S-Oil

The world's 500 largest companies generated $31.2 trillion in revenues and $1.7 trillion in profits in 2014. Together, this year's Fortune Global 500 employ 65 million people worldwide and are represented by 36 countries.

Fortune Global 500

Global business is back. After limping through a worldwide financial crisis and economic slowdown, the 500 largest companies ranked by revenues shattered all sorts of performance records in 2013: They racked up combined revenues of $31.1 trillion, up 2.5% from 2012, and profits soared 27% to nearly $2 trillion. China’s 95 companies (up from 89 last year) posted $5.8 trillion in revenues. The U.S. has four fewer companies on the list than last year but remains (for now) the country leader, with 128 corporations on the list—including No. 1 Wal-Mart Stores—reporting $8.6 trillion in revenues. 

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S-Oil (SOOCY): Company Profile, Stock Price, News, Rankings

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S-Oil | Fortune

S-Oil (SOOCY): Company Profile, Stock Price, News, Rankings | Fortune

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

Features

fortunedaily

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.

This year’s energy crisis is a stark reminder that Asia remains reliant on Middle Eastern oil and exposed to the chokepoints and conflicts that affect its supply—even as China leads the world in clean-energy innovation and manufacturing. Can the region reduce its dependence on fossil fuels and reach peak oil demand as soon as 2030? Converting Asia’s technological edge into long-term energy security requires an alignment of capital, manufacturing capacity, infrastructure modernization and political will, alongside continued technological breakthroughs. Three leaders in the sector discuss the steps needed to accelerate the transition before the next shock inevitably occurs.

Haitian Pang, Chairman & CEO, JX Intelligence 
Youyuan Huang, Executive Vice Chairman and General Manager, BTR New Material Group 
Fang Wang, Executive Editor, Shanghai, Fortune China 

