also has recently made big commitments to the U.S., rose slightly in extended trading to add to the $1 trillion gain in market value the Silicon Valley company has made since the start of Trump’s second administration.
The stock price of computer chip pioneer Intel, which has fallen on hard times, also climbed in extended trading.
Inquiries sent to chip makers Nvidia and Intel were not immediately answered. The chip industry’s main trade group, the Semiconductor Industry Association, declined to comment on Trump’s latest tariffs.
Demand for computer chips has been climbing worldwide, with sales increasing 19.6% in the year-ended in June, according to the World Semiconductor Trade Statistics organization.
Trump’s tariff threats mark a significant break from existing plans to revive computer chip production in the U.S. that were drawn up during the administration of President Joe Biden.
Since taking over from Biden, Trump has been deploying tariffs to incentivize more domestic production. Essentially, the president is betting that the threat of dramatically higher chip costs would force most companies to open factories domestically, despite the risk that tariffs could squeeze corporate profits and push up prices for mobile phones, TVs and refrigerators.
By contrast, the bipartisan CHIPS and Science Act that Biden signed into law in 2022 provided more than $50 billion to support new computer chip plants, fund research and train workers for the industry. The mix of funding support, tax credits and other financial incentives were meant to draw in private investment, a strategy that Trump has vocally opposed.
In today’s CEO Daily: Diane Brady talks to CFOs about how AI is affecting their companies.
The big story: Yet more tariffs, this time with a new policy on semiconductor chips.
The markets: S&P 500 futures are rising this morning.
Plus: All the news and watercooler chat from Fortune.
Good morning. Everyone is talking about AI. Earlier this week, we hosted a dinner with 17 CFOs from some of the world’s largest companies, where they talked about how they’re using AI in their jobs. Some are using it to highlight how different words are likely to impact sentiment on earnings calls, based on historical data. Many use it to create scenarios around earnings projections against the vagaries of tariffs, policy shifts, technology investments and more. They’re creating hyper-personalized data sets and go-to-market strategies that not only use AI agents but tailor interactions to customers’ AI agents. I also learned about their strategies for embedding AI knowledge throughout their organizations, from top-down learning to metrics for getting promoted into the senior ranks. And while most are not yet cutting jobs in response to AI, they’re also not adding to their overall headcount.
The dinner, sponsored by Deloitte and ServiceNow, was conducted under the Chatham House rule to encourage conversation by sharing highlights anonymously. But during my on-the-record chat with economist Rebecca Patterson, a senior fellow at the Council on Foreign Relations and former chief investment strategist at Bridgewater Associates, we heard about the impact of a shift in fiscal policy. “It’s not just the fact that Congress ignored the Congressional Budget Office and historical norms in enacting the reconciliation bill,” she noted. “It’s also the size of the increase to future deficits at a time when the economy has been growing above its long-term potential. I thought we would see some fiscal hawks push back more and water down the ultimate bill, or that there would be a longer fight. I was wrong.”
Patterson also said she expects policies under the Trump Administration to “lean towards” structurally higher inflation. And she talked about the continued strength of the U.S. relative to other economies and the transformative impact of AI.
Insights from leaders on the front lines are critical in shaping the themes of this column and underscore the unique role that Fortune plays in convening and creating connections. Next up is Brainstorm Tech, which Andrew Nusca will lead on Sept. 8 to 10 in Park City, Utah. One Strategy Group CEO David Meadvin told me yesterday that “there’s nowhere better for genuine relationship building.” I believe him. I’ll be going there to moderate some conversations and cohost a dinner for CEO Initiative members with Qualtrics CEO Zig Serafin. If you’d like to join us at Brainstorm Tech, you can apply here.
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