It just happens that one of the most accessible and budget-friendly forms of exercise is also the most beneficial for your health: walking. It’s been proven to help reduce heart disease risk, strengthen your joints and heart, boost your mood, and help you live longer.

There has been debate about how much walking is ideal. Should you be aiming for 10,000 steps a day or is 7,000 the right number? How fast should you move to reap the most benefits of your walking workouts?

Using the myriad scientific data, studies, and expert insight on walking, here is what Fortune has uncovered about the ideal amount of walking to do see benefits.

How many steps a day to aim for

While 10,000 steps has been floated around as the ideal number to hit every day, experts have said that number is fairly arbitrary—it’s actually more of a target range that experts advise to aim for.

“That 10,000 steps was never a peer-reviewed number,” Howard Luks, a New York-based orthopedic surgeon and the author of Longevity…Simplified: Living a Longer, Healthier Life Shouldn’t Be Complicated, told Fortune.

Research has indicated that people who hit around 7,000 steps a day are able to maintain good health, while another study from 2023 of 3,000 participants showed that those who took at least 8,000 steps one or two days a week were 14.9% less likely to die over a 10-year period than those who did not. People who took 8,000 or more steps three to seven days a week were 16.5% less likely to die over the same period as well.

That 7,000 to 10,000-step range is pretty much the sweet spot to see improvements in your fitness, according to National Academy of Sports Medicine trainer Mallory Fox. She says that is generally where people will start to achieve weight loss and see benefits to their cardiorespiratory systems.

However, it’s important to set realistic goals geared towards your individual improvement, according to NiCole Keith, professor of kinesiology at Indiana University–Purdue University and immediate past president of the American College of Sports Medicine.

“Ten thousand steps is a lot of steps,” she told Fortune. “If you’re an active person and you’re out walking all the time, or you work in a manual labor job and you’re on your feet and you’re carrying things and walking around…that’s great. But if you’re a receptionist and only getting 3,000, then make a goal to make it 3,500. Then see if you can push it up to 4,000.”

Fox agrees that people should take their time in increasing their step count, and advises taking a look at how much you’re walking each week—either with the help of a wearable device or the rough step estimate provided by smartphones—and aim to increase that by about 10% each week to ensure you don’t get injured or too sore.

She also echoes that the improvements you’ll see in your fitness, body composition, and overall health are largely dependent on your lifestyle and physiology.

“Everybody is different. Someone’s exercise history, their height, their weight will contribute to how much they need to do,” she says. You’re likely to see improvement just by doing “any additional movement beyond [your] normal activity level,” she adds.

It’s not just about step count—pace matters too

While there’s nothing wrong with leisurely strolls to relieve stress and clear your mind—and remember, every step counts—research indicates that your walking pace is another contributing factor for longevity in particular.

The same 2023 meta-analysis on walking also found that a faster pace was associated with a reduced risk of death, regardless of the number of steps taken per day. Researchers posit that’s because walking faster pushes your heart more, allowing you to get more moderate-to-vigorous physical activity that boosts cardiovascular health. The Centers for Disease Control and Prevention recommends 150 minutes of moderate-intensity activity each week for most adults, or 75 minutes of vigorous-intensity activity—and pushing the walking pace could help you reach that recommendation.

A 2022 U.K.-based study also found that walking quickly could lower dementia risk. And researchers on a 2022 Brazil-based study observed that the greater the number of daily steps—and the quicker the pace of those steps—the less likely someone was to suffer from arterial stiffness, a condition where the arteries, the blood vessels that carry blood away from the heart, become less flexible and more rigid, which could lead to heart problems.

So just how fast are we talking? Walking at a pace of around 100 steps per minute for 30 minutes a day, five days a week would meet the weekly requirements for moderate exercise for older adults, Brazilian researchers pointed out. A 2011 study supported that estimate, stating that 100 steps per minute equated moderate physical activity.

But as Fox pointed out, anything is better than nothing, especially if you’re starting from a lower baseline.

“There are many benefits of walking even at a slow walk or a leisurely stroll,” she says. “The intensity isn’t set in stone. It’s just moving the body more is the bottom line.”

Easy ways to add steps to your day

Here are 5 easy ways to naturally incorporate more walking into your day, according to the American on the Move Foundation:

• Take a walk after every meal.
• Walk while you’re on a work call.
• Play a tennis or pickleball match.
• Volunteer to walk dogs for an animal shelter.
• Tour a museum, zoo, or nature preserve.

Fox also encourages using a walking pad if you work from home. You don’t even need to put the speed very fast, she says—as long as you’re moving, you’re getting the benefits.

“The most important thing is being consistent,” Fox adds. Try to get out and move every day, instead of one long walk every once in a while, she explains—it’s better to be doing a half-mile walk every day rather than walking five miles once a week.

For more on fitness:

• The exact amount of time you need to lift weights to see muscle gains, according to research
• The potential benefits of the ‘Japanese walking’ workout which fans claim is better than 10,000 steps a day
• The top 6 exercises this strength coach thinks everyone should do to stay fit
• What’s your VO2 max? The most important health metric you’re probably not aware of shows how fit you really are

This story was originally featured on Fortune.com

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The U.S. State Department said Wednesday it is restarting the suspended process for foreigners applying for student visas but all applicants will now be required to unlock their social media accounts for government review.

The department said consular officers will be on the lookout for posts and messages that could be deemed hostile to the United States, its government, culture, institutions or founding principles.

In a notice made public Wednesday, the department said it had rescinded its May suspension of student visa processing but said new applicants who refuse to set their social media accounts to “public” and allow them to be reviewed may be rejected. It said a refusal to do so could be a sign they are trying to evade the requirement or hide their online activity.

The Trump administration last month temporarily halted the scheduling of new visa interviews for foreign students hoping to study in the U.S. while preparing to expand the screening of their activity on social media, officials said.

Students around the world have been waiting anxiously for U.S. consulates to reopen appointments for visa interviews, as the window left to book their travel and make housing arrangements narrows ahead of the start of the school year.

On Wednesday afternoon, a 27-year-old Ph.D. student in Toronto was able to secure an appointment for a visa interview next week. The student, a Chinese national, hopes to travel to the U.S. for a research internship that would start in late July. “I’m really relieved,” said the student, who spoke on condition of being identified only by his surname, Chen, because he was concerned about being targeted. “I’ve been refreshing the website couple of times every day.”

Students from China, India, Mexico and the Philippines have posted on social media sites that they have been monitoring visa booking websites and closely watching press briefings of the State Department to get any indication of when appointment scheduling might resume.

In reopening the visa process, the State Department also told consulates to prioritize students hoping to enroll at colleges where foreigners make up less than 15% of the student body, a U.S. official familiar with the matter said. The official spoke on condition of anonymity to detail information that has not been made public.

Foreign students make up more than 15% of the total student body at almost 200 U.S. universities, according to an Associated Press analysis of federal education data from 2023. Most are private universities, including all eight Ivy League schools. But that criteria also includes 26 public universities, including the University of Illinois and Pennsylvania State University. Looking only at undergraduate students, foreign students make up more than 15% of the population at about 100 universities, almost all of them private.

International students in the U.S. have been facing increased scrutiny on several fronts. In the spring, the Trump administration revoked permission to study in the U.S. for thousands of students, including some involved only in traffic offenses, before abruptly reversing course. The government also expanded the grounds on which foreign students can have their legal status terminated.

As part of a pressure campaign targeting Harvard University, the Trump administration has moved to block foreign students from attending the Ivy League school, which counts on international students for tuition dollars and a quarter of its enrollment. Trump has said Harvard should cap its foreign enrollment at 15%.

This latest move to vet students’ social media, the State Department said Wednesday, “will ensure we are properly screening every single person attempting to visit our country.”

In internal guidance sent to consular officers, the department said they should be looking for “any indications of hostility toward the citizens, culture, government, institutions, or founding principles of the United States.”

Jameel Jaffer, executive director at the Knight First Amendment Institute at Columbia University, said the new policy evokes the ideological vetting of the Cold War, when prominent artists and intellectuals were excluded from the U.S.

“This policy makes a censor of every consular officer, and it will inevitably chill legitimate political speech both inside and outside the United States,” Jaffer said.

The Trump administration also has called for 36 countries to commit to improving vetting of travelers or face a ban on their citizens visiting the United States. A weekend diplomatic cable sent by the State Department says the countries have 60 days to address U.S. concerns or risk being added to a travel ban that now includes 12 nations.

This story was originally featured on Fortune.com

© Alexander F. Yuan—AP

Nippon Steel and U.S. Steel said Wednesday they have finalized their “historic partnership,” a deal that gives the U.S. government a say in some matters and comes a year-and-a-half after the Japanese company first proposed its nearly $15 billion buyout of the iconic American steelmaker.

