Heroes

Author and researcher Brené Brown sat down with Diane Brady and Kristin Stoller at Fortune’s Most Powerful Women summit to discuss leadership and power during times of uncertainty, political turmoil and fear. Brown emphasized the importance of businesses having mission clarity for every employee, human work over AI “slop,” and making decisions in the space between stimulus and response.

Brené Brown on Leadership During Times of Uncertainty

He co-founded the world's top talent and media agency. He reshaped major movie studios and iconic entertainment brands. He was among the first to bridge the gap between Silicon Valley innovation and Hollywood storytelling. Today, he continues to shape the future through his investments in tech and media startups. We sit down with the influential executive for his perspective on the rapidly evolving business landscape—and what it takes to stay ahead

Michael Ovitz
Cofounder, Creative Artists Agency; Chairman, Treville Capital Group 

Alyson Shontell
Editor-in-Chief and Chief Content Officer, Fortune

The Power Broker

The number of ways to get around? Growing. The business models that complement ride-hailing? Exploding. And untapped markets abound—nevermind a looming autonomous driving revolution. As a new management team steers America’s No. 2 ride-hailing company into the future, we ask its chief executive: Where will Lyft go next?

David Risher
Chief Executive Officer, Lyft 

Andrew Nusca
Editorial Director, Fortune Brainstorm

For Lyft, It's Ride or Die

The world is entering a period of profound change in global trade. As major economies revisit long-standing agreements, nations are seeking new markets and partnerships. Protectionist trends are testing traditional alliances, while AI and digital commerce are reshaping trade faster than regulations can adapt. How can the World Trade Organization best adapt to this new reality? In this conversation, it’s Director-General Dr.Ngozi Okonjo-Iweala, discusses the reforms needed to strengthen the organization’s role, the frameworks required for digital trade, and whether multilateral cooperation can endure in an increasingly complex global economy.
Dr. Ngozi Okonjo-Iweala, Director-General, World Trade Organization
In Conversation with: Ellie Austin, Fortune

Closing Conversation: Global Trade in Transition

So thank you so much for being here. Now I think it's safe to say that you've probably had quite a busy and eventful year, given everything that's been happening in global trade. Um, you said to me backstage that the thing that people want to know when they see you is what's going on. So let's start there. What on earth is happening with global trade? What are the challenges, and maybe where do you see some bright spots? Well, thank you so much and good afternoon, everyone, or good evening. I think it may be on the statement of the century to say that global trade is facing the greatest disruption in 80 years. So that disruption is enormous and of course it's hit at the um. Global trading rules that everyone, all the traders and now everyone knows of the WTO, the most favored nation rules. So prior to the tariffs, 80% of world trade was on WTO MFN rules, and now it's come down. Our latest analysis shows 72% of world trade is going on on WTO rules, but look at that number. It's come down, but it's 72%, and when we looked at it very carefully, we were surprised and pleased at the resilience of the system. So it means that system built over eight decades is showing a great deal of resilience. So it's it's not. Knocked, battered, bruised, but still standing. But playing devil's advocate for a second, if one of the world's or the world's largest economy, the US, is essentially ignoring WTO rules, can the multilateral system still function? It is functioning, of course it's functioning not in the way it used to function before, but we also must know that the US is 13% of total world imports, so 87% of that trade is going on outside the US. The good news is that we avoided what happened in the 1930s. We've been there before, where there were tit for tat tariffs, protectionism that led to the Great Depression. And then, you know, the Second World War came and it was catastrophic and this system was built. What we see now. It's the fact that we've talked to their members to avoid a tit for tat. They've not done that. I'm very proud of them. 166 members of the WTO. Second, they're all still trading with themselves, mostly on WTO rules. Some of them have filed disputes against the US, I believe, absolutely, which is fine. I mean, the US remains a member of the system, a very treasured member, and we value it. And we have mechanisms where if you have a dispute with another member, you bring it. It's called your request for consultations, and that's that's a dispute process. But let me tell you this the fact that 72% of world trade goes on on WTO's terms is no reason for complacency. Far from it. I think that a lot of the criticisms made by the US of the system are valid. I share them. And I think that this is a time to use this opportunity of seeing some resilience to reform. So what's at the top of your list to reform maybe on that? Give me, give me number one. OK, maybe I'll give you two. Well, one of the things to reform, to look at is a very treasured consensus decision making system. Many multilaterals have that, but in WTA practice as unanimity. And when you need unanimity from 166 members in order to make a decision, sometimes you really get stuck. So how do we practice consensus in an efficient way that will enable us to make new agreements and make decisions more quickly than before? And what's the answer to that because I know that I can't give the answer now. The members have to work at it. OK, it's up to them to come up with the answer. Another is looking at lots of complaints about unfair trading practices, you know, the protectionism that has been creeping into the system even before the US took the unilateral actions. We need to look at all of that lack of transparency in reporting because the WTO is about transparent reporting so members can know what trade practices of other members are when they give subsidies and when they don't. And if you don't have a level playing field and and practices are not seen to be fair, then it really does undermine the system. So developing countries also feel that the system does not work as well for them. They are not as well integrated. They haven't benefited enough. So those are things we need to look at. Uh, in the list of reforms that we'll do so that's quite a to do list, that's a pretty hefty to do list. I was going to ask you about your native Nigeria and what the view of the WTO is in Nigeria, for example? Well, As let me before I took this job, WTO was not a household word. It's not there, not in any country, you know. WTO is one of these organizations that has the rules that makes world trade work, but it's like your plumbing. You don't think of it until a pipe breaks. You just take it for granted. So everybody takes the WTO for granted and world trade rules. But I tell you, if the system, if the organization was not there with these basic rules, those who trade, businessmen and women. No, there would be chaos because beyond tariffs, there's some fundamental rules like how your goods are valued, agreements, how your goods are valued when they arrive, intellectual property rules, you know, last year, over $500 billion was was earned through payments or patents and intellectual property. The agreement is outside the WTO $144 billion. Of that went to the US 25% of that of the whole amount went to the EU and the rest of the rest of the world. These are not trivial amounts. So there's a lot going on at the W2 beyond tariffs that business people value. I have no doubt. I guess some people would say you speak so eloquently about rules. If a country like the US can disobey the rules and they don't seem to be any huge consequences, Is the point of the rules in the first place? What would your response be to that? My response would be number one, if one member decides not to obey the rules, the others are some of them you said are bringing the US, they can do that, but members, other members value the rules and the fact that they themselves are keeping to those rules stays volumes. OK, can I just tell you? Out of my 166 members, 142 of them have trade to GDP ratios north of 50%, which means that trade matters a lot. The US trade to GDP is 25%. So if the US can exist, you know, within based on domestic demand, and you know it can pretty much do a lot of things by itself. Maybe China is less than 30%, but there are 142 countries who Really depend on trade and need the rules. You can't make an agreement with every single country. So you need multilateral rules and a level and a system that provides stability and predictability. They themselves, what is very heartening now is that members in this trouble have seen how they value the WTO. In every crisis, there's always opportunity. And the opportunities that members are now seeing just how much they value this and what they need to do and what we need to do is pursue reforms. All those criticisms leveled by the US and others, many of which are valid. This is the time to reform the organization. And make it fit for the 21st century, and that's what we're doing. And on the subject of innovation and reforms, roughly 40% of global trade this year came from AI related products, semiconductors, telecoms, things like that. How is the WTO thinking about establishing global standards for digital trade and AI supply chains so that number one, there are regulations in place, and number. To certain economies aren't left behind. Well, I think I'm glad you mentioned this, you know, it's very exciting. There are actually exciting things happening in trade, and that's why I want us to get on with the reforms so we can seize these opportunities. Services trade is growing. We projected goods trade to grow at 2.4% this year. Services trade is growing at twice that. Digitally delivered services trade is growing at. and it's worth almost $5 trillion. That's very exciting. Green trade is worth almost $2 trillion. So there are areas of trade and then you bring in AI and what we're seeing now, we just did a study looking at AI is that if AI AI can reduce trade costs dramatically, which helps to increase the value of trade, the AI will also change the nature of products traded. And all of this makes it very, very exciting to see what the impact is going to be and the rules. We are negotiating rules for e-commerce, for digital trade at the WTO, with with your members, with our member a group, a subset of the members, almost 100 of them have come together to negotiate the e-commerce agreement. And what's the timeline for when we could see that agreement? Well, it's in two parts. The first phase is almost complete, and I hope it will come into being by our next ministerial conference, which is March 2026, and then they will commence with the second phase. So we're really looking forward to seeing that. Now you are the first woman and the first African to lead the WTO in its 30 year history. Why do you think it took so long to achieve those two very important milestones? I'm not the right person. Go and ask all the men. What do you think they would say? What do you think they would say? No, but first I want to say, look, when I hear this first woman, first African, I have very mixed feelings. When I was doing the interview, I think I was impertinent enough to say the W2 at this point in time needs the best person. To lead it and the best person to lead the reforms. You know, if that person is a woman and the person is African, that's fine. And I said, I think I am the best person because I'm bringing different thinking and a different approach. So, so I'm glad to be first woman, first African, but I think it the key issue is who has What it takes to be able to take the organization to another level and that's the important thing and I think women have had what it takes. So I don't know why they have not been able. I mean, with the number of talented women experts in trade I meet around the world, I just wondered why they haven't been given the chance and the opportunity or sometimes you also have to take the risk. Um, you know, when we did the interview, there were 8 candidates from 80s for my job 5 years, 4.5 years ago, and you were being interviewed practically in front of the whole world, OK, because there were 166 minutes tuning and it was broadcast and so if you failed, the whole world would know about it. And there are not many people, you know, when you apply for a job, if you don't get it, it's your business. You can just go and say whatever you like. But when you apply for a job and you don't get it and the whole world knows about it, it's a little daunting, isn't it? Very daunting. So maybe many people don't want to go through that process. It was a very competitive process. So final question, you said sometimes you have to take the risks to be the first person to achieve something. What would you characterize as some of the biggest risks you've taken in your career to get to where you are today? Oh. I guess I'm a risk taker and a masochist. Look at what is happening to World Trade. Looks like whenever there's a tough job, I left a very nice job at the World Bank where I was managing director, the #2 position to go and be finance minister in my country and eventually Foreign Minister, the first woman also, that was a risk. I could have just stayed where I was and having my salary, I took her, I don't know, whatever. 50 more than that 70 or 80% salary cut left my family went back home because we're living in Washington. So go and do it, but what was the motivation? You have to ask yourself what are you about? And I've always wanted to serve. I was brought up to know that service to others, you don't get educated just for yourself, but to others. So that's been at the back of my mind. So I considered it an honor and a privilege to be able to serve my country. That's why I went back and being finance minister is not, no one likes a finance minister, OK. No one likes you, not even your boss sometimes, because you have to say no, so it's not a fun job. But it's a job you're absolutely committed to and one that gives you policy levers to move the economy, and we did, we tripled the growth rate during the time I was in office. Secondly, WTO, I'm not sure I knew most people want my job now. Uh, but it's also an honor and a privilege, no matter how tough it is, because what are we trying to do? We're really trying to materially reform an organization that is very important to world trade. You cannot have global growth without global trade growth, OK? The world world GDP is 111 trillion and world trade is the. 2 trillion. OK, it's almost 30% of that. There's no way you can grow world GDP without growing trade. So this is a commitment to make the organization work better so we can push global growth. Well, I hope on behalf of all of us that you achieved that. That's a very galvanizing note to end on. Dr. Ngozi, thank you so much for joining us. Thank you. OK. Hi everyone. Well, that brings the Fortune Global Forum to a conclusion, our 2025 event. I want to thank all of you for coming here today. I especially want to thank our speakers. I think the power of this is the village green that we are able to create for honest. A for candid insights that you share with each other and also share with our global audience, and it would not be possible if we did not have partners who enable us to do this. So I would like to just pause for a moment at the end of this incredible event to thank again our partners Saudi conventions and exhibitions, general authority. Thank you, Your Excellency. Invest Saudi, our premier partner Nummeaba, our diamond partners, Guangzhou, Baiusan and IBM, our partners, Airbus corporate jets. Aerofugia, APO, Rubric, New York Stock Exchange, Guangzhou Industrial Investment Holding Corp, Porsche Design Tower Bangkok. Thank you all of you for helping to create what I found to be very stimulating. I hope you did too. I look forward to seeing you again and thank you.

Wendell Weeks, Chairman and CEO of Corning Incorporated, joins Diane and Kristin to reflect on leading one of America’s oldest innovators through constant reinvention. Weeks shares rare stories from his partnerships with visionaries like Steve Jobs and Jeff Bezos, revealing lessons on collaboration, and what it takes to build a company designed to last the next 150 years. He also discusses Corning’s pivotal role in the iPhone’s creation, its quiet influence across industries from solar to AI, and why true leadership begins with followership.

Wendell Weeks on Risk, Resilience & Reinvention at Corning

While crypto started as a renegade reaction to the financial crisis of 2008, the industry has become increasingly intertwined with Wall Street. That trend accelerated this year with the rise of stablecoins and Trump administration's embrace of the technology, as traditional financial institutions became more comfortable with the world of blockchain. Citi's managing director of digital assets Artem Korenyuk explains what Wall Street sees in crypto—and why the relationship is likely to last this time around.

Wall Street Embraces Crypto

Oura has been making headlines for months, most recently with its massive $900 million funding round, valuing the wearables giant at $11 billion. And before that, for expanding its partnership with the U.S. Department of Defense, causing social media controversy. In September, while at Brainstorm Tech, Allie sat down with Oura CEO Tom Hale to talk about the company’s growth, data privacy, the biggest challenge he’s faced as CEO, the unexpected places he’s unlocked consumer value, and more.

“Success disasters,” data privacy, and unlocking growth with Oura CEO Tom Hale

ServiceNow president and CFO Gina Mastantuono grew up determined never to rely on anyone. Her first career move was cautious after a friend told her accounting was “recession proof.” A series of smart and calculated leaps turned that safe start into a rapid climb.

Today Mastantuono is paid to take big swings and deliver results. Under her financial leadership ServiceNow entered the Fortune 500 in 2023 and has remained on the list ever since.

For the first episode of Next to Lead Fortune executive editor Ruth Umoh explores how Mastantuono built a career that spans industries and continents from auditing at Ernst & Young to CFO roles at tech giant Ingram Micro and now ServiceNow. She explains how to recognize the right moment to switch industries, why technical expertise remains critical in the C-suite, and what rising leaders should know about seizing their next big opportunity.

ServiceNow’s CFO Gina Mastantuono on Taking Leaps, Building Teams, and Betting on AI

Fortune Global Forum 2025

Hosted by H.E. Fahd bin Abdulmohsan Al-Rasheed, Anastasia Nyrkovskaya, & Diane Brady.

Fortune Global Forum 2025: Opening Ceremony and Welcome

That I. Ma. What if I yeah. I did yeah. Mo. I still fuck. I. Yeah I. I. God bless you. What. Oh. More. one more time. Fortune guests, please now welcome to the stage. Fortune Chief Executive Officer Anastasia Nukovskaya. Anastasia Norkovskaya. Good morning. It's an immense pleasure to be here today. And um the journey for me to be here today started almost 2 years ago when we made the promise that we will bring business fortune events to Riyadh. Earlier this year, we did Most Powerful Women International event here in Riyadh. It was in May, and today we're bringing our global forum, which is our signature fortune event. Fortunately has been around for almost 100 years. I brought a copy of the magazine. This is how it all started back in 1929 with the magazine, and it's still being printed today. We have the website. We have our iconic list such as Fortune 500, most admired companies, most innovative companies, all sorts of other things, and also our live media and events. Again, this journey is a long journey, and why are we here is the big question. Fortune's mission is to make business better, and we're doing doing it through our excellent reporting and journalism. Saudi Arabia is the frontiers of the business world today and that's why we wanted to be here and that's why we're here now again, everybody needs a good partner to get things started. So I wanted to talk for a second about our partner here as well. His Excellency Fahad Al-Rashid is our partner. He's the advisor in the general secretariat of the Council of Ministers and the chairman of SEGA. For those of you who know him, he does many things transforms cities, thinks about human capital growth companies transforms he left two cities, build the port, build the metro, and help, help us to to be here as well. So I wanted to say a huge thank you. Enjoy the next two days, and I hope to speak with you and see you around. Thank you. Since 1995, the Fortune Global Forum has convened in great cities on the dynamic frontiers of business. Singapore, New York, Beijing, Paris, Cape Town, New Delhi, Abu Dhabi, Toronto, and Rome. Now, nearly 30 years on, this well-established gathering returns for the second time to the Middle East. Today, the world turns its attention to Riyadh, a vital and expanding hub for global trade, technology, and economic transformation, guided by its ambitious Vision 2030 plan. Saudi Arabia is embracing creative solutions to the forces reshaping global business on a monumental scale. At this pivotal moment when leaders everywhere are navigating artificial intelligence, new economic pressures, and opportunities for growth, the Fortune Global Forum provides a unique stage for dialogue that defines the future. Here in Riyadh, we unite the world's foremost business and thought leaders, Fortune Global 500 CEOs, policymakers, and innovators. Together, they will set the agenda for business in a rapidly changing world. Welcome to the Fortune Global Forum. Where the future of business begins. Fortune guests, please welcome to the stage advisor, General Secretariat of the Council of Ministers, Kingdom of Saudi Arabia, and Chairman of the Saudi Conventions and Exhibitions General Authority, His Excellency Fahad bin Abdul Mohsen al Rashid. Behar and I mean this bit so or is me marat Mahaliata had been Abdel messen a rushid. Of hasmu Mali wasada Sara Malekomoramaullahi Oakata. Your Highnesses, Your Excellencies, ladies and gentlemen, welcome to Riyadh and welcome to Saudi Arabia. Welcome to the Fortune Global Forum 2025. We are honored to have you all here at this great moment. So many things happening in the world, so many challenges, and so many opportunities. But you've come to the right place because this is the land of opportunity. Saudi Arabia, with Vision 2030 has made major strides, not only economic, but social. Female participation in the workforce. Has hit 37%. Ahead of our 2030 targets. We started with the tourism sector, targeting 100 million visitors. Last year, we did 120 million visitors. But we have so much more to do. Because our leadership pushes us because we as people are ambitious. We want to do more. We want to do more because we are people of the desert. And think about what you have to do to survive and build a city the size of Riyadh in the desert. Riyadh is 100. 1200 kilometers in terms of size, double the size of Singapore. We have 8 million people living in Riyadh. It's the 44th largest city economy in the world. What does it take to do all of this? Ambition Patience And unlimited boundless. Optimism. And this is Saudi Arabia. This is the Saudi people. But how does Vision 2030 mechanically work? We have KPIs set for all sectors of the economy. Just like business do. But then to achieve them, we've launched initiatives. Actually we've launched 1,052 initiatives across the board. And 85% of them are on track. How can we do it? We're doing it together, men and women. Across the country. We're doing it with great talent that we've attracted from all over the world. And most importantly, we are doing it through the power of partnerships. We have partnership partnered with our friends from all around the world like you. To do this, these partnerships have allowed us to scale, scale our capability and scale the depth of our knowledge. And we've achieved, like I said, so much. Just a few months ago we've launched Humane in artificial intelligence. And signed $23 billion of partnerships just right after that. So we are here, we are ready, we are opening our arms and extending our hands to you. Thank you for being with us and enjoy the next 2 days. Thank you very much.

Most Powerful Women Summit 2025

It’s been said Kristalina Georgieva can make or break a nation’s finances. As head of the International Monetary Fund, she is leading the 191-member organization through a turbulent era. From tariffs and geopolitics to inflation and uncertainty, Georgieva joins us to discuss how the IMF navigates times of crisis and fundamental shifts in the world economy.  

