Amazon ushered in a new era for television advertising when it converted Prime Video into an ad-supported experience by default in 2024. By the middle of this year, some 130 million U.S. viewers were on Prime Videos ad tier, watching between four and six minutes of ads per hour, according to an Adweek report.
The move is part of the companys long-term plan to dominate television advertising as viewership shifts from traditional broadcast and cable TV to streaming platforms. The digital advertising landscape is rapidly evolving with streaming TV becoming mainstream, says Kelly MacLean, VP of Amazon DSP, the companys ad-buying platform.
Under MacLean, Amazons been rolling out a slew of adtech tools to help businesses of all sizes reach viewers on Prime Video and even streaming rivals, including Netflix, NBCUniversal, and Disney. Amazons also helping with the creative side: It introduced an AI-powered video generator earlier this year that allows advertisers to easily create their own spots.
Amazons investments are paying off. For the past decade, the companys cloud-computing arm, AWS, has been the engine powering Amazons dominance. AWS brought in $91 billion in revenue in the first nine months of 2025, up 18% year over year. Amazon Ads is shaping up to be the next juggernaut: Its taken in $47 billion so far this year, and grew 24% last quarter.
Jay Richman, Amazons vice president of creative experiences, says Amazon operates one of the most vast and sprawling ad networks on the planet. Amazon is now preparing to turn this sprawling network into a well-oiled machine with the help of generative AI.
At its annual unBoxed conference, which is being held this week in Nashville, Amazon is unveiling a suite of agentic AI tools that will do everything from brainstorm creative concepts and produce video ads to advise advertisers of all sizes on where to place the finished campaigns for the most impact.
The result, says Richman, is taking an advertising process that traditionally requires weeks of work and significant financial investment and transforming it into something that can be accomplished within a few hours at no additional cost to advertisers. Heres a look at whats coming.
Unifying the streaming ad market
Though other major tech companies, including Google and Meta, have been integrating AI in their advertising products to make certain tasks easier for ad buyers, Amazon is unique in positioning its DSP platform as the go-to place for buying television ads.
Over the past two years, Amazon Ads has secured partnerships with major publishers including Netflix, Paramount, Fox Corp, NBCUniversal, Disney, and Roku, allowing advertisers to gain access to the partners inventory. The Disney and Roku partnerships were announced just in time for Cannes this past summer. In September, Amazon and Netflix announced a plan to offer programmatic buying on Netflixs Ads Plan.
MacLean says that Amazon has been able to notch deals with every major streamereven its rivalsbecause its adding value for them through capabilities like Amazon Cloud Publisher, a service that helps streamers and others use Amazons data to make their ad inventory more valuable.
Even as Amazon creates new tech and services to help publishers, it’s making it easier for a wide range of advertisersfrom big brands to small businessesto start running ads. And that begins by offering them a unified platform.
Behind the scenes, MacLeans team has rebuilt the backend of Amazons ad platform to allow advertisers to buy targeted spots not on Amazons own properties and across the wider internet. MacLean says that Amazon is using AI to harness the trillions of signals it has about consumers shopping and viewing habits to help target the right people at the right time and on the right platform.
A lot of advertisers are just dealing with mass fragmentation, MacLean says. They’re duplicating who they’re reaching. They’re wasting media dollars. So our focus has been on how to innovate and help marketers through these challenges, making it easier to distribute their ad spend in a way that can reach the right users.
Introducing AI agents
Amazon is showcasing its next slate of tools and services for digital and video advertisers at unBoxed this week.
One of the new features is Campaign Manager, which unifies the ads console and Amazon DSP into an individual media buying tool, allowing advertisers of all sizes to manage their campaigns through one entry point.
But the most groundbreaking new features take the form of agentic AI. The company has a new Creative Agent tool that will be integrated into the unified Amazon Ads console. Advertisers will be able to summon the tool via chat to make streaming and sponsored ads for television and elsewhere.
Using natural language prompts, advertisers can ask the Creative Agent to conduct audience research, brainstorm concepts and create storyboards, and even produce display and video ads using generative AI.
This is truly game-changing for the industry, allowing mid-market and small brands to design creative ad campaigns and professional-quality advertisements that were previously only accessible to large brands with substantial resources,” Richman says.
Once those ads are complete, Amazons new Ads Agent tool, which can be accessed via a chat window throughout the Amazon Ads platform, offers recommendations on how advertisers can improve the efficacy of their campaigns.
An advertiser, for example, could upload a custom media plan and let the tool configure all the campaign structures and the ad groupsor let it optimize all of the advertisers campaigns at scale using only natural language.
The goal for every brand is reaching the right people wherever they are and having compelling ads that drive those business results, MacLean says. But with our vast offerings, we’ve heard from customers that they also need a more streamlined process. The Ads Agent tool is designed to be the specialist that can help simplify everything.
Other products Amazon announced include Full-Funnel Campaigns, an agentic AI tool that will make advertising easier to launch and manage across multiple channels and formats, and sponsored product videos, which let advertisers showcase products within the Amazon store.
Unlike traditional short video ads, these product videos will offer deeper demonstrations and highlight key features. Customers can browse between videos, skip to specific sections, and click through to the product detail page on Amazon for more informationcreting a more interactive and personalized shopping experience.
The goal is to provide shoppers more information at a glance than is possible today with just static product shots, Richman says.
MacLean says that the ultimate goal with all these tools is to make Amazon Ads the best place to buy advertising. Were going to continue to simplify, automate, and drive performance, she says.
Amazon, it seems, is becoming the everything store for advertisers.
It’s up to the U.S. Supreme Court and Congress to decide when full payments will resume under the SNAP food aid program that helps 1 in 8 Americans buy groceries, as some wonder how they will feed their families without government assistance.The Supreme Court is expected to rule Tuesday on a request from President Donald Trump’s administration to keep blocking states from providing full Supplemental Nutrition Assistance Program benefits, arguing the money might be needed elsewhere.The seesawing rulings mean that beneficiaries in some states, including Hawaii and New Jersey, have received their full monthly allocations while in others, such as Nebraska and West Virginia, they have received nothing.The legal wrangling could be moot if the U.S. House adopts and Trump signs legislation to quickly end the federal government shutdown.
An urgent need for beneficiaries
The cascading legal rulings plus the varying responses of each state to the shutoff means people who rely on SNAP are in vastly different situations. Some have all their benefits, some have none. In states including North Carolina and Texas, beneficiaries have received partial amounts.In Pennsylvania, full November benefits went out to some people on Friday. But Jim Malliard, 41, of Franklin, said he had not received anything by Monday.Malliard is a full-time caretaker for his wife, who is blind and has had several strokes this year, and his teenage daughter, who suffered severe medical complications from surgery last year.That stress has only been compounded by the pause in the $350 monthly SNAP payment he previously received for himself, his wife and daughter. He said he is down to $10 in his account and is relying on what’s left in the pantry mostly rice and ramen.“It’s kind of been a lot of late nights, making sure I had everything down to the penny to make sure I was right,” Malliard said. “To say anxiety has been my issue for the past two weeks is putting it mildly.”The political wrangling in Washington has shocked many Americans, and some have been moved to help.“I figure that I’ve spent money on dumber stuff than trying to feed other people during a manufactured famine,” said Ashley Oxenford, a teacher who set out a “little food pantry” in her front yard this week for vulnerable neighbors in Carthage, New York.