Accelerating the Energy Transition

Conferences

OK, so this discussion will be conducted in English, in Chinese, so please refer to our headset to listen to our smart translation. Well, actually, so, actually, when we see that Asia, this is a huge market, even though we have very well developed new technology, but still Asia rely on the petroleum and energy from Middle East, which lead to some problem of the security. So now we invite the three distinguished guests to have the discussion. And 3, all of them coming from mainland China. I would like to share something of their background with you. So, They are, they, they are coming from the energy industry. So they also focus on the innovation of new material, etc. So today, I mean, one of the top topic is not the overcapacity, is the safety or how to have a better utilization of the recycled or new or green energy from China. So we would like to invite the three distinguished guests to share with us. So, first of all, I would like to start from Daniel. So Daniel, Daniel Liu, the vice president of Ginola. So please share something with us, something the background and also the situation of the energy, the energy transaction. So that happened in Asia. OK. Thank you. Well, in the past decade, I have run all over Asia Pacific region, over 20 countries and regions. And yeah, I saw a lot and also I interviewed a lot of people. And I, I'm glad to share with you that the transaction of energy in China is quite successful. It's something I sometimes I'd like to use the word radical. It's quite radical, but it's quite successful. We got some data. So for example, now, the power generation is over. 1.5 trillion uh 10 trillion, oh sorry, it's not 1. something, it's 10 trillion kilowatts. So it's quite huge. Such kinds of the big power generation amount is not just coming from the coming from the petroleum or coming from the coal or charcoal, etc. And a lot of them coming from the voltavoltaic. So it's coming from the solar energy. So as being a traditional coal user, charcoal user, petroleum user, China make a big step forward compared to India, you know, India got also the same population over 1.5 billion. So in the past, India also invest a lot in order to realize the energy transaction. But because of, I mean, technology or something. That the transition of the energy structure compared to China, India is left behind. Let's look at Southeast Asia. So for Southeast, for example, like the Philippines, Philippines, it owns over 7000 islands, similar to Indonesia, they also have a lot of demand. But how to combine the fossil energy together with the future, for example, the, the wind energy, right on the ocean, the wind energy got a big potential. This is something we need to consider as a big market for us. OK, thank you. Next, we'd like to invite, uh, Mr. Fang from battery. So. So, so, so, so that uh we know that you, you, you, you're focusing on the development of the battery technology. So I would like to ask your question that uh what is your idea about the development of the energy storage, energy storage, and what is your current development in China? And what the comparison between China and the other countries? In perspective of the technology development of the energy storage. OK, so the energy storage technology acquired a big growth in the past 3 years. According to the current data at the end of this year, that we expect to export over 1000 big units of the energy storage. There's over 1000 big scale, big scale energy storage units were exported from China to the rest of the world, to the other country. So that means that all, all, I mean all the industries or the government also that put a big attention to the energy storage technology. So because of what, a lot of things, number one, it could help to reduce the cost of energy, right? Yeah, #2, it could provide a stable power supply. For many countries, power generation is only #1, but #2, but power generation, you generate the power, but it's not stable, right? So the peak, you at the peak and get the value. So the peak supply and value supply, counterbalance them. So the energy storage. That unit could help to balance the two. China already established a complete industry chain. It's very reliable and of course it's quite competitive. It's affordable for many countries, for many players to import the facilities of their energy storage from from China, especially Southeast Asia. And China also a lot of the energy storage unit maker, they also shift their production line from mainland China to Southeast Asia. Indeed. Quite popular, yes. So go to Southeast Asia. Now this has become very popular because of the demand, you know that's the power supply is not very stable in Southeast Asia. So but if they want to build up a big power grid, the investment will be huge. So if they import the power energy storage unit from China, they can save the cost. And they also can control the power cost for household. Yeah, so for Gino, your company, your power generation, and also another one, OK, Dr. Huang, on behalf of the energy storage and Haikian is on behalf of the smart grid, smart energy application, right? So all of you doing something about the physical infrastructure or physical products. So it sounds like you're very, I mean, physical guy. I want to ask you physical guys that today, you know, the power grade, it's become more complicated and sometimes it's out of your way of prediction. So because you see that before we generate the power by burning the coal, charcoal, or burning the petroleum. Now, we have different sources of the power generation, right, from solar, from wind, from everything. So we please explain to us how could we have a better Uh, balancing technology or good application technology to the balance them. Make sure that people could utilize the power more in a more effectively. OK, yes, for human being, now, you know that we also, we, we, we, we live in a different region, right? So some of them live in, uh, like in Southeast Asia or or at the coastline of uh uh of the continent, and some live in the rural area or in the mountainous area. And also, for example, in the northwest part of China, so that the wind is strong in the in the desert or around the desert, right? So, if we supply the power from the south or north or east to the north northwest, it costs a lot of costs a lot by uh transporting. Transporting those power from the east to the west, from south to the north. Uh, and also the inspection. But before we ask the human being to do the inspection along the whole transportation