SR Companies

These are the best workplaces in the U.S. that employ between 10 and 99 people.

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<p>Employees say:</p><p>"Being a value-based company is very unique. They embrace the Golden Rule philosophy of treating others as we would like to be treated. They put people first, a perfect example is the Heart 2 Heart program. They contribute 1% of the monthly management fee to the program. It's managed locally, and the fund grants each senior living community the freedom to allocate financial support to employees, nonprofits, church groups and other groups in need. Working at SR companies makes you want to be a better human, every day."</p>

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In today’s episode of Fortune Daily, we sit down with Christina Stembel, the founder of Farmgirl Flowers. She shares the unconventional journey of building her successful flower delivery service and how she persevered against all odds to scale her business in a competitive market.
We also dive into the latest data from Ramp economist Ara Kharazian on the high-stakes battle between OpenAI and Anthropic. Plus, we break down the breaking report on the OpenAI Hugging Face hacking incident and what it means for the future of AI security and data protection.
Subscribe to Fortune Daily for more deep dives into the world's most powerful companies.

Additional images courtesy of Getty Images and Farmgirl Flowers

How Farmgirl Flowers Grew Against the Odds and the OpenAI Hugging Face Security Breach

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The designer behind the iPhone is getting another shot at defining how we interact with technology. Jony Ive is working with OpenAI on new AI hardware after reportedly wrestling with some of the unintended consequences of the smartphone. Fortune’s Sebastian Herrera explains why Ive’s next act could matter far beyond Apple.
Then, a huge development in skin cancer prevention has sent treatment hopes and Moderna stock through the roof. News editor Catherina Gioino has the report.
And finally, the great wealth transfer has begun. Associate editor Sydney Lake tells us why that’s causing a huge problem for some nonprofits.

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

00:00 Intro
03:37 OpenAI Hardware
11:44 Moderna Skin Cancer Treatment
15:21 The Great Wealth Transfer


Can Jony Ive Revolutionize OpenAI?