SNAP has been the center of an intense fight in court
The Trump administration chose to cut off SNAP funding after October due to the shutdown. That decision sparked lawsuits and a string of swift and contradictory judicial rulings that deal with government power and impact food access for some 42 million Americans.The administration went along with two rulings on Oct. 31 by judges who said the government must provide at least partial funding for SNAP. It eventually said recipients would get up to 65% of their regular benefits. But it balked last week when one of the judges said it must fund the program fully for November, even if that means digging into funds the government said need to be maintained in case of emergencies elsewhere.The U.S. Supreme Court agreed to pause that order.An appeals court said Monday that full funding should resume, and that requirement is set to kick in Tuesday night unless the top court takes action again.
Congressional talks about reopening government
The U.S. Senate on Monday passed legislation to reopen the federal government with a plan that would include replenishing SNAP funds.Speaker Mike Johnson told members of the House to return to Washington to consider the deal a small group of Senate Democrats made with Republicans.Trump has not said whether he would sign it if it reaches his desk, but told reporters at the White House on Sunday that it “looks like we’re getting close to the shutdown ending.”If the deal is finalized, it’s not clear how quickly SNAP benefits might start flowing.Still, the Trump administration said in a Supreme Court filing Monday that it shouldn’t be up to the courts.“The answer to this crisis is not for federal courts to reallocate resources without lawful authority,” Solicitor General D. John Sauer said in the papers. “The only way to end this crisis which the Executive is adamant to end is for Congress to reopen the government.”
Associated Press reporter Cara Anna in Carthage, New York, contributed.
Geoff Mulvihill and Margery Beck, Associated Press
The Senate passed legislation Monday to reopen the government, bringing the longest shutdown in history closer to an end as a small group of Democrats ratified a deal with Republicans despite searing criticism from within their party.The 41-day shutdown could last a few more days as members of the House, which has been on recess since mid-September, return to Washington to vote on the legislation. President Donald Trump has signaled support for the bill, saying Monday that “we’re going to be opening up our country very quickly.”The final Senate vote, 60-40, broke a grueling stalemate that lasted more than six weeks as Democrats demanded that Republicans negotiate with them to extend health care tax credits that expire Jan. 1. The Republicans never did, and five moderate Democrats eventually switched their votes as federal food aid was delayed, airport delays worsened and hundreds of thousands of federal workers continued to go unpaid.House Speaker Mike Johnson urged lawmakers to start returning to Washington “right now” given shutdown-related travel delays, but an official notice issued after the Senate vote said the earliest the House will vote is Wednesday afternoon.“It appears our long national nightmare is finally coming to an end,” said Johnson, who has kept the House out of session since mid-September, when the House passed a bill to continue government funding.
How the stalemate ended
After weeks of negotiations, A group of three former governors New Hampshire Sen. Jeanne Shaheen, New Hampshire Sen. Maggie Hassan and Independent Sen. Angus King of Maine agreed to vote to advance three bipartisan annual spending bills and extend the rest of government funding until late January. Republicans promised to hold a vote to extend the health care subsidies by mid-December, but there was no guarantee of success.Shaheen said Monday that “this was the option on the table” after Republicans had refused to budge.“We had reached a point where I think a number of us believed that the shutdown had been very effective in raising the concern about health care,” she said, and the promise for a future vote “gives us an opportunity to continue to address that going forward.”The legislation includes a reversal of the mass firings of federal workers by the Trump administration since the shutdown began on Oct. 1. It also protects federal workers against further layoffs through January and guarantees they are paid once the shutdown is over.In addition to Shaheen, King and Hassan, Democratic Sen. Tim Kaine of Virginia, home to tens of thousands of federal workers, also voted Sunday in favor of moving forward on the agreement. Illinois Sen. Dick Durbin, the No. 2 Democrat, Pennsylvania Sen. John Fetterman and Nevada Sens. Catherine Cortez Masto and Jacky Rosen also voted yes. All other Democrats, including Senate Democratic leader Chuck Schumer of New York, voted against it.The moderates had expected a larger number of Democrats to vote with them as 10 to 12 Democratic senators had been part of the negotiations. But in the end, only five switched their votes the exact number that Republicans needed. King, Cortez Masto and Fetterman had already been voting to open the government since Oct. 1.
Many Democrats call the vote a “mistake”
Schumer, who received blowback from his party in March when he voted to keep the government open, said he could not “in good faith” support it after meeting with his caucus for more than two hours on Sunday.“We will not give up the fight,” Schumer said, adding that Democrats have now “sounded the alarm” on health care.Independent Sen. Bernie Sanders of Vermont, who caucuses with the Democrats, said giving up the fight was a “horrific mistake.” Sen. Chris Murphy, D-Conn., agreed, saying that voters who overwhelmingly supported Democrats in last week’s elections were urging them to “hold firm.”House Democrats swiftly criticized the Senate.Texas Rep. Greg Casar, the chairman of the Congressional Progressive Caucus, said a deal that doesn’t reduce health care costs is a “betrayal” of millions of Americans who are counting on Democrats to fight.Others gave Schumer a nod of support. House Democratic leader Hakeem Jeffries had criticized Schumer in March after his vote to keep the government open. But he praised the Senate Democratic leader on Monday and expressed support for his leadership throughout the shutdown.“The American people know we are on the right side of this fight,” Jeffries said Monday, pointing to Tuesday’s election results.
Health care debate ahead
It’s unclear whether the two parties would be able to find any common ground on the health care subsidies before a promised December vote in the Senate. House Speaker Mike Johnson, R-La., has said he will not commit to bringing it up in his chamber.On Monday, Johnson said House Republicans have always been open to voting to reform what he called the “unaffordable care act” but again did not say if they would vote on the subsidies.Some Republicans have said they are open to extending the COVID-19-era tax credits as premiums could skyrocket for millions of people, but they also want new limits on who can receive the subsidies. Some argue that the tax dollars for the plans should be routed through individuals.Senate Appropriations Committee Chairwoman Susan Collins said Monday that she’s supportive of extending the tax credits with changes, like new income caps. Some Democrats have signaled they could be open to that idea.“We do need to act by the end of the year, and that is exactly what the majority leader has promised,” Collins said.Other Republicans, including Trump, have used the debate to renew their yearslong criticism of the law and called for it to be scrapped or overhauled.In a possible preview, the Senate voted 47-53 along party lines Monday not to extend the subsidies for a year. Majority Republicans allowed the vote as part of a separate deal with Democrats to speed up votes and send the legislation to the House.
