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Oil prices remain volatile, artificial intelligence is demanding more power than the electrical grid can easily handle, and energy CFOs are deciding where billions of capital will flow next.
Chevron CFO Eimear Bonner joins Fortune Daily to discuss how one of America’s largest energy giants (No. 21 on the Fortune 500) is navigating these shifts—from continuing investments in Venezuela to signing a 20-year natural-gas supply agreement for Microsoft’s massive data center project in Texas. Bonner breaks down energy security, AI’s unprecedented power appetite, and what consumers should expect on their energy bills as winter approaches.
Also on today's episode: • Term Sheet Preview: How did prebiotic soda brand Poppi scale from a local farmers' market booth into a $1.95 billion beverage powerhouse? Senior Writer and Editor Allie Garfinkle talks with the founder to uncover the blueprint behind their rapid growth.
- watch the full interview here: https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=ZqcD2QIeEH8
Subscribe to Fortune: https://fortune.com/subscribe/ 

Additional images courtesy of Getty Images

00:00 - Chevron CFO Eimear Bonner on AI & Energy Demand 
14:04 - Term Sheet: How Poppi Became a $1.95B Soda Brand


Inside Chevron’s Massive Bet on AI & Energy | Fortune Daily

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I live in an apartment building in Brooklyn and one of the main topics of conversation is the price of our energy bills right now. We hear the concerns and the most important thing that we can do and what we are doing as a company is ensuring that we bring as much supply to market as we can. Hello, I'm Ellie Austin and you're watching Fortune Daily. Energy is rarely out of the headlines these days and oil prices continue to be volatile. At the same time, AI needs more power than the grid can easily deliver. At the center of all of this are CFOs, Chief Financial Officers, because they're the ones deciding where energy companies invest their money. Ema Bonner is the CFO of Chevron, which is number 21 on our Fortune 500 list. And she's helping steer one of America's largest oil companies through all of it, from deciding to double down on rigs in Venezuela. To a 20 year deal with Microsoft to supply natural gas power to a massive data center that it's building in Texas and that project alone could deliver power roughly equivalent to 2 million homes. Bonna joins me to talk about energy security, about AI's voracious appetite for electricity, and also about what she'd say to consumers, panicked that as we head into winter, that already very pricey energy bills are about to skyrocket. Eva, thank you so much for joining us. So it's the UN General Assembly this week in New York, and there's real hopes that U.S.Iran talks there could help stabilize global oil prices. What's it like to manage this volatility, this ongoing volatility from the CFO chair of a major oil company like Chevron? Well, thanks, Ellie, for having me. It's buzzing here in New York at Ongo Week. Look, things Very volatile and very uncertain and that's something that we don't try and predict as a company we plan for it and so from a CFO chair I'm involved in planning for all of that uncertainty. Our business is cyclical, so we're used to every few years having some shocks and cycles, and we have to make sure, and I have to make sure from the CFO's chair that we can weather all of that disruption. So what I pay attention to are things that are within our control. How does the portfolio perform at high and low prices? What investment choices make sense? Investment choices that make sense over the long term that will be profitable and deliver high returns even if prices. are lower. How to manage risks around the world, we have operations. Around the world and so each country is different and so we think about that as a company and the CFO plays a key role in looking at all the enterprise risks and ensuring that we can manage those risks. And then third is really to ensure that every day we're safely and reliably operating all of the assets we have because it's that platform of performance that is so important, important, especially given the disruption that we're managing today when Delivering supply to the market to delivering products to customers, and it's even more important when you've got constraints in the system. Chevron has announced that it's planning to more than double its red count in Venezuela following a deal struck with the Trump administration. You've negotiated or the company has negotiated stability clauses and arbitration rights as part of that deal. But this is still a deal that's tied to a certain political administration. What protects that money that Chevron has invested if the politics change over the next couple of years? The new terms that we were able to negotiate it unlocked this growth opportunity for us. It had long duration growth possibilities. It was a low cost. Operations 3 low cost operations and higher returns. So those 3 things came together to give us confidence that we could grow our investment in Venezuela. So when we think about Venezuela, we have 3 operating. Joint ventures today we've been in the country for 100 years, so we understand the country very well. We understand the stakeholders very well. We have exceptional employees in Venezuela, so our human capital is there. Our partnership has been developed over many years. So that's where we're starting from when we got these new terms and additional acreage, it made the outlook for. Venezuela compete with everything else that we have in the portfolio. The extra protections that we put in place, the stability clauses, protects the terms of all of those new agreements regardless of who's in power, regardless, regardless. So the stability clause, and these stability clauses are like what we would have in other parts of the world, so they're no different than what we have in Kazakhstan, for example, and that really protects the investment and that's really