Spotify has a new CHRO: Anna Lundström. Joining the music and podcasting giant in 2016, Lundström has held a variety of roles at the company, and previously served as the VP of HR. She also played a crucial role masterminding the company’s remote work strategy, otherwise known as “work from anywhere.”
Fortune sat down with the newly-minted HR leader to get her thoughts on workforce priorities for the company, what she thinks it takes to build a great work-from-home policy, and of course, AI.
Lundström and chief product officer Gustav Söderström have released a set of AI rules to the entire organization, and introduced a series of trainings for employees that range from prompt engineering to more advanced courses.
“Leaning fully into the learning, making our employees future ready, providing them with AI literacy skills—that will position them really well,” she says. “We don’t know what the future will hold, but the bet we’re taking is making everyone AI ready.”
Lundström says she’s also doubling down on employee well-being, which includes increased mental health support and an annual company-wide “Wellness Week.” An idea born out of pandemic-era Zoom burnout, that’s when the company closes all offices for the first week in November, and sends 7,500 employees home at the same time.
“People love that because usually, when you’re on vacation, you come back to a full inbox and a long to-do list,” she says. “But here, everyone’s off at the same time.”
You can read more of my interview with Spotify’s new CHRO here.
– Verdict’s in. In an era of #MeToo backlash, with hyper-masculinity ruling from Washington, D.C. to Silicon Valley, the retrial of Harvey Weinstein could serve as a kind of litmus test—would his guilty verdict hold up in 2025?
Yesterday, a jury found the former Hollywood producer and convicted sexual predator guilty on the top charge he faced in New York—but acquitted him of the second and failed to reach a verdict on the third.
Three women—former production assistant Miriam Haley, former model Kaja Sokola, and Jessica Mann, who aspired to become an actress—brought claims forward against Weinstein. These weren’t the most headline-grabbing of Weinstein’s dozens of reported offenses—no celebrities involved—but they were what ultimately brought him to justice in 2020 (as did a trial in Los Angeles, which Weinstein is appealing).
Weinstein’s attorneys were counting on the vastly different cultural moment we are in to protect the ex-mogul. As the New York Times put it, his lawyers bet that the “#MeToo movement had waned enough to cast doubt on the motives and credibility of his accusers.” Attorney Arthur Aidala previously said that the women who accused Weinstein were “were trying to take advantage of [him]”—because of the impact of the #MeToo movement. Weinstein has continued to deny the allegations against him.
While accusations against Weinstein sparked the #MeToo movement, they weren’t its sum-total. The movement led to the passage of the Adult Survivors Act, which allowed victims of years-old abuse to come forward—including musician Cassie, leading to Diddy’s ongoing trial today.
The jury is expected to return today to deliberate on the third charge. Whatever the outcome, #MeToo is bigger than Weinstein—but the movement can still count his partial verdict as a measured victory during a hostile political moment.
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.
Spotify has found a new HR leader: Anna Lundström.
The native Swede and New York City dweller was appointed as CHRO of the music streaming giant in April of this year. She previously served as VP of HR, and has been with the company since 2016.
One of Lundström’s most notable contributions to the company so far was the formation of the company’s “work from anywhere” policy, which launched in 2021. A Spotify spokesperson previously toldFortune that the remote work strategy led to a 50% drop in attrition.
In her new role, Lundström oversees all aspects of the company’s human resources department, including people strategy, and managing a workforce of 7,000 employees across 180 markets. And her appointment comes at an exciting time for Spotify: the company celebrated its first full year of profitability since it was founded in 2008.
Lundström sat down with Fortune to discuss her vision for the CHRO role, plans to integrate AI into her department’s workflow, focusing on employee mental health, and connecting people strategy with business strategy.
This interview has been edited and condensed for clarity.
Fortune: What first brought you to Spotify?
Anna Lundström: I was with NASDAQ for almost a decade before joining Spotify. I still had about 20 years in HR, but was obviously working in more of a financial services environment. I loved it, but Spotify reached out and was just starting to expand in the U.S.
[Spotify] is obviously a product that I love and use, so that was important for me as I took my next step, but also the match with me being a Swede in the U.S. and being part of the Spotify journey and expansion here, was really attractive.
You’ve said that one of the goals is to make AI a key focus across the organization. How are you planning to integrate AI into your HR department?
My team partners closely with the product and technology team. A couple weeks ago, Gustav [Söderström], our chief product officer, and I, went out to the full organization with a set of guiding principles around not only the importance of AI, but [how] we are taking the learning approach.
A lot of companies are missing out [by] saying, ‘Get on the AI train!’ But they’re not really doing that. They just want to be fast and out there with the world.
We launched a set of trainings for our employees—everything from prompt trainings to more advanced ones, based on your role. It’s not about rolling out [AI]. It’s rolled out, and now everyone is working on learning.
Leaning fully into the learning, making our employees future ready, providing them with AI literacy skills—that will position them really well. We don’t know what the future will hold, but the bet we’re taking is making everyone AI ready.
In HR specifically, we have also been early adopters. We’ve had a couple of people analytics tools for about two years. Disco is one of them, which gives us real time data. So no more Excel spreadsheets. We go into a Disco feature we’ve built ourselves that gets real time attrition, engagement, and more. We have another platform, Echo, that is built on machine learning and serves as our internal LinkedIn.
What are some of your other priorities as CHRO?
Another big focus is mental health. We’re really leaning into that. We have doubled down on more support for our employees. This year we launched a new mental health platform that provides a more personalized experience, Modern Health. We believe that a sustainable and healthy workforce is a competitive advantage. Retaining our top talent is a massive focus of mine.
Culture is always evolving. Product and business have evolved a lot one year into profitability. For me, a genuine people experience is when you really tie people strategy to business strategy, and they are one.
One of Spotify’s hallmarks is its “Work from Anywhere” policy. How do you view the RTO debate in 2025?
Fun fact: My colleague, Alexander Westerdahl, and I were the architects of that policy. We launched early in 2021. One of our key success factors, as a product but also in our employee offerings, is that we do not look at other companies that much. Of course we set benchmarks. But we have always believed that we have really talented, driven employees with high agency—motivation to work hard, have fun and deliver on the results. Then we don’t necessarily care where you work from. What we have found in the years since we started “Work from Anywhere” is that we need to have those touch points where people come together.
We recently implemented what we call “Core Week,” which is one week per year when your core team comes together and you work from an office of your choosing. The whole purpose is coming together, working, socializing, and planning together.
What mistakes do you think leaders are making when it comes to RTO?
When we launched Work from Anywhere, we said that [companies] need to do what’s right for their business. It’s not a one-size-fits-all. If you really trust and respect your employees, as long as you’re able to explain the reasoning, then you can pick whatever works for you.
Which Spotify benefits are you most proud of?
Parental leave is huge. Our employees love it. Six months, all paid. For all parents: men, women, same sex couples, those carrying a child via surrogacy—it’s for everyone.
One of our most beloved ones is what we call Wellness Week. That came out of the pandemic. Everyone was at home and getting Zoom fatigue. So we came up with an idea to offer one week where the whole company is off. So now we are, for the fifth year in a row, closing all our offices in the first week of November. All 7,500 people, including executive management—no emails, no slacks, no WhatsApp. People go and spend their time recharging, being with their families.
People love that because usually, when you’re on vacation, you come back to a full inbox and a long to-do list. But here, everyone’s off at the same time.
Sometimes CHROs can be left out of conversations around the C-suite. What is your relationship like to the other executive leaders at Spotify?
One of the key success factors of being an effective HR professional, at all levels, is obviously your capability to build relationships, to harness the relationships, act with high integrity. But it’s also about being able to connect the dots between business, product priorities and people strategy—that’s high level.
I’ve been with the company for 10 years. I’ve supported almost all teams in the organization. I know the business and product inside and out. I’ve spent a lot of time with our C-suite and executive team.
Once a week, the “E-team,” or executive team, meets for three hours every Tuesday afternoon. We discuss top priorities, how we’re tracking progress on these priorities, people and culture items, whatever that may be. That has made us so connected and collaborative and fast as an organization. I feel extremely well positioned for the job based on my tenure here and where I’ve worked in the organization and the relationships I’ve had.