Associated Press writers Seung Min Kim, Michelle Price and Stephen Groves contributed to this report.
Mary Clare Jalonick, Lisa Mascaro and Kevin Freking, Associated Press
The longest federal government shutdown in U.S. history appears to be nearing an end, but not without leaving a mark on an already struggling economy.About 1.25 million federal workers haven’t been paid since October 1. Thousands of flights have been canceled, a trend that is expected to continue this week even as Congress moves toward reopening the government. Government contract awards have slowed and some food aid recipients have seen their benefits interrupted.Most of the lost economic activity will be recovered when the government reopens, as federal workers will receive back pay. But some canceled flights won’t be retaken, missed restaurant meals won’t be made up, and some postponed purchases will end up not happening at all.“Short-lived shutdowns are usually invisible in the data, but this one will leave a lasting mark,” Gregory Daco, chief economist at accounting giant EY said, “both because of its record length and the growing disruptions to welfare programs and travel.”The Congressional Budget Office (CBO) estimated that a six-week shutdown will reduce growth in this year’s fourth quarter by about 1.5 percentage points. That would cut growth by half from the third quarter. The reopening should boost first-quarter growth next year by 2.2 percentage points, the CBO projected, but about $11 billion in economic activity will be permanently lost.The previous longest government shutdown, in 2018-2019, lasted 35 days but only partially shut the government because many agencies had been fully funded. It only nicked the economy by about 0.02% of GDP, the CBO said then.The current shutdown is adding to the economy’s existing challenges, which include sluggish hiring, stubbornly elevated inflation, and President Donald Trump’s tariffs, which have caused uncertainty for many businesses. Still, few economists foresee a recession.About 650,000 federal workers didn’t work during the shutdown, which will likely boost the unemployment rate by about 0.4 percentage points in October, or to 4.7% from 4.3% in August, when the last report was released. Those workers would all then be counted as employed once the government reopens.Here are the ways the government closure is weighing on the economy:
Missed paychecks
All told, federal workers will have missed about $16 billion in wages by mid-November, the CBO estimates. That has meant less spending at stores, restaurants, and likely reduced holiday travel. Large purchases will probably be postponed, slowing the broader economy.Trump had threatened during the shutdown to not provide back pay but the deal struck in Congress would replace those lost wages once the government reopens.The shutdown has added to the Washington, D.C. area’s economic woes, where the unemployment rate was already 6% before the shutdown, after Trump’s cuts to the federal workforce this spring caused job losses. While the Washington, D.C. areaincluding the nearby suburbs in Virginia and Marylandhas the highest concentration of federal workers, most live and work outside of the nation’s capital.Federal workers make up about 5.5% of Maryland’s workforce, according to the Bipartisan Policy Center. But they also comprise 2.9% of New Mexico’s workers, 2.6% of Oklahoma’s, and 3.8% of Alaska’s.Then there are the federal contractors. Bernard Yaros, an economist at Oxford Economics, estimates they could total as many as 5.2 million, and they are not guaranteed back pay once the shutdown ends.
Flight disruptions
Airlines scrapped more than 2,000 flights by Monday evening after canceling 5,500 since Friday on orders from the Federal Aviation Administration, which is seeking to reduce the burden on overworked air traffic controllers, who have now missed two paychecks.Even before the flight cancellations, Tourism Economics, an economic consulting firm, estimated that the shutdown would reduce travel spending by $63 million a day, which means a six-week standoff would cost the travel industry $2.6 billion.The canceled flights also mean less business for hotels, restaurants, and taxi drivers. And federal employees have already pulled the plug on upcoming trips, according to Tourism Economics, which may not be able to be rescheduled even when the government does reopen.
Consumer sentiment
The shutdown has worsened Americans’ outlook on the broader economy. Declining consumer sentiment can over time reduce spending and slow growth, though in recent years Americans have kept shopping even when their outlooks turned grim.Consumer sentiment dropped to a three-year low and close to the lowest point ever recorded in a survey by the University of Michigan, reported Friday, with pessimism over personal finances and anticipated business conditions weighing on Americans.The November survey showed the index of consumer sentiment at 50.4, down a startling 6.2% from last month and a plunge of nearly 30% from a year ago.
Federal spending
While the shutdown hasn’t cut off all federal government spending, it has reduced purchases of equipment and has cut off the issuance of new contracts.Yaros estimates that about $800 million in new contracts were at risk of not being awarded each day of the shutdown.“The federal award spigot has all but turned off at the Department of Defense, NASA, and the Department of Homeland Security,” Yaros wrote.
SNAP benefits
The shutdown delayed the payment of $8 billion in monthly SNAP food aid to 42 million recipients in November, creating a significant financial disruption for many households that likely reduced spending. Some states have managed to pay full benefits for this month, though the Trump administration is still fighting over the issue in court.The deal currently under consideration in Congress to reopen the government includes full funding of SNAP benefits.
Interest rate cuts
The government shutdown cut off the flow of economic data on unemployment, inflation, and retail spending that the Federal Reserve depends on to monitor the economy’s health. Even as the government reopens, some of that data will still be delayed. As a result, the Fed may not deliver a third interest rate cut at its December meeting, which was widely expected before the shutdown.“What do you do if you’re driving in the fog? You slow down,” Fed Chair Jerome Powell said at a news conference late last month.Powell said the Fed’s interest-rate setting committee is deeply divided over whether to reduce its key rate, partly because the economy’s health is unusually cloudy right now. The government has missed two monthly jobs reports and the October inflation data, scheduled to be published Thursday, will likely never be issued.Powell said a rate cut in December was not a “foregone conclusion”and added that the lack of data could contribute to a decision by the Fed to skip a rate cut at its next meeting December 9 and 10. Fewer rate cuts could discourage borrowing and spending and weigh on the economy in the coming months.
Christopher Rugaber, AP Economics Writer
Shares in CoreWeave Inc are sinking this morning after the company revealed its third-quarter 2025 results yesterday.
While the New Jersey-based AI infrastructure firm more than doubled its revenue from the same quarter a year earlier, it also revised down its full fiscal 2025 forecast, sending its stock price tumbling.
Heres what you need to know.
Whats happened?
Yesterday, AI infrastructure company CoreWeave announced financial results for its Q3 2025, which ended on September 30.
There was some good news for the quarter, including revenue of nearly $1.4 billion (up 134% year over year) and a revenue backlog of $55.6 billion (up 271% YoY). Revenue backlog is a metric that includes future revenue that CoreWeave expects from existing client deals.
CoreWeaves main business is leasing AI hardwaremainly servers powered by Nvidias AI GPUsto AI software companies. Some of CoreWeaves most prominent customers include OpenAI and Meta.
