On this episode of FC Explains, we dive into the comeback, from Oasis fans showing up to shows already dressed in the three stripes to Bad Bunny debuting his signature shoe at the Super Bowl. None of it was an accident.

There’s a reason so many workers are clamoring for union representation. A new report from the Economic Policy Institute (EPI) argues that tripling union membership could radically change workers’ lives, ushering in the type of wage growth that helped foster a robust middle class in the 1950s. 

“Right now, almost every conversation about affordability focuses entirely on prices, as if the only way to make life more affordable is to make things cheaper—but affordability depends on both prices and pay,” EPI President Heidi Shierholz said during a press conference Wednesday. “There is one institution that has consistently proven capable of raising pay, and that is unions.”

If union membership increased to 30% of the labor force, the median worker could see a 14.5% raise, according to the EPI’s findings. That’s the equivalent of more than $7,700 per year, or nearly $270,000 over the course of a 35-year career. In total, this boost in unionization would put an additional $1.2 trillion in workers’ pockets annually. 

The report notes that this is actually a conservative estimate for wage growth, in part because union density is so low at the moment. EPI’s analysis and previous research finds that as union density rises, wages increase at a higher rate. Unions also tend to increase wages across the board, by implicitly putting pressure on companies that want to retain nonunion workers. 

Broader unionization could also correct some of the disparities that have depressed wages. It would help address the racial wage gap, reducing it by more than a third, and disproportionately raising pay for Black and Hispanic workers. It would also raise pay to match the rise in worker productivity, which has outpaced wage growth for the past four decades. 

Perhaps most crucially, data shows that 43% of workers in the U.S. want to unionize—well beyond EPI’s proposed goal of tripling union membership—and public approval for unions is even higher. 

“At this moment where trust and support in our institutions is underwater and the country is so polarized, there’s one thing that workers actually agree on, and that is that 71% say they support unions,” AFL-CIO President Liz Shuler said during the press conference.

Of course, there are plenty of obstacles to boosting union membership, between employer opposition and loopholes in U.S. labor law. As evidenced by the organizing campaigns at large employers that have stalled or failed to yield a contract, it’s not easy for workers to unionize even when there’s ample interest.

The EPI report cites some of the usual solutions, including finally passing the Protecting the Right to Organize Act, for example, which would expand collective bargaining rights. 

But the Economic Policy Institute also presents some novel ideas: Since employers don’t always negotiate in good faith, it can take more than a year for workers to secure a contract after a successful union election. Proposed legislation would introduce a binding arbitration process to secure a contract, but EPI suggests including a guaranteed cost-of-living raise in the first contract.

Another recommendation is to force employers with a high CEO-to-worker pay ratio to engage in collective bargaining, giving workers the opportunity to take back some power.

“Before decades of relentless attacks on workers’ rights to unions and collective bargaining, more than one in three workers in this country were union members,” Shierholz said. “So restoring union density to 30% is not a fantasy. At the same time, we are very clear in the paper that there is no silver bullet for getting there. It will require comprehensive labor law reform to truly protect workers’ rights to unions and collective bargaining, given the decades of attacks that we’ve seen on those rights.”

The intestinal infection, known as cyclosporiasis, spreads when people consume food that has been contaminated with fecal matter, like leafy greens and fresh produce. Right now, it’s ripping through a number of U.S. states as health officials race to find the cause.

Federal and state health agencies are now investigating the role that Taco Bell may have played in the outbreak, The Washington Post reported on Tuesday. The popular fast-food chain recently pulled menu items in some Detroit-area locations, including lettuce, cilantro, pico de gallo, and guacamole, according to Michigan’s WWJ news radio station. Signs at some Taco Bell locations apologized for the inconvenience, noting that menu items that normally contain ingredients like lettuce would not include them for the time being. 

“The health and safety of our guests is our top priority,” Taco Bell Corp. said in a statement emailed to Fast Company. “Public health officials have not confirmed a link to Taco Bell or any specific ingredient, supplier, restaurant, or retailer. While authorities continue their broader review, Taco Bell has voluntarily and temporarily removed limited ingredients at select restaurants as a precautionary measure. We will continue to closely monitor the situation and follow the guidance of public health authorities.”

Cyclosporiasis isn’t pleasant, to say the least, and can cause “frequent and sometimes explosive” bowel movements, according to the Centers for Disease Control and Prevention. Beyond diarrhea, symptoms can include fatigue, cramping, bloating, and loss of appetite. And if left untreated, the illness can linger for weeks or even months. 

So far, the CDC has identified 1,645 confirmed domestic cyclosporiasis cases, as well as more than 5,100 cases that haven’t yet been confirmed, as originating in the U.S. Out of the 1,645 cases, 141 people have been hospitalized, but no deaths have been reported. Last year, the U.S. had only recorded 249 cyclosporiasis cases in total by July. 

Cases are multiplying

The CDC describes the current batch of cyclosporiasis cases as a “large multistate outbreak,” with cases concentrated in Michigan, Ohio, West Virginia, and Kentucky. The agency says it has yet to identify a specific food that’s caused the rash of cases, but the illnesses in those states appear linked and were all reported on or after June 22. Symptoms of cyclosporiasis often begin around a week after exposure, but can start as quickly as two days afterward or take up to two weeks to emerge. 

In Michigan, health authorities reported 2,640 cases of cyclosporiasis on Monday. The Michigan Department of Health and Human Services noted that the investigation there is ongoing, but its current findings “point to lettuce or salad greens as a potential source” of the illness. The agency noted that “complex food distribution networks” can make pinpointing the origin of an outbreak like this a slow process. 

“Although we do not have a definite product identified as the source of the outbreak, we want to let Michiganders know what we have learned so far so they can take steps to protect their families,” said Dr. Natasha Bagdasarian, Michigan’s chief medical executive. “Early information has shown lettuce as a common product that regularly comes up during the investigation.”

Reduce your risk of infection

While the investigation into the cause is ongoing at the federal and state level, health experts agree on some food safety precautions that can help reduce the risk of infection. Because past cyclospora outbreaks have been linked to prepackaged salads, avoiding bagged lettuces and pre-prepared salads is a good idea for now. Fresh cilantro, basil, raspberries, snow peas, and green onions have also been associated with previous cyclospora outbreaks.

