Author: josh
He brought the world Kallex shelves and Poang armchairs, but can outgoing IKEA CEO Jesper Brodin help organize the world’s largest refugee organization? Brodin may have a chance, as the Swedish government announced him as its candidate to become the new United Nations High Commissioner for Refugees (UNHCR) last Monday. If selected, Brodin’s career pivot would highlight an exceptionally rare trajectory among global CEOs: going from business to a multilateral international organization. The UNHCR, the organization says, protects people forced to flee, delivers emergency aid in crises, and helps displaced people find a place to call home. While some businessmen,…
Melania Trump’s memecoin was just one of 15 fraudulent tokens launched as part of an elaborate scheme to trick crypto investors. That’s according to a new court filing in a putative class action lawsuit, which accuses the defendants of obtaining the first lady’s endorsement of her cryptocurrency as part of a scheme that “weaponized fame to disarm diligence.” The legal filing, submitted on Tuesday, is the newest update in a case that dates back to May, when the firm Burwick Law filed a complaint on behalf of investors against a host of entities that sold memecoins, or cryptocurrencies that have…
Already the world’s richest man, Elon Musk is defending his proposed $1 trillion Tesla pay package—arguing it’s less about joining the trillionaires club and more about making sure he can’t be sidelined. “I just don’t feel comfortable building a robot army here and then being ousted because of some asinine recommendations from ISS and Glass Lewis who have no freaking clue. I mean, those guys are corporate terrorists,” Musk said Wednesday on Tesla’s quarterly earnings call, referring to the proxy advisory services who are urging investors to reject the pay plan. The proposal would award Musk up to $1 trillion…
It’s no secret that President Trump, once a Bitcoin skeptic, has become a full-blown convert and that he and his family are using crypto to enrich themselves. What far fewer people understand is how Trump’s crypto ventures are structured on a corporate level. On the latest episode of Crypto Playbook (available on Spotify, Apple, and YouTube), Fortune journalist Ben Weiss—who has covered the Trump crypto empire from the inside—broke down how it is in fact a stable of separate businesses. “In the Trump crypto ecosystem there are four different teams, all interrelated, but all kind of separate, that are all…
Five years ago, I predicted that 95% of internet content would be AI-generated by 2025. It’s hard to measure where we are exactly, but we’ll get close to that in the coming years. This week, we integrated OpenAI’s Sora 2 into Synthesia. Businesses can now drop cinematic b-roll into the AI avatar videos they already make on our platform. As I’ve been playing around with OpenAI’s new model, I feel more confident than ever that the next two years of the internet will be weird, creative, sloppy, and brilliant, all at once. It’ll force a reset on how brands, employees,…
Nasdaq 100 futures were flat this morning after the index lost 1% yesterday following Tesla’s Q3 earnings call, which investors did not like. The stock was down 3% after Elon Musk’s company revealed record revenue but a decline in profitabilty. It was another in a series of earnings calls from tech companies that have disappointed traders. Netflix stock fell 6% after its Q3 call a couple of days ago. And this morning, SAP stock is down 1.6% after its results missed expectations despite solid AI revenue pipeline. On top of that, analysts drew attention to President Trump’s new threat to…
A homebuyer on a $3,000 budget has gained $26,000 since last year as mortgage rates drop to the low-6% range. But pending home sales are still slipping. The daily average mortgage rate dropped to 6.17% this week, near the lowest level in three years. Lower mortgage rates are curbing growth in monthly mortgage payments; the typical U.S. monthly payment is $2,556, up 0.6% year over year, the smallest increase in three months. A homebuyer on a $3,000 budget can afford a $473,750 home at today’s mortgage rate, compared to the $447,750 home they could have bought one year ago, when…
Dave:Last week I spent an entire episode laying out that I think we are in a market correction. We’re not in a crash, but we’re in a period where home prices may go down, they may stay stagnant. And I hope that was a helpful conversation for ever to just to have realistic expectations for what to expect over the next couple of years. So today we’re going to shift that conversation from just data and background towards what you can actually do about it. In today’s episode, I’m joined by Kathy Fettke and Henry Washington to pressure test the…
Half (51%) of the executive positions (vice president and above) in the U.S. are women. Globally, it’s 48%. Women also make up nearly half of the board and 50% of CEO Tony Capuano’s direct reports. That’s in stark contrast with the market average. Per McKinsey’s 2024 “Women in the Workplace” report, women hold just 29% of C-suite roles and 34% of vice president positions. The Conference Board found that women accounted for only 29% of board seats at the Russell 3000 as of 2024. Something different is happening at Marriott, an honoree on this year’s Fortune Best Workplaces for Women™…
When Steve Jobs needed glass screens for the first iPhone in 2007, he didn’t just place an order with Corning. He challenged its CEO to confront his own fears about not being able to produce enough. Wendell Weeks, who has led the 175-year-old glass and materials science company for two decades, recently recounted the pivotal conversation that helped define Apple’s most successful product. Speaking on Fortune‘s “Leadership Next” podcast with hosts Diane Brady and Kristin Stoller, Weeks revealed how Jobs manipulated him into taking on what seemed like an impossible task. The story began after Weeks initially pitched Jobs on…