However, that means CoreWeaves future growth depends on two primary factors: growing its client base and building massive data centers to house advanced AI servers to meet client demands.
Its that latter factor that has caused CoreWeaves stock price problems today.
Data center delay necessitates revised 2025 forecast
Unfortunately for investors, when CoreWeave announced its strong Q3 2025 revenue numbers, the company also said that it was revising down its full 2025 fiscal year guidance.
As noted by FXLeaders, CoreWeave said it now forecasts fiscal 2025 revenue of between $5.05 billion and $5.15 billion. The company had previously forecast fiscal 2025 revenues of up to $5.35 billion.
The reduced revenue forecast is due to a data center delay.
During the company’s earnings call, CEO Mike Intrator revealed that the development of a third-party data center on which CoreWeave was counting is behind schedule.
“There is a problem at one data center that’s impacting us, but there are [41 data centers] in our portfolio,” Intrator said, adding that the overwhelming majority of the data center delay should be resolved within the companys first quarter of fiscal 2026, which correlates to January through March of next year.
That data center delay will impact one of the companys clients. As reported by CNBC, CoreWeave did not name the client but said the client had agreed to keep the full value of the contract intact, meaning CoreWeave will not lose out on that revenue backlog; it will merely be delayed.
In addition to revising down its full fiscal 2025 revenue forecast, CoreWeave said it expects to end 2025 with adjusted operating income of between $690 million and $720 million and capital expenditures of $12 billion to $14 billion.
CoreWeave stock sinks nearly 10%
Despite CoreWeaves assertion that the data center issue isnt a long-term problem, the delay and disappointing guidance are affecting CoreWeave’s stock (Nasdaq: CRWV),which sank in premarket trading on Tuesday.
As of the time of this writing, CRWV shares are currently trading down almost 10% to $95.54 in premarket. Thats a low CRWV has not seen since September.
CoreWeave went public in March of this year.
Despite lowering its IPO price right before its Nasdaq debut, the companys stock has skyrocketed in 2025. In its March IPO, CRWV stock began trading at $40 per share. By June, shares had surged to $187. As of yesterdays market close, CRWV shares had risen more than 170% for the year.
But CoreWeaves double-digit stock decline this morning highlights the fact that investors are increasingly on edge about the valuations and lofty stock prices of companies operating in the AI space.
There are growing concerns about an AI bubble that could mirror the Dotcom bubble of the early 2000s.
CoreWeaves data center delay isnt a sign of any such bubble in itself, but the companys stock price fall may indicate that investor nerves are high when AI companies dont meet expectations.
Darin Fisher is a little older than the fresh-faced, newly minted PhD types you see roaming the well-appointed floors at OpenAIs second location in San Franciscos Mission Bay district.
Before arriving at the AI super-startup, he spent 25 years working on some of the most important web browsers in the history of the web: He worked on Netscape Navigator, which helped define the early consumer internet. He worked on the popular Firefox browser at Mozilla, then went to Google, where he was a member of the Chrome team. After Google, he wanted to explore alternative browsers; he did so first at Neeva (which offered an ad-free experience), then at the Browser Company, which built the influential Arc browser. The opportunity to come to OpenAI and infuse the AI model into all of this and to think about how that can really transform the experience was all kinds of super interesting to me, Fisher says.
In OpenAIs new ChatGPT Atlas browser, all tasks start with a prompt to the AI models working in the background. As the user accesses the web, the chatbot, which rides along at the right of the screen, can see the content of each webpage, answer questions about it, or take actions on it. An agent mode allows the AI to perform complex, multi-step tasks like filling out forms or shopping on the user’s behalf.
We asked Fisher about the choices, trade-offs, and innovations that went into designing OpenAI’s AI-first browser. The interview has been edited for length and clarity.
What’s the core philosophy behind Atlas?
One of the most important features of Atlas is really that chat is at the heart of it. You should start your journey with ChatGPT. Not because we work at OpenAI, but because I actually realize so many times, I kick myself why didn’t I just ask the model first? It would save me time. It should be the thing that’s there on autocomplete in the browser. It should be there so conveniently, effortlessly. This is the feedback we hear from people who’ve gotten to try Atlas.
How did you approach the design challenge of getting people to adopt new habits?
There’s this dance of the familiar as well as moments when you can optimize some things. I worked on browsers that have tried much more radical takes on browser UI, for good reasons, because there’s frustrations with a traditional browser UI. When you have all these little tabs at the top, at some point that starts to break down and you’re like, “Well, I guess I have to clean up now.” We really tried to get the basics right because people live in this thing. Not only are they used to it, but you’re working. You don’t want to be frustrated by it.
One of the big challenges of browser design is tab management. Can you explain Atlass scrolling tabs feature?
We built a classic tabs mode which works just like Chrome, but we also have a scrolling tabs mode in Atlas. What it does is it makes the tabs stay a fixed width and they start to scroll. But importantly, for this to work, new tabs enter at the left, which can be very disorienting for people. But once you get used to it, it’s kind of neat because what it means is new tabs are always opening on the left, old tabs are going off to the right. Your area of focus and what you’re working on stays on the left and all the tabs are nice and visible. What’s really cool is once you get used to this, you start accumulating a bunch of tabs and you can use the tab search feature Command+Shift+A. It’ll find your tab, and then you can zoom it back to the left.
How did you approach building on Chromium while maintaining design freedom? [Chromium is a Google-developed open-source browser project that provides the foundation of several major browsers, including Google Chrome itself.]
When people build on top of Chrome, you’re sort of constrained in some ways to the shape that it takes and the structure that it has. Not because you couldn’t change a lot of stuff, but because the more you change, the harder it is to update Chrome. What we really wanted to do was have our cake and eat it too. We came up with this clever way of essentially running Chrome almost unmodified, projecting the contents of the web pages into a Swift app [Swift is an Apple-developed programming language for building apps for Apple devices.] So Atlas could just be a pure Swift app, a relatively small app actually. It means we had this blank canvas on which to make anything look like anything we want. We were very free from a design perspective to rethink how so many things work. The main constraint is what people think a browser is and how they think it should work.
Can you walk me through the side chat feature?
When you click on links inside of ChatGPT inside of Atlas, it does this transition of moving the chat into side chat and opening the web page. This side chat . . . is now connected to the site that you’re on. You can ask questions about the site. [While shopping for couches at a retail site, for example] it could be things like, “What is the price range of your couches?” or “Who else sells something like this?” The model can go and look at the internet and tell you about all that stuff and you can just ask it a very simple question. Sometimes these websites are so cluttered too. A good example is a recipe site. You might say, “Can you just tell me the recipe?” You just ask the model to do that for you. Even on the recipe, you can be like, “I actually want to make this for four people, not six. Adjust the amounts of each portion.”