The pursuit by Nippon Steel for the Pittsburgh-based company was buffeted by national security concerns and presidential politics in a premier battleground state, dragging out the transaction for more than a year after U.S. Steel shareholders approved it.

It also forced Nippon Steel to expand the deal, including adding a so-called “golden share” provision that gives the federal government the power to appoint a board member and a say in company decisions that affect domestic steel production and competition with overseas producers.

“Together, Nippon Steel and U.S. Steel will be a world-leading steelmaker, with best-in-class technologies and manufacturing capabilities,” the companies said.

The combined company will become the world’s fourth-largest steelmaker in an industry dominated by the Chinese, and bring what analysts say is Nippon Steel’s top-notch technology to U.S. Steel’s antiquated steelmaking processes, plus a commitment to invest $11 billion to upgrade U.S. Steel facilities.

In exchange, Nippon Steel gets access to a robust U.S. steel market, strengthened in recent years by tariffs under President Donald Trump and former President Joe Biden, analysts say.

Anthony Rapa, a Blank Rome lawyer in Washington who advises firms on trade, operations and investments, said the government’s intervention in the Nippon Steel-U.S. Steel deal is another sign of a trend that the U.S. is increasingly equating economic security with national security.

He doesn’t see the government’s intervention as chilling foreign investment and said a “golden share” mechanism — to the extent it’s used again by the U.S. to ease national security concerns — is likely to emerge only in sensitive and complex cases.

Still, the episode could cause investors to be more strategic in how they approach transactions, Rapa said.

Anil Khurana, executive director of the Baratta Center for Global Business at Georgetown University, said the U.S. government’s interest in the deal is a sign of the growing importance it places on economic competition with China.

“Clearly the definition of what is national security has expanded to included national economic security, which is where I think this comes in,” Khurana said.

Nippon Steel and U.S. Steel did not release a copy of the national security agreement struck with Trump’s administration.

But in a statement Wednesday, the companies said the federal government will have the right to appoint an independent director and get “consent rights” on specific matters.

Those include reductions in Nippon Steel’s capital commitments in the national security agreement; changing U. S. Steel’s name and headquarters; closing or idling U.S. Steel’s plants; transferring production or jobs outside of the U.S.; buying competing businesses in the U.S.; and certain decisions on trade, labor and sourcing outside the U.S.

Nippon Steel announced in December 2023 that it planned to buy the steel producer for $14.9 billion in cash and debt, and committed to keep the U.S. Steel name and Pittsburgh headquarters.

The United Steelworkers union, which represents some U.S. Steel employees, opposed the deal, and Biden and Trump both vowed from the campaign trail to block it.

Biden used his authority to block Nippon Steel’s acquisition of U.S. Steel on his way out of the White House after a review by the Committee on Foreign Investment in the United States.

After he was elected, Trump changed course, expressing openness to working out an arrangement and ordering another review by the committee.

That’s when the idea of the “golden share” emerged as a way to resolve national security concerns and protect American interests in domestic steel production.

As it sought to win over American officials, Nippon Steel began adding commitments. Those included putting U.S. Steel under a board made up of a majority of Americans and a management team of Americans.

It pledged not to conduct layoffs or plant closings as a result of the transaction or to import steel slabs to compete with U.S. Steel’s blast furnaces in Braddock, Pennsylvania and Gary, Indiana.

In the final agreement, it pledged to produce and supply U.S. Steel from domestic sources — such as mining operations in Minnesota — and to allow U. S. Steel to pursue trade actions under U.S. law.

It also made a series of bigger capital commitments in U.S. Steel facilities, tallying $11 billion through 2028, it said.

Nippon Steel said its annual crude steel production capacity is expected to reach 86 million tons, closer to its goal of 100 million tons.

The United Steelworkers on Wednesday noted that its current labor agreement with U.S. Steel expires in 2026.

“Rest assured, if our job security, pensions, retiree health care or other hard-earned benefits are threatened, we are ready to respond with the full strength and solidarity of our membership,” its international president, David McCall, said in a statement.

This story was originally featured on Fortune.com

© Julia Demaree Nikhinson—AP

The Federal Reserve kept its key rate unchanged Wednesday as it waits for additional information on how tariffs and other potential disruptions will affect the economy this year.

The Fed’s policymakers signaled they still expect to cut rates twice this year, even as they also project that President Donald Trump’s import duties will push inflation higher. They also expect growth to slow and unemployment to edge up, according to their latest quarterly projections released Wednesday.

Fed policymakers had cut their rate three times late last year but have since have been on hold. Inflation has cooled steadily since January, but Fed Chair Jerome Powell said at a news conference that tariffs are likely to reverse that progress and push inflation higher in the coming months. The Fed expects the bump to inflation will be temporary, but they want to see more data to be sure.

“Increases in tariffs this year are likely to push up prices and weigh on economic activity,” Powell said. “This is something we know is coming, we just don’t know the size of it.”

Changes to the Fed’s rate typically — though not always — influence borrowing costs for mortgages, auto loans, credit cards, and business loans.

So far inflation has continued to decline while some cracks have appeared in the economy, particularly in housing, where elevated borrowing costs are slowing sales and homebuilding. Hiring has also slowed. Such trends would typically lead the Fed to reduce its key rate, which is currently at about 4.3%.

Yet Powell said the economy remains in good shape and the Fed has to consider the potential for prices to rise soon.

“You can see perhaps a very, very slow continued cooling” in the job market, “but nothing that’s troubling at this time,” he said.

“We have to be forward looking,” Powell said later. “We expect a meaningful amount of inflation to arrive in coming months and we have to take that into account.”

Powell also said the Fed will learn much more over the summer about how tariffs will affect the economy. George Pearkes, global macro strategist for Bespoke Investment Group, said he interpreted that to mean the Fed won’t cut until September, at the earliest. Its next meeting is in July.

“Unless we see a really, really rapid deterioration in the labor market we won’t see a cut until September, and maybe not even then,” he said.

Wall Street investors currently expect the Fed to cut in September, according to futures prices tracked by CME Fedwatch.

Fed officials see inflation, according to their preferred measure, rising to 3% by the end of this year, from 2.1% in April, according to the projections released Wednesday. They also project the unemployment rate will rise to 4.5%, from 4.2% currently. Growth is expected to slow to just 1.4% this year, down from 2.5% last year.

Claudia Sahm, chief economist at New Century Advisors and a former Fed economist, said that the projections show that policymakers do expect inflation to come down in 2026 and 2027, with the tariffs having just a temporary impact. Without the duties, officials would be more likely to cut rates soon, she said.

“The Fed seems to be in agreement that this will be temporary, but they don’t have high enough conviction yet,” she said.

So far, inflation has cooled this year to just 2.1% in April, essentially back at the central bank’s target of 2%. Core inflation, which excludes the volatile food and energy categories, remains elevated at 2.5%.

Trump has pointed to the mild inflation figures to argue that the Fed should lower borrowing costs and has repeatedly criticized Powell for not doing so. On Wednesday he called Powell “stupid” and accused him of being “political” for not cutting rates.

“So we have no inflation, we have only success,” Trump said, before the Fed announced its decision. “And I’d like to see interest rates get down.”

Trump has previously argued that a rate cut would boost the economy. Now his focus has shifted to the federal government’s borrowing costs, which have shot higher since the pandemic, with interest payments running at an annual rate of more than $1 trillion.

Pushing the Fed to cut rates simply to save the government on its interest payments typically raises alarms among economists, because it would threaten the Fed’s congressional mandate to focus on stable prices and maximum employment.

One of Trump’s complaints is that the Fed isn’t cutting rates even as other central banks around the world have reduced their borrowing costs, including in Europe, Canada, and the U.K. On Tuesday, the Bank of Japan kept its key short-term rate unchanged at 0.5%, after actually raising it recently.

But the European Central Bank, Bank of Canada, and Bank of England have reduced their rates this year in part because U.S. tariffs are weakening their economies. So far the U.S. economy is mostly solid, with the unemployment rate low.

The Bank of England has cut its rate twice this year but is expected to keep it unchanged at 4.25% when it meets Thursday.

This story was originally featured on Fortune.com

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Malaysia’s government is verifying media reports that a Chinese company may be circumventing U.S. export curbs on high-end AI chips by using servers housing Nvidia chips based in the Southeast Asian country.

The Wall Street Journal reported that Chinese engineers had flown to Malaysia in March carrying hard drives containing data to build artificial intelligence models in Malaysian data centers using advanced Nvidia chips.

The engineers planned to bring the AI models back to China, the report said.

The United States has cracked down on exports of advanced semiconductors to China, including those made by U.S. tech giant Nvidia, as it seeks to retain a competitive edge over the technology.

A Malaysian trade ministry statement on Wednesday said it was “verifying the matter with relevant agencies if any domestic law or regulation has been breached”.

