The inaugural Fortune Asia Future 30, in partnership with BCG, recognizes companies with long-term growth potential.

Fortune Asia Future 30

These innovative companies are laying the foundations for robust growth—and outsize returns for shareholders.

Future 50 2023-NIO Inc.

Like No. 5 Li Auto, Nio has been steadily gaining ground selling electric vehicles in China, where government subsidies have helped the EV industry grow a consumer base. Through October of 2023, the Shanghai-based manufacturer said it had delivered more than 126,000 vehicles for the year—up 36% from the year-earlier period—and more than 415,000 cumulatively since its 2014 debut.

The Future 50

As we face unprecedented collective challenges, cooperation has become a business superpower.

47.CTW20.42.Nio

An electric vehicle without a battery. It sounds like a prank, but the new business model of Chinese EV maker Nio could revolutionize an industry held back by sticker shock, range anxiety, and lack of charging infrastructure. Nio’s battery as a service, or BaaS, announced this summer, lets customers purchase a battery-less Nio and separately subscribe to chargeable, swappable, and upgradable batteries. The model relies on a network of battery-swapping stations; there are 143 in China so far. Nio sees the strategy as a way to lower costs—its EVs cost between $52,000 and $68,000 but sell for $10,000 less without the battery—and appeal to drivers who prefer not to be tethered to public charging stations. The approach aims more broadly to tear down barriers to EV ownership and, ultimately, to promote the decarbonization of transport.

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NIO designs, manufactures and sells smart electric vehicles, and is banking on a premium brand image, autonomous driving technology, and a battery swapping model to help it stand out in China's crowded market. The Shanghai, China-based EV startup, founded in 2014, is backed by CYVN, an Abu Dhabi, UAE investment fund.

Customers standing around a NIO electric car.

NIO (NIO): Company Profile, Stock Price, News, Rankings

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NIO | Fortune

NIO (NIO): Company Profile, Stock Price, News, Rankings | Fortune

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In this episode of Fortune Daily, we go inside Gap’s attempt to turn cultural relevance into a sustained retail comeback.
After cycling through five CEOs in five years, Gap Inc. is betting on CEO Richard Dickson—the former Mattel executive who helped revive Barbie—to restore one of America’s most iconic brands. His strategy: stop relying on constant discounts and start telling a story consumers want to buy into at full price.
Fortune Senior Writer Phil Wahba takes us inside Gap’s remodeled Flatiron flagship and sits down with Dickson for Behind the Business. We examine the brand’s renewed push for fashion, celebrity partnerships, and viral marketing—from Hailey Bieber’s campaign to Gap’s Katseye dance video—and explore whether cultural buzz can deliver lasting sales growth.
While the core Gap brand has posted 11 consecutive quarters of comparable-sales growth, the broader turnaround faces headwinds as Old Navy and Athleta navigate challenges. Plus, Phil breaks down the rising trend of CEOs publishing lengthy online essays: who are they for, and why are they writing them?
Watch Phil’s full feature video here: https://youtu.be/PwDqR7Sa_rk