When you open a new tab, you dont immediately see the chat sidebar. You see a chat window right in the middle of the page. Why did you do it like that?
We really went with this idea of one box. You should feel like it’s a simpler, cleaner experience. When we did this, we got a lot of feedback where people were like, “Where’s my URL bar?” We discovered that we could put one thereyou just have to hover and then it will be there. Or if you’re a keyboard user and you did Command+L, it would activate. One of the innovations with Chrome was one box where you can enter URLs or searches. But if you go to Chrome and you open a new tab, you’ll actually see there are two boxesone at the top and one in the middle. We’re like, “Well, can we have one instead of two?” It was remarkable that it didn’t have to actually be in your face for that to be true. Everybody was happy. Everybody has no problem finding it.
Using agent mode, you might, for example, ask Atlas to go out and find the best deal on a plane ticket, or even go further toward a purchase.
You’re definitely asking this thing to go do stuff on your behalf, but you want to feel in control too. There’s a stop button that’s very prominent. There’s a take control button. The model is tuned to understand that it should present you with results at a certain point and now you can take it to the next step, review its work, see what it’s doing. The model can open multiple web pages in the background to do its work. Also prominently, you can choose, “Do I want this to use my authentication, my cookies, or no?” [This might be your username and password at Google, and your preferences stored as cookies.] This is actually huge because aybe you just don’t trust it yet and you want to develop some trust. You want to see what it’s going to do and you want to try it out in a safe way.
How do you think about ChatGPT search versus traditional search engines?
Google, full stop, is amazing. It’s an amazing tool. But at the same time, it works the way it works. It works a certain way. People are used to it as the tool that it is. This AI stuff is different and it’s a different kind of interaction. What we’ve done to improve ChatGPT search capabilities inside of Atlas was not just because it was important for ChatGPT, but also because it’s kind of essential when you’re approaching it from a browser lens. Sometimes you’re typing in that box because you have high navigational intent. Like, “I want DNS for the web” or “I want to go look at a product on Amazon.” I don’t need anything else other than just get me there. Google’s outstanding at that, but ChatGPT with these capabilities does a great job at that, too.
What did Sam Altman and the leadership team tell you about wanting to build a browser when they brought you in?
The focus was squarely on bringing ChatGPT to more people more readily and having it be just core to that experiencerealizing that in a browser traditionally you’re like Open tab, Go to ChatGPT.com. There’s just an extra clunkiness to that. The time’s right, you want a more streamlined experience, let’s go build it. Sam was super clear about that, which actually I really appreciate. This is a company that is rapidly putting out features. We’re often in the mode of “what can we do this month?” But this is an investment, because it’s not just what we’re going to do in Januaryit was what are we going to do in January to unlock what we could do in November? We spent all that time building a foundation and now we’re on a weekly cadence of putting out new features and new things and building on this foundation.
How did you approach testing and getting feedback during development?
We are an opinionated bunch, that’s for sure. But you want to validate your ideas. We had the internal population of OpenAI, which is not the most representative samplethese are really heavy tech folks. The kind of features that people are asking for internally would be things that we know from past experience might not be what everybody wants. We also brought in trusted testers. We brought in friends and family. There was this cohort of students and other cohortswe got feedback from different folks to help inform and understand just how people experience this. We had this guiding principle that people can only learn so many things differently. You’ve got to start out with the familiar.
What’s been the feedback since launch?
I think we’ve gotten an enormous amount of positive feedback. There’s general excitement around these agentic browsers. Maybe some degree of people wanting to just kick the tires and see what it’s all about and maybe some level of skepticism too, but also enthusiasm, generally . . . The feedback really hasn’t been surprising at all. For example, we know that it’s a lot to ask for people’s habits to change on anything. Bringing ChatGPT front and center in the experience is a big change actually. For many people, early tech adopters, this feels very natural and they actually remark at how comfortable it feels that they’re [the browser and the AI] side by side. But I think for most people, they’re still early on that journey to be honest.
What features are you working on for the future?
Every week we put out a new version addressing feedback. We’ve already addressed some of the top feedback that we got. There’s a lot of stuff that was in the hopper that we paired back because we didn’t want to just go outwe wanted to go out with as polished of an experience as we could. Adding a model picker in the side chat was onethey already added that. Vertical tabs is another feature that we’re getting a lot of requests for.
What was the biggest design challenge in Atlas?
Thematically, probably one of the biggest arguments was just, “Is this in or out? How do you keep it simple?” Pretty soon if you’re not careful, you have the kitchen sink, you have the Swiss Army knife. You’re trying to satisfy everybody, but you satisfy nobody. You don’t want to overwhelm at the start. You want it to be familiar, easy. They [users] can do things that maybe aren’t the most efficient, but that’s okay. Then they can start to learn how to leverage more efficient ways. As a user, it keeps you in control. When I want to use chat, it’s there for me. But if I don’t want to be using chat on a web page, I don’t have to. I think that’s very important. You should feel empowered.
How do you design a product that has a deep set of features but still looks simple?
There’s this idea of progressive disclosure in design. [We] have a new product that can do all these things and maybe you’re really eager to try to tell everybody about it, but if when they open the product the first time, it’s telling you about all the things you can do, suddenly you’re like, “I don’t know what to even do.” Progressive disclosure can mean that as you use the product it might advertise progressively different features, but I also think of it as there’s a bunch of Easter eggs for you to discover. What do they do? They give you superpowers and help you feel like you can do better, but they aren’t in your face so you still get a product that’s approachable.
Looking ahead, what excites you most about the future of Atlas?
This is the beginning of a journey. It’s going to continue evolving. I think it’s also going to continue evolving as ChatGPT itself evolves. All these things are being built in tandem by different teams at OpenAI. A lot of ChatGPT’s best features, including things like deep research and study modeall of those are in Atlas too. There’s all these modesmodel picker, tools that you can invoke. At some level, those are powerful toolsbut do you want to try them out? But over time, the model absorbs some of that. There’s a natural tension there. You give people a palette of things, but you also want to keep it simple. Ultimately, it’s just meant to be ask the model to do stuff for you.
Ikea’s new CEO Juvencio Maeztu is calling to tell me about the Ingka Group’s latest earnings (that’s the parent company behind Ikea). As it turns out, there are worse fates than a company making a little less money than it did last year.
In August, Ingka Group announced that its long-time CEO Jesper Brodin would be stepping down, as Maeztu took the role. An economist by training, Maeztu has worked at the company for more than 25 years, and brings a powerful international perspective to the positionhaving started as a store manager in Madrid, before eventually taking over as CEO of Ikea India. For the past seven years, hes served as deputy CEO and CFO under Brodin.