If you can’t live without leafy greens, purchase whole heads of lettuce, toss out the outer few layers, and wash the inside leaves thoroughly under running water. These measures offer a layer of protection against cyclosporiasis, but they still aren’t a guarantee that you or family members won’t get sick. It’s no coincidence that bacteria and parasites like to hitch a ride on salad greens, which are rarely cooked and usually served fresh. If you’ve got greens that can be cooked, washing is still a good idea, but taking them to a temperature above 158 degrees Fahrenheit should zap any cyclospora outright. As always, washing your hands before preparing food is a good idea.

Washing all fresh produce can reduce risk, as can peeling any veggies that have removable skin, since anything that can make you sick would be lurking on the surface. And remember, just because a bag of salad mix says it’s prewashed, that doesn’t make it safe. “While washing alone may not fully eliminate cyclospora, it enhances protection when combined with cooking or peeling,” according to Michigan’s health authority.

OpenAI’s speaker will be designed for home use. It’s battery-powered, so it can be carried from room to room, and it will include cameras, sensors, and mechanical elements, according to people familiar with the matter who spoke with Bloomberg.

Whatever the AI giant comes up with will enter a crowded marketplace of smart speakers. But for OpenAI, the biggest selling point might not be the hardware, but the LLM that powers it.

The device is expected to do the things that current smart speakers already do: Play music, control smart-home appliances, answer questions, and respond to messages. The difference is that it will also be intuitive and adaptive.

The device will reportedly use an advanced version of ChatGPT Voice Mode that’s capable of listening and talking simultaneously as well as proactively anticipating users’ needs and surfacing information for them.

Here’s the current smart speaker landscape that OpenAI could find itself competing in.

Apple

Apple has seen hundreds of its former employees poached by OpenAI in recent years, and the company filed a lawsuit against OpenAI last week accusing it of trade secret theft, which an OpenAI spokesperson denied.

Apple’s own smart speakers, the HomePod ($349) and HomePod mini ($129), are built with Siri and require an Apple device to set up and manage. The HomePod’s biggest selling point is privacy and security as data is encrypted and anonymous.

Amazon

Amazon sells several screenless Echo devices, all of which have Alexa built in. They range from the economical Echo Dot ($50) and Echo Dot Max ($100) to the Echo Studio ($220), which has speakers with spatial audio and Dolby Atmos for more immersive sound. But Amazon isn’t afraid of screens. The Echo Spot has one, and the company also pushes HD smart displays that work with Alexa.

Bose

Bose’s portable smart speaker ($300) is compatible with Amazon Alexa and Google Assistant, and it can be used for streaming content, messaging, checking the weather, controlling smart-home accessories, and more.

Google

Google rebranded its Google Home line to Nest in 2019. The company emphasizes its integrations, like with Gemini for a voice assistant, and Matter hub, a platform that works with smart-home devices from multiple manufacturers. With a subscription, users can go live with Gemini to chat with the AI freely on Google’s Home Speaker ($100).

JBL

Compatible with Amazon Alexa and Google Assistant, JBL’s smart speakers stand out for their vintage-inspired design. With a boxy, retro look, the brand’s Authentics line of speakers range in price from $380 to $750.

Sonos

The Sonos Era 100 ($219) is sold in promotional materials as a music player first and foremost, but the touch- and voice-controlled speaker is also compatible with Amazon Alexa, so it can be used to control smart-home devices and to access things like calendars and shopping lists.

Americans could see $6.3 billion added to their energy bills within the next three years, an increase primarily driven by data centers.

PJM Interconnection, the largest power grid operator in the United States, revealed on Tuesday the results of its annual power auction—a way to secure electricity generation and set costs three years before that power is actually needed.

During the auction, power providers bid on the prices they’re willing to accept during peak demand times, which then become part of customer electricity rates. 

This year, prices hit PJM’s cap of $325 per megawatt-day. That means an estimated additional $6.3 billion in energy costs, according to Monitoring Analytics, PJM’s independent market monitor.

PJM’s auction also tries to secure future electricity demand, but this year it fell 6.8 gigawatts short of PJM’s reliability requirement, which is the amount of power it needs to guarantee grid reliability during a spike in demand. 

Stress on the power grid is especially concerning during extreme heat, like the country has seen this summer. Without enough capacity, communities could experience brownouts and blackouts.

“These auction results show that demand for electricity continues to grow faster than electricity supply,” PJM president and CEO David Mills said in a statement.

And the primary driver of that growth, the company said in a post ahead of the auction, is data centers. 

New data centers (as well as the expansion of existing data centers) can be developed quickly—up to two to three times faster than many of the ways to generate electricity, the grid provider says. 

“Prices will continue at the maximum level allowed”

PJM manages the power grid for 13 states and the District of Columbia. Those 67 million customers have already been dealing with rate increases. Since 2024, these PJM auctions have added some $29 billion in utility costs because of data centers.

In PJM’s December 2025 auction, data centers accounted for 40% of capacity costs, or $6.8 billion.

“Today, PJM delivered more bad news for people already struggling with higher energy bills: Prices will continue at the maximum level allowed under the law,” Julia Kortrey, director of Strategic Initiatives for the States Program at the clean energy nonprofit Evergreen Action, said in a statement about Tuesday’s auction results. 

To Kortrey, these rate hikes were avoidable. “PJM continues to slow-walk cheap, clean energy that could lower bills for working families while protecting a system that delivers record profits for member utilities, rather than fixing its problems,” she said. “PJM continues to allow the same utility and fossil fuel companies to cash in while families get stuck with the bill.”

Utility bills in general are spiking for millions of Americans. This week, Powerlines, a nonprofit that aims to lower utility bills, released a report showing that utilities across the country requested $18.6 billion in electric and gas rate increases during the first half of 2026 alone.

In some instances, those hikes came from spikes in fuel costs or for upgrades to grid infrastructure. Data centers also play a part.

Oncor, an electric utility in Texas, requested the largest single increase in the second quarter of 2026, according to that report: $1.2 billion in rate increases, “driven largely by its five-year transmission and distribution spending plan—a $45 billion investment focused on meeting demand from the oil and gas industry and data centers in the Permian Basin.”

The current dip in unemployment was mostly due to a decrease in the labor force participation rate—those 16 and older who are working or looking for work—which dropped three-tenths of a percentage point to 61.5%, its lowest level since March 2021.

However, according to the report, 1.9 million Americans are dealing with long-term unemployment—or joblessness for 27 weeks or longer. This accounted for 27.3% of all unemployment in June—an increase of 4% from the same time last year.

Long-term unemployment mostly impacts workers between the ages of 25 and 54. Those in their mid-20s and mid-30s account for the highest number of total unemployed people and also the highest share of long-term unemployment. In June, the average duration of unemployment was 25.5 weeks.

