OS National

See which workplaces made this year's list.

GPTW Real Estate Small and Medium 2024-OS National LLC_US1__20240712204502_1

<p>Employees say:</p><p>"The company cares about you as an individual. You are not just a number here. It is amazing how everyone works together being in a remote environment. This is an amazing place to work. The benefits are outstanding as well."</p>

Best Small and Medium Workplaces in Real Estate

Best Workplaces In Real Estate

Founded

Sites

Get insights into OS National including business profile, stock information, news, and rankings from Fortune.

OS National Company Profile, Stock Price, News, Rankings

legacy

os national

Companies

OS National | Fortune

OS National Company Profile, Stock Price, News, Rankings | Fortune

Robotaxis are no longer a distant promise. In China, they are becoming part of daily urban life. As of early 2026, over 50 Chinese cities allow self-driving cars on public roads for testing; at least 10 permit commercial operations. Autonomous driving developer Pony AI has targeted to put 3,500 robotaxis on the road by the end of the year. The company’s cofounder and CEO, James Peng, has built his company around a practical premise: autonomous vehicles cannot wait for purpose-built smart cities; they must learn to operate safely and reliably on the roads cities already have. As Pony AI expands its operations in China and internationally, Peng will discuss what widespread autonomous mobility could mean for passengers, professional drivers, and the design of cities themselves. A central question is whether AI will make today’s urban infrastructure work differently, or whether truly autonomous cities will eventually require us to rethink existing urban systems altogether. 

Dr. James Peng, Founder and CEO , Pony.ai 
Nicholas Gordon, Editor, Asia, Fortune 