important to know when you're in a country that the investment that you're making for the long term is protected. So in addition to the additional acreage, we also got those additional protections. And then we got the right to resolve disputes through international arbitration, which is something that we would typically have in other assets of scale around the world. So it was the terms and it was these protections, the protections on the economics and the protections, legal protections that gave us that overall confidence to grow, and we'll grow production. We'll double production over the next five years. That will require gross $7 billion of commitment. And what we'll unlock at a gross level is roughly 9 billion barrels of commercial. Commercial reserves before becoming CFO you were CTO, um, so you're particularly uniquely placed to talk about what we're seeing now with the AI boom and its potential impact on, um, the energy market. So every week is bringing another story about AI agents and what they can, they can't do, how they might. Behave. AI is now selling utilities protection against that, um, to try and guarantee safety. You're about to sell power to these companies. Um, what goes through your mind? How are you thinking about this moment in time and specifically the conversation we're having right now about AI and long term safety? So we see the opportunity in two areas. One, how to leverage the technology to improve performance, and it's one focus area. And the other area is how to power the energy, the AI growth, and the energy that's needed, that's needed for the AI growth. So we're playing kind of both sides of the equation. I'd start with, you know, leveraging AI. I mean from a CTO perspective, when I was the CTO, we stood up the enterprise AI team, so the team in Chevron that has grown over the last couple of years that has deployed AI across the organization. We're using AI in our assets to improve performance. We're using it in our reservoirs to help us make the right decision on how to increase recovery. We're using it across the organization for personal productivity and team products. Oh, I use it every day. In fact, I can't remember a day where I did not use AI. I'm using it every day to help me synthesize information. There's a huge amount of information that comes obviously across my desk every day. And one of the challenges to discern what really matters and what doesn't. And so it's really helping me with discern discern. Things I should pay attention to. It's helping me with my personal efficiency, and that gives me more time to think about some of these longer term decisions that are important to me. One of the topics that has been mentioned in these doomsday debates that have been swirling over the past week or so is the possibility of AI hacking the energy grid. Is that in your perspective, is that something that's likely within the next decade and sort of all the repercussions that could happen as a result of that? Well, I can talk about the framework that we have in our company around AI. So what regulations and what safety guardrails are you putting in place to make sure that that doesn't happen at Chevron? Yeah, we have a framework in place, a responsible AI framework, and so since the very beginning when we started up our AI team a couple of years ago, everything that we developed and everything we pushed out was consistent with that framework, and that was the third party. Um, um, this third party, um, thought leaders on AI that had developed this framework in the early days and we were able to participate in some of that work and also implement it, you know, for us we have to think every day about cybersecurity risk, risks in general, safety risk. Health risks and so this framework helped us think about the new risks associated with AI. So everything that we've developed is within that in that framework and so for us it's really important that as we leverage the technology we think about it like every other new technology that we deployed. We have good risk management. We test it. And we deploy it responsibly and safely and so that's the approach that we're taking with AI. I live in an apartment building in Brooklyn and I have a WhatsApp chat with all the other kind of apartment holders in my building and one of the main topics of conversation. Is the price of our energy bills right now and specifically going into winter, people are very nervous about, hey, if my kind of energy bill costs this in June in New York City, what's it going to cost in December? What's your response to the consumer and those concerns they have given everything that's going on in the Strait of Hormuz and The soaring prices of energy that we've seen, we hear the concerns, you know, prices impact consumers, businesses, economies. They're very hard to predict prices. And so, you know, given the disruption that we've seen this year, not only to the crude supply that's on the market, but also now to refinery capacity, those things are showing up in the price. Over the last couple of months, all of the buffers that existed at the beginning of the conflict have been drawn down. You know, there were commercial inventories. There were strategic petroleum reserve releases. There were sanctioned barrels that were on the water, and so all of those, all of that supply buffered the price for a while and so now a lot of that is drawn down and so we're seeing that increased pressure in price. In addition to that, refinery. Capacity globally has been decreased as well with some of the some of the conflict and so those two things together are creating creating the challenge and so there's a lot of pressure on prices right now and the most important thing that we can do and what we are doing as a company is ensuring that we bring as much supply to market and that we run our refineries. Reliably and as efficiently as we can and that's what we're doing so we're growing production this year we're putting more supply in the market and that's what you were saying with Venezuela Venezuela is