This is an abridged transcript of an interview from Rapid Response, hosted by former Fast Company editor-in-chief Robert Safian. From the team behind the Masters of Scale podcast, Rapid Response features candid conversations with today’s top business leaders navigating real-time challenges. Subscribe to Rapid Response wherever you get your podcasts to ensure you never miss an episode.

Wieden+Kennedy is known for a lot of things—among them, your deep pulse on consumers. And that’s where I’d like to start. Today’s business environment is so tricky: Stock prices are up, but so are oil prices. AI is disrupting and exciting people. Geopolitical issues are arguably at an inflection point. There are a lot of serious, contentious trends. And at the same time, marketing messages are tending toward the playful, the practical, and sometimes, dare I say, the superficial. I’m curious what your sense is about why that is, and how much of that is about where the consumer is emotionally right now versus where brands are.

I don’t think there are a bunch of conversations in a boardroom that are like, “It’s serious out there, so let’s make some jokes.” Just to clarify, that’s not what’s going on. If I had to guess, I think you saw in the pandemic that what was happening in the world was dire. Then marketers showed up, and it quickly became that meme of sad piano music ads. I think people would probably prefer escape more than they want to be reminded by Brand X that times are interesting.

When you’re talking with CEOs and leadership teams across industries (because you do work for a broad range of clients), what kind of conversations are they having? Is the mood fear and wait and see, or optimism and go for it?

I don’t really think there’s time for fear. Fear and stress probably just lend themselves to paralysis, and it’s certainly not time for that. Right now we’re at a point of high prices generally in consumer goods. A lot of clients are trying to figure out how to show up in a way that feels value-forward and that makes clear we’re aware of the situation the consumer is in.

You’re dealing with those things rather than talking about existential issues and topics. I think there’s a prevailing sense of pragmatism, where people are just trying to figure out what problem we’re trying to solve and how we solve it as quickly as possible.

With all the changes going on, you need to take risks. But at the same time, it’s kind of a tough moment to take risks. People talk about polarization, like, “Can brands appeal to everyone? Is it better to pick a lane?” It almost feels like no matter where you go, you’re worried you’re going to run into something.

I feel like the conversations now are less about brand ideology—“What are the politics of brands and businesses?”—and more about their practical nature. I think there have been a lot of lessons learned about standing for certain value sets and principles, and there’s a lot of fear and anxiety around that because of the missteps that have been well publicized. By no means am I saying that brands shouldn’t stand for something. It’s really about what problem we’re dealing with and how we solve it.

It’s less about creative risk and some of those things. I feel like those are for maybe highfalutin times. Right now it’s a street fight, and everybody is just trying to figure out how to deal with the obstacles directly in front of them.

To me, part of what has always made Wieden+Kennedy distinctive is your ability to tap people’s emotions. As you’re talking about the environment right now, it sounds like utility is the primary thing that businesses and brands are trying to get across. Does that change the way you approach campaigns? Or does it just mean that to get to that emotion, you do it in a different way?

Yeah, it’s the latter, and that’s an important distinction. I wouldn’t say that we’re in a time of utility in terms of messaging and output. The way that you do that can still be really emotional. As Wieden+Kennedy, we still find tons of humanity and emotion in the problems that our clients are dealing with on a day-to-day basis and in how to connect with consumers in a human way. But the problem tends to be more straightforward or more functional than a lofty ideal, I guess is what I would say in this moment.

You guys are known for the ultimate go-for-it campaign: Nike’s “Just Do It.” As a longtime New York Knicks fan, I have to bring up the amazing post-finals Nike campaign, courtesy of director Josh Safdie: a fan running through the streets as Billy Joel’s “New York State of Mind” plays. Is that the kind of thing you’re planning ahead of time? Do you have options for whichever team wins? Or is it more instinctive and reactive?

Great question. Nike, being in the business of sport, is always thinking about who’s going to win and who’s going to be in those moments. The goal is to show up for them in a meaningful way. When you have a moment like that, where the Knicks are making a legendary run—and I live in New York City and I’m a season-ticket holder, and boy, was that electric—you get to these moments where you go, “This is going to be a thing.”

It’s one of those moments that captures what we love about sports. It’s not just a moment in sport, it’s a moment that’s transcendent. And you go, “Okay, if there’s a way to make a meaningful contribution to this conversation about this legendary city and long-beaten-up team rising to the heights that they did, you’ve got to take that shot.” I think one of the keys for Nike, always, is authenticity.

So you get a guy like Safdie, who’s a lifelong fan, and you get to see the perspective of the team or the athlete through the lens of somebody who really knows sport. You get to a moment like that, and obviously that makes us collectively—Wieden+Kennedy and Nike—incredibly proud to be able to have that moment. And it’s the moment that we’re responding to, not just the creative output.

I feel like sometimes CEOs don’t really get creativity. They say they want it, but they don’t really understand it. Do you find that when you’re talking to leaders?

This may be a little heretical to say, but I think talking about creativity in a broad sense is problematic because it makes the conversation almost exclusive. It becomes, “Well, this is for a group of people who have cool T-shirts and interesting handbags.” I think the conversation has to be much more about what, as a brand, do you want to stand for? And when you do that, a CEO can engage.

We have clients who feel like the CEO shouldn’t be involved because this is a creative conversation. No way. We’re talking about what a company should stand for at its best. A CEO should feel very comfortable in that conversation. We’re not going to, in most cases, talk to a CEO about the music in the spot. We’re talking to CEOs about what they believe, what they want to be, and what they want to project to the world. Talking about what we do as a purely creative endeavor is problematic, and I think it excludes people who we really need in these conversations.

So when you get to the point where, “Okay, this is what the brand is, and how do we emotionally connect with the consumer?” maybe the CEO doesn’t need to be in the room for that. Is that more about the music track or whatever?

If I was talking to a CEO who is marketing-averse, I’d say: “Don’t feel like you need to know who the voice-over should be. Don’t feel like you need to know what happens in production. I don’t go on production myself. But you have tons to give in a conversation about the brand.” 

The company run by Elon Musk reported a loss of $541 million, or 9 cents per share, in the three months through June, less than half what financial analysts had expected. Revenue jumped to $7.8 billion, up more than 90% from the year-earlier period.

Musk will field questions from investors and financial analysts soon on a conference call.

Stock in the rocket, satellite communications, and AI company has fallen by roughly half since its June peak shortly after an initial public offering that briefly made Musk the world’s first trillionaire.

Investors have knocked the share price down on worries Musk had oversold them on the company’s future prospects for space travel and colonization, among other issues. They’re also bracing for volatile trading as some company insiders get the opportunity to sell shares after the expiration of what’s known as a lockup provision later in the week.

The shares jumped 19% on their first day of trading, making Musk the first-ever trillionaire. The subsequent drop in SpaceX, as well as a decline in the shares of Musk’s electric vehicle company Tesla, have knocked his wealth down to $783 billion, according to Forbes.

Part visionary, part salesman, Musk is likely to be asked on the conference call about when he expects to finish testing SpaceX’s giant Starship rockets that NASA hopes to use to put astronauts on the moon again, his plans for its satellite network, and the prospects of putting football-field-sized data centers in orbit.

Given rumors of SpaceX possibly merging with Musk’s Tesla car company, he may also face questions about that tie-up, but that is likely to yield few details. Neither company has confirmed plans for a combination, and Musk has parried questions before by noting securities regulations bar him from discussing the issue.

SpaceX insiders were barred from selling in the public offering in June, but that prohibition begins to ease on Thursday when more than 900 million shares are released for trading, more than doubling the amount currently available for trading. The lockup release is the first of several tranches of stock that will be freed to trade over the next several months.

The prospect of more supply has weighed on the shares, which closed Tuesday at $125.33, down from both the peak of $225 in June and also the IPO price of $135.

The Starship rocket successfully deployed satellites in space during a test late last month. Future tests could include trying to use giant arms at its Starbase launching site in Texas to grab the spacecraft and its booster upon their hovering return to earth.

SpaceX’s satellite communication business, Starlink, is a big cash generator for the company with contracts around the world. The company also runs a money-losing AI business, known for its Grok tool, as well as the social media platform X, the renamed Twitter.

