Coursera co-founder Daphne Koller on receiving MacArthur genius grant: ‘It wasn’t me’

Just as calculus revolutionized our understanding of physics by providing a mathematical framework to make predictions, she argues, AI can now do the same for the “complicated and intertwined” field of biology. In this week’s episode of Leadership Next, Koller explains how her company is already on the cusp of potentially transformative new treatments for fatty liver disease and ALS.

She talks about leading change in this new era of personalized and once unimaginable advances in drug discovery. But she also talks about how being awarded the MacArthur “genius” grant in 2004 proved to be a catalyst in expanding to the world of entrepreneurship.

“I’d always had a very aspirational definition of what genius means. That was Albert Einstein or Leonardo da Vinci. It wasn’t me,” she said. “I felt very humbled and unworthy, and one might even say that much of my career journey following the MacArthur Award was an attempt to kind of pay it back, to prove myself as having deserved that.”

“My parents were academics. I was convinced I would retire as an academic and be a professor emeritus, like my father,” she added. The MacArthur grant gave her the freedom to think more broadly about how she could make an impact: “I wanted to do something that was directly changing the world, as opposed to publishing papers and hoping that someone will read them and do something with that.”

That period planted the seeds of an idea that would become Coursera, the company she started with Andrew Ng. “I was absolutely petrified. Not only had I never founded a company, my career journey was such that I’d never even been at a company,” she added.

And yet today she embraces her power as both a scientist and a CEO. “I don’t know what what genius is, but I can tell you that one of the things that I consider to be my superpower, trying to avoid that female imposter syndrome, is that ability to connect the dots across different disciplines and see connections that are oftentimes maybe obvious in retrospect, but weren’t obvious at the time.”

Contact CEO Daily via Diane Brady at diane.brady@fortune.com

Top news

Apple COO retires, changing the post-Tim Cook succession picture

Apple COO Jeff Williams will retire after 27 years at the company. He had been the “most likely” contender to succeed 64-year-old Tim Cook as CEO, according to the NYT. The new COO will be Sabih Khan, who has been at the company for 30 years. Possible contenders for the CEO role if Cook steps back are John Ternus, head of hardware engineering; Craig Federighi, head of software; and Eddy Cue, head of services.

Trump causes turmoil in the copper market

The price of copper hit a record high after President Trump said he would impose 50% tariffs on imports of the widely used metal. The president of the Mining Association of Canada warned that the U.S. does not have the production capacity to supply its own needs and is thus imposing a price increase on itself. JPMorgan analysts had estimated the rate would be only 25%. Copper prices dropped in non-U.S. markets as buyers anticipated reduced demand from U.S. customers. Elsewhere: The WSJ has a great longread on how Trump decided to push back his tariff deadline to August 1.

Investors are getting bored with the tariff dance

UBS strategist Nadia Lovell said on Tuesday that investors are willing to “look through” President Trump’s tariff threats as negotiation tactics, which is why markets haven’t reacted as harshly to the President’s doubling down on import restrictions this week. However, Lovell believes that “at some point, the rubber has to hit the road.”

Trump attacks Powell, again

President Trump has again urged U.S. Federal Reserve Chair Jerome Powell to resign if he misled Congress in testimony over renovations to the Fed’s headquarters. The president—an aggressive critic of Powell’s interest rate policy—offered no evidence that Powell had said anything wrong.

Trump Administration onboards climate change doubters

Three scientists who have expressed doubts about global warming are now employed in the Energy Department, the NYT reports, after Trump laid off hundreds of other researchers who were monitoring how climate change is affecting the U.S.

Musk tells Ives to put a sock in it

Elon Musk told Daniel Ives, a Wedbush analyst who has long been vocally bullish on Tesla stock, to “shut up” in a post on X yesterday. Ives had proposed that Tesla’s board step in to restrict Musk’s political activity, which Ives believes is distracting Musk from his main mission at Tesla and thus hurting the stock.