Subscribe to Fortune: https://fortune.com/subscribe/ 

Additional images courtesy of Getty Images

Inside Gap’s High-Stakes Comeback | Fortune Daily

Features

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Stores have to be good. You cannot be 100% online, and it turns out young people like going to stores if the stores are fun. Hello from New York, I'm Ellie Austin and this is Fortune Daily. 10 of white t-shirts, a viral dance video featuring Cats Eye, and a pair of jeans designed by Hailey Bieber, Save Gap. The iconic retailer has had 5 CEOs in 5 years, and it's lost a lot of its cultural power in the process. But now current CEO Richard Dixon, who's also the executive who helped rebuild Barbie, is betting that Gap can win back its cultural relevance and then Wall Street. And actually the Gap brand is showing signs of life with comparable sales up 10% for its 11th straight positive quarter. But at the same time, Old Navy, which is the brand that drives more than half of parent companies, Gap Inc.s revenue just posted its first decline since 2023. So what's going on at one of America's most recognizable apparel brands? Well, Fortune senior writer Phil Weber went inside Gap's very chic remodeled flat iron flagship here in New York to find out whether a cultural comeback can indeed become a business turnaround. Let's take a look at his reporting. Gap fell into a cycle. Too many stores, excess inventory, and over-discounting that taught customers to wait for the sale. The Gap brand lost nearly half of its sales and closed more than 60% of its stores globally. We weaned ourselves off of the overpromoted, over-signed offerings. It doesn't mean that we're not a value-oriented brand at all. In fact, we love our distinction as a value-oriented brand great prices, great style, and great quality. After cycling through four CEOs in four years, Gap hired Richard Dixon. He helped revive Mattel's Barbie to a record $1.7 billion cultural phenomenon. Part of the challenge when we started this reinvigoration, you'd come into our stores and we were more about price than product. It was about stuff, not story, and so we took the And said, OK, let's edit this stuff into a story and let's start to tell our product story in a way that is primary. So Phil, we just saw that clip of your interview with Gap CEO Richard Dixon, and as we saw you walked the floor of the big flagship store here in New York, what's different in a Gap store today compared to 5 years ago? There's a lot more storytelling and it's a lot more fun. Um, that store in particular is the model of what they want to have at all their stores, so there's References to the past, pictures of the first Gap store from 1969. There's also references to their new successes, gigantic posters of Hailey Bieber. In uh Gap jeans, she's their new um uh celebrity collaborator. So there's just, it, it, uh, they're really touching the past and the future at the same time in their stores. Is it working? It absolutely is. The Gap as a brand is on fire. The gap has been struggling for more than a decade, and now suddenly quarter in, quarter out is growing by double digit percentages, and there's a lot of buzz. They've been doing ads with Cats Eye, the collaboration with Hailey Bieber, and so many others, and so Dixon's focus on cultural relevance, as he calls it, has Really helped the brand come back. So one of the things that Dixon says is, or his theory is that a brand can't sell its way out of irrelevance, and I think this links back to why he's focusing so much on storytelling. But unpack that a bit for me from your time spent with him. What did you learn? So the Gap, the brand, not the company, but the brand. Ended up relying a lot on discounting. This happened, it happened at Levi's. It happened at Abercrombie. It happened at American Eagle. It was astonishing how cheaply you could buy a pair of jeans or a t-shirt in there. And so what happened is that because all these brands went on autopilot and they didn't really have a point of view or have anything to say, so the only way you could spur people to buy it is to cut prices, and then that created this addiction to discounting. And it has been a long slog for the Gap, and they seem to have broken that cycle. Um, Dixon came from Mattau where he really helped revive Barbie, and I think he, you know, was a key figure in getting that film to the big screen. How much of what worked on Barbie the doll can work for Gap Inc. I guess we're talking about. So and remind us the four brands that fall under Gap Inc. So Gap Inc. has the Gap. It has Old Navy, which is its biggest brand by far. 6% of revenue. It has Banana Republic, which is doing better. It has struggled for years, but it's starting to turn a corner. And then Athleta, which is, you know, Lululemon competitor, but that, that brand is in a lot of difficulty right now. OK, tell me a bit about why Banana Republic is doing well and Athleta is not doing well. Well, Athleta, Lululemon is also struggling, so there's a shift away from athleisure clothing, but they've just, they've been off trend for a very long time and people stopped paying attention. Banana Republic is starting to make a comeback. They were a little higher end than the Gap, and but they've tried all sorts of positionings in the market and lost people started to. Not understand what is Banana Republic for. They feel it feels a lot more lux now when you walk into a Banana Republic store than it did say a few years ago. But going back to the Barbie question, was that was kind of the success of Barbie and the revamping of that brand attractive to Gap when they brought Dixon in? Well, it was the reason they brought him in. He, he used to work in the apparel industry, so before Barbie, Mattel, but at at Mattel, he reinvigorated the Barbie franchise by bringing in different body sizes, different ethnic groups, and made her very relevant, and then of course there was a movie that was a hit, and so he comes to the Gap and he to Gap and he understands that. Clothing is just clothing if it doesn't have a story to tell, and he told me that with time, um, Gap Inc. had forgotten how to really maximize storytelling, and a sweatshirt is just a sweatshirt unless it has a story behind it. And so these creators that they are now engaging with, Cats Eye for instance. How do they help tell the story of the product, because it's one thing to see the cat's eye viral dance video, which I think we've all seen on social media. It's really like a captivating thing to watch. It doesn't automatically drive you into the store to buy the denim skirt that one of the dancers is wearing. Well, it catches people's eye, and that's where the other part of his work has been important too. Um, you, you reignite interest in the brand, so people might give you another chance, and then they go to the stores like, oh, the store is, uh, dynamic, it's fun, the product is better. And in fact, uh, they re-elevated the quality of Gap products because that's one of the things that when you're spiraling downward, you start to cut corners. Has that had a knock-on effect on price? Yeah, yeah, so they're able to charge more full price on. More items, but it's still a work in progress. I mean, again, not everybody cares that Cats Eye says that that's a nice sweatshirt. A sweatshirt has to have it stand on its own values. So Cats Eye piques interest. It reminds people that Gap exists and then it puts them in the conversation and it also gets you on TikTok and I mean it has worked brilliantly, but also the strategy is. harkens back to what made the gap so big in the 80s and 90s. You know, there was that famous gap spot where people were dancing in khakis, which reminds