even in addition to the 7 to 10% that we are growing this year. Venezuela will bring more growth. We've grown Venezuela 15% this year already. So what we're focused on is bringing supply to the market and executing our plans with excellence. And then on the refinery side is really running our refineries at maximum throughput and in fact in the 3rd quarter we shared the production records that we are achieving and the refinery throughput records. So that's how we're part of the solution. Bringing supply and refinery throughput, and I think that is the message that operationally, operationally, operationally as best as you can, but you don't know the price is to an extent out of your, we don't control prices. What we control is putting supply in the market and running refineries well operationally, and that's what we're doing. You have had a really interesting career trajectory, Ema. So you started as an offshore. Petroleum engineer in the UK, um, my homeland, um, and then you went on to become Chevron's first female chief technology officer in 2021, um, and then first female CFO, not the first female CFO. OK, that's good news that that someone else had had held that role before you. But becoming the first female CTO, did that have any significance to you? Did you have any relationship with that milestone? It was, you know, exciting milestone. There were a few things that happened at the same time. I moved to Houston. I, um, was part of the executive leadership team and I was the CTO. So all of those things together was, was just, it was such a privilege to get that, get that opportunity. So it was significant on many, many levels. It gives me the opportunity to leverage all of the operational experience. I've had, you know, from multiple parts of the world, the UK, Asia, and Eurasia and really think about what was important in terms of the priorities for, for technology. And so what I learned through the role was that um technology can make what you think's impossible possible and technology can allow you to break through what's limiting performance. And again, the technology needs to be focused. It's got to be focused on the business, and you've got to at the end of the day see a result because that's the return that you get for all the technology programs is that you ultimately achieve a different step change in performance and so that's what I learned in the role and had a lot of fun in that role and then I. I took that lens when I became CFO because it helped me look at the asset performance just with that lens all the time. So I asked myself a lot, what's possible? What's possible? And I think that question came from that time. It's been a pleasure to speak to you. Thanks, Ellie. Cheers. How did Poppy go from a farmer's market stand to a nearly $2 billion soda brand? Here's a preview of Fortune's term sheet where senior writer and editor Ali Garfinkel got the story direct from the founder. What do you think most large companies are getting wrong about Gen Z? 100% of everything that they do. What is this? This is Poppy, the digital first soda brand Pepsi bought for $1.95 billion. Stop spiraling. Get a poppy. In the multi-billion dollar soda market, 3 companies dominate the shelves, and breaking in is notoriously difficult. Poppy, defied the odds. 53 days is the cycle. If you can't hit within that 3 days, you'll be the first to move at the speed of culture, what are you doing? And big corporations. Cannot move that quick, but executing that fast nearly bankrupt them. We had $75,000 in the bank and almost ran out of money. Today I asked Poppy co-founder Alison Ellsworth, how do you outmaneuver legacy giants, survive near bankruptcy and execute one of the largest consumer brand exits in beverage history. A lot of founders tend to cling to a CEO title. You really didn't. Why not? So it's so funny, and I'm here to tell you entrepreneurs, being CEO is just a glorified HR person. Like the last thing I want to do is deal with a ton of people problems and run a P&O. And, and, and in a day, no, CEOs are incredible and they, they have amazing vision and I adored ours at PPI. That's not what I'm saying, but it's like this title that people are so obsessed. with. And it's like, find your superpower. My superpower was running the creative and brand because I was the brand. I I I loved every aspect of it. There wasn't a can that I didn't design with my team, like all of those things. And so why would I want to do the CEO role? And it was the same with my husband. He was incredibly talented in the innovation and supply chain. And his team, I think other than our sales team was like the largest team. He was like managing like 80 people, right? You can find your superpower and not be CEO and I'm here to tell you, like you holding onto it for too long can be, it can hurt the business. To be a CEO, I think that it comes with experience and so Poppy with the crazy growth that we had, me and my husband looked at each other. It was like a year we're going from I think we were looking at going from 50 million to 200 million. We were looking at buying super wads and we looked at each other like we've never done this before. Why don't we bring in people that know more than us and be part of the conversation. And partner with them instead, instead of it getting forced upon you. Because if you have a board and you have investment and you have growth and you hold on for so long and let your ego get in the way of growth, it's going to get forced upon you and it's going to go sour real quick versus acknowledging it and learning from it. And I love that we're able to learn from these people who had been so seasoned in it before. So you can watch the full interview with Alison Ellsworth on our Fortune YouTube channel and we'll also drop the link um to that interview into the show notes for this episode. That's it for Fortune Daily. I'm Ellie Austin, remember to like, subscribe and let us know in the comments what you think about oil prices or maybe what your favorite coffee flavor is. I'll see you next week.