So with OpenAI this is a sort of second chance for him to reimagine what the future of devices look like, what the future of hardware looks like, and, and maybe there's a way to benefit society. Hello from New York. I'm Ellie Austin and you're watching Fortune daily. So if you've been on social media at all recently, you've no doubt seen coverage of the Lindsay Clancy trial. Clancy, a former labor and delivery nurse from Massachusetts, is on trial for the death of her three young children, Cora, Dawson, and Callum, who died in 2023. Clancy has pleaded not guilty to 3 1st degree murder charges. So the central legal question at the heart of this trial is whether postpartum psychosis made her not criminally responsible for the deaths. I'm not going to speculate about the outcome of the trial, which is due to move to closing arguments imminently. But instead, I've been thinking about what the huge reaction to this case has taught us. Well, hundreds of supporters, primarily women, have gathered outside the court in recent days, all dressed in pink in solidarity with Lindsay. When interviewed on TV, these supporters emphasize that they are not there to minimize the horrific deaths of the Clancy children in any way. Instead, They want to draw attention to what they see as critical flaws in women's mental healthcare, particularly during that vulnerable postpartum period. Indeed, on the stand, Clancy's former mother-in-law testified that Lindsay was quote begging for help before her children's deaths. Whatever its outcome, the trial paints a picture of fractured systems of brief provider visits and of a lack of specialized training, leaving vulnerable new mothers without proper help. It's a complete and utter tragedy that it took the deaths of 3 children for this issue to hit the national consciousness. But hopefully, the legacy of this trial will be that maternal mental health is finally seen as core healthcare and an area in urgent need of research and resources, rather than a niche issue cloaked in shame. Next on Fortune Daily, OpenAI enters the hardware market and possibly the courthouse in the process. Fortune tech correspondent Sebastian Herrera joins me to share the latest on Apple's trade secret theft lawsuit against the AI company. Also, a huge development in skin cancer prevention has sent treatment hopes and Moderna stock through the roof. News editor Katerina Giorno has the report. And finally, the great wealth transfer has officially begun, and associate editor Sydney Lake tells us why that's causing a huge problem for some nonprofits. More Fortune daily ahead. Sebastian, hello, and thank you for joining us from San Francisco. It's so great to see you. So I want to talk about a piece of your reporting about how Jony Ive, uh, arguably one of Apple's two most famous figures ever alongside Steve Jobs, is now working with OpenAI, one of Apple's biggest competitors. So give us a bit of context to start. Who is Jony Ive and why does this matter? Yeah, besides Steve Jobs, Johnny Ive is probably the most famous Apple employee ever. He was, he worked side by side with Steve Jobs for years, and together they designed some of the most iconic Apple products that we know. That includes their first computers, that includes, of course, the first iPhone, uh, that includes the Apple Watch, and so Johnny Ive is known to bring the design field that we know for our Apple products to us, to the consumers. He's responsible for the, the curvature, the, the clean lines of, of the iPhone, the, the way that they look and feel. Uh, and so, you know, he's a very famous person from Apple, uh, and he, he left the company, uh, in 2019. Uh, at the time that he left, you know, he had really been more and more disengaged with the company ever since Steve Jobs died in 2011. That was really his running mate, and after he passed away, uh, Johnny Ive slowly kind of sort of began less and less to be involved with Apple, and so in 2019 he left to form his own design firm which is called Love Firm, and then, you know, soon after that he partnered with OpenAI and now together with OpenAI they're building hardware products for this AI era that we're in. Tell us a bit more about the products they're building, and then I want to get into the reaction to this story. Yeah, definitely. I mean, we're all waiting to see what OpenAI and Johnny Ive have cooking up. Uh, a lot of people still believe in the tech industry that you, you can't just have an AI product talking to us, you still have to tether it to a phone. The belief is that a phone could still be part of what, uh, Johnny Ive is still working on this time. With OpenAI instead of Apple. Uh, and, but what we're expecting is a family of products from OpenAI and Johnny Ive, uh, and that's supposed to come out beginning next year, 2027. The reason why it's such a big deal is because, uh, here you have Apple's famed designer now working with the rival OpenAI but still working on Products that, you know, could be revolutionary for all we know. I can't imagine that Apple would be too thrilled if it was a phone, given their iconic status of the smartphone. Tell us a bit about how Apple has has responded more broadly to this relationship between Jony Ive and Sam Altman. Apple takes its devices and its uh proprietary hardware really seriously. They're known to sue people, uh, and companies that they feel is in any way copying them or trying to go after them, and that's exactly what they're doing in this case as well. They recently sued OpenAI and they, they've, they're claiming that OpenAI uh stole trade secrets through Johnny Ives, uh, hardware firm called IO. Products. Now, I is not named in the lawsuit itself, but they are suing OpenAI and former Apple employees for trade theft. And so they're alleging that uh these employees took secrets on how to build Apple products to OpenAI. They, you know, infamously in the, in the lawsuits say that they were showing Apple devices in interviews with OpenAI, uh, and, and, you know, taking information from. Apple computers, Apple is essentially trying to slow down what OpenAI is working on with Ive, and maybe they'll be successful with that. Um, you know, at the moment, uh, you have these two tech giants going at it for the future of hardware, uh, and it's been a very sort of intriguing story in Silicon Valley. What does your reporting say about why Apple decided not to name Ive in the lawsuit? Is there a degree of strategy around that? And they probably are doing that to sort of protect his legacy in some way at Apple, uh, but it's, it's a, it's definitely a very awkward thing for all parties involved, and I think Ive notably hasn't, you know, made a public comment. There was a really interesting line in your piece where you suggested that Jony Ive. Might feel a degree of guilt for their societal ills, some of them that have come from the development of the iPhone, which is actually a subject we talked about yesterday on this show. Tell me a bit about that and how teaming up with OpenAI to produce this hardware might assuage some of that guilt. Some of our reporting that we did with my colleague Emily, is that I feel a sense of guilt on what the iPhone has become, and what that means is that, you know, uh, we've all seen the reports of, uh, uh, the addiction to our phones that, that we, we have as a society and to, you know, to social media. And so I, who's known as a, as a person who's, you know, deeply cares about the things that he builds, um, you know, he reportedly, uh, just doesn't feel great about all the Consequences for society that the iPhone has brought upon us. And so with OpenAI this is a sort of second chance for him to reimagine what the future of devices look like, what the future of hardware looks like, and, and maybe there's a way to benefit society through what he's building, whether that's AI that can help us out in our homes, whether it's, you know, with people that are blind or, or, um, have some sort of, um, uh, you know, handy. Cap, it's a huge opportunity, but it comes with a lot of responsibility just like the iPhone did, and I think when, when I and Jobs were building the iPhone, I, I don't think they could imagine the impact that it's had on all of our