Good morning. The dual role of chief financial officer and chief operating officer is becoming more common, and the experiences of two industry-leading executives demonstrate that the CFO and COO positions can be complementary.
When Gina Goetter joined Hasbro—the largest publicly traded toymaker in the U.S. and one of the largest in the world—in 2023, she was hired as both CFO and COO, a combination that immediately drew her interest. It was her second CFO role, following her time at Harley-Davidson.
Earlier in Goetter’s career at General Mills, she developed the view that finance is inherently operational. “I was kind of born and bred into this mindset that every operational decision is linked to a financial one—they just go hand in hand,” she explained during a panel session at the Fortune COO Summit on Tuesday.
Hasbro has the same philosophy, Goetter said. “When you’re working with a company that is manufacturing a product, that is making real cost decisions—real investment decisions—there is no path that isn’t either operational or financial,” she said.
Panelist Amrita Ahuja, CFO and COO of Block, a Fortune 500 fintech company, shared that during the first half of her career, she was much more of a generalist, starting in strategy and corporate development. The second half of her career focused on finance, where she developed strong analytical skills and a passion for driving insights from data.
Ahuja joined Block in 2019, later adding COO responsibilities in 2023. The company offers customers financial options such as payment plans through Afterpay, various lending choices for Square sellers, and the ability for Cash App users to split paycheck deposits among cash, Bitcoin, or stocks.
In addition to overseeing finance, Ahuja leads the legal and people functions, oversees communications and policy, and serves as chair of Square Financial Services, the company’s industrial bank.
Of the dual CFO-COO role, Goetter explained: “It’s very blended. You can’t do one without the other, and I find combining them actually creates a lot of simplicity across the organization.”
Are there some complexities in serving in the dual role? “The tension in the role is aspiration and discipline,” Ahuja noted. As CFO, you advocate for growth while ensuring responsible capital allocation, she explained. As COO, you enable the business to move quickly but responsibly. “No COO role is alike,” she said.
Some large companies are going beyond the dual CFO-COO role and combining the functions to create a hybrid position. Bridging finance and operations is strategic in an increasingly complex business environment.
You can watch the Fortune COO Summit panel session here.
Over a two-year span, the Southern Co.’s Plant Vogtle power complex repeatedly made history, potentially changing the entire economics of the nuclear industry with a new uranium fuel.
In 2023, Georgia’s Vogtle brought online the nation’s first new nuclear reactor built from scratch in more than three decades. Last year, a second new reactor turned on, transforming Vogtle into the nation’s second-largest power station.
Now, one of Vogtle’s legacy reactors quietly marked another major nuclear milestone that experts say could shake up the rules for the industry.
Engineers loaded the old reactor with a new type of uranium fuel enriched above the traditional threshold and designed to withstand all kinds of accidents, last longer without refueling, and generate less radioactive waste. In April, the reactor powered up to full capacity, becoming the first commercial reactor in the U.S. to run on next-generation fuel.
It’s the first time in U.S. history a commercial reactor is running on fuel enriched above 5%. That may not sound like much, but many industry analysts recognize the redesigned uranium fuel as a monumental step change for the nuclear sector.
“This is enabling us to get more out of those existing reactors than in the past,” Jonathan Chavers, Southern’s director of nuclear fuel and analysis, told Fortune exclusively. “It’s a significant game changer for the industry.”
There’s a lot of excitement in the nuclear world now with the Trump administration promising to remove nuclear regulatory hurdles and new nuclear technologies ready to take hold, including small modular reactors that use coolants other than water. These are considered fourth-generation models in a world where most reactors in use are second or third gen.
Asked whether the leap from traditional uranium fuel to the pellets Southern (ranked 161 in the Fortune 500) rolled out this spring represented the same jump in technology from third to fourth gen, Ken Petersen, the former president of the American Nuclear Society, laughed.
“This is like going from a Generation I to a Generation IV,” said Petersen, a retired fuel executive from Constellation, the nation’s largest nuclear utility. “It’s really breathtaking. We’re breaking barriers.”
What’s not clear is how widely adopted the new fuel could be in the short term with existing nuclear facilities other than Vogtle. Companies may not want to make the financial investment for older reactors.
Brett Rampal, a nuclear engineer and consultant who previously worked on core design at Westinghouse, called the new fuel program a “big waste of time”—for now.
“As a guy who sold fuel to existing reactor operators, it didn’t matter what I was selling to my customer or utility. It didn’t matter what improvement to the fuel there was,” he said. “The bottom line they asked me is, ‘You’re going to sell this to me at the same price, right?’ Why would we sell you new and improved fuel for the same price? Then they’d say, ‘We’re not interested.’”
How it works
The nuclear fuel that goes into reactors is not the same uranium that comes out of the ground. Once mined, uranium ore is crushed, sorted and compacted into yellowcake, which is then converted into uranium hexafluoride through a chemical process. That grayish solid material is put through a centrifuge to enrich a small percentage of the uranium into uranium-235, the unstable isotope that can split to release energy in the form of heat.
At the end of the enrichment process, gummy bear-sized pellets of fuel are loaded into fuel assemblies like PEZ candy in a dispenser and placed into a reactor that can spark the chain reaction called atom splitting, and the resulting heat is harnessed.
At that point, a nuclear power plant functions just like the coal-fired stations that came before it: the heat turns water into steam that spins turbines and generates electricity.
Since the dawn of the nuclear industry in the U.S., the enrichment process has capped the amount of U-235 present in the fuel at 5%—an artificial industry threshold set decades ago and retained out of what experts said was a sense of inertia in an industry whose tight rules offered little room for innovation. All the atomic energy contained in the other 95% of the uranium that isn’t split contributes to the leftover radioactive waste at the end of the fuel cycle.
In 2012, the year after the Fukushima disaster crushed public support for nuclear power, Congress established the Department of Energy’s accident-tolerant fuel program. At the time, Plant Vogtle was preparing to start construction on the first Westinghouse AP1000, a new generation of reactor with safety features that made a meltdown like the one in Japan almost impossible. The fuel program promised to make uranium pellets themselves that much safer.
The pellets are “doped,” meaning the uranium blend in the nuggets of fuel is modified with materials such as chromium oxide and alumina to improve performance under high heat.
In other words: all the highly radioactive materials that form during the fission process are better contained in the new fuel.
But the next breakthrough in Southern’s novel fuel is newer. The actual cladding in the fuel assemblies—the part that you load the candy into in a PEZ dispenser—is now coated in a zirconium alloy that can withstand more intense heat.
“That helps the rod protect itself in a high-temperature environment,” Chavers said. “[Let’s] say a Fukushima-style event occurred at a nuclear reactor. The coating would protect the rod for an additional amount of time so we could get cooling into the core.”
With those features in place, the reactor can run hotter, allowing it to burn up more U-235. That means the new fuel can be enriched higher—up to 8%. It may not sound like a lot, but the effect is nuclear reactors that must be refueled every 18 months can instead run for 24 months or longer without taking costly breaks to swap out the rods of uranium pellets.
Still, of all the major commercial nuclear operators Fortune contacted to ask about Southern’s breakthrough, none indicated immediate plans to buy the new fuel.
While the new fuel could be commercially manufactured relatively soon, commercial versions of the so-called cladding are likely at least a decade away, according to Southern.
Pacific Gas & Electric, the owner of California’s last nuclear plant Diablo Canyon, said it “remained focused on operating to 2030 with our current fuel design.” New Jersey-based PSEG declined to comment.
The Tennessee Valley authority said only that it “supports accident-tolerant fuels developments” and believes “Southern’s achievement is a good step towards bringing higher assay fuels to market.” Xcel Energy called the milestone “a significant achievement that will enhance safety and reliability,” but declined to say whether it would buy the fuel.
On the other hand, Virginia’s Dominion Energy said it was “considering using [fuel] similar to what’s being piloted by Southern.”
And, while Baltimore-based Constellation said it had “no current timeline for the large-scale use of newer fuels” in its reactors, the nuclear utility said, “We would deploy these newer fuels in our reactors once they make the transition from research and development to a commercial offering.”