Mastercard is betting on a new era of agentic commerce, where AI agents can act on behalf of consumers, make purchases, and even transact with other machines. But handing an AI agent your wallet raises new questions around trust, identity, and accountability. What happens when an agent buys the wrong thing, exceeds its authority, or gets manipulated? And how do you build a payments system that can distinguish between human and non-human actors? Fortune’s Ruth Umoh sits down with Ed McLaughlin, Mastercard’s President and Chief Technology Officer, to discuss the future of agentic commerce, AI-powered fraud prevention, cybersecurity, and what happens when machines become participants in the global economy.

Would You Let AI Buy Your Flights? Mastercard’s Bet on Agentic Commerce | Next to Lead

At just 21 years old, Lucy Guo co-founded Scale AI. Two years later, she walked away and went on to become the world’s youngest self-made female billionaire.


Now, she’s building Passes, a creator monetization platform shaping the future of digital media. Lucy sits down with Fortune Daily to discuss: 
• Building an AI giant before the boom 
• Bouncing back from a contentious exit 
• Early bets on Anthropic and the future of artificial intelligence 
• How a new generation of multi-hyphenate tech founders is wielding global influence


Also on today's show: 
• Fame to Fortune: Kristin Stoller sits down with two-time World Cup champion and former USWNT goalie Ashlyn Harris to break down the business of sports. 
• High Stakes Strategy: Former FBI lead hostage negotiator and CEO of The Black Swan Group, Chris Voss, shares negotiation tactics for high-net-worth, high-security environments.
Subscribe to Fortune: ⁠https://fortune.com/subscribe/⁠ 
Additional images courtesy of Getty Images

00:00 Lucy Guo
14:25 Ashlyn Harris
18:40 Chris Voss


How Lucy Guo Became a Self-Made AI Billionaire | Fortune Daily

More than three-quarters of organizations now use AI in at least one business function, according to McKinsey data, yet adoption often outpaces execution. The harder task is to move beyond tokenmaxxing—treating ever-higher AI token consumption as a proxy for productivity—and turn promising tools into durable productivity gains and measurable business value. This session examines what that takes: orchestrating multiple AI systems at scale, developing models that work in local languages and contexts, and building sovereign AI capabilities that give organisations greater control over their data, models, and deployment choices. Technology leaders explore how businesses can embed privacy, security, and trust from the outset—while building AI that employees and customers can actually use, and that delivers value beyond the demo.

Alvin Kwock, Co-founder & CEO , AIFT 
Becca Carroll, Chief Strategy Officer, IDEO 
Pak-Sun Ting, Co-founder and CEO, Votee AI 
Madhav Timalsina, Vice President & Group Director, Infosys 
Nicholas Gordon, Editor, Asia, Fortune 

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