lives and how it has become really the main thing that connects all of us around the world to each other, um, and, you know, some of that has been positive, some of that has been negative. What does this mean for other AI companies, Sebastian, and how they think about entering the hardware space? Yeah, you know, Every company that matters in Silicon Valley is trying to figure out the next form factor for AI, and what that means is that, you know, these different tech companies, they wanna be the ones who deliver us our AI in, in whatever way is best, and I think a lot of companies like OpenAI or like Meta, for example, they don't wanna have to rely on Apple to deliver their AI to consumers. If they can create. Glasses or wear, you know, other sort of wearables where their AI can live on and that can be the next hot product. They would love to have that reality. And so, for example, Meta is a really great example of that. They have their Meta Ray-Ban, uh, glasses, their smart glasses that have cameras on them, and you can talk to the AI. You can listen to music, uh, and they've really figured out a way to have a, a product that's been pretty popular, uh, among consumers and it has been a way to introduce. Consumers to their AI, you know, it's, it's an arms race to who can figure out how AI is best delivered to the consumer, whether it's meta, whether it's OpenAI. There's Chinese companies working on this as well. Everyone's trying to figure it out, and there's, you know, there's millions, there's billions at stake here. Sebastian, thank you so much. We'll be watching this space to see how this develops and come back and tell us more about this lawsuit if and as it evolves. Where can people find more of your reporting? Yeah, they can check out more of my articles on Fortune.com and thanks so much for having me. Thank you, Sebastian. Speak soon. Next up, Anatomy of a Deal with my colleague Kat Giorno. Kat, I wanna talk to you about this big announcement um that's recently come out from Moderna that it is developing a cancer vaccine that could drastically improve treatment rates for skin cancer. Specifically, I have to say skin cancer runs in my family, so I'm very invested in this. Tell us how this vaccine works. It's in partnership with Merck, so they took a case, a study of around 1100 people who happen to have. Melanoma and they took out their tumors. So these are all people who have been treated already. They've surgically removed their tumors, and they've caused the vaccine to be grown basically and treatable per person. So it's personalized. They take the cells from the tumor and they make each vaccine per person, and they've found a reduction in about any kind of recurrence, any kind of metasization of this cancer from happening again. Wow. And this is mRNA technology which came into the public lexicon, as we will all remember during the COVID pandemic. During COVID, yeah, and again with Moderna, no less. So now Moderna and Merck are making this this cancer vaccine that could potentially really save people's lives. Moderna's stock rose very sharply in response to this news last week. Tell us a bit about the machinations of why that is. It's actually insane. It went up 100%. So from a $25 billion market cap to $50 billion almost within like three hours of the entire news dropping. MERC's also rose, and as a result of just the entire idea of. Seems now curing cancer. Everything across the board has also risen. So Eli Lilly and all these other firms have also been rising in terms of stocks. So Merck and Moderna did a sort of joint venture on this vaccine. Absolutely. So Merck has their own entire vaccine. It's called Keytruda. This is actually part in place with the Moderna MERC vaccine, which is called an antiogen antigen. OK, quite a mouthful, quite a mouthful, a mouth I mispronounced it, but the two of them together, they treated about half the control group. With both of these vaccines together, and they treated the other half with just the Keytruda, which is which is MERC's own vaccine, and they found a reduction in terms of any kind of recurrence or any kind of metastasization. I think the stats were 49% reduction in recurrence and a 56% reduction in metastasization of these cancer cells with the joint vaccine, the joint with the joint vaccine. So what assumptions are investors now making about Cancer vaccines in the future of cancer treatment. I mean, melanoma is a high risk. It's the deadliest form of skin cancer you can have out there. And the fact that we've, they've found a way to really cure it and really, well, let's say like found a way to reduce the recurrence and also any kind of ill effects that happens with this cancer, insane. And as a result of that, investors are now doubling down on this, and you're seeing this across the entire health industry, you're seeing this across the whole entire longevity space. People are thinking mRNA has like such an amazing potential. Possibility and this is the first time that we've ever seen something that's personalized, really like drive through it. What should we look out for in the coming years when it comes to the evolution of cancer treatment because it's been this, this unattainable goal for such a long time, the prevention, the curing of cancer, it feels like it could be in touching distance. Is that true? Potential. I mean like think about it this way, most cancer treatments like chemotherapy, radiology, all this is indiscriminate, it affects your whole entire body, yes, it affects those cancers. causing cells, but this is personalized, so the, the actual like added benefit of this is that you are not getting those ill effects of let's say throwing up or like hair loss that comes with chemotherapy or other kinds of cancer treatment because it's only affecting those personal cells that are causing cancer. Kat, this is so interesting, we will watch very intently to see how this story develops. Remind people where they can find more of your reporting. Yeah, go onfortune.com. Next up, the business of luxury with Sydney Lake. The great wealth transfer, it's something that people have been anticipating for years, decades really. It is the 124 trillion great wealth transfer is fully underway, but nonprofits are paralyzed by how to chase millennials' newfound wealth, and it's essentially as The baby boomer generation starts to age out and phase out, the younger generations, particularly millennials, um, and some of Gen Z, will inherit all of that baby boomer wealth. So, kind of the trend behind this is the idea of For decades, baby boomers have really been the primary philanthropists in society. They're the ones who hold the most wealth, they have the most disposable income, but as this great wealth transfer starts to really move and transpire, and a lot of money is changing hands. The idea is philanthropy as we know it is fundamentally going to change, but what's actually interesting from the data is. At this point, millennials are actually the most active generation in terms of philanthropy and volunteerism, being involved with with nonprofits, but still, baby boomers are the ones who quite literally have the most bang for their buck. So, nonprofit organizations are really having to rethink. Hey, how are we going to attract a brand new generation of people who we really haven't been chasing for, for a long time because for decades, baby boomers have largely been, you know, making connections to certain causes, certain organizations, but millennials haven't had the disposable income really to Donate to kind of their nonprofits and philanthropies of choice at least at the same scale, you know, these are like mega gifts like hundreds of thousands of dollars or millions of dollars. Millennials, as we all know, we're all kind of struggling out here. Economy's tough, not as much disposable income. So it'll be interesting to see the wealth quite literally move, you know, it could be across the country, it could be from city to city, organization to organization, kind of once the, the money itself changes hands. That's it for Fortune daily. I'm Ellie Austin. Please remember to like, subscribe and let us know what you thought of today's episode. I'll see you in the comments.