With recent reports of mass layoffs from companies like Meta, Microsoft, Atlassian, Lucid, and others, the number of competitive job seekers may be outpacing the availability of jobs. Many of these workers may have severance packages that cover fewer than the 25.5 weeks it’s taking people on average to find a new position. 

For example, Meta offered laid-off U.S. employees 16 weeks of base pay and two weeks of pay for every continuous year of employment. Block, which laid off 4,000 employees earlier this year, offered those impacted 20 weeks of salary and one additional week for every year of tenure. Packages like these typically feature a healthcare continuation period lasting anywhere from several weeks to months.

Long-term unemployment also takes a toll on people’s mental health. According to an April survey of 5,000 unemployed adults that was conducted by Talker Research, just 23% said they feel consistently motivated, while 31% admitted to stopping their active job hunts. The survey also showed the average unemployed American has been on the job hunt for six months, but 30% have been searching for longer.

Last year, former Federal Reserve chair Jerome Powell said the U.S. economy was in a “low-firing, low-hiring environment,” in which companies reduced the number of active hires and the amount of employees they fire. This structure can push unemployed people into part-time positions.

If the cycle continues, more people will be at risk of losing motivation, straining their mental health and leaving gaps in their résumés. July’s employment situation report will be released on August 7.

Cantor is Telemundo’s lead soccer play-by-play announcer, covering major tournaments like the World Cup, the Copa América, and the Olympics.

But with 10 World Cups under his belt, Cantor is more than just the narrator of a match. He has become a staple for the Spanish-speaking soccer community.

“Sometimes they’ll turn around and say, ‘Wait, I heard your voice. You are Andrés Cantor—you’re Mr. Goal’,” Cantor tells Fast Company about 30 minutes before Spain and France were set to play in the semifinals on July 14.

Cantor was not set to go on air for that Tuesday game because he was resting his voice to prepare for the Argentina versus England semifinal the next day on July 15.

“It’s very flattering when they tell you that I’ve been the soundtrack of their lives because they’ve been watching soccer for so many years with my broadcasts,” he adds.

So far, Cantor has called 15 matches for the 2026 World Cup, traveling over 20,000 miles, from city to city, to attend the games scattered around North America.

For many fans, part of the World Cup experience is to hear Cantor’s play-by-play, so much so that the Spanish-speaking network has seen an influx in popularity this year.

According to Miguel Lorenzo, a senior vice president at Telemundo Deportes, who spoke with NPR, this year’s tournament has been the most watched in the Spanish language in the country.

“Half of the country of the United States is watching the World Cup in Spanish on Telemundo,” Lorenzo told NPR. “We’re seeing audiences that are bilingual, that are Spanish dominant, that speak English, enjoying World Cup coverage.”

And for many viewers, turning to Spanish is not just about the language, but the emotion in the play-by-play.

“The English commentators literally sound like they’re narrating a nature documentary about grass growing,” a user said on X. Another added: “The South American commentators and their ‘gooooooooooooooal’ are unmatched.”

Landing the job

Cantor’s dream was to succeed behind a byline, not a screen. Born in Buenos Aires, he moved to California during his teenage years, eventually attending the University of Southern California to study journalism.

“I finished my journalism curriculum without taking one TV or radio class, because I wanted to write,” he explains.

And indeed, his first big break was writing for an Argentine newspaper, El Gráfico, serving as a correspondent for events like the Oscars and Formula One races.

But he eventually landed on broadcast by chance, when a producer at the Spanish International Network (what would become Univision) invited him to audition to be a sports commentator in 1987.

“The very first time I auditioned, I yelled in my first play-by-play game—I never meant to yell,” Cantor says. “It came out naturally because that’s the way I grew up listening to soccer, both on television and radio. So I didn’t know any better.”

His call was unlike many others who were on the air at the time, but it felt like home to many raised around a TV with fútbol always on. Instead of a simple “goal,” the call became a prolonged “gooooooooaaal,” and it was emotive enough to get any credible soccer fan up on their feet.

“And then suddenly, without having set foot in a TV studio in my life, I became the lone play-by-play announcer for Univision for the next 14 years,” he notes.

The voice that became a brand

It is rare for specific phrases to escape their ecosystem and become a part of popular culture in a way that makes a single soundbite a character in itself.

Take the “stand clear of the closing doors, please” announcement for the New York City subway system, voiced by radio news anchor Charlie Pellett, or AOL’s “You’ve got mail!” greeting, voiced by Elwood Edwards.

With decades on the air, Cantor has reached far beyond the stadiums. His voice has trickled into mainstream pop culture, cementing his status as more than a play-by-play announcer and as a recognizable feature of soccer culture.

He guest-starred as himself on The Simpsons, voiced a Spanish commentator for Phineas and Ferb, appeared on David Letterman’s talk show, and made a cameo in the Muppets Most Wanted movie.

You could argue that taking a single phrase and turning it into a brand is not a game of luck, but one of perseverance and curation.

For Cantor, announcing soccer matches comes with painstaking preparation, from compiling notes on the various teams and players to practicing vocal exercises.

For instance, Cantor—who has a voice coach—uses a metal straw and blows into a glass of water to help open his throat, as well as massages his throat and stretches his facial muscles before a match.

Beyond the daily rituals that prepare him for the job, Cantor has relied on his agent to decide what opportunities outside of the stadium are a good match with the Mr. Goal brand—which Cantor defines as one that is respectful and organic.

This year’s endorsements include Coors—where he is featured in an ad calling “Cooooors,” a play on his famous line—Lowe’s, and Visa.

“I did five campaigns in this World Cup, but I think I was approached by probably another five or six brands. But we didn’t find that their campaigns suited my persona and who I am,” he adds. “I don’t have as many as David Beckham. But for just being a play-by-play announcer, it’s very good.”

Netflix and Hasbro are bringing the 91-year-old game to life, inviting 12 people to join in as contestants on a show based on Monopoly. 

The contestants are set to step directly into a life-size version of Monopoly’s Town Square, the made-up world that fills the game’s playing board. But the winner will not just get bragging rights and Monopoly money, they will get a $2 million prize.

The series is produced by Studio Lambert, the same producers behind the Squid Game reality TV adaptation—Squid Game: The Challenge—and will also include executive producers Gabriel Marano and Zachary Edwin, Hasbro Entertainment’s head of television and head of unscripted television, respectively. 