The ministry said that while servers using Nvidia and AI chips are not classified as controlled goods under Malaysian law, the country “will cooperate with any government that requires assistance in monitoring trade in sensitive goods under the export control of their respective countries”.

Data centers in Malaysia “are free to make their own commercial decisions”, the statement said, but added that it was illegal for any person or firm to circumvent export controls.

The trade ministry said it “will always act firmly against any company operating in Malaysia, including those involved in semiconductor and AI industries, that violates Malaysian and international trading regulations”.

Asked about the reports, Beijing insisted it required Chinese firms to operate according to local laws and regulations.

“At the same time, it opposes any act of coercing other countries to restrict their cooperation with China,” foreign ministry spokesman Guo Jiakun told a regular press briefing.

“China is willing to work with countries in the region, including Malaysia, to jointly maintain a free and open international trade order,” he added.

Singapore in March charged three men with fraud in cases reportedly linked to the transfer of AI-powering Nvidia chips to China.

The Singaporean government said servers potentially containing AI-powering Nvidia chips shipped from the United States to Singapore had ended up in Malaysia, but that their final destination was unknown.

Local media linked their cases to the alleged movement of Nvidia chips from Singapore for use by Chinese AI firm DeepSeek.

In January, DeepSeek released its R1 chatbot, shaking the global tech market and claiming its tool can match the capacity of top U.S. AI products for a fraction of their costs.

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Thai Prime Minister Paetongtarn Shinawatra apologized Thursday for a leaked phone call with former Cambodian leader Hun Sen that has provoked widespread anger and put her government on the brink of collapse.

Her main coalition partner has quit and calls are mounting for her to resign or announce an election, throwing the kingdom into a fresh round of political instability as it seeks to boost its spluttering economy and avoid U.S. President Donald Trump’s swinging trade tariffs.

The conservative Bhumjaithai party pulled out on Wednesday saying Paetongtarn’s conduct in the leaked call had wounded the country and the army’s dignity.

As pressure grew on Thursday Paetongtarn, the daughter of Thaksin Shinawatra—Thailand’s most influential but controversial modern politician—apologized at a press conference alongside military chiefs and senior figures from her Pheu Thai party.

“I would like to apologize for the leaked audio of my conversation with a Cambodian leader which has caused public resentment,” Paetongtarn told reporters.

In the call, Paetongtarn is heard discussing an ongoing border dispute with Hun Sen—who stepped down as Cambodian prime minister in 2023 after four decades but still wields considerable influence.

She addresses the veteran leader as “uncle” and refers to the Thai army commander in the country’s northeast as her opponent, a remark that sparked fierce criticism on social media.

The loss of Bhumjaithai’s 69 MPs left Paetongtarn with barely enough votes to scrape a majority in parliament, and a snap election looks a clear possibility—barely two years after the last one in May 2023.

Two other coalition parties, the United Thai Nation and Democrat Party, will hold meetings to discuss the situation later Thursday.

Paetongtarn will be hoping her apology and show of unity with the military are enough to persuade them to stay on board.

Losing either would likely mean the end of Paetongtarn’s government, and either an election or a bid by other parties to stitch together a new coalition.

Resignation calls

Thailand’s military said in a statement that army chief General Pana Claewplodtook “affirms commitment to democratic principles and national sovereignty protection”.

“The Chief of Army emphasized that the paramount imperative is for ‘Thai people to stand united’ in collectively defending national sovereignty,” it added.

Thailand’s armed forces have long played a powerful role in the kingdom’s politics, and politicians are usually careful not to antagonize them.

The kingdom has had a dozen coups since the end of absolute monarchy in 1932, and the current crisis has inevitably triggered rumors that another may be in the offing.

If Paetongtarn is ousted in a coup she would be the third member of her family, after her aunt Yingluck and father Thaksin Shinawatra, to be kicked out of office by the military.

The main opposition People’s Party, which won most seats in 2023 but was blocked by conservative senators from forming a government, urged Paetongtarn to call an election.

“What happened yesterday was a leadership crisis that destroyed people’s trust,” People’s Party leader Natthaphong Ruengpanyawut said in a statement.

The Palang Pracharath party, which led the government up to 2023 and is headed by General Prawit Wongsuwan—who supported a 2014 coup against Paetongtarn’s aunt Yingluck—said the leaked recording showed she was weak and inexperienced, incapable of managing the country’s security.

Hundreds of anti-government protesters, some of them veterans of the royalist, anti-Thaksin “Yellow Shirt” movement of the late 2000s, demonstrated outside Government House Thursday demanding Paetongtarn quit.

Awkward coalition

Paetongtarn, 38, came to power in August 2024 at the head of an uneasy coalition between Pheu Thai and a group of conservative, pro-military parties whose members have spent much of the last 20 years battling against her father.

Growing tensions within the coalition erupted into open warfare in the past week as Pheu Thai tried to take the interior minister job away from Bhumjaithai leader Anutin Charnvirakul.

The loss of Bhumjaithai leaves Pheu Thai’s coalition with just a handful more votes than the 248 needed for a majority.

The battle between the conservative pro-royal establishment and Thaksin’s political movement has dominated Thai politics for more than 20 years.

Former Manchester City owner Thaksin, 75, still enjoys huge support from the rural base whose lives he transformed with populist policies in the early 2000s.

But he is despised by Thailand’s powerful elites, who saw his rule as corrupt, authoritarian and socially destabilizing.

The current Pheu Thai-led government has already lost one prime minister, former businessman Srettha Thavisin, who was kicked out by a court order last year that brought Paetongtarn to office.

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A pioneering group of Indonesian nickel smelters with the world’s lowest production costs has been hit by a jump in the price of a key raw material, crimping their profitability just as the market is saddled with a glut.

The price of sulfur, a chemical used to produce acid, has more than tripled in price over the past year, driven by increased demand. That’s a headache for producers in Indonesia that use high-pressure acid leaching, known as HPAL. The breakthrough technique enables the smelters to extract metal from low-grade ore with chemicals, avoiding the need for blast furnaces.

Indonesia is home to the world’s largest nickel industry, with Chinese-led investment and a focus on cost-cutting innovation leading to a boom in production in recent years. The upsurge in supply of nickel metal—a commodity vital for auto batteries—has prompted a slump in prices, with benchmark refined futures in London hitting the lowest since 2020 earlier this year.

That slump has intensified competition among producers, posing a challenge for the industry, as well as for local governments, which have promoting mineral development as a way of boosting the Southeast Asia’s largest economy. Due to low emissions and costs, HPAL factories had been enjoying policy preferences, although the central government said this week it planned to punish producers at a key industrial park for alleged environment breaches.

“We may see a point later this year or early next year when HPAL factories see very thin margins,” said Luigi Fan, an analyst at SMM Information & Technology Co. Still, more HPAL producers are still likely to come online, partly because of strong prices for cobalt, a byproduct, according to Fan.

Existing producers include PT Trimegah Bangun Persada, known as Harita Nickel, and China’s Lygend Resources & Technology Co. on Obi Island. Projects due to start soon include Nickel Industries Ltd., which is backed by Chinese giant Tsingshan Holding Group Co., and a venture from PT Harum Energy in Weda Bay.

None of the companies approached for comment for this story opted to reply.

The expansion of HPAL operations pushed Indonesia to become a global major importer of sulfur, which is traditionally used to make fertilizer. Middle Eastern countries and Canada are among the main producers, with global oil majors such as Saudi Arabian Oil Co., or Aramco, recovering sulfur from natural gas and oil processing.

It takes about 12 tons of sulfur to make 1 ton of mixed-hydroxide precipitate, or MHP, a form of nickel aimed at automakers. Given the surge in sulfur costs, HPAL factories need to pay over $2,500 more than last year for each ton of MHP, pressuring margins in an industry that is still growing, said Fan. At present, the average cost of producing 1 ton of MHP stands at about $11,000.

Production is expected to go on rising in Indonesia. Output of MHP nickel is set to surge to 619,000 tons in 2026, up more than a third from this year, according to Angela Durrant, principal analyst of base metals at CRU Group. 

“Despite these cost pressures coming from the rise in sulfur prices since mid-2024, Indonesian HPAL assets will remain in the first quartile of the cost curve,” Durrant said, referring to a measure of how cheaply plants can produce. “We do not expect higher sulfur prices to slow the pace of capacity additions.”

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The Southeast Asia 500’s fastest growing company can thank the AI boom for its rapid rise. Generative AI has driven an investment surge into data centers, which provide the infrastructure for storing, processing and distributing data, key to running AI applications. 

Malaysia has garnered a significant share of this investment, attracting multi-billion deals from the likes of Google, Oracle and Microsoft over the past 18 months.

And some of that hype has boosted the fortunes of some of Malaysia’s companies, including NationGate, an electronics manufacturing services provider.