In today’s episode of Fortune Daily, Meta faces a landmark federal trial with states seeking up to $1.4 trillion in damages. Fortune Editorial Director Kristin Stoller takes us into the world of social media rehab and the young patients at the center of the court battle.
Then, we examine Bank of America’s $250 million-a-year bet on GLP-1 weight-loss drugs for employees. Reporter Emma Burleigh explains why companies are weighing the promise of a healthier workforce against the rapidly rising cost of covering drugs like Wegovy and Zepbound.
Finally, we look at Arianna Huffington’s warning that success can become a trap. From CEOs afraid to leave multimillion-dollar roles to founders who feel unmoored after a major exit, we explore why professional achievement does not always translate into fulfillment with Associate Editor, Orianna Rosa Royle.

Algorithm Addiction Rehab

And we read about young people in particular forging relationships with these bots online. She described it to me as like I'm standing on a cliff watching a tsunami about to come destroy all these houses and no one else can see it but me. Hello from New York. I'm Ellie Austin and you're watching Fortune Daily. So we start the week with the existential white collar question to meet or not to meet? Well, a number of high profile meetings faced collapse, cancellation, and closed door curiosity over the weekend. First up, USCanada trade negotiations failed. Canadian Prime Minister Mark Carney said last minute demands from the US were unfair, and he clapped back with dollar for dollar levies. In California. Meanwhile, the state's Attorney General Rob Bonte canceled a Monday meeting to settle the state's lawsuit blocking the Paramount Warner Brothers. Discovery merger. He accused Paramount of leaking and misrepresenting details in what he called a bad faith maneuver, and House Democratic leader Hakeem Jeffries and Trump adviser Jared Kushner met privately in New York to discuss possible areas of common ground and cooperation. The confab sparked immediate backlash among progressives. From boardrooms to courtrooms. Our next story asks whether social media platforms are facing a reckoning of their own, and what we do know is that Mehta is up against lawsuits from dozens of US states over addictive tech that it is alleged particularly targets young people and children. And coming up, Fortune editorial director Kristen Stoller gives us a look at young users seeking recovery in social media rehab. And as businesses weigh the costs of GLP one access, reporter Emma Burley will break down Bank of America's big bet. Finally, Arianna Huffington says a quote, success trap is leaving leaders in a creativity rough. Associate editor Orellana Rosa Royal shares her reporting on the CEOs who are desperate to quit. Christian, hello, thank you so much for dropping by. Now I mentioned in the introduction to the show that we are seeing states suing Meta right now um over potentially addictive tendencies of their tech and the impact that that tech is having on children and young people in particular, and we'll be watching how those cases evolve, but in the meantime you've written a piece that really dives into the human. Side of this, you went to the country's only standalone rehab center for tech addiction, which I think is just outside of Seattle. Tell us first of all how you learn about this center's existence. Yeah, so my brother is a therapist and for years he has been saying I want to do tech addiction therapy, and he's basically been laughed at by all of. The people in his in his life because everyone says oh that's so niche, you know we have drugs we have gambling, we have pornography addiction, but tech addiction is such a new field um so he told me about this one center that does it in Seattle and so I thought I have to to visit and see what it's about and how easy was it to get access? It was easy to talk to the center's founders. Talking to the, the clients, uh, was a bit more difficult because it, it's embarrass. for a lot of them. They're between the ages of 19 and sometimes it even goes up to 50, and they just are addicted to their phones, their tablets. They can't get off. Now I think any of us would say we have a certain degree of addiction to our phones. I mean, I very much count myself in that category, sadly. This center treats people who reach crisis point. What does crisis point look like? Yeah, so for them, so there's, I spoke to a bunch of them. One of them told me that she had absolutely failed out of school. She would not leave her room. She didn't have friends in the real world. She wasn't eating, showering, sleeping, and I think a lot of them follow the same pattern. They, they just live in this virtual existence. And how old was this? This the woman I spoke with was 21, and typically women is rare. It's typically men at the center, way more men than women. And at what age had she been given her first screen? At 6. So she had her iPad at 6 playing Angry Birds, and from there it just evolved into VR. Well, which you can have a lot of empathy for. I mean these screens are incredibly addictive, and if you're getting it at 6, how does your brain know how to control that? So tell us what happens when a patient arrives at one of these, uh, at this clinic. What happens next? Yeah, so what happens next, it kind of looks like a house really, and there's a bunch of different rooms separated for males and female clients. All their screens are fully taken away, no phone, no iPad. They can use a manual handheld phone, which I think you and I have not used in decades. They can listen to records. They can listen to CDs. TV. There is no TV that I have seen. And they have to go to therapy between 24 and 30 hours a week. It's a mix of individual therapy and group therapy, and it's a lot of time in nature too, because they're right out in Seattle. They're doing a lot more grounding in nature. And what did you learn about parallels between tech addiction and substance addiction? That, that was honestly the most interesting part to me about the piece was that the, the founder of the center, this woman Cosette, she said. You know with tech it's, it's really different because with a drug addiction it's not like I go out into the real world and my friends are talking to me about meth or heroin or I'm at a supermarket and people are selling drugs like with with tech it's constantly in your face you're constantly being presented with it and have to say no. And so she told me, you know, I think of it more as like an eating disorder where food is always going to be a part of your life, but you have to constantly make a choice