Strolling around Marvin Gardens or St. James Place—some of the iconic locations from the original board—contestants will need to buy up real estate and businesses like electric companies or a hotel in order to advance in the game. Like when playing at home, competitors will be able to purchase properties, negotiate deals with others, and earn money. And one of Monopoly’s most recognizable features will also come to life—the chance of going to jail due to a wrong move.

As the game advances, those who become bankrupt will be eliminated until one mogul is left standing to take home the prize.

Those wishing to participate must be legal residents of the U.S., 21 years or older with a valid passport, and available to film for three weeks. Individuals may apply for casting through the official casting website.

While no specific air date has been announced yet, the series is set to premiere in the fall of 2027. The show follows Netflix’s broader strategy of unscripted adaptations of cinematic universes and board games, including a forthcoming reality adaptation of Roald Dahl’s Charlie and the Chocolate Factory called Wonka’s The Golden Ticket.

Netflix won the rights to produce a reality show based on Monopoly back in 2025. While a separate project, Netflix also has plans for a movie adaptation of Monopoly, in partnership with Margot Robbie’s production company LuckyChap Entertainment.

Buffett told CNBC that Gates’s association with Epstein was “distasteful,” but the 95-year-old investor suggested that Gates’s actions weren’t much different from mistakes he himself had made over the years in hiring the wrong person or in choosing friends.

“No one bats a thousand in the business of choosing people,” Buffett said on CNBC.

Buffett read up on Gates’s ties to Epstein

Buffett said he “read a great deal since Jan. 1 in terms of what happened with Bill and Epstein. And I have read his remarks to Congress given under oath, and I read the cross-examination.” He noted that Gates eventually ended his relationship with Epstein.

Buffett said Gates wasn’t surprised by the decision Buffett announced Tuesday to eventually donate all the rest of his $140 billion of Berkshire Hathaway stock to foundations associated with his family and his three children, Howard, Susie, and Peter. Gates flew to Omaha a few weeks ago and spent several hours talking with Buffett. The two hadn’t spoken much since before additional details about Gates and Epstein started to come out when the federal government began releasing files from the Epstein investigation.

Gates has said that he only met with Epstein because he thought it might help him raise money for charitable causes, and he didn’t know about Epstein’s ongoing crimes.

Epstein, who was accused of sexually abusing dozens of underage girls, was found dead at the Manhattan federal lockup in August 2019. His death was later ruled a suicide by New York City’s medical examiner.

Buffett said in 2024 that he planned to cut off donations to the Gates Foundation after he died and let his three children decide how to distribute the rest of his fortune.

In other news from the CNBC interview, Buffett revealed that he recently broke his leg and underwent surgery for it, but he said he is recovering well.

Drastically increasing donations to give away his fortune by 2034

The Gates Foundation didn’t immediately respond after Buffett’s interview on Wednesday, but a day earlier, the foundation thanked Buffett for donating more than $47 billion since 2006. The Gates Foundation plans to close in 2045 after distributing the rest of Gates’s fortune.

Buffett said he wants his own money to be distributed even quicker than he has previously indicated: by the end of 2034. To do that, he will have to drastically increase the amount he donates every year, to more than $17 billion annually.

Right now he is giving roughly $6 billion to the Susan Thompson Buffett Foundation and the foundations his children run: the Sherwood Foundation, the Howard G. Buffett Foundation and the Novo Foundation. The majority of that is going to the foundation named in honor of his late wife, which may quickly become one of the world’s largest such organizations. Buffett also traditionally gives additional gifts to his family foundations around Thanksgiving each year.

He has said that after his death, a new foundation will be created to distribute the rest of his shares and that his children will have to agree unanimously on where to donate them. He wants his children to be able to make those decisions before they die and his oldest daughter will be nearly 81 in eight years.

Buffett’s donations may affect his successor’s support

The accelerated pace of Buffett’s plan to give away his fortune over the next eight years rather than doing it over the 10 years following his death will mean that his successor at Berkshire Hathaway, Greg Abel, won’t be able to count on the support of Buffett’s family as the company’s biggest shareholder for as long as he thought.

Nevertheless, Buffett said he believes it’s clear that Abel is the right man to lead the conglomerate he built, and “that becomes more evident by the day.”

However, Buffett did note that Berkshire’s big investment in Google’s parent company, which has grown in value considerably over the past year, is one he initiated and not an investment Abel picked, though Abel did agree on it. Just last month, Berkshire agreed to invest another $10 billion in Alphabet after previously tripling its stake in the company.

—By Josh Funk, AP business writer

On Wednesday, July 15, the U.K. government announced social media curfews and content restrictions for 16- and 17-year-olds. It follows last month’s blanket ban on social media for kids under 16, expected to go into effect early next year. 

The proposal, put forward by the Department for Science, Innovation and Technology, would switch off this age group’s access to social media apps from midnight to 6 a.m. daily. It would also have “features that can keep users scrolling for longer” turned off by default. These features include automatically playing videos and personalized content feeds. 

“The new protections strike a balance between giving older teenagers greater safeguards online while still allowing them to change their own settings if they wish,” the announcement reads.  

Honestly, removing autoplay videos and access to late-night social media? It sounds kind of nice. 

The proposal stems from a month-long pilot program of more than 300 families with 13- to 17-year-old teenagers that tested the effect of a 9 p.m. to 7 a.m. curfew, a 15 minute daily limit, and a total ban. Participants saw mental health benefits, but also described “social and emotional trade-offs,” according to the report, published on July 14. A midnight to 6 a.m. option could be a good middle ground. 

“Our consultation provided a clear message from parents and teenagers alike—even as young people gain greater independence at 16, they should still be protected from the most addictive online features that can have a harmful impact on their well-being,” U.K. Technology Secretary Liz Kendall, stated in Wednesday’s release. 

The U.K. government plans to share the new proposal in Parliament by the end of the year and, like the under-16 total ban, put it into effect early next year. 

The policies will likely move forward despite the upcoming change in U.K. leadership. Andy Burnham, who is set to take over as prime minister from Keir Starmer next week, supports social media bans for kids under 16.

Alongside the curfews and restrictions, the government also announced plans to improve media literacy education in schools, with topics including disinformation, AI, and bias. 

He continued, “That’s why we’re launching New York City’s first-ever Parents’ Night Out, so that parents can get a little time on their own to catch a movie, run errands or go on a date without worrying about who will take care of the kids – or how much it will cost.”  

Luckily, city parents won’t have to worry about traveling very far to drop their children off on the big night, given a recreation center within each of the five boroughs will be serving as a childcare facility.