We spoke around the release of Ingkas 2025 financial earnings, which Maeztu characterizes to me as mostly flat. Revenue is down 0.9% (to 41.5 billion) as the company fights inflation to keep prices low. Tariffs have yet to fully enter the equation in these figuresbut Trumps 50% tariffs on furniture announced in September were significant enough that Ikea raised prices to help offset them.
On the brighter side, store traffic was up 1.3%, online sales were up 4.6%, and overall item sales grew 1.6%.
In our conversationrepresenting some of Maetzus first public comments since being appointed to the positionhe detailed his biggest priorities for the company, while addressing the challenges of operating a budget-friendly furniture business in a volatile global economy.
Now that youre officially CEO, what is your immediate focus for Ikea?
The announcement was made mid-August, and the last three months I have been traveling around many countries to learn about the reality from the shop floor, and then talking with consumers and colleagues and coworkers. And that has cemented three things that are quite important to deliver to the care vision (that caring for people and the planet is core to Ikea’s purpose). Because we will not change the care vision. We will not change the business idea.
I will keep putting a lot of focus on growth; not growth only in mature markets or more European-based growth, but many markets, U.S. included, and India and China. Growth is a way to be more present in homes. So growth is not connected with profit to the shareholder, its connected with affordability for the many people. You could say we can never achieve our vision if we don’t grow. So we have to substantially grow.
The second thing is to double down . . . on the need for cost transformation . . . and the need to keep costs low. Because the best frame of low price is a low cost. You cannot be a low-price company if you are not a low-cost company. And I will double down on the resilience of the company.
And then the third one is simplicity. So normally, big companies like us start to be bureaucratic, and from the leadership perspective, we have to learn how to lead the company in a more agile way, faster decision making, less layers, and at the same time, more agility in the decision making.
We have a good brand, we have a good omni channel capabilities today. We have amazing cultural values with high coworker engagement, super high right now. And then at the same time, we have a strong balance sheet. So you could say we have a lot of assets that allow us to really double down in the growth, in the cost transformation, and the simplicity.
Looking over your earnings, where is that revenue dip coming from?
We are selling more quantities at a lower price.
If I take one step back, we measure performance in four dimensions. So one of the four is a financial dimension, and I will comment on that. But the other three are the climate dimension (we call it better planet for all), the social dimension (better life for people), and the consumer dimension (better homes for the customer).
Today, as we release the financial result. Its almost flat revenue0.9% lower, almost flat, which is 41.5 billion (approximately $47.9 billion). However, whats happening is exactly what we wanted to happen, because our physical visitation is growing, our online visitation is growing, and our [sold] quantities are growing.
So basically, [revenue is down] because we have kept low prices. But then we are very happy [about] the underlying business.
For us, growth is not a mechanism to pay more dividends to the shareholder. Because we are owned by a foundation. So 85% of the profit remains in the company, and 15% is the dividend to support the charitable activities. . . . We normally say profit gives us resources to keep investing in the future and low price.
How are general inflation and other factors affecting your supply chain?
The overall supply chain is quite stabilized now. We came from many disruptions in the last year, and that disruption is still happening at the end of this fiscal year, but now it’s quite stable. So we are not increasing prices in general.
We constantly hear that physical retail is challenged, or on the brink of collapse. But I noticed Ingka centersyour malls, basicallyhad an influx of new foot traffic this year. I’m curious about your take on large-scale retail right now.
People still have the need to socialize. People still have the need to go out. That’s why it’s important that we call it a meeting placenot necessarily a shopping centerand when you visit our meeting place its a way to connect with the communities . . . to create traffic with engagement and food and events. So in a world that is omnichannel and online, people still have the need to socialize. So that’s why we keep seeing more visitors in the shopping center and more visitors in the Ikea physical store.
Then what is really important is that the visitor still finds a good value for money. That’s why we dont have too much in discount activity on Black Friday. We are more trying to have everyday low prices. And that’s why we keep investing in that. So somehow customers recognize that, you offer them a fun day out in the meeting place, shopping center, the Ikea store, and then you keep prices low. You know, cost of living is increasing, not only in U.S., but anywhere in the world.
The cost of housing is increasing all over the world, so [our] care visionbetter life at home by providing more affordable home furnishingsits not only timeless. Its even more relevant today than some years ago.
Now that theyve stabilized a bit, how do you see the impact of tariffs affecting Ikea?
I think the entry point is not only tariffs. The entry point is that companies who operate globally, like us, are living in a more complex world, in a more volatile world. Sometimes because of tariffs, sometimes because of currencies, sometimes because of the limitation in global trade or geopolitics. But we need to learn as a company, how can we build the resilience to keep navigating the circumstances?
And that’s why we distinguish what is the short term and the long term. And for us, the long term is to build the resilience in the company, and the low cost in the company, that can keep us in the low price agenda.
And then, of course, we always try to mitigate the impactnot necessarily when we have to increase prices because of tariffsnormally . . . we try to absorb the impact. But I would say it&8217;s not only tariffs in U.S. There are many reasons why global trade is a bit volatile, but in the long term, we will keep growing. In Europe, in the U.S., in China and India, all over the world.
This conversation has been edited for length and clarity.
Every year, the $463 billion global footwear industry make 20 billion pairs of shoes for just 8 billion humans. Since virtually none of them are recyclable, they will end up clogging up landfills around the world.
For decades now, the fashion industry has been on a mission to make products recyclable. But shoes have been a much harder puzzle to crack than clothing. While garments are made from just a handful of materials, shoes are far more complex objects.
A sneaker can be made of 50 different materials from foam insoles to leather exteriors to cotton laces, all glued together with adhesives. A handful of brands have prototyped one-off recyclable shoes, like Adidas’s Futurcraft Loop or Nike’s IPSA Link Axis. But the shoe industry is far from recycling at scale.
But change is on the horizon. A group of sustainability experts wants to make shoe recycling as widespread as recycling paper or aluminum. Their solution: Radical collaboration among the biggest shoe rivals in the world.
Yuly Fuentes-Medel, a fashion sustainability expert who runs MIT’s Climate Project, has just launched The Footwear Collective (TFC), a non-profit devoted to building circular solutions for the footwear industry. She’s convened eight founding shoe companiesincluding Brooks, On, New Balance, and Steve Maddenand is recruiting more. It has also partnered with Goodwill to collect large quantities of shoes at scale.
The sustainability teams within these organizations meet with each other on a regular basis to tackle a pipeline of 50 different projects with achievable goals, like working with industrial recyclers to develop the technology to recycle shoes and finding secondary markets for the resulting recycled materials.
“The shoe industry is competitive, and these brands are rivals,” says Fuentes-Medel. “But by sharing costs, data, and infrastructure, they can achieve the sustainability goals that have eluded them for years.”
[Photo: Footwear Collective]
Collaboration is Crucial
The fashion industry is one of the biggest polluters in the world. Over the past three decades, fast fashion has driven down the price of both clothing and shoes, allowing consumers to cycle through products quickly. Extracting large quantities of raw materials and shipping them to factories all over the world to turn them into products results in roughly 8% of global carbon emissions, accelerating climate change.