about how to have a healthy relationship with it. And that's how she looked at tech. It's really hard because at some point presumably you have to reintroduce it in some form, and you mentioned that in the piece that a lot of these clients end up with what we call a dumb phone for a period of time when they transition back into day to day life. Yeah, so, so one of the women I spoke with, Sarah, she had just transitioned to this dumb phone. You get that after about 16 weeks. All. Can do is I think call basic basic text and no access to the internet so she was working at a supermarket, had access to this, but she said the scary part was she found herself scrolling just through screensavers about like what to do because she, her brain just needed something to do like the dopamine exactly and then so she got scared and kind of like put it under her leg when we were talking, but she was like. I am fearful that I could go back to that place. Tell me more about the founder, Cosette and why she felt there was a need for this sort of rehab center. So, she's interesting because she actually worked in tech. She worked outside of Seattle and she found herself, and this was back, I would say late 90s, early 2000s, really spending too much time on it and she was really ahead of the curve and she and her co-founder. Founder thought we need to do something about it. She'd been a social worker. She'd had one case where she'd started to see it, and when she founded the center in 2012, people kind of laughed at her and thought she was crazy. And eventually now she's seeing more and more clients, but it was a real struggle for her at first to to get it up and running. She was really ahead of that curve. Um, how does the introduction. Of AI chatbots influence the work that is going on at this center because I mean we read about young people in particular forging relationships with these bots online. She is so scared about it, the founder of Cosette, she said she kind of, she described it to me as like I'm standing on a cliff watching a tsunami about to come destroy all these houses and no one else can see it but me. It is too early for it at the center though, because I, I went in end of February, early March, and she said usually the diagnosis and treatment is, is years behind the tech. So right now the biggest thing is virtual reality. She predicts that probably in 5 years she'll be treating people who are addicted to AI tech. The biggest addiction point right now is virtual reality, exactly, yes, which, which we think is being a tech from maybe what, like 7 years ago, but it's just caught up that people are caught so. So addicted that they need the help for it. So she predicts that for AI chatbots in 5. Wow. So people are people wearing headsets for their virtual reality addiction? And the woman I spoke to, Sarah, that was her main addiction. She was wearing the virtual reality headset day and night, refused to take it off. Wow, there's an element there of wanting to escape reality, isn't there, drilling down into why you're finding day to day life so difficult. Um, I want to talk a bit about accessibility because you say in the piece that this clinic costs. $1000 a day, yes, which is not accessible to the majority of people who need it. Absolutely not. Is it covered by insurance? Most insurances don't take it, especially because, so tech addiction is not actually a clinical diagnosis. It's not in the DSM, which is the manual that the American Psychological Association uses to diagnose disorders. So without it being a clinical diagnosis, it's really hard to get it covered. Do you have to apply for access to the clinic? You. For access, um, they will typically take anyone that that can pay for it, but it's, it's really difficult to pay for it because you were saying it's about a 16 week treatment for the first part, the first part, yeah, so it could take months at $1000 a day. What did you learn, if anything, about how this type of treatment is going to be made more mainstream? That's the tough part is that this is really the only center in the US. I think half the battle is getting people to believe. That tech addiction is real, which is what these lawsuits are all about. I would say a good majority of the population, and a lot of the sources I spoke with for this story told me that they don't think it's a thing. They think it's overblown, and some even told me that using the words tech addiction is really harmful in and of itself. And why do they say that? They think that, you know, we throw it around, oh, we're addicted to our phones, we're addicted to our phones. They say that's really harmful to people who are actually might be addicted, and b, they just don't think it's an actual addiction. Is there any scientific data on this? What are, what are the scientists saying? The, so it's, it's mixed. A lot of scientists have studied, um, the brain scans of people who say they are addicted to technology, and they're seeing, you know, dopamine triggers like people who are addicted to, to drugs. Um, but there have been some studies done in the UK, especially where people said there's, there's no correlation between the tech and an addiction. So it's, it is really, really mixed, and there are people on both sides of the argument. In the lawsuits that I mentioned at the start of this conversation, states are seeking certain structural changes to the, to these social media platforms, such as limits on engagement, maximizing features like infinite scroll, which is definitely scrolling and stronger age protections. Which changes do the c clinicians that you've spoke to believe would most reduce the people who eventually need this sort of treatment? They first of all to start. They want to follow Australia, follow the UK. So Australia, remind us, Australia put a ban in last year, yes, for they're banning anyone under 16 from using social media, and the UK is due to vote on it, I think, towards the end of this year, but has a similar exactly, they're hoping to reduce it by 2027. So that would be a great start, they're saying. The next thing they would love to do is reduce the algorithms that keep you engaged in the platform, reduce the infinite scroll, reduce the amount of likes, um, they don't. A light counter and then the other thing they want to do is the founder actually of of of the clinic Cosette, she would love to do off hours, dark hours, so flip a switch, you turn it off, you know, after 7 p.m., comes back on at 9 a.m. What incentive do the platforms have to do this because I imagine it would result in their revenue decreasing. That's the problem. They have no incentive and there's no