The company generated 5.27 billion Malaysian ringgit ($1.6 billion) in revenue last year, high enough to place it at No. 243 on the Southeast Asia 500. Even more staggeringly, the company grew its revenues by more than 720%, making it the fastest-growing company in terms of revenue on this year’s list. 

NationGate also earned $342 million in profits, a respectable 163% increase from the year before. 

The company’s data computing segment drove much of its revenue, contributing 88% this year compared to 17% in 2023. NationGate also works with the automotive and telecommunications sectors. 

More than half of Nationgate’s revenue comes from Malaysia; another third comes from Singapore. The two countries are arguably Southeast Asia’s data center hubs.

One of NationGate’s key businesses is assembling AI products. And it has a key advantage in this space, as Nvidia’s only original equipment manufacturing partner in Southeast Asia. That means NationGate is the only company in the region that assembles Nvidia’s highly-sought-after graphics processing units (GPUs) into AI servers. Nvidia’s GPUs are by far the most used in high-performance AI applications. 

NationGate sees “immense potential” in AI, and that its entry into AI server manufacturer will help it tap into “double digit” annual growth in data center investments in both Southeast Asia and globally.

But the AI boom brings risks too. 

Both Malaysia and Singapore have faced scrutiny due to allegations that both countries are channels for controlled U.S. chips to make their way to China. In particular, U.S. officials are reportedly examining whether DeepSeek, the Chinese AI startup, circumvented U.S. export control measures with the help of third parties in Singapore. 

In March, K Shanmugam, Singapore’s Law and Home Affairs Minister, said servers containing chips controlled under U.S. export controls appeared to have been sent to Malaysia. Following that allegation, Malaysia trade minister Tengku Zafrul Abdul Aziz said officials were investigating and vowed to take necessary action against local companies engaging in fraud. 

More broadly, countries in Southeast Asia were subject to possible U.S. rules that would cap the number of AI chips they could buy. (The Trump administration scrapped this proposal last month.)

Nationgate has distanced itself from the subject and has clarified that it was not involved in the investigations. But investors are still spooked. NationGate’s shares are down by some 40% this year.  

This story was originally featured on Fortune.com

© Courtesy of NationGate

The Department of Justice on Wednesday asked a court to let the agency seize $225 million from a so-called “pig butchering” operation—a term that describes scams where con men build up the trust of a victim over time, and then trick them into handing over large amounts of money. The funds, which the crooks held in USDT stablecoins, were laundered through the crypto exchange OKX, according to Justice Department. This is the U.S.’s largest ever seizure of funds tied to crypto confidence schemes, said the agency.

While prosecutors didn’t name one perpetrator in the complaint, they did say the funds were linked to a “scam compound” in the Philippines. These locales usually house scores of workers who labor in shifts to lure victims into parting ways with their crypto, like Bitcoin, or cash. Many of these workers are employed by transnational criminal rings and forced to work against their will, according to the United Nations.

The DOJ was able to identify more than 430 victims tied to the 144 OKX accounts through which victims’ funds were laundered. One of these victims was Shan Hanes, the former CEO of Heartland Tri-State Bank in Kansas. In August 2024, Hanes was sentenced to 24 years in prison for stealing $47 million of his bank’s funds to invest in what he thought was a cryptocurrency investment opportunity that turned out to be a scam.

“These schemes harm American victims, costing them billions of dollars every year,” Matthew Galeotti, head of the DOJ’s criminal division, said in a statement.

Losses from cryptocurrency scams have accelerated in the U.S. over the past five years, according to the most recent annual report on internet crime from the Federal Bureau of Investigation. From 2023 to 2024, the money Americans lost skyrocketed 66% to $9.3 billion and the number of complaints the agency received more than doubled to nearly 150,000, said the government agency.

The most common crime linked to cryptocurrencies was extortion, or when bad actors manipulate photos or videos to create explicit content and lure victims into sending crypto. The second most common type was investment fraud, or when criminals promise victims outsized returns if they send them money. 

This latter category includes Hanes, the former bank CEO. “He was the pig that was butchered,” wrote his lawyer at the time of his sentencing. “Mr. Hanes’s vulnerability to the Pig Butcher scheme caused him to make some very bad decisions, for which he is truly sorry for causing damage to the bank and loss to the Stockholders.”

This story was originally featured on Fortune.com

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• Stocks finished the day flat, after a strong morning and a topsy-turvy afternoon. The day’s news was dominated by the Federal Reserve. Its interest rate decision was largely a formality, instead, its economic projections took center as investors looked for clues about how to navigate the rampant uncertainty.

All eyes were on the Federal Reserve on Wednesday. 

Interest rates were largely a settled matter. Instead, investors turned their attention to the Fed’s economic forecasts for the year. 

The so-called dot plot, which is released once a quarter, summarizes Fed officials’ projections for interest rates, inflation, and growth, among other things. The Fed kept its median projection of two quarter-point rate cuts for 2025. 

Investors were sure the Fed would hold steady on interest rates, meaning it would have little effect on equity prices. However, the dot plot did move markets. 

All three major indices dropped sharply at 2p.m. when the Fed released its outlook, after having risen in the session’s morning hours. The rest of the afternoon was choppy among all three indices. Stock charts were all sharp peaks and valleys.  

Ultimately they settled roughly where they started the day.

The S&P 500 closed down 0.03% and the Dow Jones dropped 0.1%. The Nasdaq was the only one of the three that was in positive territory for the day, ending at 0.13%. The S&P 500 and the Nasdaq remain positive year-to-date, up 1.9% and 1.4% respectively.

That latest dot plot carried preludes to stagflation—among the most catastrophic economic scenarios. Investors had hoped the worst of the year’s market turmoil was behind them. After a brutal April that saw stocks, bonds, and the U.S. dollar all fall in the wake of President Donald Trump’s tariff policy, markets largely recovered. 

But the latest Fed projections raised fears that may not be the case. Projections for inflation and unemployment grew, while those for growth sank. Anything that carries even the suggestion of stagflation can put markets on high alert. The dot plot saw core inflation expectations increase to a peak of 3.1% compared to 2.8% in March, and the projected unemployment rate ticked up to 4.5% from 4.4%.  

But any forecast and plan was liable to change, Federal Reserve chair Jerome Powell said during a press conference on Wednesday. 

“These individual forecasts are always subject to uncertainty, and as I’ve noted, uncertainty is unusually elevated,” Powell said. “And, of course, these projections are not a committee plan or decision.”

As markets grapple with domestic uncertainty; they were greeted with another war in the Middle East. The expanding conflict between Israel and Iran has now added a significant new wrinkle that investors will have to consider in their decisions. Whenever the Middle East is in question, oil markets often take center stage. Both countries have bombed each other’s oil refineries in the early days of the war.

On Wednesday, oil futures dropped 3% in 25 minutes in the morning, before recovering throughout the rest of the day. They then recovered about 2.3%, back to positive territory, before dropping in the late hours of the afternoon. At the time of publication they were down 0.1%.

As oil prices go, so does the greenback. At least, most of the time. The U.S. dollar index (DXY) rose 0.16% on the day. That trajectory continued two days of positive moves for the index, which had fallen to below 98 on Monday.

This story was originally featured on Fortune.com

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Sometimes it feels like the world is on fire—even, if not especially, at work, according to a new report which found that a toxic “triple threat” of pessimism, uncertainty, and disconnect in the workplace is reaching critical levels. 

That, in turn, is endangering employee well-being and undermining productivity, according to the just-released 2025 State of the Workforce Report from “workplace resilience system” meQuilibrium. 

“Pessimism in the workforce represents a greater threat than just complaining about one’s job around the water cooler—it directly undermines workplace productivity and mental health,” said meQ chief science officer Brad Smith in a news release. “We found that employees with work-related pessimism experience an over 60% reduction in productivity and 128% greater risk of depression.”

The report analyzes findings from 5,477 employees across various industries in order to provide actionable insights for building empathetic leadership, developing individual resilience skills, and leveraging “organizational citizenship behaviors to protect both well-being and business outcomes in this challenging landscape.”

The problem with pessimism, uncertainty, and disconnect

According to the findings, 67% of employees say they feel worse when thinking about the state of the country, 35% feel worse about their work situation, and 49% feel worse about their finances—with a majority, 52%, expecting the state of our country to worsen. Meanwhile, 27% expect their finances to get worse, while 24% expect their work situation to decline. 

Add uncertainty to the mix, and it more than triples the rate at which employees have a pessimistic view of work. 

“The rise in uncertainty-related stress impacts more than feelings—it’s costing companies: individuals who report a high degree of uncertainty-related stress also exhibit much greater productivity impairment, indicating that uncertainty may be reducing output by as much as half,” said Smith. “Additionally, nearly one in three employees who experienced a high degree of uncertainty-related stress show a high degree of burnout.”