line of the power, and it costs a lot, right? And the symptoms are quite dangerous. For example, in the extreme climate, in the rainstorm, in the snowstorm, if we ask the staff to go climb up. Come up to do the inspection to the power transformer or the transportation line, etc. wow, you know, that's quite dangerous. But now we, we have the AI, we have the robots to do it, right? We have the UAE to do it, the drone to do it. And then we also get the Power generation sources also become greener than before. We have the solar energy. We have the wind energy, etc. so that the whole industry becomes complicated. Therefore, we need to develop the power management system or the control center that is a smart center could allocate the resources, allocate the power resources. Amount the big to the power grid and then make sure that people when they use their solar panel to generate power, they can get the return from them at the same time, they will go to utilize the power conveniently. So yeah, that is really quite great. So what you have mentioned has come to a new topic, which is quite hot right now. We say it collaboration of computing power, electricity power. So that is something we always say in China. So on one hand, For one hand, we use the electricity power to guarantee the computing power. On the other hand, computing power will help the power generation to be smart generated. So for example, the computing power can help the electricity to do the peak shaving. So I'd like to ask you, Daniel. So, um, from 2026, the new computing center. Um, built in China show. At least consume 80% of green electricity. So the electricity should be green electricity. Is that a burden or is that the opportunity? So for for Jino Solar, are you start to sell the solution rather than just sell. Uh, component part is that burden or opportunity? Well, I think that is very inspiring and for us, we are doing that right now. So just like Mr. Wang said. Asia Pacific region. has been very unbalanced in terms of new energy. And AI will be a very good tool to address the imbalance issue. So we know that in China, we have data center. Um, in the eastern part of the country, but the computing power should be built in the western part of China. So for example, we build a center in the western part of China because the energy cost is much lower and the energy is more enriched. So in China, there's a line that draw from the southwest of China to the northeast of China. And in the east part, there are a lot of companies, so consuming power is very strong and they need a lot of computing power. But in the northwest part of China, which has less population, less industry, less demand. But more energy. So right now, for example, we have the ultra high voltage project. So we use the ultra high voltage project to transmit the power from the west of China to the east where the demand is. Yeah, and in the future with AI we can do the peak shaving. We can adjust the Uh, power Yeah, so the energy storage demand is also going up with the computing power center. So I would like to ask Dr. Huang, so you know that the energy storage accounts for over 40% in terms of the facilities relating to AI. So what kind of material do we need for energy storage? For your company because VTR is making new materials. How do you think about the new materials? Well, AIDC. Energy storage comes from two parts. The first one is UPS system to guarantee very stable supply of power generation. And this system has very strict requirements for the volt, for the volt, um, fluctuation. And then with AI technology, and every time when the power fluctuation happens, The AIDC needs the battery to do the instant response. Even within milliseconds to ensure the stable supply of power generation. Otherwise, if we lose the data. Yes, several days ago we saw a lot of LLM shut down because of the fluctuation of the voltage, right, from of the boat. Yes, especially during the 11 when a lot of people are using their technology to buy the products. So it will have very big challenge on the supply of the power. So this requires very Um, very high demand on the new material for the stability. So it has a high requirement on the material. OK, besides lithium, you're also working on R&D of some other materials like the sodium, etc. Will that be used in the AIDC? Yes, of course. Because, The sodium ion battery has very obvious advantages in the power and also for the thermal. Resistance or or a thermal tolerance, but it has disadvantages in terms of energy density. So for energy density, lithium battery is more ideal. But for the sodium ion technology, I believe that with the industry development, it will be, more ideal choice in the future. OK, so could you please tell us about the AIDC development perspective from China and some other area. So we know that in Malaysia or Thailand they all want to build. AIDC and China has most green electricity and most cheap electricity price. But how about the other countries? Yeah, that is different. Computing power collaborates with electricity? Maybe only happens in China because the demand. And the supply. Well, you know, in China, we can use a lot of green electricity for installation. We also invested in Indonesia, and we know that Indonesia is also built the DC, but based on traditional power generation, maybe thermal power or hydropower. But still, This electricity. are different from China because China is not just for satisfying the demand on using electricity, but also needs to reduce the cost and satisfying carbon reduction. Yeah, so in China, You satisfy the demand for using the electricity, but also needs to be cheap electricity and also needs to be clean and green electricity. So China satisfying three goals together. OK, so how about you, Hai Xian? A lot of people said that, um, Silicon Valley started to talk about China, Wullan Tabo. We know that Wullan Tabo is a place that built the first Energy integrated adjustment platform. So are you also making the deployment in Wulan Chabu in the Mongolia of China? So how does that realize the peak shaving? So why do you think that the Silicon Valley people are so fascinated about that? Well, Wulan Tabu is a very typical case about China for computing power collaborating with electricity generation. A lot of AIBC were built in Wulan Tabu, um, essentially have infrastructure. I think that the biggest cost is coming from the electricity power itself. So in Wulan Tabu, it enjoys great solar power and wind power. So here, You can use very low cost of wind power or solar power to support