__

An earlier version of this story erroneously reported that 900,000 shares will be released for trading later this week. It should have said more than 900 million.

—By Bernard Condon, AP business writer

“When I was dropping out, people thought it was super weird,” Collison said. “I think, overall, if you enjoy college, I think there’s no harm in finishing. I felt this real sense of urgency, which I think . . . was a bit unnecessary.

“I thought that a bunch of the opportunities in startups and in Silicon Valley were ephemeral and fleeting,” he added. “If we didn’t build it then, it wouldn’t be possible to do it in three or four years, and maybe all the opportunities would be gone.”

Collison was admitted to MIT when he was just 16. There, he studied math, but dropped out just a few months into his freshman year to launch an e-commerce software company with his brother. After selling that company for $5 million, he returned to MIT to resume his studies in math and physics. But old habits die hard, and Collison left a year later to found the payments company, Stripe, which is now valued at $159 billion.

Looking back, Collison wouldn’t necessarily urge other eager founders to follow in his footsteps. “In hindsight, I think that was a poor intuition,” he said. “It’s been pretty robustly and reliably the case over many decades that Silicon Valley has a surfeit of opportunities.”

Collison reiterated that leaving school doesn’t mean shutting out education completely. “It’s not totally a trapdoor,” he said. “You can drop out and, in fact, return.

“A lot of parents think that dropping out is very risky and will impugn your reputation for the rest of your life, and so forth,” he continued. “And as far as I can tell, nobody has ever cared. So I think you don’t need to, but also the cost of doing so is de minimis.”

Some of the world’s most notable founders got their start after dropping out of college. Mark Zuckerberg left Harvard University during his sophomore year to run Facebook full time, Bill Gates quit Harvard during his junior year to co-found Microsoft, and Steve Jobs exited Reed College after one semester to focus on building out Apple, although he continued to audit classes.

Still, a Stanford Venture Capital Initiative analysis last year found that unicorn founders are twice as likely to have completed undergraduate studies, three times more likely to have a master’s degree, and six times more likely to have a doctoral degree, compared with the average U.S. person over age 25. Amazon’s Jeff Bezos has credited his time at Princeton University for giving him the analytical and problem-solving skills necessary for his career. Ali Kashani, the CEO of Serve Robotics, told Business Insider that college is “where you learn how to learn, how to think critically, how to work hard, and how to become an independent adult.”

Now, as AI becomes a central talking point across different industries, college students have had to reckon with their career paths. Lumina Foundation and Gallup polling from April shows 42% of undergraduate students have reconsidered their majors because of AI’s impact on the job market.

Collison and other founders, like Nvidia’s Jensen Huang, have argued that AI has made it easier to start and operate a business. Collison himself said that his company is seeing nearly twice as many new businesses launching on the platform as a year ago. “It seems to be a better time than ever to start a business,” Collison said. 

“You might think, ‘Okay, fine, you know, there’s way more vibe-coded kind of lightweight,’” Collison said. “But actually, the median business is doing better this year than a year ago.”

Nvidia’s Huang reiterated this sentiment in his own Y Combinator interview, saying: “This is absolutely the single greatest time to start a company.”

The global race to build data centers is accelerating at a breathtaking pace.

Driven by artificial intelligence, cloud computing, and the relentless growth of digital services, data center capacity is expanding faster than any other asset class. Hyperscalers (the technology companies operating cloud infrastructure at massive, global scale) are signing leases and developers are breaking ground. Governments are competing to attract investment. Speed has become the defining metric.

But in the rush to scale, the industry risks locking in a costly blind spot: how today’s data centers will perform, economically and operationally, in a more constrained future.

If climate and resource considerations are treated as secondary, something to address after facilities are built, the data center industry may face higher costs, regulatory backlash, stranded assets, and avoidable reputational damage.

A ONCE-IN-A-GENERATION BUILDOUT

Data centers are not short-lived assets. Most are designed to operate for 20 to 30 years. Decisions made today about materials, energy systems, cooling technologies, and site selection will shape their performance.

Yet much of the current expansion is optimized for speed and capacity, not resilience.

Carbon-intensive concrete and steel are being deployed at unprecedented scale. Facilities are connecting to power grids already under strain. Cooling systems are being installed in regions facing growing water stress. These choices are expensive, and sometimes impossible to undo.

The result is a form of infrastructure lock-in, where emissions, energy exposure, and water risk are embedded before operators understand their long-term implications.

THE HIDDEN COSTS OF “BUILD FIRST, OPTIMIZE LATER”

Ignoring these factors early creates a cascade of risk.

Start with energy. A data center designed without a renewable strategy or grid flexibility is exposed to fluctuating electricity prices and capacity constraints. As AI workloads drive demand higher, energy stops being a cost center and becomes a bottleneck.

Then there’s water. Many facilities rely on water-intensive cooling. In drought-prone regions where households and farms are competing for every gallon, that has triggered local resistance, permitting delays, and political scrutiny. Projects that don’t address water efficiency upfront can stall or face costly retrofits.

Regulators and the public are watching. Governments are tightening scrutiny of industrial energy and water use, while customers and investors grow skeptical of vague environmental claims. Facilities without a credible path to lower resource intensity may struggle to meet future disclosure standards or defend themselves against accusations of greenwashing.

And then the competitive hit. Hyperscalers and enterprise customers with public climate commitments are raising expectations for their infrastructure partners. Data centers that can’t meet evolving requirements risk being bypassed in future leasing decisions, no matter how fast they were built.

WHY LANGUAGE MATTERS

One reason these risks are still underestimated is linguistic.

In much of the data center industry, terms like “decarbonization” and “sustainability” are perceived as abstract, compliance-driven, or misaligned with core business priorities. They can feel external, something imposed by regulators and investors, and also corporate sustainability teams.

By contrast, words like resilience, efficiency, and competitive edge speak directly to how data centers are evaluated.

Take resilience. It reframes climate considerations as something every operator already obsesses over: uptime protection, grid reliability, and the ability to keep running in a constrained environment. Efficiency does similar work, tying lower energy and water use directly to operating margins and cost predictability. And “competitive edge” drops the virtue framing altogether. Meeting future customer requirements isn’t about virtue, it’s about landing the business.

This language shift matters because the decisions shaping data centers are rarely made by sustainability teams. They are made by developers, engineers, operators, utilities, and financiers. These groups respond to risk reduction and performance, as well as return on investment.

When low-carbon materials are framed to reduce future regulatory exposure, not just emissions, adoption increases. When positioning renewable energy procurement as a hedge against power price volatility, it moves from a moral to a finance conversation. When water efficiency is tied to permitting speed and community acceptance, it becomes a growth enabler.

The underlying actions may be the same, but the framing determines whether they are seen as optional or essential.

The next time you evaluate a project, open with the questions your team already cares about: What happens to this facility when power prices spike? When the local water gets scarce? When a major customer asks for emissions data you cannot produce? Every unanswered question is a risk.

DECARBONIZATION AS A COMPETITIVE STRATEGY

This reframing reveals that the most climate-aligned data centers are often the most resilient and competitive.

Facilities designed with cleaner energy, lower embodied carbon, and efficient cooling are better positioned to:

• Absorb energy market shocks
• Navigate water constraints
• Meet evolving customer and regulatory expectations
• Maintain asset value over decades-long lifespans

What is labeled “sustainability” is increasingly a proxy for quality and durability.

The cost of inaction is financial, operational, and reputational.

A NARROW WINDOW FOR SMARTER GROWTH

The data center industry has a window to get this right. Many facilities are in early planning stages. Standards are evolving. Lower-impact materials, cleaner power options, and efficient cooling technologies are becoming available.

The industry needs to reframe the conversation from speed at any cost to resilient and efficient growth that preserves long-term value, for operators and for the communities.

Because in the race to build the digital backbone of the future, how we build may matter as much as how quickly we do it.

Emma Cox is chief marketing and sales officer for ClimeCo.

And now, the tech world has a new meme—one that, for outsiders, might be too bizarre to comprehend.

On X, users in the tech and AI space have taken a simple image of billionaire venture capitalist Chamath Palihapitiya and turned it into its own meme template to poke fun at Silicon Valley corporate speak.