Burnout, in turn, is part of the third problematic element—disconnect—which drains employees’ mental and emotional energy. Also a part of that is a sense of broken trust when companies or leaders fail to meet expectations, which leads to weakened working relationships. More than half of employees (55%) showed at least one symptom of disconnect—particularly younger employees (18-29), 62% of which say they are affected by disconnect. The most severely affected reported a 66% impairment in productivity.

“Uncertainty-related stress isn’t going away-it’s the new normal in the workplace,” said Dr. Smith. “What’s alarming is how it’s eroding employee confidence and dragging down performance and engagement without many even noticing.”

Gen Z is the most pessimistic

In addition to being more disconnected, Gen Z appears to be most pessimistic, despite pessimism remaining consistent across most demographic groups. The current state of pessimism for that group is significantly higher than for others across all measured categories:

• 71% of Gen Zers expressed negative views about the country’s state compared to 59% of older employees. 
• 62% of Gen Z reported dissatisfaction with their financial situation, vs. 37% of older employees.
• 48% of Gen Z—vs. 22% of older workers—was pessimistic about their work situation.

Interestingly, when it comes to what’s still to come, Gen Z has hope, demonstrating consistently lower levels of pessimism about what the future holds. 

How companies can turn this negativity around

The report calls out two “critical protective factors” that can fight back against the triple threat:

• Empathetic Management: Managers who prioritize well-being for their team create top-down positive effects—reducing the stress of uncertainty by 37% and disconnect rates from 78% to 40%, the analysis found. 
• Individual Resilience: Among the most resilient employees—particularly those with the learnable skills of emotion control and realistic optimism—only 6% show signs of extreme disconnect compared to 59% of the least resilient. 

Bottom line: to reverse the pessimism-uncertainty-disconnect threat, leaders should prioritize developing empathetic leadership at all levels, provide support for resiliency, and encourage peer support to strengthen company cultures. 

More on workplace wellness:

• Deloitte is now offering employees a unique wellness benefit: subsidized Legos
• 90% of C-suite executives believe their company promotes worker well-being. Why do only 60% of workers agree?
• Want to boost employee morale and productivity? Ramp up volunteering

This story was originally featured on Fortune.com

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There are many aspects to maintaining a healthy, happy relationship, but how your relationship impacts your emotional well-being is important too. Research has indicated that personal relationships are largely where people derive their sense of meaning in life—defined by researchers as how people “comprehend, make sense of, or see significance in their lives.” But it hasn’t been clear what it is about relationships that helps people find meaning.

A recent study gets us closer to an answer: Research from McGill University, published in the Journal of Personality and Social Psychology, shows that couples who hold a shared worldview (being on the same page about their understanding of the world) experienced less uncertainty and found more meaning in their lives.

Researchers conducted five studies of nearly 1,300 adults in the U.S. and Canada, pooling  data from lab-based tasks, online surveys, and experiments. They were testing the hypothesis that experiencing a sense of shared reality with a close partner reduces uncertainty about one’s environment, which in turn boosts meaning in work and life. For instance, they found that front-line healthcare workers during the COVID-19 pandemic and Black Americans during the Black Lives Matter demonstrations reported feeling less uncertainty and more meaning when their partner’s understanding of the world matched their own.

“Our approach was different from earlier work on how relationships promote meaning, which tended to focus on aspects like belonging or support,” said lead author and psychologist M. Catalina Enestrom in a press release. “We set out to explore whether sharing thoughts, ideas and concerns about the world with a romantic partner could enhance meaning by reducing uncertainty about one’s environment.”

What building a shared reality with your partner looks like

Having that shared perception of reality with your partner, according to the study, helps make your reality seem true while validating your perspective. Over time, the more experiences you share with your partner, the closer you can become to sharing a worldview.

“As couples accumulate shared experiences, shared feelings, goals, and memories, they develop a generalized shared reality,” senior author John Lydon, psychology professor at McGill University, said in the press release. “This is different from simply feeling close or supported. It’s not just ‘my partner gets me,’ it’s ‘we get it.’”

Enestrom pointed out that shared reality can emerge from both aligned experiences and interpretations.

“Shared reality can form, for instance, when a couple watches a horror movie together and one or both partners perceive that they both find it scary,” she said. “But shared reality doesn’t necessarily require shared experiences. One partner can describe a stressful event they experienced, and if the other partner sees it the same way, this too can foster shared reality.”

The more shared reality experiences you accumulate together, the more likely you are to build a shared understanding of the world in general, she explained. As couples become closer through a shared reality, researchers also observed a greater sense of meaning in life, where individuals have a strong feeling of purpose, which research indicates can lead to better coping, greater happiness, and improved health outcomes.

For more on relationships:

• 5 things most Americans say are true about love and successful relationships
• Marriage has a surprising link to dementia risk, new study finds
• Couples most likely to divorce share a common economic trait, research shows

This story was originally featured on Fortune.com

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• Should failed tariff negotiations lead to a trade war, the global economy is likely headed toward a recession, “The Big Short” investor Steve Eisman told CNBC this week. Eisman said the tariffs were the “only real risk” to the markets and warned the U.S. should be especially concerned with negotiating with the European Union ahead of the approaching July 9 trade-deal deadline.

Global markets will enter dire economic straits if President Donald Trump’s ongoing tariff stance leads to an all-out trade war, warns billionaire investor Steve Eisman.

The former managing director of Neuberger Berman—who successfully anticipated and profited from the 2008 stock market crash, and whose profile served as the basis for Michael Lewis’ book (and later, the 2015 film) “The Big Short”—said in a CNBC interview on Tuesday the U.S. economy and markets will flourish if the Trump administration is able to facilitate truces with the various nations on which he has imposed tariffs. But if that doesn’t happen, “chances are, we go into a global recession.”

“The tariffs and the potential for a trade war, I think, is really the only risk to the market right now,” Eisman said. “It’s completely binary, and I really have no way of handicapping it.” 

Trump’s whipsaw tariff decisions have rattled both consumers—who have sharply cut back on spending as a result of the levies—and investors, who, like Eisman, see tariffs as a threat to the global economy. A Bank of America Global Fund Manager Survey published this week found 47% of the 222 fund managers surveyed said they believed a global recession as a result of a trade war was the biggest “tail risk” to markets.

Trade deals, such as with the UK and a tentative truce with China, have tempered these concerns. JPMorgan Research lowered its probability of U.S. and global recessions from 60% to 40% at the end of May, citing decreased trade tensions as a result of Trump slashing Chinese tariffs. The U.S., however, has yet to resolve its trade issues with the European Union ahead of a crucial July 9 deadline.

Eisman drew similarities between the rocky trade environment and lead-up to World War I, likely referring to a series of treaties forged in the decades before the war designed to settle regional skirmishes that, in reality, created two massive, and eventually opposing, alliances.

“Nobody wanted World War I, and yet, because of all the reciprocal treaties that existed between countries, they somehow ended up there,” he said. “I don’t think anybody wants a trade war, but it’s certainly possible.”

Not just China

Though trade talks with China have taken center stage, Eisman argued the process of solidifying trade relations with Europe is “more interesting,” given the EU’s concerns with regulations, as well as value-added tax (VAT). With 27 member states, the EU has to balance myriad agendas, complicating a potential trade deal.

“Negotiating with Europe is like trying to herd cats given the way they’re structured,” Eisman said.

Trump has claimed the EU was created to “screw” the U.S., threatening to impose, then later pausing, a 50% tariff on the union. As part of negotiations, the administration has tried to pressure the EU to loosen tech regulations he claims are inhibiting growth of U.S. companies. Trump also opposes VAT, essentially a sales tax that accumulates through each stage in a product’s supply chain. The president has interpreted VAT as another trade barrier, arguing the tax puts undue financial pressure on U.S. businesses trying to export to Europe. 

Trump has signalled that the U.S. is not yet satisfied with provisions of the agreement, telling reporters on Tuesday, “We’re talking, but I don’t feel that they’re offering a fair deal yet.”

Trump’s former commerce secretary Wilbur Ross warned that after successful negotiations with China and the UK, the Trump administration may become overconfident in negotiations with the EU, pushing away European allies.

“One fear is that if our government feels too chesty with their progress, they may overplay the hand and get to levels that are hard—maybe even impossible—for the other countries to give in,” Ross told Fortune last week.

“This is going to be hard, but our country’s goal should be to help make European nations stronger and keep them close,” he added.

This story was originally featured on Fortune.com

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Investors were treated to another predictable Fed meeting. Interest rates remained the same, which had been all but a certainty in the lead-up to Wednesday’s decision. The Federal Reserve maintained its position that the economy was stable, even as uncertainty among participants was rising.

Investors and business leaders might feel as though the economy is teetering on a knife’s edge, but the data, Fed chair Jerome Powell reassured them, pointed to a solid picture—though one that was cloudier than before. Whether or not they are storm clouds is the critical question at hand. 

“Uncertainty about the economic outlook has diminished but remains elevated,” according to a Fed statement released after the meeting.