AIDC. But for AIDC, Well, it has its own problems. So for example, uh, for training, it can wait a little bit for for training, but for Interference and reasoning, AIBC needs to do that instantly, right? And maybe not at night, right? Because only in the daytime you have the solar power. And then for the wind power, you cannot predict the wind power. Uh, you need a smart brain to understand about the physics and the geography of this area. And to predict what kind of energy storage it needs to install to ensure the comprehensive electricity cost to be the lowest, yeah, stable, clean, low cost. And uh AI brain should be important because the upstream is uncontrollable and unpredictable and downstream means you should be more ideal and flexible. So you need a smart AI brain to satisfy the needs both upstream and downstream. AI can play a vital role. Well, so why do you always call physical AI brain? Physical AI is that different from AI? Well, we say physical AI. Physical AI means to understand the physical world and physical rule, including meteorology, including the weather, including the economics. OK, physical AI brain needs to understand the physical world. Yeah, it should simulate the world, understand the world rule. OK, Doctor Huang. China is a leader definitely. But there are still a lot of challenges China face. Would you please talk about some pinpoints in China challenges, particularly, for example, like excessive and excessive supply. So when you come to other countries, like Malaysia or Southeast Asia, do you think they can Bypass our challenges. So for example, some challenges only faced by China, but they don't have such challenges. Well, I think that they can learn the lessons China has has encountered. In other countries, maybe they could not make as big infrastructure as China. Yeah, China has very big infrastructure. Yeah, in other countries, maybe. They need to make the plan and layout based on their own development stage. For example, distributed energy system is more suitable in Southeast Asia, and they can use the low cost energy technology. For example, in Southeast Asia, and some least developed area, distributed energy system is more suitable. So we are also promoting that in Indonesia and Morocco. We work together with the local government to build the energy generation plant and to promote the green use of energy and to the local government we can help them to improve the energy usage. OK. When a Chinese factory open another site in Southeast Asia, you work together with the local government and make the distributed energy system. Will that benefit the community? Yeah, of course. Especially in some countries. The resources of green electricity is abundant. And we're also very happy to see that some country make the national program to promote green electricity. So Haitian, you mentioned about Saudi Arabian 2030 vision. Do you make some deployment in Saudi Arabia? Because Saudi Arabia is a traditional petroleum country, but they also have the energy transition goal. Can you talk about Saudi Arabia 2030 vision? Well, A clean energy transition or lower cost energy transition is continued. This trend is continued. And from our side, First of all, China is leading in the technology. And we guarantee that stable supply and lower cost of supply for electricity. And In Saudi Arabia, even the country is traditionally thrived based on the petroleum, but it also has the ambition because In the desert, in the desert, they enjoy greater solar power. They enjoy greater sunlight. And also in Saudi Arabia. They are quite innovative as well. They think that even we have enough fossil energy, but for the future and sustainability, we need to make preparations. So They build AIDC as well. I think Saudi Arabia is quite an amazing country and I know those people have great mindset towards green electricity. And we also see that in some Southeast Asian countries in some Middle East countries. They are interested in our physical AI products. They would like to talk to China. They would like to accept the Chinese technology. I think that in the future, um, these green transition will be globalized. OK, we know that Jinco so far is still just uh suffering from one thing is that the overcapacity of the this industry. So still that the solar power, I mean the solar power, uh, this industry is still in the in the valley, OK, so we don't know what it can go out of this valley. Would you please analyze something about the whole the Asian market. So how the other countries in Southeast Asia sector would avoid this problem like China, right? The photovoltaic, photovoltaic power overcapacity of the production. Yeah, OK, so in order to avoid the overcapacity of the production like in China, I think this question, it must be, I mean, be aware. So number one. So #2 is that this is about the energy transaction, right? So that's, for example, that if there is abundance, there is abundance uh solar energy resources in one place, for example, like in Ningxia. So the government should have a better plan, the plan in advance and then to core the participation from the enterprises step by step. Otherwise, that if everybody joined into that channel and they step in China. Then it will cause a problem overcapacity again. So that even you go to some other like countries and regions, they would not work like China. So for example, like in Pakistan, over 60% of 60% of the agriculture irrigation were moved or driven by the PV by the solar power. Solar power to the agricultural irrigation in Pakistan over 60%. Yes, it's true. You know, Pakistan used to be, I mean, lack of the water, right, water resources, and then the irrigation costs were high, but now they import the solar energy technology from China and then to help them to support the agricultural irrigation. So they they reduced the cost a lot and another successful case study also happened in South Asia, the Philippines. And also that's, I mean, the cost reduced a lot. So I think in the period of the energy transition, so that we we have some focus on the safety, and also we have the market potential and also we have some idea how to avoid the overcapacity. Thank you for all your sharing, it's very wonderful. We know that this is a correct route, is a correct right road for us to do the energy transition in Asia. Even though China is a leader, but the other Asian countries and regions, they use, they work on their own way towards the future and we believed in the year 2030, definitely we'll reach the goal of low carbon. Thank you for your wonderful sharing.