Intelligence in Motion: Mobility and Urban Futures

Conferences

Good morning everyone, and I wonder if we can have James up on screen. James, it's so great to have you here with today. I know you're very busy and so thank you for giving us this time today. You know, I, I wanna start this conversation with a confession and that confession is I absolutely hate driving. I hate driving a car. I hate dealing with traffic. I hate dealing with parking. So why don't you give us a timeline. Of how long we might be able to when we might be able to expect kind of robo taxis to be commercial, to be ubiquitous, to be widespread, kind of how long are we thinking before these robotaxis become more common. Hi, Nicholas. Hi, this is James. Uh, it's great to be here and uh There's a bit ico. So Uh, do I see a bit of echola? Uh, anyhow, the, uh, Uh, can, can we turn off the, uh, mic somewhere? I see, I, I hear the echo. But anyhow, let me just go, go ahead and start. So, uh, I mean, as you already described, there's already commercial usage of the robotaxi in, uh, certain cities. For example, in China, we have launched commercial robotaxi services in the four tier one cities in China, uh, Beijing, Guangzhou, Shenzhen, and Shanghai, uh. And of course, our main focus for the next several years will be focusing on scaling and putting the vehicles to be ubiquitous, right? So, I think there there are several limiting factors. One is regulation, the other is the capital and the resource needed to manufacture the vehicles and put them into uh uh many different cities. And the third, of course, is building the customer consensus and the willingness to actually having the services. I think all those takes time, but what we have seen is that the flying wheel is already there. We have uh See, at least from our current operations, customers love them. Uh, we, on average, I think we have about 25 rides per vehicle per day. And, uh, so, so to answer your question, in short, I think it's a matter of, uh, getting more and more. Uh, vehicles manufactured and getting the regulation ready. I think the technology problem is pretty much already solved. So, so maybe, maybe look at another five years, you'll be able to see in, in most of the major cities. Around the world, you'll be able to have, uh, get, get you a regular, regular, uh, service, and you'll be able to hail in a robotaxi just like a normal taxi. And, and let's talk about some of those major cities in the world because I know you're, uh, you have this aggressive global expansion plan. You're in Zagreb, um, in Croatia. You have this new partnership with Uber for Europe and the Middle East. I think you also just expanded into South Korea. So how are you thinking about these, these global markets and what's your approach to, you know, entering a new city? Uh, when, when we considering, because our resources are limited, so when we considering a city to enter into, there are several factors we consider. One is It, it should be a city that relatively has a mature taxi service, right? It, it's the taxi fare is relatively high, so there will be potential demand. The second factor is on the regulatory front. The, uh, at least, even, even if there's no existing regulations to support robotaxi, there should be a pathway already exist, uh, to support it. And the third, of course, is have a strong local partnership. I think with all three factors to consider, that will be a candidate city that we will enter into. That's why we, we consider definitely currently Europe. Uh, Middle East, I think South Korea, Japan, uh, uh, Southeast Asia, that'll be our main focus for now. And you know, tell us more about these, about these partnerships. So when you're working with someone like Uber, what are you getting from them and what are your partners getting from you? Because think about it, it, even a regular taxi, let, let, let alone a robo taxi requires different partnerships, right? There's user acquisition, uh, Such as Uber. There's a vehicle manufacturer, and there's a driver. Besides that, there's also backend services, right, such as cleaning, servicing, charging, and all that. So you, you, you can think of Pony as providing a driver, a virtual driver that, that's safe, reliable, uh, consistent, and will make the driving a fun experience. But besides the driving itself, right, we, we want a trusted partner in the local markets that the local residents are already familiar with. For example, that like Uber as a global ride-hailing, uh, platform, uh, most of the people are familiar and trust. So, so essentially, our partnership with Uber is that Uber can provide uh a, a customer acquisition tool and also we work together to push the boundaries of the local regulation to support. Robotaxi. So, so I think the partnership is essential in our global expansion. So how do you think that You know, urban transit, urban planning might change as robo taxis become more common. You know, you might expect maybe, you know, on the negative side it could be that there are more cars on the road, fewer people take buses, take the subway. On the other hand, you know, automated driving may be safer than human drivers for a variety of reasons. There are kind of implications for labor and for jobs, but how do you see kind of this again this question of urban mobility changing as we have more robotaxis on the road? Uh, 000, I think the automated driving, such as robotaxi, it could be other forms of automated driving that actually will make, uh, mobility to be much more easily accessible. Uh, it could be that there's less usage of subways, but that on the other hand, there could be much less usage of self-driven cars that in a, in a way, think about a lot of urban space. Uh, uh, uh, built for parking where the personal used cars are very less efficiently used, right? Most of the cars drive like 2 hours a day. So, so if there's robotaxi becomes more, more ubiquitous everywhere, then, then it can be, will save more parking space. Well, it can be that the, the mobility becomes much easily accessible. Then maybe, maybe the urban planning will be different because, because the mobility. If it becomes ubiquitous and everywhere, you, you, you may not need to live in the city center. So, so I think the implication is, uh, will, will be profound and probably still. Eventually we will change the whole urban planning and it changed the way of our life. And of course with with all new technologies I mean there's an element of kind of trust getting people used to the idea there's working with regulators there's convincing potential customers um I know China earlier this year briefly paused robotaxi rollouts because of you know incident involving one of your competitors. Um, but kind of what's your strategy for, you know, working with regulators to convince them of trust and safety, to encourage customers that it's totally fine that this car has no driver, don't worry about it, kind of what, what's your strategy for those kinds of stakeholder engagements? Yes, I, I think the most important one, of course, is by, by facts, by metrics. So, so we, we actually, uh, by working with the regulators, we show, we, we have all the, uh, data that we collected on the safety side, on the convenience side, on the impact to the, uh, local transportation network. So I, I think seeing is believing, right? Once we were able to present. All this statistical data to the, to the regulators and also to the passengers. Uh, we, we, we'll have a strong argument that it is a much safer technology. Of course, uh, magic is numbers is just one side. The other side is, is by convincing, by storytelling, and also by really putting more vehicles on the road. Providing a great service to the customers, I think, I think the, uh, a lot of cases our new customers actually come to our platform because the word of mouth. So I think, uh, uh, by building, uh, early adopters by building a really trusted cohort of users we'll be able to have that, that really, uh, uh, uh, snowball effect to have more and more people joining and trusting our services. You know, China's become really strong in this, in this space. I mean there's you, there, there are other kind of robotaxi startups, large companies getting involved too. Briefly, you know, why do you think China has shown itself to have kind of I I say surprising strength, maybe that's the wrong word, but, but, but why is China proved to be kind of surprisingly strong in this robotaxi space. Well, I think definitely there are several factors. One is, uh, the, uh, uh, government itself, uh, is very progressive. Say for example, in Pony's case, we were able to, uh, test and operate on the open roads, even, even 9 years ago, when, when the technology wasn't even as mature as what it is today. So that, Supportive regulation is definitely important. Second, of course, is because of the, uh, over the last 20-30 years, the whole ecosystem or the whole tech industry really accumulated a lot of the, uh, talents, components, a lot of the know-hows. So, so when we enter into the market, we were able to actually hire, uh, uh. Really strong candidate, uh, who's passionate and who's experienced. And, and also the whole ecosystem, right, when we need a lighter, when we need, uh, say, say a mechanical parts, we were able to find, uh, uh, uh, uh, around us. So, so I think all those, essentially it's, it's, it's like a whole system needs to be in place for this, especially for mobile taxi who's, I think, I think the key challenge is, it's such a complex system, it requires hardware, software talents. Regulation and everything else. I think uh China provides a good, uh, system to support this kind of innovation. Mhm. You know, I, I want to take the opportunity to ask kind of whether you've seen kind of customer behavior change after using robotaxis for a long time. I will tell you when I first rode in one, it was weird for about 5 minutes and then quickly became not weird. And in fact the ride was a lot smoother than than a human driven taxi, but you know there are, you know, people talk about oh people are hiring robo taxis to take phone calls. They're hiring them to, um, for kind of purposes that people maybe wouldn't have expected going as the sector was growing. So from your experience kind of as from running Pony AI, what are some kind of interesting customer behavior changes that you've seen as robotaxis start becoming more popular? Mm, I, I think certainly one thing we can see is the, the, the, the, there are certain big percentage of the customers become regular commuters, uh, once they, exactly as you described, the, uh, a lot of the new riders. Uh, 1st 5 minutes, they, they may be wandering around. They, they even take out their phones to take a video, but then after the first great experience, they, they start using the robotaxi as very regular. I think they're robotaxi compare with. Human driving taxi, they provide some unique experience, right? It's a private space. You feel a lot, uh, uh, safe, private, and, uh, also it's, it's consistent. I think that's an important part is you, you, as a if you get a human taxi, a human-driven taxi, you, you might get a good driver in one day, the next day might not be, right? So it's a consistent, it's always a clean environment. Uh, give, give you a specific example. For example, for, for the. For female riders at night, they feel a lot safer, uh, just because there's no driver. So, so it's, it's, uh, once it's at night, there's a lot, the, the female riders actually percentage is getting much higher. Um, uh, there, there's, uh, To just give you an example, but, but it's essentially, I think, uh, it will become a regular. I think the, the, the, uh, our riders are very diverse across different age groups, uh, different, uh, professions. So, so it's definitely not, not something, uh, unique just for the tech-savvy people to try. It becomes very, very, uh, general to the public. Well, as I said, I, I look forward to them being a lot more ubiquitous. Um, in the cities where I am. James, thank you so much for helping, for coming on the program today. We're very glad to have you. Yeah, thank you, thanks for having us and uh and uh who whoever goes, comes to our, our, the cities that we operate, definitely, definitely, uh, give it, give it a try. You can download Tony AI app. It's, it's through through App Store or you just use the WeChat, uh, mini program. You, you're gonna love it. All right.