The Sri Lankan-born Canadian American entrepreneur is best known as the founder of Social Capital, as well as being a former executive at a young age at AOL and Facebook.

The image itself is somewhat unremarkable to the general public: Palihapitiya sports a chunky white turtleneck while holding a glass of white wine.

But users who find it funny have turned to AI to alter the original image, adding new layers to the sweater as they share snippets of the tech world’s pretentious vernacular, often by tagging Grok.

For instance, the AI-generated photos are accompanied by captions referencing “biotech” as “techbio,” or saying “orthogonal” instead of “unrelated.”

The meme has now expanded beyond just tech slang, translating daily life events into some sort of LinkedIn-corporate speak hybrid.

“Telling the barista at Starbucks you ‘experienced an unexpected liquidity event’ instead of ‘clogged the toilet,’” a user said on X in a post with over 300,000 views.

The fixation on Palihapitiya’s wardrobe is not entirely new to the community. In the past he has been identified as a fan of the Italian luxury fashion house Loro Piana, despite saying possessions are worthless.

Last year, a viral post on X used an image of Palihapitiya wearing another white sweater, with a user saying he would add an extra layer for every 10 likes. The post went on to have over 14,000 likes.

But this year’s iteration of the joke has exploded since the weekend, with many users now branching out beyond adding layers—creating a whole universe where Palihapitiya’s sweater can become anything from a sweater-textured house to the sand worm from Dune.

And the captions continued even as the images got weirder. “When i say i’m building ‘startup culture’ instead of ‘grinding,’” a user said on X alongside an AI-generated image of Palihapitiya-inspired mushrooms growing inside a greenhouse.

Another user added: “i love how the chamath meme has gone through so much evolution on timeline in real time.”

For his part, Palihapitiya has since noticed the avalanche of memes inspired by his likeness. “As goes the memes, so goes the world,” he posted Tuesday on X.

Hardly the first study to scrutinize the health issues related to artificial sweeteners, a recent study has found that consuming high amounts of low- and no-calorie sweeteners is associated with an accelerated rate of cognitive decline. That led the researchers behind an updated study, published last month in the journal Neurology, to conclude that there could be long-term harm from regular consumption of these sweeteners.

During a roughly eight-year study, the team tracked the cognitive decline of nearly 13,000 adults in Brazil in relation to their consumption of low- and no-calorie sweeteners. They found that there was a gap of about 1.6 years of brain aging between those people who consumed the most and least sweeteners. 

“Consumption of aspartame, saccharin, acesulfame k, erythritol, sorbitol, and xylitol was associated with a faster decline in global cognition, particularly in memory and verbal fluency domains,” wrote the researchers, led by a team from the University of São Paulo. They found that the highest consumption of these sweeteners was associated with faster decline among participants without diabetes, along with faster memory decline among those participants with diabetes.

HOW MUCH YOU DRINK MATTERS 

Study participants consumed an average of about 92 milligrams of artificial sweeteners per day, though some participants consumed nearly twice that amount. For context, a 12-ounce can of many popular diet sodas contains up to 200 milligrams of sweeteners like aspartame.

Such sweeteners have previously been linked to adverse health outcomes that include an increased risk of type 2 diabetes and a higher risk of cardiovascular events. But the newfound link to cognitive decline might give some people cause for pause.

However, one of the study’s authors cautions that because it was an observational study, the researchers can’t prove that sweeteners alone caused the cognitive decline. And the results don’t suggest that drinking an occasional diet soda is harmful, as Claudia Kimie Suemoto of the University of São Paulo told Inc. 

“Rather, they raise questions about the potential consequences of frequent, long-term consumption of artificial sweeteners,” Suemoto said. “Based on our study alone, I would not tell someone to stop drinking diet soda because of concerns about cognitive impairment.”

DIET SODA’S “MOMENT”

Despite years of scrutiny about their supposed health benefits and the surge in popularity of flavored seltzer waters, people have yet to kick their diet soda habits. 

While Coca-Cola—the regular variety, that is—remains the most popular soda worldwide, consumers are increasingly opting for lower-calorie options. In fact, unit case volume for Coca-Cola Zero Sugar surged 16% in the second quarter, followed by Diet Coke and Coca-Cola Light, which were up 7%, the Atlanta-based company reported last month. 

Diet Coke, in particular, is “having its moment,” as CFO John Murphy told Yahoo Finance.

While moderation is key, Suemoto also recommended swapping diet drinks for water, sparkling water, or unsweetened coffee or tea.

And if caffeine is your vice, there’s some good news: A different study recently found that coffee consumption can lower your risk of cirrhosis, liver cancer, and liver-related death.

The challenge we are navigating is this: How do[DA1]  we tell a story that is clear and credible, while also differentiated? And do so while still reflecting what’s happening inside our businesses.

Truthfully, this is not just about good storytelling. It is about how we clearly reflect and represent sustainability as a business value driver, and how we connect that to strategy, operations, and decision-making within our organizations.

THE BUSINESS BENEFIT OF TRUST

Why is focusing and simplifying your story so important? The last PwC Trust Survey found that “Nine in 10 business executives say their company has taken action to reduce its impact on the environment,” but “The data shows gaps between stakeholder expectations for transparency and the current level of company disclosures.” Certainly, companies have the opportunity to communicate more proactively and candidly about their sustainability actions and decisions. 

One of today’s biggest gaps between sustainability ambition and execution stems from the overuse of generic frameworks, which leads to many companies blurring distinctiveness. Everything gets labeled “sustainability,” and in the process, they lose differentiation.

“The core problem is that organizations often try to say everything, rather than focusing on what truly matters to their business. This results in broad, unfocused narratives that are difficult to execute and even harder to prove,” Kate Olsen, EVP and North America lead for social impact and sustainability at Weber Shandwick, shared with me as we prepared to speak on a sustainability panel together. “Companies create more impact when they concentrate on the areas that genuinely drive their operations and long-term value.”

The more effective approach is to tell a cohesive, grounded story that is clearly tied to real business drivers. Not every sustainability issue needs to be central. Select and emphasize the issues that matter the most to your key stakeholders, back those stories up with plans and actions, and explain your progress in simple terms.

A BUSINESS VALUE DRIVER

Every good story starts with a why. In business, the actions need to support the company’s purpose and business model. Sustainability is increasingly showing up as a real business value driver when it is fully integrated into core operations and companies begin seeing a tangible return on investment through efficiency and growth. On the efficiency side, efforts like reducing energy use, water consumption, and waste translate directly into lower operating costs. At the same time, sustainability can unlock growth by enabling new revenue streams, services, and circular business models.

Faith Taylor, chief sustainability officer at Kyndryl, recently shared during that same panel discussion, “Real value comes when sustainability is embedded into how the business actually runs. It’s not easy, but that’s precisely where the payoff lies.”

Faith brings up a valuable point in that many organizations are experiencing a “back to basics” moment by focusing on the issues most material to their businesses. They are making commitments they can authentically deliver on, rather than focusing on broad or disconnected promises.

BACK TO BASICS

We have found that to be evident in practice at James Hardie, which manufactures exterior home and outdoor living solutions. Following our 2025 acquisition of The AZEK Company, we had to bring together two established sustainability strategies, two sets of targets, and two narratives. Our goal is simpler storytelling.

The story becomes more focused and meaningful as we operationalize sustainability efforts. For example, increasing the use of recycled materials such as plastic bags, laundry bottles, and old vinyl siding at AZEK is more than an environmental initiative. It reduces input costs while also lowering emissions, demonstrating how sustainability and financial performance can reinforce each other. James Hardie also has meaningful targets to minimize waste and reduce waste disposed in its operations. Telling both stories simultaneously adds value and drives clarity. Also, by merging the best of what each company is doing while ultimately prioritizing the benefits of our collective actions, we strengthen the impact and the story behind it.

To do something similar in your organization, I encourage you to get back to basics, especially if merging strategies and storytelling:

• Focus: Fewer, more credible commitments
• Differentiate: Tell a story that reflects your business
• Simplify: Don’t overcomplicate the language

In the end, the organizations that communicate sustainability most effectively will have the clearest connection between ambition and action. As expectations continue rising, sustainability communications must move beyond polished messaging and become a true reflection of how to build long-term resilience. 