Today on Fortune Daily, OpenAI is making a controversial push into the cybersecurity business. Fortune Senior AI Reporter Emily Forlini breaks down the rollout of the "Astra Model," a tool designed to protect critical infrastructure—and open a massive new revenue stream for the company. But with the timing following the Hugging Face breach, big questions remain about the risks of giving AI control over our most crucial systems.

Next, we look at a bizarre change to Apple Maps. At the request of the Trump administration, Lake Superior has been renamed "Lake America" within the app.

Plus, we examine a warning from within the government. Pete Hegseth argues that Pentagon bureaucracy is driving the U.S. military into a "Soviet-style" decline. Reporter Sasha Rogelberg joins us to fact-check the claims. Finally, Energy Editor Jordan Blum reports on the unexpected oil exploration boom triggered by the chokepoint at the Strait of Hormuz.

Can We Trust OpenAI to Protect Our Power Grid? 

There's different ways you can pitch this, kind of like, maybe we know the hackers because we are one. I don't know. Hello from New York, I'm Ellie Austin and this is Fortune Daily. On the heels of its recent and very public hacking incident that we've reported on multiple times on this show. OpenAI is making a curiously timed push to make cybersecurity its next big business. So the company is now courting governments and critical infrastructure operators to adopt its new Astra model with the goal of helping these institutions defend themselves against cyberattacks. In the process, this could open a much needed new revenue stream for OpenAI and. A new front in its race to transform itself from Frontier Lab to viable enterprise business. But the timing, as I mentioned, is a little complicated. Astra's rollout was delayed after the hugging phase shack, which happened via another open AI model. This hack, of course, raised big questions about how much power AI should be given, and let's be honest. Coupling revenue growth with protecting our most crucial infrastructure feels at least a little awkward. Lucky for us, Fortune senior AI reporter Emily Fellini is coming right into the studio to break down this big decision by OpenAI and the high stakes behind it. Emily, thank you so much for joining us, and again, another day, another open AI story, it never ends. So you've heard directly from the company this week that it's changing the launch strategy for its new models. Tell us why they're doing this. Yeah, so they're preparing to launch Astra, which is a new model, which has actually been delayed a couple of weeks, but they said it's coming soon, could be tomorrow, could be next week, could be tonight after we film this, who knows? Um, but basically after the hugging face hack, they are being more cautious because their models are getting more powerful, um, which is great, that's the goal, but they're also getting more dangerous. There's more potential for people to wield them for evil. As we've discussed in previous episodes of this show, so tell us what this new strategy involves, this rollout strategy, and how does it differ from what came before. So they're really focusing on cybersecurity with this launch. I mean they always talk about cybersecurity, but it's been a headline and and yesterday they briefed us on how they're handling cybersecurity in Astra. What did they say in that briefing? So in the briefing, they basically said, you know, they paused training for 2 weeks after the hugging face hack. They reiterated all the new controls that they've introduced and what they're doing differently and specifically for this Astro model, they're going to restrict access to the most advanced cybersecurity capabilities just for those in its trusted access program. OK, so who, what kind of clients might be in this trusted access program? Well, they didn't list them and they didn't respond to my email asking for a list of them. I did ask on the briefing who was in it, and I asked specifically is the US government in it. They said yes. And then It's probably just a handful of other businesses. So everyone else doesn't get access to that, no higher tier of capabilities. No, no, just a couple of people who need access to the most advanced technology or they oversee critical infrastructure is what they said. And so basically the issue is that these models, the same skills they have that hack tugging phase of kind of like finding bugs in the software, finding loopholes in places they can get out and go breach companies and find files and things, those same skills that were, you know, negative in that context can also be used in a positive way to help find bugs and vulnerabilities in software. Patch them and companies and protect them. Yeah, it's like offense and defense. So you can use it for offense to go, you know, somebody who has a bad intention could use it that way, or the models could just autonomously decide to do that, which is what we saw with hugging face in a training setting. Or you can use it for good to try to keep somebody out. So is this new approach in this tiered system of access. An acknowledgement by OpenAI that they still don't have complete control of these models. Yeah, this is a little different than the hugging face one because that was internal training, so they were kind of pushing it to the limits and it was supposed to be isolated, and the problem