The Pursuit of Global Economic Security

Managing director at Geva, I have to say that you said good music walking on. It makes me wonder, do you have a favorite walk-on song for IMF meetings? Yes, I do. Oh, really? What is it? We will, we will. OK, I think that sets the tone right there. This must be the most wonderful time of the year for you. You've got the annual meeting of the World Bank, IMF. You've got 191 member countries coming in. Give us a sense. This is day one. Thank you for joining us. Um, what have you been hearing so far? Give us a bit of a highlight. Well, the world is in a Very interesting place. Uh, so what I hear is mostly questions. Hey, how is it going to be? What would the world economy look like? Are we going to survive the trade war? And what about my country? What advice do you have for us? I actually started the day with The delegation of Tajikistan. Tiny country in Central Asia. Used to be a basket case. They had the Civil War. And then they lucked with leadership. I was delighted to have them as my first meeting because their growth is strong. Inflation is Below 3%. Their public debt is coming down, uh, and how are they doing that? Strong fundamentals, they pay attention to their policies, strong institutions, and hey, the IMF is there for them. So my message to my membership. If you come here so we can see better through the fog of uncertainty lying over our heads together. And what I'm asking you is leave your trade wars, your cold wars, your hot wars outside of my room. You can why mothers should be in charge, right? Yes, we keep it outside. Keep it outside. Well, you talked about what's heartening, what's disheartening to you right now. Uh, what is most disheartening is the risk we face for many countries. To lose hope for converging with those that are better off. What we have experienced over the last years, shock upon shock, upon shock. has pushed the fate of many poor countries into a more desperate place. And why should we care? We should care for two reasons one, Because when part of the world is falling behind, that means more insecurity for you guys, those who have global companies, shrinking market, and 2, because it is morally wrong. You know, I'm struck you, you led the World Bank. You're now in your 2nd term, you know, at the IMF. These are two organizations that really grew out of Bretton Woods in a spirit of globalization. Let's start with how do you lead an organization of people that is devoted to globalization in this fragmented environment? Well, the IMF is devoted. To help countries do better for their people. It happens that a more integrated world economy works better for the majority of people, but not for all. And one thing we have been saying now for some time is pay attention to those who are left out or left behind. Uh, and if we don't, then we risk more trouble. But let me deliver two messages to you. The first one is that despite the fragmentation in the world economy, we are still seeing. Countries reaching out to each other. And if globally we have more difficulty then at the regional level, subregional level, we seek compensation. Gulf Cooperation Council, ASEAN regions countries are looking for ways in which they can trade more with each other. And second, frankly, this thing that trade is dead is completely overstated, um. Trade is like water. You put obstacle, it goes around it. What we are seeing, and this has been like this for thousands of years, um, when we came to assess where is the world economy these days, we look at what is happening with trade and actually the impact of trade tensions is more muted for three reasons. One, Because the tariffs that were announced in the United States in April that shocked the world at that time 23%, now nominally they are still high, 17.5% but less, and when you look at collection, how much is collected, it is more around 10%, still much more than the under 3% before, but Not as dramatic impact as initially we anticipated. 2. The rest of the world has chosen not to retaliate. 188 of our 191 countries said. We're good. We actually like to continue to trade on most favored nation rule. And 3, and the tree is very, very interesting. When we look at the upswing in regional engagements, it's actually amazing and frankly these guys should have been trading more with each other. They're right next to each other and they have been kind of obsessed with shipping all the way to the to the United States rather than say ASEAN trading among themselves. So I think I'm, I full disclosure, I'm an optimist. I believe in the good of people and I think that ultimately we actually find the high road to do better and I see that this world, we are a more fragmented world, a more uncertain world. It is also getting people to recognize that. We are in this one big boat. It is a rough sea. We better row together. Well, let me go back to 2 a second when you talk about this resilience in the economy and the fact that people are not retaliating, that sounds like a bit of a fragile piece to me. Do you think that's going to last? Give us some message to the US and those of us here who are US based leaders. Uh, the Most important factor that determines how we look at the economy today is uncertainty, and my message to business leaders is very simple, buckle up. Uncertainty is here to stay. And uncertainty is driven by just far too many very powerful factors. You have technology, you have geopolitics, you have policymakers being less predictable. You have demography, some countries aging, some countries exploding. All of this is creating a foggy world. I was actually talking to Diane before we came here. We know the world we lived until recently, that we know. We don't know where we are going to land in this period of transition. That is the saying, the king is dead. Long live the what? And in this week we will see many of our members actually concentrating on how can we provide more anchors of certainty. So what we do, we do work on two of these anchors. First one is policies and institutions and we are telling. Loudly to everybody. You need good policies, you need Good institutions and you need independent institutions in some anchors of policymaking protected to private sector. I understand that the majority of you here are business people. Well, good news for the world. Private sector is more agile, more adaptable. Over the last years we have seen in many countries where there was big state presence in the economy. Including because of IMF urging them to pull back more private sector initiatives and in this time. of strong winds. You guys are an anchor of stability because you adopt, you just keep doing it. You know, I think about another quote from one of your favorites, John Maynard Keynes. In the long run we're all dead, which is another that's either optimistic or pessimistic, but I do think about that essay which I know you've quoted from the economic possibilities for our grand. Children and just the arc of the last 100 years, the progress we've seen, we're very much in a short game right now. Talk a bit about the long game from where you sit. I love John Maynard Keyne's little essay Economic Possibilities for Our Grandchildren. Basically, he says there. In 100 years we are going to be about 8 times better off. 100 years later we are about 8-9 times better off, so he nailed this one in parenthesis, what he got wrong, he was saying we would be so productive that we don't have to work 5 days, 6 days a week. We would be working only 3 days a week. And we would be writing poems in the rest of the time. Why did he get that wrong? Totally. And actually I love when I read the AI enthusiasts that say now AI is going to deliver a lot of free time and we would be having only 3 days to work. The rest we would write poems. I think, I think it is in human nature we actually are keen to deploy ourselves. We like to, I mean, we like to work. Um, let me ask you actually this, how many of you like to work? So that's the, so when I look forward, I do believe that we will be much better off as humanity. In 100 years' time. And if medicine decides to advance faster than it is doing right now, we will be there to see it, right? You know, one of the things I find So in addition to being the 2nd woman to lead the IMF, I should ask you, do you hang out with Christine Lagarde? Do you guys? We do, yes. Christine was, as you probably remember, she was the managing director of the IMF before me, first woman, so Christine came, broke the glass ceiling. I came after her. No scratchy. Well, you're the first woman. You're the first, you're the first leader from an emerging market economy, so you've got your own first. You're also somebody who did your PhD in environmental protection policy and growth in the USA. Now climate change, environmental policy, that is not something that is Very high on the radar right now in some countries. Uh, how are you feeling about that as a factor in growth? So we at the IMF, we work on macroeconomic and financial stability for growth and employment. Anything that is a risk to macroeconomic and financial stability, we have to take into account. Some of my members, some of our members say Caribbean states. Uh, they can get 100 to 100% of GDP wiped out just by one hurricane. So obviously we have to integrate this in the way we think about supporting countries. We want to help them help countries have good insurance policies. Uh, we want them to have good thinking about how at low cost they can be more resilient to climate, and I want to give you just one example why it matters. Um, Bangladesh, Bangladesh is a country that gets flooded on a regular basis, and so they were thinking how they can have resilience policies that are affordable. They worked at that time I was with the World Bank. We worked with them on investing in dual purpose infrastructure. So you build the school, the school is a school. If there is a flood, it's lifted, people with their animals go there for shelter. One of the measures that we came up, they came up and we reinforced was they used to have lots of chicken. And they switch from chicken to ducks. When the flood comes, chicken die, ducks swim. I love that the index. It doesn't have to be expensive, but you have to put some thinking and then translate it into economic activity. That's very smart. You know, um. I notice you, you bring your granddaughter occasionally to events, and you are the great granddaughter of a revolutionary Ivan Karshovski, who was a great revolutionary in Bulgaria and also a journalist. I think you started out wanting to be a journalist. I dodged a bullet. No, I'm just kidding, but, but I'd love to talk a little bit about what is your message to her? I mean, she's now studying in the US you came. An Alexander Hamilton scholarship here, give me some sense of of the legacy and how you think about, you know, leadership in your own family and what you tell her. So what I'm telling her is one change is unstoppable, unstoppable. So lean forward because that's going to be in front of you. This is going to be your life. 2, do the right thing. Even if it is not popular, even if it is not politically correct, do the right thing. This is what my father taught me. This is not what my great grandfather left for us. And 3, the world is fabulous. We have to protect our ability. To work with each other, we need to protect that, uh, making the world a really small place and you, your generation has a role to play. By the way, fun fact, imagine communist Bulgaria, we are just coming out of it. There is a Alexander Hamilton scholarship I can apply for. I did. I'm going for the interview. Now, as you can imagine in communist Bulgaria, they didn't teach us more about much about the founding fathers here. So The main question the journalists are asking, sorry, the interviewers are asking is, who is Alexander Hamilton? No Google, no phones, and I'm saying, I saw, I saw him recently. Where did I see him? And then The good of being dollarized at that time, I saw him on a $10 note. So I walk in the interview room. They asked me who is Alexander Hamilton, and I said, Who the guy on the $10 note? They didn't know. They started, there you go. This is my, my message is create, you know, never lose your cool, whatever the situation, come through it, come out of it victorious. I love that. This is also what I teach. I teach my granddaughter. I love that. Well, well. Have you seen the play, by the way? Hamilton? Of course, the first thing I did when she came to the United States, I took her to see Alexander Hamilton, and she loved it. So, so let's end on a note around back to the global economy. You've got a lot of anxious people, I'm sure, who are in town this week. What is your message to them in terms of these 191 member countries, excuse me, you've got finance ministers, central bankers, leaders. First of all, that's a Tough group to manage, but what is, what does success look like right now? So what we, what we provide to our membership is to see the world from the same vantage point. We produce global economic world economic outlook. Financial stability report and fiscal report and then we say, look at this, what strikes you the most? Three things. One, Better than feared, worse than we need. We touched, we, you know, ditched the bullet. But It's not over, so please you guys cooperate. Don't get out of this meeting. In the lunacy of economic wars. 2 Look at your finances. You're in trouble. Your debt levels have shot up during the pandemic, everybody had to borrow to support households and businesses. But nobody is pulling this support out. Why? Because people like it. What is not to like? Have the guts. To come to fiscal consolidation because if you don't, when the next shot shot shock comes and it will. You're in a very bad place. And 3, there are imbalances. Across countries, let's figure out a way to reduce them because they're an obstacle to a better global economy. Great woman leader, we have 18 seconds left. What is your message to this room of women leaders? But my message is think of the unthinkable. So you're ready when the Anticable comes because we know from COVID, we know from the war in Europe, it will come, and we women, we women are so strong and resilient we can face it. I love that. Please join me in thanking managing director Georgieva. Thank you so much. Thank you very much. Thank you.

Brainstorm Tech 2025

Delivery robots, drone drops, new business lines, and global expansion: DoorDash has transformed into a full-stack commerce platform for local businesses. CEO and Co-founder Tony Xu joins us to explore how DoorDash is approaching automation, international expansion, and a broader push into hospitality and retail.

Tony Xu
Cofounder and CEO, Doordash 

Jason Del Rey
Tech Correspondent; Cochair, Fortune Brainstorm 

Now Serving: Global Ambition

Brainstorm AI Singapore 2025

The AI race is no longer just about scale—it’s about standards, trust, and strategic agility. As major powers build ever-larger models, Singapore is charting a different course: investing in global assurance frameworks, cross border digital integration, and a radically expanded pipeline of AI-skilled talent. Its approach is systems-first and credibility-focused—offering a model for how small states can lead by shaping norms rather than dominating infrastructure. But in an increasingly fractured landscape shaped by open-source disruption and deepening U.S.–China tensions, can neutrality still deliver influence? We'll discuss what makes Singapore’s AI strategy distinctive—and consider what other countries might learn from the Singapore model in crafting their own AI strategies. 

Beyond Scale: How Small Nations Can Lead In The Age Of AI

Now, to kick this off, I'm thrilled to introduce our opening conversation led by Fortune's executive editor for Asia and Brainstorm AI co-chair, Clay Chandler in conversation with our first guest, Singapore's Minister for Digital Development and Information, Josephine Teo. When we talk about global leadership in AI, it's easy to focus on the big players, but Singapore continues to prove that small nations can lead in big ways. This isn't just a story about scale. It's about strategy, standards, and Singapore's bet that credibility can compete with compute. Please now join me in welcoming Clay Chandler and Minister Teo. Thank you. Thank you, Jeremy, and welcome everyone and especially welcome Mr. Chou. It is such a delight to have you back. Uh, you were our kickoff speaker last year when we first launched this franchise in Singapore. We had a great discussion. Uh, that explored the ways in which Singapore was really pioneering how small and medium sized economies could punch above their weight when it came to artificial intelligence, and I'm really quite eager to have a kind of catch up conversation with you about that because so much has changed just in the last year since you were last here. Um, I wonder if we could start maybe by just a reference to the um. The AI action summit in Paris this year, which is a big event that got a lot of people's attention. Singapore there launched a global AI assurance pilot. And more recently, it's established a thing called the AI Verify Foundation. Can you tell us about these initiatives and and what they are and how they evolved? Well, it's great to be back and I'm also very happy that you've returned to Singapore for AI event. Um, you. Referenced what we were doing at the AI action summit. Uh, perhaps for context for the audience in the room today, uh, the AI action summit that took place in Paris is a 3rd edition of what started out in Bletchley as the AI safety summit. And then in between, there was a summit that was held in Korea. And by the time it got to Paris, our French colleagues decided that They didn't want to focus so much on safety, they wanted to focus on action. But if we ask what we really want to see in AI development, the way Singapore thinks about it is that this being general purpose technologies, you do want um it to be very widely adopted across many industry settings as well as across a whole range of organizations. So when we updated our national AI strategy, we thought that we needed to ensure that um uh people understood what this was going to be for. So we said that the vision for Singapore was AI for the public good, for Singapore and the world. And why we decided to focus on public good was that The incentives would naturally create many commercial applications of AI, but for the whole of society to benefit, for people to appreciate its value, and this being general purpose technology, you also want AI to be applied towards public healthcare, public transportation, uh, public safety in policing, for example. So that's one dimension of AI development that we wanted to see in Singapore. The other dimension is equally important. In many of these commercial settings, you would want AI to be implemented, deployed in a responsible way. So the question, however, is what does responsible AI look like? Well, it really depends on the application and at which layer of AI development you're talking about. Are you talking about the infrastructure, you're talking about the models, or you're talking about the applications? And Apart from being able to articulate what responsible AI looks like, you also need to answer the question of, well, how do you get that? And if you say that you are implementing responsible AI, how do you test for it? How do you assure people that in fact this is happening? So, As we were also promoting AI adoption, we decided at the same time that these questions deserved investigation. You need to put aside resources to research, but at the same time, it's useful for us to start developing practical tools. To answer the question of what responsible AI looks like. That's how the global AI assurance pilot came about. It was to create uh a number of methods by which AI developers as well as deployers were able to assure their stakeholders that they were implementing in a responsible way. And the idea was also to learn from it, accepting the fact that at this early stage, there are no interoperable standards that apply across the globe. We don't know when we will get there. And so Singapore's modest hope is to contribute to this conversation and to bring about international collaboration so that we can all develop best practices in AI development. There is a lot to think about there. Um, I want to come back and maybe talk a little bit more about how Uh, assurances, the strategy aligns with the kind of commercial competitiveness objectives of Singapore, but I want to, before we get to that, uh, ask you about one of the other big developments that's happened in the last year, which happened just about the time. Uh, a lot of people were in Davos, uh, and, uh, I remember being in Davos and hearing people at the beginning of Davos sort of pooh poohing China's ability to catch up to the United States. Oh, Silicon Valley is so far out in front in these foundational AI models that China can't play the same game. And then, uh, right in the middle of Davos there was this kind of announcement that emerged that there was this thing called Deep Seek. There was a Chinese hedge fund that had, uh. Sort of issued this new platform in AI that was produced with a fraction of the resources of OpenAI or Gemini, but seemed to be pretty close on all the significant benchmarks of performance. Last year we talked about, you know, the age of. Uh, you know, big data and, and AI superpowers and whether that created daunting obstacles for smaller states like Singapore. So I'm curious to hear your thoughts about the implications for countries like Singapore. For the deep sea breakthrough, we've had a couple of these other really kind of fast follower platforms come through in China recently. Um, is this something that even Singapore can now compete, you know, by following those kinds of examples? How does it open up and democratize the the the AI game for a country like Singapore? Well, the thing that we ask ourselves is what are the impediments of using any sort of technology for innovative purposes. And inevitably cost becomes an issue because for a company that is uh deploying technology already in a certain way to use AI as an alternative or as an addition, the question of cost must come up and it has to be weighed against the benefits. So when the cost comes down, then whatever benefits you were able to get from it may look more attractive. So from the perspective of bringing down costs. Innovation such as Deepeek are very much welcome. But I would also say that um this whole dynamic is not necessarily only a competitive one. It is also mutually reinforcing. Let me give you an example. We don't use deep per se to develop our own large language model, but within the context of Southeast Asia, we know that large language models that are trained primarily on the Western corpus, primarily on perhaps English as the language, um, they will have difficulties being applied in the Southeast Asian context. Um In our case, there are already probably more than 1000 local languages and if you build AI tools on top of these large language models that didn't incorporate the kind of data that could be found in our part of the world, then naturally the quality, the way it performs, the way it responds to prompts will perhaps not meet. The requirements of Singapore, as well as our neighboring countries. What we did was to therefore develop our own large language model, not necessarily the biggest, but certainly trained on languages that we find commonly in our part of the world. You know, um, Malay language, Tamil, Indonesia. This is sea lion, you are very familiar with it. So I think there is room for both, uh, and indeed, many companies, when they are thinking about how they can develop, for example, chat assistance that could be useful in our context, they would use a combination of both. And so that's how I think about it. I think that in an innovation ecosystem. Um, ways in which we can bring down the cost, ways in which we can complement one another in terms of the models that are available. I think they just open up the space for innovation to a larger extent. And in the Singapore context, um, when we think about AI governance and in AI innovation, The two are not necessarily at odds with each other, being able to assure ourselves of the safety and proper governance actually, I think can enable innovations to go further, because then the developers and deployers know where are the markets that they should work with. It's very interesting because it's a very, it's a much more kind of neutral approach to evaluating technology and And AI platforms in the US right now, a lot of this stuff is very politicized, so we thought that TikTok was a terrible national security risk until we realized that it was so popular that we couldn't really stop it and you know certain political leaders realized it was to their advantage to embrace it, but deep. See there's still a lot of ambivalence about deep seek in the US. The US government is prohibiting, uh, government agencies from, from using it, uh, uh, and trying to discourage companies from using it, whereas I gather in Singapore there's none of that. There's, well, let's look at it and is it useful or not? Or perhaps I would put it another way. I think when Companies, developers, deployers, they think about what model they want to use. There is always an assessment of a couple of things. One of the things would be, of course, performance. The other thing that they, they would take into consideration is security and resilience. And it's up to every organization to evaluate all three and draw their own conclusions about what can be used and what cannot be used, although they do not wish to use. And I would imagine that there will still be concerns about deep sea and other models that would cause companies. needs to take a pause and say that maybe this is something that we are still not very comfortable with. I wouldn't be surprised at all. This is a very natural consequence of organizations having to weigh the cost and benefits as well as the many dimensions of what makes an innovation worth the effort. So the other thing that's related to this and that that's new over the past year is that you know we in the US we have a new president now. And relations between the US and China have gotten, uh, safe to say much more tense and in many ways more acrimonious. President Trump is imposing very large tariffs on China. China has been retaliating in kind. The US has tightened restrictions on selling chips and other technologies to China. I wonder whether you know and we talked last year about Singapore's strategy of being sort of non-aligned, uh, being a kind of a Switzerland of Asia, a space where both Chinese and and uh uh US companies and tech players could could operate together. And so my question is can Singapore still do that? And this also sort of applies to the rest of ASEAN. Can it remain strategically unaligned, or are the two giants trying to force small and medium sized economies like this one to pick a side. I think Singapore's consistent approach is to act. In a way that meets our own interests. And that is the starting point that has to be our guiding principle. Now We would certainly hope that relationships between the two giants can warm up to a much greater extent, but it's not something that we can wish to happen and it will happen. I wish that was, um, you know, something that uh we didn't have to deal with, but it's a reality. Um, the way in which we go about it is to engage, you know, uh, all countries, not just China and US. Um, and Build upon our bilateral foundations. And to try and make headway in new technology areas too. So with the US, we have a dialogue on continuing and contin critical and emerging technologies. Similarly with China, we have a digital policy dialogue. They cover different areas of interest um that um we mutually believe are important for our own countries. But, you know, it doesn't prevent us from seeking to understand each other's concerns better and then continuing to find ways to move forward. So in AI Assurance in AI governance, for example, with our US colleagues, we did a mapping of our own risk assessment model against us, and this serves as a basis for us to engage with colleagues elsewhere around the world, particularly those that are involved in the AI safety network. Um, with our Chinese colleagues, we noticed that um there are industrial Uh, foundation is so broad and deep that the application of AI would be very interesting to watch and learn from. So there are different ways in which we engage with our ASEAN countries, we say, for example, that um even if we are not ready to move into the era of standards in AI governance, there's nothing to prevent us from agreeing on what the ethical principles could look like first. And then with other countries um that are like us, small, um, we created a digital pillar in the forum of small states, which Singapore is the convener of. And with countries like Rwanda, for example, we created an AI playbook for small states. So these are the ways in which we are coming together for conversations around different aspects of AI hoping to meet, make progress. Interesting and, and, and thoughtful. Um, I wanna ask quickly if I can about um. Scaling the digital workforce to kind of support a lot of these initiatives. The last time we spoke, you described for us, the government's plan had a goal for training 5000 AI practitioners in Singapore, and you have since tripled that, as I understand it, to 15,000. Why the increase and how will you achieve it and what will be the background of these practitioners? Well, number one, I think there's a lot of interest, um. So many people in, in, in Singapore are aware of the potential benefits of AI and they are themselves finding ways to acquire the skills. Uh, I would say that, um, whether it is AI creators or AI practitioners, Uh, I'm overall optimistic about what can be achieved through our workforce if each and every one, were enabled to acquire some AI related skills. And you imagine that um certain basic AI skills will become as ubiquitous as you and I being very familiar with using emails, um, and perhaps in the earlier stages, Maybe it was not so common for people to be able to use um digital tools, you know, whether for word processing or making slides and so on. But over time, we all acquire a certain level of competence. But we think that it's not enough just to have basic level of competence. So what you described, the 5000 and 15,000 are what we call AI practitioners, we are hoping also to grow another pool to complement the data scientists and machine learning engineers. We're talking about people who who are in the professions, lawyers, accountants, doctors, who will become the early adopters of AI and then they show their peers how to make better use of it. We're also talking about people in different sectors, whether it's manufacturing, whether it is, um, you know, in healthcare or um in financial services. They themselves also acquire this facility with using AI and then they demonstrate how it can create more value for their organizations. This group of AI practitioners will have to exceed the 15,000 that I talked about to a much greater extent. So in the Singapore context, our workforce is maybe 3.5 million. I think. At the level of AI users that are AI, they are competent, you, you will need to get to a much larger number than what we were talking about last year. So watch this space, we will have more to say about this. We, we will watch it with great interest. We've got just a couple of minutes here. I wonder if we can come back to this initial point about assurance. Uh, it's very interesting to me because it seems that what Singapore is doing is it's trying to become a kind of a test bed for safety and responsible AI and And to create a kind of haven. And build a brand around that in much the way that Singapore has done with FinTech regulation and cybersecurity services. Is that, is that the idea and Maybe you could say a little bit more about the philosophy behind the emphasis on insurance. The broad idea is that this technology um can have many applications and you don't want to overly restrict its growth and development. On the other hand, for a technology that can be used in so many different contexts. You've got to watch that it doesn't cause harm because the moment it does, and people become very wary of seeing it being used in even more ways, then it's much harder to recover from that sort of loss of momentum. So the way in which we'd like to go about it is to set out the broad directions and also to set out what are the principles that we should be working along. And then to uh say to industry as well as organizations that are using AI, let's try and find a way to define the risks and also then to find ways of mitigating those risks. That's generally the approach that we take. Small steps, um, not necessarily always big bang, but when we're ready to move, then move quickly. It's always fascinating for us to kind of watch those small steps and to try to observe them and analyze them. I think that many of them are of great relevance and and benefit to other kind of medium sized states as to how they can navigate in. This really rapidly changing technology environment. We look forward to tuning in again and coming back for the next installment of this conversation we hope in years to come. Thank you so much, Minister, thank you so much. Thank you. Thank you.

Fuel up with Fortune, Cannes 2025

Elite leadership isn’t just about vision—it’s about action, resilience, and the relentless pursuit of growth. At Fortune’s exclusive Fuel Up With Fortune panel in Cannes, Snap Inc. EMEA President Ronan Harris and Mars Wrigley North America President Anton Vincent share their top leadership learnings and what truly sets outperformers apart.

Elite Leadership: Unlocking Growth at the Top

Elite Leadership: Unlocking Growth at the Top Pannel at Cannes

At the Fuel Up With Fortune panel in Cannes, Snap Inc. EMEA President Ronan Harris and Mars Wrigley North America President Anton Vincent share their top leadership learnings.

Fortune COO Summit

How are the companies pioneering artificial intelligence technology actually using it internally? These two preeminent operational leaders at the forefront of the AI revolution will share the strategies they are using to deploy the very technologies they're developing—while writing the future of AI for the world. We’ll hear how they are leveraging AI to optimize operations, fuel growth and share specific advice for corporate leaders about how best to implement today’s most cutting-edge innovations in their own organizations.