For years, the industry has realized that circularity is one solution. Recovering the materials in old shoes and clothes, then transforming them back into materials for the fashion industry would dramatically reduce both waste and carbon emissions. But to achieve this circular system, you need a lot of infrastructure. First, you need to build out large, high-tech factories that can process these materials, and then you need to develop ways of collecting old products from consumers.
In the world of clothing, companies like Circ have only just developed the technology to recycle polyester cotton blends, the most common material in the apparel industry, and is now building out factories around the world. But the shoe industry is much farther away from a similar solution.
Fuentes-Medel observed that the footwear industry was struggling with this challenge. So in 2023, she hosted a footwear circularity summit at MIT, and was surprised by how much interest there was: Sustainability experts from 45 different shoe brands showed up. As they discussed possible solutions, Fuentes-Medel wrote up a “Footwear Manifesto” that laid out the obstacles to circularity and how to overcome them, such as building markets for recycled materials and ways of collecting old shoes. But one thing was clear from this summit: None of this could happen without collaboration.
“This approach makes sense,” says Katherine Petrecca, GM of footwear innovation at New Balance. “We’re working together on pre-competitive spaces. All of us will win if we have the infrastructure to collect and recycle shoes.”
After the event, brands were clamoring to continue this work. So Fuentes-Medel launched The Footwear Collective, with eight founding brands who pay dues to fund the project. Sustainability teams within these organizations meet every week with one another, as well as with other companies, to work towards solutions across seven pathways, including getting more value from waste, designing for circularity, and influencing consumer behavior. And together, they have come up with projects to work on, including finding a use for a particular recycled material to creating marketing materials that get consumers excited about recycling shoes.
[Photo: Footwear Collective]
The Problem of Scale
Many footwear brands have been on a mission to become more sustainable. But when a brand is going at it alone, there are many hurdles to achieving goals. “Recycling can only work at scale,” says David Kemp, director of corporate responsibility at Brooks.
For one thing, it will require a lot of work to develop the technology to automate the disassembly of shoes at scale, then recover their component materials. “Shoes companies hire teams of engineers to design and develop their products,” says Fuentes-Medel. “You really can’t think of them in the same category as clothing. They have to live up to much higher technical performance standards.”
Kemp says that the recycling industry isnot incentivized to invest in developing this kind of high tech recycling facility because there isn’t a big market for the recycled materials that would come out of this process. For footwear brands, this would mean working with their factories to start using recycled foams, and leather, and hardware. “Recyclers are for-profit businesses,” he says. “Through the Collective, we can finally show recyclers that there’s business volume here worth investing in.”
A Pilot Program
Then, there’s the problem of how you collect large volumes of old shoes to recycle. Some brands, like Brooks, invite customers to bring back their old shoes once they’ve reached the end of their life. But Kemp says that participation in these programs is very low. “Historically, only around 3% of customers bring their shoes back to us,” he says. “This isn’t enough volume to bring to a factory to ask them to develop a recycling program for us.”
Again, Fuentes-Medel believes that the solution is to collect shoes from across many brands. And there’s already an organization that is doing this: Goodwill. TFW has decided to work with Goodwill’s California division, since the state has strong Extender Producer Responsibility (ERP) laws which mandate that companies fund and manage the collection, recycling, and reuse of their products. As a result, California can fund more sophisticated recycling operations.
With this new project, consumers are invited to drop off shoes from any brand at participating Goodwill locations in California. Shoes that cannot be resold will be sent to three recyclers, where they will be shredded. The shredded material will be separated by weight and density, so they can be sorted by material. (Rubber, foam, and cotton all have different densities.) Then the recycler can determine what materials can be recycled and sold. “We’re aligning with California, since we can help put their legislative policy into practice,” says Petrecca, of New Balance.
This is just one of many projects that TFC is working on right now. Other groups are working on changing the way brands design shoes to make them easier to disassemble, without losing any of their performance qualities. “We’re running two offenses,” Petrecca says. “We’re designing for what’s next, but we also need to figure out what to do with the billions of shoes that are already out there.”
For Fuentes-Medel, collecting data is crucial throughout all of these early pilots and tests. From all her years immersed in MIT’s quantitative approach to sustainability, she believes it is important to track exactly what happens so that they can measure impact. “We if don’t base our strategy on data, it’ll be just another greenwashing initiative that gets press but changes nothing,” she says.
But ultimately, Fuentes-Medel is optimistic that this small but committed collective is building a movement. So as TFW continues to grow and communicate with consumers, it wants to make circularity exciting and tangible, thanks to good storytelling. “Movements are built on joy,” she says. “Collective action depends on everyone feeling motivated to do their little bit, from sending in one pair of shoes to telling one friend.”
The newest plaza in Valencia, Spain, has everything one might expect from a public space in a temperate seaside Spanish city. Its five acres contain green space, a playground, ball courts, and walking paths, and the plaza connects to a new market hall, with restaurants and bars serving a wide range of local specialties.
Next to all thisand the real reason for any of it existing at allis Roig Arena, the new multipurpose stadium built for the men’s and women’s professional basketball teams of the Valencia Basket Club.
The basketball arena is hardly the second thought here, but it’s much more a piece of this broader civic space than the typical pro sports facility. Especially compared to the U.S., where the stadium is often the only element of such a project, Roig Arena and its public amenities offer a refreshing take on a form of urban development that favors the “development” over the “urban.”
[Photo: Hufton + Crow Photography]
Open since September, the project was designed by the international architecture firm Hok and Valencia-based Erre. With a fluid, scaly facade of precisely angled ceramic tiles, the arena has an unmistakable presence in a neighborhood just outside the center of the city. But because it was sunk down into the ground, the arena is actually much shorter than most of the surrounding neighborhood, softening the unavoidable intrusion of such a big building.
There’s room inside for more than 15,000 people during basketball games, and upwards of 20,000 when the venue is used for concerts, which, according to its business plan, represents a large chunk of its calendar. Even more significant is the market hall, which is open every day, even when there’s no basketball game or concert happening.
[Photo: Hufton + Crow Photography]
In contrast to stadiums in the U.S., Valencia’s was a relative bargain at 400 million, or about $461 million. (The Intuit Dome, the flashy new home of the NBA’s Los Angeles Clippers, for instance, cost more than $2 billion.) The project was financed entirely by Juan Roig, owner of the Valencia Basket Club and majority owner of Spain’s largest supermarket chain, Mercadona. It’s a unique financial arrangement in Spain, where most sports arenas are publicly financed.
The Valencia basketball arena’s design was led by Erre partner Amparo Roig, who also happens to be the daughter of Juan Roig. “He wanted to do something important for Valencia and for Spain,” she says. “It was very important to be sustainable economically.”