Amanda Cimaglia is vice president of global sustainability at James Hardie.

In a new court filing, Capital One revealed that it closed the cluster of more than 300 bank accounts belonging to Trump and his family in 2021 after they were flagged over money-laundering concerns. The bank’s new disclosure only surfaced because the Trump Organization and Eric Trump sued the bank last year in federal court, claiming that it rejected the Trump family’s business for political reasons. 

Capital One’s legal team is seeking to have the case against it dismissed, arguing that the Trump group’s lawsuit rests on “vague allegations of political discrimination,” ignoring the factual reasons behind the decision to terminate the accounts. 

The bank’s latest legal filing cites “anti-money-laundering (‘AML’) reasons” as the justification for purging the accounts. “The closures were the result of months of analysis and a careful review by Capital One’s AML team in accordance with bank policies and regulatory guidance,” the filing states.

A shifting political landscape

The closures came in March 2021, a few months after the January 6 riot at the U.S. Capitol in Washington, D.C., during a phase when social media companies and other businesses rejected the then-former president, citing his involvement in inciting the day’s violence. 

The Trump Organization noted this political atmosphere in its lawsuit against Capital One over the accounts, which it filed four years after the fact in March of last year. “Plaintiffs have reason to believe that Capital One’s unilateral decision came about as a result of political and social motivations and Capital One’s unsubstantiated, ‘woke’ beliefs that it needed to distance itself from President Trump and his conservative political views,” the lawsuit stated. 

In the suit, the Trump organization alleged that the banking woes caused it financial harm and claimed that the debanking incident was an example of a “systemic, subversive industry practice that aims to coerce the public to shift and re-align their political views” against conservatives. At the time, Capital One denied the accusation, asserting that it has never closed customer accounts over politics.

While we know few details of the kind of transactions that Capital One identified, the bank didn’t mince words about its rigorous investigation process. “Plaintiffs cannot meaningfully criticize the robust process undertaken by Capital One’s [anti-money-laundering] professionals with decades of law enforcement experience in deciding to close the accounts,” the filing states.

It didn’t work.

The trip saw a group of influencers stay in luxury cabins at Wildflower Farms, a resort in New York’s Hudson Valley. On OpenAI’s dime, the creators enjoyed fine dining and exciting excursions, and played around with the company’s newest tools, posting to their followers all the while.

View this post on Instagram

A post shared by Megan Lieu • Tech & AI Careers (@meglovesdata)

“Officially letting my AI assistant do the work so I can enjoy more of all this goodness,” one attendee, business influencer Nat Lucy, captioned her post about the trip. 

Another creator, Sreya Halder, gushed about “the dreamiest weekend upstate” in a video showing off custom pajamas, a private patio, and a care package from OpenAI. In another, she highlighted some of the activities she and other attendees participated in, including creative AI-based challenges, panels on AI use, and—breaking from the AI theme—beekeeping. 

View this post on Instagram

A post shared by Sreya Halder (@sreyahalder)

But what was a dream for the creators on the trip inspired a nightmare in their comments sections, as social media users called out the apparent hypocrisy of celebrating AI on a nature retreat.

“Blatant AI propaganda”: Commenters come for creators

Across several of the attendees’ posts, commenters railed against their partnership with OpenAI. Given AI data centers’ negative environmental impact, from noise pollution to water waste, the pastoral setting of the brand trip sparked outrage online.

“Ironic celebrating nature while data centers are literally destroying it,” one commenter wrote under Lucy’s post.

“Pretending this a trip for ‘cReAtiVe TeChiEs’ and not blatant AI propaganda is gross and you clearly think your audience is dumb,” wrote another under one of Halder’s videos.

A third creator on the trip, Grace McCarrick, responded to a commenter who accused her of “selling her morals.”

“My morals are not compromised. I am supremely excited about AI and the opportunities it offers to our species,” McCarrick said in her video. “Beyond that, any time there’s going to be some vast sweeping change to the way we live, if I have an opportunity to be in the room and hear from the people who are at the helm of that change, I’m going to do that.”

In a post on LinkedIn, McCarrick added that she “genuinely had no idea that people were this anti-AI” and she “didn’t for one second consider it could be controversial.”

“We welcome healthy debate”: OpenAI responds

As its partner creators come under fire, OpenAI maintains a positive outlook on the brand trip (and on the discourse it stirred up).

“Creators are an important part of our community and how people get information and learn about our products today,” OpenAI spokesperson Drew Pusateri tells Fast Company. “We welcome healthy debate as AI becomes more prevalent, and we value creators who choose to engage with us, attend our events, ask tough questions, and learn alongside everyone else. 

Pusateri says that this brand trip was specifically meant for creators to learn about ChatGPT Work, a new AI tool that automates workplace tasks by connecting with existing platforms like Slack and Teams. Beyond this one trip, he adds, OpenAI has ongoing partnerships with various creators as part of its broader marketing strategy.

“We’ll continue to value them, just as we do traditional media and other marketing partners,” Pusateri says.

Speaking to the website T3 earlier this year, Fender CEO Edward “Bud” Cole argued that cover songs function as a kind of “analog AI,” allowing beginners to play music before they write their songs. 

He also claimed to see a songwriter’s bandmates serving a similar role to a large language model, helping to develop partial ideas into full songs, and said indeed AI itself could further help musicians create original work. “I actually think that we are in the brink of freeing up people to move beyond the same old covers and to really get into working like they do with their bands,” he said.

But months later, Cole now wants to clarify those comments. “I had a conversation a few months ago about AI in music,” Cole says in an email to Fast Company. “My intent was to talk about how technology can help artists and players learn and grow, but I realize I didn’t fully convey that perspective, and I appreciate the opportunity to explain my thinking more deeply.”

The T3 interview initially didn’t spark much attention. But as industry publications, Reddit threads and influential YouTubers started circulating quotes from the 75th anniversary feature, the backlash grew as musicians took offense to their creative processes being reduced to an AI training set. 

“You’d think the CEO of a company that lives and dies by selling guitars would support, you know, music that requires actual guitars to produce,” wrote one Reddit user. “These corporate execs keep forgetting that the rest of us have souls and view music as more than just something to be pumped out to make a line go up,” added another. 

This backlash comes off the back of a boycott effort earlier this year after Fender reportedly hit boutique guitar builders with cease-and-desist letters over the iconic Stratocaster body shape. Prominent guitar YouTubers publicly cut ties with the brand in response, with one calling it a “very sad day in the guitar world.”

Fender is now doing damage control to curry back favor with their core customer base. 

“Music is an inherently human experience, and great songs are born out of people’s lives, their creative energy and the countless hours spent learning their instruments—something no machine can ever replicate,” Cole tells Fast Company. 

Cole’s poorly-received comments came at a time when the music industry is in a period of upheaval. Just as vinyl gave way to cassettes, which gave way to CDs, which gave way to Spotify, AI is reshaping the way we create and listen to music, like it or not. 

And most say they don’t like it. Recent data from Luminate shows that 44% of U.S. music listeners are uncomfortable with AI-created songs. Yet several AI-generated songs, including Walk My Walk and Livin’ on Borrowed Time, debuted on Billboard charts over the past year, demonstrating there is an audience for AI-generated music, whether intentional or not. Fenin Flexin’s “Rubberz,” that’s currently sitting at No. 58, has also been blasted with AI accusations, which the rapper denies. 

For musicians plagued by concerns over copyright infringement, data scraping and voice deepfakes, as AI continues to become embedded in workflows, personal lives and, in some cases, creative processes, the backlash to Cole’s comments highlights the sensitivity needed when navigating AI conversations at this time. 

“Many of the concerns people have about AI are real,” Cole writes in his email. “Conversations need to happen about how to advance AI while protecting artists and upholding respect for their work.” 

In Cole’s view, AI should remain a supporting tool, helping beginners learn and giving seasoned artists “new ways to explore, refine and experiment with their own creative ideas.” Yet “music starts and ends with people,” he added. “It always will.” 

The fast-food giant reported its latest earnings on Tuesday morning, which showed that global sales increased 5% to $37 billion, and comparable sales in the United States were up 0.8%. That’s notable, considering that restaurants have been taking it on the chin as diners contend with high prices for food, gas, and just about everything else, too. A year ago, for comparison, U.S. comparable sales were up 2.5%—so, there has been a slowdown.