ARCHITECTS OF AI: DRIVING TECHNOLOGICAL TRANSFORMATION FROM WITHIN 

Fortune MPW International Summit 2025

Hosted by ROSHN Group  
Around the world, significant strides have been made to increase the number of women in corporate leadership positions. In the U.S., women make up 29% of C-Suite level roles and hold approximately 30% of board seats. And here in Saudi Arabia, nearly 10% of board positions are held by women, a new reality made possible by the Kingdom’s ambitious Vision 2030 strategy and other significant government-led reforms. Even with such progress, untapped opportunities remain in industries where women have traditionally been underrepresented – from construction and engineering to technology and energy. In this special lunch program, we’ll explore the strategies needed to advance women into C-suite positions, create more inclusive workplaces, foster untapped talent, and create a path to parity – not just progress – for women at all levels of business.
Panelists:
Dr. Maryam Ali Ficociello, Group Chief Governance Officer, Red Sea Global
Giovanna Carnevali,	 Executive Director, Master Planning, ROSHN Group
Dr. Saeeda Jaffar, Senior Vice President and Group Country Manager – GCC, Visa
Jena Ladhani, Chief Executive Officer, Global Workplace Solutions, KSA, CBRE
Renée McGowan, Chief Executive Officer, India, Middle East, and Africa, Marsh McLennan
Moderator: Michal Lev-Ram, Contributing Editor, Fortune

WOMEN’S LEADERSHIP LUNCH PROGRAM: ADVANCING WOMEN IN THE WORKPLACE

Workplace Innovation 2025

Does DEI promote or prevent meritocracy? After a growing number of companies announced they’d be rolling back their DEI programs, some employees were left wondering if the pre-2025 DEI movement in business was wholehearted or largely performative. How will the private sector navigate external pressures while fostering inclusive and equitable environments for employees and customers? Netflix’s inaugural Vice President of Inclusion Vernā Myers joins Anson Frericks, the author of the recent New York Times opinion essay “Working at Anheuser-Bush, I Saw What Went Wrong With the D.E.I. Movement,” for a thought-provoking and multifaceted conversation about how America got here--and where DEI is headed.  

DEI IN 2025: RETREAT OR REINVENTION?

And welcome. Thank you for being with us today. We're excited to start our 2nd day of conversations and connections. We have lots to dive into today, like multi-generational workforces and how to manage them under one roof and the debate over return to office policies. We'll look at the trend of skills over degrees. We'll talk about integrating AI as your new employee. We'll hear lessons on career building from a Hollywood power player and we'll step into the world of the hit show Severance to see how corporate dystopia is brought to life. It's gonna be so much fun and we're going to get right to it all, but first, a quick reminder about what can be shared and what's off the record. What's said on stage or in our breakout sessions is on the record, including the open Q&A. Feel free to post on social media. And tag us using hashtag fortune workplace summits. What's said over the table during a meal or on breaks is private and off the record unless that's agreed upon by those involved. In just a moment, Fortune's next to lead editor, Ruth Umo, we'll kick off our conversations, but first, our partner McKinsey and Company wants to share some thoughts on getting the most out of tech. Tech has limitless potential, but how do we turn that into value? Unlock the power of AI at scale, reinvent tech delivery, build innovative products, and entirely new businesses. We rewire organizations to get the most out of tech, from strategy and talent to operating model, data and governance, capabilities, and culture. Great tech is essential, but with McKinsey, it's never just tech. Hey, good morning, everyone. Let's start with a big question. Is DEI DOA dead on arrival? Diversity, equity and inclusion in America is at a crossroads. Critics argue DEI initiatives have gone too far, creating new divisions and unfairness. Supporters say DEI strategies are necessary to address workplace inequities and can drive business success. We're gonna dive into both sides of the debate, and we have two great guests to do just that. Anton Ferris is co-founder of Strive Asset Management and a business leader who believes talent and results should take priority over diversity metrics, and Bernie Myers is founder and president of the Vernie Meyers Company, which helps organizations build effective DEI strategies. Please welcome them to the stage. Welcome, welcome, thank you both for joining us. Let's cut straight to the chase. Anson, you have argued that one of the fundamental failures of corporate DEI movement is that no one has ever clearly defined what it was trying to do. Let's do just that to level set. How do you each define DEI? What do you think it is actually trying to accomplish? something you want to take it first here, Renee, ladies first here. Thank you, thank you. So I am now start not saying DEI anymore. I'm saying diversity, equity and inclusion. When I say diversity, I mean talking about a difference and a mix, quite frankly, of culture and identity and experience when I'm talking about inclusion. It's about how do you make all of those differences work on your behalf, right, creating an environment where people of all backgrounds feel included. I often say expected, respected, and also reflected that's that's the idea of inclusion and with equity it's what you need to do the processes and. And the, the kinds of, uh, I would say tools that are necessary in order for that inclusion to actually flourish and for you to get the best out of human talent. Same question for you. Yeah, and I think, I think one of the biggest problems with diversity, equity, inclusion, it's never been well defined. If you ask everybody in this room, they're going to give you a different answer. I think that. Bernay's answer was a very plausible answer for DEI, and I think if you go back in time 5, 10 years ago, I think probably everyone in DEI wanted just to go out and find the best and the brightest. DEI was about finding a diverse group of candidates, trying to make sure they had an equitable opportunity or an equal opportunity to be able to succeed, and then we want to be inclusive of all people and walks and different backgrounds. I think there was a lot of positive in the initial DEI movement. why it's become controversial and I'll define why I think it's become controversial is DEI instead of just providing equal opportunities for people of diverse backgrounds. I think it's about now perceived in a lot of circles as forcing equitable outcomes for people as opposed to equal opportunity. So based off of your race, sex, gender, etc. the diversity piece has been about a lot of quota systems in certain. Companies we're going to hire people based on their race, sex, gender. That's become very controversial. The equitable piece is not about sort of equal opportunities, but making sure that everybody gets promoted in an equal way or an equitable way based on race, sex, gender, and then even the inclusive pieces, I think, become very challenging because the inclusive piece is very difficult to define and I actually think stifled a lot of open debate and free speech and dialogue. So I want to thank you for Having this conversation because I think it's incredibly important, but that's how I think about DEI and think about the two different definitions of what it was and I think what it's become. Well, Renee, let me turn to you then. What is your response to critics who argue that DEI, to his points, often rewards identity over performance and risks sidelining the most qualified candidate, um, in the name of representation? I'm gonna say poppycock. Right, because the whole point of DEI is to allow for merits, right? And it is much older than 5 years ago or 10 years ago. We've been doing the work of DEI since the civil rights movement. In fact, that's the birth of diversity, equity inclusion, and the idea is that it is hard to get to merit when there are obstacles, unfair. Obstacles in the way and so there is no MEI without DEI. In fact, it is impossible and and and what is so upsetting for me and I feel like it's, I would say morally unjust and bankrupt to suggest that we could just move forward as if we had somehow managed to level the playing field. You cannot get. To equality without recognizing inequality, it is impossible to do that and in no other business setting would we have an objective, not measure it, not looking at outcomes and how well the actual operation is either delivering on equality or not. And so we've got plenty of data that would suggest that it's not equal. I mean, if I look at women right now in the C-suite. We've got, uh, I, I actually brought the numbers because I am always not, I'm not always on numbers, but I know that there's 28% now women in uh the C-suite and that's up. It was 17% in 2017. So the work we did to get women to be recognized for their merit is working. In fact, I think this backlash against the EI is because we're winning, is because we are leveling the playing field and not because by identity. But by allowing people to actually share and exhibit what they're capable of, I will also say that if we look at women of color in the suite, C-suite, it's much, much lower. So let me jump in here because I do want to hear from you, Anton. Yeah, thank you. Uh, and, and I love that this is a spirited debate because Anne Sandy, you wrote, uh, a New York Times op ed, um, and you pointed to Anheuser-Busch, where you worked for some time as a cautionary tale of DI gone wrong, but was the real failure DI itself, or was it the clumsy way that DI was executed? Why is it a failing of DI overall and not just how they leveraged that business strategy potentially in a in a way that was erroneous. I think that DI there was a failure in terms of definitely how it's been implemented in companies, and I think what I think about sort of a company and why does a company exist, you have a clear mission statement that most companies have, you know, if you're a beer company, you were supposed to, our mission as a company was to create a future with more cheers. That was the mission of the company as a as a beer company, perfectly good mission. There's lots of other missions as well. Coinbase is doing crypto. Indeed is, I don't know, empowering people and finding jobs, whatever it is. Those missions are great. Then I have a view that we should find people and attract people that's going to help the company fulfill that mission. And if you're, you know, in the business of fighting fires, you want to have firefighters that are brave and resilient and all these things. If you were a beer company and the way that InBev worked and Anheuser-Busch and 3G, it was a very hard-nosed finance kind of driven company. And if you're a healthcare company, you probably have different people for that, and you should have different sort of characteristics and adjectives that you can describe to recruit people, and I think that each company needs to define those own adjectives to create. the sort of workplace they went in, but every company, I think before defining what those values were of who they wanted to recruit, they first looked at it through a DI lens, and I think that was problematic in saying that before we find people that are brave or empathetic or compassionate or hardworking or whatever adjective you want to describe for that company, first you have to look through this lens of, well, what's people's race or sex or gender or others, and I think you know there's a why is it you used the word before. Why can it all happen at the same time? This is just my experience working at Anheuser-Busch and then also running Strive Asset Management where we're investors in hundreds of different companies across the S&P 500. It just didn't. It probably can, but I think most people, they look through sort of the lens. Wells Fargo is a good example of a company that said in 2020 that we're going to have to interview 50% of all candidates have to be minority candidates for any job that's over $100,000 and then they were actually accused of literally encouraging minority candidates to apply for jobs after they'd already been filled just so they could check a box. And I think that's sort of the problem of like a lot of people just implemented DEI policies poorly and wrongly. And they became, I think, frustrating for, I think, a lot of minority candidates. They were supposed to help. And then also conversely became very frustrating, I think for non-minority candidates or even say candidates of background that were Asian or Indian or others that might have been passed over for a job because they weren't called the check the box right minority. Let's dig into it really quickly, and I think you might actually be about to touch. On this because you mentioned DI quotas, hiring quotas, and we saw a number of companies, uh, that instated the certainly post George Floyd and so if, if, if the argument is that DI initiatives result in these diversity quotas, Verne, how is that not trade in one form of exclusion for another? Let's, let's, let's get the language right. There's no such thing as quotas. Quotas are illegal. They've been illegal for a very long time. Kenji Yoshino last night yesterday explained to us it's not about quotas. That's another example of a disinformation campaign. It was about goals. And every company, if you want to achieve a change or cultural transformation, you have to have goals. How else are you knowing whether you are making a difference with what you're implementing, right? So people said unless we pay attention to this problem, the problem being the underrepresentation of groups of people over a long period of time due to exclusion, both intentional and Unintentional. This work does not get done unless you pay attention. It's attention and intention. People often think, well, just let it go. It'll just happen. It never just happens. I mean, you know, people will quote that like the moral arc of the universe is long, but it bends towards justice. Thank you, MLK, my love. It doesn't bend by itself. You have to bend it. I'm a, I, I came into the legal profession. I was the first black person in my law firm, the only black lawyer, I should say, in my law firm. When I went back to my Harvard Law School, um, women in Harvard Law School, I learned that in 19. 53 when they finally let in women, they had no toilets for no bathrooms for the women. So you can say they had gender diversity maybe, but you cannot say they had gender inclusion and if you arrive in an environment and it's not set up for you, it's not conducive for you. It's insisting that you emulate the person or the group that has been there. And who have dominated for a period of time and if you don't, you can't advance because somehow we have this idea of fit and that's about our own comfort and it's a lot about our prejudice and also our biases and that is what DEI is hoping to do to create an environment where everyone can succeed versus being. Held back because of an identity, it's just the opposite of what is being perpetuated these days about the disadvantaging effects of DEI. Who has been disadvantaged? We have no data that would suggest that white men are being disadvantaged by the work of DEI. Well, let me ask you that, do you think that white men have been disadvantaged by the work of DEI? No, but I think definitely like Asians have 100%. If you take a look at Harvard versus Fair admissions, it was all the Asian students that had to essentially have twice the SAT scores, twice the whatever the scoring rubric was that that that black students have to have to get into Harvard. So I think yes, there's definitely been, and if you look at med school admissions, you look at other admissions, definitely certain races have been excluded, and I think We have to get back to the MLK's dream is that we have to get back to finding a place where we don't discriminate based off of race, sex, gender. Like any type of even reverse discrimination is discrimination. And so if we're discriminating against Asian people for advantaging black people, that's discrimination. I think we have to have an open and honest dialogue and conversation about that, and the data shows that the people are being discriminated. No, I don't think which data? Well, if you look at any admissions data for Harvard University, that's why affirmative action was overturned. And even if you go back like, you know, you're right, the Civil Rights Act that started in 1964. Hubert Humphries, who was the floor leader at the time, said this ever leads the quota systems, I'll eat my hat. Affirmative action, you're lower by background. California versus Bakke essentially said that you cannot have quota systems. When the California system literally set aside a quota of 16 positions for minority students in med school, they said that's illegal, but you can do affirmative action to take into race considerations. That was upheld in Michigan in the Supreme Court case in 2003. But even Sandra Day O'Connor at that time said at some point the affirmative action has to go away. At some point we can't just keep giving. Certain people an advantage based off race, sex, color, gender, and Sandra Day O'Connor said within 25 years. And so maybe it was 5 years earlier than she originally anticipated when Harvard versus Fair Students for admission overturned affirmative action, but it went away and at some point we have to get to the point where we're not looking at people based on race, sex, gender, sexual orientation. We're looking at them as individuals and say when do you want to do that? When do you want to do it? Do you want to do it now when we still have deep Equality and disparities not just in outcomes but just how people are being treated and in fact I feel like what we're doing what we're hearing is a way of trying to divide and distract and keep people from being connected and being unified across their differences and their commonalities and so I'm saying to you, when do we just stop doing it and. When do we start to acknowledge that there is still an enormous amount of work to do? We've been at this DEI work for a long time. It's not time to stop it. It's time to continue to evolve it. So let's talk about that evolution because we are running up on time. If we strip away all of the buzzwords, is there a version of diversity, equity and inclusion that both skeptics and supporters could agree on? What does that look like? And let's try and make it quick. OK, I think that what it looks like is, uh, I'm going with the, I'm going with the R's. I think we have to actually reassess. We need to redefine, we need to reimagine, and we need to re-engage. We need to redefine what we mean because obviously folks have a different opinion about what DEI means and what it means to have equality, right? And I do think we need to really try to do an assessment. What are we doing that is working and what are we doing that might be holding people back or making certain people feel excluded and then how do we reimagine a new idea, a new possibility, and then how do we re-engage, which is a lot of listening and a lot of caring? Yeah, 20 seconds for you. Yeah, I think it's the most exciting time if I was in the HR world because we don't have to do DEI specifically anymore and every company essentially adopted DEI. Yes, they had a different little flavor of it, but it was very similar to DI. Every company should have their own program to hire people and as long as we have a baseline, we don't, we don't discriminate based on race, sex, gender, then come here with your own program. It could be MEI, it could be whatever program you want to come out with. But talk about what's unique about your company, the people you want to attract, the values that they have, and talk about that and extol that being unique to your company. I think that will create an amazing workforce. We'll create amazing HR, uh, business partners in this room where you guys can really define what is unique about your company and who's gonna thrive there. Well, we'll end here. Thank you both for an illuminating conversation. Although you have cons shots and viewpoints, clearly, uh, your insights underscore the importance of continued dialogue. So thank you, thank you. So that's That's this way. OK, thank you so much.

Brainstorm AI London 2025

When no one was looking, the global semiconductor business became a smash-mouth, no-tariffs-barred affair. But in an age of AI, business is still (very) good. The founder and CEO of one of SoftBank's newest multibillion-dollar acquisitions weighs in on the future of AI compute, the changing cast of industry power players, and the shifting geopolitical landscape ahead.

Iron in the Fire

Peter and Daniel. So there's a lot of excitement about what AI can do, right? That's why we're here. But none of it's possible without the right infrastructure and the right chips. The competition to build the next generation of AI hardware isn't just a business story, it's a strategic one touching on everything from investment and innovation to geopolitics. Today we're joined by one of the most respected leaders in technology and semiconductors to help us understand what's at stake and where the future is heading. So please welcome Renee James, chairman and CEO of Ampere. Hi Renee. Good to see you. All right. Thank you for joining us. So You worked at Intel for a very long time, um, and you worked with the great Andy Grove. You were for a long time, you were first as chief of staff, is that right? And then you, you know, right before you left Intel, you were the president of Intel. So, When you look at that, I promise I will ask you questions about your company Ape, which was acquired by SoftBank for $6.5 billion earlier this year, but I promise we'll get there, but I have to know as an, as an Intel vet. What would Andy Groves say about the state of Intel today? Thanks. Yes, um. He would be very disappointed. Why? Because it's an industry that Intel um invented literally invented the means by which you fabricate modern semiconductors, um, the what we think of as fabs that everyone likes to talk about and weirdly wants to build everywhere. Uh, and the process that goes into them was pioneered by Intel, developed by Intel. The modern transistor technology was invented by Intel, um, the first modern CPU that powered, you know, computing and the entire PC mobile, everything. Was Intel. So when you think about that, and these were people who left Fairchild because they had a different view of how the future could be and started with venture capital, if you can believe it, in the late 60s, 6869, this is, you know, their life's work and then to see Intel fall behind. Um, a company that was a great partner, has been a great partner, still is, I think of Intel forever, my supplier TSMC was started in collaboration with Intel, um, because we needed an additional source. So you look at it and you think, wow. That's kind of scary and sad. And Intel is not that sort of enzymatic uh uh uh actor that it was in in its heyday is, is kind of what you're inferring. And a lot of the technology that we use today, I mean, the Mellanox interconnect technology of Nvidia was invented at Intel and spun out there, you know, my company, uh, not just me but several of the key leaders, we're X Intel, we built every server product that built every data center. it started, you know, all of this cloud stuff. So, you know, a lot of good came out of it and a lot of spinoff companies, you know, the modern way that we think about building silicon and semiconductors that we all take for granted like a miracle occurs. You turn something on and it just works and like, you know, 70 billion of something you don't even know what they are is going on and on a little piece of silicon and we don't know, you know, it just works it it truly is miraculous, but then you think about the state of the company today and And I, I wish them recovery. I really do. I think they're super important to global semiconductors. They're super important to the future of where we're going because at its base Intel is the company that invents the future of transistor. still today, even in their current situation, super important. We will come back to the sort of global implications of that in a second, but I do want to, I do want to talk about Amper for a second. So Renee, you're one of two women who run semiconductor companies. It's extraordinary. And then you I'm happy that there's someone else now. That's right. That's right. And you went even further because you said, I'm going to start one. Like that isn't exactly how that went, but yeah, I think Andy said, what are you doing with your life? Why don't you start the next one? So what what what leads one to start a semiconductor company because I've always gotten the sense that um sort of like an automaker, you can't just turn around and it's not exactly a software company, you know, you can't just spin it up overnight. You need a lot of capital. Yes, um, well, so first of all you have to have a passion and a vision for where you think things are going because you, you know, you're not, you wouldn't start a company at the kind of the scale of a CPU company or GPU company, um, from the ground up at this point in the history of semis given the the hurdle rate and the investment rate and costs, um, unless you had a passion for doing something that hadn't been done before because you know you're not gonna start a company to like compete with Nvidia. That's ridiculous. Um, so we said the problem that we hadn't solved, the thing I was passionate about after 30 years of building microprocessors, was we have always, whenever we got into trouble we would just say like, oh, you know what we can do, we'll just put more power onto it. We can just release the power and I'll get higher performance or we'll put down more transistors. I mean, we did a lot of things that at the time it didn't matter. It didn't cost as much. It was, you know, no one was going to freak out that we went from 350 watts to 400 watts to, you know, whatever. I mean these were conscious decisions to change because you have to change the spec on what the server is and what goes into the data center and all that stuff, but more was more, more was more and you could get paid for it. Um, so the thing we didn't do was something that we knew about. I mean, good and physicists know that at some point, you know, you need to constrain the power and figure out how to improve the performance through other techniques, and that's a lot of R&D and a lot of thinking. About thinking differently, thinking differently about how we designed the architecture of X86 for the last 20 years that we had been working on it, um, before I was president until I ran R&D for a long time, so we spent a lot of time thinking about this, so we, um. I said, you know what, that's what I want to work on. I want to work on how we build out what comes next, knowing that not AI in the way that we think of it today, but we were working on machine learning and everything already. We knew that was the next big thing. We knew that cloud computing, the way that the cloud used software was different than the way that the enterprise consumed software, like in this linear scaling, always on, always on demand. Um, and, and the microprocessors that we had built were meant to turn on and off in a way to be efficient for different workloads but not for the cloud, so that was our thesis and um. I gathered around people that were retired or that had worked for me before and I said we should do this and they're all like, you've lost your mind because we had built like 80 microprocessors, 80, and they were like, really, are you sure? I'm like, we can do this. If not us, then who? And then Andy says. He was still alive and not really that helpful in the sense that he was like, we taught you everything, you know, this is what we what Bob and Gordon and I did. This is what, you know, this is, this is the history of Silicon Valley. Someone has to do it, so that's what we did and I was really fortunate because the Carlisle Group, who doesn't. Usually do venture um back to us in our first round um and then we had a couple of strategic, our largest strategic being Oracle over time um and we ended up raising billions of dollars over the course of the last 8 years and um last month announced that, um, SoftBank Group is buying the company for $6.5 billion. In cash. So let's talk, let's talk a little bit about that. So what. Some folks were scratching their heads when that deal was, was, was announced. What does SoftBank give Ape? What does Ampere give SoftBank? Um, well, of course the deal isn't closed, right, so we're in the regulatory period, but in general, um, we've pioneered, we have a lot of patents and a lot of technology we've built, um, 5 generations of product already that have been deployed into major hyper scale data centers, um, how to build very, very high performance in an air cooled, meaning 500 watts or less envelope, um, and we could release the power and use liquid cooling. And go even, but the performance is that of like an AMD leading edge processor today we have integrated AI acceleration inside of that envelope. We can add additional functionality on and only release the power, you know, 50, 100 watts. So I think that that whole thing allows you to build out a vision of AI, you know, scale data centers that are more efficient over time. Um, we were, we are an arm architecture licensee, so a sister company in the SoftBank Group, um, so we had taken an architecture that's inherently low power but had not been known for the highest performance, and we had, um, invented ways to bring it up to. The level of, you know, that kind of performance, and I think that it's very synergistic with their overall vision and the mission that Masasan has for Stargate. For sure, for sure, and, and we will get to that in a second. I, I wanna ask you, I want to come back to the, the geopolitics question so. When you and I were talking about Intel previously, um, you were expressing to me kind of the importance of that company in the overall ecosystem, um, honestly, in the US, but, but in as as outdated the terms as it is with the West. Um, we are in a very US versus China moment in time right now and you're very concerned. Um, what is the future of SEI right now and What's it look like if we don't get it right here in the UK? In the UK, um, what do you mean by don't get it right in the UK? What, what is the landscape, right? What is the playing field given these tensions and you know what, how do we remain competitive given that sort of binary choice, you know, semiconductors historically have been a global product that have been available globally, um. That you know the predominance of semi semiconductor business is distributed around the world both in supply chain and design. Um, some of the great design teams in different segments of semiconductors are in Europe, and many of the industrial companies in Europe do their own semiconductors, so super important. Um, the predominant and and currently an EUV only lithography equipment is from Europe, so I think we have a long history of a very open design design and manufacturing ecosystem. I, I do think that there is, you know. An importance in the global nature that this business has always been, it was never just a US business that went global. It was global from day one. So I think we have to think about where the people are who do this, how, how the, you know, how it moves, how it affects every segment of the economy in all these different countries, because computing is not just about people doing office work anymore, it's how we live our lives. It's everywhere, right? So, um, I think as long as we're conscientious about open market and and how we move forward on that I think that's important. The China thing is a separate situation because China has capabilities that are self-contained and to some extent I don't know what direction that will go it, you know, I have always participated in a global market, so it's hard for me to speculate on what that would look like, but it's the US and. Um, Taiwan, Southeast Asia, European, you know, design capability for global semiconductors is profound. I mean, it is hard to imagine doing, you know, some level of networking and mobility and everything without teams in France, for example, right? Like there's just specialties around the world, Poland. Right, right, I will come to the audience for a question in just a moment. I wanna just quickly ask you to tell me, you know, does AP have a role in the Stargate project? And if so, what? Um, well, I can't comment too much on that, um, but as we said in the press release, we, we do have a role in that, so yeah. All right. All right, let's go to the audience for questions. Questions for Renee James. They're all wishing they were in semiconductors, like, really? All right, well, I have, oh yes, right here up in the front, just wait, wait for the mic to reach you. Way up here. It's on the couch. And as always, your name and who you're with when it comes to you, OK? Thank you. I'm Doctor Shiva, I bank, and like I said yesterday, we're building a data center and also I'm from Sri Lanka. I don't know whether you all know Bain graphite, the pure graphite is in Sri Lanka and only 1% is exported. And now there are people looking at graphene, which is the GPU. Uh, you know, for graphene chips, you need graphite. Is there any, you know, experiments that you are doing or what's the plan? Yeah, so we don't do base level. Um, Ampere is a fabulous semiconductor company unlike Intel. We don't do um base level metallurgic, um, material science at MPR. We do design, advanced design and IP um development, um. So I am sure there are people looking at that, but most of that work is done in process fabrication, um, in conjunction with that. So at TSMC and Intel and places like that. Yeah. We have a question. Thank you for your question. We have one right back here, yes, your name and who you're with. Uh, I like, yes a business school. So I had a question about the overall ecosystem around CPUs and GPUs. So where do you see this going? Nvidia is now very dominant in the GPUs. Um, you know, X86 is still powerful in the CPUs. Where, where do you see this in 5 years, you know, Nvidia, ARM, everything. Yeah, thanks for the question. Um, in the, in the, you know. GPUs, as you know, grew out of gaming. So a large portion of the GPU, you know, the shaders and the things you need for rendering and gaming aren't used to um train large language models. So, Um, while it's a lot of horsepower, it isn't the only way that you can do the computation required for AI. And in fact, um, as we've discussed in multiple roundtables here, um, as we go to smaller models, as we use, let me say the appropriate AI technology or machine learning technology for the job at hand, you might just run it on an enhanced CPU. In fact, that's probably the most efficient way. So all the CPUs are being enhanced with AI acceleration, and we have a product that we've talked about Ampeer1 Aurora, that actually has um the AI functionality because we have 512 cores you can put, you know, AI cores and compute cores and into that's one of the great innovations that we've been working on. Um, so I think that 5 years from now what we're going to see is a convergence of AI and compute and architecturally there's an underlying thing that is super insular, uh, Silicon Valley Wars kind of thing which is the micro architecture of computing. Will it be X86 or will it be something else? Um, Nvidia is an ARM licensee. Nvidia builds their things on ARM as well. I do think given the progress we've made and now under our new ownership that um our proposed ownership that that arm is looking like a long term it's the architecture that Apple uses they're in a licensee that Samsung uses that Qualcomm uses that Broadcom uses. And um because of the developer community being on phones, laptops, you see, you get this bulk of developers that know that environment so I, I, I think the future is relatively bright there. And of course, SoftBank owns arm. Yes, right here. Hi Seth Dober in Quantum AI and Infinity Adventures. Hi Renee. Um, so one of the biggest challenges in, in AI, especially training is not necessarily compute, it's the distance between compute and memory. Are you guys doing anything in that space? That's my favorite topic. Oh my God. See, I, yesterday at lunch I was like, I love that guy. I, uh. Yes, Seth, of course we're working on that problem that we've had for the last 30 years. Um, if it exists, if it, if it was a problem in mainframes, it's still a problem. Um, of course there's high speed memories, but one of the things, of course I, I'm not gonna reveal how we're doing it, but all of us have been working on moving memory closer, staging memories, uh, flexible different kinds of memories that you might want to put in and out depending on costs, so there's a bunch of things that we're doing to, um. Deal with moving the workload in and out more efficiently. It's not just memory, it's a lot of the die to die interconnect as well, as you know, right? So we've done a lot of innovation. We have patents in it and die to die and how you move things across, but you know, the other thing that's quite fascinating only to me but probably not the rest of this room, but maybe to you, the way you lay out the chip where you put computation versus IO actually matters because it determines some of the. Length of travel and so we've been very attentive to that as well. Thank you for your question. I feel like I saw one more. Yes, was just my memory. I wanna talk about semiconductors. Come on now. Oh yes, right up here. Oh yes, your co-host. Yes, that's right. Just wait for it right here, Maddie. Thank you. Hi Renee, Jason Del Ray from Fortune. Um, I spent a lot of time, probably too much time thinking and reporting about Amazon, and I'm curious what you see as their potential future in the chip space. Um, I know they've made a lot of investments and are you bullish, bearish on them in the future, and either way, where, where do you see them fitting in? Yeah, so, um. Thank you for that question. It's, it's Amazon uniquely has an outstanding team that they've had together for years, and one of the hallmarks of a successful semiconductors is how many generations has a team done together, and the answer to Amazon is a lot, and they also use ARM architecture and have been quite successful in building chips, as has Google, by the way, um, that are specific to the pathology. They have a really unique way of accelerating data inside their own network and they're and they have an outstanding silicon team that's been able to build, you know, really great products that for their own use. I think given you know their their might and their team and everything that they'll continue to be very successful with that strategy. I, you know, the hyper scalers have the wherewithal to. Do that kind of thing, but the other half of the market is the enterprises of the world that need to use AI that don't have it, and that's where I think, you know, commercial chips have to fill that gap and they're not all gonna build out massive Nvidia infrastructure either, right? So there's still an enormous market opportunity and let us not forget, despite the fact that we never talk about it. Pure computational data, non-AI is growing as well at a double-digit kegger. So there's kind of a, there's other stuff going on as well. Thank you. Everyone, the fantastic Renee James.