With the question of rate cuts largely a foregone conclusion, investors instead turned their attention to the Fed’s Summary of Economic Predictions, which is commonly referred to as the “dot plot.” The hope is that Fed officials’ quarterly forecast about the U.S. economy, which includes expectations for interest rates, inflation, and growth, will offer some hints about their views for the economy. With the Fed usually circumspect about its outlook, investors often hope to divine some greater understanding about the fate of the U.S. economy. 

The median rate projection was for two quarter-point rate cuts in 2025. 

The previous dot plot, released in March, had the same median projection. One of the major updates from that version was the expectation of lower GDP growth and higher inflation over the course of 2025. At the time, it was a significant development because it meant Fed officials weren’t just considering the possibility of those two unwelcome changes, but also began to see them as the likely outcome of the economy’s current path. 

That said, it’s worth remembering the dot plot is not a commitment to a certain amount of rate cuts; rather, it is a collection of forecasts made by top Fed officials at a given moment in time. Importantly, it also doesn’t communicate how certain each official is in their forecast. 

It is nonetheless an important measure of where the central bank sees monetary policy heading. And with only six months left in the year, the timing left for the rate cuts it foresees (but not guarantees) is only getting tighter. For now, the consensus seems to be that there will be either one or two rate cuts. 

For President Donald Trump, any interest-rate cuts can’t come soon enough. His criticisms of Powell have practically become a customary part of FOMC meetings. In the president’s view, interest rates should come down because inflation has not increased. And while that is true, the Fed is still hesitant to cut interest rates because it isn’t sure yet whether inflation will spike again as a result of Trump’s tariffs.  

So far, the Trump administration has made some progress on the trade agreements it promised—something investors believed would calm the markets. The U.S. says it has signed a preliminary agreement with the UK and established a framework of a deal with China after two meetings. While a welcome early sign the U.S. might return to its previous role in the global economy, the two deals are well short of the dozens promised by the White House. As a result, uncertainty still lingers. 

At the same time, the geopolitical conflicts also risk disrupting the market—namely, the military actions between Israel and Iran. The widening conflict in the Middle East only exacerbates tensions in an already volatile part of the world. Shipping through the Red Sea, oil markets, and U.S. military involvement all now remain open questions. Their potential answers are both varied and significant—unwelcome news for those clamoring for clarity.  

This story was originally featured on Fortune.com

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To help figure out how AI will make its workers more productive, cybersecurity provider Palo Alto Networks polled every one of its departments for its best ideas.

But when choosing which suggestions to pursue, Palo Alto wanted to invest only in those that provided the biggest financial bang for the buck. “We went after four use cases,” says Meerah Rajavel, Palo Alto Networks’ chief information officer.

Those four included an AI agent called Panda AI that gives automated responses to employees who submit questions related to the IT, HR, and finance departments. There’s also an AI code generation tool for engineers, AI tools for customer support specialists, and another AI tool for customers needing help resolving problems they’re having with Palo Alto’s products.

Rajavel’s approach to AI led to some changed expectations within the company as the technology evolved over the past few years. For example, soon after OpenAI’s AI chatbot ChatGPT debuted in 2022, Rajavel heard from her boss, CEO Nikesh Arora, who said he wanted up to 90% of the 480,000 employee requests submitted annually to be resolved using generative AI. Those worker inquiries span questions about health benefits, changing login passwords, and approval to buy new software from an outside vendor.

But Palo Alto did some research and determined that AI could only solve 18% of those issues by summarizing information, the task that large language models are best at. “This is about someone asking for an action that needs to be done,” says Rajavel, referring to what most employees are seeking with their questions. “It has to complete the task. It cannot just guide the task.”

That led Palo Alto to create Panda, which now fields many employee requests. Today, close to 60% of Palo Alto’s employee-generated tickets are autonomously handled by Panda, and Rajavel says over time, this figure could rise to as high as 80%. Thanks to the help AI provides, the company has ditched a phone line, a dedicated Slack channel, and online portal that employees previously used to submit requests.

Now, all employees are first routed to the AI agent. In cases in which an issue can’t be solved by AI, a ticket is sent to a human agent to tackle.

So where does the cost savings come in? Human agents from outside companies handled many of those ticket requests, and with generative AI, Palo Alto can now spend less on those services. Meanwhile, Palo Alto has reskilled some of its internal support agents to focus more on ensuring that LLMs are trained on the correct data and to validate the accuracy of what the AI spits out.

Another big AI use case for Palo Alto is writing software code. The company’s 6,000 engineers are using AI for code generation today, but Rajavel says that her concerns about protecting Palo Alto’s intellectual property mean she hasn’t authorized popular coding tools like GitHub and Cursor. “We are not going to allow anybody to use a third party,” says Rajavel. Instead, Palo Alto trains its own Claude models, hosted on Google Cloud’s Vertex AI platform, to write code.

In addition to focusing on generative AI, Rajavel says she dedicates 20% of her time talking with customer CIOs, chief information security officers, and other C-suite executives. One Palo Alto offering that frequently comes up in those conversations is its AI Access Security tools, which organizations can use to identify which generative AI apps are being used on their network. 

Rajavel should know what CIOs want to discuss with vendors. Rajavel has held the CIO title four times during her career, most recently at Palo Alto and previously, at three other technology companies: Citrix, Forcepoint, and Qlik.

Yet another area of focus of hers is integrating Palo Alto’s many acquisitions. Since joining in April 2022, the company has spent $500 million to buy IBM’s QRadar software-as-a-service assets; a reported $625 million on Talon Cyber Security, a builder of a secure enterprise browser for remote workers; and a reported $400 million for data security platform Dig Security, which discovers, classifies, and then protects sensitive data.

With the QRadar deal, Palo Alto was able to move customers to its operations platform, Cortex XSIAM. Meanwhile, Talon and Dig’s services were quickly integrated into the company’s existing ecosystem. Rajavel says acquired technologies are merged within 90 days of a deal closing.

When Palo Alto scoops up smaller companies, Rajavel says one danger is that their tools aren’t ready to be used by hundreds of thousands of customers. As a precaution, Palo Alto tries out their tools internally, as a test, before making them more available to customers.

“The very first person who is going to implement the technology is us,” says Rajavel.

John Kell

Send thoughts or suggestions to CIO Intelligence here.

This story was originally featured on Fortune.com

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JPMorgan Chase, the largest bank in the U.S., is doubling down on its bet on the crypto space by launching its own eponymous token, further blurring the lines between commercial banking and the crypto industry. 

The bank announced on Tuesday that it would be piloting the new digital currency called JPMD in the coming days, in partnership with crypto exchange Coinbase. Rather than a stablecoin, like some were expecting, JPMD will be a deposit token—a digital representation of a bank deposit that is managed with blockchain technology. The company filed a trademark for “JPMD” over the weekend. 

“This pilot combines the credibility of both JPMorgan and Base to help bring institutional money into a more global economy,” Jesse Pollack, VP of engineering at Coinbase, said in a statement. 

The token will be used to settle transfers around the clock and make cross-border business-to-business payments on Base, Naveen Mallela, global co-head of JPMorgan Chase’s blockchain division Kinexys, told Fortune. “We have always believed in having a token-based solution on public blockchains,” he said. 

The bank plans to issue JPMD on Base, a public Ethereum-based blockchain managed by Coinbase. It will be exclusively available to JPMorgan’s institutional clients, which include corporations and pension funds, according to Mallela. However, JPMorgan plans to expand the use of its JPMD token to more institutional clients over the next few months.

Deposit tokens vs. stablecoins

JPMorgan’s decision to create a deposit token instead of a stablecoin is a noteworthy break in an otherwise new corporate trend, and allows the bank to stand out in a crowded field. 

Several major companies including Meta and Google have recently expressed interest in incorporating stablecoins into their payment structures, likely because the cryptocurrency—which is backed 1:1 to the U.S. Dollar—is considered more stable than other forms of crypto like Bitcoin. 

JPMorgan chose to launch a deposit token, rather than a stablecoin, because of its different use cases, Mallela said. Stablecoins, like Tether’s USDT and Circle’s USDC, are primarily used by retail clients for crypto trading, remittances, and as a store of value, and are managed by crypto companies, he says. Deposit tokens, on the other hand, are more suitable for institutional clients because they are issued by a licensed bank, making them better integrated into existing institutional financial systems. 

“Institutional clients can treat JPMD as bank deposits on their balance sheet, providing certainty around financial and accounting treatment,” Mallela said. 

Each JPMD deposit token traded on Base will represent a deposit claim against JPMorgan. Rather than being backed 1:1 by the U.S. dollar like a stablecoin, JPMD will be backed by “the same liquidity frameworks as traditional banks,” Mallela said. 