In today’s episode, we explore the high-stakes world of sports ownership and venture capital. Josh Kushner’s Thrive Capital is making waves with a major deal to acquire a stake in the Los Angeles Lakers alongside Disney CEO Bob Iger. News Editor Catherina Gioino joins us to break down Kushner’s latest acquisitions and the strategic vision behind Thrive Capital.

Then, reporter Sasha Rogelberg dives into the massive influx of private equity into an unexpected arena: youth sports. From local leagues to national tournaments, we look at why big-money firms are suddenly so interested in the next generation of athletes.

Finally, AI reporter Emily Forlini shares exclusive reporting on the internal challenges at OpenAI, focusing on the team tasked with solving the platform's most complex problems.

How do you feel about private equity moving into youth sports? Let us know in the comments!

Subscribe to Fortune Daily for more deep dives into the world's most powerful companies.
Additional images courtesy of Getty Images

Why Josh Kushner is Buying Into the Lakers

Features

fortunedaily

It's the biggest sports sale ever in history for $12.5 billion. Hello from New York, I'm Ellie Austin, and this is Fortune Daily. So let's start with a $2 billion signal about China's priorities. The tech company Alibaba is selling its gaming business in a deal worth roughly that figure. On the surface, this move could read like a company deciding to get out of a. Tough, competitive entertainment business. But as Fortune's Maya Osmonbikov reports, the bigger signal is about where money is going next, because as China pushes harder into AI, into chips, cloud infrastructure, and advanced manufacturing, gaming is taking a backseat to other priorities. In China, the government and its corporate giants are increasingly signaling which kinds of tech they want to win and which ones they're willing to leave behind, and gaming appears to be falling in that latter category. In more local policy news, New York City just tried something radical for parents, a free night off. Over the weekend, Mayor Zaram Mandani's parents' Night Out pilot offered 4 hours of free supervised childcare for kids aged 6 to 13 at city rec centers. About 500 families registered and roughly 265 ended up using the program. But the point wasn't just about babysitting. In New York, a babysitter can cost around $30 an hour plus tip, of course. So when I can and does quickly become a luxury for parents if they want to go out, have dinner. The mayor is pitching the program as a small example of a bigger idea, which is that if the city wants families to stay, it has to help make family life affordable. It's a tiny pilot for now. But it marks an important shift in New York City moving to make childcare part of the basic city infrastructure, rather than something unwieldy and unaffordable that parents just have to figure out on their own. In today's big story, we're talking about Josh Krishna's Thrive Capital and his recent deal to buy the Lakers with Bob Iger. News editor Katerina Giorno will tell us about Thrive, the venture capital firm, and Krishna's latest acquisitions. After that, reporter Sasha Rogelberg dives into another financing arm in sports, which is private equity. Because firms seem to be taking enormous interest in the youth sports world. And finally, AI reporter Emily Fellini shares her fascinating reporting on Open AI's internal problem solving team. Let us know what you think about all of this in the comments and please like and subscribe to the show. More Fortune daily ahead. Kat, thank you for coming to talk to us about this big business of sports story. So Josh Kushner and Bob Iger have just bought the Lakers. Tell us what you know about how this deal came to be. Yeah, it's the biggest sports sale ever in history. For $12.5 billion. So that's up $2.5 billion since Mark first bought it. Mark Walter, Mark Walter, yeah, 14 months ago. That's a 25% annual return and annualized is 21%, Biggest deal in sports franchise history. Why has Walter sold the Lakers so quickly? That's still up for debate. Great question. There is a government investigation into him, but we can't say for certain that that's why he's sold. But he said that his 14 months of ownership have been amazing, and he's happy to have had the chance to own it. He said thanks to Bob Iger, to Josh Kushner, and to the Buss family as well, and he's made $2.5 billion just for holding for 14 nice. So last month, uh, Josh Kushner's Thrive Eternal, which is an arm of Thrive Capital focused on permanent capital and into funding into sport. Um, announced that it was going to take a stake in FIFA. That deal has now collapsed. Two weeks later, we hear that Thrive is buying the Lakers. Are those two events interlinked in any way? I mean, this is all part of like Kushner's big plan to really make Thrive Eternal into like a major sports capital arm in the first place. He started off right after making Thrive Capital. In 2010, he's founded it when he was 24 and after buying early stakes in like OpenAI, Instagram, Spotify, all these things, he's a sports guy and so he wanted to make this purely as like a venture firm for sports. FIFA didn't pan out. I mean, there's currently a boycott against the current president, but there's also a question as to what was going to happen with the lead investors in the first place, of which it was Thrive Capital, uh, Thrive Eternal. This is his first. Major stake in a major sports firm, and not just stake, he's the owner of it. And tell us a bit about the relationship between Kushner and Bob Iger. Yeah, because in some ways, I know they've done business together before, but in some ways they feel like a bit of an unlikely path. They're like, they're like besties at this point. If I were to speak for themselves, if they want to tell me otherwise, let me find out. But in 2020, 2022, after Bob Iger left Disney the first time. He went to work for Josh Kushner at Thrive, and he worked at Josh was his boss basically while he was there. And then now when he went back to go replace Bob Chappeck at Disney, he went back for those two short years and now he's back as a partner in an advisory role with Josh at Thrive. So Kishna has stakes in other teams that predate this. He's got a minority stake in the Miami. Heat, um, but I believe he has to unwind to allow this Laks deal to go through. What do you think the chances are of this Lakers deal coming to fruition, or is there a FIFA situation on the horizon where it may all fall apart? All, all done deals so far. I mean, like