me of what Cats Eye did. So there's always a little bit of a hint of the past. And you know, you had Sarah Jessica Parker, you had Madonna, you had Missy Elliott back in the day. So this is really sort of just taking the gap back to what made it big to start with, especially in the 90s, it's biggest. They did have talking about big name collaborations, they did have a collaboration with Kanye West and Yeezy that very much went south. Tell us a bit about that and how much is that haunting the company at this point? Well, they've gone through it, but that was during the period of throwing spaghetti at the wall, and Kanye West, for all his artistic genius, not a reliable person when you're a mass brand. He was supposed to develop all sorts of products and the only thing that they ever showcased was that gigantic hideous puffer jacket. Um, so that, that, that was, uh, that was just trying to latch onto celebrity without really thinking through what it could do for the brand, and they lost a lot of money as a result of that. They lost a lot of money and they lost a lot of time, crucially. Mhm. Um, Dixon said I thought it was a really interesting leadership story that when he came into the company there was a positivity bias and the execs were not facing problems and challenges head on. Um, what did that look like specifically? Well, it's just, there was a focus on when things went well to tout them but not examine why things that failed failed, and actually what's interesting. The thing is that that was also something that Macy's CEO flagged to me last year, Tony Spring, that when he got there, nobody ever wanted to talk about the problems. Everything was like, oh well, we did this collection, it did well, and he said and our stores are dumps, we have to do something about it. And then so. In both cases you've seen that candor and honesty without falling into negativity and cynicism have really helped brands come back. You speak to an analyst in the video feature who says who's very skeptical about that sort of 10%. That we see Gap trumpeting, that their sales are going up every quarter, and he says that everyone's kind of revenue is going up as a result of tariffs. Is that correct? He is, and there's a certain amount of inflation that's lifting everybody, but even pardon me, even putting that aside, Levi's has had a turnaround. Abercrombie and Fitch's had a turnaround. American Eagle, so if the gap weren't growing, it would be very worrisome. So there is a little bit of Yes, it's staging a comeback, but it's not unique in doing so, and that's also why the stock has not had liftoff as people might have expected. The stock has remained relatively flat. We've talked about the stores. How does Gap do well as e-commerce these days? I know Dixon says he sees. The people coming into the stores and enjoying the experience of shopping. What does its e-commerce presence look like? They have a very big online business, but they really need, and in fact this has become the consensus in retail land, is stores have to be good. You cannot be 100% online. And it turns out young people like going to stores if the stores are fun. And so the Gap store uh in the Flatiron District here has records, and it has fantastic vintage photos by Anna Leibovitz of spokespeople of years past next to Hailey Bieber. So you have to make your stores interesting. You also have to make them attractive to the Instagram generation. Absolutely. Um, so I mentioned in the intro to this to this conversation that while Gap is doing well, Old Navy, which is a really, you know, 50%, it constitutes 56% of revenue for Gap Inc. is not doing well. So how do you read the story of Gapping more generally? Is this really going to be a turnaround? Well, uh, as Old Navy goes, so goes Gap Inc. and, um, you know, Old Navy has also tried celebrity collaborations, you know, they, they, uh, they used to be, you know, they used to have that golden touch too, and in fact right now they have a collaboration with Cardi B, uh, but that's not enough, and so, uh, Old Navy has sort of lost its position. It's not helping that Walmart has been doing. A lot of really trend forward stuff at those price points and so Old Navy has to figure out what its value proposition is and it's been several quarters of weakness and they just changed the CEO from Target and Walmart. Target, yeah, Michael Francis, who was at Target a very long time ago, and so that shows you that the Richard Dixon playbook. Um, works, but celebrity collabs on their own aren't enough. You really have to have, um, Clothing that is on trend and you have to have absolutely peerless supply chains, some of the less sexy stuff of apparel, and you have to have good prices and you have to really differentiate yourself, differentiate yourself from others because Walmart and Target. are their competitors and fast fashion as well. And so this is Old Navy is actually the biggest clothing brand in the country after Nike. Phil, thank you so much. Where can people watch your full Gap feature? They can go to YouTube to the Fortune section, but specifically the Behind the Business tab. So we wanted you to stick around, speak to you about another subject which you recently wrote a CEO daily essay about, um, was very pertinent to the moment we're in. CEOs writing these enormously long essays on all different platforms. Um, I'm thinking about Dario Amodai's essay this weekend about the long. Safety of AI, it scrolled on and on and on despite being very important. What's going on? Why are CEOs writing these things? Well, part of it is, uh, they want to position themselves as big thinkers, but also there's a bit of a land grab happening in trying to get public opinion about AI, uh, but there's also a lot of ego involved. I think that, um, they tend to think that they're experts at everything and that everybody is hanging on their every word. And what could be said in 2000 words is said in 13,000 words. It's a bit like having a sub stack or being a contributor at Forbes. No offense, and so it, it's, it's they're trying to shape public opinion but also position themselves as people who are thinking these big things. Do you think they have teams helping them? Do they have editors? Are they the ones actually writing these posts? Uh, they're a little difficult to read and they clearly need an editor, so I'm guessing that they might be writing it themselves and then just having one person say, I'll just have a look. And that person probably said this is phenomenal. Warren Buffett is known for writing thought pieces, but generally he errs on the more succinct side. Is that correct? Well, when he was, uh, that was his annual letter to shareholders, so it was one time a year, but remember you. Millions of people who are trying to figure out how to invest like he did, and there was a point to it and it was clearly earned that audience. This is a little bit like, OK, well I'm just gonna, you know, a stream of conscience, put this out on the website and people will read it. At what point do you earn the right to be read if you're one of these big tech guys? Well, they do have the right to be read, but they should be edited and make it. Cleared, we, we don't need to know every single, uh, thought that they have and how it all connects. I mean, everybody needs an editor. It's, it's hard for journalists to admit it, but we, we need editors. We really do. It always ends up bad, so thank you. Thank you. That's it for Fortune Daily. I'm Ellie Austin. Please remember to like and subscribe. It really does make a difference to the show and other people finding us. I'll see you tomorrow and in the meantime, I'm off to explore the Gap flagship. OK, thank you guys.