New nuclear plants won’t come online anytime soon, so maximizing existing facilities is critical. “If you look at U.S. capacity factors, we’re higher than anybody else,” Petersen said. “We’re pushing up against those limits, and that’s why we need this additional enrichment.”
A new class of young graduates is getting ready to enter the workforce this summer, but they’re likely to face a chilly reception.
In one social media post after another, entry-level workers are bemoaning the state of the labor market and how hard it is to find a job. “It feels more likely to win the lottery right now than get a job,” said one young TikTok poster. “This is not what I expected,” said another young woman on Instagram as she held a stack of resumes and wiped tears from her eyes. “But I can’t be delusional anymore, I literally need to make money.”
The current labor market appears strong on the surface—unemployment is still low at 4.2%, wage growth is steady, and the U.S. added 139,000 jobs in May. But those numbers don’t tell the whole story. A deeper look beneath the surface reveals a much different jobs market for entry-level workers. The unemployment rate for recent college graduates aged 22-27 was 5.8% as of March, according to research from the Federal Reserve Bank of New York. And a May report from Oxford Economics found that 85% of unemployment since the middle of 2023 could be attributed to people just entering the workforce.
“Top-line job openings and unemployment statistics aren’t, in practice, reflecting the experience of new grads entering the workforce,” Mischa Fisher, an economist at Udemy, a provider of online training courses, tells Fortune. “Because entry-level roles are in short supply.”
It’s no surprise, then, that employee confidence amongst entry-level workers just hit an all-time low, according to a recent report from Glassdoor. And more than half (56%) of this year’s college graduates feel pessimistic about starting their careers in the current economy, according to another survey from jobs platform Handshake.
A few different factors are likely contributing to such a tough job market for young people right now. Experts tell Fortune that a combination of factors including a cooling labor market, a hiring pullback prompted by shifting tariff policies, and the long-promised of integration of AI into the workforce, are all creating massive problems for a new generation of job seekers.
“There are now clear trends in the data, not just vague whisperings, that more and more people are getting left behind,” says Cory Stahle, an economist at hiring platform Indeed’s Hiring Lab.
The ‘lock-in’ effect
The COVID pandemic kicked off a major workforce reshuffling, unofficially dubbed the “Great Resignation,” during which workers were successfully able to switch jobs for higher wages.
But that era is long gone. The labor market has become more stagnant, and quit rates fell from 3% in March of 2022, the highest in over two decades, to around 2% as of April 2025, according to data from the Federal Reserve Bank of St. Louis. Workers who switch roles are also less likely to make more money if they do so. People who stay in their jobs are seeing an average of 4.4% wage growth, while those who leave are getting just 4.3% more, according to data from the Bureau of Labor Statistics.
That lack of turnover means that there are fewer opportunities for entry level workers to nab a role. “We’re seeing the labor market’s version of the housing market’s ‘lock-in’ effect, where employees are too nervous to make moves,” says Fisher. “This freeze is blocking normal opportunity flow, so early career workers can’t break in, experienced workers can’t move up, and burned-out employees are staying put.”
Tariff uncertainty
Trump’s tariff policy changes, and their subsequent impact on the economy, is also creating problems for entry-level workers in the labor market.
With an uncertain economic outlook thanks to on-again-off-again levies for major U.S. trading partners, many companies have pulled back on hiring until they get further clarity on what kind of economy will take shape in 2025.
Around 30% of small and mid-size business owners say tariffs are directly impacting their organizations in a negative way, and 42% say they plan to pull back on hiring as a result, according to a May survey from coaching and advisory firm Vistage, in partnership with the Wall Street Journal.
“Business leaders are uncertain and when that happens they don’t do as much hiring because they don’t know what the next week is going to look like, let alone the next month,” says Allison Shrivastava, a labor economist also at Indeed’s Hiring Lab. “They’re going to wait, especially for those jobs in what we think of as, traditionally, white collar sectors, which are often difficult and costly to hire for.”
The new AI reality
The promise of AI has been a looming threat to human workers for years, but there are now signs that companies are using the new tech to take over work previously done by entry-level employees.
Many of the tasks that used to serve as a training ground for junior employees, like data entry, research, and handling basic customer or employee requests, are already being delegated to AI. Technical fields like computer science and finance are getting hit especially hard. While employment for people older than 27 in computer science and mathematical occupations has grown a modest 0.8% since 2022, employment for those aged 22-27, or recent graduates, has declined by 8%, according to a May report from labor market research firm Oxford Economics. That’s compared to college graduates in all other occupations, who saw 2% employment gains.
“We concluded that a high adoption rate by information companies along with the sheer employment declines in these roles since 2022 suggested some displacement effect from AI,” the report reads.
LinkedIn’s chief economic opportunity officer Aneesh Raman, echoed that thought in a recent New York Times op-ed. “In tech, advanced coding tools are creeping into the tasks of writing simple code and debugging—the ways junior developers gain experience,” he wrote.
Companies are under pressure from investors to show that they can do more with less because of AI, says Sam Kuhn, an economist at Appcast, a job advertising company. Cutting jobs, or freezing hiring, are ways to do that. “We are starting to see the ripple effects of companies that have invested a lot of money into artificial intelligence, wanting to show that they’re actually getting something out of it,” he says.
Meta reportedly plans to use AI to review the platform’s privacy and societal risks instead of human staffers.AtMicrosoft, CEO Satya Nadella said in April that around 30% of code is now written by AI, a reality that likely factored into recent layoffs. And the CEO of payments platform Klarna has openly admitted last month that AI helped the company cut its workforce by around 40%. AI company founders are also getting more candid; Dario Amondei, the CEO of leading AI company Anthropic, has said outright that the technology could wipe out roughly 50% of all entry-level white-collar jobs.
“It sounds crazy, and people just don’t believe it,” he said. “We, as the producers of this technology, have a duty and an obligation to be honest about what is coming.”
What’s a new grad to do?
New job seekers can comfort themselves with the knowledge that it’s not just their imagination—the hiring landscape really is tougher for them than it was a few years ago.
That means they need to be more resourceful than their predecessors when it comes to outsmarting the labor market. That might include things like pivoting their job search to consider other industries or roles outside of what they studied in school. They also need to work harder to show employers that the skills they learned in college are a perfect fit for a given role.
“In the current labor market, new graduates need to find additional signals of skill beyond just a degree,” says Fisher. “From certificates to demonstrated soft skills like communication, the candidates who stand out show they’re already bridging the gap between school and skills acquisition.”
Because the hiring process skews towards Zoom interviews and AI-driven recruiting, young people also need to take the initiative and reach out to hiring managers on their own, whether that’s on LinkedIn, at a local job fair, or tapping into an alumni network. “There are fewer opportunities now to engage on a human level with employers up front,” says Steve Rakas, executive director of the Masters Career Center at Carnegie Mellon’s Tepper School of Business.
There remains, however, a reason for young people to hold out hope. Labor market trends are cyclical, and there are still opportunities out there for young people who want them, notes Rakas—even if they’re not ideal.
“We’re coaching them to think about not just plan A, but also plan B, C and D,” he says. “To be pragmatic, and also to pivot.”
A new report by the World Bank claims global economic growth could slow to its weakest level since the 1960s. The report pointed to an environment of trade obstacles and tariff policy uncertainty as the underlying reason for sluggish growth as President Donald Trump continues to threaten tariffs against America’s biggest trading partners.
A new era of global tariffs spurred by President Donald Trump could make the 2020s the slowest decade of world economic growth on average in more than 50 years, claims a new report from the World Bank.
The World Bank’s Global Economic Prospects report, published Tuesday, paints a bleak picture of the world economy over the first seven years of the 2020s—although it stopped short of predicting another global recession such as that caused by the pandemic.
The international financial institution predicted 70% of the world’s economies would see lower-than-expected growth and that overall global growth would top out at 2.3% in 2025, nearly half-a-percentage-point lower than expected at the start of the year.
“The sharp increase in tariffs and the ensuing uncertainty are contributing to a broad-based growth slowdown and deteriorating prospects in most of the world’s economies,” the report states.