at any given point, Mark Walter could back out and be like, listen, maybe not, but I mean $2.5 billion for 14 months of, I mean like come on, that's, that's a great deal. Um, what does it mean that Bob Iger and Krishna as characters are gonna take over this team? Oh, this is like a fantastic question that's like playing out in the sports world, the entertainment world. Bob comes from Disney, obviously. He, he's the reason why Disney invented or has acquired, let's say, Pixar and has invented all of these massive franchises that we know today. And the Lakers, on the other hand, are known as the, the Showtime. Of the NBA team. They're known as the entertainment. Tell us what that means, showtime for people who might not be familiar. So there's Jerry Buss, who was the original owner of the Lakers back in the 60s and 70s. He invented Showtime Lakers, and that meant really bringing entertainment to the courtside arena. He's the reason why cheerleaders are now at the halftime show. He invented Paula Abdul essentially found her and gave her carte blanche to do a cheerleading choreography. He brought really Entertainment style to sports because originally sports was just seen as another thing that you go see. This is now entertainment. And he's the reason why we had the Showtime Lakers. We have Magic Johnson as a Showtime like magic basically. You have a massive million dollar and billion dollar industry delivering entertainment to a sports world, which is usually seen, I mean, now it's intertwined, so we don't know the difference. But before it was seen as two very different things, sports are sports, entertainment values and something that. Never have been seen. And that's what, or you can argue, and I would be very much so correct in arguing this one, is what made it into a billion dollars if not $1 trillion dollar industry in the first place, sports in general. Interesting. So really set the standard for the explosion of the business of sport that we've seen. So where is Iger going to take this or could he take this franchise next, given his history of someone who kind of takes much loved stories and put them out into the world across new people. Of course, I mean like this is like the big question, right? It's like we are seeing like a the move of a major player like LeBron from the Lakers to again like the Sixers, but we do have Luka Dankic who is now going to be the star player. You have a lot of like these brand names that are full of action-packed star power who are in the Lakers and at the same time when you have someone with like the brains of Bob Iger who's well known for making stories and delivering the story of a team or. A character and you have Josh who knows how to like go into something and really invest and make it bigger than it has to be or I mean Lakers are a very huge team but make it even grander, we are going to see possibly like more of the Showtime Lakers, possibly more of this, hey, like we are the entertainment sports team, we are the people that people want to congregate to and already it's a massive driver when it comes down to ticket sales. We are probably going to see a lot more ticket sales going to the Lakers. Going to LA specifically, how have the fans responded to this announcement? So far so good. I mean, a lot of questions, a lot of people have questions about Mark and why he's selling as we went over. A lot of people are questioning like whether what he said last year was sincere in the first place. He was saying that he's a lifelong fan, and he again sent his thanks to the Buss family for the selling of the stake. He was originally a minority owner at around 27% a few years ago, and then he then acquired the majority stake. And now you have other people piping in. So Magic Johnson, for example, again, probably one of the biggest faces of the Lakers, he sends his wishes to both Walter and also thinks again that Iger and Kushner will be doing great. On the other hand of it, you have Kushner and Iger who sent out and released a joint statement saying they are like one of the biggest fans of the Lakers and they've been lifelong NBA fans. So they're looking forward to really seeing this team go through. Um, Josh Kushner, obviously brother of Jared Kushner, who is the son-in-law. of President Trump, and as far as we know, those two brothers have very different political leanings. Um, Josh has traditionally, traditionally been a Democratic donor and supporter. What do you think Thanksgiving is like in that house when they all get around the table? Can you imagine that? It's just like one guy talking about the March for Our Lives donations and then the other one saying like my father-in-law is the president. What does this story teach us about Josh Kushner's investment thesis, and I'm asking. In case we have people listening who are themselves investors and thinking about where they should put money next. I mean, like Josh is well known for getting in early on things. He has that kind of magic hunch about things. So again, I'm gonna go back to like Spotify and OpenAI. That's like what he did with Thrive, and he was just like a child when he basically did the child at 24 when he did it. Now with the Lakers and now when he's trying to go through the initial like first round funding, that happens to be his entire approach to both permanent capital and let's say previously. At Thrive Capital and really you can start to question either he wants to go into a maintained established brand like the Lakers, like FIFA, for example, if that deal went through, or more so like get in early about his hunch. He knows what's going to be big, what's going to be he's a really good gut sense for that. He does. Yeah, absolutely. Like he knew that Spotify was going to be a major music kind of industry or game changer, and he got in early. He got in early on OpenAI. So he has that kind of hunch of like knowing what can actually change the landscape. of a certain industry as opposed to doing what the average typical like VC firm would do, which is just spray and play kind of thing. He does it more so he picks and chooses. He knows which one he thinks with his backing also can use his kind of funding, can use his connections to become grander than it is. So it's more of a two-way beneficial street as well. Kat, where can we find more of your intricate reporting? Of course, go unfortune.com. Next up, more sports, the business of sports with Sasha Rogelberg. OK, Sasha, thank you for coming back to join us again. So this is such an interesting story, private equity funneling into youth sports. How