Brainstorm AI San Francisco 2024

Colin Kaepernick, Founder and CEO, Lumi; Super Bowl Quarterback, San Francisco 49ers Interviewer: Andrew Nusca, Fortune

Brainstorm AI 2024: Colin Kaepernick’s Next Revolution 

Hey Collin, how's it going? It's great. How are you? Good, good. We uh we got a lot to talk about my friend. Um So why don't you explain the origins of loom me? Because I was fascinated to find out that it's really focused around comic book, illustrators, graphic novels, things like that. And I thought Colin Kaepernick, so please indulge us. Yeah. So part of this came out of 10 years building a media company, five years building a publishing company um and seeing the challenges that creators face. But the other part was I grew up on comics. Um And we had a whole stash of comic books. We had boxes and boxes of them. Um My brother is actually the one who really got me into them. He's 10 years older than me. Um We used to have a sounds a little sketchy now, but there was a house down the couple blocks away, we ride our bikes to and the living room was just comic books. Um So we go through and grab the ones we wanted and go back home. Um But as I went deeper down creating graphic novels, being on the publishing side and seeing the challenges that creator are facing, whether it's writers, illustrators, anchor, um colorists. Uh What we found is a lot of them are living paycheck to paycheck project to project. They actually aren't creating things that they want to. Um Because they're just looking for that next gig and a lot of them have their own ideas that they want to bring to life and are just looking for the avenue and opportunity to do so. Is your company focused around the kind of creative tool and support part, the distribution part? Because that's important with publishing too, where does it come into play if you're one of those folks? Yeah, both of those. OK. Um So very focused on creating that tool set for creators to give you A I assistance where and if you need it. Um So you can go on the platform and create and never touch A I if you don't want to or you can use it through the process to help you. Um And then that is distributed directly on the platform. Um trying to solve that distribution issue that a lot of creators face. How does this company make money? Because that's the number one question when you're talking about media and publishing? Absolutely. Um So a few different ways, the first way is we do a monthly subscription. Um that's our immediate revenue generator. But as we look more broadly, we have on-demand publishing for physical publishing publishing. We've realized creators want that they need it. Um And it's a way for us to do that profitably from the first copy sold, which is a anybody that has worked in the publishing industry. Um you know, it has a very difficult space to work in and be profitable. So we solve that. And then the last piece is we help with the merchandizing of the stories that they're creating. And I've released graphic novel, multiple children's books. Um I talked to a bunch of artists around this and what we've realized a lot of them aren't merchandizing very well. And I actually didn't merchandise my own uh projects because it wasn't an easy process to be able to do that. So that's something that we're looking to solve for them as well, right? What's harder publishing for football? Depends which part. I mean, the physical tool, football definitely harder. Um figuring out how to be profitable and scale a publishing company is no small fee. Yeah. Fair, fair, fair, fair. So what is the status of Lumi right now? Where are you at in terms of a product? Where are you headed? Yeah. So right now we have a product beta testers on the platform. Um Interesting enough, we actually have contracts with school signed right now. Um And they're looking to use that as something to advance learning um project based learning to help literacy, literacy rates, um student voice, student engagement. Um So seeing a lot of traction there in use cases that they want to elevate students with. How are your uh how is your company handling? Ip we've talked about uh copyright and, and concerns about that on this stage already today. Um I think that's the big question throughout the industry, how we look at is creators own everything that they create on the platform, anything that they bring to the platform they own. We're not touching that we don't wanna touch it. We wanna be a space where creators are owning the content because that gives them longevity. And if we're serving them in the best way possible, that creates a much more reciprocal relationship. Um And it also pushes us to be the best company that we could beat for creators. Um We don't want anybody controlled or constrained by that. So that's a great point around that. If someone creates a breakout comic or graphic novel, they could take that and sell it to Netflix or Disney or any other platforms, nothing that we're doing on our end to restrict that in any way. Got it. I'm going to come to the audience for questions in just a minute. But I want to ask you one more. You've already raised funds for this company uh that took you on a, you know, the, the show uh with investors. What did you learn from that experience? Um Yeah, very similar experience to playing football. Um Oh, please go on. Yeah, so what you realize is you aren't gonna be everybody's cup of tea. Um, in football when I was getting drafted, even when I was going to college, you always looked at, it only takes one, you need one person to believe in you and then that gets the ball rolling. Um And ultimately, you want to have a chance to be in the game. We found some great investors that support us in that way. Um So any other founders or people looking to raise funds? I, you're going to get a lot of nose through that process, keep going and just look for that one person that truly believes in you and is going to support you. Yeah. All right. Let's go to the audience for questions, please. Questions for calling. Oh, yes. Right up here. Well, please wait for the uh the mic your name and who you're with when you get it. Thank you. Thank you. So, uh Lorenza Ple and I work or have worked for a while with the economist. So I think it's great what you're doing, especially uh you know, trying to help the community and to people with low resources, to create content to sell, etcetera. Um So I'm curious to, especially because I've worked for a long time, mobile apps, engagement subscriptions, etcetera. Uh Yeah, I would like to understand what do you think is the best way uh to, you know, grow your platform, but at the same time making sure that it's affordable for people uh with low resources. And uh are you partnering with any other, let's say third party companies that will help you perhaps or get them like free credits? Like, I don't know, like to publish on Amazon books or to, you know, like get some sort of partnerships with, with publications to uh yeah, help uh help those with low income. Thank you. Yeah, that's a great question. Um So that's actually part of the foundation of why we built the platform. Um So right now, subscriptions start 20 to $75 a month. So we take a tiered approach to make sure we're trying to give access to people who may be financially constrained. Um The other part to step back and look at the difference in where we're at on this is if you look at the lowest bar of where creators are typically entering a publishing space today, typically is through a Kickstarter and they're raising 5 to $10,000 to get a project off the ground. Um So we're drastically lowering that barrier. Now, if you look at projects that I've done in the past, typically, you're looking at a six figure investment and you're looking at a two plus year production timeline um before it ever sees the light of day. So we're trying to break down both the expense and the speed of creation for creators to be able to get their ideas out into the world. Right on another question for Colin, please. Yes. Right up here in the front. Hey, Steven Steven Wolf Beta. I'm the CEO of AL Fund company. But before that I started a kids media company focused on diverse kids media called Nandos. And one of the great areas for creators to really monetize their I pe is actually with merchandizing. Do you envision the platform actually expanding into products and giving the ability to actually have storefronts? Um Just because there's so much more to just the content, it's actually all the merchandise. 1 1000% you are, you are dead on with how we are thinking about it. Um No, one of the things that we realize is the people who are consuming the content, the people who are buying the books are also the people that are most likely to buy the merchandise, like it's a natural progression. Um Most people aren't doing it. Um And the ones who are actually, they don't love the process of doing it. They just do it as a means to an end. Um So we want to help simplify that process all the way through for the creator from creation, taking that idea to a finished product, to the publishing, to the merchandizing. So one, they can create the things they actually want to. And two, they don't have to worry about the being the business owner, the operator handling all the logistics. Um Every creator we've talked to they're like, I just want to create, I don't want to do those things, but a lot of them end up doing it because they have to today and those are barriers that we can break down. Yeah. Yeah. Yeah. II, I understand that mindset very well. Let me ask you a question. Colin um, you know, you've gone on this, uh, this journey po you know, post, post football every morning, by the way, you still training, of course, OK. You heard it here. He's still training. I was, I was training before I got on my flight to come out here. Now you're making me feel bad. OK. So, so, II I would love to understand, you know, who you see as a mentor for this part of your career, whether that's in Silicon Valley or somewhere else. That's a great question. Um I think there have been a few different people that have really helped me get to where I'm at today. Um One has been in the VC community, Ben Horowitz has been great person to lean on. It's given me phenomenal insight. Um Williams has been another one who has really helped me my thinking. Um Having the opportunity to sit on the board of medium has been incredibly insightful and very helpful for my own development. Um And the other one just thinking about where I'm at today is Alexis Christina, the 776 team um who is our lead investors. They're incredibly brilliant and also great people. Um so to be able to have them to lean on and ask for guidance. Um And also just pick their brains on things that we're working on. Um how we can scale things more effectively, how we can reach, reach creators more effectively. Um Especially when you have someone like Alexis who's built reddit. Um You know, you have a great person to be able to lean on in that regard and an enthusiastic one. All right. Well, let's go for one, one more question. I think there was one over here, but I cannot recall. Oh, it's way over here. Yes. Hey, Carol. Hi, I'm Carol Vanda. I chair um responsible A I for Mars Incorporated. But outside of that, I'm actually an author. So I have a question because I know a lot of authors have negative feelings when it comes to A I, they feel that it's stealing their copyright, their IP how do you overcome those objections to launch Loy? And thanks for your great work. Oh, of course. Um Phenomenal question. And we have talked to a lot of writers about it. Um I think one is understanding that A I isn't going to do the work for you. Um Two is understanding that most of the writers are already using A I, they just don't know it as A I, um we talked to a lot of writers that hesitant, they wanted to see the platform, what it was um as we talked to them and they showed us their workflow, most of them are using grammarly um and the A I in their workflow already then as we get them on the platform and they see how it actually works and how we're looking to engage with them. Um We aren't looking to do the work for them and we're looking to be there to be helpful in that process if they need help brainstorming ideas, if they're struggling and, you know, they hit writer's block and they're looking for, where can I go with this? Where can I take it? Um So we're looking to help them through that process, but they also have the opportunity to use it as much or as little as they want. And that's one of the things that was really important for us. Um, both on the writers and the illustrator side is making sure that they have the opportunity to opt out if they want to, um, or engage when they do want to. Fantastic Colin, thank you so much for joining Fortune Brainstorm A I Yeah, absolutely. Thanks for having me. Ok.

is a unique conference dedicated to exploring the increasingly crucial nexus between business and design. 

Brainstorm Design 2024

Bob Dennis, Senior Director of Creative Studio & Resort Development, Universal Beijing Resort, In conversation with Nicholas Gordon, Editor, Asia Fortune

Brainstorm Design 2024: Designing Memories

Bob Dennis, Senior Director of Creative Studio & Resort Development, Universal Beijing Resort, In conversation with Nicholas Gordon, Editor, Asia FORTUNE  

So I thought there would be a fireplace. Uh Fortune invited me to a fireside chat. So I thought there would be a fireplace. But we brought is, is how is is wordplay part of your tool kit for memorable experiences. Yeah, it's immersion. Don't you feel cozy? So we're, we're going to get into your thoughts on park design, how to build immersive experiences, how to leverage emotions. But I have to ask, I'm a fervent player of video games. What was it like for Universal to work with Nintendo? Oh Amazing. First of all, Miyamoto. So is a genius and uh it's a learning curve for both of us. Uh because in the world of video games, it's digital and our world is physical with steel and concrete. Um So it's a learning curve on both sides but an amazing partnership. So, so as mentioned, you know, you've worked in this space for over 30 years. I believe your first gig was working for a San Rio theme park back in 1988. How has theme park design changed over the decades? Well, I'm old. So um when we were designing theme parks back in the eighties we didn't have any computers, we didn't have computer assisted design. It was all done with a pencil and then ink and then of course you pulled your prints. Um But everything was exhibition then and the industry has changed so much that now it's immersion. Um And we're getting better and better at that, but we've been doing immersion since before the term was even coined. So, I mean, let's split at that. I mean, given your long experience kind of working with immersive experiences, you know, before, was a buzzword that people used. You know, how do you actually create such an immersive memorable experience? What's your toolkit? And I believe we have some slides, maybe even some audience engagement a little bit as we go through this. So I think the table stakes because of where we are, it's a good reference. The table stakes are excellent storytelling and of course, um you'll hear this often today. Um visual stimulation, sensory input. So you need a, you need a beautiful picture, but you also need a logical story that the guests can connect to and find their place in what it is that you're trying to present. So that's cable stakes and where you have to go further is you have to, you want people to connect to the story you have and most people forget about emotion. So every memorable experience can be done by senses here in Macau, you get a sense of awe, a sense of grandeur. But what's missing to make it an episodal autobiographical memory is emotion. So the best connection is always made through emotions and often people confuse feelings with emotions. So there's a million colors and everything that we do happens here, it happens inside the brain, regardless of how good your design is or how grand your experience is, all of it has to be encoded so that we have an experience without the memory. What's the point? Right? So most people don't realize that with three colors, you can make a million, a million different colors with eight basic emotions. You can also make a million different feelings. And it's very important to understand the difference between emotions and feelings. OK? Can you guys guess what this emotion is? We don't need mics, you can just yell it out just fine play along, right? So this is obviously joy. I created these images um to trick you in a minute. Um But yeah, these are facial expressions uh that evoke that particular chemistry happening in your limbic system. So you understand joy, the opposite of joy. Of course, the next one, sadness, right? And after sadness, I'll, I'll see if you can guess this one. This is the trick. Most of you are thinking love, however, love is not an emotion. Love is a feeling that is a combination of several emotions. It could be joy, sadness, disgust, right? And um these all come together in a symphony inside our brain that we equate with the feeling of love. So it's trust, trust is the emotion. This one is a good one discussed, right? This is baked into our limbic system for your survival. Um And so memories that are formed along with this emotion are deeply encoded anger when we have a perceived wrong. Um These also are strongly recorded, not as moments but as experiences. So they're, they're like little videos instead of a snapshot. If somebody makes you afraid, you will retell this experience over and over again in great detail. OK? Anybody anger, right? Same process. So every oh they made me so mad and then they'll tell you every little detail because it's been recorded as an autobiographical memory. It was, it was an experience. OK? This one, this one, Alfred Hitchcock was a master at this. We use it often too um anticipation. And then finally, uh this is where you take your redirect. So if you use the emotion of anticipation, the brain starts creating all kinds of scenarios on its own and it engages deeply in the frontal cortex. And what this does is creates more engagement and people are doing their own self reflection. And then of course, you do the redirect, you take them into a way that they did not expect the outcome to be and we get surprised. So we have these eight emotions then how are you kind of putting them all together? And leverage them into a memorable experience. I mean, some of these emotions make sense for a theme park setting, joy, surprise anticipation, even fear, some feel a little bit, you know, maybe not quite as easy to put into an entertainment setting like discussed. So how are you leveraging all of these emotions together to kind of tell a story in the real world? It's a good point. So you don't want to manipulate people and you don't want to use uh emotions as trickery. So it has to be authentic. And so I think most designers forget about engineering those emotions in putting together a recipe or a symphony that causes crescendos and date crescendos. And that, that working together engages the person into a story and they, they're all useful, but some, we use more than others, obviously joy. Um There's a great one, anticipation. We try to stay away from fear and disgust, but they're used, we, we do use them. Um I want you to dive a bit deeper about kind of adapting these ideas, you know, a lot of universal zone properties, the properties of your partners like Warner for Harry Potter or Nintendo. These are things that exist on the page or on the screen. They don't exist in the real world. You know, as much as some of us would love magic to exist in the real world. It, it it doesn't. But how do you take these things that only exist? You know, in fiction basically and make them work as a real world experience. So this is why I'm losing my hair. Um So our, our creatives um Miyamoto Song JK Rowling, um They're amazing at creating worlds in print or production designers like Stuart Craig for film and they can pretty much create anything that they can imagine. So our job is to take that world and those stories and connect our guests to those characters. But we have to do it with steel and concrete building codes, safety requirements, throughput, operability. Um Basically, we shouldn't do anything because it's almost impossible. And yet we have many parts around the world that do just that. So um it, it's very difficult to, to translate, but we're very fortunate because we work with our IP partners and the films are there, we only get three or four minutes to, to kind of get people through that experience. Um And so we do a lot of callbacks, a lot of bringing up things that they saw or remembered in the film. And we have to do that in a way they can touch it. So a gag has to work every time, every day for years, not just to catch it, capture it on film. So I would say we use all the sciences um and all the arts and that our attractions are some of the most sophisticated machines there are. And I think that when you go to a theme Park. We don't want you to know that we try to keep that secret, but it's a fact. Um I want to stick on this film point for a second and how it connects particularly to one memory I have of going to Universal Studios, Japan when I was a very small child. I still remember seeing the Water World Exhibit for those who don't know. Water World is a 1995 film starring Kevin Costner. Um I'll say reactions to the film were mixed and being charitable. Um But I dare say the attraction is more, is, is, is more famous than the film at this point. Um It's in, it's in many of um universal parks. Um And so kind of why do you think this attraction in particular is so popular? And how does it fit in your philosophy for immersion and experience? We actually have some video that you can have talked for a bit first. It's a very good example. So the film mixed reviews on the film II, I don't think it was a blockbuster. Um But we were able to take uh from that film and use the emotions that are created by it and do a stunt spectacular. So not only was it visual, which is great and great sound and great lighting and great special effects, but everything is real. We don't use projections, there's real flames, we set the entire lagoon on fire and you will feel the heat from that and you will get wet. Um But in the story itself, we also engage many of the emotions, you may be angry at the villain. Um You feel some joy. So I think that the theme park experience in this example um has outlived the film and we're gonna show a little bit of it what actually happens on screen. Um So I want to talk about kind of another stakeholder in this discussion. We've talked about designers universal, we've talked about it partners, but there's also the fans um these are worlds with uh I'm going to call them very devoted fan bases, very passionate fan bases. That's true of Harry Potter. It's true of Nintendo, it's true of your um your peers at Disney, you have to work in Star Wars. Fans are passionate, they are also a little nuts. Um And so how do you kind of design these experiences in a way to kind of give fans what they want to make it memorable for them, but also managing expectations and managing it for those who maybe haven't read every single book a dozen times. So I think as designers, we often get caught up in our own story and um we, we wanna engage our visitors to remember what they want to experience. So at Universal, we really believe our guests are co creators. We engage often and constantly with those, not just the deep fans, but with uh the people that may not be deep fans, it's very important to get that feedback so that you're telling the story that they can get, that you're telling the story that they want to experience and that you don't get too stuck in what you want. Um So it has to be more objective, a little less subjective and constantly engaging with the feedback from the fans and we love hearing from them. Um And you're right, some of them are a little crazy, but we love that kind of crazy. Um You know, just kind of, it's gonna bring a kind of more examples of rides we've worked on. I mean, what's maybe another one of these exciting rides that you've worked on that really kind of shows your philosophy on, on designing immersive and memorable experiences. So the the awards are, are Industry's Oscars and we received it last year for Jurassic World Adventure. You all have to come to Beijing. That's the only place that attraction exists right now and that I believe really checks all the boxes on visual stimulation, um experiential design, but more importantly, emotion. So I remember when we opened, uh there was a 12 year old boy that was a guest of a friend of mine. And after going on that attraction, he asked me quite seriously, uh what do we feed our dinosaurs, right? So, so that type of sense, the suspension of disbelief um can only be found in, in, in the major players in this and that was why that is my favorite. I'm going to have to find an excuse to go find a story to write about it and then get work to expense it. Um But thank you Bob for, for walking us through the toolkit on how you build immersive experiences at universal. We're going to take a short break right now. Please help yourself to coffee, which will be served right outside the ballroom. Don't forget to pick up a copy of Gensler's design forecast 2025 report available at the desk on a first come first serve basis. So grab your copy. Now we'll meet back here for our next conversation promptly at 1045. When we come back, we'll hear from two of Silicon Valley's leading industrial designers and a panel of accomplished design leaders on customer experience. We'll see you back here soon.

