The fortunes of major quantum computing firms turned negative this week as share prices sankin some cases by double digits.
The so-called Quantum Four publicly traded companiesRigetti Computing, IonQ, Quantum Computing Inc, and D-Wave Quantumsaw their stock prices tumble on Thursday. And as of this writing, all four companies are down even lower in premarket trading on Friday.
Berkeley, California-based Rigetti (NASDAQ: RGTI) has seen the biggest drop, with its stock price falling almost 15% on Thursday, October 16. As of this writing, the stock was down another 7.65% during the premarket session.
Shares of IonQ (NYSE: IONQ) were down by a similar amount on Thursday, although their 2.23% drop on Friday has not been quite as steep.
Quantum Computing Inc (NASDAQ: QUBT) fell by 11.73% on Thursday, while D-Wave (NYSE: QBTS) was down 9.65%.
Why are quantum computing stocks down?
There doesn’t seem to have been any market-moving negative news specific to the quantum computing space. In fact, D-Wave had just announced on Wednesday a $12 million deal to bring its much-hyped Advantage2 computer to Italy.
However, the broader stock market experienced shocks on Thursday after regional bank Zions Bancorporation accused some of its borrowers of fraud and warned that it would take a large loss, as the Wall Street Journal reported.
This disclosure has sparked fears about the credit health of regional banks more broadly, and those fears appear to be spilling into the markets.
Stock futures were all in retreat on Friday morning as investors continue to digest the news. In the meantime, some may be gravitating toward safe-haven assets like gold, which just set yet another record this week when it topped $4,300 per ounce.
Quantum computing investors may be profit-taking
All four of the major quantum computing firms have had enormous runs over the last 12 months, with shares of Rigetti soaring almost 5,000% over that period.
With markets turning negative and troubling signals emerging from the banking sector, it’s natural that investors in quantum computing might be inclined to sell off some of their shares while profits are high.
Although quantum computers are seen by many experts as a transformative technology that could reshape the industry, the space is still highly speculative, and some have argued that the stocks are currently overvalued.
What happens next is anyone’s guess.
Hello again from Fast Company and thanks for reading Plugged In. Before I go any further, a bit of quick self-serving promotion: This week, we published our fifth annual Next Big Things in Tech list. Featuring 137 projects and people in 31 categories, its our guide to technologies that are already reshaping business and life in general, with plenty of headroom to go further in the years to come. None of them are the usual suspectsand many have largely flown under the radar. Take a look, and youll come away with some discoveries.
Two weeks ago in this space, I wrote about Sora, OpenAIs new social network devoted wholly to generating and remixing 10-second synthetic videos. At the time of launch, the company said its guardrails prohibited the inclusion of living celebrities, but also declared that it didnt plan to police copyright violations unless owners explicitly opted out of granting permission. Consequently, the clips people shared were rife with familiar faces such as Pikachu and SpongeBob.
Not surprisingly, that policy gave Hollywood fits. Quickly changing course, OpenAI tweaked its algorithm to reject prompts that clearly reference copyrighted IP. A handful of high-profile Sora members have used its Cameo feature to create shareable AI versions of themselves, including iJustine, Logan Paul, Mark Cuban, and OpenAIs own Sam Altman. Theyre everywhere on the service. But with other current celebs off the table, the Sora-obsessed turned to one of the few remaining available sources of cultural touchstones: dead people.
That too has proven controversial. Most notably, the daughters of George Carlin, Martin Luther King Jr., Robin Williams, and Malcolm X have all decried the use of Sora to create synthetic videos of their fathers. Please, just stop sending me AI videos of Dad, wrote Zelda Williams on Instagram. If youve got any decency, just stop doing this to him and to me, to everyone even, full stop.
I am sympathetic to their angst. In 2021, a genealogy site called MyHeritage presaged the Sora era by launching a feature called Deep Nostalgia that let you turn old family photographs into brief videos. Out of curiosity, I uploaded a photo of a deceased relative. The moment I saw the results, I regretted having done so. Being constantly exposed to AI simulacrums of your parent created by random strangers must be agonizing.
In response to concerns about bad-taste AI resurrections, OpenAI told The Washington Posts Tatum Hunter and Drew Harwell that it would allow representatives of the recently deceased to block Sora depictions. But the company didnt specify what it considered to be recent.