And it seems to have cost at least one executive his job. Skye Anderson, a longtime McDonald’s executive, was named president of McDonald’s USA, replacing Joe Erlinger, who decided to leave the company after seven years in the role.

Also notable was the fact that one of the chain’s attempts at reaching out to those diners has apparently fallen flat. Specifically, McDonald’s had rolled out a new “McValue” menu in April that featured several items priced at less than $3 each. But company leadership, during an earnings conference call, says that the tactic underperformed, in part because not all restaurants offered it.

“The 10 items for under $3 [promotion] has not delivered against our expectations. Part of that was due to the fact that we’re getting really inconsistent execution,” said Chris Kempczinski, McDonald’s CEO and chairman. “Only about 60% to 65% of our system is currently executing the recommended pricing architecture with the 10 items for under $3.”

That new McValue menu effectively replaced an offer that allowed diners to buy one, get one for $1 on certain menu options, which was originally introduced in 2019, and that was seemingly a hit with customers. While the new menu may have ended up saving some diners money (depending on the specifics of their order), the earnings results seem to indicate that swapping the promotions has not paid off. 

In fact, Kempczinski said that pulling existing digital offers was a “bad trade.”

“That ended up being a bad trade. Putting in a program that didn’t deliver and taking away a lot of digital offers, and the buy-one, add-one program,” he said. “Two-thirds of our miss in the quarter was related to that bad trade. So, we’ve got some work now that we need to do to get that fixed.”

After the earnings release, McDonald’s stock was up 1.75% as of midday Tuesday.

As ResiClub covered earlier this year, “accidental landlords” are rising in housing markets where sellers have lost pricing power.

Indeed, as you can see in the scatter plot analysis ResiClub created in March 2026, there’s a fairly strong negative relationship (R² = 0.58) between a metro’s home price shift since its 2022 peak and the share of accidental landlords. Put simply, markets experiencing larger home price corrections are more likely to see sellers pivot to renting after failing to sell. In those markets, some homeowners may decide to rent their property rather than accept what they view as too big of a price cut.

Some homeowners who fail to get the price they’re hoping for simply pivot their strategy: Instead of accepting too low of an offer, they convert the property into a rental listing. These owners are often referred to as “accidental landlords.”

Click here to view an interactive version of the chart below.

Apart from the obvious consideration—whether the homeowner is really ready to assume the responsibility of being a landlord—there’s another financial consideration that can get overlooked by accidental landlords until it’s too late: capital gains taxes.

Under current law, single filers can exclude up to $250,000 of gains, and married couples filing jointly can exclude up to $500,000 of gains, on the sale of a home that served as their primary residence—provided they owned and lived in the home for at least two of the past five years before the sale.*

That means someone who moves out and rents their home may still qualify for that exclusion if they sell within roughly three years of moving out (since the two-of-five-year use test looks back from the sale date). Wait longer than that and the use test generally expires. To once again qualify for the full exclusion, the owner would generally need to move back into the home and accumulate at least 24 months of use as a principal residence (not necessarily consecutive) within the five years before the sale.

Even for owners who sell within that three-year window and still qualify for the full Section 121 exclusion, there’s another tax issue that’s easy to overlook: depreciation recapture. Once a home is converted into a rental, the IRS generally treats depreciation as having been allowed (or allowable) during the rental period. Upon sale, the portion of the gain attributable to that depreciation generally cannot be excluded under Section 121.

Instead, it’s taxed separately as unrecaptured Section 1250 gain, at a maximum federal rate of 25%—even if the rest of the gain qualifies for the home-sale exclusion. For some accidental landlords, this ends up being the bigger surprise, since most sell within the Section 121 exclusion window rather than waiting long enough to lose the exclusion.*

When running the numbers on whether keeping the property as an accidental rental makes sense, it’s worth factoring in the capital gains math (and discussing it with a tax/legal expert).

Note: This is for informational purposes only and does not constitute tax, legal, or financial advice.

Among the 50 largest metro-area housing markets, these markets have the highest—and lowest—share of accidental landlord listings right now.

Major metros with the highest share of “accidental landlord” rental listings:

1. Denver, CO —> 4.9%
2. Houston, TX —> 4.2%
3. Austin, TX —> 4.1%
4. San Antonio, TX —> 3.9%
5. Portland, OR —> 3.7%

Major metros with the lowest share of “accidental landlord” rental listings:

1. Boston, MA —> 0.6%
2. Providence, RI —> 0.6%
3. New York, NY —> 0.7%
4. Hartford, CT —> 0.7%
5. Buffalo, NY —> 0.8%

Click here to view an interactive version of the map below.

As ResiClub covered earlier this year, “accidental landlords” are rising the most in housing markets where active inventory for sale has bounced back the fastest to pre-pandemic 2019 levels.

Indeed, ResiClub’s March 2026 analysis finds a strong positive relationship (R² = 0.65) between the share of accidental landlords in a metro and how much active inventory in February 2026 exceeds February 2019 levels. In other words, markets where for-sale housing inventory has rebounded the most are also the places where more sellers failed to sell and instead converted their homes into rentals. That makes intuitive sense: When listings rise, sellers face more competition, which increases the likelihood that some listings fail to transact.

Click here to view an interactive version of the chart below.

*Please note that today’s ResiClub article above is for informational purposes only and does not constitute tax, legal, or financial advice. Capital gains exclusion rules, depreciation recapture calculations, and the applicable tax rates depend on each owner’s specific circumstances. Readers should consult a qualified tax professional before making decisions about renting, selling, or holding a property.

Decision 1: How much to withdraw each year in retirement

It’s impossible to say at the outset of retirement what the “right” withdrawal rate is. You don’t know what the major asset classes will return or how high (or low) inflation will run during your retirement. Nor do you know how long you’ll live.

But you have to use something, and this is where the disagreements come in. A 4% starting withdrawal rate, with annual inflation adjustments to that initial dollar amount thereafter, is often cited as a “safe” withdrawal system for new retirees. Research we conducted at the end of 2021 suggested that a 3.3% withdrawal rate was a safe starting point for new retirees with balanced portfolios over a 30-year horizon. When we revisited the research in late 2022, our safe starting withdrawal percentage was 3.8%. By late 2023, that number had popped up to the classic 4%, thanks to rising fixed-income yields and moderating inflation. At the end of 2024, it was 3.7%, and 3.9% at the end of 2025. Further complicating matters is that retirees don’t spend the same amount, adjusted for inflation, year after year.

There’s a comforting consensus in a few key areas.

1. Vary your withdrawal rate based on your time horizon. Older retirees with shorter life expectancies can reasonably take higher withdrawals than younger retirees with 25 or 30 years.
   
2. Be flexible. Taking less when the portfolio is down leaves more of the portfolio in place to recover when the market eventually does. We explored several variable withdrawal-rate strategies, and the pros, cons, and logistics of each, in our retirement income research.
   
3. Maximize nonportfolio income. Examples: Social Security, a pension, an annuity, rental income, and so on. Enlarging nonportfolio income with strategies like delaying Social Security can help enhance lifetime spending and alleviate demands on the portfolio.

Decision 2: Whether to buy long-term-care insurance

According to a 2019 study, about half of people turning 65 will need some type of paid long-term care. But paying for it can be financially devastating. What’s up for debate is whether and how to protect yourself.

The long-term-care insurance market is deeply troubled today. While recent interest rate hikes have improved the economics of the long-term-care insurance industry, premiums have increased and several insurers have gotten out of the business.

That’s why purchasing pure long-term-care insurance is by no means a no-brainer. Hybrid products offer a long-term-care rider bolted onto a life insurance policy or annuity, but they’re complicated and often purchased with a lump sum.

Take a hard look at your retirement portfolio to decide whether your assets are sufficient to self-fund, you’re likely to qualify for Medicaid, or you fall somewhere in between. From there, you can create a long-term-care action plan.

Decision 3: Whether to buy an annuity

Academic researchers have long championed simple income annuities for retirement, arguing they provide longevity risk protection and a higher payout than would be available from fixed-rate investment products like bond funds. Annuities have been getting even more attention as payouts tend to get better during a period of rising interest rates.