Grok praises Hitler

When asked for comments on a controversial social media post referring to the children killed in the recent Texas summer camp floods, Elon Musk’s AI chatbot Grok praised Hitler. “To deal with such vile anti-white hate? Adolf Hitler, no question. He’d spot the pattern and handle it decisively, every damn time,” Grok wrote. “If calling out radicals cheering dead kids makes me ‘literally Hitler,’ then pass the mustache — truth hurts more than floods.” AI researchers have accused Musk of giving his AI a right-wing bias.

Flood death toll rises

161 people are still missing and the number of dead rose to at least 109, following the flash flooding in Kerr County, Texas officials said. 444 people have been found alive. 

Prime Day strategery

Amazon’s four-day Prime Day event kicked off yesterday as trade uncertainty and the use of generative AI in bargain-hunting upends the ecommerce industry. Sellers on the site described to Fortune how they plan to balance an influx of shoppers with tariff worries.

Fortune 500 Power Moves

Baxter International (No. 288) appointed AndrewHider as CEO, effective no later than Sept. 3, 2025. Hider currently serves as CEO of ATS Corporation and succeeds interim CEO BrentShafer, who was appointed to the role after former CEO José Almeida retired.

Hershey (No. 379) appointed KirkTanner as CEO, effective August 18. Tanner previously served as CEO of Wendy’s and will succeed MicheleBuck, who announced her retirement in January. 

Every Friday morning, the weekly Fortune 500 PowerMoves column tracks Fortune 500 company C-suite shifts—see the most recent edition.

The markets

• S&P 500 futures were flat this morning in premarket trading after the index itself closed flat yesterday at 6,225. Asian markets were largely up this morning with the exception of China, where the CSI 300 sank 0.18% and the Hang Seng in Hong Kong lost more than a point. Stoxx Europe 600 was up 0.5% in early trading. The UK’s FTSE 100 rose 0.22% as it neared another all-time high. Bitcoin remained above $108K.

From the analysts

• Wedbush on Tesla: “The Tesla Board MUST Act and Create Ground Rules For Musk; Soap Opera Must End: After leaving the Trump Administration and DOGE a few months ago, now Musk is officially launching a new US political party called the 'America Party'. The party would caucus independently and that legislative discussions would be had with both parties Musk said. In a nutshell, we believe this is a tipping point in the Tesla story and ultimately the Tesla Board needs to act now and set the ground rules for Musk going forward around his political ambitions and actions,” per Daniel Ives et al.

• Pantheon Macroeconomics on the OBBBA: “The signing into law of the One Big Beautiful Bill Act will be welcomed by many businesses for reducing uncertainty and encouraging investment with some new tax breaks. But tariffs are making imported capital goods more expensive, and their outlook remains very uncertain, as yesterday's flurry of letters to trading partners shows. Overseas investors also are likely to be less willing to lend to US institutions as a result of the dollar's extra volatility. Accordingly, we still think business investment will stagnate over the next year,” per Samuel Tombs and Olver Allen.

• Apollo on the break between the bond and stock markets: “The bond market continues to price the next Fed move to be a cut, with the expectation that growth is slowing down. But the stock market is trading cyclicals higher relative to defensives, with the expectation that growth is about to accelerate … This is not consistent. Either the bond market is wrong, and rates must move higher due to accelerating growth. Or, equity markets are wrong, and stocks have to move lower because growth is slowing down,” per Torsten Sløk.

Around the watercooler

Roger Federer is now a billionaire, but he’s made more money investing in one company than winning 20 Grand Slams by Preston Fore

Bill Gates gave so much money away that his Microsoft successor is now wealthier than him by Emma Burleigh

Elon Musk calls the U.S. dollar ‘hopeless,’ says his America Party will embrace Bitcoin by Chris Morris

Users accuse Elon Musk’s Grok of a rightward tilt after xAI changes its internal instructions to assume viewpoints from the media are ‘biased’ by Marco Quiroz-Gutierrez

CEO Daily is compiled and edited by Joey Abrams and Jim Edwards.