did you come to report on this? Right, so basically toward the end of the Men's World Cup this year, uh, US soccer star Landon Donovan, who competed 3 times in the FIFA World Cup, he's a Hall of Famer, he said, I wouldn't have been able to participate in club sports today. Um, I had a single. Mom raising three kids, she's making $34,000 a year, and club sports are just so exorbitantly expensive that he wouldn't have been able to play and ostensibly, you know, reach the heights that he has been able to reach today, and he's not the only one. And so was he expressing regret that that is no longer the case with youth sports? He had some concerns about youth sports today. Basically from 2019 to 2025, the costs of youth sports have increased 46%. It means that fewer kids will have opportunities to compete, basically. And so tell me about the role of private equity here, what exactly is it buying in youth sports? So I think before we talk about private equity, we have. To talk about kind of like the environment that arose um that would enable private equity to enter youth sports. A lot of parents are worried about higher education for their kids and one way to get into college is through sports scholarships. So as the cost of college increases, um, basically more sports scholarships have become available and is therefore incentivized youth sports participation, um, so that's one reason and then at. At the same time, um, after the 2008 financial crisis and further exacerbated by COVID, public funding for rec centers have really decreased. So now there's all of this demand for youth sports, um, but really kind of fewer opportunities to take advantage of it. But what are the mechanisms for this? What is private equity actually buying? Is it buying the team? Is it buying the facilities? Tell me more. All of the above, um, so this has swelled. To a $40 billion industry, private companies see opportunities with leagues, um, with apparel and equipment companies, um, with facilities, um, so all of the above. So, Sasha, you mentioned that the cost of eth sports has gone up by around 46% in recent years. What does it cost these days if, if I'm a parent wanting to enroll my kid in soccer or baseball or whatever it might be? Between travel, apparel and equipment and year-round coaching, it can cost thousands of dollars, sometimes up to $15,000 for one kid for a whole year. And is private equity improving youth sports? What are the benefits of this happening? Private equity would argue that it is, you know, creating a supply for this, for this increased demand, um, as well as, you know, kind of like state of the art, um. Experiences for these kids who want to go pro, but I would imagine it's also creating an accessibility issue here. Yeah, it means for many American families they can no longer participate in youth sports or they have to make incredible financial sacrifices. Is the price of. Kids' sport just going to go up and up and up, or is there going to be a tipping point unless something changes? So I think we're starting to see a tipping point now. There are a couple components of private equity's presence in sports that are really concerning. To people, one of them is this whole state of play idea. Basically, these private companies that own teams or leagues or facilities, they make deals with certain hotels and require teams to stay at those particular hotels at tournaments, which means that they can jack up the prices. Of hotels, um, other companies or leagues require that, uh, athletes play for an entire year, not just the season, which also increased costs, uh, and then you have examples like, uh, Black Bear Sports Group, which is the largest owner operator of hockey rinks in the US, and they've essentially banned parents from live streaming and recording their kids playing hockey. And instead uh require you to subscribe to, um, their own services in order to, you know, see your kid shoot a goal. OK, wow, this is a whole ecosystem that I didn't know existed in the way you were describing, um, if we have any parents watching, please leave us a comment and let us know if your kids play youth sport and what it costs. Sasha, so thanks so much for joining us, come back and tell us more as you continue reporting. Always a pleasure. Next up, I'm chatting to AI reporter Emily Fellini about OpenAI's internal troubleshooting system. Emily, hello, so I wanted to bring you in to do an open AI check-in because as Emma there's a lot going on at the company. You published another really interesting story this week about the internal process at a company for dealing with friction. Tell us what that is. So I, just in my, again talking to former employees, I learned about this process called friction. And it's this internal email address friction at open AI. And when they have a bottleneck, uh, a team is blocking them, a process isn't having the intended result, or even if they have an office-related issue like they said the IT vending machines being. Low or there's no parking spots, they can shoot their shot and email this friction at OpenAI and the leadership team monitors that inbox and they select the ones that they think need to be solved immediately. They're kind of like worthy of of uh fixing and defensible and um the expectation is that those teams will basically fall in line immediately and get it done. And do you have any gauge of how effective this process is? Yeah, it seems to be very effective in the sense that I did talk to somebody who had led a team and was, um, he said on the receiving end of about 12 orders to comply with frictions. And he said it's pretty much just a drop everything, make it work now, and to the point where His team had to build new technology to accommodate the change. Like there was a reason that they had blocked the other team, and they had to reprioritize their roadmap to work on this, as he called it, a friction and the friction team will follow up and ask questions. And make sure it gets done, um, which instills confidence in the employees because they feel like their needs are getting met, they're kind of being addressed, these bureaucratic problems are being slashed and burned, so it's good culturally, but if you have to deal with. Deal with it, it's, it's not fun. And then there's a a monthly Slack announcement to the company, like a big update on everything that was resolved through friction. OK, I wonder if it would work at Fortune to be discussed. Emily, thank you so much for joining us. Thank you. That's it for 14tune Daily. I'm Ellie Austin, see you next time.