Although Trump was not mentioned by name in the report, one expert said the uncertainty the president has brought to U.S. trade policy as well as the possibility that burdensome tariffs could be implemented on major trading partners could play a major role in slowing world economic growth.
Tariffs will both raise prices for businesses and consumers, causing pressure on both the demand and supply side of the economy. This effect could cause customers to spend less and businesses to supply fewer products to those consumers, effects that ripple across economies. At worst, it could lead to stagflation, the double whammy of low growth and high inflation which plagued the U.S. economy during the 1970s, said Rebecca Homkes, a lecturer at London Business School and faculty at Duke Corporate Executive Education.
“If tariffs to the level the administration is proposing do go into effect, it will have a tangible and noticeable impact on the economy, and the U.S. economy has implications for the global economy,” Homkes told Fortune.
If countries are able to mitigate the effects of tariffs with trade deals such that tariff levels are halved from what was announced in May, a month after Trump’s so-called “liberation day,” world economic growth would increase 0.2 percentage points on average between 2025 and 2026, the World Bank wrote in its Tuesday report.
However, Homkes said the most pressing need right now is to decrease uncertainty brought on by the Trump administration’s careening policy decisions.
“Every time a tariff announcement or the possibility of a deal is announced, it’s met with a lot of skepticism that that’s going to be the same one in a few weeks, let alone a few years. So this level of uncertainty makes it incredibly difficult to plan, to model, to think about future growth, future jobs, hiring, etc.,” said Homkes.
In today’s CEO Daily: Peter Vanham on L’Oréal’s radical innovation.
The big story: Former Sen. Loeffler’s quiet financial holdings.
The markets: Glum over trade prospects and Mideast tensions.
Analyst notes from UBS, BofA, and Deutsche Bank.
Plus: All the news and watercooler chat from Fortune.
Good morning. Peter Vanham writing from Geneva. L’Oréal has been in the beauty business since 1909, but these days the company—No. 348 on the Fortune Global 500—is squarely in the innovation business. The French cosmetics company has long been known for its iconic brands like Lancôme, Garnier, and Maybelline. But in today’s competitive global landscape, its CEO Nicolas Hieronimus told me recently, that radical innovation is propelling the company forward, with new products totaling 10-15% of its global business each year.
“We have always considered our business model was to bring to market products that are state of the art, charge a bit more, and globalize,” Hieronimus told me. But in the AI era, the “state of the art” bit has taken more of a front seat than ever at the company, which now invests over €1.3 billion per year in research, and even more in technology.
It’s that mindset that propelled L’Oréal to claim the top spot in Fortune’s inaugural Europe’s Most Innovative Companies ranking, which we published today. In it, Fortune and Statista ranked Europe’s 300 most innovative companies, considering product and process, as well as innovation culture.
The real driver of L’Oréal’s innovation, Hieronimus stressed, is technology. “Technology is an augmentor upstream for research but also downstream for the consumer,” he said. Upstream, AI now allows the company to scan hundreds of new molecules per year, whereas in the past it took months to do one.
“It’s a fantastic opportunity,” he said. “Our labs are powered by AI. It is an advantage. We have 16 terabytes of proprietary data on beauty. We use AI in research to scan new molecules, using digital twins.”
The commercial result, Hieronimus said, is that “[AI] allows us to reformulate faster, but also to come up with new products.” He pointed to the new Laroche Posay Mela B3 anti-dark spot serum containing one such new molecule, Melasyl, as one such example.
Downstream, the use of agentic generative AI is also starting to yield results, Hieronimus said. After experimenting with virtual try-outs and other tech-enabled online offerings, L’Oréal last year launched its L’Oréal Paris Beauty Genius, an AI agent that advises consumers on their purchases.
More than 100,000 consumers already use the Beauty Genius, Hieronimus said, leading to benefits for both consumers and the company. “If you recommend the right product, [your consumers] remain loyal,” he said. These loyalists, the company finds, purchase up to eightfold the amount of L’Oréal products another consumer would. Other Fortune Global 500 companies that made it to the top 10 of our Most Innovative Companies list include aircraft engine maker Rolls-Royce (No. 3), pharma giants GSK (No. 5), Sanofi (No. 6), and Novo Nordisk (No. 7), and Europe’s largest tech company, SAP (No. 9). You can find the full list here.
Nicolas Hieronimus, chief executive officer of L'Oreal SA, during the International Economic Forum of the Americas (IEFA) conference in Paris, on Dec. 17, 2024.
President Trump’s tariff strategy was based on the belief that China, heavily reliant on the US market, would absorb higher export costs and be forced to negotiate. However, recent data shows Chinese exports to the U.S. have sharply declined as China diversifies to other markets, undermining Trump’s leverage and casting uncertainty over the future of U.S.-China trade relations despite a temporary truce.
When President Trump announced his tariff regime, he said China would have to “absorb” the increases to export prices and would be forced to the negotiating table to agree new trading terms.
After all, he reasoned, China is reliant on the U.S. as its greatest export market and would have to reshape its entire economy if it didn’t agree to a deal.
So, despite wanting to rebalance trade with economic partners, Trump’s strong hand relied somewhat on the notion that Chinese businesses needed to keep selling to U.S. companies and consumers.
But as negotiations rumble on and evolve, that foundation has shifted. Data released Monday reveals Chinese exports to the U.S. fell by more than 34% in May 2025 when compared year-on-year (YOY).
Exports to the U.S. also dropped a little over 20% in April, signaling a conscious shift away from the reliable U.S. consumer towards other markets.
These new pockets of potential for Chinese exporters include Africa, where exports were up more than 30% in May YOY, and Canada, where exports are up 20% in May compared to the same month last year, per analysis from FX and international payments specialists Convera.
The diversification away from the U.S. for Chinese exporters could be interpreted as undermining Trump’s seat at the negotiating table in Beijing, said Convera’s lead FX and macro strategist, George Vessey.
He tells Fortune: “I think the data may be seen as undermining Trump’s position and ability to hurt China. Still, given the disinflationary impact this is expected to have on other countries, it raises the risk of the trade war escalating elsewhere with other countries forced to impose their own tariffs on China.
“There was already growing evidence that China is successfully diversifying its trade relations, becoming less dependent on the U.S. as the destination of its manufactured goods. The share of the U.S. in overall Chinese exports has fallen from around 23% at the beginning of the century to 16%.”
He also provided a caveat to the data, saying: “It’s worth noting that Chinese exports to the U.S. always fall around the Chinese New Year (generally February) but usually rebound strongly by now. This year, the post-Chinese New Year rebound simply hasn’t happened. Although there was a surge in U.S. imports in Q1, nearly all came from Europe rather than from China.”
To recap, currently the tit-for-tat trade war between Beijing and Washington D.C. has entered something of a truce, with Treasury Secretary Scott Bessent announcing a 90-day pause in May.
Both sides agreed to lower their rates by 115%, meaning Bejing faces a 30% tariff and the U.S. faces a 10% tariff.
As officials met in the U.K. this week, analysts had hoped for some further evidence about what an eventual deal would look like.
Instead, they received a reiteration of the truce already announced and a framework with little detail about future proceedings.
President Trump said that a deal was “done,” pending sign-off from President Xi. Rare earth and magnets would be “up front” in the agreement, he added, leading some to speculate that the U.S. had agreed to commitments such as letting Chinese students into its universities.
As Deustche Bank’s Jim Reid wrote in a note sent to Fortune this morning: “Overall, this left a sense that the two sides had re-established the trade truce that was signaled in Geneva last month, but with the path forward towards any genuine trade normalisation still unclear.”
Vessey chimes: “Trade talks between major economies remain pivotal, shaping inflation and global market dynamics. We’ve heard some positive developments over the past week, but until there’s more clarity, investor sentiment may pivot back to macro drivers.”
Britain’s goods exports to the US fell in April by the largest amount for any month since records began in 1997 after President Donald Trump launched his global trade war.
Goods shipments to the US including precious metals fell by £2 billion ($2.7 billion) from March, which the Office for National Statistics said was “likely linked to the implementation of tariffs on goods imported to the United States.” It left sales to the US at £4.1 billion, the lowest since February 2022.