regulation right now in the US that says, you know, you have to do X or Y or Z. I think through the lawsuits hopefully there will be some regulation, but right now that's how they make their money. It's a wild west out there. And finally, what did the young people who you spoke to, Sarah, who you mentioned, what did she attribute her addiction to? Did she blame the platforms? Did she blame her parents? What was her take on how she ended up where she did? They're so smart because they really don't blame the platforms. They don't, they show no hatred for. You know, all our social media platforms, they blame society and what they're saying is we should be taught in schools how to safely use technology because technology is great it's a, it's a tool that's super helpful. Our problem is when it doesn't become a tool, it becomes your life and so they wish there was either regulations to to avoid some of these things we talked about or and or I'd say having teachers teach in school from a very young age here's. You can safely use technology, and here are the signs when you may be veering too far into an unhealthy zone. Kristen, this is fascinating and so important. Thank you so much. Where can people find more of your work? Yes, so they can look unfortune.com. I also am on LinkedIn and Instagram. Next up, Anatomy of the Deal with Emma Burley, who's telling us about how Bank of America is offering up a unique employee perk, GLP1. Hi, I'm Emma Burley. I'm a success reporter, and in a recent story for Fortune, I covered how Bank of America is spending more than $250 million annually covering weight loss drugs for its employees. GLP-1s like Ozempic, Wagobi, and Zebound are now in the mainstream for weight loss purposes, but actually they were originally Intended to help type 2 diabetes patients. Currently, about 10% of Americans are on GLP-1s for weight loss purposes. And even though that production's ramping up, supply is ramping up, a lot of companies are now having to grapple with the constant costs of covering these drugs for their employees. So as many companies have reeled back on this offering, arguing that it's unsustainable to cover these costs indefinitely for workers. Some employers like Bank of America are really making a large investment on this bet. So I found Bank of America's investment to be super interesting because a lot of companies are currently reeling back this benefit. So currently about 60% of employers offer it for just type 2 diabetes, but other companies, around 36%, offer it for weight loss purposes and for type 2. Even though that the availability and the costs of these drugs have come down, a lot of employers have had to rethink about what this means for their long term investment. Some companies like AWC, HDA Healthcare, and Cigna all once offered GLP-1 treatment for its employees, whether it be weight loss reasons or whether it be type 2 diabetes. But now these companies have since rescinded back on the qualifications that it needs to cover GLP-1s. So now many companies aren't even offering it for weight loss purposes anymore. So it was very interesting to hear Bank of America. America's CEO Brian Moynihan talk more about the short-term health impacts that he's seen already and the overall benefit for his workforce. The $250 million yearly investment is quite large, so it's a sizable chunk of what they're spending to make sure that the mental health and the physical health of their employees are up to par. And Moynihan talks about how this is a worthwhile investment, even if in the long term his employees go elsewhere and then they reap the health benefits of GLP-1s later. He still thinks that offering this in the first place makes Bank of America a great place to work. And now, under the radar with Orellana Rosa Royal on the CEO Success Trap. Hi, I'm Orellana Rosa Royal. I run Fortune's success desk and I've recently interviewed the Huffington Post founder, Arianna Huffington. About what life is like when you actually make it to the top, the reality that comes with success, and one surprising takeaway that I came out with from that interview is that success can be a trap. Some of her CEO friends said that they no longer like their jobs, but they're stuck in it. Arianna Huffington built Huffington Post from scratch to this like multi-million dollar media brand. She was, you know, on the cover of Time magazine, and she did that for 11 years and then gave it all up to start again and launch Thrive Global. She has been through burnout, she's been through the highs of like launching your own company. Uh, like one of the biggest digital media newsrooms of its time to leaving it all and starting over. We often assume when people reach a certain level of success that they're happy, that, you know, I'll get that promotion, I'll get that job title, and I'll get the car, I'll get the house, you know, I'll get all these things with it, and I think we often hold out on our own happiness until we reach a certain role. So it's quite jarring to find out that people that get there aren't happy. When we think about CEOs being unhappy or people with a lot of money being unhappy, that we think of golden handcuffs. We think of this idea that, oh, they must have like trapped themselves with a certain lifestyle. They've got this huge salary, so they splashed out on the mortgage, they sent their kids to private school. The thing that Ariana. Hufferton said is much less tangible, but no less real. It's this idea that our identity becomes so enwrapped with our job titles that that's what is making them trapped. It's not the idea that they can't afford to quit. It's this idea that quitting won't just be leaving a paycheck, it'd be leaving a version of themselves, their identity. And that is existential really. I'd say this is absolutely bigger than CEOs. So many people right now are losing their jobs with AI and. If you inflate who you are with that, that could be soul destroying, and I also think it's applicable for everyday people because a lot of people maybe are climbing the ladder thinking once I get this title, I'll be happy, I'll be successful, I'll be this, that and the other, and I think it's a useful like reframe here, you know, it's not about um CEOs being unhappy. It's just the story's not about that, it's about your job title is rented. Your job title might be different tomorrow, so to not conflate your happiness, to not become your title. Your job is something you do, but it's not who you are. That's it for Fortune daily. I'm Ellie Austin, please remember to like, subscribe, and tell us what you thought of today's episode. I'll see you in the comments.