is that they got out and we talked about like the gorilla broke out of the cage. Like that's, that was a specific lab environment. In this case they're talking about, OK, we're releasing this publicly. Who has access? What will they do with it? And then they talked a little bit about how they'll be monitoring. That use post release. So it's a big deal. It's a big deal. A lot seems to have changed in the past couple of weeks. Now, another model that was involved in the hugging face attack has been deactivated, I believe. What do you know about that? Well, OpenAI would like me probably to reiterate that Astra was not in the hugging face attack, right? Very important, they're getting their messaging right. Also important for the public to know that this model is not one that was kind of implicated in that, this was a separate thing. So the two models that were in the hugging phase, one was like they said it was a pre-release, kind of like a prototype, and they said that that was the main, the leader of the hugging phase, and it has been deactivated, kind of like put away forever. I don't know. These are these things that, you know, we take their word for it, we, I don't think they're lying or anything, but of course for us on the outside, it's very hard to know like what, what they did, um, what the future plans are, if they'll take bits and pieces of it and repurpose, who knows. But for now, not going anywhere with that complete model. Um, you wrote a piece yesterday, um, about all of this, and you said, and I'm quoting, OpenAI like other frontier AI companies is trying to find ways to endow its models with an inherent. sense of right and wrong and ensure that they have alignment with human values and norms. That struck me as such a fascinating concept. Um, how realistic is it that they, that these models will be able to achieve those human sensibilities? Yeah, I think it's to some degree realistic, and they seem to be getting smarter and smarter. And the thing with the hugging face that really struck me is we talk about it as a hack, a breach, but the the AIs didn't really consider it that way. They just were trying to do what they wanted to do because they thought that was, you know, the task of the moment. They aren't like, Oh, this is illegal. We're going to go hack a company. You know, they kind of lacked. They didn't know it was wrong. They didn't know it was wrong and they were just existing in their little world. We talked about they had a messaging board where they were talking and colluding basically to get the hack done, but they just have their own almost society where they just do what they want to do in the hugging face situation. So that's a big problem for OpenAI. So they're trying to, you know, it's called align these models to understand what are the laws, what is right and wrong, what might you not do, because it's hard for a company like OpenAI to predict everything an AI will do. Ideally, the AI will just stay in the bounds of what we think is, you know, reasonable in society. And then you don't have to have all of these precautions, all of this monitoring. I mean, you have it, but you hope not to use it, right? You just want the AI to act right from the start. Anthropic, I think, has an in-house ethicist who I believe is helping to write a constitution around what is wrong and right for AI to do. Do other companies have that role right now? Should they? I think they do, yeah, they do. And they hire people who know philosophy and and ethics and morals, and they work on that and they try to. Map that to the AI's, it's very complicated and it's a whole new area of philosophy and human behavior. Um, so, OpenAI we've discussed this, has this sort of rotating door of execs at the moment. People are in, people are out. Darli Rajk is the new Chief Revenue Officer at OpenAI. What do we know about him and what role does he play in this new focus on cybersecurity? Yeah, I wrote a profile of him. I think it published last week, and he's a cool guy. Um, he comes from, he's from Croatia, um, or kind of like Eastern bloc. He kind of moved around a bit as a kid, came to the US, always wanted to come to the US, and he's had a really incredible career in Silicon Valley. And he most recently was working at Wiz, which is a cybersecurity company that Google bought. It was Google's biggest acquisition ever. So Google, you know, we see the industry focusing on cybersecurity. Now he's going to OpenAI and he will be bringing those skills to the team and he oversees all the salespeople, so he's going to be directing them on how to sell the companies, how to improve adoption of OpenAI software. And a big focus is going to be convincing companies to use open AIS models to fight cyberattacks. In the introduction to this show, I alluded to the fact that there is a bit of innate tension in um this cybersecurity software er being sold as a way to protect critical infrastructure, but it also being a new revenue stream for the company. Uh. How do you predict that Rajk might balance this? Is it possible? I don't know. It's a good question, Ellie. It's a there's a lot of, there's so many tensions and it's really difficult to get it right, especially when you don't know exactly what an AI is going to do, which we talked about. So, I mean, he will be telling companies you can use these powerful models to, you know, plug holes in your software, like I just talked