Trump hit the UK with 10% tariffs on all goods on his April 2 “Liberation Day.” Imports of steel and aluminium, and cars and car parts were subject to a higher 25% tariff.
There were decreases in exports of most commodities to the US in April, the ONS said. Exports of machinery and transport equipment decreased by £800 million because of a drop in car shipments. Chemical exports fell by £300 million. Imports from the US slid by £400 million to £4.7 billion.
The UK struck a deal with the US on May 8 lowering car tariffs and removing them on aluminium and steel but the new regime has yet to be put in place.
The total goods and services trade deficit with the rest of the world widened by £4.9 billion to £11.5 billion in the three months to April 2025.
ONS Director of Economic Statistics Liz McKeown said: “After increasing for each of the four preceding months, April saw the largest monthly fall on record in goods exports to the United States with decreases seen across most types of goods, following the recent introduction of tariffs.”
Trump hit the U.K. with 10% tariffs on all goods on his April 2 “Liberation Day.” Imports of steel and aluminium, and cars and car parts were subject to a higher 25% tariff.
U.S. President Donald Trump took to his social media platform, Truth Social, on Wednesday to proclaim that a deal with China was “done,” pending final approval from himself and Chinese president Xi Jinping.
The post followed days of trade talks in London, where Washington and Beijing tried to save an uneasy truce in their budding trade war, threatened by complaints about export controls and visa revocations.
Trump announced that the U.S. would charge a 55% tariff on Chinese goods, while Beijing would impose a 10% tariff on U.S. goods. He also proclaimed that China will continue to export magnets and rare earth materials, while the U.S. would allow Chinese students to continue studying the U.S.
Still, Asian markets weren’t thrilled by the news that a deal had, once again, been reached. Hong Kong’s benchmark Hang Seng Index closed down by about 1.4%, while Japan’s Nikkei 225 dropped by about 0.65%. China’s CSI 300 was essentially flat.
One reason for the chilly reception could be that China only officially commented on the deal in the late-afternoon Thursday Asia time. Lin Jian, a foreign ministry spokesperson said at a regular press briefing that both sides should “abide” by the consensus reached following the latest meetings in London. Lin also said China has always kept its word and delivered results.
Another reason might be that the deal—even in the form Trump characterized in his social media post—merely brings things back to the level proposed on April 2, or “Liberation Day.” Then, Trump announced a 34% “reciprocal tariff” on Chinese imports which, on top of a previously announced 20% tariff tied to Beijing allegedly not doing enough to stop fentanyl smuggling, hiked rates to 54%.
Tariffs on Chinese imports rose to a staggeringly high 145% after rounds of tit-for-tat retaliation. Yet economists think that even a 55% tariff is close to the level where most goods trade between the U.S. and China would be wiped out.
Shipping volumes were already starting to collapse in late April, as steep U.S. tariffs on China began to take effect. (These tariffs were mostly suspended as part of negotiations in Geneva.)
Analysts expect tariffs to cause a rise in inflation in the coming months, even though recent inflation data has come in cooler than expected.
Rare earths and student visas
Trump’s post also refers to two issues that have frustrated both sides since last month’s agreement in Geneva.
The U.S. has accused Beijing of being slow to facilitate exports of rare earths. China holds a dominant position in the production of these materials.
Auto companies have faced shortages of these materials ever since Beijing required companies to apply for a license if they wanted access to these goods.
Still, while China has agreed to restore rare earth exports, the Wall Street Journal reports, citing sources familiar with discussions, that issued licenses will only last for six months. In return for Beijing easing rare earth controls, the U.S. reportedly agreed to relax some of its own export restrictions on goods like jet engines and ethane.
In his post, Trump also pledged to allow Chinese students to continue studying in the U.S.
On May 28, Secretary of State Marco Rubio said the U.S. would revoke the visas of Chinese students with ties to the Chinese Communist Party, or those working in “critical fields,” normally used to refer to those working in tech or the sciences. He also added that the State Department would enhance scrutiny of all visa applications from mainland China and Hong Kong.
There are around 280,000 Chinese students currently studying in the U.S. Higher education is a U.S. export.
In his Wednesday post, Trump said that he had “always been good” with Chinese students attending U.S. universities.
Mixed messaging
U.S. investors on Wednesday were cool to Trump’s announcement of his “done” deal. The S&P 500 dipped by 0.27%, while the Nasdaq 100 fell by 0.5%.
As of 4:00 a.m. Eastern time, S&P 500 futures are down by 0.4%.
The 90-day window for U.S. trading partners to negotiate a deal to avoid Trump’s “Liberation Day” tariffs is fast closing. Unless the U.S. extends the tariff pause, which applies to all countries except China, import duties will rise far beyond the current flat 10% rate in early July.
On Wednesday, U.S. Treasury Secretary Scott Bessent said that the U.S. will extend the pause for countries negotiating “in good faith.”
Yet in comments to reporters on Wednesday, Trump suggested that he was prepared to make an ultimatum to trading partners, unilaterally setting a tariff rate in what the president characterized as a binary take-it-or-leave-it deal.
So far, the U.S. has only managed to successfully negotiate a deal with the U.K. Officials are currently talking with several other economies, including India, Japan, South Korea and the European Union.
Update June 12, 2025: This story has been updated to include comments from China’s Ministry of Foreign Affairs’ regular press briefing.
U.S. President Donald Trump returns to the White House on June 9, 2025 in Washington D.C. Trump returned from Camp David where he held a meeting with senior members of his administration.
Goldman Sachs is cautioning its young job-seekers against using AI during the interview process. Instead, the $176 billion bank is encouraging applicants to study up on the firm in preparation. Other businesses like Anthropic and Amazon have also warned candidates against deploying AI—and if they’re caught, they could be disqualified.
While many companies are boasting about all the efficiencies that will come with AI, some are dissuading potential hires from using it to get a leg up in interviews with recruiters and hiring managers.
Goldman Sachs’ campus recruitment team for the bank’s private investing academy in EMEA recently sent out an email to students reminding them of its expectations for interviews, as reported by eFinancialCareers. Goldman uses video interviewing platform HireVue to pre-assess candidates and maintains a set of best practices for job-seekers. Based on the best practices guidelines, the young applicants are encouraged to prepare for interviews by studying the $176 billion firm’s financial results, business principles, and core values. But they can’t bank on AI to help them out.
“As a reminder, Goldman Sachs prohibits the use of any external sources, including ChatGPT or Google search engine, during the interview process,” the email noted, according to someone who saw the message.
HireVue is an AI-powered talent evaluation platform, known for asking behavioral questions that reveal applicants’ skills. Gen Z job-seekers might be tempted to use ChatGPT or other chatbots to game the recruitment process—but it’s discouraged, and isn’t the most viable option.
The typical Goldman Sachs virtual interview allows for 30 seconds of prep after the question, followed by a two-minute response time, according to research from eFinancialCareers. That makes it hard for job-seekers to quickly type a prompt into the chatbot, churn out an answer, and decide what the line of attack is. Plus, the responses aren’t tailored and unique to the individual, potentially hurting the interviewee more than helping.
Goldman’s job-seeker AI policy could seem ironic, as half of the firm’s 46,000 employees have access to the technology. But other companies are navigating that same paradox as they try to fully flesh out their AI strategies in an ever-changing technological environment.
Other companies dissuade applicants from using AI
Goldman Sachs isn’t the only major company warning its applicants not to use AI during recruitment. The $61.5 billion AI giant Anthropic went on a hiring spree last month, but told job-seekers that they can’t use the advanced technology to fill out their applications. The company argued that it wants to test the communication skills of potential hires, and AI use clouds that assessment.
“Please do not use AI assistants during the application process,” Anthropic wrote in the description for its hundreds of job postings. “We want to understand your personal interest in Anthropic without mediation through an AI system, and we also want to evaluate your non-AI-assisted communication skills.”
