• Dylan Field cofounded Figma in 2012 with a Brown University teaching assistant. Since then, Field has led the company to meteoric success and a historic IPO. 

Fifteen years ago, Dylan Field was a freshman computer science student at Brown University. On Thursday, the company he started in college and now runs, Figma, made its blockbuster debut on the New York Stock Exchange, marking the largest U.S. venture-capital-backed tech IPO in four years. 

Figma’s stock surged 250% on its debut, making it the largest first-day pop for a billion-dollar tech IPO and cementing its status as a bellwether for a resurgent tech IPO market. Demand was so intense that many hopeful investors received only a handful of shares, while trading was temporarily halted due to volatility.

Closing at $115.50, the IPO instantly catapulted Figma’s valuation to nearly $68 billion—more than triple Adobe’s failed $20 billion acquisition offer for the company just two years ago. 

The multibillion-dollar company, however, began with an idea thought up by Field and cofounder Evan Wallace, who was a Brown teaching assistant at the time. The duo explored the potential of new browser technologies and began brainstorming ways to democratize creative design through software. But it wasn’t until 2012, when Field was awarded the prestigious Thiel Fellowship, a $100,000 grant for young entrepreneurs willing to leave college that he and Wallace dove headfirst into what became Figma, the popular web-based design tool used for user interface and user experience design.

Field, now 33, was always a high achiever, especially with technology. At age three, he taught himself to use his family computer, and his interest in robotics began early in childhood. In the early 1990s, Field also worked as a child actor, starring in several commercials, including one for Windows XP. But ultimately his academic successes landed him at the Rhode Island Ivy League school and several competitive tech internships.

The Penngrove, Calif., native held several part-time gigs while studying at Brown, including a nine-month stint as a research assistant at Microsoft, a four-month data analytics internship at LinkedIn, and two internships at aggregation software company Flipboard—first as a software engineering intern and then a product design intern. His second Flipboard stint was part of the Kleiner Perkins Fellows Program, a highly competitive program that places selected students with companies in the Kleiner Perkins portfolio.

It was through his LinkedIn and Flipboard jobs that Field secured seed investments for his entrepreneurial ventures and eventually propelled himself to billionaire status by 33 years-old. Both his LinkedIn manager Peter Skomoroch and Danny Rimer, a general partner at Index Ventures who recognized Field’s potential during a Flipboard board presentation, helped the young founder finance his start. 

“Here was this 19-year-old, who had a lot of clarity about what he wanted to do—democratize the world of design, and provide tools to everyone,” Rimer told Fortune in 2023. “He had this ambition of dropping out of university to go after this crazy idea, where it’s clear that he’s not going to be able to come up with a product for over two years. In the world of move-fast-break-things, here were two folks [Field and Wallace] who were saying, ‘We’re not going to have anything for two years, so we hope you’re comfortable with that.’”

Other early Figma investors included Phoenix Court and Greylock Partners.

Index Ventures ultimately led Figma’s 2013 seed round with a $1.7 million investment. And in the following 12 years, the fund reportedly invested $86.5 million in the company.

Much like Rimer predicted, it took Field and Wallace until September 2016 to launch the product publicly, after years of meticulous planning to create the so-called Google Docs for graphic designers. By 2018, the company was valued at $115 million, a figure that skyrocketed during the pandemic. In June 2021, Figma’s valuation was $10 billion. That same year, Wallace left the company. 

In September 2022, Adobe announced plans to acquire Figma for $20 billion, a deal which would have made Field—then just 30 years old—a billionaire several times over. But regulatory roadblocks killed the deal in 2023, and as part of the cancellation, Adobe paid Figma a $1 billion breakup fee.

Figma and Field soldiered on, despite the failed acquisition. The company’s 2024 revenue reached $749 million, up 48% from 2023. And in the first quarter of 2025, revenue grew 46% year over year. Figma, as of early 2025, has 13 million monthly active users, and 95% of Fortune 500 companies use the software.

Now, as Figma closes its first, astonishing chapter as a public company, Field shows no sign of slowing down. “We know this is just the start,” Field wrote in a statement after ringing the opening bell. “This is a vision that will play out over many decades and I believe Figma’s most innovative days are ahead.”

Figma declined a Fortune request for comment.

This story was originally featured on Fortune.com

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When Coinbase published its second quarter earnings on Thursday, the results were ho-hum at best: a narrow miss on revenue and a decline in trading volume, which led the company’s stock—which has been on a tear in recent months—to drop by around 15%. The market’s focus on typical earnings metrics, though, mean the news coverage largely overlooked three very significant one-off numbers that matter a lot to Coinbase’s short and long term future.

The first of those numbers is $1.5 billion. That figure reflects what Coinbase described as “pre-tax gains on strategic investments—which included an unrealized gain on our investment in Circle.” Translation: Coinbase hit the jackpot when Circle, its partner on the fast-growing USDC stablecoin, went public in early June and saw the value of its shares soar soon after.

Coinbase is presumably subject to the same six month lock-up as other Circle shareholders, and it’s unclear when the company might cash out its windfall or if those shares will still be worth as much when it decides to do so. But even if Circle stock does decline, it’s a safe bet that Coinbase will still be sitting on a large and liquid investment it can cash out during a downturn, or use to fuel its impressive acquisition spree.

It’s also important to recognize that Circle is just one of many crypto firms in which Coinbase has an equity stake. As the crypto market continues to mature, other startups will go public and it’s a good bet that Coinbase will be in position to collect when they do. In this proves to be the case, the $1.5 billion that the company reported as a one-time item will actually be replicated to greater or less degrees in upcoming quarters.

The second one-time number Coinbase reported on Thursday is part of a far less positive story. That would be the “$307 million in expenses related to the data theft incident disclosed in May.”

The “incident” in question is the calamitous hacking episode that saw criminals bribe customer service agents in India, and then use the personal data they garnered to pose as Coinbase employees and defraud them. In response, Coinbase pledged to make good any customer who lost money in the scheme and to put a $20 million bounty on the heads of those responsible.

If the fallout from the episode only costs $307 million, Coinbase can count that as a win. But that’s a big if in light of the gaggle of class action lawyers and state regulators lining up to extract a payout from the company over the data breach. Then there is the reputational damage that goes with Coinbase failing to see how outsourcing sensitive customer data to dirt-cheap agents in India posed a security risk. For now, though, the company appears to have weathered the PR storm and its announcement of a new customer service “Center of Excellence” in North Carolina could help to smooth out remaining mistrust.

Finally, there is third big one-off number tucked into Thursday’s earnings report: “a $362 million pre-tax gain on our crypto investment portfolio (largely unrealized).” This reflects a pair of significant recent developments. The first is the obvious run-up in crypto asset prices, which is fattening Coinbase’s treasury holdings. The other is the recent change in accounting rules that allows companies to record crypto gains as they accrue. While companies accumulating crypto on their balance sheet is generally a dicey corporate finance strategy, it is fortunately only a small part of Coinbase’s operations and, for now, the gains are very real and help to strengthen its already strong fundamentals.

While one-off numbers are typically just that—temporary noise that shouldn’t be mistaken for a signal of a company’s broader performance—they can also represent something more. That is the case with Coinbase’s Q2 earnings, where items like its massive Circle windfall arguably matter more than the usual quarter-to-quarter revenue and trading fluctuations.

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• Some Silicon Valley startups are embracing China’s outlawed “996” work culture, expecting employees to work 12-hour days, six days a week, in pursuit of hyper-productivity and global AI dominance. The trend has sparked debate across the U.S. and Europe, with some tech leaders endorsing the pace while others warn it risks mass burnout and startup failure.

Silicon Valley’s startup hustle culture is starting to look more and more like an outlawed Chinese working schedule.

According to a new report from Wired, Bay Area startups are increasingly leaning into models resembling China’s 996 working culture, where employees are expected to work from 9:00 a.m. to 9:00 p.m., six days a week, totaling 72 hours per week. 