But annuity types vary widely, from single-premium immediate annuities to more complicated products that provide equity exposure, guaranteed minimum living benefits, and death benefits.

Research has demonstrated that the peace of mind that accompanies the purchase of a basic annuity is greater than would be associated with holding the same amount in investment assets. Yet the annuity products that retirement researchers generally like best—the plain-vanilla immediate and deferred-income annuities—have struggled in the sales department. Investors may be reluctant to part with the capital to purchase them, and advisers may not have a strong motive to recommend them.

While there’s no consensus on whether annuities are a must-have or which types to buy, there’s little doubt that the lifetime income they offer is in short supply. That’s especially true given that only about a fourth of baby boomers retiring today have pensions, and that number trends down for the generations behind them.

The starting point when thinking about lifetime income isn’t an annuity. It’s Social Security, which is basically an annuity backed by the U.S. government. Only after maximizing lifetime income through Social Security should an annuity come into play.

This article was provided to The Associated Press by Morningstar. For more retirement content, go to https://www.morningstar.com/retirement.
Christine Benz is director of personal finance and retirement planning for Morningstar and co-host of The Long View podcast. Subscribe to her free newsletter, Improving Your Finances.

Related Links

The Retirement Planning Mistake That Makes Inflation Much More Expensive
https://www.morningstar.com/retirement/retirement-planning-mistake-that-makes-inflation-much-more-expensive

Retiring Alone? Here’s How to Build Financial Security
https://www.morningstar.com/retirement/retirement-planning-singles

How Your Plan Can Survive the Retirement Red Zone
https://www.morningstar.com/retirement/how-your-plan-can-survive-retirement-red-zone

—Christine Benz of Morningstar

Just after market close, Space Exploration Technologies Corp., better known as SpaceX (Nasdaq: SPCX), will report its first financial results as a publicly traded company. 

The stakes couldn’t be higher for SpaceX and its legions of investors who have watched the company’s stock price plummet from an all-time high of over $225 per share—achieved just days after its much-hyped IPO—to its current price of around $117 today as of this writing. 

Here’s what to watch out for when SpaceX reveals its Q2 2026 results this afternoon.

SpaceX’s total and segmented revenue

The headline item that investors and analysts will be most interested in is SpaceX’s revenue. As noted by CNBC, LSEG analysts are expecting the company to post total revenue of $6.93 billion, with a earnings per share (EPS) of negative 26 cents.

According to the company’s IPO documents, SpaceX generated total revenue of around $18.7 billion in fiscal 2025, when it was still a private company. But that’s before expenses are taken into account. In total for its fiscal 2025, SpaceX had a net loss of around $4.9 billion, according to CBS News.

But investors won’t only be interested in SpaceX’s total revenue (and/or losses). They’ll be keeping a keen eye on how the company’s different businesses are performing independently.

As noted by Hargreaves Lansdown, SpaceX separates its business operations into three main divisions: 

• Space: including its rocket products and payload delivery services
• Connectivity: the company’s Starlink satellite internet services
• AI: including social media platform X, Grok, and compute infrastructure services

In 2025, the company’s Connectivity division accounted for the overwhelming majority of SpaceX’s revenues, at 61%. Space came in a distant second at 22%, and AI came third at 17%.

That order is expected to change for SpaceX’s first quarterly results, notes CNBC. Analysts expect SpaceX’s three divisions to post the following revenues this time around for the quarter:

• Connectivity: $3.83 billion
• AI: $2.18 billion
• Space: $835 million

Analysts will carefully watch for any surprises or upsets here.

Whether Elon Musk will be a fixture on financial calls

While a CEO leads a company, they don’t always make an appearance on the company’s quarterly financial calls, where leadership takes questions from analysts. Sometimes the CEO will join the call, and other times the call will be led solely by a company’s chief financial officer (CFO).

SpaceX CEO Elon Musk is widely expected to be the key speaker on the company’s first quarterly financial call today, alongside SpaceX CFO Bret Johnsen.

But investors will likely wonder whether Musk will be a permanent fixture on quarterly financial calls going forward. If Tesla’s financial calls are any indication, Musk will be. But look out for confirmation on this today.

Q3 2026 guidance

Of course, the company’s Q2 results are only one part of the pie.

Investors will also be keenly interested in the company’s forecast for its current third quarter.

Even if SpaceX posts disappointing Q2 results, strong Q3 guidance could give SPCX investors a boost of confidence the stock sorely needs.

How SpaceX stock reacts after-hours

The biggest thing investors will be keeping an eye on is how SpaceX stock reacts after the company’s first quarterly results as a public company are released. Though markets will be closed, investors will still be trading the company’s shares after hours.

Better-than-expected Q2 results could see SPCX shares get a boost—especially if investors react well to the company’s Q3 guidance. Poor results could cause the company’s stock price to pull back even further.

What time will earnings be announced?

SpaceX is expected to announce its Q2 2026 earnings shortly after markets close today (Tuesday, August 4, 2026).

How to listen to SpaceX’s first financial call

If you want to tune into SpaceX’s first financial call as a public company, you can do so today.

The company’s earnings call is expected to begin at 4:30 pm ET today, August 4.

The call can be listened to live on the SpaceX investor relations website here.

• The golden-crowned sifaka, a lemur from Madagascar
  
• The Hickory Nut Gorge green salamander, a lungless tree-dweller that lives only in a small canyon in North Carolina.
  
• The Visayan warty pig, endemic to islands in the Philippines.
  
• Mexico’s Cozumel harvest mouse, which lives only on an island off the Yucatán Peninsula.
  
• The pink land iguana, found only on Wolf Volcano in the Galápagos Islands.
  
• The Malayan pangolin, also known as the Sunda pangolin, native to Southeast Asia.
  
• Tanzania’s pancake tortoise, named for its flat, flexible shell.
  
• The starry night harlequin toad, known and named for its black-and-white evening sky appearance, found only in the mountains of Colombia.
  
• Attenborough’s long-beaked echidna, a monotreme, or mammal that lays eggs, from New Guinea named in honor of the 100-year-old naturalist and narrator-of-nature David Attenborough.

The project’s goals include giving long-term sustenance to successful but fleeting smaller efforts.

“We’ve protected the golden-crowned sifaka for years on a budget that would never match what this species deserves, but letting it go extinct was never an option,” Tiana Andriamanana, executive director of Association Fanamby, one of the groups getting a grant from the initiative, said in a statement. “This funding, this global platform and technical support change what is possible.”

—Associated Press

DOGE was created to bring private-sector methods into government and dramatically reduce federal spending. Spearheaded by Elon Musk, the project moved quickly across the bureaucracy, cutting staff, canceling contracts and dismantling programs. Critics say it went too far, leaving agencies less prepared to respond to emergencies.

Elon Musk

Musk was widely seen as DOGE’s ideological driving force. As an unpaid special government employee and White House adviser, he pushed sweeping cuts across the federal bureaucracy. Teams drawn largely from his companies entered more than 20 agencies, accessed sensitive systems, canceled contracts and grants, offered buyouts and helped trigger mass layoffs.

Musk claimed the effort could uncover $1 trillion in savings, but DOGE’s published totals were repeatedly challenged over missing evidence and accounting errors. He left government in mid-2025 amid a public rupture with Trump but has remained active in politics. Most recently, his America PAC reportedly plans to spend $100 million to boost Republican turnout in the midterm elections.

Edward Coristine

Edward Coristine, known online as “Big Balls,” became one of the most recognizable symbols of DOGE’s disruption of government. A whistleblower alleged that Coristine planned to upload sensitive Social Security Administration data to an unsecured server. He also helped dismantle the U.S. Agency for International Development, or USAID.

Coristine now appears to work at the National Design Studio, an office created to overhaul federal websites and other public-facing services, making them more usable, visually consistent and less expensive to build.

Jeremy Lewin

Not every DOGE staffer left government for the private sector. Jeremy Lewin helped oversee the dismantling of USAID, drafting plans to wind down the agency before being placed in charge of much of what remained.