about. And there is actually precedent in the cybersecurity industry of what's called a kind of controlled hacks, where companies will basically Unleash some kind of AI to simulate what an attacker might do and to chart the course ahead of them and block it. So there's different ways you can pitch this, kind of like, maybe we know the hackers because we are one. I don't know. And obviously OpenAI is looking ahead to this blockbuster IPO that it's hoping to achieve. How does this new focus on cybersecurity play into that? Is it a strength? Is it a weakness as we approach that? IPO date. ABC IPO date. Yes, we'll see when that is. Anthropic seems like it's going to come first, maybe this month or next month. Um. The thing with the cybersecurity and the new CRO selling it is that it's a predictable, hopefully a predictable revenue stream, like a new business line. So that's what investors are going to be looking at, you know what money is coming in, where is it coming from? Is it going to continue and continue growing? So OpenAI has identified cybersecurity as one of those more predictable revenue streams, and they've hired him to make sure they have to oversee it. Yeah, oversee it to grow it. It's already a revenue stream. They have a program called Daybreak. They wouldn't grow it. Yeah, tell us briefly what Daybreak is. Uh, it's very vague, to be honest, but it's a program that has various cyber capabilities that they are, you know, giving to companies to cybersecurity. Um, I know that you speak to OpenAI pretty much every day. Um, has there been a change in recent weeks in how they communicate with reporters, given the reputation management that has been needed post hugging face? What have you noticed? I've noticed they're being very intentional with it, um, they're telling us what they're doing behind the scenes, they're trying to make sure we understand it, so our coverage is accurate. There's a lot of scrutiny and focus on it and intensity in this moment with Open Eye. Fascinating, Emily, thank you so much for taking time away from this crazy scandal to explain it to us. Of course. Now for another interesting story on our radar today. Apple Maps has a new name for Lake Ontario, at least it does if you're searching for the lake from here in the United States. Following President Trump's executive order, Apple now labels the lake Lake America for US based users. Interestingly, Canadian users still see Lake Ontario. So the change comes obviously as tensions really rise between these two countries. Trade talks have collapsed and new tariffs continue to escalate. Importantly, it also comes after President Trump directly asks Apple to edit the name of the lake. Google has actually already made this naming update, again for US users only. Perhaps unsurprisingly, it has sparked significant backlash um from very many users across the US. So on its face, this is a fight over a map label, but of course it also tells us something much bigger about the kind of decisions that Apple's new CEO John Turners is going to have to make regularly. Because Turners is taking over at a moment where Apple can't afford to treat politics as something happening outside of the company. Whether it's tariffs or supply chains, app store rules, chips, and now even geographic names, Apple's products are becoming part of the biggest policy battles of the day. And the question for this new era and new leadership at the company. Is what to do with government pressure. When government pressure reaches the iPhone in your pocket, does the company push back? Or does it simply decide to update the map? Right now, it's chosen the latter option. Now energy editor Jordan Bloom shares his reporting on the oil exploration boom prompted by the chokehold in the Strait of Hormuz. I'm Jordan Bloom. I'm the energy editor of Fortune. Um, so I've been covering the energy sector for over a decade. SLB, they're the largest oil field services company in the world, where essentially they do all the grunt work. Um, they do all the drilling, the, the fracking, the, uh, geosciences, reservoir studies of the oil and gas wells. They do, uh, Now a lot of data center modular construction and heat management for the AI boom. There are over 100 countries, so there's really arguably no better company to tell the story of the global history of energy in the, in, in the world. With everything going on in Iran right now, SLB is there. They're in most of the Middle Eastern countries. They're going to play a big role in working with Saudi Arabia, UAE, Qatar, all the countries there, um, you know, bouncing back after the war, the Strait of Hormuz. was the biggest oil and gas artery in the world, essentially this narrow strait of water that's this big bottleneck where 20% of the world's oil and gas has flowed, and again, SLB will play a role in helping develop all the resources, you know, in those areas to reroute with SLB having about 109,000 workers worldwide. I mean, just for context, SLB employs more people than ExxonMobil and Chevron combined. So apart from everything, oil and gas, SLB is really diving head into the AI boom too, but it's taking a different approach and kind of carving its own path than a lot of other energy companies. Uh, most energy power companies are focused on essentially building power plants, which is huge and what's necessary for the AI data centers, but that's not really SLB's bread