Whatever its definition, its not going to make everyone happy. The aforementioned famous fathers died anywhere from 1965 (Malcolm X) to 2014 (Williams). They surely wont fall under a recency exception. Yet the old bit of wisdom tragedy plus time equals comedywhich apparently originated with another dead person, comedian Steve Allendoesnt always hold true. It depends on the context.
Even more than a decade later, Robin Williamss death by suicide still feels like an incalculable tragedy. I have not run across any videos of him on Sora, and would prefer I never do. But I dont feel the same way about Queen Elizabeth II, who made it to 96 and was spry until her 2022 passing. Actually, I thoroughly enjoyed a jag of Sora remixes that began with a clip of her praising the cheese puffs at Costco (delightfully orange) and went on to show her relishing other delicacies in various venues around the world.
Some of these clips made me LOL, not figuratively but literally. In fact, the only reason I peruse Sora at all is because an overwhelming percentage of the items in my feed are fanciful and at least aspirationally funny. AI slop of the sort that striveshowever clumsilyfor realism is scarce on the service. The same is hardly true on other social networks such as Facebook and TikTok, which are infested with machine-generated kindhearted celebrities and cute animals.
Im not saying that Sora is consistently riotous. Ive scrolled through a lot of videos of MLKand Mister Rogers, Bob Ross, and othersin which the only point is that theyre mouthing some anodyne term they wouldnt have used, or talking about Sora itself. That gets tiresome fast, and makes me at least slightly queasy. It might even be slop. Its just not the sum total of Sora.
I have not been above making my own Sora videos depicting the departed. Inspired by the fact that Orson Welles once recorded a radio commercial for frozen peas, I prompted for a video depicting him filming such an ad. It came out entertaining, in part because Soras version of Welles reminded me of the late John Candys wonderful impression of him. Other users remixed the clip into ones showing Welles endorsing everything from twine to camp chairs, starring less and less convincing approximations of the legendary actor-director. Maybe you had to be there. But I found it to be a rewarding if minor act of collaborative creativity, not a regrettable coarsening of the internet.
All in all, encouraging people to channel their AI-video-generating energy into clips that are playful, genuinely social, and cordoned off from reality, as Sora does, seems like a positive development to me. Still, I try to show grace toward the feelings of others and would accept more restrictive policies on the use of deceased celebrities. Maybe the service could permit them only if nobody alive ever met the person in question. Cleopatra and Abraham Lincln would pass that test; Marilyn Monroe and Albert Einstein would not. (Thats before you get to the fact that the estates of some celebrities have deals with licensing companies that probably arent thrilled with Soras unauthorized use, such as CMG Worldwide, which represents the Monroe and Einstein estates.)
If nothing else, building new guardrails around specific categories of famed individuals no longer with us would be an interesting challenge for some engineer at OpenAI. I cant see the company investing much effort in it. But in a strange way, its done the world a favor by forcing us to confront questions like this while the stakes remain relatively low. AI is only going to get better at deepfaking people, famous and otherwise. Better to figure out how we feel about that now, before the synthetic dead folks are truly indistinguishable from the real thing.
Youve been reading Plugged In, Fast Companys weekly tech newsletter from me, global technology editor Harry McCracken. If a friend or colleague forwarded this edition to youor if you’re reading it on FastCompany.comyou can check out previous issues and sign up to get it yourself every Friday morning. I love hearing from you: Ping me at hmccracken@fastcompany.com with your feedback and ideas for future newsletters. I’m also on Bluesky, Mastodon, and Threads, and you can follow Plugged In on Flipboard.
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We are in an era of strategic silenceno longer in the age of the activist CEO. Instead, business leaders are being told to lie low and stay in their lane to avoid unwanted attention, including from the White House. In the wake of Jimmy Kimmels removal from ABC, CEOs are reportedly turning down press and speaking opportunities. Today, leaders are faced with the question of when to speak up . . . and when to stay strategically silent in order to protect their constituents.
Reverend Mariann Budde is an expert on speaking up. She was thrust into the national spotlight during President Trumps inauguration when she preached a sermon urging him to have mercy upon the people in our country who are scared now. In the weeks that followed, Budde was publicly criticized by President Trump, and received both hate mailas well as an overwhelming amount of gratitude for speaking up.