Startups, especially in the AI space, are openly asking new starts to accept the longer working hours. For example, AI start-up Rilla tells prospective employees in current job listings not to even bother applying unless they are excited about “working ~70 hrs/week in person with some of the most ambitious people in NYC.”

The company’s head of growth, Will Gao, told Wired there was a growing Gen-Z subculture “who grew up listening to stories of Steve Jobs and Bill Gates, entrepreneurs who dedicated their lives to building life-changing companies.” He said nearly all of Rilla’s 80-person workforce works on a 996 schedule.

The rise of the controversial work culture appears to have been born out of the current efficiency squeeze in Silicon Valley. Rounds of mass layoffs and the rise of AI have put pressure and turned up the heat on tech employees who managed to keep their jobs.

For example, in February, Google co-founder Sergey Brin told employees who work on Gemini that he recommended being in the office at least every weekday and said 60 hours is the “sweet spot” for productivity.

Other tech CEOs, including Elon Musk and Mark Zuckerberg, have stressed that productivity among workers is king, even if that means working hours or days of overtime. In November 2022, Musk infamously told remaining X, then Twitter, employees to commit to a new and “extremely hardcore” culture or leave the company with severance pay. 

Part of the reasoning for the intense work schedules is a desire to compete with China amid a global AI race. Especially after Chinese startup DeepSeek released an AI model on par with some of the top U.S. offerings, rocking leading AI labs.

China has outlawed 996

China has actually been trying to clamp down on the 996 culture at home. In 2021, China’s top court, the Supreme People’s Court, and the Ministry of Human Resources and Social Security jointly declared China’s “996” working culture was illegal. At the time, the move was part of the Chinese Communist Party’s broader campaign to reduce inequality in Chinese society and limit the power of the nation’s largest tech companies.

But the practice has already spilled over to other countries. Earlier this summer, the European tech sector also found itself in a heated debate over the working culture.

Partly exacerbated by an ongoing debate about Europe’s competitiveness in the technology and AI space, some European VCs warned that more work and longer hours may be needed to effectively compete.

Harry Stebbings, founder of the 20VC fund, said on LinkedIn in June that Silicon Valley had “turned up the intensity,” and European founders needed to take notice.

“[Seven] days a week is the required velocity to win right now. There is no room for slip up,” Stebbings said in the post. “You aren’t competing against random company in Germany etc but the best in the world.”

Some other founders weighed in, criticizing the rise of the 996 working culture and warning that it could quickly lead to burnout culture. Among them was Ivee Miller, a general partner at Balderton Capital.

“Burnout [is] one of the top 3 reasons early-stage ventures fail. It is literally a bad reason to invest,” Miller said on LinkedIn. 

This story was originally featured on Fortune.com

A sweeping July 2025 report from UBS Evidence Lab highlights that artificial intelligence, and generative AI in particular, is rapidly becoming a strategic imperative for consumer-sector companies around the globe, but its not really “visible” yet.

“It’s becoming an essential strategic focus and a competitive differentiator across the entire value chain, not just a tool for efficiency,” the authors write. They see wide-reaching use cases, from demand forecasting to supply-chain automation to product recommendations, and believe it should provide a “more pleasant customer experience” on top of improving operations. The use of AI will be a critical factor going forward that separates winners and losers in the consumer space, they add. It’s just so early.

Despite prominent case studies and a surge in executive attention, UBS finds the direct, quantifiable financial impact of AI remains limited, stating simply about profits and loss statements, or P&L: “AI’s impact on P&L is not material, but we expect it to be visible in the next 3 years.” Meanwhile, despite many headlines about AI-related layoffs, UBS finds little evidence of reductions in headcount: “We have heard some anecdotal evidence but not within our coverage.” Such reductions in force are likely to come, though, UBS added.

Drawing on in-depth interviews with analysts and company disclosures across more than 20 global sectors, the report details how AI is reshaping everything from supply chains and marketing to customer experience, while underscoring the most significant changes—and competitive divides—are yet to fully appear. “Most consumer companies expect the impact of generative AI to be more visible in 3 to 5 years,” the note adds.

AI moves from back office to boardroom

A central theme: AI has moved beyond being a back-office efficiency tool to a core part of business strategy. Large retail and consumer-oriented firms, notably Walmart, are appointing executives dedicated to AI transformation, underscoring its rising importance. The number of AI mentions on consumer-sector conference calls has doubled since 2022, and major investments are being made not only to streamline operations, but also to power growth through personalized recommendations, smarter inventory management, and targeted marketing.

Leading companies are finding a wide range of AI applications, the UBS Evidence Lab found.

• Walmart uses AI-driven recommendations and assistants to personalize the shopping experience and optimize fulfillment. Automation in its supply chain is credited with up to 30% reductions in unit costs at fulfillment centers.
• L’Oréal leans on AI for marketing optimization and product innovation, reporting 10%-15% productivity gains in advertising tasks due to its bespoke BETiq tool, which it expects to cover 60% of its marketing spend by 2024.
• P&G utilizes AI for logistics, and it has quantified a potential $200 million-$300 million in savings from smarter truck scheduling.

Globally, consumer-facing companies are also deploying AI for tasks ranging from product design (e.g., Robam’s proprietary LLM called “AI Gourmet” in China), to dynamic pricing, to smarter labor scheduling. In Australia, travel firms and retailers have cited cost savings and improved margins from AI-enabled automation.

Bigness will matter

A recurring takeaway is that large, well-capitalized incumbents are set to benefit most in the near to medium term. These players, such as Walmart, Home Depot, Coca-Cola, L’Oréal, and China’s Midea and Haier, can better afford the investments and have the customer data troves needed to maximize AI’s benefits. In contrast, smaller and less technologically advanced companies may struggle to compete, potentially accelerating industry consolidation or leaving followers at a disadvantage.

While patterns of AI adoption are broadly similar worldwide, impacts vary by region and sector. U.S. retailers and restaurant chains have focused on operational efficiency and customer engagement. The European luxury sector, more dependent on craftsmanship and brand, should see less near-term impact from AI. In Asian markets, market leaders are leveraging AI to drive product differentiation and cost advantages, but there is little evidence of broad profit impact yet.

Only a handful of companies, usually industry giants with deep pockets and rich data sets, are reporting clear improvements in margins or revenue directly attributable to AI adoption. Most firms, especially smaller ones, have yet to see material P&L enhancements. In many cases, AI’s efficiency gains are being reinvested to spur growth, rather than dropping to the bottom line.

Outlook: gains to materialize over 3–5 years

Most analysts expect the true financial benefits—higher margins, revenue growth, and labor productivity—to become “visible” within three to five years, as AI applications mature and become more deeply integrated into core business processes. In the meantime, a wave of experimentation—particularly in marketing, logistics, and customer experience—is laying the foundation for a potentially transformative decade for consumer industries.

For now, UBS concludes that for all the excitement, the AI revolution’s effects on consumer-sector profits and workforce structure are only just beginning to be felt.

For this story, Fortune used generative AI to help with an initial draft. An editor verified the accuracy of the information before publishing. 

This story was originally featured on Fortune.com

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• As unemployment climbs and AI wipes out white-collar jobs, Walmart is dangling six-figure salaries and luxury perks to lure tech workers. The Fortune 500 retail giant is actively hiring software engineers, data scientists, and product managers. A senior director in data science can expect to earn up to $320,000.

Landing a lucrative tech job has never been easy—but this year in particular has presented unique challenges thanks to AI’s revolution of the job market and a worsening labor market.

Some companies are using AI to boost productivity. Others are using it as a reason to slash headcount. Firms like Intel, Google, and Microsoft have cut jobs in recent months, but while their leaders haven’t solely blamed the technology, others haven’t minced words.

“We will need fewer people doing some of the jobs that are being done today, and more people doing other types of jobs,” Amazon CEO Andy Jassy wrote in a recent internal memo. “In the next few years, we expect that this will reduce our total corporate workforce as we get efficiency gains from using AI extensively across the company.”