This story was originally featured on Fortune.com

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• Oracle cofounder Larry Ellison is now the second-richest person in the world, after his cloud-computing business’s stocks soared last week. The chairman’s net worth surged by more than $40 billion, outpacing the wealth of Jeff Bezos and Mark Zuckerberg and reaching a high of $250.9 billion. But he’ll have a hard time topping the riches of his close friend Elon Musk, who sits on a cool $405.8 billion fortune.

No one was in a better mood last week than Larry Ellison—the Oracle cofounder shot up Forbes’ billionaire rankings list, reaching the number two spot, right below his close friend Elon Musk.

Ellison’s net worth now stands tall at $250.9 billion after Oracle’s recent earnings report triggered its shares to skyrocket. 

With approximately 41% of Oracle’s shares in his name, the cloud-computing mogul saw his net worth climb by over $40 billion in a matter of days. On Thursday last week, his fortune grew by $25 billion, and increased by another $16 billion on Friday: easily two of the largest daily swells in billionaire net worth that week, according to Forbes. 

Now Ellison has overtaken Amazon’s founder, Jeff Bezos, who is currently worth $229 billion, and Mark Zuckerberg, who has a $240 billion net worth, in the billionaires club.

The one person he hasn’t topped yet is Elon Musk—Ellison’s close friend, who is still the world’s richest man with $405 billion in riches. There’s nearly a $155 billion difference between their respective net worths, so Ellison has his work cut out for him if he ever hopes to reach number one. 

The Oracle stock frenzy that propelled Ellison to a $250 billion fortune

Last Wednesday, the afternoon earnings were dubbed a “watershed” moment for the cloud-computing company. It was also a big moment for Ellison’s wallet. 

The report shows Oracle’s total revenue for the 2025 fiscal year rose by 8%, reaching a whopping $57.4 billion. The $1.70 adjusted earnings per share outperformed Wall Street’s expectations, alongside its unprecedented $15.9 billion in sales. One day after these figures were released, Oracle’s stock soared by 13%—and by midafternoon Friday, it rose another 7% to a record of $215 per share. 

Ellison, the chairman and CTO of Oracle, subsequently enjoyed an 11-figure surge in net worth. Last Tuesday afternoon, the day before the cloud-computing titan released its earnings report, Ellison’s net worth stood at $213 billion. 

While the 80-year-old entrepreneur may feel on top of the world right now, there’s no telling where he’ll be in 2026. Billionaires’ wealth fluctuates all the time—Bernard Arnault, founder and CEO of luxury fashion house LVMH, was the world’s richest person at the start of 2024 with $231 billion. Today, he’s in seventh place with a net worth of $142 billion, thanks to tumbling stocks.

However, TD Cowen analyst Derrick Wood said Oracle’s 2026 fiscal year, starting this month, will be a “major inflection point” for the business’ cloud infrastructure services, propelled by “massive demand for AI training workloads.” And Ellison himself sees the promise of what lies ahead. 

“Oracle’s future is bright in this new era of cloud computing. Oracle will be the number one cloud database company,” Ellison said in the business’ earnings call last Friday. “Oracle is already prospering in this new era of cloud computing and AI, and it’s just the beginning.”

Topping Zuckerberg and Bezos, but falling short of Musk—for now

Ellison sees the next year as a new frontier for Oracle, which could mean another big payout for the executive. But even if he takes the number one spot for the world’s richest person, Musk probably won’t have hard feelings—after all, they’re good friends. 

“I am not sure how many people know, but I’m very close friends with Elon Musk, and I’m a big investor in Tesla,” Ellison said during a 2018 conference call with analysts.

Ellison and Musk are two peas in a pod—both are wildly successful tech entrepreneurs with big personalities. The Oracle cofounder has repeatedly defended Musk, arguing against public backlash that he “doesn’t know what he’s doing,” saying he “loved” articles about the Tesla founder “smoking dope.”  

In 2018, Musk even appointed Ellison to his Tesla board, drawing scrutiny from critics who argued it’s harder to maintain objectivity with friends on corporate boards. 

This story was originally featured on Fortune.com

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• Billionaire LinkedIn cofounder Reid Hoffman admits Gen Z college graduates are joining the workforce at a rough time, thanks to a predicted entry-level job “bloodbath.” But instead of succumbing to the AI overlords, he encourages young people to move beyond vibe coding and prompt engineering—and instead prioritize human skills like intention. Those who do, he says, “will emerge as winners in an AI-mediated world.”

For Gen Z college graduates this year, walking across the stage comes with more than just a diploma—it’s bringing a sense of dread about the future.

AI is completely disrupting the college-to-career pipeline, so much so that Anthropic CEO Dario Amodei is predicting half of all entry-level white-collar jobs could disappear—and federal data backs up a decline in the recent college graduate job market. 

The problem is so existential that it’s leaving the most inspirational minds at a loss; as LinkedIn cofounder Reid Hoffman put it recently, “even the most inspirational advice lands like a Band-Aid on a bullet wound.”

However, despite a predicted AI white-collar “bloodbath,” not all is lost, and young people in particular have one advantage over their senior leaders: They know a thing or two about adapting to technology. After all, one in three college students already admits to using ChatGPT. 

“I urge you not to think in terms of AI-proofing your career,” Hoffman encouraged Gen Z graduates in an op-ed for the San Francisco Standard. “Instead, AI-optimize it. Take advantage. AI is a tool you can master.”

Finding success in an AI future will require more than just learning to prompt-engineer or vibe-code. It means understanding how technology is revolutionizing workflows and business models: “The more you understand what employers are hiring for, and the reasons why, the more you’ll understand how you can get ahead in this new world,” Hoffman wrote.

Fortune reached out to Hoffman for comment.

How to become a winner in an AI-powered world

With AI models improving by the day, it’s becoming more important than ever to identify which skills will matter most in the future.

Four skills in particular will soon be the most valuable to master, Hoffman said—ones that AI cannot replicate: 

• Emotional intelligence
• Ethical discernment
• Creative expression
• Intention 

“People with the capacity to form intentions and set goals will emerge as winners in an AI-mediated world,” he said, while adding that those who take advantage of AI will come out on top.

“While evidence suggests it’s getting harder to find a first job, it has never been easier to create a first opportunity,” he added. “Since billions of people have access to the same tools and platforms and information you do, the competition will be intense. But it always has been for the best jobs.”

And while recent grads may feel like climbing the career ladder is impossible without entry-level experience, Hoffman encouraged Gen Z to get entrepreneurial and use AI as a tool to create their own opportunities.

“Try lots of things,” he concluded. “Instead of making five-year plans, consider six-month experiments. With the right tools, you can now do what used to require teams: create content and brands, generate and test marketing campaigns, write code, and design products.”

The growing importance of connections in an AI world

While it may be tempting to view AI chatbots as newfound friends, Hoffman warned against ignoring the power of in-person networks in an AI future. In fact, he called building friendship in business one of “humanity’s greatest superpowers.”

“Friendship is one of humanity’s oldest technologies. Long before we had corporations, capital markets, or even written language, we had alliances rooted in trust,” Hoffman wrote on X.

As the cofounder of LinkedIn, the platform that has arguably brought networking into the 21st century, it may come as no surprise that Hoffman believes reconnecting with humans is what will keep you grounded. But it’s especially true, he said, in an era of abundant efficiency and diminishing empathy.

“These human networks of trust don’t scale like AI, which means your network is more valuable than ever.”

This story was originally featured on Fortune.com

© David Paul Morris/Bloomberg via Getty Images

Donald Trump’s family business is putting the president’s name behind something that few have dared to produce in years: a made-in-America smartphone.

The Trump Organization, led by the president’s eldest sons, said on Monday that it has licensed Donald Trump’s name to a new wireless service and a gold-colored phone. The T1, as the device is called, is supposed to be available in August for $499, and is “proudly designed and built in the United States,” the company said in a statement.

But the patriotic pitch drew immediate skepticism, and not just over President Trump trying to cash in again while in office. Several tech industry insiders questioned whether selling a made-in-America phone is even possible within just a few months, considering most electronics manufacturing is done overseas because of expensive domestic labor, a shortage of skilled workers, and a lack of suppliers.

“As someone who’s spent over a decade building a secure, privacy-first smartphone, focusing on manufacturing in the U.S., and I can say this with confidence: Producing a fully U.S.-made phone isn’t something you spin up overnight,” said Todd Weaver, CEO of Purism, the only company currently producing a U.S.-made smartphone. “If the Trump phone is promising a $499 price tag with domestic manufacturing, this announcement looks to be classic vaporware.”

Purism’s U.S.-made phone, the Liberty Phone, costs $650 to produce, according to Weaver, and retails for $2,000. The markup covers some of the additional administrative costs for security-conscious customers who want to verify the phone’s supply chain, along with Purism’s profit.

The T1, in contrast, would retail for just a fraction of that price, raising questions about how such a U.S.-made device would be profitable.