On today's episode of Fortune Daily- OpenAI’s Security Risks: Senior AI Reporter Emily Forlini joins us to break down the latest security challenges facing OpenAI. Are these vulnerabilities leading to real financial consequences for the AI giant? We dive into the report.
The Iran War Briefing: Executive Editor Jim Edwards provides the essential Bull, Bear, and Base cases for the ongoing conflict in Iran. What are the global economic stakes, and how should investors be looking at the situation?
Subscribe to Fortune Daily for more deep dives into the world's most powerful companies.

Additional images courtesy of Getty Images

The Real Cost of OpenAI’s Security Breaches

What do you hope to see in that postmortem report? I want to know what they prompted the AI. What did they tell it to do? Hello from New York. I'm Ellie Austin and you're watching Fortune Daily. So bonds may be calming down slightly today, but the message from the market is still loud and clear. Long-term money is getting more expensive, and the 30 year Treasury yield has pulled back a little after hitting a 19 year high, because as of 10:00 a.m. this morning, It's at just under 5.2%. What does this mean? Well, investors are worried about mounting government debt, about sticky inflation, and about whether central banks can really bring prices under control without causing more damage. Why does that matter? Higher bond yields raise the cost of borrowing across the economy for Washington. For companies and eventually for consumers, and they give investors a more attractive alternative to high priced stocks. We'll keep you posted on this story as it evolves. So in case you weren't glued to Coachella this year as I was, Madonna is back and she's just scored more MTV Video Music awards nominations than any other artist in the running this year. A whole 4 decades after her early VMA performances, Madonna leads the field with 11 nominations, and she's just ahead of Taylor Swift, who has 9. They're both up for Video and Artist of the Year. But these nomination halls are as much about marketing as they are recognition. Nominations drive streams, they drive ticket sales, social content, and cultural capital. So what does Madonna tell us about longevity in any industry? Well, it's often about converting cultural relevance into commercial momentum. Madonna and Taylor Swift both show that great leaders build brands that cut across generations. They refresh the product, they command attention in new channels all the time, and they turn every public moment from a nomination to a viral clip, to a wedding, shout out Taylor and Travis, into a broader growth engine for audience, for revenue, and for influence. Next on Fortune Daily, the big story. So are open AI security woes having financial consequences? Senior AI reporter Emily Fellini is back and she's going to share her reporting on the subject. And executive editor Jim Edwards joins us from London to give us the bull, bear base case on the Iran war. OK. Emily, you are back to talk to us more about AI securities, which is that OpenAI has announced that it is pausing certain aspects of its AI development. Uh, how significant is this? It's very significant in the sense that it's a first for the company, so it's been. All systems go develop, develop, research, research, push it to the limit until now after the hugging face thing happened, they rolled back and they kind of just stopped for two weeks and they said actually they still have paused their most significant runs, so they're still on a pause. Just some things have started again. And is this reputation management or is it open AI leadership realizing that they do have a security problem here? I think both, so they have something called a preparedness framework, which is an internal guideline and when basically the models are getting too dangerous and too risky. And so they found that their model that's coming up, it's called Astra, actually passed that threshold. So that's also part of them pausing. So they, they realized that I think last time we talked about them having drugged gorillas and how do they escape the lab, basically that was your great analogy. They've determined that they don't know how to contain the gorillas right now and they're just. Pausing and implementing new safety measures, new monitoring, things like an automated mechanism that during training if there's an issue, it'll alert the team within 30 minutes. And so they're just putting in place more guard rails, which sounds great and raises a little bit of the question, why didn't you already have that, um, but they're adding it does pose that question. What do you think the answer is to that? Well, they've said that more guardrails means slower research, so it's this tension the whole time between innovation and safety just like with regulation, you know, it's, it's if you put more controls on it, maybe you risk not being able to bus to the wall research everything immediately as fast as you want. And in the AI industry there's so much competition that people want to move as fast as possible, but I think they realized that they started to move so fast it actually made them move a little bit slower because they had this. Huge reputational risk. Their AI hacked hugging face and also 4 other services, and all signs to them, all signs point to them not knowing that that was happening when it happened. But we're still pending their full technical report. Yes, which I want to come back to in a second. Astra, first of all, what is it about this model that poses, and I'm quoting from an OpenAI blog post here, um, that poses a critical cybersecurity risk. Yeah, I think it just, it's, you know, it might do something, it might hack another company again or it might do, you know, more risky cybersecurity related activity. So that's what critical means in this, in this context. So I don't have to worry yet about the mass dissemination of disease via AI models. I don't think so. OK, OK, I just wondered how to interpret critical in that sense. So OpenAI has released this blog post explaining that it's pausing certain developments. As you said, it's hinted that there's going to be a more technical postmortem to come. What do you hope to see in that postmortem report? I want to know what they've prompted the AI. What do they tell it to do? Because if they told it to achieve this goal at all costs and they didn't say make sure you don't hack 4 other companies in the process, you know, you can see how maybe that they might be able to control it a little more than they did. Um, it's just interesting the way that OpenAir is talking about it. So with this blog post yesterday they reached out to us and other reporters ahead of the news and. They're talking about it and they're they're saying, you know, oh we're not doing this because of hugging face, we're doing this because we want to and because of the Astro model that we've determined, um, so it's a lot of towing a line and it's hard to know exactly what's going on at OpenAI and how much is PR like if they're hiding some big secret of something that went really wrong, are they, how much are they going to disclose in the technical postmortem. It is being conducted independently by different research companies, so by third parties. Yeah, right, but it's just interesting that they, it's clearly a big PR moment for them, very clearly, and they, they have an approach. They've definitely had a lot of meetings about it because they had the blog post yesterday about guardrails they're putting in place, but they haven't told us exactly what happened, so we don't even know if the guardrails are adequate. Mhm. It's just like they're trying to slowly groom us into probably thinking everything's OK. So people are like you are going to continue to ask questions. What does all of this mean for the business' bottom line? How much money are they now having to spend in investigating this hacking that maybe previously was directed elsewhere? Yes, so they said that they have used 3 million GPU hours investigating the hacks. Translate that into layman's language. So I reached out to a bunch of experts, people who buy compute for their own AI companies and just know the rates. Because the compute rates are different for companies than for people who might use an API or an AI that in the public, so it's kind of hard to figure out, but they said that 3 million GPU hours would be anywhere from 4 million to $12 million. Wow, that's, I mean, significant, but maybe not hugely significant for a company like OpenAI, right? That's just, that's just what they presented. But if you think about the opportunity cost of slowing research, delaying a model that has implications, you know, directing the team to focus on this instead of something. Else that has implications. So it's to OpenAI's credit that they're willing to incur a cost to explore this. And how, if at all, has the competition reacted to A, the situation, this escape of the models, and B, OpenAI's response to it. Well, anthropic, then I think we might have talked about they found that their AI did the same thing, so they've released a report. So it's just the way these systems are built, they're so hard to control and to predict. That's what OpenAI keeps telling us in these reporter briefings. This was not intended and and things like that. So I think everyone's just trying to get their arms around it and in the absence of of regulation, it's, it's mostly falls on them. And is there