Marc Lore wants to scale food service like software. At Wonder, AI designs menus, robots prepare meals, and drones coordinate delivery so anyone—a mom or pop, an established shop, or a global brand—can leverage a "programmable cooking platform" to turn a restaurant idea into reality. With national expansion on order and an IPO simmering, Lore is making the case that the restaurant industry doesn't need to be disrupted, but rebuilt from scratch.

Marc Lore, Founder and CEO, Wonder 
Jason Del Rey, Founder, The Aisle

The Infinite Kitchen

Thanks for being here Mark. I was a little, I was, I was a little worried that if the NBA finals were going on and your team, the Timberwolves were in it, sorry about that, uh, we'd have a conflict, but lucky for us it's my Knicks instead. So, um, you actually grew up a Knicks fan, but that's a whole another discussion we could do that afterward, um. You've done a lot in your career, obviously. I'm assuming a lot of people in here know Mark for diapers.com and then working at Amazon, Jet.com, and then selling that for over $3 billion to Walmart, working there for many years. You've now been running Wonder for several years. For those who might live on the West Coast and haven't experienced Wonder or just someone who doesn't know what it is, can you give me sort of the 32nd version of what, what you've been building with Wonder? Yeah, I think, I think of Wonder is a vertically integrated food platform. Where we own all the restaurants on the platform, we do all the cooking and we do the delivery. So we bought Grubhub, so it's fully vertically integrated. We own 26 different restaurants and counting across every cuisine type from a high-end steakhouse, Bobby Flay steak to burgers, barbecue, Chinese, Mexican, Italian, Middle Eastern fried chicken pizza, all out of a single 22,500 square foot kitchen. That's, all out of a 2500 square foot kitchen with very lightly trained. Folks back there it's very systematized we've got, you know, conveyors and automated expo area, um, but the food quality is cooked. To be as good as every cuisine that we compete against, and that's really the magical one that we put many years into culinary engineering and food science to be able to cook, you know, a steak in 6 minutes to perfect temperature, seared them both sides beautifully at a price point that you wouldn't be able to get anywhere else. Let's just quickly talk about the food because I think it gets overshadowed, and we'll talk about all the technology. I've had wonder a bunch. I think, I think the food can be very good. I think. Consistency, I think you've also said still constant work in progress. Like if you compare it to a Chipotle or a Cava, and I know you're doing something much more complex in terms of the amount of restaurants, maybe not at that consistency level. Like how do you think about getting there with how much different types of food you're offering? Yeah, I mean that's a good question, and we're obsessed about food quality, so we get. Data from about 20% of our customers every day, a score of 1 to 10 rating the meal, um, we usually get feedback and our chefs every day are looking and ranking the meals and the stuff that's at the bottom we're reiterating and reintroducing, and the food quality over the last 12 months has subjectively gotten better whether you look at internal metrics, whether you look at Google reviews, we're now across all locations at 4.4 rating. That's a lot higher than higher a year ago a year ago, the burger is phenomenal that we that we just upgraded and that will compete with the best burger in the market. We have a new pizza that's rolling out across all locations by September, so we're constantly iterating and then of course the infinite bowl making machine. Did everyone catch that? The infinite bowl making machine. So you acquired this company from Sweetre, correct? That makes that a robot that makes. Bowls and salads, is it salads too, or is it just it can make salads. It can make fast casual Mexican. It can make Greek bowls, poke bowls, any kind of bowl, and this is real. This is a real thing in production. So Sweetgreen is using it in 32 locations. They don't make salads any other way. The machine makes the salads. So the beautiful thing about this machine is the bowl actually is on a maglev, and the bowl spins and the ingredients are put very beautifully in the bowl, so it looks and presented. Credible and there's no errors, right? So you get exactly what you ordered. The machine can do 500 bowls an hour. And compared to what, what did one of your human workers do when it comes to or or you're not timing them on that way. I don't know exactly how many a single person can do, but it's not gonna be more than probably 30 bowls an hour, that's only 45. So what is, what does that mean for your expansion? Well, it just means that we could, you know, a third of our sales in bowl concepts the probably the the most inconsistency that we're seeing is in bowls because humans are making it and they sort of make it with different portion size or they might miss an ingredient and things, so really looking forward to that automation rolling out it actually goes into the first location next month. Um, so there, there, there's a long time, another longtime entrepreneur named Travis Kalanick who Uber founder, um, has gone on to do many things including some robotics in a kitchen. I, I believe you were friendly or friends with him at some point. Why not partner with him over actually making an acquisition like this? Yeah, um, first. First we, we, we did actually the first we did originally um try to partner with him and I guess the, the capacity wasn't there to make enough machines for us, um, but also sweet green machine was in production and one of the hardest things about this machine is not just making the bowls but making sure that they don't go down so it's got 99.99% uptime and then it's easy to clean. So those are things that you don't think about when you're when you're building a, you know, machine prototype so this has been in production it's proven it works um and the and the core customer role at a high level, the core customer for Wonder is it a family that has a bunch of different people who want different things and so they can order from one app instead of, you know, three different deliveries like what is the. What is the sweet spot or the ideal customer for Wonder? Yeah, so I'd say that the mission at Wonder is to make great food more accessible. So we're able to bring 26 different restaurants to places in the US from a geography standpoint that Fast Casual can't afford to open because we're able to aggregate demand across 26 different restaurants. So we go to Hackettstown, New Jersey if anybody knows that, but. There's there's no fast casual there. We're bringing all these