The locations are: Highbridge Recreation Center in Manhattan; Al Oerter Recreation Center in Queens; Kwame Ture Recreation Center in the Bronx; Greenbelt Recreation Center in Staten Island; and Shirley Chisholm Recreation Center in Brooklyn.

While the program aims to help give parents and caregivers a break, there are some restrictions. It’s first-come-first-served and will only take the first 500 children who are registered. And it’s only open to children ages six to 13. Every family must fill out a waiver, due Friday, July 31. Likewise, families must also register for NYC Parks Recreation Center membership, due by the event date.

While so far, there is only one planned event, Aug. 16 will serve as the pilot program. However, judging by the mayor’s comments about how essential it is to provide relief to busy parents, it seems likely more dates will follow.

“Making New York City more affordable isn’t just about lowering costs, it’s about giving people back their time. This administration is committed to making it easier to raise a family in the greatest city in the world,” Mamdani said.  

The event is certainly offbeat, but it’s not all that surprising for the new mayor who has made a number of efforts on the affordability front since taking office in January. He announced a free childcare pilot program for city workers, he’s planning to open five city-run grocery stores to combat rising food costs, and he froze rent for around $2 million New Yorkers.

Families interested in NYC’s first Parents’ Night Out can register here, and, since chances are the spots will fill quickly, it’s best to do so ASAP.

As a result, a new trend called “weathermaxxing” is emerging, in which travelers are planning vacations not based solely on the destination—but increasingly around the forecast.

In fact, a new report from Sensible Weather—the leading weather protection provider for the travel and hospitality industry—finds American travelers cite weather as the second-most important factor when booking a vacation, after cost. (The survey polled 600 U.S. leisure travelers.)

One example of how “weathermaxxing” is affecting summer bookings is the trend toward “coldcations” or “coolcations”: Trip.com data showed a 74% year-on-year increase in searches for “coolcations” in 2025.

This trend has travelers forgoing the beach in favor of more comfortable temperatures in Iceland and Scandinavia (where they can still engage in outdoor adventures), trips in the U.S. to Alaska and coastal Oregon, and vacations in Western Europe’s Swiss Alps, Scotland, and Ireland.

Meanwhile, “weathermaxxing” means more travelers are deliberately taking climate into consideration when choosing destinations and the timing of travel, and they’re adding “trip protections that reduce weather-related risk.” Sensible Weather’s report finds 56% of travelers cite bad weather as a top concern when booking a leisure trip, while 55% say they postponed booking because they were unsure about the forecast.

“As weather becomes more disruptive and extreme, travelers are looking for tools that help them book with confidence,” Nick Cavanaugh, climate scientist and Sensible Weather’s founder, tells Fast Company. “In fact, 90% say they would feel more confident booking if weather-related disruptions were covered automatically.”

Pieces of the pitch from the upcoming World Cup final are for sale, starting at $450. The small sections of grass will be encased in acrylic resin and inscribed with details of the game, including the location, date, participating teams, and final scores. With the match scheduled for this Sunday, July 19, at New York New Jersey Stadium and the final two teams yet to be determined, the keepsakes are currently only available for pre-order, shipping to buyers after the World Cup is over.

The price of the pitch

The “Piece of the Final Pitch” collection comes in four distinct tiers, each bigger in scale (and more expensive) than the last. There’s the basic Foundation Edition for $450, which includes a 2.5-inch acrylic cube containing a piece of the turf, to be extracted after the final match is played. It also comes with a USB containing an “authenticity film” and is packaged in a hinged box. The Foundation Edition was initially for sale on FIFA’s online store, but it’s currently only available via the collectible manufacturer KeepStub.

At double the price, the Stadium Edition goes for $900 and throws in a metal souvenir ticket etched in gold, a signed certificate of authenticity, and a much larger double-doored box (though the acrylic centerpiece is still just 2.5 inches wide). The Legacy Edition hikes its price even higher to $1,200, adding a miniature gold replica of the ball to be used in the World Cup final and a box “adorned with storytelling,” meaning blurbs about the 2026 World Cup are written on the inside. Again, the actual piece of the pitch doesn’t increase in scale.

Finally, there’s the Hero Edition, going for a whopping $3,000. It adds a crystal-cut glass World Cup Trophy and a larger wooden box, along with—finally—a bigger chunk of the pitch. In this edition, the cube is three inches wide instead of 2.5.

Each edition has a limited supply, with only a thematic 2,026 units of each up for sale. If every edition sold out, they’d add up to more than $11.2 million in revenue.

World Cup fans facing ever higher prices

The collectibles’ high prices quickly caught flak on social media. “As if paying 6k for a ticket hadn’t been enough,” one commenter wrote in response to the merchandise.

Indeed, the merch prices are only the latest example of uncharacteristically high prices for the 2026 World Cup. This year’s tournament was the first to feature dynamic ticket pricing: Top-tier tickets to the final match, initially priced at $6,730 in September of 2025 (an already much higher figure than the most expensive tickets at Qatar’s 2022 World Cup), jumped in price to $10,990 by April. In May, FIFA released even pricier tickets to sit in the front row, on sale for $32,970 a pop.

The public outrage over the World Cup’s pricing was enough to garner probes by the attorneys general of New York, New Jersey, California, and Texas.

“New Yorkers have been waiting years for the World Cup to come to their backyard, and they deserve a fair shot at affordable tickets,” said New York Attorney General Letitia James. “No one should be manipulated into paying sky-high prices for seats, and fans should be able to trust that the tickets they purchase will be the ones they receive.”

The company will officially open its newest Chase Sapphire Lounge by The Club on July 16 at Dallas Fort Worth International Airport, giving Chase Sapphire Reserve cardmembers access to an 18,000-square-foot space centered around local food, wellness experiences, family-friendly amenities and the lounge network’s first dedicated whiskey lounge.

Located post-security in Terminal D near Gate D25, the lounge arrives in one of Chase’s most important markets. According to Dana Pouwels, head of airport lounge benefits at Chase, the Dallas-Fort Worth region is home to nearly 3 million Chase customers, almost 300,000 small businesses, and roughly 17,000 employees, making it a natural fit for one of the company’s largest lounge concepts.

“We’re thrilled, first of all, to be opening a lounge in Dallas Fort Worth,” Pouwels tells Fast Company. “This is a very important market for JPMorgan Chase.”

Designed with Dallas in mind

At 18,000 square feet, the split-level lounge ranks among the largest in the Chase Sapphire Lounge network.