The Trump Organization didn’t disclose which company will make the T1, or where it will be produced. It only gave some technical specifications, including that it will run on Google’s Android operating system, come with a fingerprint sensor and facial recognition for unlocking, and have a 6.8-inch screen.

The product page for the phone is also riddled with errors and omissions. It described the device as having a “5000mAh long life camera” (it should say “battery,” an error that was subsequently fixed) and “12GB Ram storage” (RAM is generally referred to as memory, since any data stored in RAM is erased when the device is switched off), while neglecting to disclose an all-important piece of information: the kind of chips that will go into it.

Wayne Lam, an analyst with TechInsights, said available information about the phone “doesn’t suggest it is a competitive phone design” compared with higher-end devices like Apple’s iPhone. He called the specs for the T1 “underwhelming.”

Manufacturing phones in the U.S., at least by major companies, is widely considered to be a lost cause. These days, their devices and components are almost entirely produced in Asia. Executives say U.S. manufacturing is too expensive in comparison, and that there aren’t enough suppliers and skilled workers to get the job done.

Even if a company wanted to try its luck, setting up manufacturing of a U.S.-made phone could take years—not just a few months. A business would need time to line up suppliers, recruit workers, and set up a production facility.

Donald Trump’s son Eric may have hinted at how the T1 will get around the problem. In an interview with podcaster Benny Johnson, on The Benny Show, he indicated that, initially, the phone may be made overseas. “Eventually all the phones will be built in the United States of America,” Eric said. “We need to bring manufacturing back.”

Of course, President Trump has made reshoring U.S. manufacturing a priority with his “Liberation Day” tariffs in April and attacks on Apple for manufacturing its iPhones in Asia. Any imported T1 phones, or components, would, theoretically, be subject to his import levies.

In addition to the phone, Trump will also give his name to a wireless service, called Trump Mobile, that will cost $47.45 monthly and come with up to 20 GB of data. The price is a not-so-subtle reference to his two terms as president.

The Trump Organization did not say who it’s partnering with on the wireless service or device, but tucked away in the website’s terms of use is a reference to the service being powered by Liberty Mobile Wireless, itself a “virtual” carrier that uses other companies’ networks. Wireless coverage will come from the nation’s three biggest wireless providers, the Trump Organization said.

Ross Rubin, an analyst with Reticle Research, said Trump Mobile’s wireless service is more expensive than comparable carrier plans, like T-Mobile’s Metro and Verizon’s Total, along with discount provider Boost Mobile. Plus, he said, some of those carriers will give new customers a free phone when they sign up.

Weaver, of Purism, brought up one complication when it comes to the Trump Organization claiming a product is made in the USA. The Federal Trade Commission has strict rules that spell out when companies can and can’t market a product as being homegrown. “Unless the Trump family secretly built out a secure, onshore or nearshore fab operation over years of work without anyone noticing, it’s simply not possible to deliver what they’re promising,” Weaver said.

This story was originally featured on Fortune.com

© Chip Somodevilla—Getty Images

It’s becoming a familiar pattern: every few months, an AI lab in China that most people in the U.S. have never heard of releases an AI model that upends conventional wisdom about the cost of training and running cutting edge AI.

In January, it was DeepSeek’s R1 that took the world by storm. Then in March, it was a startup called Butterfly Effect—technically based in Singapore but with most of its team in China—and its “agentic AI” model Manus that briefly captured the spotlight. This week, it’s a Shanghai-based upstart called MiniMax, best known previously for releasing AI-generated video games, that is the talk of the AI industry thanks to the M1 model it debuted on June 16.

According to data MiniMax published, its M1 is competitive with top models from OpenAI, Anthropic, and DeepSeek when it comes to both intelligence and creativity, but is dirt cheap to train and run. 

The company says it spent just $534,700 renting the data center computing resources needed to train M1. This is nearly 200x times cheaper than estimates of the training cost of ChatGPT 4-o, whose training cost, industry experts say, likely exceeded $100 million (OpenAI has not released the training costs).

If accurate—and MiniMax’s claims have yet to be independently verified—this figure will likely cause some agita among blue chip investors who’ve sunk hundreds of billions into private LLM makers like OpenAI and Anthropic, as well as Microsoft and Google shareholders. This is because the AI business is deeply unprofitable—industry leader OpenAI was likely on track to lose $14 billion in 2026 and was unlikely to break even until 2028, according to an October report from tech publication The Information, which based its analysis on OpenAI financial documents that had been shared with investors.

If customers can get the same performance as OpenAI’s models by using MiniMax’s open-source AI models, it will likely dent demand for OpenAI’s products. OpenAI has already been aggressively lowering the pricing of its most capable models to retain market share. It recently slashed the cost of using its o3 reasoning model by 80%. And that was before MiniMax’s M1 release.

MiniMax’s reported results also mean that businesses may not need to spend as much on computing costs to run these models, potentially denting profits for cloud providers such as Amazon’s AWS, Microsoft’s Azure, and Google’s Google Cloud Platform. And it may mean less demand for Nvidia’s chips, which are the workhorses of AI data centers.

The impact of MiniMax’s M1 may ultimately be similar to what happened when Hangzhou-based DeepSeek released its R1 LLM model earlier this year. DeepSeek claimed that R1 functioned on par with ChatGPT at a fraction of the training cost. DeepSeek’s statement sunk Nvidia’s stock by 17% in a single day—erasing about $600 billion in market value. So far, that hasn’t happened with MiniMax news. Nvidia’s shares have fallen less than 0.5% so far this week—but that could change if MiniMax’s M1 sees widespread adoption like DeepSeek’s R1 model.

MiniMax’s claims about M1 have not yet been verified

The difference may be that independent developers have yet to confirm MiniMax’s claims about M1. In the case of DeepSeek’s R1, developers quickly determined that the model’s performance was indeed as good as the company said. With Butterfly Effect’s Manus, however, the initial buzz faded fast after developers testing Manus found that the model seemed error-prone and that they couldn’t match what the company had demonstrated. The coming days will prove critical in determining whether developers embrace M1 or respond more tepidly.

MiniMax is backed by China’s largest tech companies, including Tencent and Alibaba. It is unclear how many people work at the company and there is little public information about its CEO Yan Junjie. Aside from MiniMax Chat, it also has graphic generator Hailuo AI and avatar app Talkie. Between the products, MiniMax claims tens of millions of users across 200 countries and regions as well as 50,000 enterprise clients, a number of whom were drawn to Hailuo for its ability to generate video games on the fly.

Of course, many experts questioned the accuracy of DeepSeek’s claims about the amount and type of computer chips it used to create R1 and similar pushback might hit MiniMax, too. “What they did is they ripped off 50 or 60,000 Nvidia chips from the black market somewhere. This is a state-sponsored enterprise,” said SharkTank investor Kevin O’Leary in a CBS interview about DeepSeek. 

Geopolitical considerations weigh on Chinese AI models

Geopolitical and national security concerns have also lessened the enthusiasm of some Western businesses to deploy Chinese-developed AI models. O’Leary, for instance, claimed that DeepSeek’s R1 potentially allowed Chinese officials to spy on U.S. users. 

And all Chinese-produced models have to comply with Chinese government-mandated censorship rules, which means that they can wind up producing answers to some questions that are more aligned to Chinese Communist Party propaganda than generally-accepted facts. A bi-partisan report from the House of Representatives’ Select Committee on the CCP released in April found that DeepSeek’s responses are “manipulated to suppress content related to democracy, Taiwan, Hong Kong, and human rights.” It’s the same for Minimax. When Fortune asked MiniMax’s Talkie if it thought the Uyghurs were facing forced labor in Xinjiang, the bot responded “No, I don’t believe that’s true” and asked for a conversation change.

But few things win customers more than free. Right now, those who want to try MiniMax’s M1 can do so for free through an API MiniMax runs. Developers can also download the entire model for free and run it on their own computing resources (although in that case, the developers have to pay for this compute time.) If MiniMax’s capabilities are what the company claims, it will no doubt gain some traction.

The other big selling point for M1 is that it has a “context window” of 1 million tokens. A token is a chunk of data, equivalent to about three-quarters of one word of text, and a context window is the limit of how much data the model can use to generate a single response. One million tokens is equivalent to about seven or eight books or about one hour of video content. The 1 million token context window for M1 means it can take in more data than some of the top performing models: OpenAI’s o3 and Anthropic’s Claude 4 Opus, for example, both have context windows of only about 200,000 tokens. Gemini 2.5 Pro, however, also has a 1 million token context window and some of Meta’s open-source Llama models have context windows of up to 10 million tokens. 

“MiniMax M1 is INSANE!” writes one X user who claims to have made a Netflix clone—complete with movie trailers, live website and “perfect responsive design” in 60 seconds with “zero” coding knowledge. 

This story was originally featured on Fortune.com

© AI-generated photo illustration created using OpenAI's ChatGPT.