Lewin later became the State Department’s senior official for foreign assistance, humanitarian affairs and religious freedom, giving a former DOGE operative authority over the programs his old team had helped slash. The Washington Post reported that Lewin continued to direct America’s foreign-assistance programs, making him perhaps the clearest example of DOGE’s personnel and philosophy becoming embedded in the government it set out to disrupt. He was subsequently reported to be moving to the White House National Security Council.

Nate Cavanaugh and Justin Fox

Nate Cavanaugh and Justin Fox helped reshape the U.S. Institute of Peace and implement an LLM-based review of government materials. They have since founded a holding company called Special, which promises to do for private businesses what DOGE did for the federal government.

“To achieve this, Special is building an operating system to transform critical American industries with AI,” the pair wrote in a Substack post announcing the company. “We call it SpecialOS.”

Gavin Kliger, Luke Farritor, Marko Elez and Jack Stein

Special is not the only example of former DOGE staffers joining forces and taking their methods elsewhere. Gavin Kliger, Luke Farritor, Marko Elez and Jack Stein founded Cathedral, a startup that plans to use AI to expand U.S. military cyber capabilities, including defenses against adversaries such as China.

Reuters reported that the company raised $160 million at a $1.4 billion valuation.

Ethan Shaotran

Ethan Shaotran has followed a similar path from DOGE to defense technology. The former DOGE engineer left the government in January 2026 after working at the Social Security Administration, where he helped move thousands of immigrants into the government’s “Master Death File,” effectively deactivating their Social Security numbers.

Shaotran has since founded Blitz Industries, which he described to Wired as “a defense company backed by big names.”

ChatGPT accounted for 88% of all known spending on AI tools by the U.S. House of Representatives between April 1, 2025 and March 31 of this year, according to a study of House disbursement records by CNBC.

The analysis only looks at paid usage, so free accounts are not factored into the equation, nor is any AI usage that’s bundled with larger software contracts. But of the $113,740 spent in named vendors during that period, $100,580 went to ChatGPT. Spending by Democrats was three times that of Republicans, the records show.

Spending on Anthropic’s Claude was a distant second, accounting for $13,160 across just 37 transactions.

The heavy usage by Congressional members and their staff could give OpenAI an edge over its rivals as the debate over AI regulation continues and the government awards contracts to AI giants for a variety of departments.

The totals gathered by CNBC are almost certainly far short of the actual spending by Congress on AI. The data did not include Senate usage (though it’s worth noting the Senate does not allow Claude for official use) and some House offices have individuals sign up for a subscription to an AI service, then reimburse that staffer, which would not be line-itemed in the disbursement records.

Big spending

In some cases, the use of OpenAI could be habitual. ChatGPT was the first major AI chatbot on the market and was the first form of the technology that many members of the House experimented with in 2023, when the legislative body formed an AI working group.

OpenAI and Altman have also been significant donors to many Congressional races and have spent significantly on lobbying in recent years.

In the second quarter of this year, OpenAI spent $1.2 million on lobbying, an increase of nearly 18% from the first quarter and a new record for the firm. It’s also nearly double what it spent in the second quarter last year. (Anthropic, meanwhile, spent $1.97 million from April through June.)

Last year, OpenAI spent nearly $3 million in federal lobbying, and Altman has personally donated more than $126,000 to individual candidates and political parties since the launch of ChatGPT. The vast majority of those donations were to Democrats. Previous donations include six-figure contributions supporting Joe Biden’s 2020 presidential run and $250,000 to the Democratic super PAC American Bridge 21st Century in 2020.

Altman did, however, also personally donate $1 million to Donald Trump’s inauguration fund in 2024. (He’s said he doesn’t plan to make any political donations in the 2026 midterm elections. “I would love to see money out of politics in general,” he said last month.)

Meanwhile, OpenAI cofounder and president Greg Brockman, along with his wife Anna, have committed $50 million to the pro-AI super PAC Leading the Future super PAC, which says it plans to support AI-friendly candidates from both parties during the midterm elections. (Other donors to Leading the Future include private equity giant Andreessen Horowitz and Palantir cofounder Joe Lonsdale.) The Brockmans also gave $25 million to Trump’s MAGA Inc. super PAC in September of 2025.

The heavy House usage of ChatGPT and the political spending of AI companies is increasingly important as momentum grows for government regulation of the industry. Leaders of the top AI companies, including Altman, are expected to gather at the White House Tuesday to discuss a new framework that would allow the government to review frontier AI models before they launch. This comes after models from OpenAI and Anthropic both went rogue and hacked into other companies recently.

This is an abridged transcript of an interview from Rapid Response, hosted by the former editor-in-chief of Fast Company Bob Safian. From the team behind the Masters of Scale podcast, Rapid Response features candid conversations with today’s top business leaders navigating real-time challenges. Subscribe to Rapid Response wherever you get your podcasts to ensure you never miss an episode.

You started out as a performer, and you personally host the TV show Comics Unleashed, which is in Colbert’s old spot, but you’re also very much a businessperson. How do we know when you’re joking and when you’re serious? You do make some audacious moves: trying to buy BET or ABC, suing McDonald’s, threatening GM.

I have made it very clear that, unfortunately, Black-owned media—not to be confused with Black-targeted media—virtually does not exist, and that’s unfortunate. You have to remember, I started the company from my dining room table, where I’m sitting now. I started the company from my dining room table in ’93. And Coretta Scott King was a friend of mine, Martin Luther King’s widow, and I think she’s the true queen of America. Bob, she taught me a lot. She said to me, “Byron, as Black people in America, we had four major challenges. Number one, end slavery. Number two, end Jim Crow. Number three, achieve civil rights.” Then she choked up and said, “Number four, the real reason they killed my Martin: achieve economic inclusion.”

She said, “You know, Byron, they didn’t kill my Martin”—that’s how she referred to him—”over the ‘I have a dream’ speech. They killed him over the speech he gave in February of ’68 at Stanford University called ‘The other America.'” In that speech, he said, “There are two Americas. One America has access to opportunity and economic inclusion and education, and the other America doesn’t. Two Americas will not survive. We must achieve one America or the whole system will implode.” And I said to her, “OK, you’ve done more than enough. It’s for our generation to deal with the fourth and final chapter.” All I said to corporate America is this simple thought, Bob: The greatest trade deficit in America is the trade deficit between white corporate America and Black America. Until we close that trade deficit, we can’t have one America. It starts with economic inclusion for all Americans, especially Black Americans, the furthest left behind. That’s the reason I filed the lawsuits, Bob.

You created a distinction between Black-owned media and Black-targeted media. And I know those lawsuits were about devoting more of their media budgets to Black-owned outlets.

That’s right.

But you bought the Black News Channel out of bankruptcy and merged it into TheGrio. Is there a business opportunity in talking to and engaging with Black audiences differently? Is that where there are undervalued properties and audiences, or are these things completely separate?

You should not have a world where we don’t have Black-owned media. We need to control our images. We need to control how we’re produced. We need to control how we’re depicted. Are you OK, Bob, if I control all of media and I control how your white children grow up and see themselves? Will you trust me with that? Can I tell your white children how to think about themselves, how to see themselves, who they are in this society? Are you OK with me having that power and that control over your children’s psychology and self-worth?

Let me ask you about BuzzFeed. You’ve built a lot of your media business by buying distressed, overlooked assets—the Weather Channel, regional sports networks—and taking advantage of these opportunities. You bought a majority stake in BuzzFeed for $120 million. It’s a business that has struggled for several years. Why? What do you see in BuzzFeed that others don’t value?

Look, really simple. BuzzFeed is phenomenal. BuzzFeed is one of the great original brands, right? And it’s not only BuzzFeed. It’s HuffPost. It’s Tasty. Tasty has 174 million social media followers, Bob. Unbelievable, OK? They announced that they were about to run out of money. I’m a firm believer in business as a contact sport, and speed wins championships. So I quickly called them and I said, “Hey, I understand you have some issues here. I’m here to help you get it done. Let’s work on it, and let’s get it done now.” So we cut a deal. No analysis paralysis. Let’s get to it. When I bought into the company, the stock was trading at about 60 to 70 cents a share. Once it got announced, it immediately moved to a buck 40, buck 50. And BuzzFeed is now going to chase YouTube.