But there are still opportunities for workers to find success in today’s job market. Walmart, the No. 1 company on the Fortune 500 list, is on the hunt for experienced software engineers, data scientists, IT product managers, and more—with dozens of open job postings making six-figures, with some roles extending to over $300,000.

The perks and paychecks on offer at Walmart 

Pickleball classes, hydromassages, and rooftop lounges.

Those are the perks you could be enjoying if you’re willing to pack your bags and move to Bentonville, Arkansas, and take a job at Walmart’s new 350-acre luxury campus.

And while the office alone might not convince you to relocate to small-town America, the retail giant is still willing to shell out high-paying salaries for competitive tech talent. Walmart is on the hunt for experienced software engineers, data scientists, IT product managers, and more.

Here’s what each can expect to earn: 

• Software engineer
  • Staff, software engineer: $132,000-$264,000
  • Principal, software engineer: $110,000-$220,000
  • Senior, software engineer: $90,000-$180,000
  • Distinguished, software engineer: $156,000-$338,000

• IT product managers
  • Staff, product manager: $110,000-$220,000
  • Senior, product manager: $90,000-$180,000
  • Principal, product manager: $110,000-$220,000

• Data scientists
  • Staff, data scientist: $143,000-$286,000
  • Senior, data scientist: $90,000-$180,000
  • Distinguished, data scientist: $130,000-$312,000
  • Principal, data scientist: $143,000-$286,000

• UX designers
  • Senior UX designer: $90,000-$180,000
  • Senior manager, UX design: $110,000-$220,000
  • Senior, design researcher: $90,000-$180,000

• Tech directors
  • Director, software engineering: $130,000-$260,000
  • Group director, software engineering: $195,000-$370,000
  • Director, data science: $169,000-$338,000
  • Senior director, data science: $160,000-$320,000

These numbers were sourced based on Fortune analysis of active job postings, but the exact compensation package, including salary, bonus opportunities, and stock award, will likely vary by role and depend heavily on a candidate’s experience. Location, too, is a factor, with Walmart also recruiting for its satellite locations like in California and Washington.

Fortune reached out to Walmart for comment.

The secrets to landing a job in today’s rocky market

Despite this revolution, some best practices still hold true for landing a high-paying gig. But because careers are changing faster than ever, Jassy encourages Gen Z to stop worrying about what their job will look like in 10 years—and focus on finding a passion.

“I have a 21-year-old son and a 24-year-old daughter, and one of the things I see with them and their peers is they all feel like they have to know what they want to do for their life at that age,” Jassy said on the podcast, How Leaders Lead with David Novak. “And I really don’t believe that’s true.”

And it’s a practice he learned from personally; Jassy experimented in sportscasting, soccer coaching, and investment banking before landing at Amazon.

“I tried a lot of things, and I think that early on, it’s just as important to learn what you don’t want to do as what you want to do, because it actually helps you figure out what you want to do.”

For Walmart CEO Doug McMillion, one of the secrets for success is simple: raising your hand and being a team player.
“Nothing happens through the work of just an individual,” McMillon told Stanford’s Graduate School of Business this May. “We all do this together.”

This story was originally featured on Fortune.com

© Getty Images—Luis Alvarez

A new Federal Reserve Board staff paper concludes that generative artificial intelligence (genAI) holds significant promise for boosting U.S. productivity, but cautions that its widespread economic impact will depend on how quickly and thoroughly firms integrate the technology.

Titled “Generative AI at the Crossroads: Light Bulb, Dynamo, or Microscope?” the paper, authored by Martin Neil Baily, David M. Byrne, Aidan T. Kane, and Paul E. Soto, explores whether genAI represents a fleeting innovation or a groundbreaking force akin to past general-purpose technologies (GPTs) such as electricity and the internet.

The Fed economists ultimately conclude their “modal forecast is for a noteworthy contribution of genAI to the level of labor productivity,” but caution they see a wide range of plausible outcomes, both in terms of its total contribution to making workers more productive and how quickly that could happen. To return to the light-bulb metaphor, they write that “some inventions, such as the light bulb, temporarily raise productivity growth as adoption spreads, but the effect fades when the market is saturated; that is, the level of output per hour is permanently higher but the growth rate is not.”

Here’s why they regard it as an open question whether genAI may end up being a fancy tech version of the light bulb.

GenAI: a tool and a catalyst

According to the authors, genAI combines traits of GPTs—those that trigger cascades of innovation across sectors and continue improving over time—with features of “inventions of methods of invention” (IMIs), which make research and development (R&D) more efficient. The authors do see potential for genAI to be a GPT like the electric dynamo, which continually sparked new business models and efficiencies, or an IMI like the compound microscope, which revolutionized scientific discovery.

The Fed economists did cautioning that it is early in the technology’s development, writing “the case that generative AI is a general-purpose technology is compelling, supported by the impressive record of knock-on innovation and ongoing core innovation.”

Since OpenAI launched ChatGPT in late 2022, the authors said genAI has demonstrated remarkable capabilities, from matching human performance on complex tasks to transforming frontline work in writing, coding, and customer service. That said, the authors said they’re finding scant evidence about how many companies are actually using the technology.

Limited but growing adoption

Despite such promise, the paper stresses that most gains are so far concentrated in large corporations and digital-native industries. Surveys indicate high genAI adoption among big firms and technology-centric sectors, while small businesses and other functions lag behind. Data from job postings shows only modest growth in demand for explicit AI skills since 2017.

“The main hurdle is diffusion,” the authors write, referring to the process by which a new technology is integrated into widespread use. They note that typical productivity booms from GPTs like computers and electricity took decades to unfold as businesses restructured, invested, and developed complementary innovations.

“The share of jobs requiring AI skills is low and has moved up only modestly, suggesting that firms are taking a cautious approach,” they write. “The ultimate test of whether genAI is a GPT will be the
profitability of genAI use at scale in a business environment and such stories are hard to come by at present.” They know that many individuals are using the technology, “perhaps unbeknownst to their employers,” and they speculate that future use of the technology may become so routine and “unremarkable” that companies and workers no longer know how much it’s being used.

Knock-on and complementary technologies

The report details how genAI is already driving a wave of product and process innovation. In healthcare, AI-powered tools draft medical notes and assist with radiology. Finance firms use genAI for compliance, underwriting, and portfolio management. The energy sector uses it to optimize grid operations, and information technology is seeing multiples uses, with programmers using GitHub Copilot completing tasks 56% faster. Call center operators using conversational AI saw a 14% productivity boost as well.

Meanwhile, ongoing advances in hardware, notably rapid improvements in the chips known as graphics processing units, or GPUs, suggest genAI’s underlying engine is still accelerating. Patent filings related to AI technologies have surged since 2018, coinciding with the rise of the Transformer architecture—a backbone of today’s large language models.

‘Green shoots’ in research and development

The paper also finds genAI increasingly acting as an IMI, enhancing observation, analysis, communication, and organization in scientific research. Scientists now use genAI to analyze data, draft research papers, and even automate parts of the discovery process, though questions remain about the quality and originality of AI-generated output.

The authors highlight growing references to AI in R&D initiatives, both in patent data and corporate earnings calls, as further evidence that genAI is gaining a foothold in the innovation ecosystem.

Cautious optimism—and open questions

While the prospects for a genAI-driven productivity surge are promising, the authors warn against expecting overnight transformation. The process will require significant complementary investments, organizational change, and reliable access to computational and electric power infrastructure. They also emphasize the risks of investing blindly in speculative trends—a lesson from past tech booms.

“GenAI’s contribution to productivity growth will depend on the speed with which that level is attained, and historically, the process for integrating revolutionary technologies into the economy is a protracted one,” the report concludes. Despite these uncertainties, the authors believe genAI’s dual role—as a transformative platform and as a method for accelerating invention—bodes well for long-term economic growth if barriers to widespread adoption can be overcome.

Still, what if it’s just another light bulb?

For this story, Fortune used generative AI to help with an initial draft. An editor verified the accuracy of the information before publishing. 