Fortune Global Forum 2024

Abby Joseph Cohen, Professor of Business, Columbia University Graduate School of Business
Gary Cohn, Vice Chairman, IBM; Former Director, U.S. National Economic Council
Lynn Martin, President, NYSE Group
In conversation with: Diane Brady, Executive Editorial Director, Fortune Live Media and Co-Chair Fortune Global Forum

Fortune Global Forum 2024: Business at the Speed Of Change

Photograph by Michael O’Shea for Fortune

Abby Joseph Cohen, Columbia University Graduate School of Business
Gary Cohn, U.S. National Economic Council
Lynn Martin, NYSE Group
Diane Brady, Fortune Live Media and Co-Chair Fortune Global Forum

Conferences

Fortune 500 Titans and Disruptors of Industry

It’s been one year since Vice President Kamala Harris and then-Democratic nominee was coming down to her final days of the 2024 presidential campaign against Donald Trump. She spent 107 days on the road in a bid to earn their vote, but it wasn’t enough. Almost one year later, she’s had time to reflect. In a wide-ranging conversation at Fortune’s Most Powerful Women summit, Harris joined Fortune’s Editor in Chief Alyson Shontell at the Washington National Cathedral to discuss the growing divides between Republicans and Democrats, how the government is not meeting Americans’ basic needs, and why not inviting Elon Musk to the White House was a “mistake”.

Kamala Harris says the ‘Glass Cliff’ Suggests Finality: “I’m Not Into That”

JPMorgan Chase CEO Jamie Dimon has led the nation's largest financial institution through times of disruption for two decades. As Dimon navigates today's world of generative AI, President Trump's policies, and the effects on the global economy, Dimon sat down with Fortune's Editor-in-Chief, Alyson Shontell, to discuss these topics at the Most Powerful Women Summit in Washington, D.C. Dimon shares his thoughts on Washington, as the government is currently shut down, and Zohran Mamdani, the democratic socialist leading polls in the New York City mayoral race.

Jamie Dimon on What Kills Companies and the Key to Business Leadership

Ramp CEO Eric Glyman has helped build one of fintech’s fastest-growing startups — hitting $1 billion in annualized revenue, serving 45,000 businesses, and soaring to a $22.5 billion valuation in just 2,367 days. In this episode of Fortune 500: Titans and Disruptors of Industry, he sits down with Fortune’s Editor-in-Chief Alyson Shontell to break down Ramp’s meteoric rise, the business model flipping corporate cards on their head, and why he believes speed and focus are the keys to scaling.

How Ramp's Eric Glyman Built a $22.5 Billion Startup in 2,367 Days

In this segment of Fortune 500:Titans and Disruptors of Industry Accenture CEO Julie Sweet opens up about how a breast cancer diagnosis reshaped her perspective and sharpened her resolve. She reflects on saying “yes” to a stretch role that would set her on the path to CEO, and on how decisive leadership has become her trademark in moments of uncertainty.

How a Cancer Diagnosis Reframed Julie Sweet’s Approach Work and Leadership

Fortune's Editor and Chief Alyson Shontell sits down with Accenture CEO Julie Sweet

How a life-changing diagnosis forged Accenture CEO Julie Sweet’s leadership style

For Accenture CEO Julie Sweet, surviving cancer twice brought both clarity and urgency. In this conversation, she shares how those lessons shaped her path to the top.

A huge break that you got and deserved, frankly was the North America CEO job. How did you first know that that was something that you wanted? And how did that come about? That seems like a really big career moment and a really big opportunity that you had. So I'm just curious if there's a backstory there and how you prepared. I went from GC straight to the head of North America. Wow, and I remember the moment this even became a possibility. So I, I worked for an amazing CEO, Pierenter, and I was in Paris. He was French and we were having just a usual meeting. I was his general counsel. It's a very close relationship. We were kind of, you know, just doing the usual meeting. At the end of the meeting, he closes his notebook and he pushes it aside, and he says to me, completely out of the blue, he says, I think you could run this place someday, but you'd have to run something else first. You can't go from general counsel to CEO. Well, so he thought you could be the CEO of the whole thing, like, right, he could see me. He said, you know, do you want that? Now at the time, what ran into my head immediately was something that we had this incredible director Dina Dulon, who had once talked to a group of women, and she'd given us advice. She said, When someone gives you a stretch role, and let's face it, moving from GC to, you know, being the global CEO is a stretch role, it's like, chances are that the person offering you a stretch role is as nervous or more nervous than you are. So don't say anything like, are you sure? You know, right? And it would have been really easy to, because I was very close to Pierre, um, and, you know, it would have been easy to be kind of like, oh, are you sure? da da da. And you know, what's most remarkable about me being global CEO is not that I'm the first woman or that I was a lawyer, but I'm actually the first CEO that didn't start out of college, right? So like, it had never occurred to me that Accenture. would take someone who hadn't grown up here to be CEO and then you add on top of it, I was the general counsel like it wasn't just part of like something I thought I could reasonably aspire to. So I looked at him and I said, with Dena in my head, why yes, I'd be interested. What did you have in mind? Is that like interim step, you know, and it was really funny because he said, Well, you know, products is going to come available. That's one of our business scene, he's like, but that's really big. He's like, Ooh la la, you know, maybe not. And he said, Well, you know, maybe the North America job. So that was just like an incredible moment. And a month later I found out I had breast cancer. Oh my gosh. So I wasn't thinking too much about, you know, running North America at the time, and he was so incredible to me. And then when I came back full time, I had a lot of complications. And when I came back full time, the North America job actually opened up and You know, what an amazing company I work for, because, you know, I battled with all the different things around breast cancer for about 9 months, and I remember I came back in January of 2015 and there wasn't something like, oh, you know, Julie's been out or anything. It was just like, oh, she's back. The job, you know, became available and Um, you know, long story short, on June 1st, 2015, I became the North America CEO, which, you know, was the stepping stone to be able to become the global CEO four years later. Wow. There must be something so clarifying and distilling about getting a diagnosis like that. And I'm curious how, and you've battled it now twice, including recently, and I'm so glad that your treatment has passed, and I hope, I hope you're doing well. I'm doing great, so thank you, and I've had so much support. It's been amazing. So I'm curious how it's changed you as a person. I'm sure you know it brings empathy with it, but also clarity of how do I want to be spending my time? Am I doing the thing that I really want to be doing? Do I want to spend all this time at work? So I'm curious how you've worked through that. When I go back to 2014, I had young kids, they were 6 and 7, and uh which is always scary, um. And you know at the time, I felt good about how I'd been living my life because I said, you know, like, do I have any regrets? And I, and I actually felt like I'd struck the right balance with the given that obviously I'd chosen a career that I was going to work a lot, like so it's not that I was, you know, like that was just a that was a choice, but within that choice I felt good about the choices that I had made in terms of time. And in the intervening years I've used that as kind of a litmus test because I mean, you know, like I know your job is crazy, so I know you, you relate to this, right? You can get sucked into different times being really busy and so I would, I would stop and ask myself like if, you know, if something happened to me tomorrow, would I still feel like I didn't have any regrets? And sometimes I'd be like, no, I would be regretful and I'd have to adjust. And so I think it helped me. Bring more balance over the 10 years and balance, not like somehow some nirvana, but being able to stay focused on what's important, which is my family and, and, you know, being with them. And then this, you know, this latest time is just of course always a reminder. So for me, you know, probably the thing that as a working mom kind of went to the wayside the most was a focus on my health. Then now fortunately the one area I always did was self exams because I actually found Recent cancer through a breast self exam and I always talk about that because I really want to encourage women to make sure that they're getting their mammograms and they're doing their regular self exams and because, you know, ultimately because I caught it early, you know, I'm here and I was able to get through it pretty quickly. But you know, this time around for me it was a little bit more of a wake up call that, you know, just focusing on my health and, you know, not so much but because of the cancer, but recognizing that I'm probably, I wasn't spending as much time. It wouldn't have affected whether I had cancer or not, but it was kind of like a reflection on I want to live a really long life. Like you get really clear, I want to live a really long life, and I want that to be a quality life and I was reading this book by Peter Atia, I don't know if you know it outlived and And he talks about, you know, having a health quality, not just life, you know, tenure, and what he talks about is like you want to have that last 10 years of your life be very high quality, and that means you've got to do things now. And so I'm super focused on making sure that I'm doing the things that I need to do now that are good for my health now but also put me in a position that You know, I have, you know, an opportunity in the last decade of my life to live it to the fullest. Even as she faced her own health struggles, Sweet was steering Accenture through seismic shifts in geopolitics, the economy, and rapid tech change. In 2022, after navigating the firm through COVID, she made the swift decision to pull Accenture's operations out of Russia just one week after the country's invasion of Ukraine. Russia overnight launched its long anticipated attack on Ukraine, striking military posts across the country. That kind of rapid response reflects a broader leadership style, spotting opportunities and moving fast to act on them. Sweet has also helped drive an aggressive mergers and acquisitions push. In 2024 alone, Accenture completed 46 acquisitions worth $6.6 billion. The company targeted firms in data, analytics, marketing, and AI to strengthen its position in fast growing sectors. Beyond AI, the company is pushing into bold new areas too, from humanoid robots to space tech and even building digital twins. I think one of the defining things that I just heard from your peers, we have a great profile of you out in Fortune. Every everybody should go read it. Jane Frazier, who runs City, said, you know, Julie is a great leader, but she makes decisive quick decisions, and that seems to be just something that's trademark about your to lead is that you are able to take a lot of noise and just be like this is the path going with conviction. How do you make those decisions because from everybody else it seems like it's fast and quick, but I'm sure to you there must be something going on internally. Is it data? Is it gut? Is it talking to peers? How are you coming to these conclusions? Well, first of all, Jane is an amazing leader, so it's so nice of her to say this. Um, it starts with a great team, and what do I mean by that? I have a team that is constantly, like, also, you know, acting with humility, excellence and confidence, right? We are constantly challenging each other and our assumptions. And when you have a team that thinks that way, right, not that they all think the same, in fact, the exact opposite because we put together teams with like diverse experiences and ideas, but when you build a team that thinks that status quo is challenging assumptions embracing change, it means you're constantly questioning, right? You don't need to stop and have a big strategy, sort of like, let's take the next, you know, 12 months to look at it because you're always working on the strategy. And when you have that base, that means that you have like leaders to go to to like to be starting to question and test things and then I have a larger team, a global management committee. That is deeply steeped in our strategy. They own every dollar of revenue and cost who are like also constantly providing input and they're there to bounce ideas off very, very quickly. And this was an innovation when I became the CEO. A back in 2019 because the prior CEO only had his direct reports as the Global Management Committee, and I expanded that to me the direct reports and the people who lead our services, so think of that as our products and our markets and what that Means is I have about 45 people who are deeply steeped in our strategy, not, you know, sort of meeting once a year, you know, like lots of companies have these like kind of groups of leaders that are almost an adjunct. These are the leaders who are running the company and they provide that constant input. And so I cannot emphasize enough how important it is to have a body of leaders who know more than just their role. who believe that their role is is also to lead the company and that you can have like this constant resource of input so that as you're testing ideas you know you've got the right input and that makes me able to make decisions with a lot of confidence and to do so with my team.

Accenture CEO Julie Sweet leads one of the world’s largest workforces—and is navigating an era defined by AI disruption, geopolitical volatility, and shifting global markets. In this segment of the Fortune 500: Titans and Disruptors of Industry vodcast, she shares how she advises fellow CEOs to reinvent their companies, reflects on her unconventional leap from law to CEO, and opens up about the lessons that shaped her rise to one of the most powerful roles in business. 

How Accenture’s CEO Took the Leap From Law to Consulting

Alyson Shontell sits down with Accenture CEO Julie Sweet

Julie Sweet shares how she her unconventional path from lawyer to CEO—and what it takes to rewire companies in the age of AI disruption.

From law to the corner office: Accenture CEO Julie Sweet reflects on her rise and why today’s leaders must rewire their companies to withstand AI and shifting markets.

You are able to take a lot of noise and just be like this is the path going with conviction. How do you make those decisions? It starts with a great team. We are constantly challenging each other and our assumptions, and that makes me able to make decisions with a lot of confidence. AI is transforming every industry, and it puts even the biggest companies at risk. Top venture capitalists. The Node COSLA predicts that the 2030s will see the demise of more Fortune 500 companies than at any point in history. This transformation is the number one thing on every Fortune 500 CEO's mind, especially for Julie Sweet, who runs one of the largest workforces in the world with more than 770,000 employees. In order to capture the opportunity with AI, you have to be willing to rewire your company. I recently sat down with Julie about how she's advising other CEOs to transform their companies and how she's trying to keep AI from eating Accenture's own lunch. Our conversation was packed full of advice and it was personal. Her journey from a small California town to becoming one of the most powerful people in global business is inspiring, especially as she has battled and beaten cancer now twice. I'm your host, Importance's editor in chief, Allison Chantel. Please enjoy the first episode of my podcast, Fortune 500, Titans and Disruptors of Industry with Accenter CEO Julie Sweet. Julie, it is so nice to be here with you today. Thank you for joining me. It's the inaugural Fortune 500 podcast podcast episode of Titans and Destructors of Industry, and who better to have in you. Well, thank you, Allison, and I'm really honored to be your first, so that's that's really exciting for me. So thank you for having me. Since becoming CEO, Sweet has nearly doubled Accenture's value and grown its workforce to over 770,000 employees across 52 countries. That's more than 20 times the size of a key rival, McKinsey, ranked number 211 on our Fortune Global 500 list. It's also among the mere 5% of Fortune Global 500 companies that's run by a woman. First off, you're on Accenture. You've run it since 2019. It is in the top five largest workforces in the world. On top of that, you generate some of the largest revenue in the world. You're number 211 on our Fortune 50 Global 500 list, right, that ranks companies by revenue. I think it's like $65 billion. In a year or something that a center does and then also just you are incredibly powerful. You rank number 11 on our most powerful people in business lists. So I'd just love to start with an economic snapshot from your vantage point. What are the major things on your radar that are affecting your business, but also the businesses of all the CEOs that seek your counsel and work with the center? Well, there's a lot of trends that are literally affecting the world, right? So one, the obvious one, has been tariffs and trade. And that affects countries differently, but there isn't a country that's not being touched by that, so that's one. Second, there has been an ongoing shift in geopolitics, and you know, sometimes people say to me like, oh, right now it's so volatile and uncertain, and you know, I've been CEO for 6 years and I'm kind of like, that's been the story of the last 6 years and And we'll talk about that later, I'm sure, but you've been seeing a shift in geopolitics for some time, like the role of the Middle East. We look at Southeast Asia as things have changed with China, and so making sure that you understand the opportunities and the challenges. So oftentimes people think about the supply chain, but it's also a huge opportunity and are you positioned to take advantage of where growth may come. In the future, so those are two of the big ones. And of course then you can't go, you know, you can't walk past AI, so you'll notice I didn't start there, the obvious one. When I think about AI, the thing that for me is so exciting is that, you know, the last several years have been a series of what were once black swan events. And now the CEOs around the world have a powerful set of tools that they didn't have for some of those events before. Now those tools are hard and they're complex and they have a lot of different, you know, aspects to consider. But as I look forward, it's, you know, very rare as a CEO that you're handed something that is brand new, wasn't part of the toolkit, and allows you to look at the world and really shape your future, and we talk a lot about You know, how do you set the next performance frontier, and AI is definitely something that allows you to think very differently about your future trajectory. So those are the three of the big ones. There's more demographic changes we can go on and on, but those are 3 that I'm talking to a ton of CEOs about, and of course underlying all of that are the talent implications. Unlike traditional strategy focused consulting firms, Accenture doesn't just advise. It also takes on operations and services on behalf of its clients, and its clients span a wide range of industries from banks like Citi and Barclays to Nestle, Saudi Aramco, and pharmaceutical giants like Pfizer. Since we took the helm in 2019, she's helped boost the company's revenue more than 50% to $65 billion. But Sweet's path to CEO was far from typical. In her years before joining Accenture, Sweet had a high profile legal career, earning a scholarship to Claremont McKenna College, graduating from Columbia Law, and making partner at an elite firm within 8 years. In 2007, she landed on the cover of American Lawyer as dealmaker of the Year. So when you decide to come to the center, by the way, you've already had a tremendous career as a lawyer, a career that I think most people wouldn't have said, Oh, I'm just going to forget this path. You rose to partner at one of the top law firms within 8 years, and I'm curious, why did you make that career change? Why say I'm going to go into this crazy tech consulting firm that I don't really don't know that much about, and I'm going to leave this really cushy setup I've created for myself and go try something totally different. How do you weigh a big career change like that? Well, and Allison, one of the things I look back to and now that's like not many people realized was I made the change when I had a 2 year old and a 3 year old as well. I respect that. I took this job when I had a newborn, exactly, which I'm like it all up at the same time. Exactly. You're like, I'm like, oh my gosh, what was I thinking? Well, you know, it is interesting because I was in my office and I love my law firm, so I love the job and I got a call and my assistant had had stepped away and I, this was like a very You know, like a law firm where you had somebody answer always answers your phone, you know, and we had like iced tea delivered 3 times a day to my office, you know, I had a beautiful office. And so I pick up the phone because she'd stepped away and it was a head hunter talking about like this great opportunity and You know, I look back, I was 42, and my father had actually just passed away recently, and I think that definitely affected me because he died quite young at 68. So I'm like listening to this and I'm like, you know what, I'm going to take a meeting. And when I did that, I said to myself like, I know I'm 42, I'm super successful, and I absolutely know what my future is going to be like at Cravath, right? Like because it's like the deals would change, but I made partner and I was like, OK, I could see my future and Then I went and I interviewed with Accenture, who I knew about because I'd done actually a securities deal for a competitor where, you know, we had to like learn about Accenture as a competitor and so I respected the company. Their CEO Bill Green was incredibly charismatic. He had the best line ever for me. Like I, I just fell for a hook line and sinker in my interview. He said, I'm not looking for a lawyer, which is kind of funny because he was hiring a general counsel. He said, I'm looking for a business leader with legal experience. And I'm like, that's what I want to be. And so I ended up taking, you know, taking the leap, and it was the it was the right time. And you know, when I, you know, think back to it, I'm sure my dad's passing had something to do with it, but also just the possibilities of making an impact and uh you know, I've just, I was so fortunate because I absolutely love Accenture. It's an amazing company. I was very privileged to join and I feel really privileged every day to leave this place. So it sounds like a big new opportunity and challenge, a chance to try something new, but to really expand who you were. So you've said that when you were 42 and you came in as general counsel to Accenture, you didn't have the skill set then to be the. CEO, but you're the CEO. So what happened? What was missing and how did you work on those things and know to work on those things? Well, just to start with, I didn't understand technology when I joined, and Accenture is all about technology, and I figured out pretty quickly that If I wanted to be the business leader with legal experience, I had to deeply understand the business. And so after I'd been here nearly 12 months, probably, I made friends with someone named Bhaskar Ghosh, who was running our India technology practice at the time. He would eventually become our global head of technology and now my chief strategy officer, and I asked him, I said, Will you teach me technology? And it really was because I thought of myself as a business leader and I didn't deeply understand the business that we were in. And so we used to meet every 2 weeks for about 18 months, and he would send me off to meet people to learn things. I still remember the guy that taught me, you know, what cloud was, and and that really set me on a very different path because I think my boss at the time, Pierre Naner, saw me differently too. He saw me showing up differently and so did my colleagues. And so anywhere in do it because sometimes it can feel like, oh, I just want to act like I know this thing, but I really don't know this thing, but You seem pretty fearless about just going in and saying like nope, don't know it, tell me everything. I think one of my superpowers is asking for help, you know, I, and maybe that goes back to humility and the idea of building great teams, and so I've always been that way. I've always, you know, if you focus on how you deliver value, then it becomes very natural that you have to have a team and you have to ask for help because at the level that we operate, no one delivers value alone. And one of the things I I coach a lot of people because the people come to me and say, Well, how do I network, etc. and I'm like, look, don't think about networking. Think about connecting with people that can help you deliver more value or who you can help deliver more value and focus on that as opposed to someone who can get you your next job, because the more value you can contribute to your company, the more likely you're going to get that best next job and I've always thought about that with my clients, right? It's like, what do my clients need? They need me to better understand this. And when I was the general counsel, my, my client was actually the company, and what did they need from me? They needed me to understand the business better, to be a better general counsel. And so that focus on value has really been, I think, a big part of my career trajectory.

AI is rewriting the rules of business — and Accenture CEO Julie Sweet says reinvention is the only way Fortune 500s will survive. In the debut episode of Fortune 500: Titans and Disruptors of Industry, Sweet sits down with Fortune’s Editor-in-Chief Alyson Shontell to reveal how she’s nearly doubled Accenture’s value, grown its workforce to 770,000, and kept the company thriving through disruption.

Julie Sweet’s Path From Lawyer to Leading 770,000 People

Titans and Disruptors of Industry

Behind the Business

Since Michelle Gass took the helm as CEO of Levi Strauss & Co. in January 2024, the company has been on a mission to reach $10 billion. Behind this vision is a fresh collection of luxury denim and streamlined go-to-market strategies designed to elevate the brand's status and reach new markets.

