Welcome to AI Decoded, Fast Company’s weekly newsletter that breaks down the most important news in the world of AI. I’m Mark Sullivan, a senior writer at Fast Company, covering emerging tech, AI, and tech policy.

While millions of soccer fans cheer or groan over World Cup matches spanning North America, health officials will be on high alert for germs.

A heat wave may be the most obvious health threat. But infectious diseases can spread in a crowd, and experts are set to scrutinize wastewater, hospital visits, even social media for any signs that an outbreak might be brewing.

Measles, one of the most contagious diseases, is among the top concerns, sparking a warning this week from the Pan American Health Organization, PAHO. With a nearly six-week stretch of packed stadiums, bars and tourist sites in 16 cities, officials are on the lookout for a long list of infections, from the stomach bug norovirus to mosquito-borne dengue fever.

“This is truly a marathon,” said Palak Raval-Nelson, Philadelphia’s health commissioner.

The mass gatherings come at a tense moment for budget-strapped health agencies in the U.S. The Centers for Disease Control and Prevention, hit hard by Trump administration staffing cuts, already was grappling with a growing Ebola outbreak in central Africa and a cruise ship hantavirus outbreak. While CDC officials have advised state and local health departments behind the scenes, its expected World Cup disease surveillance dashboard still was “in final development” days before games began, according to the Department of Health and Human Services.

“Our public health professionals are pretty stretched,” said global health specialist Rebecca Katz of Georgetown University, who is leading an unusual new hub to help.

At the Health Security Operations Center, a joint effort between Georgetown and MedStar Health, workers are analyzing data from around the country so they can alert health authorities, even emergency rooms, to any early signs of trouble. The center is issuing daily “situation reports” about disease trends around World Cup host cities and team base camps to several hundred local and federal public health groups, emergency management and hospital officials and others who’ve signed up.

“It’s important that we don’t become alarmist,” said MedStar emergency medicine specialist Dr. Shane Kappler. “We’re trying to be the insurance policy.”

A major STEM-focused university in the unlikely location of Bentonville, Arkansas, is starting to take shape. Announced in 2025, the university is the brainchild of brothers Tom and Steuart Walton, grandsons of Walmart founder Sam Walton and heirs to the massive wealth the company has created.

Damaging storms swept through the Midwest, knocking out power to hundreds of thousands of customers and causing more than a thousand flight delays or cancellations at Chicago airports with more potentially severe weather expected Thursday.

The National Weather Service said it received more than a dozen reports of tornadoes Wednesday across northern Missouri, Iowa, Kansas and Illinois. There were no immediate reports of injuries or deaths.

Weather service meteorologist Frank Pereira said the frontal system that produced the storms, including high winds and hail, was moving eastward Thursday. There was also a slight risk of severe thunderstorms in parts of the Northeast and Mid-Atlantic. The storms are being fueled by cool air from Canada clashing with warm, humid air from the South.

“Going forward, we’re expecting another area of severe weather to develop across portions of the central Plains, Midwest, particularly from Iowa, northern Missouri, northeastward through the Great Lakes,” Pereira said. “Again, it’s all tied into a pretty well-defined frontal system.”

Storms moved into the Chicago area on Wednesday afternoon, downing trees and damaging some buildings.

The two major Chicago airports, Chicago O’Hare International Airport and Chicago Midway International Airport, temporarily put all flights on hold in the evening due to thunderstorms. A similar ground stop was issued at John F. Kennedy International Airport in New York due to thunderstorms.

By Wednesday evening, more than 1,000 flights going into and out of Chicago had been delayed or canceled, according to FlightAware, a flight tracking website.

Air traffic appeared to return to normal Thursday morning, with only 24 flight cancellations and 34 delays nationwide, FlightAware reported.

Strong winds blew part of the roof off an apartment building in the Chicago area, forcing residents to leave, according to NBC 5 Chicago. Elsewhere, barns collapsed in Wisconsin, buildings were crushed in rural northern Missouri and some large trees and power lines were downed in other areas across the Midwest, photos and video online showed.