Retail giant Amazon also doesn’t like it when potential talent uses AI tools during the recruitment process. Earlier this year, the $2 trillion behemoth shared guidelines with internal recruiters, stressing that candidates who are caught using AI during job interviews should be disqualified. According to Amazon, the tools give an “unfair advantage” that masks analysis of someone’s “authentic” capabilities.
“To ensure a fair and transparent recruitment process, please do not use gen Al tools during your interview unless explicitly permitted,” the guidelines, as reported by Business Insider, noted. “Failure to adhere to these guidelines may result in disqualification from the recruitment process.”
With AI changing what’s possible in the workplace and prompting companies to rethink roles, few doubt that the future of work looks significantly different from what employees are used to today.
But companies need to actively help their workers through this profound transition, believes Rashmi Badwe, chief operating officer at New York–based TIAA Wealth Management.
“Humans who use AI will replace humans who don’t,” she said at the Fortune COO summit on Tuesday, echoing a common refrain. With that in mind, her company has been pushing AI adoption in ways both direct and subtle.
There are three things companies need to drive adoption, Badwe believes. The first two are perhaps obvious: Give workers AI tools, and then give them the necessary skill sets. But third, she said: “Involve them in the creation of the solution.”
This is a more subtle strategy business leaders might overlook. At her firm, estate-planning attorneys have been testing and giving feedback on two different AI solutions. Their feedback has been helpful, yes, but an additional benefit is that by giving them a say in how the company approaches AI, the company also encourages them to use it further.
“Their involvement in it has been instrumental in driving adoption,” she said, adding, “Co-creation is a big lever.”
To help with upskilling, TIAA has also created about nine guilds, or “informal networks in the company where employees come together, learn, and experiment,” she added.
As AI transforms business, company leaders also need to rethink the skills they look for in employees and potential hires, she believes.
“The skills of the future are going to be different,” said Badwe. “There’s going to be a premium on certain skill sets. So, speed over structure, insight over title, judgment over certainty, and, frankly, clean-slate thinking over continuous improvement. We as leaders need to ensure we are evaluating for these skills, hiring for them, performance-managing for them—that’s where the future is.”
Dogecoin, a crypto memecoin that tends to fluctuate on Musk-related news, rebounded on Wednesday after tech billionaire Elon Musk backed down from an escalating feud with President Donald Trump.
“I regret some of my posts about President @realDonaldTrump last week,” Musk posted on X early Wednesday morning. “They went too far.”
Dogecoin popped 3% in the minutes that followed Musk’s apology, jumping from 19 cents to above 20 cents, according to Binance. The currency has pulled back slightly since the post but remains up 2%. By comparison, Bitcoin is up less than a tenth of a percent since the post.
The price rebound comes after Dogecoin fell 11% to 17 cents last week, as Musk and Trump entered into a public feud on social media. The dispute between the world’s two most powerful people happened after Musk, who had concluded his time at the White House, took issue with the president’s spending bill, calling it “pork-filled” and a “disgusting abomination” in an X post on June 3.
Trump fired back saying that the easiest way to mitigate government spending would be to “terminate Elon’s governmental subsidies and contracts” on Truth Social on June 5.
In a since-deleted post, Musk responded by saying that his aerospace company SpaceX would begin “immediately decommissioning” its Dragon aircraft which shuttles people to and from the International Space Station. Musk walked back the statement later that day, but the two men continued to exchange barbs.
The same day, Musk dropped what he called “a really big bomb,” claiming that Trump “is in the Epstein files,” in another since-deleted post on X. The “Epstein files” refers to documents the U.S. government collected during their investigation into sex offender Jeffrey Epstein that supposedly contained the names of his high-profile associates. Musk did not provide evidence to support his claims.
Trump responded to Musk’s claims by posting a screenshot of Epstein’s former defense attorney David Shoen denying that Epstein had any information that would “hurt” the president.
“I was hired to lead Jeffrey Epstein’s defense as his criminal lawyer for 9 days before he died,” Shoen wrote on X on June 5. “I can say authoritatively, unequivocally, and definitively that he has no information to hurt President Trump.”
Trump has also previously denied any wrongdoing in relation to Epstein. Last year, Trump wrote in a post on Truth Social: “I was never on Epstein’s Plane, or at his ‘stupid’ Island.”
Musk-related news has a history of influencing the price of Dogecoin, the crypto industry’s first and most popular memecoin. The Tesla founder has repeatedly expressed his affinity for the currency over the years, proclaiming himself “Doge father” on SNL in 2021 and titling a federal agency the Department of Government Efficiency, or D.O.G.E.
Dogecoin isn’t the only Musk-affiliated enterprise that took a hit in value during his war of words with the sitting president. Tesla’s share price dropped around 17.3% after Musk began feuding with Trump. It has rebounded since then, but still remains below its previous price.
The global oil and gas sector is in a new state of deterioration amid worldwide economic uncertainty from tariff wars, slowing oil demand, and an escalation of production from OPEC and other nations, according to a June 11 report from Fitch Ratings.
Fitch’s decision to change the 2025 outlook for the fossil fuel industry from “neutral” to “deteriorating” is based on global macroeconomic conditions, especially the early April double whammy of President Trump’s tariffs announcement and the decision of OPEC and key allies to churn out more crude oil volumes after years of self-imposed curtailments.
However, Fitch did highlight that most U.S. oil and gas companies should face limited impacts from the sector downgrade—as long as its shorter in duration—because they entered this period of volatility with stronger balance sheets on avwrage, including less debt.
“There has been some tariff de-escalation,” Fitch said in its report, “however, uncertainty over where tariff rates will settle and the impact of those tariffs already implemented will remain key factors in our macroeconomic forecasts, leading to lower-than-previously expected oil consumption increases.”
As OPEC, led by Saudi Arabia, and other countries, including Kazakhstan, Brazil, and Guyana, ramp up oil production, the world is simultaneously consuming less crude oil than previously expected. Fitch projects global oil demand will grow by about 800,000 barrels per day (bpd) this year, compared with previous expectations of more than 1 million barrels daily. “The market will remain oversupplied in 2025 due to faster supply growth.”
In late May, S&P Global Ratings said it expects U.S. oil and gas producers to reduce aggregate capital spending by 5% to 10% in 2025 “amid global economic uncertainty and heightened oil price volatility, capital discipline, and ongoing efficiency gains.”
Of course, the third major credit ratings agency, Moody’s, famously joined S&P and Fitch in May by lowering the United States’ sovereign credit rating from the top “Aaa” level for the first time in more than 100 years with the tariff wars representing the final straw.
Federal forecast
The ratings agencies’ projections mesh with the U.S. Department of Energy’s own updated oil and gas forecasts.
The DOE’s short-term energy outlook released June 10 said U.S. crude oil production will finally enter a period of decline for the first time since the pandemic from a world-leading, all-time high of 13.5 million barrels a day in the second quarter of 2025.
The outlook forecasts U.S. volumes will fall to 13.3 million barrels daily by the end of 2026. That’s a relatively small decrease, but it represents a major milestone for the industry that is projected to not only plateau, but to also shrink.
OPEC and its key allies, a group called OPEC+, already shocked oil markets in April—the same time Trump announced his new tariff policy—with pledges to raise production volumes by more than 2 million barrels per day by late 2025. Likewise, at the end of May, OPEC+ agreed to a third month of volume hikes in July.
“Crude oil prices fell for the fourth consecutive month in May, driven by rising global oil inventories that have resulted from slowing global oil demand growth and the accelerated unwinding of OPEC+ voluntary production cuts, which began in April,” the DOE report added.
Collectively, OPEC+ has taken 5.86 million barrels per day of oil offline since 2022 until this year—more than 5% of global demand—to help strengthen oil markets, partly in response to rising U.S. production and because of slowing global demand growth.
Meanwhile, the U.S. was growing from producing 8.8 million barrels of oil a day at the beginning of 2017 to its new high of 13.5 million barrels daily in 2025, a whopping increase of more than 50%.
These DOE and credit rating reports all follow a first-quarter earnings season in which oil and gas CEOs bemoaned the economic turmoil and weak oil price environment, but only announced relatively limited budget reductions.
