Happy Friday.
I’ve written here before about the OneTen initiative, a coalition of companies pulled together by former American Express CEO Ken Chenault and former Merck CEO Ken Frazier to upskill and hire one million Black Americans into good jobs over the next decade. Today, the group is announcing a partnership with Guild Education, to help with the upskilling piece. Guild will provide OneTen companies access to its learning marketplace, which includes both courses and coaches. Among the many schools it works with, Guild now includes HBCUs including Spelman College, Morehouse College and North Carolina Agricultural and Technical State University.
Guild’s training programs kick in only after a person has been hired by one of the participating companies. But Chenault told me yesterday that OneTen is working with member companies to change their job specifications so they can hire more people without college degrees, and then use Guild’s programs to upskill them while on the job. The effort is yet another sign that the post-George Floyd emphasis on corporate diversity is being pursued with more resolution and creativity than in the past.
By the way, the partnership between OneTen and Guild is not entirely surprising. Chenault, who is now chairman of General Catalyst, said General Catalyst was the lead investor in Guild’s Series D financing round and he sits on the board.
Separately, I wrote yesterday about Kyndryl, the IBM spinoff. Later in the day, I spoke to IBM CEO Arvind Krishna, who said that while the spin leaves IBM a smaller company—Kyndryl accounted for just under a third of its revenue—it also leaves IBM poised for growth. “I believe with complete confidence that I now have the pieces I need to sustainably grow this business in the mid-single-digits annually.” Investors will be glad to hear that. As for the future, IBM is continuing to develop A.I., and continuing its big bet on quantum computing. “We will have a 1,000 qubit quantum computer by late 2023,” he said. Still remains to be seen how Quantum computers will be used to solve business problems.
More news below. And take a minute to read Grady McGregor’s piece about how the crazy Shiba Inu meme coin made one warehouse manager a millionaire. (Warning: this story is for subscribers only. Newsletter readers can get a discount here, using the code CEODAILY.)
Alan Murray
@alansmurray
alan.murray@fortune.com
Correction: This essay was updated on Nov. 5 to correct the spelling of Chenault’s name.
TOP NEWS
Vaccine mandate
A hundred million U.S. workers and their employers need to take heed of two new vaccination rules that go into effect Jan. 4: companies with 100 or more employees will need to ensure workers are vaccinated or regularly tested, and health-care workers need to get vaccinated, period. However, the vaccine mandate does not apply to remote workers. Fortune
Boeing settlement
There has apparently been a settlement agreement in the shareholder lawsuit against current and former Boeing directors, relating to the 737 MAX safety debacle. The settlement is reportedly worth $225 million, and also involves Boeing hiring an ombudsman to handle internal issues and appointing a board member who actually knows something about aviation safety. Wall Street Journal
Alphabet drugs
Alphabet's A.I. research outfit, DeepMind, is spinning off a new Alphabet venture focusing on drug discovery. Isomorphic Laboratories will initially be led by DeepMind boss Demis Hassabis, who will also retain his existing role, and will try to "reimagine the entire drug discovery process from the ground up with an A.I.-first approach." Fortune
Chinese property
The Chinese developer Kaisa Group Holdings missed payments on wealth products it had guaranteed, and its shares—and those of its property-management, health and construction businesses—have been suspended from trading in Hong Kong. Fortune
AROUND THE WATER COOLER
Coal or nothing
The chance of staying within the 1.5-degree-warming limit is "close to zero" unless countries such as the U.S. and China agree to phase out coal, International Energy Agency chief Fatih Birol has warned. Even coal-addicted Poland has signed the U.K.-sponsored phase-out pledge. Financial Times
Biden bill
President Joe Biden's big climate and social investment bill, now worth $1.85 trillion or so, will soon head for a House vote. Here's what it includes, and what's been dropped. Fortune
Hertz and Tesla
Latest on the what-is-going-on deal between Hertz and Tesla: the car-rental firm may have announced it's getting 100,000 vehicles, which would represent a huge chunk of Tesla's annual output (now estimated at nearly 900,000 for this year), but Hertz will probably only get 10,000 Teslas a year, as it has to wait in line like everyone else. Wall Street Journal
Schmidt on Facebook
Show more restraint, former Google CEO Eric Schmidt has advised Big Tech companies in the wake of Facebook's scandal deluge. Schmidt thinks Facebook/Meta "went a little too far on the revenue side and not enough on the judgement side," and also that the company "knew what it was doing." Fortune
This edition of CEO Daily was edited by David Meyer.
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