Budde believes bravery can be learned. She is the author of How We Learn to Be Brave, a book about what courage looks like in our lives, and how we can cultivate it. Shell be releasing an adaptation for younger readers, We Can Be Brave, in late October.
Reverend Budde sat down with Fast Company to discuss how leaders should think about speaking up in an environment where doing so has very real consequences.
In this paid Premium story, youll:
Hear how Reverend Buddes decision to speak out against President Trump affected herboth negatively and positively
Understand the time and place leaders should speak out
Get advice for dealing with the aftermath of speaking up
[The following conversation has been edited for clarity.]
How can leaders distinguish between when its necessary to speak up, versus when its actually not worth the risk and, in fact, foolhardy?
It’s a very important question. And if there were a formula then it would be easy, right? We would all know. And part of the uncertainty and the risk is that we don’t know.
Is this an important timeeither for our personal integrity, the well-being of others, or the interests of our community or businessto speak out? Is this a time when we have reputational strength and wherewithal to withstand anticipated blowback?
You don’t have to rise to every occasion, if it’s not wise. I think in times like this, these are serious questions to ask, because whole constituencies are at risk.
However, there are times when we self-censor or when we step back unnecessarily, out of the anticipation of consequences that may or may not be real. There are dangers when we all take the safe route.
It leaves a big gap for really unhealthy dynamics in society to have free reign. I think we are at risk of seeing some of that now, to be honest.
Whats the cost to society if we all take the safe route?
Unfortunately, in the beginning, you don’t see it unless you are near a vulnerable population, which is why proximity to those who are most impacted by the large societal movements is so important. I live in Washington, D.C., and people ask me: What’s it like in Washington now?
It really depends on where you’re standing. For some people, life is just fine, and for other people, it is a living terror.
How do you decide when to use your voice?
Carefully. I don’t speak up every day. I did not and I don’t speak up on everything. I weigh my very limited public impact potential carefully.
I try to stay in my lane, which is where spiritual values that I represent are in alignment with the democratic aspirations of our country. When I speak up, I do so from that foundation, and also from a constituency base that I personally represent.
Whats a time when you didnt speak up and wish you had?
I wake up almost every day thinking of human inflicted starvation in Gaza. I am asked repeatedly to speak out, and I have done so very rarely, in part because I have very deep ties within the Jewish community here in Washington and in this country.
I recognize not only the complexity of the situation, but also the impact that things I might say or do. The Archbishop of the Anglican church in Jerusalem asks us sometimes not to say anything because it just makes things worse for them.
But I tell you, it doesn’t feel good to be quiet sometimes. Not that I have any illusions in this particular political environment that I would make a difference, which is another calculation I make: If I have absolutely no chance of affecting change by what I say, I have to decide if it’s worth the cost.
You have spoken up in a very public way that has thrust you into the national spotlight. What was the impact on you personally?
Well, first of all, it was a very unusual opportunity that was given to me to preach at the post inaugural prayer service. In terms of the upside, that was a privilege. The downside, it was obviously hard. It cost me a lot to think that through.
I clearly offended the President and his inner circle, and they took the opportunity to make that known and it set in motion an onslaught of reaction for about three weeks. Our entire church was flooded with some pretty mean-spirited and false accusations. So that was the hard part.
The other side to it was also a huge outpouring of gratitude, the likes of which I’ve never experienced. Boxes and boxes of mailso much we couldn’t open it. People wrote me letters that began with, I’m not a religious person, but I wanted to tell you how much what you said meant to me. Thank you for reminding people that my child is a human.
What advice do you have for people who do want to use their voice in a very public way, such as the way you have? Maybe people such as other leaders?
Its very helpful to be grounded. For three or four days, you’re at the height of all this energy and attention, and then the world goes silent. And it’s time to take out the garbage and remember that you forgot 17 things on your to-do list.
Its helpful to remember while theres a response to you, your life is rooted somewhere else.
We’re not the first generation of Americans to experience significant pulling back from values that we thought had been well-established. It was no picnic in the early 1920s when resegregation was introduced into this country. What did the people do then, and what can we do now?
It’s also good to have a sense of humor, and a couple of children around to keep you grounded.
We are at a time of deep disconnection and polarization. What does good leadership look like right now, especially if youre leading people who are deeply divided?