The space features a full-service bar, family room, private nursing room, showers, reservable rest pods and complimentary Face Haus mini facials, which last about 15 to 20 minutes and have become a popular amenity at other Chase lounges.

Pouwels says Chase approached the design by looking beyond the airport itself and focusing on what makes Dallas-Fort Worth unique.

“In terms of the design, we always really are looking at the local elements of the city and how we can infuse that into the Sapphire experience,” she says. “That’s really a lot of research and knowledge of the local area to ensure that we incorporate that local feeling in the right way.”

Throughout the lounge, guests will find leather accents, natural Texas-inspired materials and subtle nods to Dallas sports, along with a signature brass-canopy bar and stone countertops that double as charging stations.

Local restaurants shape the menu

Rather than relying on standard airport fare, Chase partnered with Bishop Arts District favorite Encina to create a menu inspired by Texas ingredients and flavors.

Breakfast includes blue corn butterscotch pancakes, while afternoon offerings feature dishes like slab bacon with cheddar grits. Coffee comes from Fort Worth’s Cherry Coffee, a women-owned roaster located in the city’s Near Southside neighborhood. The beverage program also features Texas beers, regional cocktails and wines curated by Parcelle.

“The food and beverage continues to be a very important part of our offering,” Pouwels says. She added that Chase wants each lounge to give travelers “that sense of discovery” by offering something new to experience rather than standard airport fare.

A first for the Sapphire Lounge network

The biggest draw for the lounge may be tucked away behind an unassuming entrance.

DFW is home to the Chase Sapphire Lounge network’s first dedicated whiskey lounge, a separate 40-seat space featuring guided tastings, tableside whiskey cart service, food pairings and an all-Texas whiskey lineup.

The collection includes Texas bourbons and ryes from producers across the state, including Fort Worth and Waco, as well as an exclusive custom barrel from Milam & Greene created specifically for the lounge.

“We’re really excited about the whiskey room,” Pouwels says. “The whiskey room is really focused on having a collection of whiskeys from the Texas region, and we think that is very, very much unique to this area.”

The whiskey lounge also includes one unexpected feature: televisions.

Chase generally avoids TVs in its lounges, but made an exception for Dallas because of the region’s sports culture. When not in use, the screens disappear into the decor by functioning as mirrors.

“When they’re off, you will not otherwise know that they’re televisions,” Pouwels says. “They look like a mirror, and we’ll only have them on if there’s a sporting event that guests would like to see.”

Wellness joins the travel experience

Dallas is also the first Chase Sapphire Lounge to introduce custom Peloton wellness programming.

Travelers will be able to access guided stretching routines and meditation sessions created specifically for airport travel through their own phones and tablets before the content expands to the broader Chase Sapphire Lounge network.

“We’re always looking and exploring different ways to bring wellness to customers in the lounges,” Pouwels says. “We thought that this would be a great place to pilot this in Dallas.”

The DFW opening continues Chase’s rapid expansion in premium airport lounges, with Los Angeles International Airport expected to become the network’s next location within the coming year.

Apple’s case against OpenAI centers on accusations that the company stole Apple’s intellectual property. The iPhone maker alleges that OpenAI asked former Apple employees and prospective recruits to bring information about unreleased products with them. OpenAI denies that claim, saying in a statement that it has “no interest in other companies’ trade secrets” and would “remain focused on building innovative technology.”

The unspoken part of the feud, however, concerns OpenAI’s pilfering of Apple’s workforce. To date, more than 400 former Apple employees have jumped ship, lured by steep compensation packages. Apple has recently begun offering larger-than-normal retention bonuses to prevent further defections.

Poaching was once relatively uncommon in Silicon Valley. But as a new generation of tech giants becomes established, the rules may be changing.

Job hopping barriers

Silicon Valley’s questionable anti-poaching history reaches back at least to 2007, when Steve Jobs emailed then-Google CEO Eric Schmidt about Google’s attempt to recruit an Apple engineer.

“I would be very pleased if your recruiting department would stop doing this,” Jobs wrote.

Schmidt forwarded the email to unknown parties, adding “Can you get this stopped and let me know why this is happening?”

That same year, Palm’s CEO wrote to Jobs that an anti-poaching agreement would be “likely illegal.” Intel chief executive Paul Otellini also composed an email disclosing an agreement with Google. “We have a handshake ‘no recruit’ between eric and myself. I would not like this broadly known,” he wrote.

All of these emails came to light following a 2010 antitrust action brought by the Department of Justice against Adobe, Apple, Google, Intel, Intuit, Pixar, Lucasfilm, and eBay. The civil suit alleged that the companies had colluded not to recruit one another’s employees, violating the Sherman Act, a federal law prohibiting anticompetitive business practices. The Justice Department said the agreements reduced workers’ wages and stock bonuses.

The companies settled the case. Months later, workers filed a civil class-action lawsuit over the practice, seeking $3 billion. Within three years, all of the tech companies had reached settlements without admitting guilt. Ultimately, more than 64,000 workers received an average payment of $5,770 each.

Today, there is no formal agreement among tech firms restricting them from recruiting one another’s workers. The practice nevertheless remains relatively rare.

A new breed

Up-and-coming tech firms, however, do not appear inclined to follow that norm. In the 2000s, Meta lured hundreds of employees away from Google, enraging executives who demanded that Sheryl Sandberg stop the practice. She refused. More recently, Meta has actively recruited from AI rivals, hiring key employees from Apple, OpenAI, and other startups.

OpenAI, which was founded in 2015, now appears to be following the same recruitment playbook. High-profile Apple employees who have joined Sam Altman’s company include Tang Tan, Apple’s former vice president of product design; Paul Meade, who oversaw the Vision Pro headset and smart-glasses projects; and Chang Liu, who worked on the iPhone for more than eight years. Jony Ive, who left Apple years ago to start his own company, is also now with OpenAI after it acquired his io startup last year.

There have been no reports of other emerging tech giants poaching workers from Silicon Valley’s established companies, but that does not mean the practice is not happening. Anthropic has filed paperwork with the Securities and Exchange Commission for an IPO and will face pressure to keep investors happy. High-profile hires could help. Elon Musk, who runs SpaceX, also has a long history of disregarding industry conventions.

A different generation of tech companies is threatening to become Silicon Valley’s new ruling class. Should they succeed, the question is whether they will discourage job hopping as their predecessors did—or turn the competition for top talent into a free-for-all.

The Associated Press Health and Science Department receives support from the Howard Hughes Medical Institute’s Department of Science Education and the Robert Wood Johnson Foundation. The AP is solely responsible for all content.