Inside Levi’s CEO’s growth plan: "We should be at least a $10B company"

Since Michelle Gass took the helm as CEO of Levi Strauss & Co. in January 2024, the company has been on a mission to reach $10 billion. Behind this vision is a fresh collection of luxury denim and streamlined go-to-market strategies.

Since Michelle Gass took the helm as CEO of Levi Strauss & Co. in January 2024, the company has been on a mission to reach $10 billion.

Just a few head of Levi's blue jeans and a lot of heart miles. You see, fashions may change, but quality never goes out of style. For over 170 years, Levi's has defined American Denim. The brand is now tightening its belt and cutting costs in efforts to reinvent itself and return value to shareholders. We made some tough calls. We made some really tough calls, and that was hard. The brand closed out the 2024 fiscal year with $6.4 billion in net revenue. That's 3% growth in Levi's CEO Michell. Goss's first year at the helm. Now we always have to be really tight in the DNA of the brand. Levi's stock price fluctuated throughout the year, going as high as $24 and as low as $15. The brand is up against fast fashion retailers and luxury giants that aim to rise above the competition in the denim market, but will slimming down costs and tapping into the luxury market be enough to expand its control in the denim wars? So big picture, what has been for you the biggest pleasant surprise? I think one of the most exciting things, and I'd also put it to your question, one of the most surprising things is how much of a lift this is around the culture. You know, Levi's, we've been around for 170 years now. There have been many chapters along the way, but Over the last couple of decades, we've operated largely as a product brand company selling through others, a wholesaler, and now we're saying, OK, we still are going to do that, but close to 50% of our business is GTC. And so when you have to make that level of change, and you can do all the process you want, but you've really, you've got to get the buy in of the hearts and minds of the teams and the people, and I know we have their hearts, you know, and we have their minds, but like what does that mean in practice? But hard decisions have also marked her tenure. The company exited its footwear products in Europe, parted ways with its affordable denizen catalog, and began conversations to sell off its Dockers brand. In January 2024, the denno company also announced it would slash up to 15% of its global corporate workforce, part of a larger productivity initiative. We made some. Tough calls and the responsibility, the role I have responsibility I have to all of our stakeholders, our shareholders, our communities, our board, all of our people, everyone we serve is to make sure that this company is set up to thrive over the long term, and we recognize that we had just we had. Gotten too big and so we had to slim down the organization, especially in our corporate offices around the world. In 2024 $289 million in capital was returned to shareholders. This is 45% higher than the year before. In simpler terms, the company gave back significantly more money to its investors compared to the preceding year, rewarding them for their investments. Let's go say hi to Beyonce. Another first year high for Goss was fortifying a decades-long relationship. I had to. Uh. You gave her a shout out in your most recent earnings call. How important are collaborations like that? We call it living at the center of culture, you know, the right collaborations create great brand heat for us, and they drive that relevancy again. A brand that's been around for decades and decades. How do you continue to reinvent might be too strong a word but stay relevant while always staying true to your heritage? The campaign titled Reimagine puts a spin to iconic Levi advertisements with none other than Beyonce and her song Levi's Jeans. The Levi Strauss and Company brand dates to 1853 when it opened as a San Francisco dry goods store during the gold rush. Levi Strauss, a German immigrant, partnered with Latvian tailor Jacob Davis to create a durable pair of pants for working men, and in May 1873, the pair received a US patent for their design. Today, Levi's ranks 2nd among apparel companies on the Fortune Most admired Companies list. This is 5 spots higher than the previous year. The brand has a global presence across 110 countries with about 3400 stores. Meanwhile, the global denim jeans market is expected to hit $95 billion by 2030, and the company is looking to women to carve out a larger stake in the market. Look for Levi's womenswear. Do you think you can ever get to 50/50 in the genders or even majority female? 50/50 feels about right for us. I mean, we have a great men's business. It's go way back when. It's how the company. right, so while I look to the future, and by the way we're a little over a $6 billion company today. I look forward and we should be at least a $10 billion company, and that's going to come through a few ways, but women's is going to be a key means to do that. Levi's is also looking to expand its identity well beyond its denim jeans. To get this done, the company is aiming for its direct to consumer model to account for 50% of business. The brand also looks to triple its e-commerce operations. When I talk about denim dressing, head to toe denim, you know, our consumers are really responding to fun fashion like this. Driving the shift are decisions to ensure consumers have the latest trends. The company is transitioning from a two-season model to a 4 season approach. The company also aims to slash its go. Market timeline from 16 to 12 months. We have to be a lot faster to make sure we're catching the trend. And so we're faster today than we were a year ago, and we're going even faster because you've got to hit it right when it's happening. You can't be too late. And keeping tabs on trends has already proven invaluable. Our teams who are out looking a couple of years see what's happening on the streets, and now. You know, baggy loose like it's everywhere and everybody's wearing it and I'm very pleased to say that it was Levi's who started that trend. Being attentive has also allowed Levi's to tap into the luxury goods space. The brand introduced Blue Tab for its spring 2025 collection featuring sophisticated silhouettes made with Japanese selage denim. We've had a blue tab for quite some Time and it would show up in our Japanese denim made in Japan product and you know that's been out there enough and consumers even play back to us, Oh, it's the blue tab. That must be the good stuff. While Goss is betting on attracting more women to the brand, widening product lineup, and emphasizing TTC to drive growth, her focus remains squarely on sustained expansion. It doesn't have to be heroics, you know, it shouldn't be these big swings up and down, you know, steady beat of nice growth and without risk there is no reward. Now with that in place. We got to deliver. We've got to execute, and there's still opportunities, you know, and there'll be some mistakes along the way. Not everything always goes as as perfectly as one would expect, but I feel like we are poised to deliver.

Adobe is going all-in on AI, integrating generative and agentic tools across its Creative and Experience Clouds. As the company shifts its strategy, creative and marketing professionals—especially newcomers—face growing pressure to keep up. Here’s what Adobe’s AI push means for the future of creative and marketing work.

Adobe’s Secret Weapon in the AI Race? Trust—and Millions of Subscribers

Adobe is doubling down on AI by integrating generative and agentic tools into its platforms. 

Adobe is going all-in on AI, integrating generative and agentic tools across its Creative and Experience Clouds. As the company shifts its strategy, creative and marketing professionals—especially newcomers—face growing pressure to keep up. 

For decades, Adobe set the standard in creative software. Tools like Photoshop and Premiere helped define entire industries and shape creative careers. But in recent years, the company has been staking its claim in the fast moving world of artificial intelligence by embedding generative and now agentic AI directly into its legacy products. And creators are noticing Doby's new AI called Firefly. They've done a very good job of taking that loyal following and producing Gen AI in the format that most of those developers have been used to. And Adobe's ambitions don't stop at creative software. The company is now releasing AI tools that are transforming how global brands deliver marketing campaigns. But these transformations across the industry are raising tough questions about AI's role in creative fields and who benefits from this new era of automation. Junior creatives are being pressed by the market to react in AI timing, which is light speed. Here's a closer look at how Adobe is adapting to the AI era and how it's helping to shape the future of creativity and marketing. For years, Adobe sold box software like Photoshop, Illustrator, and Premiere for a flat fee. That changed in 2012, when it moved to a subscription-only model with Creative Cloud. Definitely a cloud. Subscriptions gave Adobe a steady predictable revenue stream and allowed it to update products continuously. They've moved from where you buy the product and then can use it essentially for free from there on out to charging on their way. That's Steven Messer, the co-founder of an AI sales company called Collective Eye. With over a decade of experience in the field, he's had a front row seat to the AI boom. The speed at which its adoption took place, the speed at which people learned to write prompts, prompt engineering was a word that no one had ever heard of, but the speed at which they did that was unfathomable. Gen AI has really changed the creative world dramatically. By 2022, Generative AI was already reshaping how creative work got done. Tools like OpenAI's Dolly and startups like Midourney let users generate high quality images in seconds. No traditional software needed. And when you ask Dolly for an image of a koala bear riding a motorcycle, it knows how to create that or anything else with a relationship to another object or action. After years of layering smaller AI features into its tools, Adobe made its biggest move in 2023 with the commercial launch of Adobe Firefly. Unlike newer AI startups, Adobe integrated generative AI into familiar tools across its Creative cloud, giving it a head start with a built-in audience. Across its Creative Cloud and acrobat applications, the company reaches over 750 million monthly active users. I think Adobe has a loyal base of customers, so a user of their products can just incorporate GenAI as part of their workflow as opposed to having to learn entirely new applications. Similar to other generative AI tools, Adobe Firefly can generate high quality images and video from text prompts, but it goes further, powering tools within creative cloud apps like Generative Fill and Expand in Photoshop. Watch. Boom, and text to vector graphics in Illustrator. Take your sketch from this to this in seconds. Adobe has a legacy of people who know how to use those products very well, which means they're already trained, they're already efficient. They know what they're doing, so if they want to create something very specific, then make it 3D, then have it do different things or be in different environments. Now you're talking about taking that creative license of a professional and just blowing it out um in a much more efficient. And the company is also taking a more cautious approach to AI training. Many AI platforms train their models by scraping content from across the web, raising copyright concerns. The New York Times suing OpenAI, the creator of Chat GPT, and Microsoft for copyright infringement. But Adobe says Firefly is different, trained only on licensed and public domain content. Unlike a lot of other software companies, they've actually chosen to build most. Their Gen AI on their own. Their argument is that it's always licensed creative that they're using, so that anything that's that's going to train their Gen AI is going to be safe from threats of copyright infringement, trademark infringement, etc. And so their real goal is to go out there and say this is a safe environment. But Adobe is far from alone in this space. In just two years, the generative AI market has exploded from a market of 191 million. In 2022 to more than 25 billion in 2024. When you see foundation models coming up at the speed they're coming up, it is all over the map. It's not just meta, which is a risk to them. It's not just runway. It's not just mid journey. It's literally a range of people coming out of nowhere, and it might be people building on top of those models. Competitors like OpenAI, Canva, Sigma, Runway, Stability AI, and Mid Journey are moving fast. With some AI first tools that can be simpler and cheaper than Adobe's offerings, the risk they run is that their loyal audience looks and says, Wait a second, this new tool actually is easier or is faster or is cheaper or is better, and if I don't use this new thing, I'm going to lose in the overall game of competition. Meanwhile, tech giants like Google, Microsoft, and Meta are flooding the space with their own generative AI models. I look at that. When they released their new Llaa model, they came out with a cartoon version of everyone, and everyone quickly flew on to Meta to make a cartoon version of themselves. Well, that is the risk to Adobe. You've never seen the speed at which people are willing to change products just to get one capability that is at the edge or really hot and exciting. But Adobe still dominates when it comes to the creative software market, commanding over 80% of market share in 2024. But the rise of generative AI like Adobe Firefly is reshaping how creative work is done and who gets to do it, especially for junior talent breaking into the industry. Junior creatives are being pressed by the market to react in AI timing, which is light speed. Bruno Lemgruber is an associate professor of design at the University of Southern California and a creative director at Tabaruba Design with over 2. Decades of experience in the industry. So things have shifted in such a dramatic way. Before, you would do something in a week or in 40 hours and now you can do it in 1/10 of the time. And if the market is pressing people to respond in AI timing, then you're being neglected the time to reflect and to use critical thinking. And for senior designers, senior creators. You have enough experience to know what you're skipping, but if you're a junior, you're actually skipping a learning curve. AI is also changing the structure of creative teams. Tasks once given to interns or junior staff can now be done instantly with generative tools. Before, I would have interns or junior designers to try things that I kind of have a vague idea that will probably not work, but I say, hey, let's try it out. Now I can quickly experiment that with AI. There are many things that before you would require junior creatives to be involved. And now you don't need them. When it comes to the creative process, AI has advantages too, like saving time and making it easier to experiment. AI gives you the time because you didn't invest like hundreds of hours. You can quickly experiment, prototype something. Do I like that? Is there where I wanted to go? No, it's not. And like. and do it again. You're not stuck on like, oh, I already spent like 200 hours. I need to keep going. Now some creative professionals say they're under pressure not just to use AI, but prove they're keeping up in design and creative direction in general, if you don't embrace AI, you're most likely going to become irrelevant. As creatives adapt to a shifting landscape, Adobe is pushing beyond generative AI into what's known as agentic AI or AI agents. While generative AI creates content based on data patterns, Agentic AI acts more like a digital assistant, automating multi-step processes. Agenic AI is generally a new concept that people are talking about, and this is where the AI does its own thing on its own, and it starts to make decisions on behalf of the end user for you. Adobe is integrating these AI agents into its creative cloud and marketing products like Gen Studio and the recently launched Agent Orchestrator. The company says these tools help marketers streamline their entire content supply chain. Adobe Gen Studio for performance marketing lets marketers create their own on-brand email, paid social ads, and display ads. The tools are built to automate tasks like asset creation and performance tracking, helping brands scale and adapt campaigns more efficiently, and that strategy appears to be driving results. In fiscal year 2024, Adobe reported record breaking revenue with joint creative and marketing enterprise deals growing by more than 100% year over year. I don't think people have been paying enough attention to Adobe's approaches to Gen AI. They are doing some pretty interesting things. They are playing with different ways to incorporate Gen AI into existing products, but I don't know if they've really gotten the attention of the world, and I think that's what people keep waiting for is what are they doing on the frontier that's really going to blow people away.

American Express is winning over Gen-Z by offering curated experiences and personalized rewards that resonate with younger audiences. In 2023, Gen Z accounted for 75% of new American Express Platinum and Gold cardholders, drawn to benefits like exclusive event access and dining perks. This video explores how Amex's strategy of tapping into experiential rewards is transforming the credit card landscape and setting new standards for customer loyalty. 

How Gen-Z Made Amex Cool 

In the first quarter of 2025, Millennials and Gen Z drove over 60% of new global Amex sign-ups. 

American Express built its brand on elite travel benefits and luxury perks – but now it’s shifting to win over a younger audience: Gen Z. 

American Express built its brand on elite travel benefits and luxury perks, but now it's shifting to win over a younger audience, Gen Z. That's the powerful backing of American Express. In the first quarter of 2025, Millennials and Gen Z drove over 60% of new global Amex signups fueled in part by influencer-driven buzz. Hear me out. Get the platinum AMEX card. It's metal and it goes. Things at the heart of this growth is Amex's loyalty and rewards program. So especially as everything costs more, if you can get champagne travel on a beer budget, that's a lot of what Gen Z and millennials are trying to achieve. Here's a closer look at how this 170-year-old credit card giant is evolving to stay relevant with the next generation of cardholders. For decades, American Express was the go to card for luxury travelers and the business elite, built on prestige and premium perks. My name is Tina Fey. Oh, go right in. Really, that worked. Are you aware that you can access over 120 lounges simply by showing the platinum card? But that image. and its older customer base is shifting. In 2023 alone, Gen Z and Millennials accounted for 75% of Amex's new platinum and gold card accounts. Gen Zers are actually bigger risk takers with their money. They came of age though at a different time. It was actually around the pandemic time when money was actually flowing freely. People got all that stimulus money. A lot of Gen Z's introduction to money, at least in adulthood, was more gambling on meme stocks and crypto. We've actually seen Gen Zers proving a lot more risk takers with their money, and that includes taking on debt and also taking on riskier investments. A study from TransUnion found 84% of Gen Z consumers aged 22 to 24. Had at least one credit card by the end of 2023. That's a 23% higher rate than millennials at the same age a decade ago. Millennials were famously debt averse, very slow to get credit cards, perhaps because they have hefty student loan burdens, and many grew up around the time of the financial crisis. Gen Z spends differently too. Unlike older generations who prioritized travel upgrades in airport lounges, Gen Z is putting more of their money towards experiences. and lifestyle, and Amex is leaning in. They'll get you a free global entry or TSA PreCheck membership. They have their own special lounges at certain music festivals and sporting events. You get a little bit off your media subscriptions. You get a little bit off Uber. You get a little bit off these food delivery apps, but it is sticky and it keeps people coming back for more. Amex's business model makes it uniquely positioned to build out this rewards ecosystem. Unlike many of its competitors that just run the payment networks, Amex operates in a closed loop system. That means it handles everything in-house, functioning as the issuer, the acquirer, and the network. Amex has a unique business model in that they're both a lender and a payment processor. Visa and Mastercard dominate the network side of things, but they're not lenders. They're not extending credit. Amex is playing both sides of that. That full picture view. From both shoppers and merchants gives Amex an advantage. It knows where customers are spending and can tailor company rewards to keep them coming back. There's something about getting 4x points when paying for dinner with this card that just hits different. Gen Z and millennials use their Amex cards for dining nearly twice as much as other generations, according to the company. Amex saw an opportunity and moved fast. In 2019, the company acquired Resi, a restaurant reservation platform that Cardholders early access to in-demand tables, and in 2024 it expanded its dining ecosystem by acquiring the high-end restaurant booking service Talk, as well as Rome, a mobile payments app. When you're with Amex Gold, you can stack 4 times points on restaurants around the world. Amex has really leaned into dining as one of their key experiences. They have elevated dining rewards on a bunch of their credit cards, but Also relates to the experience aspect where they can help you book a table at a fancy restaurant. They can sometimes offer chef tutorials and meet and greets, and I'm right here in New York City for the American Express Platinum Coast dining experience. Amex also taps into brand partnerships to appeal to a younger audience. Y'all already know by now that my first job every single year at Coachella is always the Amex experience. Influencer marketing. It is a big deal. They do these activations at film festivals and concerts and music festivals and things like that. It is a way to reach young people. These rewards are designed to keep younger cardholders spending. This boosts transaction volume and in turn drives up revenue. Everybody wants a freebie, right? So especially as everything costs more, if you can get champagne travel on a beer budget, that's a lot of what Gen Z and millennials are trying to achieve. If it really keeps people loyal, keeps them spending. That loyalty has been key to Amex's growth, even with hefty annual fees, nearly $700 for premium cards like the platinum. Younger cardholders are still signing up. The annual fee thing is interesting because that shows how sticky their audience is that, you know, every so often, every few years, they introduce new features on a card and they raise the annual fee, and the renewal. Percentage is apparently very, very high. The people are loyal to these cards. They like the perks they're getting. The competition for these young and affluent spenders is fierce. The rewards race is on, and competitors like Chase, Capital One, and Mastercard are catching up. It's a copycat industry, and we're seeing a lot of that. Chase and Capital One are following the Amex playbook when it comes to luxury travel cards, getting you into the airport lounge, building out their own propriety. lounges. That was something that Amex really pioneered. Take the Chase Sapphire Reserve card. It offers premium travel perks, dining rewards, and access to lounges. Once a hallmark of Amex's platinum card. They have a lot more challengers now than they used to, and in fact, Capital One's a real up and coming competitor. They're in the process of acquiring Discover. That's going to make them an even more worthy competitor. They've been building out airport lounges. They've been in. Producing premium luxury travel cards. Chase had a big shot across the bow in 2016 when they introduced that Sapphire reserve card, and that's going toe to toe with Amex Platinum. And American Express is watching for more than just competition. It's also bracing for broader economic headwinds, including the potential impact of rising tariffs. Market volatility and investor jitters over tariffs already contributed to a dip in the company's stock price. are already worried about inflation and the high cost of living. If tariffs make that more expensive, there's a fear that we could tip into recession and that this could kind of be the straw that broke the camel's back. A recession is still bad news for any sort of payments provider. If people are spending less, that pie is shrinking. In its April 2025 earnings call, Amex CEO Steve Squareri acknowledged those risks, but pointed to the company's affluent customer base as a buffer. If you look at our card base now versus our card base in 2019, it is more premium than it was at that point with higher FICOs. And the other thing that I'll say, our millennial and Gen Zs are performing significantly better both from a FICO perspective and from a delinquency perspective than the industry. That high spending, low risk consumer base may help shield the company. From some economic turbulence, the companies that would likely fare the worst in a recession are those that cater to more of a subprime audience, those who have customers with lower incomes, lower credit scores. The Amex audience is very resilient. Delinquencies across the industry have gone up. They haven't gone up as much at Amex, and that's also reflective of the customer base and could bode at least better if there is a downturn.

Trek CEO, John Burke, takes us inside the company’s high-stakes race to stay ahead in a rapidly shifting cycling industry. As e-bikes surge in popularity, supply chains evolve, and consumer habits change, Burke shares how Trek is adapting its strategy to lead the pack. From innovation and sustainability to manufacturing and tariff trouble, Burke sheds light on the challenges and opportunities of the billion-dollar family business.

Trek built a $2B business. Now Tariffs are jeopardizing its future.

Trek CEO, John Burke, takes us inside the company’s high-stakes race to stay ahead in a rapidly shifting cycling industry.