This story was originally featured on Fortune.com

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Even as crypto finds growing traction on Wall Street and among retail investors, few people regard the blockchain technology that powers it as useful or relevant to their day-to-day lives. A crypto startup called Subzero Labs wants to change this, and it plans to launch its own blockchain designed for use beyond just speculation.

“We’re doing something for the real-world users,” Ade Adepoju, cofounder and CEO of Subzero Labs, told Fortune.

The startup announced Friday that it had raised $20 million in a seed round led by the crypto investment firm Pantera Capital. Other participants included the crypto venture capital company Variant, the venture arm of Coinbase, and the crypto desk of the high-frequency trading firm Susquehanna.

Adepoju declined to detail his startup’s valuation. The deal, which closed in the first quarter of the year, was for equity and token warrants, or allocations of a yet-to-be-released cryptocurrency, he said. 

iPod to iPhone

Adepoju, who is 30 years old and lives in New York City, is a longtime engineer. Early in his career, he worked at the chipmaker AMD, moved over to the laptop giant Dell, and then got a job at the streaming titan Netflix. In 2021, he decided to take the plunge into crypto when he joined the startup Mysten Labs as an engineer.

Founded by former Meta developers, Mysten Labs is one of the main companies behind the Sui blockchain, whose tech stems from Mark Zuckerberg’s failed attempt to launch his own stablecoin. Adepoju helped build Sui from conception to launch, but, in early 2024, he took a career break. “I wanted to take a step back and observe what it meant to make a network actually successful,” he said.

As he pondered his next move, he linked up with his cofounder Lu Zhang, also a former employee of Mysten Labs, and decided to get into the business of launching his own blockchain. Together, the two created Subzero Labs, which currently has 20 employees.

Some might argue that, at a time when there are dozens of active blockchain projects, the world is not exactly clamoring for another one. In response, Adepoju argues that none are good enough yet to run real-world applications. “When you actually ask, ‘do we need another one?’ it’s like asking, ‘do we need another iPod?’” he said. “No, we don’t, but we definitely need an iPhone.”

He’s hoping his new blockchain, dubbed Rialo, will be that iPhone. An acronym, Rialo stands for “Rialo isn’t a layer 1.” Layer-1 blockchains are like Ethereum, which is a decentralized network of servers that processes and stores data. Layer 2s are blockchains built on top of layer-1 blockchains.

Adepoju says Rialo isn’t a layer 1, 2, 3, 4, 5, or 6. In fact, he’s reluctant to compare it to any existing crypto products. He does say the blockchain is designed for non-crypto developers and that it allows engineers to replicate tools usually implemented outside a blockchain. These include the ability to access information, like a FICO score, elsewhere on the internet without the need of an oracle, or outside data provider.

“Cameras used to ship with laptops. They used to be separate,” he said, referring to external video cameras people used to connect to their computers in the early 2000s. “They got bundled. These things happen with every technology.”

This story was originally featured on Fortune.com

© Courtesy of Subzero Labs

• Workers making over $100,000 no longer consider themselves “rolling in it”—more than half of six-figure earners no longer feel financially successful. Those with top salaries are shopping at discount grocery stores, and cutting back on dining, clothes, and travel as they try and make ends meet. They’re even stalling major life plans—like renovating their homes, and throwing their weddings. 

Being a six-figure earner once felt like an exclusive club, with the promise of a lavish life—but now those making over $100,000 are feeling the pinch. So much so that they’re even buying their groceries at dollar stores and ditching takeouts.

More than half (58%) of six-figure earners no longer feel financially successful, according to a recent report from Clarify Capital. 

Six-figure earners aren’t choosing to fly economy over first-class—they’re looking for better deals when it comes to the essentials. More than seven in 10 of these high earners are now being forced to shop at discount grocery chains to save cash. 

Around 74% also say they’re cutting back on dining out, 54% are skimping out on entertainment, 51% are getting thrifty with buying clothes, 49% are scaling back their subscriptions, and 49% are spending less on travel. 

However, they’re not ashamed of their new thrifty ways, with 62% of six-figure earners proudly claiming they aren’t embarrassed to admit they’re cutting back. 

“In today’s economy, income alone doesn’t guarantee financial peace of mind,” the report says. “High earners are feeling squeezed by inflation, stressed by social pressure, and more mindful about what it really means to be well-off.” 

“As spending habits shift and priorities change, one thing is clear: real wealth is about security, not just status.”

The wealthy are cutting back on major life purchases too

Once the epitome of “making it” in America, workers earning six figures are now in the same boat as their less wealthy peers. 

And beyond the day-to-day expenses, those considered to be “rich” are also delaying major life purchases. About 47% are setting back their dream vacations and travel, 31% are stalling on home renovations, and 26% are delaying buying or leasing a new car.

Perhaps unsurprisingly, the tough housing market has forced many to rethink their American dream timelines, as 17% are pushing back buying a new home—and 6% of six-figure earners are even delaying getting married. 

Essentially, the rising cost of living crisis has forced people in all tax brackets to watch their spending, causing anxiety. About 85% of six-figure workers say they feel stressed and anxious due to increased living costs—and it’s even worse for women. Around 88% of top-earning women feel worried about keeping their checkbooks balanced, compared to 81% of men. 

The new upper-class: making more than $200,000

It’s no surprise that six-figure earners are pinching pennies when it comes to daily essentials—after all, more than half of Americans making over $100,000 annually lived paycheck to paycheck in 2022, 7% more than the previous year, according to a 2023 report. The cost-of-living crisis has pushed the needle of wealth to a new high.

In some parts of the U.S., making around $200,000 isn’t even considered to be “rolling in it.” A household making $199,000 a year in Massachusetts and New Jersey would still be considered middle-class, according to a 2025 analysis of 2023 U.S. Census Bureau data. And in every single state in America, a $100,000 salary is no longer enough to be considered to be upper-class. 

There are several reasons why more six-figure earners are struggling to make ends meet. Some employees have been hit with wage deflation, and the prospect of switching jobs for better pay has been upended. Employees who stayed in their current roles received a 4.6% wage bump in January and February, while those who switched jobs received only a marginally higher increase of 4.8%, according to 2025 data from the Atlanta Fed. 

Also, inflation has increased living expenses across the board. People may assume a middle-class lifestyle could at least keep up with the basics, but 65% of those households say their incomes were falling behind the cost of living, according to a 2024 study from Primerica.

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• OpenAI just raised $8.3 billion in a fresh round led by Dragoneer Investment Group. The AI startup is well on its way to raising $40 billion by year’s end.

Back in March, OpenAI announced a plan to raise up to $40 billion at a $300 billion valuation by the end of the year, with $10 billion becoming immediately available (thanks to SoftBank, which footed 75% of the bill), and the remaining $30 billion arriving by the end of the year.

On Friday, OpenAI made strong headway on its financial plans, raising another $8.3 billion at that same $300 billion valuation, The New York Times’ DealBook was first to report. Demand for the round was off the charts—it was five times oversubscribed, according to the NYT—which meant many early investors participating in the new round were reportedly frustrated by getting smaller allocations so OpenAI could prioritize new backers. 

OpenAI’s latest fundraising round was led by Marc Stad‘s Dragoneer Investment Group, an early investor in Spotify and Uber. Dragoneer wrote a massive $2.8 billion check, which means OpenAI now represents roughly 10% of the firm’s funds.

The round also included new investors, including T. Rowe Price, as well as a pair of giants from the private-equity world, TPG and BlackStone. Other participants in the round included Andreessen Horowitz, Sequoia Capital, Founders Fund, Fidelity Management, Thrive Capital, D1 Capital Partners, Coatue Management, and Tiger Global.

The New York Times’ DealBook reports OpenAI’s annual recurring revenue, which was reported as $10 billion in June, now exceeds $13 billion just two months later, and may pass the $20 billion mark by year’s end. 