—Lauran Neergaard, AP Medical Writer

—Kevin Freking, Associated Press

I had spent 35 years by then coaching senior leaders, and most of them were men. Men who moved through their careers on a road already paved. No motherhood penalty at the front, and rarely a caregiving crisis at the back, because somewhere in their lives there was usually a woman absorbing the work at home. I was good at helping them. Then I hit the wall myself and went looking for the map I had been handing other people. There was none. The workplace I had given my life to had never imagined a woman would still be inside it on the day her mother began to disappear.

When Fast Company ran “Corporate America is crushing senior-level mothers” by Shalene Gupta last month, the response was enormous. Thousands of words came back from women who finally felt named. Underneath the relief I heard a second question the piece could not reach. These women survived it. The day care years, the pumping in supply closets, the promotions timed around due dates. They came out the other side. And now what?

Most organizations still build careers for women around the young-mother arc. The whole structure assumes the defining tension of a woman’s working life is the one between babies and ambition, the toddler on the hip against the seat at the table. That assumption was not wrong; it was partial. It put a gate at the front of a woman’s career and left everything past it as open country, with no road markers.

For every woman promoted at the director level, McKinsey and LeanIn found, two women directors walk out the door. There is a leak at exactly the altitude where companies say they want more women, and we have spent years blaming the women for it. 

Consider the woman who is in mid- or late career. She is not arranging childcare anymore. She is arranging hospice, or memory care, or the third specialist this month. She is one of the more than 48 million Americans who gave unpaid care last year worth an estimated $600 billion, most of them women, and she is doing it in the years she was finally supposed to be running things. The squeeze does not announce itself. It arrives as a phone call during a meeting she cannot leave, and it does not end when the call does.

Brenda (pseudonym), a VP of philanthropy at a national nonprofit, breathed a sigh of relief when her youngest child graduated from college. Three days later her husband was diagnosed with ALS, and she had to care for him as his body failed. Her career-capping fundraising ambitions paled alongside the gargantuan role she had to play at home, resulting in FMLA leave, fragmented efforts, and distracted attention to her big career goals.

The body is in this story too, whether we are comfortable with it or not. Menopause arrives and lasts the better part of a decade, landing squarely on the most senior and most expensive years of a woman’s career. The Mayo Clinic put its cost to the U.S. economy at $26.6 billion a year, and that figure does not count the women who simply leave the workforce. Rachel (pseudonym), an executive VP at a major consumer brand, described it this way: “My perimenopause brain fog was intense, and I felt I had to back off the big role. I took early retirement, even though I wasn’t ready.”

According to research discussed in Harvard Business Review in 2023, women suffer from a “never right” bias pattern around age, meaning the same gray hair that makes a man look seasoned makes a woman look finished. His experience gets celebrated. Hers gets walked toward the door. You thank her for mentoring the young men who will be promoted past her. You celebrate what she knows precisely because you have stopped betting on what she could still do.

And here is the part Gupta’s motherhood essay could not hold. The young-mother design doesn’t fail just the women who passed through it. It fails the women who never had children at all. Jean (pseudonym) was a pinch hitter throughout her 30s and 40s, always able to travel on assignment as a senior partner. She was the backstop, assumed to be endlessly available because, in the words people use, she had nothing else going on. Women like Jean covered the leaves and the snow days and the late nights, and they reached the far side with the same failing parents and the same vanishing relevance, plus a quarter century of having been the accommodation that let everyone else’s accommodation work.

We built women’s careers around one season of one kind of life, then treated everything that fell outside it—the aging parent, the changing body, the second act—as a private problem for the woman to absorb in the dark. The cost was always real. We simply arranged never to see it.

It does not have to be this way, and the fix is not a women’s affinity group or a webinar on resilience. It is design. 

First, treat caregiving as a normal feature of a working life rather than a one-time emergency. We built parental leave and then behaved as though care ended at kindergarten. It does not. People care for parents, partners, siblings, adult children, themselves, in waves that recur across 40 years. Build leave, flexibility, and real reentry paths that assume those waves are coming, and make them available to everyone by policy, not granted one woman at a time behind a closed door.

Second, audit who gets the future and who gets the past. Look honestly at who receives the stretch assignments and who gets routed onto the legacy panels and the mentoring tracks. If your most seasoned women are advising and stewarding while the high-visibility roles go to people 15 years younger, that is a pattern, not a series of coincidences. Promote inside the highest-earning decade instead of escorting people out of it.

Third, make menopause an ordinary workplace fact. It is a predictable stage of human health, not a scandal, and right now it is draining some of your most expensive talent. Manager education, flexibility in schedule and environment, and simple permission to name it out loud turn a hidden attrition driver into a routine accommodation, the way we eventually learned to handle pregnancy instead of pretending it wasn’t happening.

Design for all genders a working life that runs 50 years, not a 30-year sprint that peaks at 45. That means sponsorship, lateral moves, and genuine second acts built for people in their 50s and 60s. It means looking around the room and noticing that the most capable person in it is often the one you have already written off.

I made it through my own impossible year the way these women always do. On my own, without a single road the workplace had ever thought to build for me. The women in this story are not asking to be protected. They are the most capable people in most of the rooms they walk into, and they know it. They survived the front half. The question was never whether they still had something to give. It is whether we will finally build workplaces able to meet their back half.

What’s happened?

Early this morning, Reuters reported that the fintech giant Stripe and the private equity giant Advent International have offered to buy PayPal for well above its closing stock price on Tuesday.

According to Reuters, Stripe and Advent made PayPal a buyout offer of $60.50 per share, equating to about $53 billion in total. That $60.50 per share offering price is roughly 28% higher than PayPal’s closing price of $47.37 yesterday.

Stripe and Advent reportedly made the offer to PayPal earlier this month. It is an offer that PayPal has reportedly not responded to yet.

While Reuters did identify its sources, other than saying they were people “familiar with the matter,” news of the proposed buyout offer could put pressure on PayPal leadership to publicly respond—and face displeasure from PayPal investors if they do not like the company’s response.

PayPal, Stripe, and Advent all declined to comment.

What do Stripe and Advent want with PayPal?

The report didn’t go into specifics about what Stripe and Advent would do with the legacy online payments giant should they acquire it, but Reuters said that the two suitors would jointly own PayPal instead of breaking up the company.

Stripe is one of the biggest players in the modern fintech scene. The privately held company was valued at around $159 billion in February. But Stripe’s specialty and core business is facilitating transactions between a business’s bank account and a customer’s payment method.