and butter. Um, so they're jumping in by focusing on kind of the power management, that's the heating, the cooling, and then the modular data center construction. Just an example, just this week, they, uh, Paid $4 billion to buy a company called Kelvion. It's a thermal management heat exchange tech company that's essentially going to help them further build their data center business. It started with two brothers, Conrad, Marcel, Schlumberger, you know, French brothers who focused on geophysics, uh, back in, uh, over 1100 years ago. Um, and they were essentially using electrodes to, to measure conductivity underground, and, you know, it turned out that, uh, measuring underground was perfect for, for studying the subsurface of where oil and gas is in reservoirs underground and really helped kick off the world's oil and gas boom. It's not a family company anymore, but there's been all kinds of offshoots of the Schlumberger family, which is fascinating too, so. It's, you know, they're still all over the place. It's interesting. Next up, a story of government pressure from within. Pete Hegseth says Pentagon bureaucracy is risking a Soviet-style decline for the US military. Reporter Sasha Rogelberg has the fact check. Last year, Secretary of War Pete Hegseth sounded the alarms on what is going on in the Pentagon as far as how it's spending its money, and he compared it to Soviet-style bureaucracy. My name is Sasha Rogelberg, and I'm a reporter for Fortune. So, earlier this month, the Government Accountability Office, which is an independent agency that acts as the government's budget watchdog, put out this report with like a really shocking number, $285 billion maintenance backlog in the US military. What that means is that there is $285 billion worth of repairs to military infrastructure that is still outstanding. That's something that the Trump administration has really tried to address. What was shocking to me was what the magnitude of these potential disrepairs could actually look like. So, for example, uh, over the last 3 years, the Navy lost track of $3 billion worth of equipment. But despite that, The defense budget is swelling to $1 trillion and I think that trend is going to continue where, you know, our budget is going to increase. These real problems are also going to continue so long as the structure of how the Pentagon works stays in place. There are a couple of reasons why He's comparison between the US and the Soviet Union don't quite align. For example, the Soviet Union really spent 15 to 30% of its GDP on the military industry, which starved its economy and led to its downfall. Um, on the other hand, while the US defense spending is absolutely massive, it really accounts for just about 3 to 4% of the US GDP. So while the Soviet Union saw its military collapse because it really overspent and became a poor country that lacked key resources, The US really is an extremely wealthy country that continues to misallocate funds even as its budget growth. This story really highlights the US's relationship with spending, particularly, you know, the Pentagon's relationship with spending, that the Pentagon is the only major federal agency that has never passed an audit, and that's fascinating. The Pentagon will tell you that that's because it's such a massive agency dealing with a massive amount of money, but the GAO, which is the same entity that conducted this initial report, previously found evidence of pervasive money mismanagement. This is not a Trump administration issue or an issue that's specific to the Trump administration. But there are things that the Trump administration is doing that is making this problem worse. So, for example, the war in Iran has caused billions of dollars in repairs for damage on US intelligence posts. The GAO found in July that The increase in military presence at the US-Mexico border as a result of Trump's immigration crackdown cost $2.64 billion and that money was pulled from construction projects and facility maintenance. It's a drop in the bucket compared to that $285 billion figure, but you do kind of get a sense of what the Trump administration's priorities are and how that might come at the expense of maintaining facilities. That's it for Fortune daily. I'm Ellie Austin, remember to like, subscribe, and let us know what you thought of today's show. I'll see you tomorrow. We will be conducting a fire drill on the 4th floor or occupants are requested to participate in the drills at the sound of the fire alarm or occupy the measures on the 4th floor. in the elevators and searches.

In today’s episode of Fortune Daily, we go beyond the balance sheets to explore human potential, global shifts, and a crisis in a very specialized market (spoiler: it’s cheese!).
First, we are joined by tech mogul Bryan Johnson for a deeply personal conversation. We move past the bio-hacking data to discuss his ultimate quest for longevity, embracing haters, the journey of finding love, and how he thinks he’ll be viewed by future generations.
Next, Fortune’s Asia Editorial Director, Lee Williamson, provides an inside look at Vietnam’s rapid transformation into an economic powerhouse and what this means for the global stage.
Finally, Editor Catherina Gioino reports on a surprising crisis currently impacting the world of cheese banks in Italy.

Additional Footage by Getty.

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