fast casual restaurants. We're able to deliver a steak. We're able to deliver Thai or Indian, and maybe there's no opportunity, so there's that. We can stay open till 2 a.m. in the suburbs because we could operate all 26 restaurants with 3 people late night, um, and then of course, uh, what are those 3 roles? Do you know? One is running the, the hotline, one is doing all the finishing, and one person's doing bagging and handoff. OK, sorry, go, no, that's OK. And then, and then, you know, the biggest point on accessibility is that because we're vertically integrated we have one profit pool. If you think about restaurants today, they have to mark up their food on the delivery aggregators to cover the commission. Because the delivery aggregators need to make a profit as well, so there's two profit pools that increases prices for customers. We have one profit pool. The prices are much lower. So if you go on Wonder, you're going to get incredible value. You get a 10 ounce Bobby Flay steak cooked to perfection for $36 delivered without any delivery fees. That doesn't exist anywhere. You can't, can't do it. We have salad bowls and fast casual Mexican bowls that start at 9.95 for the same portion size you would get at a sweet green or Chipotle. Let, let's talk about, um, acquisitions for a second. So, uh, in a past life when I was writing about you a lot at Jet.com and then and then Walmart, you made a ton of acquisitions and typically. We'll see if you agree with this, but typically you were buying either businesses that had plateaued or were distressed in some way, and some of those deals got unwound at Walmart either while you were still there after you left. You've you've done a bunch of acquisitions at Wonder as well. I'm curious what you learned, if anything, from the strategy at Walmart that maybe changed your approach. At W, yeah, I think, I think it's important not to be in the middle so that's his barbell strategy either. You're buying something that's distressed because it's an asset or capability that the company needs and would take a lot of time and money to build, so you're looking to build versus buy. Grubhub's a great example. 400,000 restaurant relationships, 250,000 couriers, 8 billion in delivery volume. You bought that at a, at a very good price. It would have taken a decade to build that sort of capability, and we do think that is a valuable piece to the to the wonder story. Um, and then you have on the other side of the barbell, if you're going to buy restaurant brands, we're going to buy the most iconic beloved brands in the market. So the first one you did was Blue Ribbon fried chicken, fried chicken in New York City, and I, I thought when we discussed that at some point before you had made any deals that one of the theories were to buy food brands or restaurants that. Had strong social followings and also historical like cult following but maybe had plateaued or am I, am I thinking about it incorrectly? Well, we don't want to pay for a restaurant brands that are growing very fast because we don't want to pay for that growth. So and the ideal would be an iconic brand that's been around for a long time that's not growing, where you could just buy it, the brand for the Ebotaj generating. So you buy it. So so what's, so, so what's, what's next? I, I asked you backstage about Katz's Deli in New York. Yeah, what do you think? Something like that is, is, is a good example of a brand that's not scaling. So is that a yes? I mean it's it's it's not imminent now. Um, I, I do wanna get some questions from the audience. Um, if anyone has one right now we could take one, otherwise I'll come back in a few minutes. Anyone from Mark could be about NBA too. I know he loves those questions. Mark's the owner of the Timberwolves if, if, uh, and the links right? is that correct? OK, um, I'll keep going so. Drone delivery just started experimenting with that. I admit it even as someone who follows the place closely, when I see drone delivery and I know it's gotten to scale in some markets, I'm still like, is that really a future that a lot that like people across the US can expect? Yes, your answer is absolutely unequivocally yes. So in Texas right now there are tens of thousands of drone deliveries happening every week. So this is not some futuristic thing into the future. These drones, you, you, you probably imagine it coming down and buzzing on in the suburbs and people saying that I don't want these drones in the air. They're quiet. They fly at 300 ft. You don't hear them. You can barely see them. They come over your front lawn. A wire comes, zips down with a little box, leaves your, um, package, closes up, and zips back up. Absolutely quiet cool or freaky? You think cool? I think freaky too, yeah, a little bit freaky too, um, kids absolutely love it, right, every time, but it's 95% of the time the delivery is within 5 seconds of the time it tells you, so it's actually a countdown on your phone. That's how can you and can't you deliver that way? I mean anything up to 10 pounds. So if you're a lot of food, but almost. The orders below 10 pounds pizza box, you have a pizza gets cut in half and gets put in two things. There's stacks on top of them. That's the only, it's the only disadvantage. Everything else comes as is, but if you like your pizza whole, you don't want to cut it in half, then you're not going to do the drone delivery. But we're both from Staten Island, so we don't like our pizzas cut. I don't know. You do you? By drone I'll take it. OK, I'll take it. I'll take it by drone. Uh, has anyone had a drone delivery of anything to their home? Oh, there, can you tell us what? Google Wing, now you don't part you're not partnering with with Wing Zipline we're partnering with Zipline and but Wing 2, I mean both of those are sort of the, the two leaders in the space, um, but this is coming, uh, we're doing it in New Jersey. It's gonna be expanding. Across the US it's faster, it's more on time. The food's hotter. It's actually a great delivery mechanism. It also can help bring food to areas that are inaccessible. You can deliver to a lake, a campsite, a field, a beach. I mean think about that. Anywhere you can see the sky, you can get it delivered. So what is the, like, what is the roadmap there? Like what is reality in terms of like scale you can do in the next few years? I know reality is that we're opening 100 locations in Texas next year and they're almost all gonna have drone delivery. So it's happening. So these are 100 storefronts, 100 storefronts, 20 will open in January with drone delivery, and then we'll just scale from there. Any questions for Mark? Oh yeah, right, there's a mic right here. Please tell us who you are. I'm not gonna say who I am anymore, and, and the, I love Mark. Mark has not heard it, so I love Michael