One of PayPal’s strengths is facilitating peer-to-peer transactions. It also has a massive user base of consumers and small businesses that trust the brand and are loyal to it.

It is possible Stripe sees a PayPal acquisition as a way to move into areas of the fintech space where PayPal clearly dominates.

Would PayPal sell itself?

No one can answer that but PayPal leadership. However, a buyout offer could be attractive to PayPal’s board and investors, considering the company has struggled in recent years.

While PayPal was the de facto payment backbone of consumer e-commerce for roughly the first two decades after its founding in the late 1990s, in recent years the company has lost ground to competing products like Apple Pay and Google Pay, which make it much simpler to pay digitally for products and services right from smartphones and other devices.

While PayPal’s stock did see a massive boost during the pandemic years, when online shopping boomed like never before, it has tumbled since then.

In 2021, PayPal stock was trading at more than $291 per share—an all-time high. As of yesterday’s closing price, PYPL shares were trading at just above $47. That stock price decrease came as a result of newer technologies and more competition that siphoned away business.

In February of this year, PayPal replaced its CEO, Alex Chriss, with HP’s Enrique Lores.

“The payments industry is changing faster than ever, driven by new technologies, evolving regulations, an increasingly competitive landscape, and the rapid acceleration of AI that is reshaping commerce daily,” Lores said at the time. “PayPal sits at the center of this change, and I look forward to leading the team to accelerate the delivery of new innovations and to shape the future of digital payments and commerce.”

How have PayPal’s shares reacted?

Investors have reacted very well to the reported buyout offer. As of the time of this writing, PYPL shares are currently up around 19.87% to $56.72 in pre-market trading.

That’s well above PayPal’s closing price of $47.37 yesterday, but still slightly under Stripe’s and Advent’s reported offering price of $60.50 per share.

Harvard Business Review reported in 2022 that workers toggle between applications 1,200 times daily, losing nearly 4 hours per week to reorientation. That’s roughly 9% of total work time. For a knowledge worker earning $100,000 annually, the cost translates to $9,000 in lost productivity per employee per year. For a company with 10,000 employees, that fragmentation amounts to roughly $90 million annually, not from bad strategy or underinvestment, but from the basic friction of fragmented digital infrastructure. Almost no organization has a line item for it. It just compounds.

WE GAVE AI THE WRONG JOB

When generative AI arrived, most organizations gave employees better tools for the work they were already doing. Better search, faster drafting, and sharper summaries. But they didn’t change the underlying architecture. The siloed systems, approval chains, and status emails were all still there. We added AI to the workflows without redesigning the workflows. Employees ended up with one more window to toggle to.

In many organizations, AI just made the chairs swivel faster.

The first generation of enterprise AI was primarily generative, retrieval-augmented systems that surface the right document, summarize it well, and hand it back to a human to act on. That’s a meaningful capability, but it’s still a handoff. The AI produces an output for a person to carry it forward. Output is not outcome. In business, no one gets paid for outputs, but rather for completed work.

FINISHING THE WORK IS HARDER THAN IT LOOKS

The next phase of AI is about completing the work.

Agentic AI is defined as systems that can plan a sequence of steps, select the right tools, execute actions across systems, and govern the outcome with auditability. They can now take a request from initiation to resolution without a human manually stitching it together.

The intelligence part—the reasoning, language understanding, and ability to interpret an ambiguous request—is increasingly commoditized. Two years ago, GPT-4-level reasoning was a competitive advantage. Today, that capability is available open source, inference costs have dropped by roughly 10-fold annually, and benchmark performance across the leading models has converged to where the differences are largely invisible to enterprise users. What remains genuinely difficult and differentiated is the execution layer connecting that intelligence to the enterprise’s operational fabric.

Consider what completing a single workflow actually requires. Onboarding a new hire might span a human resources information system, an IT provisioning system, a facilities platform, a payroll processor, and a compliance training tool. Each has its own data model, permissions architecture, and API behavior. And they were never designed to talk to each other.

This is why “just use an LLM” isn’t an enterprise AI strategy. A large language model without enterprise context produces large language model results—fluent, plausible, and often disconnected from your actual business machinery. The grounding layer, the connectors, the context graph, the permissions model, and the workflow orchestration are what turn a capable model into a system that completes work.

WHAT EXECUTION AT SCALE LOOKS LIKE

What makes this possible is the harness around the model. When an employee submits a request, they’re not talking directly to an LLM, but to a layer incorporating business context. The LLM selects the right path, applies the right permissions, and decides which systems need involvement and the order. The model supplies the reasoning and the harness supplies the judgment about how to apply that reasoning inside your organization.

That’s why we’re seeing enterprises resolve the majority of service desk requests without human involvement. They are resolved end to end, with the right action taken, logged, and governed. Live agent chat volumes drop in days because the requests never had to escalate. At one global manufacturer, approval processes that once averaged 10 hours of VP time now close in under 10 minutes. Same policy. Same people. The harness surfaces the right context in sequence, and the inbox archaeology disappears.

The swivel chair became unnecessary.

These productivity improvements are structural changes to how operations run. The people who were spending their days on coordination overhead are now doing the work that requires their expertise. That is the shift worth chasing.

THE MOAT HAS MOVED

McKinsey’s 2025 Global Survey found that 88% of organizations report regular AI use in at least one business function. Individual use cases show promise, including a 14% productivity boost in customer service operations while using AI. That’s meaningful, but incremental.

The competitive question now is: How deeply is your AI connected to how work happens in your organization?

The companies building that depth with context graphs, orchestration layers, and the governed workflow execution are getting more efficient. Every workflow you automate teaches the system more about how your company operates. That compounds. It comes from building AI into how the company runs.

WHAT THIS MEANS RIGHT NOW

If you’re still measuring AI ROI in tokens generated and summaries produced, you’re measuring the wrong thing.

Find the work nobody chose. The status updates nobody asked to send. The approvals stalled in inboxes. The handoffs that require a human because the systems should communicate, but don’t. Map where your most capable people are spending time on coordination instead of judgment.

That’s your AI roadmap. Start with one workflow. Prove value in production. Then let the compounding begin.

The goal was always to make the swivel chair unrecognizable, to reach a point where the next generation of employees doesn’t know what the phrase means because they’ve never experienced the problem. We’re closer to that than most leaders realize. But only by building AI into the workflow, not on top of it.

Bhavin Shah is SVP and GM of Moveworks and AI at ServiceNow.