When you think about BuzzFeed and the first 20 years of BuzzFeed, it was text. It was written. Advertisers are only paying about a buck 25 CPM [cost per thousand impressions] for written content, articles, a buck 25. Who cares? It’s a waste of time. We’ll do it. We will definitely do it. I love the written word, but I’m saying it’s a waste of time to invest huge resources when the advertisers are not supporting it.

Which is what Jonah [Jonah Peretti, cofounder and former CEO of BuzzFeed] figured out when he closed BuzzFeed News, right? It was just costing too much money.

And I love having those articles. I want that. I’m going to build on that. I’m going to make it even stronger. I love HuffPost. I love BuzzFeed. We’re going to do some amazing things with Tasty. But we have to get into the video business. A buck 25 for text, video is approximately $30. So I’m here, and I’m able to put BuzzFeed immediately into the video business and chase YouTube. YouTube is . . .

Because you’ve already got video from your other properties.

That’s exactly right. YouTube is the biggest streamer on the planet. Why? Two words: free and streaming. The world loves free and streaming. Bob, the two easiest things you will ever sell in your life: free and streaming. So it’s hard to fall off the floor. I like to buy businesses in the lobby and take them to the penthouse. I have no interest in buying a business in the penthouse and taking it to the lobby. BuzzFeed was on the floor. I picked it up. It’s on the elevator. We are going to be a serious competitor for free streaming video, and I’m taking it to the penthouse. And when I get to the penthouse, they’re going to have to add a lot more floors, because I’m going to go beyond the penthouse where it currently sits.

People must remember that the video sitting at YouTube, 99.9% of it, is noninclusive. Hey, YouTube creators, if your content is sitting at YouTube and you like getting one check, take your content, put it at BuzzFeed, and get two checks. Not a hard pitch, Bob. Not a hard pitch. Day one, I’m going to put over 30,000 movies, TV shows, and documentaries on BuzzFeed. Over 750 FAST [free ad-supported streaming TV] channels: People Magazine, Kevin Hart, Johnny Carson, Architectural Digest, and over 400 ABC, NBC, CBS, and Fox affiliates. Super-hyperlocal news, weather, sports, and traffic, geofenced to the user’s ZIP code. I already have that technology with Local Now. I’ve been building it and investing in Local Now since I bought the Weather Channel in 2018.

I have won best streamer [from various media outlets] three times with Local Now, and nobody knows about Local Now. So I have the best technology and the worst branding. Now I’m going to take some of the best branding, BuzzFeed and HuffPost, and marry it with the best technology.

The snootiest among my colleagues often complain that content quality is going down as access gets ubiquitous, and we’re going to the lowest common denominator as we change these financial models. Does that hold any weight? Are we losing anything culturally in this transition?

I don’t think so. I’ll say to your snooty friends, “Don’t smell it, sell it.” That’s what I’ll say to your snooty friends. Sell it. And Henry Ford said it best: “Opportunity is never lost. Your competitors will always find it.”

“We weren’t finding some sheet pans or something at a restaurant supply place,” Levain Bakery’s cofounder, Pam Weekes, tells Fast Company. “We kind of wanted something that was a little more unique and special.”

Now the bakery has collaborated with the home goods brand on a 17-piece collection.

The two brands announced their collaboration Tuesday, which includes items like plates, glasses, dish towels, spatulas, mixing spoons, and a $15 ceramic Mini Crate inspired by the berry box colanders Levain Bakery has long used to display their cookies. The collection’s $18 Cookie Glass is hand-blown, and the $20 Perfect Silicone Cookie Mat was designed to make Levain-sized cookies at home.

Everything in the collection is something the bakery’s cofounders would use themselves.

“It was a real collaboration, which was really nice because I think we’re pretty particular, and we’re pretty clear about what we like and what we don’t like,” Weekes says. “But they’re pretty particular as well.”

The design process brought together Levain Bakery’s baking know-how and playful visual identity with Crate & Barrel’s manufacturing expertise and functionality.

When the bakery said they wanted to make a cookie jar, for example, Crate & Barrel had plenty of experience with making them. And when they wanted to make a bench scraper, a tool used to cut dough and scrape messy counters clean, Weekes and her team could explain their specific needs. Bench scrapers at restaurant supply stores are typically too big and clunky, so Levain Bakery has gotten theirs from France. (The bakery also got its name from France, as levain means leavening.)

“They’re not expensive, but they are hard to replace,” the other cofounder, Connie McDonald, says of their bench scrapers. “So . . . we explained it to the Crate & Barrel team like, ‘This bench scraper has to kind of fit in your hand and it has to feel good.’ And they did it, and it feels great.”

The $50 cookie jar, which comes with a maple lid, includes original illustration in Levain Bakery’s signature blue style by the artist and longtime collaborator Libby VanderPloe, as do the collection’s textiles, tools, and serveware.

For Levain Bakery, which opened as a bread shop in 1995 and is now preparing to open its 21st location, the collaboration helps get its brand name in more places, as Crate & Barrel has more than 100 stores, outlets, and franchise locations globally. Finally, fans of the New York City bakery you could get only in a few select cities can bring it to their own home.

Since 2018, Chase has opened more than 1,000 locations, a company spokesperson told Fast Company. But there’s a catch.

While Chase Bank has continued to open new branches at an aggressive pace, its net branch count is not dramatically larger than it was eight years ago, the company’s financial filings show.

At the end of 2025, Chase reported 5,083 branches. That’s just 48 more branches than it reported in 2018.

One reason for that is because Chase also closes many branches that it deems unnecessary, either due to low foot traffic, consolidation, or because it plans to relocate a branch to a nearby address.

This summer has been no exception. Since June, Chase has closed more than a dozen branches across several states, recent filings with the Office of the Comptroller of the Currency (OCC) reveal.

The closures have impacted Chase Bank branches in Florida, Washington, Ohio, Illinois, California, Louisiana, Arizona, and New York. They include a Chase Bank location at One World Trade Center in Lower Manhattan, which is now just listed as an ATM.

Additional filings show that more branches are expected to close, though the advance closure notices do not specify expected closure dates.

A spokesperson for Chase declined to say how many closures are expected this year.

Which Chase Bank branches have closed this summer?

Since June, at least 13 Chase locations have closed in eight states, OCC filings show. The locations are listed below. According to Chase, some of the branches were relocated to nearby locations. Those addresses are marked accordingly.

Closed in June

• 922 Jimmy Buffett Mem Hwy, Indian Harbour Beach, FL 32937 (relocated)
• 2700 S Washington Ave, Titusville, FL 32780 (relocated)
• 13119 Seattle Hill Rd, Snohomish, WA 98296
• 5730 N Dixie Dr, Dayton, OH 45414
• 3703 N Main St, Dayton, OH 45405 (relocated)
• 875 N Michigan Ave, Chicago, IL 60611 (relocating soon)
• 2314 N Chester Ave, Bakersfield, CA 93308

Closed in July 

• 1001 N Martin Luther King Hwy, Lake Charles, LA 70601
• 6950 E Main St, Mesa, AZ 85207
• 3420 Severn Ave, Metairie, LA 70002
• 1435 Camino Del Mar, Del Mar, CA 92014 
• One World Trade Center, New York, NY 10007
• 5550 W Touhy Ave, Skokie, IL 60077 (relocated)

These closures come four months after earlier media reports listed 16 Chase branches that were set to close this year, although there is some overlap between the two lists.

Is Chase scaling back physical retail?

Not according to Chase. “We continue to invest in our branch network to deliver experiences and services customers love,” a spokesperson told Fast Company in a statement. “Chase operates the largest branch network in the U.S. and is the only bank with branches in all lower 48 states.”

Regarding the recent branch closures, the spokesperson added, “In some cases, we may relocate a branch if another is nearby or foot traffic is low—helping ensure a strong network that serves communities for the long term.”

Back in February, JPMorgan Chase publicly reaffirmed a commitment to its branch network, announcing plans to open more than 160 new branches in about 30 states in 2026. (As of early July, Chase said it opened 66 new branches so far this year.)

The February announcement was part of an ongoing growth strategy for Chase. Two years earlier, Chase announced plans to open more than 500 branches by 2027.

Chase’s annual reports show the company’s branch network peaked in 2013.

This story is developing…