Schrag, MIT. Thank you. Loved, loved the, the, the wonder eaten there. Very, very well done. But also familiar with your, uh, um, Walmart experience. I've gotta ask, as you've built Wonder, what's the most important thing you've learned about the trade-off between scaling and customization quality? Because you know you you you've clearly unlocked ways to Package and bundle technology to facilitate cost efficient scale. What do you understand about the trade-off now that you didn't when you started? I think the opportunity is bigger than than we thought, so I don't see a trade-off. It's just the opposite. As we scale, it opens up the opportunity for even more assortment, you know, more of the robotics that we talked about, the infinite ball machine. We're building an infinite sauce machine that could make this is also real infinite sauce machine. Sorry, it sounds made up, so it is. Made up name, but I sort of like it. But but it could make nearly any sauce on the internet on demand. So it's got 152 raw ingredients. It could perfectly dispense according to a recipe, high shear blend, and heat the sauce. It can do 500 sauces an hour in 3 and 6 ounce cups. So imagine what that unlocks in terms of the creativity. You can make a pesto, a mole, an arabiata, a vindal. Sauce on demand according to your recipe. So having this automated sauce machine, automated bowl machine, there's more automation coming, the infinite beverage machine. I love the word infinite. It's just, I could tell infinite beverage machine will be coming out next year that can make any drink in Starbucks or Dutch Bros without any labor, including foam layer and blending. So we can talk about that, but. The thing I'm most excited about is one to create because anyone in the world will be able to plug into this automation and create their own restaurant and scale it across all wonder locations for 10 bucks a month. So think about Shopify and steroids. You don't have to do anything. You basically, who is, who is the person that wants to do this and why does the end consumer want this? OK, so who wants to do this? First of all, Wonder Create is just a, it's an AI prompt. You just type build. A fast casual Mexican restaurant for Gen Z, for people that love cycling. AI will build the entire restaurant using our automation and ingredient library. Brand it, name it. You own the restaurant. You own the name, all the descriptions, pictures, pricing, nutrition information. You could do it in 2 minutes. If you like what you see. You could ask AI to change it, but if you like it, you could publish it. It now goes live. You can push it out on DoorDash, Uber, and Grubhub as well. So the creator makes about a I? Sorry, sorry, just one thing on it. I, I think of restaurant and food experiences at least in my life as like they can be really special right? and like restaurateurs and chefs, they are in some ways artists and um people have like deep connections and so I I just I wonder how you think about like all the infinite all the automation. Accept bringing accessibility, but. Perhaps losing some of the soul of, of what meals mean to people. Yeah, I think we're not trying to compete with restaurants where you sit down and you get that very custom chef experience. We're talking about how do you systematize Shake Shack, Sweetgreen, Cava, Chipotle, Wingstop, like all these great fast casual brands that have great food tend to be more expensive. than fast food like Taco Bell or McDonald's, how do you bring down the price point of that food and make it more accessible to people both in geography, time of day, but also the price point itself? Automation helps do that. And only talking about systematizing so you as the creator, you're still coming up with your own sauce or your own dressing for your salad, but imagine you can Set the portion size precisely as you want it. What are your micro and macronutrients exactly? How much protein do you want? The machine will do it precisely. You could build a restaurant for people that are on Ozempic. Half the portion size, you know, like half the price point. There's a lot of flexibility, so I wouldn't think it's not about trying to wow people with something that never existed before, but just doing what exists today more efficiently, higher quality, and then. At a with a much faster delivery experience, more on time, hotter, more accurate, there's a lot of advantages, and then you get multi-restaurant ordering, right? Right. I, I have 11 final one. You've sold two businesses for a lot. You sold a third business for less but still a lot of money for a lot of people, but 2 businesses for a lot of money. We've talked about your motivation with this wanting an IPO, um, something that's followed you around I think in the industry is a question of can you build a long term sustainable profitable business. So where are you on that? And are you absolutely committed that a public company that Wonder will become a public company and not someone else's acquisition? Yeah, first of all, as you said, I mean, as an entrepreneur, the dream is to have that, you know, long standing legacy business that becomes a household name, and I think Wonder can be that. We are going to be ready to go public early next year. Um, and then we'll see where the markets are, but, um, yeah, I certainly expect this to be a, a big public company one day. I think the TA is there. We've got an incredible moat around the business that we're building. It can't be disremediated with AI. So, and then, and then making great food more accessible is, is a, is a passion of mine. I love the idea of being able to, you know, have people that are currently today eating Taco Bell for dinner and have them eat something that is healthier for a similar price point. I do think we can bring down the price of grapefruit quite a bit with automation over time and make it accessible in places and at times of day that it's not accessible today so we're, we are way over time um, maybe some people can track you down if they have more questions around campus, but thank you so much, Mark. Thank you.

The AI arms race runs on electricity, and right now, America does not have enough of it. As global conflicts reshape energy supply chains and the grid strains under unprecedented demand, a new generation of founders is doing what Washington has struggled to: actually build. Zach Dell is hardening the grid after watching Texas go dark. Doug Bernauer left SpaceX to mass-produce nuclear microreactors. They discuss how energy independence is no longer just an infrastructure problem, but a national security imperative.

Zach Dell, Co-Founder and CEO, Base Power Company
Tori Shivanandan, President, Radiant Industries
Allie Garfinkle, Senior Writer, Fortune 

OS National

OS National in Fortune Rankings

OS National in Fortune Rankings

Videos