“We believe we are at a tipping point for U.S. oil production at current commodity prices,” Stice said in a needle-moving shareholder letter in May. “As a result of these activity cuts, it is likely that U.S. onshore oil production has peaked and will begin to decline this quarter.”
Leadership at business software giant Workday wanted employees to embrace artificial intelligence, but after conducting some internal research, they uncovered a few barriers.
Their study found that 43% of Workday’s employees—known as “Workmates”—said they lacked sufficient time to explore AI. More than a third of them also expressed uncertainty about how to use these new tools and worries about reliability and accuracy.
“Here we are wanting them so badly to explore, but they don’t feel that they have that time or that permission,” says Ashley Goldsmith, chief people officer at Workday. “What we’re working on is really changing the mindset.”
To encourage greater use across the organization, Workday held a splashy, all-hands meeting in April that prominently featured AI use case testimonials from across the workforce. Workday also set up a digital academy to promote AI upskilling and hosted a “prompt-a-thon” where employees could brainstorm problems they think can be solved with AI and develop prompts to best leverage large language models.
In another nudge this year, senior leadership for the first time mandated that all 19,300 employees establish personal goals for how they will use AI to improve their work and learn new skills. Their progress will be assessed by managers at the end of the year.
Workday says these “Everyday AI” initiatives were built on internal analysis of the company’s workforce that uncovered that peer-to-peer guidance was more compelling than C-suite technologists evangelizing the benefits of AI. The company has also sought to reassure employees that experimentation is highly encouraged and that doing work faster with AI is always preferred over not using those tools.
“Everyday AI” was developed with the goal of boosting AI adoption across the company by 20% from the baseline set at the beginning of 2025. Workday says the increase was a better-than-anticipated 37% through May, with 79% of all workers now using AI. The tools used now range from the company’s own AI chatbot Workday Assistant to AI features from vendors including Zoom, Google, and Slack to generative AI-specific tools to support specific functions like customer support and coding assistant GitHub Copilot for developers.
Jim Stratton, who recently became Workday’s senior vice president of technology and architecture after serving as chief technology officer from 2018 until May this year, says his own approach to generative AI has evolved over the past few years.
Historically, the company would roll out fresh new features to all customers globally at the same time. But innovation is moving too quickly for AI—and some customers want to see early versions of AI-enabled tools before they are more broadly launched. That’s led to a staged rollout process for generative AI features, including at Workday, where early adopters get access to new tools first.
He’s focusing more on measuring the return on investments for generative AI, which can be easier to track for AI tools that assist customer support specialists or software developers using AI to generate code or bug fixes. But Stratton says ROI can be more difficult to quantify for other use cases, including when used to more accurately predict sales forecasts or when to help craft a pitch to a customer.
“Increasingly, in probably the last 18 months or so, there’s a real focus on measured ROI out of those investments,” Stratton says about AI and machine learning advancements. “Both in terms of what we do internally and also the products that we now go build.”
Workday says it has put extra emphasis on the company’s responsible AI principles, which include testing, risk assessments, and documentation, all work that’s especially critical for a software company whose tools are used to recruit and onboard talent, performance management, and onboarding. Some workplace tasks associated with this work, like decisions around compensation or promotions, should remain with workers.
“There’s certain critical steps that for a very long time, I think humans will absolutely still be the decision makers,” says Stratton.
While that may be some comfort to human resource employees, fresh fears of AI’s impact on the workplace have increased in recent weeks, encapsulated by Anthropic CEO Dario Amodei’s warning that AI could eliminate around 50% of all entry-level, white-collar jobs. Workday itself generated headlines along those lines when it announced in February that it would lay off 1,750 workers, or 8.5% of its staff, as the company prioritized investments like AI.
With developer productivity improving by 20% or more, Stratton acknowledges the fears workers may have that companies will need fewer employees to do the same amount of work. “That could be true,” he says. “But the way we view it, particularly on the development side of things, we can get more done with the same number of people so we can just go faster in terms of delivering more product.”
Goldsmith says there could be cases in which the technology completely takes over the work a person does, but ultimately he espouses AI’s benefits to both the business and workers. This is the tough sell that all businesses are confronting: encouraging workers to use AI to complete more tasks, while assuaging concerns that doing so won’t put them out of a job.
“We can reinvest those dollars in our technology and do more to advance the support and work for our customers,” says Goldsmith. “That’s how we talk to our employees about it. It is about super charging them, not replacing them.”
John Kell
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Introducing Fortune AIQ
AI is reshaping work. What does it mean for your team? Fortune has unveiled a new hub, Fortune AIQ, dedicated to navigating AI’s real-world impact. Fortune has interviewed and surveyed the companies at the front lines of the AI revolution. In the coming months, we’ll roll out playbooks based on their learnings to help you get the most out of AI—and turn AI into AIQ. The first AIQ playbook, The “people” aspect of AI, explores various aspects of how mastering the “human” element of an AI deployment is just as important as the technical details.
Companies are overhauling their hiring processes to screen candidates for AI skills—and attitudes. Read more
‘AI fatigue’ is settling in as companies’ proofs of concept increasingly fail. Here’s how to prevent it. Read more
AI is changing how employees train—and starting to reduce how much training they need.Read more
AI is helping blue-collar workers do more with less as labor shortages are projected to worsen. Read more
Everyone’s using AI at work. Here’s how companies can keep data safe.Read more
Jim Stratton, senior vice president of technology and architecture (left) and Ashley Goldsmith, chief people officer, both at software provider Workday.
In 1993, Steven Lee’s parents opened Seven Star Fashion, a textile shop in LA’s Koreatown, after immigrating from South Korea to build a new life.
“They were the first entrepreneurs I knew,” said Lee. “They worked long hours, a classic immigrant story. They came here with basically nothing, and didn’t know how to speak English. They didn’t have a network—and they’re a very big influence for what I do today.”
Today, a very different Seven Star launches. Steven Lee has left his role as a partner at SV Angel to start his own firm, Seven Stars, which is debuting with an oversubscribed $40 million fund. Raised in just five weeks, the fund focuses on pre-seed and seed-stage investments in AI applications across both consumer and enterprise. Lee plans to back 35 to 45 companies per year. Limited partners include a university endowment and a pension fund—both undisclosed—as well as StepStone Group and Sapphire Partners.
Nate Leung, Sapphire Partners partner and OpenLP cofounder, said part of Lee’s pitch was refreshingly simple: “an outstanding track record from a highly respected firm.” SV Angel—founded by legendary VC Ron Conway—has a long history of early bets on companies like Google, Facebook, and Airbnb.
Lee built his own reputation within that legacy, focusing on AI and was involved with backing startups like ElevenLabs, Mercor, Captions, Reflection AI, and Skild AI, as well as personally investing in OpenAI. These early partnerships helped lay the foundation for his new firm. Hunter Somerville, partner at StepStone Group, pointed to Lee’s “extensive relationships and trusted reputation with leading AI companies” as another key strength.
“I’ve started to build this unique network, really understanding what these visionary AI founders need from their early investors,” Lee told Fortune. “I really believe that AI is the equalizer for the 90% and it’s already transforming lives at a global scale. And it really starts with motivated founders who are building enduring companies empowering individuals and other companies to thrive. And while AI’s already benefiting one billion knowledge workers today—we’re already seeing it in finance, law, marketing—I’m most excited about AI’s impact on the next eight billion people.”
He’s already invested in five companies since launching the fund, though he declined to name them. Lee’s value-add strategy is highly focused: offering hands-on fundraising support, access to a curated advisory network, and help with hiring across all levels.
“It’s not just helping with hiring early, with entry-level engineers, but helping and closing and sourcing for mid-level to senior-level executives,” said Lee. “When you put those three things together, that’s kind of the investor that I want to be. And I think that’s very unique in this moment of time, especially as a lot of these first time AI founders are navigating this really complex technology for the first time well.”
Influenced by his parents, Lee had always imagined starting something of his own one day. Despite working in AI (or perhaps because he works in AI), he believes success isn’t just about the technology—it’s also about the people behind it and the life experiences they bring.