This women-only panel brings together business leaders honored on Fortune’s Most Powerful Women Asia list for a candid conversation on how leadership is evolving in one of the world’s most dynamic growth regions. As AI transforms industries and Asia’s role in global business continues to expand, female leaders are navigating change while building the partnerships, influence, and power structures that will define this new era of business. In this session, they will explore how leaders can build organisations that are equipped not only to respond to change, but to direct it.


Carol Liao, Chair, Managing Director & Senior Partner, BCG Greater China 
Melissa Ries, Group Vice President and Managing Director, Asia, ServiceNow 
Fang Wang, Executive Editor, Shanghai, Fortune China 

A New Blueprint for Power in Asia

Conferences

Should the tech industry drastically slow down AI development?
On today’s episode of Fortune Daily, we break down an intense weekend of debate surrounding long-term AI safety and frontier model development. Following Anthropic CEO Dario Amodei’s essay urging the industry to “pace the frontier,” OpenAI CEO Sam Altman sat down with Fortune Editor-in-Chief Alyson Shontell for an exclusive interview.
In a striking moment from one of the central figures accelerating the AI race, Altman agrees that development may need to be paced. We share exclusive clips from the interview and sit down with Fortune’s senior AI reporter Emily Forlini to break down what this means for the future of tech, safety regulations, and the global race for artificial intelligence.
In this episode: • Dario Amodei’s call to “pace the frontier” • Exclusive clips: Sam Altman sits down with Alyson Shontell • Analysis and context with Fortune Senior AI Reporter Emily Forlini
Watch Alyson Shontel’s full interview with Sam Altman on Titans and Distruptors: https://youtu.be/RSZSGa9if8k

Follow Emily Forlini on Instagram - @emily.forlini 

Subscribe to Fortune: https://fortune.com/subscribe/ 

Additional images courtesy of Getty Images

Why ChatGPT’s Founder Wants to Pump the Brakes on AI | Fortune Daily

In this week’s episode, Substack CEO Chris Best joins the show to discuss the company’s new AI-detection feature. Plus, an ex-Anthropic researcher sparks a media frenzy with a warning that AI could become smart enough to “kill us all,” while OpenAI claims it cracked a $1 million math problem — sparking a backlash amongst mathematicians. Fortune AI Editor Jeremy Kahn and Senior AI Reporter Beatrice Nolan break down the biggest AI stories of the week.


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