To offer some context: Anthropic, OpenAI’s nearest rival in terms of revenue and capital raised, has $14.3 billion in lifetime fundraising, and its valuation is $61.5 billion as of March—though it is currently in talks to raise another $5 billion at a $170 billion valuation. Perplexity AI, another rival, raised $100 million last month, bringing its valuation to $18 billion. Elon Musk’s AI company, xAI, has raised $10 billion at a reported $80 billion valuation, though current fundraising efforts could bring that number up to $200 billion. 

Of course, all of this money brings OpenAI closer to an initial public offering. The company is currently in the midst of restructuring itself to become a for-profit company (which requires a green light from Microsoft), so there is still no announced timeline for an IPO. But the latest round means OpenAI has raised more than any other AI company by a wide margin, which gives it the upper hand in the red-hot sector.

OpenAI might face a true challenge, though, from some of the more established Silicon Valley giants, including Meta. CEO Mark Zuckerberg is pouring billions into AI resources, including talent; its $72 billion AI infrastructure spend is almost 80% higher than OpenAI’s entire fundraising round this year. Meta is also the sixth-most valuable company in the world with a market cap approaching $2 trillion.

OpenAI did not wish to comment further on the news, or on its future plans.

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• Sales of the Nintendo Switch 2 are outpacing the original Switch. The company has sold 5.8 million units since launch and expects to hit the 15 million mark by the end of March. Software sales were strong as well. The original Switch is the best-selling console in the company’s history, beating the Wii, NES and SNES.

Demand for Nintendo’s Switch 2 is not slowing down.

The Kyoto-based company says it has sold 5.82 million units since the system went on sale in early June and demand continues to outpace supply in most locations. Nintendo says it’s on track to sell 15 million units by the end of its fiscal year (in March of 2026).

Should it achieve that goal, that will make the Switch 2 a faster seller than the original Switch, which went on to become Nintendo’s best-selling console system. (The original took a full calendar year to hit the 15 million mark.)

That led to a strong quarter for the company. Revenues more than doubled compared to a year ago, coming in at $3.8 billion. Profits topped $378 million. Officials say Nintendo is on track to early $12.6 billion this fiscal year.

To make up for Switch 2 shortages, Nintendo plans to boost production – as many people who have ordered one have yet to receive theirs.

It’s not just game systems that are selling well. Switch 2 software sold 8.67 million units in the quarter, with Mario Kart World and the highly-rated Donkey Kong Bananza both leading the charge.

The Switch 2 is backwards compatible with the original Switch, so software sales for that older system were even higher. Nintendo says it sold 24.4 million Switch games in the quarter – along with nearly 1 million of the older consoles.

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•  Billionaire Microsoft cofounder Bill Gates says AI is moving at a speed that “surprises” even him,  as workers and employers are preparing for how the technology will impact their jobs. Leaders are already saying it’s just as good as workers, and is taking more jobs than are being created. 

Job seekers are scrambling to figure out when AI will come for their jobs—but even the experts can’t agree on a timeline. Now, Bill Gates is sounding the alarm: It could all happen so fast, workers won’t even have time to catch up.

“The question is, has it come so fast that you don’t have time to adjust to it?” Bill Gates just said in an interview with CNN.

The Microsoft cofounder noted that AI is already capable of taking over administrative roles like telesales, but it’s still falling short when it comes to more complex tasks—and even he’s dumbfounded by just how quickly it’s closing the gap.

“It’s improving at a rate that surprises me,” the tech pioneer, worth $122 billion, said in the interview, while pointing to its deep research capability as an example.

“A few times a day, I take some complex question, and just for fun, I see AI does an awfully good job gathering all the materials, and summarizing what I need to know.” 

In just a few years, the technology has gone from writing emails to generating functional code. That’s why no one can pin down when exactly the tipping point will come, Gates added.

“AI today can replace human work, the most complex coding tasks, [but] it’s not able to do [it] yet. And people in the field disagree: is that within the next year or two, or is it more like ten years away?”

Tech leaders agree that AI will be as good as human workers

Fellow business leaders have been candid that AI will be just as capable as, or even more advanced than, most human workers in the next few years.  

Anthropic CEO Dario Amodei predicted that up to 50% of entry-level white collar jobs could be replaced by AI within 5 years. 

“Most of them are unaware that this is about to happen,” Amodei warned in an interview with Axios. “It sounds crazy, and people just don’t believe it.”

Amazon CEO Andy Jassy also told employees that within the next few years, AI would reduce some corporate roles, like customer service representatives and software developers. And over at Meta, its CEO Mark Zuckerberg is already getting started on automating some of his employees’ jobs—the tech billionaire announced that the company is building an “AI engineer” to help with coding tasks.

That shift isn’t unique to just tech roles. IBM cut around 8,000 jobs this May in HR and other departments, as the tools take over routine administrative tasks. Instead, the company is hiring more engineers and salespeople, signaling a transition to more roles that require creativity and complex decision-making.

AI is improving productivity, Bill Gates says

As more companies pull back on hiring and training early job seekers, they are also shrinking the talent pool of future leaders. The jobs that have historically served as stepping stones for entry-level workers are under threat. 

With recent college grads struggling to land entry-level jobs, Gates weighed in on growing fears that AI is taking opportunities from young workers. He argued that rising productivity should free people’s time to do more of the other things they enjoy—from side hustles to vacations.

“When you improve productivity, you can make more [jobs],” Gates said.  “It means you can free up these people to have smaller class sizes or have longer vacations or help to do more, so it’s not a bad thing.”

New research echoes that already, 4 in 10 say it has provided better work-life balance, reduced stress, and improved decision-making.

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• Miller Lite is celebrating its 50^th anniversary by giving away 50,000 beers in 500 bars around the country. The company is also offering free beer on its website to people that can’t make it to a bar in time. The giveaways will take place between 4:50 p.m. and 7:00 p.m. local time.

Aug. 1 is international beer day—and if your beer fridge happens to be empty, one major beer brand is happy to offer you a freebie today.

Miller Lite is giving away 50,000 beers at 500 bars around the country on Friday. (This also happens to be the beer brand’s 50^th anniversary.) Can’t get to a bar? The brand will also be offering a sweepstakes on its Website that’ll pick up the tab for fans.

To find which bars near you are handing out the free beers, head to millerlite.com/find-celebration. There’s no reason to plan on a liquid lunch, though, which should make HR departments happy. The giveaways will take place between 4:50 p.m. and 7:00 p.m. local time.

Alternatively, you can visit MillerLite.com, starting at 3:00 p.m. CT (4:00 p.m. ET) to enter a sweepstakes for free beers.

“The 50th anniversary is just more than a milestone for Miller Lite, it’s a celebration of our fans and the five decades we’ve spent together enjoying Miller Time,” said Ann Legan, vice president of marketing for the Miller family of brands.

To culminate the celebration, Miller will host a Beer Drop at its brewery in Milwaukee, much like the Times Square ball drop on New Year’s Eve. Only, in this case, it will be a larger-than-life six pack that descends, rather than a crystal-encrusted ball.

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In today’s edition: Kamala’s new book, the tariff deluge, and a record for the Global 500.

– Record-setting. Fortune‘s Global 500, a ranking of the world’s largest companies, was published earlier this week. And it broke a record—women are running more Global 500 companies than ever before.

Of the 500 companies on the list, 33 have female CEOs this year. That’s up from 28 last year—but 33 is still only 6.6%. It’s far behind the Fortune 500, the ranking of America’s largest businesses, where women this year ran 55 businesses, or 11% of the companies on the list.

The companies on the Global 500 total $41.7 trillion in revenue, more than one-third of the world’s GDP. It’s a higher revenue bar for a company to make the list than on the Fortune 500—the smallest company on the Global 500 brings in $32.2 billion annually. On the Fortune 500, that cutoff was $7.4 billion this year. Women-led Fortune 500 companies are often smaller than the world’s giants—one reason the Global 500 lags behind the Fortune 500 in female leadership.

The highest-ranking woman-led Global 500 company this year is General Motors, led by CEO Mary Barra. (One reason she was No. 1 on our Most Powerful Women list earlier this year). GM is followed by Elevance Health, led by Gail Boudreaux; Jane Fraser’s Citigroup; and Sarah London’s Centene.