any development on the regulatory side of things? I know last time we spoke, certain big tech leaders were going to the White House. Did anything come from that? The crickets. And when we talk about OpenAI, when we talk about anthropic, we can't ignore the fact that both are approaching IPOs. Yeah. How do these security questions impact? The potential of these companies going public very soon. I think it's a big reputational risk. It's probably not the biggest factor in the IPO, but it has just been such a huge story, and from what I can tell from talking to the company, they care a lot about this. They really care. They're bringing reporters in and. They're giving us super tight timelines. They're doing a lot of internal reviews on what's communicated about this. A big revenue stream for them, their biggest is enterprise customers, so they now make more money on businesses adopting chat GPT and Codex than on consumers just talking to chat GPT consumer plans. So if they're going to continue selling to businesses. But they're also unintentionally hacking businesses at the same time. It's kind of like, are they able to play in this space and grow with the Sound Foundation. It's a very intense moment for them reputationally. It sounds like a very interesting and intense time to be an open AI reporter. Emily, thank you for taking the time to come and chat to us. There's something else I want to ask you about, so stay there for one second. And next up, it is the Bull Bear Base Case with Jim Edwards. Jim Edwards in London is backed by popular viewer demand to give us another bull bear base case, and today we're going to talk about the Iran war and the status of it. So let's start with the bull case, and we're talking from the US perspective here. President Trump has articulated on multiple occasions that the US has gained control of the Strait of Hormuz. And has won the conflict, therefore, um, Jim, give us the bull case for that argument. Um, the most optimistic way to look at this is to note that the US Navy blockade of the Strait is effective. There are very few ships going through the Strait. There's only about 6 per day. Ships are still being attacked, by the way. The, the bull case would be that this blockade hurts Iran's economy so much that the Iranians eventually come to the table and say, hey, can we sort it out and, uh, resume some kind of normalcy in Iran. Um, but we are not there yet. The, um, the, the, the one most effective thing about the war from the US point of view is that it has destroyed the value of the Iranian currency, which is, which will hurt them in the long run. And give us now the bare case, which is what you've kind of just alluded to, but the fact that maybe the situation is not quite what the president of the US is telling us it is. Yeah, so the bear, the bear case is that the Strait of Hormuz is effectively closed and very few ships are going through it. I said 6 on Tuesday, but normally it's over 100. The Iranians are largely in control of that strait in the sense that they are effectively keeping it shut. They are negotiating with Oman to charge tolls which didn't used to be there before. And there's no nuclear deal on the table, and the two sides are not talking, and Iran, the Iranian regime, is comfortable letting its people suffer while this war goes on because the Iranian position has been strengthened by the war, frankly. And give us a base case, Jim. What's the most realistic reading of where we're at right now with this conflict? The Iranians are very well aware of the upcoming midterm elections in the United States, and they are going to continue keeping the Strait of Hormuz closed until that time. They want the price of oil to go, to go up, and they know that. Uh, this makes President Trump very unpopular, so they're, they're basically really hoping to hurt Republican chances in November. Um, after that, all of the sides, including the regional neighbors, will become more incentivized to figure something out that makes this whole situation look, look a little bit more normal. Mhm. OK, so no immediate shift in this situation right now. It looks like maybe waiting until the end of the year. Jim, thank you so much for joining us again. Thanks for having me. Emily, we're back. So we touched on in our earlier conversation the fact that both OpenAI and Anthropic are headed for big IPOs. The Wall Street Journal has just reported on some leaked financial information from both. Companies, what does our reporting tell us about how these tech giants are doing? Really interesting. They stand to be the biggest IPOs in history. Like Anthropic is predicted to surpass SpaceX. So this is a huge moment. Let me get my phone, and make some notes of what has been reported this week, and these are again kind of like leaks. So, but this is what we know. OK, so I have 4 data points. 1, Q2 revenue. OpenAI 6.7 billion, anthropic 11.6 billion. So it was that expected? Did you expect that discrepancy? Well, the wall, I don't know, it's, it's pretty big. So it's, it's anthropic is basically double. And so that's what the Wall Street Journal was saying is that investors felt opening eyes, sales were kind of tepid. Again, my, my take is that both these companies are doing fabulously amazing and their IPOs are going to go great. So it's not a doomsday story for OpenAI as a result of these numbers you're saying. I don't think so. There's a lot of chatter that it is, and OpenAI is falling behind. OpenAI is failing, but so I mean the next data point I have, so annualized revenue run rate, so kind of like what they're predicted to make over the year. OpenAI $40 billion. I mean, does that sound like a small number to you? No, no, that sounds huge. It's a huge number. It's a huge. The only reason it feels small is because anthropics is $65 billion. So you think, oh, that's a big delta, but um. Yeah, I think to me they're still those very interesting companies to watch and they're, they're clearly onto something just with how much demand there is. The key is margin, so are they making money? So they're signing up customers. We just talked about OpenAI has more business customers than consumer now, so there's all this corporate money that they're getting and there's a lot of interest there. But are they, are their costs too high on compute and, you know, investigating the hugging face hack and all this stuff. So the bad news for OpenAI is it appears their margin is worse than ever. They're actually sinking more into the red, the Wall Street Journal said, and Anthropics is looking better than ever. So that's where Anthropic is feeling really good. Potential IPO in September, October, an investor told me yesterday, and OpenAI is kind of like maybe 20 2026, maybe they need some more time. They'll push it to 2027. So you think they're watching each other to see when the other company goes, Yeah. Yeah, totally, and it's all confidential right now, but I have heard from sources that a lot of the discussion and OAI over the past year, even the discussion of meetings, has been how do we keep up with anthropic, and they've, they've, I think, made a lot of really smart moves to do that, focusing on the coding, merging chat GPT and Codex, doing more with, um, desktop apps, you know, things people use at work as opposed to your mobile phone, um, so they're. They're moving and you know they've had a lot of uh shakeups in the C-suite. And I wanna ask you about that because last week we spoke about Brad Lightcap, yeah, former COO departing OpenAI. Since we chatted then there's been another departure, which is Denise Dresser, former CEO of Slack who came to O openpenAI I think not even a year ago to be Chief Revenue Officer. She has now departed. Great. What. These high profile departures mean, particularly as a company is eyeing this IPO. They all have such a different story. Like Brad Lightcap was there for 8 years. He stepped down in April from COO, and then he kind of faded off into the sunset and left the company. So that was a long term situation. Denise is the opposite. She was hired there for less than 1 year, and then we see this very aggressive. Hiring of a new person to replace her. His name is Dali Raji. I'm working on a piece about who he is, his background. From what I can tell, he's a total star. Like he's really successful and his bread and butter is going to be these corporate enterprise sales, so he's going to be responsible. For pumping this technology into businesses and getting that revenue, so I think to me that's the most important departure. So it's sort of a strategic shift that resulted in Denise maybe no longer being the right fit. I think they just want to turn the dial up and they felt that Dali Rajik's skill set was more of turning the dial up and really getting those sales, so they felt he was a better fit for the company at this time. Denise made a lot of headway though, like she really, their enterprise sales have really accelerated. Emily, thank you so much, I could talk to you about this stuff for days. Remind us where we can find all your reporting. Well, unfortunate.com. You can follow me on Twitter, I'm on TikTok a little bit, I'm on LinkedIn. Everything is just my name, Emily Forlini. I'm very easy to find, so I would love for people to reach out and read my stuff. Emily, thank you. That's it for 14tune Daily. Please remember to like and subscribe. I'm Ellie Austin, and I'll see you next time.

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