Around 390,000 customers had no electricity in the Midwest on Thursday. There were nearly 226,000 outages in Illinois, including around 150,000 in Cook County, while 85,000 homes and businesses were without power in Michigan, according to poweroutage.us.

Commonwealth Edison Company, which provides electric service across northern Illinois, said the storms had downed poles and wires.

“We know this is challenging and will restore service as safely and quickly as conditions allow,” the company said in a post on X.

The storms soaked Rate Field in Chicago before Wednesday night’s game between the White Sox and the Atlanta Braves.

Oracle Corporation reported increased revenue of 21% year-over-year (YOY) for its fiscal fourth quarter, but it wasn’t enough to please stockholders. 

SpaceX’s initial public offering is just one day away, and it is widely expected to be the largest on record.

A record-breaking comeback, capped off by what could go down as a legendary play.

The long road back to the top of the NBA is almost complete for the New York Knicks, and the step they took Wednesday night was unforgettable.

The Knicks came from 29 points down and moved to the brink of their first championship since 1973 by beating the San Antonio Spurs 107-106 in Game 4 of the finals on OG Anunoby’s tip-in with 1.2 seconds remaining.

“That has to be the most iconic shot in the history of New York basketball,” Knicks coach Mike Brown said.

It’s certainly high on the list — as high as Anunoby leaped when Jalen Brunson’s long 3-point shot bounced off the front of the rim, with his right hand stretching high to softly flick it in.

“Right hand from God,” Knicks center Karl-Anthony Towns said.

The Knicks, who have just two titles in their 80-year history and hadn’t even been to the NBA Finals since 1999, have a 3-1 lead and three chances to win the best-of-seven series — starting with Game 5 on Saturday night in San Antonio.

It looked impossible early, when the Spurs rolled to a 27-point halftime lead. But Brunson helped bring the Knicks back with 36 points and Anunoby finished with 33.

The World Cup has a way of turning local rituals into global demand almost overnight. We’ve seen it happen with beer, coffee, and tequila. In 2026, it may happen with yerba mate. Are the systems behind these traditions ready for what results from that visibility? Events like the World Cup move culture, but they also accelerate consumption and ecological pressure. The 2026 tournament will be the largest in FIFA history. One peer-reviewed analysis projects it could generate nearly double the carbon footprint of any World Cup in the past decade. When traditions rooted in land, culture, and biodiversity suddenly go worldwide, we become responsible for protecting the ecosystems and communities that sustain them.

The leaders who drive meaningful change don’t project certainty. They start with a powerful vision, commit fully to the work, and adapt as the goalposts move. The leaders who navigate this best often learned to do it long before they ever stepped into a boardroom.

In 2025, software engineering underwent profound change. A new generation of AI models (Cursor, Claude Code, Codex), paired with a maturing agentic infrastructure, crossed an invisible capability threshold. By the end of the year, developers moved from “AI helps me write code I carefully review” to “I can orchestrate teams of agents that automate most of the development process.” What made it happen wasn’t smarter models, but the infrastructure around them finally catching up. 

People often ask me if my business is my baby. The answer is always no.

Tourists may soon be able to fast-track their U.S. visas—if they’re willing to pay an extra $750.

For those who believe in Dani Rojas’s mantra, “fútbol is life!” as seen in the hit Apple TV series Ted Lasso, life is about to get so much sweeter.

After the usual round of strategy conversations, my client sat down to write his strategy document. It had been percolating in his head for days. Then, when he sat down, nothing happened.

I’ve been teaching strategic communication at Stanford’s Graduate School of Business (GSB) and coaching executives for almost two decades. Recently, I’m consistently hit with one concern from students and executives alike: With AI taking over, what will be left for me?

The 2022 FIFA World Cup hadn’t even started when researchers set out to grow the perfect pitch for the 2026 World Cup, which kicks off in cities across North America this month.

Kacy Fleming was presenting in a boardroom when the burning started. It began at her thighs and rose up through her torso as the legal counsel in the room pushed back on her points. She whipped off her blazer even though all she was wearing underneath was a threadbare James Perse tank top.

As more companies require employees to return to the office five days a week, new research shows working from home may not be so great for your mental health.