A handful of companies became women-led Global 500 businesses for the first time this year. Ding Xiangqun now runs the People’s Insurance Co. of China, the $86 billion-in-revenue state-owned insurer. Amanda Bardwell took over the $44 billion-in-revenue Australian supermarket chain Woolworths Group in September 2024. Emilia Esther Calleja Alor took over the Mexican utility CFE in October. Karin Rådström now leads Germany’s Daimler Truck Holding and Susan D. Morris is two months into running Albertsons.

Other notable female CEOs of non-U.S. Global 500 businesses include Sandy Ran Xu of JD.com; Magda Chambriad of Brazil’s Petrobras; and Catherine MacGregor of France’s Engie. And of course Accenture chief Julie Sweet (the company is incorporated in Ireland, and appears on the Global 500 rather than the Fortune 500). My colleague Lila MacLellan has a fantastic new story about the Accenture CEO out now alongside this list.

Emma Hinchliffe
emma.hinchliffe@fortune.com

The Most Powerful Women Daily newsletter is Fortune’s daily briefing for and about the women leading the business world. Subscribe here.

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• Stocks fell in early trading after a weak jobs report and the beginning of the Trump tariff rollout. The Labor Department drastically reduced the number of new jobs for the past two months as July’s figures fell short of expectations. Trump, meanwhile, made last-minute changes to tariff rates ahead of his self-imposed deadline.

More last-minute modifications to tariff rates and a disappointing July jobs report weighed heavily on investors in early trading Friday.

The Dow Jones Industrial Average tumbled 770 points (-1.74%) as of 10:00 a.m. ET. The Nasdaq Index was off 544 points (-2.6%) and the S&P fell 122 points (-1.9%).

Nonfarm payrolls were up by 73,000 last month, which was far less than the 100,000 economists were expecting. In addition, the Labor Department revised previous months downward, saying June job growth, which was previously reported at 147,000, was actually just 14,000. May’s count was also changed from 125,000 to 19,000.

That indicated the job market has been weak for quite a while now, something many Americans suspected, despite the bullish jobs numbers. The only possible bright side to that is it could give the Federal Reserve a reason to cut interest rates sooner than expected.

“Today’s data signals labor market conditions continue to cool and while the softer conditions don’t warrant a warning signal for investors, it should put market participants including the Fed on notice that economic conditions are shifting,” said Charlie Ripley, senior investment strategist for Allianz Investment Management.

Tariffs were the chief weight on stocks, though. Overnight, Trump updated the levies, which now range from 10% to 41%. Even goods that were transshipped to avoid the tariffs will face a 40% tariff now. And Canada will now have a 35% levy, up from 25%.

Macquarie strategists Thierry Wizman and Gareth Berry, in a note to investors, wrote trading at the start of the month was beginning “with a bit of panic.”

Amidst all this, Trump resumed his public criticisms of Fed chair Jerome Powell, seemingly encouraging the Fed Board to launch a coup. “Jerome ‘Too Late’ Powell, a stubborn MORON, must substantially lower interest rates, NOW,” Trump wrote. “IF HE CONTINUES TO REFUSE, THE BOARD SHOULD ASSUME CONTROL, AND DO WHAT EVERYONE KNOWS HAS TO BE DONE!”

The weak market open comes after three consecutive days of losses for the S&P 500. Since Trump has taken office, the S&P 500 has increased 5.7%. The Dow is up 1.5% and Nasdaq is just shy of 8% higher, compared to where they stood on Jan. 19.

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• U.S. payrolls grew by just 73,000 last month, well below forecasts, but downward revisions to prior months stunned Wall Street even more, showing that the labor market was much weaker than thought over the spring. That may prompt the Federal Reserve to lower rates sooner rather than later, which President Donald Trump has been demanding for months.

The U.S. labor market looks much weaker than previously thought, and Wall Street now expects the Federal Reserve to resume rate cuts sooner rather than later.

The Labor Department reported Friday that payrolls grew by just 73,000 last month, well below forecasts for about 100,000.

But downward revisions for prior months shocked investors even more, revealing that the labor market came to a near standstill over the spring. May’s tally was cut from 144,000 to 19,000, and June’s total was slashed from 147,000 to just 14,000, resulting in a combined cut of 258,000. The average gain over the last three months is now only 35,000.

The news came just days after the Fed kept rates steady again with Chairman Jerome Powell signaling a continued desire to wait for more data to see how President Donald Trump’s tariff would impact inflation, which is still running about the central bank’s 2% target.

“Powell is going to regret holding rates steady this week,” Jamie Cox, managing partner for Harris Financial Group, said in a note. “September is a lock for a rate cut and it might even be a 50-basis point move to make up the lost time.”

The unemployment rate also edged up to 4.2% from 4.1%, even as the labor force shrank. Meanwhile, U.S. factories continued to slump and cut 11,000 jobs last month after shedding 15,000 in June and 11,000 in May amid uncertainty over Trump’s trade war.

Stocks plummeted on the jobs data, with the S&P 500 down 1.7% and the Nasdaq down 2.3%. The 10-year Treasury yield sank more than 11 basis points to 4.247% as Wall Street priced in a rate cut at the Fed’s meeting next month and more later in the year.

After the jobs report, Trump reiterated his months-long demand for the Fed to lower rates, while Cleveland Fed President Beth Hammack stood by the central bank’s decision on Wednesday to keep policy steady.

“Headline NFP at 73k is a miss, but perhaps more concerning is -258k net revisions to the prior two months. These revisions put May’s headline NFP at 19k and June’s at 14k,” Adam Hetts, global head of Multi-Asset and portfolio manager at Janus Henderson Investors, said in a note. “Had those figures been the initial prints a month or two ago it would have significantly changed the labor market narrative over the entire summer. Indeed, odds of a September rate cut are increasing significantly on the back of this data release.”

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President Donald Trump on Friday called for the Federal Reserve’s board of governors to usurp the power of Fed Chair Jerome Powell, criticizing the head of the U.S. central bank for not cutting short-term interest rates.

Posting on his Truth Social platform, Trump called Powell “stubborn.” The Fed chair has been subjected to vicious verbal attacks by the Republican president over several months.

The Fed has the responsibility of stabilizing prices and maximizing employment. Powell has held its benchmark rate for overnight loans constant this year, saying that Fed officials needed to see what impact Trump’s massive tariffs had on inflation.

If Powell doesn’t “substantially” lower rates, Trump said, “THE BOARD SHOULD ASSUME CONTROL, AND DO WHAT EVERYONE KNOWS HAS TO BE DONE!”

Trump sees the rate cuts as leading to stronger growth and lower debt servicing costs for the federal government and homebuyers. The president argues there is virtually no inflation, even though the Fed’s preferred measure is running at an annual rate of 2.6%, slightly higher than the Fed’s 2% target.

Trump has called for slashing the Fed’s benchmark rate by 3 percentage points, bringing it down dramatically from its current average of 4.33%. The risk is that a rate cut that large could cause more money to come into the economy than can be absorbed, possibly causing inflation to accelerate.

The Supreme Court suggested in a May ruling that Trump could not remove Powell for policy disagreements. This led the White House to investigate whether the Fed chair could be fired for cause because of the cost overruns in its $2.5 billion renovation projects.

Powell’s term as chair ends in May 2026, at which point Trump can put his Senate-confirmed pick in the seat.

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Stealth submarines fitted with space-shooting lasers, supply-chain sabotage and custom-built attack satellites armed with ion thrusters. Those are just some of the strategies Chinese scientists have been developing to counter what Beijing sees as a potent threat: Elon Musk’s armada of Starlink communications satellites.

Chinese government and military scientists, concerned about Starlink’s potential use by adversaries in a military confrontation and for spying, have published dozens of papers in public journals that explore ways to hunt and destroy Musk’s satellites, an Associated Press review found.