Bikes might just have pedals, but they're powering an industry worth over $60 billion globally. High-end cycling has seen a renaissance in the past decade, fueled by a surge in e-bike popularity and a wave of amateur road racers investing in pro-level gear. Few companies have ridden that wave more successfully than Trek. Trek has doubled in size over the past decade, taking its $1 billion revenue in 2016 to $2 billion in 2024. But now the company faces global economic headwinds. Tariffs, how have they affected track? Huge. You know, we're an international business. Put in the chat GPT, chances of a successful 49-year-old company lasting 100 years, and the answer came back 8%. And so I play against that number every day. So with the increased economic uncertainty, how will Trek maneuver to stay relevant in a volatile landscape? The bicycle has always had a boom and bust relationship with American consumers from explosive growth in the 1890s and 1970s to sharp crashes just years after those. The industry has had to recover countless times, and out of the ashes, Preck was born in 1976. My first day at Trek, the training program was one day. I graduated from school, went home, got my wisdom teeth pulled, and the next day I was at Trek, and I remember my first boss, Joel Holden, he told me, he said all the great salespeople drive on Sunday, and I lived in the Rocky Mountains. And I had like 12 states and so I would always drive on Sunday um just to get be in position for Monday morning. John Burke took over as CEO in 1997 from his father, who founded the company in 1976 in Waterloo, Wisconsin. 1982 I was in college and my dad, he wanted to go on a bike trip and so we went out to Colorado. He always loved challenges. He thought it'd be super cool if we could climb Independence Pass. and so early one morning he and I climbed up Independence Pass, and that's been a famous photo. We have a saying, a track called Think Bigger Than the Barn. Tell me about the Red Barn. Well, this is where it all started. Red Barn downtown Waterloo, Wis. 1976, I think the first year there were 6 employees and they made about 700 bikes and you know, a lot of times during the day I'll just walk down to the red barn and back and I feel something when I go down there and it keeps me focused. So I love the red barn. As you were a kid, the company was rising. The day you start, it crashes. What facilitates that crash? I think it was arrogant. I think it was not focusing on the customer. It was kind of focused Trek focused on Trek and Trek didn't take care of the customer and then they got into some product issues and it kind of went downhill from there. My father came in and he took over running the business, and he studied the business for 2 or 3 months and said we're gonna have a quality product at a competitive value and we're going to deliver it on time and that's it. And it sounds so boring today, but at that time Trek was doing none of those things. Now imagine, say theoretically you're someone like me who has not ridden a bike in a while. Where would you recommend I start? If you haven't ridden a bike and you want to get into biking? One of the things I'd really recommend is an e-bike. Can I show you my favorite e-bike? Yes, I love this bike, and the reason I love it is because I have one. And the one thing about e-bikes is anyone who rides one has a huge smile on their face every single time. I mean, you get on a bike, it's unbelievable. You can do 2 X, 3 X 4X, where you could usually do. Once considered a niche product, e-bikes are now one of the fastest growing segments in cycling, projected to top $50 billion worldwide by 2030. Trek has leaned into the electric surge, expanding its e-bike lineup across mountain, road, and city models. E-bikes have been a big part of Trek's growth. It's a big part of our sales right now, but if you take a look at racing bikes, We do really well in racing bikes. The unit volume isn't that high. The dollar volume is really high, and we have a really strong brand there. When Lance Armstrong, a trek athlete, rose to fame after multiple Tour de France wins, his celebrity status had a huge impact. Not only did the bike industry see a boost in interest, Trek specifically saw an increase in sales and cultural interest, dubbing it the Lance effect. The global racing bike market is now valued at $7 billion. Tell me a little bit about Trek's customer. Some of these bikes are thousands of dollars. Who is a Trek customer? Well, you know, just a quote that it's always stuck into my head is, you can judge the greatness of a person not at one extremity, but by their ability to touch both at the same time. We saw a lot of kids' bikes, really cool kids' bikes. But then we sell a lot of $15,000 Project one custom bikes. We touch both extremities and everything in between. Are you looking to expand in those categories, or are you still right sizing after the pandemic? Oh, we're always looking to expand. When COVID-19 hit in 2020, global supply chains ground to a halt, but bike demand exploded. With gyms closed and mass transit viewed as a health risk, people turned to bicycles and droves. For many, it was a safe solo way to stay active or simply get outside. For others, it became a critical form of urban transport. The explosion of interest made bike companies. Ramp up manufacturing. What was happening is a lot of retailers were placing just a ton of orders because they couldn't get everything they wanted, so they just kept placing orders and we're like, God, we're geniuses, and we were not geniuses. And so we kept producing more and more and then the music stopped and there were 5060 day lead times had grown to 500. lead times and so you had this massive amount of inventory. I was reading somewhere where you sort of said something to the effect of trek has to be an international business. That's part of what success looks like, but it is a very difficult time to be an international business. brutal. OK, so yeah, I love how we're we're already here. Yeah, tariffs, how have they affected trek? Huge. You know, we're an international business. We design products in the United States, we build products in the United States, we source products in Asia. We have a large factory in Europe. We do more than 50% of our business outside the United States. We're a global company. And we've got tariff policies that are changing on a constant basis. I'm just telling you, we just increased our prices last week 10%. Tariffs can have a massive impact on a company that potentially can have a huge impact on employment levels. Over 50% of Trek's business is done outside the United States. Why would it be difficult for Trek to move all of its manufacturing to the United States? Yeah, you know, we actually This goes back to the mid 90s. We actually had a manufacturing plant that built a lot of volume bikes in the US and it's really hard because the infrastructure doesn't exist. There are not frame manufacturers. There aren't parts manufacturers. Like you can't buy tires, you don't have rim suppliers. You don't have brake suppliers, you don't have crank suppliers. All that business is gone. It hasn't been in the US for 40 years. It doesn't exist. So to snap your fingers and go, let's reshore everything. By the time you resor stuff and started at that, you're 5 years down the road. And for people to think that you can just go like that, you can't. So what are we looking at here? This is one of the most famous moments in trek history. It was maybe 6 or 7 years ago somebody came back and they said, Do you really know what's going on with women's cycling? And I said, No. And they said, Well, they don't make any money. They stay in the worst hotels. They get the worst amount of support, and I was like, Oh, brutal. And I said well why don't we buy a team and we'll do it the right way. And so we started our own cycling team and there's a race called Perry Rubay and it's only for men and it is the most difficult roads in Belgium in that area and it's all cobbles and it's just really hard. They added a women's event. It was 2019 and that's Lizzie Begman and that's the year Lizzie won the first Perry Rube. What does the future of bicycling in the US look like and where does that intersect with the future of track? I think bicycling in the United States is important for a bunch of different reasons. Number one is just exercise. If you take a look at it today, 42% of Americans are obese. The government helped to bring smoking down. The government helped take care of drunk driving. I think the government can play a Bigger role with the health of the American people and the biggest aspect of that is getting people outside and getting people exercising. So I think that's one thing, you know, I just take a look at transportation, you know, a majority of car trips are 2 miles or less, and would you rather drive a car 2 miles or less, or would you rather be on a bike or would you rather be walking in the United States, if we define a car trip. And we say going to work, going to school, going to the restaurant, going to the market, 1.5% of trips are taken by bicycle. If you go to Holland, that number is 25%, and you have to say from a societal standpoint, do we want more and more people driving cars. or would it be really good if people rode their bikes or walked? And I think for physical health, mental health, healthcare costs, we need to get the country moving, and I think cycling is one way that you can do that.

Fortune sits down with Keurig Dr Pepper CEO Tim Cofer to explore how the $15B beverage giant is outpacing rivals like Pepsi. Cofer breaks down the company’s bold strategy—expanding in energy drinks, innovating in coffee with plastic-free K-Rounds, and navigating inflation and tariffs. Here's how KDP is rewriting the rules of the beverage business under its new leadership.

How Keurig Dr Pepper's $15B Empire Beat Out Pepsi

Fortune sits down with Keurig Dr Pepper CEO Tim Cofer to explore how the $15B beverage giant is outpacing rivals like Pepsi. 

You may not know it, but all the drinks here are owned by just one company, Keurig Dr. Pepper. We have a dawn to dusk portfolio that literally covers every demand space and every need that a consumer has in terms of beverages. KDP generated $15 billion in revenue last year. We put the consumer at the center of everything we do here at Keurig Dr Pepper with both legacy brands. Like Green Mountain and newer brands like Ghost Energy, they've invested a lot to keep up. What up y'all? I got my hands on the new Dr. Pepper BlackBerry. Let's try this. Having that relationship with the consumer, understanding what's important in their lives, understanding the cultural moments that really define that younger generation, Gen Z. and then tapping into it in a very authentic one of a kind way. Smash or pass. Classic Dr. Peppermash. And though Dr. Pepper just overtook Pepsi as the 2nd best selling soft drink in North America, their coffee business is cooling off. Can Keurig Dr. Pepper re up another wave of growth. Yeah, this is one that I really like, although I always get the bottles. The big news is that Dr. Pepper has just gone to #2 among all soft drinks. The milestone that you just referenced is one that's been really years in the making. I think it's a combination of many factors. I point to innovation. I'd point to marketing and sales excellence. This is a brand unique, one of a kind, oldest soda brand in America since 1885, but a really unique personality. In 1885, 1 year before the birth of Coca-Cola, a pharmacist in Waco, Texas famously mixed 23 soda fountain syrups in an experiment to recreate the drugstore's aroma. The blend became Dr. Pepper. Fast forward 140 years, the soda is one of the most popular in North America, and in 2018, Keurig Green Mountain and Dr. Pepper Snapple Group merged in a nearly $19 billion deal to form Keurig Dr. Pepper. All right, here's some cold beverage. Let's look at some of these. Today the Beverage Powerhouse has over 125 hot and cold drink brands, and in recent years, Dr. Pepper has seen a surge in popularity. Y'all, we can make us a dirty soda. Let's make a dirty soda just like the Mormons do. Dirty soda. It's been a thing in Utah for years where people started spiking soda with everything from cream to flavored syrup. Delish. All right, that's it. Goodbye. You have appealed to a much younger audience here. Was that an intentional strategy? How did that happen? We put the consumer at the center of everything we do here at Keurig Dr. Pepper, having that relationship with the consumer, understanding what's important in their lives. Understanding the cultural moment really defining that younger generation Gen Zennials, that was kind of the impetus of us picking up on this dirty soda trend and that allowed us to drive that great new innovation really winning marketing across the patch. Here's our ghost lineup C4, that performance brand, fitness brand, Bloom, a more female forward brand started by a young lady and then Black Rifle veteran focused. The energy drink market has exploded in recent years, fueled by a younger demographic, wellness trends, and a demand for functional beverages once dominated by. Red Bull and Monster, the category is seeing new players. Cur Dr. Pepper, historically absent from the core energy segment, is now making strategic moves to catch up. What we saw a few years ago is an opportunity to continue to shape our portfolio in a way that would be more growth accretive. We love our position in carbonated soft drinks. We knew there were other verticals like energy, like sports hydration, where we had an opportunity to participate more meaningfully. And so energy is our is our latest big bet. 3 years ago we were nonexistent in energy. Today we have over a 6 market share, and I have an ambition to be a double digit market share player here in a couple of years. One of Keurig Dr. Pepper's competitive advantages is DSD, its direct store delivery network. While many beverage companies rely on third party distributors, KDP owns and operates a vast logistics system that delivers products directly to retail shelves. In the beverage industry, DSD direct store delivery, is a scarce asset and it's a critical asset because the consumer is looking for that beverage wherever she shops and needs it right then and ideally needs it cold, right? So DSD direct store delivery is a big source of competitive advantage and it's one of the reasons why we attract so many partners, partners who might not have that critical distribution. One of the highly unusual things about the company was the combination of hot and cold. What power did you see in that combination? You know, I'd start once again at a consumer level. We have a dawn to dusk portfolio that literally covers every demand space and every need that a consumer has in terms of beverages. This is one of our newest brewers in terms of the intersection of hot and cold. This is called the K Brew and Chill. This is the first brewer that actually makes cold coffee to the touch. As COVID began, KDP used data from home coffee makers to foresee a spike in demand after a sudden shift to the stay at home economy. The then CEO ramped production and secured big shipments of cans well before rivals saw the way of building, but as more Americans returned to offices and cafes, demand for at-home coffee began to soften. We love our coffee business. We have over a $4 billion coffee business, and coffee remains today a ubiquitous category. In fact, coffee is second only to water as the most consumed beverage today. Indeed, to your point, however, of late, you've seen coffee under pressure, and so we're really playing the long game on coffee. Coffee will come back and when it does, we're going to be really well positioned to capitalize it, including a revolutionary new system that we'll be launching here in the next year or so. So this is KA Sean, the new system. This is obviously a prototype we're actually just went into beta testing in consumer homes. No plastic, no aluminum, 100% coffee you can. I mean, smell that. That's just nothing but coffee. With a plant-based coating. We're disrupting ourselves with a sustainable option that is plastic-free, aluminum free K rounds. As the beverage landscape evolves, Keurig Dr. Pepper is betting that a diversified portfolio and a powerful distribution engine will keep it competitive even as consumer tastes continue to shift. Give that a try. So it's your favorite ginger ale with a real splash of cherry juice. It's terrific.

Wayfair thrived during the pandemic, scaling to over 30 million products and rising to #217 on the Fortune 500. But after a post-COVID slump, it’s rethinking its strategy. In 2024, the company opened its first large-format retail store and rolled out new AI tools to reimagine how people shop for their homes. Here’s how Wayfair is betting on technology and in-person retail to power its next chapter in a crowded home-goods market.


How Wayfair’s Betting on AI to Future Proof its $12B Empire 

Wayfair is betting big on AI and physical retail to reconnect with shopper

Wayfair thrived during the pandemic, scaling to over 30 million products and rising to #217 on the Fortune 500. But after a post-COVID slump, it’s rethinking its strategy

How Wayfair Built a $12 Billion Home Retail Empire 

Wayfair built its multi-billion dollar business by selling home goods online, eventually scaling to more than 30 million products. Today, it's the largest online home goods retailer in the United States, but after a pandemic boom in sales, growth slumped, and so did the company's stock price. Now Wayfair is pivoting. In 2024, it stepped into physical retail with its first large format store. At the same time, it's betting on AI to streamline operations and reimagine how shoppers discover furniture. So we've been using the sort of text to image generation capability to generate an AI to be able to showcase a whole bunch of different images that our customers can then react to and say, oh, I like this. Here's how Wayfair built a $12 billion home goods empire. And how it's using AI and big box retail to fuel its next chapter. Founded in 2002 as a network of niche furniture sites, Wayfair evolved into a sprawling online marketplace. It now offers over 30 million products from around 20,000 suppliers. It also runs a lineup of lifestyle and luxury brands. The main basic difference between Wayfair and some of its other home furnishing competitors is that it is a marketplace platform, so they don't own any of their inventory. Everything is just forward position. on their site so that consumers can use it from the many vendors that they work with. Unlike many of its competitors, Wayfair doesn't manufacture or own its inventory. Instead, it connects shoppers with third party suppliers. This dropship business model allowed Wayfair to scale quickly, offering an enormous product catalog while keeping fixed costs low. Having these relationships with some of these smaller vendors is really unique in that it's a More visible way for the vendors to reach a much broader total addressable market. It helps elevate the business of small vendors while it also helps provide more choices to consumers for Wayfair. During the pandemic, that model helped the company thrive. Sales surged by 45% in 2020 as consumers redecorated during lockdowns. The next year, Wayfair shot up the Fortune 500 rankings, climbing more than 100. 30 spots to land at number 217. When we look back at COVID, that clearly accelerated e-commerce adoption across a number of categories, things like grocery and furniture. We saw the share price really rise to around $350 a share, but post-pandemic demand cooled as interest rates climbed and inflation pinched household budgets. Spending on big ticket furniture slowed. Wayfair's stock lost over 80% of its. between 2021 and early 2023, investors realized things are going to reopen. People are traveling. They're eating at restaurants again, and it wasn't idiosyncratic to Wayfair. It was across the industry, right? All of the peers really saw that phenomenon. Major home retailers like Bed Bath and Beyond filed for bankruptcy in 2023, shuttering hundreds of stores around the country. Despite declining sales post pandemic, Wayfair was. A to weather the market volatility. You know, if you look at somebody like Bed Bath and Beyond, there were liquidity issues. Interestingly, despite the fact that really Wayfair isn't generating a whole lot of profitability, the way that the capital structure works is that they don't really need that same sort of liquidity. But as the online home retail market has become more crowded, Wayfair is looking for ways to improve its e-commerce model and its customer experience. So we've been applying AI for quite some time, probably over a decade. The more recent advancements are allowing us to take that to yet another level. Fiona Tan is Wayfair's chief technology officer. Over the last few years, she has helped lead the company's investments in AI. It's a category where it's hard for our customers sometimes to describe what they're looking for. And then sometimes they don't really even know what they're looking for, so we've been using the sort of text to image generation capability to generate a AI to be able to showcase, you know, a whole bunch of different images that our customers can then react to and say, oh, I like this. I didn't know, I don't know what it's called, but it speaks to me. In 2025, Wayfair debuted a generative AI platform called Muse. The tool allows shoppers to curate AI generated home designs in certain styles. From there, the platform will recommend Wayfair products that fit the look. And then you can even tailor it a little bit more and just say, OK, well I like this, but I prefer green chairs instead of beige, and as you interact with muse, it'll generate you another image based on what you're saying. As the customers are inspired and engaged more with us, we're able to discern better what the intent and what their style preferences are, maybe what the budget preferences are, and then it allows us. And then recommend products for them. Waver says that level of personalization may help reduce return rates by giving customers more confidence in their purchases because the customers are more confident of the products that they buy or they've been able to get more information about it, ideally what you also see is there are fewer returns, right, because you're able to help them make um more. Informed decisions. Behind the scenes, Wayfair's legal, HR, and finance teams are also using AI to process data faster and streamline operations. For example, our legal teams using it to be able to look at, you know, user reviews to look for items that may have caused any kind of injury, and then you'll have examples in the technology department. Our accounting and finance team is also leveraging it. So it's really across the enterprise. While AI is helping to streamline Wayfair's digital operations, the company is also testing a more traditional strategy opening physical stores. In May 2024, Wayfair opened its first large format retail store in Wilma, Illinois, just outside of Chicago. The 150,000. A square foot store features showrooms, interior design services, and a cafe. Instead of spending marketing dollars on digital spend, you're spending your marketing dollars on physical spend. While competitors like William Sonoma benefit from built-in visibility through their retail locations, Wayfair has had to rely more heavily on advertising. every, every home. In 2024, they spent about 12% of their net revenue on advertising, while competitors like William Sonoma spent about 7% and Restoration Hardware only spent 4%. Wayfair leans into advertising a little bit more because it's hard to remain visible when you're an e-commerce only retailer, right? And so, You know, reminding consumers that you exist isn't free. Wayfair's new store location sits strategically along a major commuter highway. Since the opening of the store, Wayfair says sales in Illinois have jumped around 15%. Based on early results, Wayfair plans to open two more large format stores, one in Atlanta, Georgia and another in Yonkers, New York. Still, when it comes to home goods, Wayfair operates in a competitive and fragmented landscape. While the company holds the top spot for largest online home goods retailer in the US, it's only by a small margin, very fragmented, very hard to have a competitive advantage. We think Wayfair is one of a number of competitors that are really struggling. To avoid discounting and reinvent themselves in different ways to remain relevant to consumers. Big box retailers like Walmart, Target, and IKEA all sell home goods with the added advantage of physical stores, tight logistics, and brand familiarity. Other high-end home goods companies like RH and Pottery Barn offer in-person shopping that build a more luxury customer experience. It's a lot easier to be top of mind when you are a pottery barn in a mall or a RH that has a freestanding store and a restaurant, and it's an experience, but we. moves into brick and mortar stores and AI are helping to close that gap. So one of the capabilities again of AI and also generative AI is our ability to understand, have a deeper understanding of the products that we sell, discerning the color, the size, dimensions. Some of it's in the product details, sometimes there may be errors and it can also augment and enrich the information. That we get from our suppliers, so we're doing a lot in the customer experience. I do think AI will help young people sort of get their head around how they want to plan their smaller spaces, but also, you know, the accessible price points that is that Wayfair offers also helps bring those consumers in, and I think that a lot of that is their their main consumer.

In this exclusive interview with Fortune, Nike's newly appointed CEO Elliott Hill shares his vision for the iconic sportswear brand's future. From intern to chief executive, Hill's 30+ year journey at Nike has given him unique insights into the company's DNA. He discusses his plans to refocus on Nike's core strengths, emphasizing sports and athlete partnerships while addressing recent challenges in sales and market positioning. Hill outlines strategies to balance direct-to-consumer sales with wholesale partnerships, reduce promotional pricing, and drive innovation in key categories like running and basketball. With a commitment to authenticity and a deep understanding of Nike's heritage, Hill aims to lead the company back to its roots while pushing forward into a new era of growth and innovation.

‘Nike’s Back’: How Its New CEO Plans to Reassert the Brand’s Dominance

In this exclusive interview with Fortune, Nike's newly appointed CEO Elliott Hill shares his vision for the iconic sportswear brand's future.