[Photo: Hufton + Crow Photography]
More than an arena
Making it financially sustainable required focusing on ways the arena could be more than just a sports venue. In the U.S., arenas typically host professional basketball and hockey teams as their anchor users, with concerts and performances as a substantial side business, and fine dining and other concessions adding to the bottom line during events.
[Photo: Hufton + Crow Photography]
In Spain, hockey is not part of the mix, which meant the arena had to be designed to make concerts and events sit on almost equal footing as basketball games, and have concessions that would actually draw more than just the captured audience of a sports game or concert. One sit-down restaurant in the complex specializes in paella and grilled fish. Another offers croquettes and Valencian flatbreads. “We’re not doing hot dogs here,” Amparo Roig says.
[Photo: Hufton + Crow Photography]
In other ways, the arena is a typical sports and concert venue, with priority given to spectators’ view lines, easy ingress and egress, and comfort inside the space. Roig took the designer’s prerogative and included more restrooms for women than men. Specially designed piping systems allow beer vendors to operate on the floor level during concerts. “Subtle things like that make sure that it is very much a party building when it’s in party mode,” says John Rhodes, director of sports and entertainment at Hok.
The venue also has its share of luxury lounges. But unlike the stuffy, windowless lounges inside most arenas, Roig Arena’s were designed to stretch to the exterior edge of the building, much of which is open to the usually warm air of Valencia.
“What we tried to do was actually ensure that the lounges were almost connected with the outside, with this beautiful climate,” Rhodes says.
[Photo: Hufton + Crow Photography]
An outdoor arrangement
That connection to the outside extends throughout the building. Its facade, made of 8,600 ceramic scales, was carefully configured to block the intensity of the sun while still allowing coastal breezes to enter the building. This partially cools the building, cutting down on its energy use. A rooftop solar array also reduces its energy demands.
[Photo: Hufton + Crow Photography]
The openness of the Valencia basketball arena’s facade raised some concerns from locals. This, after all, is an existing neighborhood; a local school was relocated to create room for the project. As such, the designers focused heavily on community outreach, and on addressing issues that residents raised. The big one was noisea challenge that forced Madrid’s main stadium to cancel concerts after the roar of a Taylor Swift concert spilled out across the surrounding neighborhood. “We made a lot of effort that the sound didn’t go outside, not through the roof and not through the facade,” Roig says.
It’s part of the project’s civic gesture. In the end, it’s still a big event venue that will always stick out a bit in a city with thousands of years of history. But among the sports stadiums being built around the world, it does at least try to soften the impact, and possibly add more than it takes. “As a designer, it’s very, very rare that you get to introduce such significant public realm into a heritage city,” Rhodes says.
Affordable housing has gone in search of collaborations. Across the country, developers and cities have found a solution in pairing housing with unexpected projects to save money and build more vibrant communities.
[Photo: Juan Tallo]
A wave of libraries, fire stations, and even Costco stores have been built below or adjacent to much-needed, lower-cost apartments. Now a new development in the Southern California city of San Juan Capistrano is sharing a lot with City Hall.
Salida del Sol, a $31 million, 49-unit supportive housing development by Jamboree Housing Corp., opened this past July on a 2.2-acre site downtown. At a time when federal support for homeless services is wavering and cities in California and elsewhere have taken more conservative approaches to unhoused communities, San Juan Capistranos decision to place housing next to the seat of city government sends a strong message.
According to Mayor Troy Bourne, it was a perfect opportunity to marry strategic development and attack a growing problem in the city and region, all while avoiding the typical pushback such developments often provoke. Supportive housingwhich combines accessible, affordable homes with a suite of social services to help individuals navigate challenges such as chronic homelessnesstends to attract significant angst from nearby neighbors.
[Photo: Juan Tallo]
This says to the community, Well go first, we trust this to go well, Bourne says. These developments arent going to be universally popular in a community. People want this problem figured out far away from their front door. Putting this next to City Hall says not only are we supportive, but were putting it on our front porch.
Jamboree, which manages approximately 11,000 units across Southern California, has never seen a project utilize government land and pair up with such a symbolic civic building, says CEO Laura Archuleta. The city was able to both provide land at a competitive rate and help finance the construction via a municipal fund to support affordable housing. The old City Hall building had been deteriorating for decades and needed a refresh, which coincided with the citys push to add more supportive housing.
[Photo: Juan Tallo]
More importantly, Archuleta says, the potential for interaction, observation, and understanding at the new site provides immense social value, giving lawmakers and local residents a more realistic impression of the challenges of rehabilitation, and the difference such housing projects can make. Law enforcement and local officials will get a more accurate sense of the challenges and lives of the unhoused, while those living at Salida del Sol may gain more trust of local police.
I see compassion and learning taking place on both sides, Archuleta says. Thats an added benefit.
[Photo: Juan Tallo]
She says theres already interest from other communities in California, including discussions around another co-development on a city hall campus in East Los Angeles County, and plans to build another building on a senior center campus.
The challenge in building this kind of deeply affordable housing includes combining a variety of funding sourcesSalida del Sol utilizes state and local subsidies as well as housing voucher funding from the federal governmentand finding a site.
Especially in a wealthier community like San Juan Capistrano, finding land that isnt prohibitively expensive remains a challenge, as well as persevering through neighborhood pushback. There were some local business owners wary of the residents hanging out near their storefronts, Archuleta says, but Jamboree mitigated that with community outreach and education and didnt face widespread opposition.
[Photo: Juan Tallo]
Jamboree and other supportive housing providers passionately believe in the value of a housing-first approach to giving the unhoused a place to recover and access social services; a 2017 study completed with researchers at nearby University of California, Irvine, found it was more cost-effective for cities to provide housing to the homeless, as opposed to the various costs associated with medical and criminal issues that come from not having a permanent home.
[Photo: Juan Tallo]
Once the city and developers decided on a location for Salida del Sol, the design went through a few iterations. For one version, the housing would have been on the second floor above City Hall. At another point, it became clear the supportive housing wouldnt fit on the lot with a building that contained a full city council chambers. To make room, local leaders converted a nearby community center so it could double as a chamber room when needed. The final layout placed the resident entrance on the opposite side of the lot from the City Hall entrance.
[Photo: Juan Tallo]
Archuleta says the project includes full wraparound services such as access to social managers and other support for the residents. Its a big deal to know the city manager works next door and can simply pick up the phone and call her if he sees a resident having a hard time. According to Bourne, placing unhoused people near city services, as well as in the middle of downtown near transit and jobs, offers the connection and assistance they need to get back on their feet.
You cant throw money or a building at a problem. At the end of the day you need human capital, he says. Were providing access to jobs, a train station, and support. Presenting someone with that I think is a real solution.
Bourne adds: We would do it again in a heartbeat. This has been a huge win.