Chinese researchers believe that Starlink — a vast constellation of low-orbit satellites that deliver cheap, fast and ubiquitous connectivity even in remote areas — poses a high risk to the Chinese government and its strategic interests. That fear has mostly been driven by the company’s close ties to the U.S. intelligence and defense establishment, as well as its growing global footprint.

“As the United States integrates Starlink technology into military space assets to gain a strategic advantage over its adversaries, other countries increasingly perceive Starlink as a security threat in nuclear, space, and cyber domains,” wrote professors from China’s National University of Defense Technology in a 2023 paper.

Chinese researchers are not the only ones concerned about Starlink, which has a stranglehold on certain space-based communications. Some traditional U.S. allies are also questioning the wisdom of handing over core communications infrastructure — and a potential trove of data — to a company run by an unpredictable foreign businessman whose allegiances are not always clear.

Apprehensions deepened after Russia’s 2022 full-scale invasion of Ukraine made clear the battlefield advantages Starlink satellites could convey and have been exacerbated by Musk’s proliferating political interests.

Musk pumped tens of millions of dollars into President Donald Trump’s reelection effort and emerged, temporarily, as a key adviser and government official. As Musk toys with the idea of starting his own political party, he has also taken an increasing interest in European politics, using his influence to promote an array of hard-right and insurgent figures often at odds with establishment politicians.

Musk left the Trump administration in May and within days his relationship with Trump publicly imploded in a feud on social media. SpaceX, the rocket launch and space-based communications company that Musk founded and that operates Starlink, remains inextricably linked with core U.S. government functions. It has won billions in contracts to provide launch services for NASA missions and military satellites, recuperate astronauts stranded at the International Space Station and build a network of spy satellites for the National Reconnaissance Office.

Starlink’s space dominance has sparked a global scramble to come up with viable alternatives. But its crushing first-mover advantage has given SpaceX near monopoly power, further complicating the currents of business, politics and national security that converge on Musk and his companies.

Starlink dominates space

Since its first launches in 2019, Starlink has come to account for about two-thirds of all active satellites, according to Jonathan McDowell, an astronomer at the Harvard-Smithsonian Center for Astrophysics, who writes a newsletter tracking satellite launches. SpaceX operates more than 8,000 active satellites and eventually aims to deploy tens of thousands more.

Beijing’s tendency to view Starlink as tool of U.S. military power has sharpened its efforts to develop countermeasures — which, if deployed, could increase the risk of collateral damage to other customers as SpaceX expands its global footprint. The same satellites that pass over China also potentially serve Europe, Ukraine, the United States and other geographies as they continue their path around the earth.

Starlink says it operates in more than 140 countries, and recently made inroads in Vietnam, Niger, Somalia, the Democratic Republic of Congo and Pakistan. In June, Starlink also obtained a license to operate in India, overcoming national security concerns and powerful domestic telecom interests to crack open a tech-savvy market of nearly 1.5 billion people.

On the company’s own map of coverage, it has very few dead zones beyond those in North Korea, Iran and China.

No other country or company is close to catching up with Starlink. Amazon billionaire Jeff Bezos has taken aim at rival Musk with Project Kuiper, which launched its first batch of internet satellites into orbit in April. So far Amazon has just 78 satellites in orbit, with 3,232 planned, according to McDowell, and London-based Eutelstat OneWeb has around 650 satellites in orbit, a fraction of the fleet it had initially planned.

The European Union is spending billions to develop its own satellite array — called the IRIS2 initiative — but remains woefully behind. EU officials have had to lobby their own member states not to sign contracts with Starlink while it gets up and running.

“We are allies with the United States of America, but we need to have our strategic autonomy,” said Christophe Grudler, a French member of the European Parliament who led legislative work on IRIS2. “The risk is not having our destiny in our own hands.”

China has been public about its ambition to build its own version of Starlink to meet both domestic national security needs and compete with Starlink in foreign markets. In 2021, Beijing established the state-owned China SatNet company and tasked it with launching a megaconstellation with military capabilities, known as Guowang. In December, the company launched its first operational satellites, and now has 60 of a planned 13,000 in orbit, according to McDowell.

Qianfan, a company backed by the Shanghai government, has launched 90 satellites out of some 15,000 planned. The Brazilian government in November announced a deal with Qianfan, after Musk had a scorching public fight with a Brazilian judge investigating X, who also froze Space X’s bank accounts in the country. Qianfan is also targeting customers in Kazakhstan, Malaysia, Oman, Pakistan and Uzbekistan and has ambitions to expand across the African continent, according to a slide presented at a space industry conference last year and published by the China Space Monitor.

Russia’s invasion of Ukraine supercharges concerns

Concerns about Starlink’s supremacy were supercharged by Russia’s 2022 full-scale invasion of Ukraine. The war was a turning point in strategic thinking about Starlink and similar systems. Ukraine used the Starlink network to facilitate battlefield communications and power fighter and reconnaissance drones, providing a decisive ground-game advantage. At the same time, access to the satellites was initially controlled by a single man, Musk, who can — and did — interrupt critical services, refusing, for example, to extend coverage to support a Ukrainian counterattack in Russia-occupied Crimea.

U.S.-led sanctions against Moscow after the full-scale invasion also curtailed the availability of Western technology in Russia, underscoring the geopolitical risks inherent in relying on foreign actors for access to critical infrastructure.

“Ukraine was a warning shot for the rest of us,” said Nitin Pai, co-founder and director of the Takshashila Institution, a public policy research center based in Bangalore, India. “For the last 20 years, we were quite aware of the fact that giving important government contracts to Chinese companies is risky because Chinese companies operate as appendages of the Chinese Communist Party. Therefore, it’s a risk because the Chinese Communist Party can use technology as a lever against you. Now it’s no different with the Americans.”

Nearly all of the 64 papers about Starlink reviewed by AP in Chinese journals were published after the conflict started.

Assessing Starlink’s capabilities and vulnerabilities

Starlink’s omnipresence and potential military applications have unnerved Beijing and spurred the nation’s scientists to action. In paper after paper, researchers painstakingly assessed the capabilities and vulnerabilities of a network that they clearly perceive as menacing and strove to understand what China might learn — and emulate — from Musk’s company as Beijing works to develop a similar satellite system.

Though Starlink does not operate in China, Musk’s satellites nonetheless can sweep over Chinese territory. Researchers from China’s National Defense University in 2023 simulated Starlink’s coverage of key geographies, including Beijing, Taiwan, and the polar regions, and determined that Starlink can achieve round-the-clock coverage of Beijing.

“The Starlink constellation coverage capacity of all regions in the world is improving steadily and in high speed,” they concluded.

In another paper — this one published by the government-backed China Industrial Control Systems Cyber Emergency Response Team — researchers mapped out vulnerabilities in Starlink’s supply chain. “The company has more than 140 first-tier suppliers and a large number of second-tier and third-tier suppliers downstream,” they wrote in a 2023 paper. “The supervision for cybersecurity is limited.”

Engineers from the People’s Liberation Army, in another 2023 paper, suggested creating a fleet of satellites to tail Starlink satellites, collecting signals and potentially using corrosive materials to damage their batteries or ion thrusters to interfere with their solar panels.

Other Chinese academics have encouraged Beijing to use global regulations and diplomacy to contain Musk, even as the nation’s engineers have continued to elaborate active countermeasures: Deploy small optical telescopes already in commercial production to monitor Starlink arrays. Concoct deep fakes to create fictitious targets. Shoot powerful lasers to burn Musk’s equipment.

Some U.S. analysts say Beijing’s fears may be overblown, but such assessments appear to have done little to cool domestic debate. One Chinese paper was titled, simply: “Watch out for that Starlink.”

___

Chen reported from Washington.

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China’s cyberspace regulators on Thursday summoned Nvidia over security concerns that its H20 chips can be tracked and turned off remotely, the Cyberspace Administration of China said on its website.

In the meeting, Chinese regulators demanded that the U.S. chip company provide explanations on “backdoor safety risks” of its H20 chips to be sold in China and submit relevant materials, the office said.