“Building a company, or any kind of business is incredibly difficult,” said Lee. “It takes a lot of courage, lots of sacrifices. Quite frankly, it takes a bit of luck as well. I always want to make sure I remember that, especially as I work with these next generation AI founders. Because I also want this firm to be enduring, for it to outlive me… In good times and bad times, I want to remember that’s what we’re striving for. That it’s generational. That Seven Star Fashion was the first generation.”
The 17 rare earth elements (REEs) are indispensable. They exhibit unique electromagnetic properties that make numerous technologies function—think smartphones, electric vehicles, artificial intelligence, humanoid robotics, advanced defense systems, and more.
The Trump administration seems to understand this. Recent actions by President Donald Trump—including his executive order “Immediate Measures to Increase American Mineral Production” and his use of Section 232—have made clear America’s interest in rare earths. Indeed, long before this administration, bipartisan recognition of these minerals’ strategic value already existed, for national security and a vast array of advanced technologies.
China dominates in rare earth elements
As has been widely reported, China currently controls around 90% of global REE production. Its dominance is so strong that even some Western companies must send their rare earth materials to China for processing. Now, with Beijing imposing export controls on key elements and rare earths having been a central focus during this week’s U.S.-China trade talks, the challenge has been further amplified for America.
China’s grip is the result of decades of long-term investment, aggressive policy, and an economic playbook designed to corner the market. Processing rare earths is also notoriously dirty, which is something China has historically been less concerned about.
A 4-point fast-track program
If the U.S. is serious about building a resilient, domestic REE supply chain, it must act with urgency. Here’s how we can do it, and do it fast:
Inject capital at scale
The U.S. must follow China’s lead by strategically funding and investing in rare earth producers and infrastructure. Rare earth development, particularly refining, requires significant capital, unless the asset is already advanced and leverages existing infrastructure. That is rarely the case in the U.S., and while both private and public companies are raising funds, significant federal support is essential to compete with China at scale. America’s late start means we must move faster and spend smarter. We can’t afford to wait.
Establish price stability
Once U.S. producers are operational, price volatility becomes the next major hurdle. China can manipulate the global market by flooding it with underpriced material, undermining U.S. startups before they can gain traction. A temporary pricing floor or purchase guarantee for U.S.-sourced rare earths would help stabilize the market and protect domestic growth. The U.S. has implemented similar pricing strategies to support other foundational industries, including oil and agriculture. America’s emerging rare earth industry is critical and could benefit from these types of pricing initiatives.
Streamline permitting
While the U.S. rightly values environmental protection and community impact, permitting delays are hampering progress. Responsible, low-impact projects are waiting in line, when they should be fast-tracked. We must retain environmental oversight but remove unnecessary bureaucratic barriers that stifle innovation and increase costs. China has little to no concern with environmental protection in regard to REEs, so removing these roadblocks in the short term will not only allow U.S. companies to get set up to compete, but will also be better for the environment in the long term, all while delivering significant value for American stakeholders.
Create a centralized refining hub
The rare earth bottleneck isn’t mining—it’s refining. Processing capacity outside China is severely limited. The U.S. needs a centralized, government-backed refinery that serves multiple companies, enabling cost-effective and collaborative scaling. This shared facility would accelerate production, reduce risk, and mark a crucial step toward independence from China’s stranglehold. I believe this effort is the best path forward for Americans to unite and build the industrial infrastructure required to combat the big bully in the rare earth space.
The power of a public-private partnership
With government support and private-sector innovation, we can build a fully integrated rare earth supply chain. Doing so would neutralize one of China’s most powerful economic weapons and create a strategic advantage for the U.S. in critical industries. It’s also a smart investment in America’s long-term manufacturing future.
This isn’t just about minerals. It’s about national security, technological leadership, and economic resilience. The time to act and join forces is now.
Kuljit (Jeet) Basi is the president and executive chairman of Tactical Resources Corp.
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.
For many senior executives, the COO role is viewed as a pivotal on-ramp to the CEO seat. In fact, last year, 57% of new S&P 1500 CEOs were promoted from COO roles. And some of today’s most notable business leaders, including Apple’s Tim Cook and Chipotle’s Scott Boatwright, made the leap from COO to CEO. But leadership experts warn that what looks like a fast track can just as easily become a dead end.
Stephen Miles, founder and CEO of leadership consultancy The Miles Group, shared two critical missteps for CEO aspirants during Fortune’s 2025 COO Summit. He recounted a story of one COO who began referring to themselves as the company’s heir apparent and not just within the company, but in the boardroom too. The fallout was swift, prompting an emergency board meeting to decide on whether or not to dismiss the executive.
“The board had to be talked off the ledge,” says Miles. “They want the ultimate decision to choose their next CEO.”
This kind of overreach, whether motivated by ambition or miscommunication, can be fatal to a leadership trajectory and demonstrate characteristics counterintuitive for those in the top role, namely arrogance and hubris. More broadly, the COO role, as Miles notes, is often a highly customized position designed to achieve specific outcomes. Treating it as an automatic stepping stone to CEO can alienate key decision-makers.
Aside from overstepping, Miles cites a COO’s failure to align tightly with the CEO as another succession roadblock. Organizations, he says, will constantly test the blueprint for synchronizing and reducing friction between COOs and CEOs.
“What they do is they go to you as COO and say, ‘Make a decision,’ and then they try to take that decision to the CEO, assuming they want a different decision, or slightly different and see if the CEO will bite,” Miles explains. “As soon as they bite, they erode the entire construct of the CEO-COO relationship, and generally that goes really poorly for the COO.”
While the COO’s job is to “win in the business of today,” as Miles puts it, the CEO’s role is to “build the business of tomorrow.” The leap from one to the other requires more than operational excellence. It demands strategic vision, leadership acumen, and humility.
Stephen Miles, founder and CEO of leadership consultancy The Miles Group, shared two critical missteps for CEO aspirants during Fortune’s 2025 COO Summit.
– Loyalty program.Outdoor Voices founder Ty Haney launched her second startup, Try Your Best (or TYB), more than three years ago. It was peak Web3, a space that Haney became highly interested in after she left the athletic apparel retailer that, in some ways, defined 2010s startups.
Today, Haney is still building TYB, with 38 employees—and it’s outlasted the rise and fall of blockchain/crypto/NFT-mania. The platform is intended to be a layer of loyalty infrastructure for consumer brands, what Haney calls “community commerce.” Two hundred brands use the platform, as do 2 million users—mostly Gen Z women.
Haney just raised an $11 million Series A for TYB, Fortune is the first to report. The round was co-led by Offline Ventures and Strobe Ventures, with participation from Coinbase Ventures, Castle Island Ventures, and Unusual Ventures. This brings its total capital to $23.5 million.
Talking to Haney about TYB, you can feel her excitement. Years after the drama that engulfed Outdoor Voices, which included board battles and Haney’s exit and return, she’s thrilled to be at step one again. “I love this stage. I love building something from zero,” she says.
Ty Haney’s second startup is the consumer loyalty platform TYB.
Craig Barritt/Getty Images for Create and Cultivate
The brands that use TYB include several of the buzziest brands from the beauty industry—like Glossier, Rare Beauty, and Saie. “Beauty as a category has popped off significantly for us,” Haney says. “[Beauty] consumers are already creating so much content and participating in rituals around the brands.” There’s also Poppi, Urban Outfitters, Set Active. Coming soon to the platform are Crocs and Away.
Consumers on TYB participate in gamified challenges, earn collectibles, and have blockchain-enabled loyalty profiles that can potentially follow them from brand to brand. A TYB-using customer has 40% higher frequency of purchase and a 28% higher lifetime value, Haney says. Monthly engagement rates for brands crack 40%. Haney tells brands that TYB can drive 5% to 10% of revenue—“in a more profitable fashion than putting all your dollars against Instagram or Facebook.”
TYB is developing “affinity webs” that can map a user’s loyalty to one brand and apply it to another. “Within the Glossier community where I’m level three—can that mean something to Nike?” Haney explains.
She’s brought some lessons with her from Outdoor Voices and the tens of millions it raised. “I’ve become a lot more sophisticated, or precise, in terms of who I who I raise money from, how much money I raise, and ultimately considerate of ownership and as little dilution as possible,” she says.
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.
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