Is this a return to Nike's roots? No question. I think every company has a core of what makes them great, and I think sport is the core of what we are, we are about. We're about human potential and performance. Nike's back. Since started as an turn in apparel sales in 1988, Elliot Hill has spent his entire career climbing Nike's ranks. He has spearheaded some of the company's biggest sportswear launches and led headline grabbing marketing campaigns. So don't ask if your dreams are crazy. Ask if they're crazy enough. Now more than 30 years later, all eyes are on him as he steps into the company's most prominent job, CEO. It almost feels surreal like, hey, did this just happen? But Hill has taken the reins at a time when Nike is grappling with declining sales and a fall in stock price. How do you think you're performing at this point? I think we can be better. As Hill kicked off his 33rd year at Nike and 3rd month as CEO, he recounted his journey to the corner office and what's next for the sports retail giant. Nike's sprawling facilities in Beaverton, Oregon didn't exist when Hill first started as an intern. We very much wanted it to feel like a campus, and we moved here in 1990. The buildings that you can see across the way in Brown were the first buildings. At the start of 1988, the company was worth just over $700 million. Three decades later, it's valued at more than $100 billion. You are Nike's newly minted CEO. How did you get here? I took a sports marketing class and I wrote a paper around this company called Nike. I fell in love with the company and I said, you know, that's the type of company I want to work for. I can combine sport with business. And I was fortunate. There was a guy named Tim Joyce who came to speak at our university and after he finished speaking, I went up to him and said, I want to work for Nike and I bothered him for about 6 months and he finally hired me and I started at Nike June 1 of '88 as as an intern. That internship was a springboard to a lifetime career at Nike. In his early years, Hill held various sales roles selling shoes to mom and pop retailers and driving around in an old minivan. I was driving around in a used Dodge minivan, that's for sure. I drove 60,000 miles a year and I was started out in sales. I worked my way up through the sales organization, different experiences. Hill steadily moved up the ladder, never staying in the same role for more than 4 years. In 2018, he was promoted to president of Consumer and Marketplace, a role he held until 2020 when he. Hired, but his exit didn't last long. Four years later, Nike's former CEO John Donahoe was out. Nike's CEO John Donahoe is going to be leaving the company. During the pandemic. Donahoe's aggressive e-commerce and direct to consumer business approach helped drive Nike's share price to a historic high in November 2021. But as the pandemic wound down, market conditions. Changed and the strategy started to backfire. The company lost market share and strained its relationships with retail partners, all while losing sales and street cred. The board needed a replacement. Walk me through how this came to fruition, your return to Nike. I, I had stayed in touch with people at Nike at all levels of the organization. It was a series of phone calls and I, you know what, I, it was a pretty quick decision for me. Nike's share price jumped by more than 6% just a day after it announced Hill would assume the top job. Is there a part of you that felt you had something to prove? Had a great Second chapter, if you will, business career. I was doing a number of investments and projects that inspired me, motivated, kept me busy, but I have to admit there were those moments when I would walk away from a board meeting as an example where your responsibility is to steer, guide, suggest. You know, provide thoughts, perspectives, and then you leave and you don't have the responsibility for continuing the execution. There was a moment when I started to think to myself, is this really what the rest of my life's going to be like? And then I get the phone call. And so and then here we are and my whole world turns upside down and uh and uh and it's just been a crazy 75 days. What's one of mind for you? The next 30 days, the next year, the next 5 years, well, the 1st 60 days were a sprint. I'll tell you that. What I wanted to do first and foremost was to re-engage with the team. So I spent the 1st 60 days and my first day in the office. I did an all employee meeting, brought everybody together, had a fireside chat so they could get to know me. We get to work in schools. We do. That we do, that we do. What are they telling you? What are you hearing? Where we're headed, which is around celebrating the passion and emotions sport that excites them that that gets them motivated. That's what we have to do more of. That's when we're at our finest is when we put athletes at the center of everything we do. We take the insights from those athletes. That's what drives our product innovation pipeline. That's what drives those emotional and inspiring stories that we tell. Those athletes' stories have become synonymous with Nike's brand. 26 times I've been trusted to take the game winning shot. And missed. From Michael Jordan and LeBron James to Serena Williams. And Ronaldo Nazario. This is the Ronaldo pitch as we call it the Ronaldo Field, and so to, to celebrate him and all that he means to Nike, we, we dedicated the the pitch and his name and then of course we have the the statue here and. And we've been fortunate to continue our relationship with him even beyond his playing days. Hill sees those athlete partnerships as a crucial element of Nike's past and future success. As Nike's vice president of North America, Hill forged a strong partnership with Michael Jordan and was instrumental in encouraging the basketball legend to expand his brand globally. The strategy has paid off with sales growing to over $7 billion annually in 2024. Now Nike is looking ahead. We had Caitlyn Clark here I saw that she was in yesterday on her signature shoe that we launch and we're working on her logo and design of her logo. She signed an 8 year $28 million endorsement deal with Nike in April of. Last year, making it the largest sponsorship contract for a women's basketball player, what was the motivation behind that and and what impact do you think it will have on, on women's sports certainly on the WNBA? When we were running just basketball, we never got to the women's opportunity, but by having this small team. That's focused on women's basketball. It unlocked, we believe, opportunities for the game of basketball, but also in product. It becomes an opportunity to grow the overall marketplace by inviting more and more girls into the world of sport. It is in an area that we'll continue to invest in, and we see tremendous tremendous momentum right now. Hill's new role comes at a critical time for Nike. Sales dropped in the last three quarters of 2024, and shares have slumped to more than 43% since 2023. In an effort to clear out inventory, the company began offering massive discounts throughout the year, slashing prices by as much as 30%. Hill says that approach has hurt the brand. You said in the December earnings call, uh, your first as Nike CEO that Nike has become too promotional offering too many discounts. I'm certainly not complaining, but what what's your vision for how Nike should approach pricing and discounts and still uphold its brand value and market position? There are moments in the traditional retail cycle where it makes sense to be promotional Black Friday, Cyber Monday. But we had become too promotional in between those moments we were even leveraging promotions to drive revenue, and frankly that's not great for margin. It's not great for the brand. It's not great for our wholesale partners because they end up competing against us and profitability matters for them. And so starting this spring we're moving to a position where Nike Direct both digital. Physical is going to actually lead the marketplace and be less not only less promotional but elevate the experience that the consumer has with our brand. Nike also faced backlash over its direct to consumer sales strategy. Before the pandemic, it started to pull back from large wholesalers like Foot Locker and Dick Sporting Goods to focus on its own brick and mortar stores and e-commerce. Now that strategy is changing. Pre-pandemic, Nike severed ties with retailers wanted to focus more on direct to consumer. What are your plans to evolve to rebuild, you know, your partnership with wholesale retailers like Foot Locker and so on? I think it all starts with the consumer. There are consumers that want to shop choice wholesale, either digital or physical, and the good news is the space that I spent a big part of my career. I have great relationships with our retailers, made it. Very, very clear to our team first and foremost that we were going to run a balanced. Marketplace and I've had countless numbers of phone calls and meetings already with them making certain that they understand the importance uh that they play to our brand and the development of our brand that's been a great reception by the way, from our retailers are saying OK. Nike's back. Gone are the days of going wide. Hill wants to go deep, and he says Nike will be zeroed in on 5 main categories moving forward running, basketball, training, football, and sportswear. I live in Manhattan. I run in Central Park. I see a lot of people wearing Nike. And but I also see on run. I see hook, right? A lot of these brands that I've eaten into Nike's market share. So what are your thoughts on how you go back to reestablishing yourself as the premium athletic brand and what do you see as the number one driver for growth for Nike as we move forward? It does always come back to have new, different innovative coveted beautiful product. The lineup that we have in running. Uh, is the strongest lineup that I've seen since I've been here top to bottom across the board, and we have to have those retail partners to help us take shelf space, open to buy and market share from our competitors because frankly that's we left it open ultimately. We have to earn our way back onto the shelves. It's that simple. You've repeatedly made this reference where you say we're going back to sports. Sport is at the heart of our brand. When I think of Nike, I think sports apparel. So what do you mean by that? We were running at what we call the gender offense, so men's, women's, and kids, we lost the sharpness around sport. And so we're reorienting the organization to focus sport first, so think running, think basketball, think football or soccer. And then gender second by lining up by gender, it also helps us find opportunities specifically for that gender, whether it's color and material that's different for a man versus a woman. Another big focus for Hill is product innovation. This is the LeBron James Center, and it's all about advanced R&D and innovation, and it's without question we believe one of the foremost centers of innovation of athletic and human performance. Hill still recalls the 1988 unveiling of Nike's now famous Just Do It campaign. I'm thinking of being a lawyer. He also led launches of footwear for elite athletes, but in recent years, critics, including investors, say Nike has fallen behind in the innovation race. What does product innovation look like for Nike as you move forward? We have a team of people that are already working on product in 28, 29. What's that look like? So long term, very futuristic innovation. The best innovation does come from an athlete, how to make you run faster, jump higher. Uh be safer, move quicker. For Nike, many of those insights came from athlete partnerships. Nike's at its best when we have an athlete, and we have a great relationship with that athlete, and we're able to partner with that athlete to take insights from their game and This case obviously basketball and to build the product around that individual's game in this case it happens to be LeBron James. He's very involved in the footwear that he wears and how it looks, how it fits, how it performs. He's just a representation of some of the. The great executions that we've done with him. Few are as familiar as Hill with the history, people, and inner workings of Nike. Despite three decades of experience and a clear enthusiasm for the CEO role, he has his work cut out for him. In your 60 days as a CEO, what have you learned about yourself? What have you learned about leadership? I have to be who I was always. I have to remain authentic. Just because I have a title and a new responsibility, it can't change how I show up because I think if I do, people will see it, smell it, sniff it, and I've done some just real tactical things to try to do that. I it sounds so simple, but I go get my own coffee in the morning and I go get my own coffee in the afternoon. I work out in our gyms here every morning and I move around the gyms and the coffee places so that I can interact with more and more of our teammates. You can't let a A title or new responsibility to change who you are to your core, you have to show up as authentic authentically yourself as you possibly can.

Facing brand dilution and declining wholesale sales in the 2010s, Ralph Lauren has sought to reinvent itself and win over a younger generation. Under CEO Patrice Louvet, the company pulled back from heavy discounting, doubled down on its own stores and digital platforms, and refocused on core values like authenticity and timeless design. Today Ralph Lauren is seeing renewed growth, topping $7 billion in revenue the first time in nearly a decade. Fortune's Phil Wahba sat down with Louvet to learn about the strategy behind the turnaround.

Inside Ralph Lauren’s Big Comeback — And How it Won Over Gen Z

We had lost touch with the younger generation, and a lot of the questions I got when I started was, is Ralph Lauren still relevant? For years, Ralph Lauren leaned heavily on discounts and overexpansion, eroding the exclusivity that built its name. But in recent years, the company has worked to overhaul its strategy and win over a younger generation. Now the brand is back in the cultural spotlight from the US Open. To elaborate fashion shows and even a viral Taylor Swift dress moment. So Taylor Swift's dress that she just got engaged in is on sale for Miles Lauren for under $350 right now. For the first time in nearly a decade, the company's revenue topped $7 billion and growing segments like women's apparel are taking off. percent of our shoppers and stores online are actually Whitman, and now Ralph Lauren is looking ahead, experimenting with AI. If we can figure out how to do what we do better with the aid of technology, fantastic. Here's how Ralph Lauren pulled off one of fashion's biggest turnarounds and what it takes to stay relevant in a rapidly shifting luxury market. Here on Madison Avenue sit two of Ralph Lauren's most iconic flagship stores. The sprawling retail locations carry men and women's polos, sweaters, and other preppy mainstays the brand is famous for, alongside growing segments like handbags, outerwear, and luxury home goods. Since taking the helm in 2017, CEO Patci Cove has doubled down on Ralph Lauren's roots while expanding into new categories and rethinking the retail experience. Let's talk a little bit about the branding because here we are in in the mansion, it's opulent, it's luxurious, it could seem exclusive, but in fact it is welcoming. So can you tell me a little bit about how the company manages that balance of being luxury and high-end but without being, you know, unfriendly? Well, about philosophy from the beginning has been this concept of Inspiring the dream of a better life irrespective of where you come from, what your income level is. And so our price ranges today go for, you know, a pack of tennis socks that might be $15 all the way to, we recently sold a $320,000 watch. We want to create an environment that's aspirational but engaging and inviting, right? And this notion of inclusive luxury is really important to us. You have 15 year olds coming in here. And you have billionaires, but Ralph Lauren's luxury empire didn't start this way. In 1967 from a small office in the Empire State Building, Ralph Lauren launched Polo, wide, colorful neckties that stood out in an era of thinner styles. Over the next two decades, Ralph Lauren branched into full men's and women's collections. And created cultural touch points like outfitting Team USA. By the 2010s, the company was stretched too thin. Ralph Lauren was suffering from brand dilution with excessive discounting, multiple sub-brands, and an overreliance on struggling department stores. By 2018, revenue had fallen more than 16% in just two years. The Ralph Lauren story was growing by leaps and bounds for years, and then One could argue it overextended itself. What was your feeling about how to address that? Yeah, I think it happens to a lot of companies across industries, right? Great success, high expectations of continued great success, and when there's pressure like that, there's a temptation to broaden distribution. There's a temptation to increase promotional activity. I think of it as the boiled frog phenomenon, which is you say, just do a little bit, just a little bit more. It'll be fine. It won't impact us overall. But as you do more and more of that little bit, ultimately you're damaging the brand. Our challenge was here in the US where we went too broad, we were too promotional, and um we had to pull back. And yes, it's painful, but it's mandatory. Now Louve is steering Ralph Lauren into an era built on brand elevation. In recent years, the luxury brand has sharpened its focus on core products, attracted younger customers, improved the shopping experience, and pulled back from its heavy. Reliance on discounts and wholesale. So far it appears to be working with margins rising and revenue at a 9 year high. How did you get young people on board with this brand? We did a lot of work to understand what was relevant for the younger generation, where they wanted to shop, how they wanted to engage. Which values matter most to them and what we're finding is the Ralph Lauren values of authenticity, family, optimism, quality, timelessness, those resonate with that younger generation, and they resonate with that younger generation here in New York or in Shanghai or in Milan. Ralph Lauren reinforces those brand values through experiences from in-store coffee shops designed to draw in younger shoppers to long running sports partnerships that spotlight the brand. G's partnership with the US Open started 20 years ago. Wimbledon Australian Open, the Olympics. So if you look at where we are now, what we're finding is we want to celebrate what's on the court, but actually the thing that's most interesting is showing style in the audience, or the fans and how the fans dress and and how the styles varyond sports, Ralph Lauren shows continue to lean into spectacle. The 2024 Hampton show turned equestrian stables into a runway with supermodels Christy Turlington and Naomi Campbell walking before a celebrity packed crowd. At the same time, Ralph Lauren is wrapping up marketing and sharpening its retail strategy. In 2022, it singled out 30 global cities as key markets. It's fueling that push with its largest ever marketing budget, over half a billion dollars. There are a lot of cities in the world, there are, um, and a lot of cities that have a lot of shoppers. 30 only hits obviously a very small portion of it. What's the rationale for that? I think our experience and when you look at the industry. when you overextend yourself, you end up diluting the brand, you end up diluting your resources and therefore you end up diluting your performance. So listen, we're, we're not here for another quarter. We're not here for another 3 years. We're here for another 50 years. So we have plenty of time to go hit the other cities in the world. China for me is a wonderful example. I think there's still a lot of growth to be had in Shanghai, Beijing, Shenzhen, Chengdu, Taipei, Hong Kong, right? Those are massive cities, tens of millions of inhabitants. Once we feel like we're fully established, then we'll continue to drive that business and then we'll start to open the white space. You dilute yourself. You might see the benefits short term, but, but ultimately, it impedes your ability to perform consistently. Clothing and fashion, by definition, there is the risk of misfires. Tell me a little bit about for you, where's the balance between not playing it too safe, but also not going crazy with wild stuff that could flop. So we have the benefit of decades of Presenting core items that consumers know and recognize really well. Our cable knit sweaters, our polo shirts, our Oxford shirts, right? Our tree jackets, like quintessential RA one. That's job one. Job one is how do we continue to present that, animate that, engage the new generation with these types of products, right, and this ability to leverage our core products across generations, I think has served us really well. Women's wear and handbags have also become major growth engines. Women's Wear alone now brings in about $2 billion a year, and in the last fiscal year, Ralph Lauren's bag sales jumped by a double digit percentage. 56% of our shoppers and stores online are actually Whitman. It's less than 1/3 of our business. So for us it's a massive opportunity. Within that, we realized that the handbag category was significantly underdeveloped for us. It's part of the overall lifestyle, and we've gotten some really nice traction behind some of the more recentensitization. These moves have helped Ralph Lauren sidestep the challenges facing much of the luxury market. In 2024, the luxury industry saw its first major slowdown since the Great Recession, as shoppers questioned whether high-end fashion still delivered on quality and creativity. Luxury giants like LVMH, Burberry, and Caring all missed revenue targets that year. While some companies responded by pushing prices higher, Ralph Lauren says it doubled down on its core values. What do stores need to be for you? What does a typical Ralph Lauren store have to? Do to really justify its existence. It needs to be an experience, right, because I can get the products online. It needs to be a place where, you know, you, you, you want to come, you want to discover it, you want to have an amazing engagement with sales associates. You want to discover the different dimensions of the raw For lifestyle. You might not buy the first time, but you'll come back and want to feel that. And that's the bar that we set for ourselves. Like many companies in the luxury retail space, Ralph Lauren is also experimenting with artificial intelligence. We dreamt of the day when we'd be able to do something like this. That's David Lauren, the company's chief branding and innovation officer, and the son of founder Ralph Lauren. In September, he helped launch Ask Ralph, a generative AI shopping tool that lets customers ask style questions and get product recommendations. David, tell me a little bit about Ask Ralph, the AI style assistant. I mean, how long have you been working on it? What customer did you have most in mind when this was being developed? Yeah. Well, the idea for Ask Ralph really started 25 years ago. We launched Ralph Lauren.com, which was really the first luxury fashion website. At the time, we had a sort of archaic version of Style Guide, where Ralph Lauren himself actually answered style questions and it was very popular. When you get dressed in the morning, clothes help give you a sense of confidence, a sense of identity, a sense of who you are and who you want to be, and the ability to pull out of your back pocket. You know, a companion to help give you that sensibility is Ralph. So literally our dream one day is that Ralph himself will be using this to gut check an idea. The company says that what sets this tool apart is its use of Ralph Lauren's full inventory to suggest complete brand approved outfits. Ask Ralph can answer prompts and offer curated looks pulled directly from its collections. Do you see this as a tool that in-store employees could use as they help a customer as well? I think the goal of this is to not only help our our customers, but to help our own employees. The better educated our team can be, the more consistent our voice can be all around the world, the more valuable it's going to be. In many ways. Ask Ralph is a new employee. Even as Ralph Lauren regains its cultural cachet, the wider fashion industry is battling economic headwinds. Shoppers are becoming more price conscious, especially in the US, where discount and value-focused retailers like TJ Maxx are thriving. That pressure has forced Ralph Lauren to rethink how it reaches customers. During COVID, Love leaned into his strategy to open more Ralph Lauren stores and continue exiting weak department stores. As for supply chain, it now stretches from Vietnam to Peru, and the brand is well positioned to weather global trade disruptions, including tar force. Before all the terrorist drama of 2025. Ralph Lauren had done a lot of work to not be too reliant on the same suppliers. Can you tell me a little bit about what that looks like now and what was the rationale for doing that? We were very dependent when when our team started some 89 years ago on A few geographies from the sourcing standpoint, uh, and a few suppliers. And in an environment that's uncertain and volatile, you cannot do that, right? So significant diversification. Now, there's not one market that's more than 20%. We generally have dual sourcing, if not triple sourcing. Across our entire portfolio. The other piece is agility, and I don't think people would have used the term agility to describe Ralph Lauren 10 years ago. And I think in a world that's so dynamic, the ability to be nimble, move production from market A to market B, and I'm actually really proud of the work that teams have done on this one because I think agility is a is a unique strength. Ralph Lauren Ralph Lauren also carries the weight of being a symbol of Americana at a time sentiment abroad towards the US is shifting. Despite these pressures, Ralph Lauren continues to anchor itself in the vision laid out by its founder. So I want to ask you a little bit about um your working relationship with Mr. Lauren himself. Tell us a little bit about how you work with him. Ralph and I spent a lot of time upfront, making sure we're on the same page, making sure we had a consistent ambition for the company, making sure that we valued the same things, value with a big V, and making sure that we were all, we were going to push the same direction. And we talked about what business are we in, right? Because I think that's a fundamental question for all companies is just clarity on what business are you really in. And we concluded that we were in the dreams business, not in the apparel business, not in the fashion business, we're in the dreams business.

Leadership Next

ULTA Beauty, the largest beauty retailer in the United States, will open its first Middle East store in Kuwait later this week. 
The company has been on a trajectory of global expansion since its international debut earlier this year, with the opening of the first stores in Mexico and the major acquisition of the leading British beauty retailer SpaceNK. 

CEO Kecia Steelman sat down with Fortune’s Diane Brady and Kristin Stoller to discuss what her first months as CEO have been like, her leadership style, and how social media has charted the way for doing business overseas.

Kecia Steelman on ULTA’s Global Expansion and Her Dream Collab | Leadership Next

ULTA Beauty's Kecia Steelman sat down with Fortune’s Diane Brady and Kristin Stoller to discuss what her first months as CEO have been like, her leadership style, and how social media has charted the way for global expansion.

Ramp cofounder and CEO Eric Glyman joins Leadership Next to discuss how the fintech upstart has scaled from launch to $1 billion in annualized revenue in just a few years—while reshaping the incentives of the corporate card industry. Glyman explains Ramp’s mission to help companies spend less, how AI is automating millions of hours of financial work, and why urgency and speed are core to Ramp’s culture.

Eric Glyman on Ramp’s Rocket Growth, AI-Powered Finance, and Redefining Corporate Finance

Diane and Kristin sit with Patagonia CEO Ryan Gellert to discuss how he's redefining what it means to lead a global brand with values at its core. In this candid interview, Gellert discusses Patagonia’s bold financial restructuring, its decision to give away company profits to fight climate change, and why advocacy is essential to making a powerful impact as a company.

How Patagonia CEO Ryan Gellert Leads with Purpose

In this episode, Diane and Kristin sit down with Lyft CEO David Risher to explore his leadership philosophy, deeply rooted in firsthand experience and an unwavering commitment to customer experience. David shares insights on the future of ride sharing, his dedication to delivering exceptional service for both riders and drivers, and the journey that shaped his path to leadership.

Lyft CEO David Risher on comebacks, customer obsession and moonlighting as a Lyft driver

Sheryl Palmer, Chairman and CEO of Taylor Morrison, joins Leadership Next to share her journey from McDonald’s crew member to the first—and still only—woman leading a publicly traded home builder. In this live episode recorded in Scottsdale, Palmer opens up about leading through the housing crash, the challenges of going public, and what it takes to grow a billion-dollar business without losing its soul. She reflects on navigating the post-2008 crisis, standing up to private equity, and building a culture rooted in empathy and impact. Palmer also unpacks how Taylor Morrison is tackling housing affordability through innovation and policy, why she believes “love the customer” is more than a slogan, and how CEOs today must balance public scrutiny with purpose-driven leadership.

Breaking Ground and Glass Ceilings: Sheryl Palmer’s Mission to Humanize Homebuilding

Vlad Tenev, CEO and cofounder of Robinhood, joins Leadership Next to discuss his evolution as a leader, from weathering the GameStop firestorm to reshaping the platform into a full-spectrum financial services provider. Tenev reflects on how Robinhood disrupted Wall Street giants, the leadership lessons he learned under pressure, and why he sees AI as both a labor market disruptor and a catalyst for wider retail investing. He also opens up about navigating viral misinformation, the power of financial education, and how memecoins and tokenized assets could transform capital markets.

From Meme Stocks to Financial Futures: Vlad Tenev’s Vision for Robinhood

Photo Courtesy of Vlad Tenev; Graphics by Fortune

WM CEO Jim Fish joins Leadership Next to unpack how the company formerly known as Waste Management is reinventing itself for a new era—one defined by sustainability, automation, and culture-first leadership. Fish explains how WM is transforming from a landfill-dependent waste hauler into a high-tech environmental leader, investing in profitable recycling centers and piloting autonomous garbage trucks. He shares why recycling is not only good for the planet but a major business driver, and reveals WM’s plan to reduce 5,000 jobs through attrition—not layoffs—by automating hard-to-fill roles. Along the way, Fish reflects on the surprising role trash collection has played in improving public health, and why, in his eyes, managing waste responsibly is a civic duty we all share.

Inside WM’s Plan to Automate the Future of Trash

Photo Courtesy of Jim Fish; Graphic by Fortune

What does it take to lead during a new era of health, culture, and commerce? Brooks Running CEO Dan Sheridan joins Leadership Next to discuss the company’s pivotal role in today’s running resurgence, and how it’s winning over Generation Well. From investing in biomechanics and injury prevention to launching lifestyle collaborations, Sheridan shares how Brooks remains purpose-led and performance-focused while adapting to modern consumer habits. He also reflects on navigating global expansion, tariff challenges, and how a strong internal culture has kept Brooks grounded as it grows. 

Running Through the Boom: How Brooks Is Winning Over Generation Well 

Photo Courtesy of Dan Sheridan; Graphic by Fortune

CEO Dan Sheridan on How a Niche Running Brand Became a Global Performance Powerhouse

Gillian Zucker, master operator at the L.A. Clippers, discussed her unique relationship with owner Steve Ballmer, emphasizing his genuine love for the game. She detailed her career journey, from Hamilton College to roles in PR, sales, and operations. Zucker highlighted the transformation of the Clippers’ fan base and the development of Intuit Dome, focusing on frictionless technology and fan engagement. She shared insights on leveraging data for personalized experiences, such as rewarding loud fans and using facial recognition. Zucker also touched on the Clippers’ commitment to sustainability and efforts to enhance the fan experience through innovative features like the Halo scoreboard and the Wall. 

Gillian Zucker's Blueprint for Modern Sports Entertainment

Photo Courtesy of Gillian Zucker; Graphic by Fortune

Yahoo CEO Jim Lanzone joins Leadership Next to unpack the company’s bold transformation from a sprawling media conglomerate into a streamlined, product-first tech company. He shares lessons from turning around Ask Jeeves; why authenticity, not hype, is key to rebuilding trust; and how Yahoo’s future rests on delivering real utility to users through innovation in AI, sports, finance, and beyond. Plus, Lanzone gets personal about leadership, family, and why Yahoo’s next 30 years might be its most exciting yet. 

The Yahoo Comeback: Jim Lanzone on Reviving a Tech Icon

Photo courtesy of Jim Lanzone; Graphics by Fortune

ServiceNow’s CFO Gina Mastantuono on Taking Leaps, Building Teams, and Betting on AI

Brené Brown on Leadership During Times of Uncertainty

The Power Broker

For Lyft, It's Ride or Die

Closing Conversation: Global Trade in Transition

Wendell Weeks on Risk, Resilience & Reinvention at Corning

Wall Street Embraces Crypto

“Success disasters,” data privacy, and unlocking growth with Oura CEO Tom Hale

ServiceNow’s CFO Gina Mastantuono on Taking Leaps, Building Teams, and Betting on AI

Brené Brown on Leadership During Times of Uncertainty

The Power Broker

For Lyft, It's Ride or Die

Closing Conversation: Global Trade in Transition

Wendell Weeks on Risk, Resilience & Reinvention at Corning

Wall Street Embraces Crypto

“Success disasters,” data privacy, and unlocking growth with Oura CEO Tom Hale

ServiceNow’s CFO Gina Mastantuono on Taking Leaps, Building Teams, and Betting on AI

CONFERENCES

TITANS AND DISRUPTORS OF INDUSTRY

BEHIND THE BUSINESS

LEADERSHIP NEXT