“Cybersecurity is critically important to us. NVIDIA does not have ‘backdoors’ in our chips that would give anyone a remote way to access or control them,” an Nvidia spokesperson said in a statement to AP.

It came just about two weeks after the Trump administration lifted the block on the computing chips and allowed Nvidia to resume sales of H20 chips to the Chinese market. Jensen Huang, chief executive of Nvidia, made the announcement with fanfare when he was in Beijing earlier this month.

The latest episode appears to be another turbulence in the tech rivalry between the United States and China, which have left businesses in both countries tussling with governments over market access and national security concerns.

Any safety concern by Beijing could jeopardize the sale of H20 chips in China. Citing unnamed U.S. AI experts, the Chinese regulators said Nvidia has developed mature technology to track, locate and remotely disable its computing chips. The regulators summoned Nvidia to “safeguard the cybersecurity and data security of Chinese users,” in accordance with Chinese laws, the statement said.

The statement also referred to a call by U.S. lawmakers to require tracking and locating capabilities on U.S. advanced chips sold overseas.

In May, Rep. Bill Huizenga, R.-Michigan, and Rep. Bill Foster, D.-Illinois, introduced the Chip Security Act that would require high-end chips to be equipped with “security mechanisms” to detect “smuggling or exploitation.” The bill has not moved through Congress since its introduction.

Foster, a trained physicist, then said, “I know that we have the technical tools to prevent powerful AI technology from getting into the wrong hands.”

The U.S. still bans the sale to China of the most advanced chips, which are necessary for developing artificial intelligence. Both countries aim to lead in the artificial intelligence race. The Trump administration in April blocked the sales of H20 chips, which Nvidia developed to specifically comply with U.S. restrictions for exports of AI chips to China.

After the ban was lifted, Nvidia expected to sell hundreds of thousands more H20 chips in the Chinese market.

But the easing of the ban has raised eyebrows on Capitol Hill. On Monday, a group of top Democratic senators, including Minority Leader Sen. Chuck Schumer, wrote to Commerce Secretary Howard Lutnick to express their “grave concerns”.

While chips like the H20 have differing capabilities than the most advanced chips such as Nvidia’s H100, “they give (China) capabilities that its domestically-developed chipsets cannot,” the senators wrote.

Shortly after the ban was lifted, Rep. John Moolenaar, R.-Michigan, who chairs the House Select Committee on China, objected. “The Commerce Department made the right call in banning the H20. Now it must hold the line,” Moolenaar wrote in a letter to Lutnick.

“We can’t let the CCP use American chips to train AI models that will power its military, censor its people, and undercut American innovation,” Moolenaar wrote, referring to the Chinese Communist Party by its acronym.

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President Donald Trump has raised the tariff rate on U.S. imports from Canada to 35% from 25%, effective Friday.

The announcement from the White House late Thursday said Canada had failed to “do more to arrest, seize, detain or otherwise intercept … traffickers, criminals at large, and illicit drugs.”

Trump has heckled Canada for months and suggested it should become its 51st U.S. state. He had threatened to impose the higher tariff on Canada if no deal was reached by Friday, his deadline for reaching trade agreements with dozens of countries.

Earlier Thursday, the president said Canada’s announcement it will recognize a Palestinian state would “make it very hard” for the United States to reach a trade agreement with its northern neighbor. Trump has also expressed frustration with a trade deficit with Canada that largely reflects oil purchases by America.

Prime Minister Mark Carney had tempered expectations over tariffs, saying Ottawa would only agree to a deal “if there’s one on the table that is in the best interests of Canadians.”

In a statement released early Friday, he said he was disappointed by Trump’s actions and vowed to diversify Canada’s exports.

“Canada accounts for only 1% of U.S. fentanyl imports and has been working intensively to further reduce these volumes,” he said, pointing to heavy investments in border security.

Carney added that some industries — including lumber, steel, aluminum and automobiles — will be harder hit, but said his government will try to minimize the impact and protect Canadian jobs.

Canada was not included in Trump’s updated list of tariff rates on other countries announced late Thursday. Those import duties are due to take effect on Aug. 7.

Trump sent a letter to Canada a few weeks ago warning he planned to raise duties on many goods imported from Canada to 35%, deepening the rift between the two North American countries that has undermined their decades-old alliance.

Some imports from Canada are still protected by the 2020 United States-Mexico-Canada Agreement, or USMCA, which is up for renegotiation next year.

The White House’s statement said goods transshipped through Canada that are not covered by the USMCA would be subject to a 40% tariff rate. It did not say where the goods might originate.

President Donald Trump said Thursday that there would be a 90-day negotiating period with Mexico after a call with that country’s leader, Claudia Sheinbaum, keeping 25% tariff rates in place.

This story was originally featured on Fortune.com

© Chris Young/The Canadian Press via AP

A federal appeals court has upheld a jury verdict condemning Google’s Android app store as an illegal monopoly, clearing the way for a federal judge to enforce a potentially disruptive shakeup that’s designed to give consumers more choices.

The unanimous ruling issued Thursday by the Ninth Circuit Court of Appeals delivers a double-barreled legal blow for Google, which has been waylaid in three separate antitrust trials that resulted in different pillars of its internet empire being declared as domineering scofflaws monopolies since late 2023.

The unsuccessful appeal represents a major victory for video game maker Epic Games, which launched a legal crusade targeting Google’s Play Store for Android apps and Apple’s iPhone app store nearly five years ago in an attempt to bypass exclusive payment processing systems that charged 15% to 30% commissions on in-app transactions.

The jury’s December 2023 rebuke of Google’s app store for Android-powered smartphones began a cascade of setbacks that includes monopoly judgements against the company’s ubiquitous search engine last year and the technology underlying its digital ad network earlier this year.

Although not as lucrative as Google’s search engine or ad system, the Play Store for Android apps has long been a gold mine that generated billions of dollars in annual revenue by taking a 15% to 30% cut from in-app transactions funneled through the company’s own payment processing system.

Following a month-long trial, a nine-person jury determined that Google had rigged its system to thwart alternative app stores from offering better deals to consumers and software developers. That verdict resulted in U.S. District Judge James Donato ordering Google to tear down digital walls shielding the Play Store from competition, triggering the company’s appeal to overturn the jury’s finding and void the judge’s mandated shakeup.

But a three-judge panel that heard Google’s appeal in February rejected its lawyers’ contention that Donato erred by allowing the case to be determined by a jury that deviated from the market definition outlined by another federal judge who mostly sided with Apple in Epic’s case against the iPhone maker’s app store.

Epic’s lawsuit “was replete with evidence that Google’s anticompetitive conduct entrenched its dominance, causing the Play Store to benefit from network effects,” the judges wrote in the decision.

Unless Google can extend the enforcement delay placed on Donato’s order issued last October, the company will have to begin an overhaul that includes making the Play Store’s entire library of more than 2 million Android apps available to would-be rivals and also help distribute the alternative options. Google has argued that the required revisions will raise privacy and security risks by exposing consumers to scam artists and hackers masquerading as legitimate app stores.

But Epic’s lawyers have ridiculed Google’s warnings about the changes as scare tactics in a desperate attempt to protect the fortunes of its corporate parent Alphabet Inc.

Although Epic fell short in its attempt to have the iPhone’s app store declared a monopoly, that case resulted in a judge issuing an order that required Apple to surrender exclusive control over the payment processing of in-app transactions and allow links to alternative systems without collecting a commission.

Besides being hit with Donato’s order, Google still faces further trouble ahead that could leave an even bigger dent in its finances.

As part of the effort to address Google’s illegal monopoly in search, a federal judge is weighing a proposal by the U.S. Justice Department that would require the sale of its Chrome web browser and ban the multibillion dollar deals that company has been making with Apple and others to lock-in its search engine as the main gateway to the internet.

Google is also facing a proposed breakup of its advertising technology as part of the countermeasures to its monopoly in that business. A trial on that proposal is scheduled to begin in September.

This story was originally featured on Fortune.com

© AP Photo/Juliana Yamada, File