We don’t realize how influenced we have become by the contempt thats poisoning our society. We can’t have conversations with people who differ from us in ways that don’t dehumanize and belittle one another. If we can’t figure out how to talk to each other across our differences, we will never, ever solve the problems that we’re facing as a society.
You do have to speak up in the face of hatred and intolerance, but how you do it matters. You have to meet that knd of intolerance with firm conviction and persuasionand yet not robbing that person of their inherent dignity as well.
What does it mean to be brave?
From our earliest days as human beings, we have to and are summoned to do things that we have never done before. Stepping into something that is unfamiliar carries some degree of risk, and yet this is the miracle of our existence.
Even though we’re afraid, we know exactly what we’re supposed to do. Sometimes we’re really excited because we feel like we’re in our element and we can do this. Other times, we’re terrified. We don’t know if we can do it. And we learn sometimes that we can’t, in fact, do that thing, and we fail.
Then the most important learning is what is the brave moment after failure or disappointment or making a mistake? I find that the brave or the courageous call in those times is to step up, learn, wipe off whatever humiliation or wounding that happens, and persevere.
When brands hire illustrators, animators, or other artists, they typically know what theyre paying for: a defined set of creative assets, delivered on deadline, with clear usage rights.
But in the age of generative AI, thats no longer the whole picture.
Commissioned artwork is increasingly being used not just in finished campaigns, but as training data to power AI modelsmodels that, in turn, generate new, derivative outputs. Often, this use isnt spelled out in contracts. Its not malicious. Its just . . . new.
Thats left brands, agencies, and artists in a tricky spottrying to apply old licensing logic to a new generation of tools. The result is a growing disconnect between how creative work is made, how its used, and how its paid for.
Whats needed isnt a philosophical debate about machine creativity. Its a practical frameworkone flexible enough for fast-moving teams, but structured enough to protect the humans still at the heart of the process.
The Creative Loop Has Changed
Traditionally, artists get paid for what they delivera character design, a series of storyboards, a set of icons or illustrations. The license defines where, how long, and in what formats those assets can be used.
But as AI workflows become more embedded in creative production, the loop looks different.
A brand commissions original artwork. That artwork is used not only in campaigns, but to fine-tune a generative model trained to produce content in the style of the original work. From there, marketing teams or third-party vendors can generate dozens of variations on demandwithout going back to the original artist.
Theres nothing inherently unethical about this. In many cases, its efficient and creatively useful. But if the artist who trained the model isnt compensated for that secondary use, a value gap opens up. And that gap becomes a reputational risk for the brandespecially as creative professionals, advocacy groups, and consumers become more AI-literate.
A Shift from Ownership to Participation
This isnt a question of whether AI should be used. That debate is over. The question now is how to ensure the humans who shape the aesthetic intelligence of these systems are fairly recognized and fairly paid.
One path forward is to rethink the licensing structure. Instead of defaulting to flat fees for fixed deliverables, brands can structure creative engagements to reflect how derivative value is created over time. That starts by offering two distinct paths: one built around full ownership, and the other designed for ongoing participation.
In the ownership model, brands pay a higher up-front fee that covers the rights to train a model, generate derivative outputs, and use those outputs across campaigns without future royalties. Its clean, comprehensive, and often a fit for fast-scaling companies or complex campaigns with long content tails.
In the participation model, brands pay a standard commission fee and then compensate the artist over time, based on how their work is used to generate new content. This might look like a royalty per output, a revenue share, or a pooled licensing structure tied to usage volumeakin to how publishers or music rights organizations operate.
Neither option is perfect. But both reflect the realities of modern creative workwhere original contributions can fuel a long arc of generative production. More importantly, they offer artists a choice in how their labor and influence are valued.
What a Smarter Licensing Framework Looks Like
For brands and agencies ready to adopt more transparent compensation models, the good news is this doesnt require a reinvention of the creative contract. A few key mechanisms, easily added to existing agreements, can bring clarity to how AI-derived work is used and monetized.
The first is a Commission-to-Model clause. It makes explicit that commissioned work will be used to train a model, and defines the scope of that use. These clauses can specify what kind of model is being trained, whether third-party partners will have access, and how long the model can be used. Crucially, they establish triggers for expanded usesay, across new business units or global campaignsthat would require a conversation or renewal. Think of it as the AI-era equivalent of a sync license for a song: it clarifies how the source material can be extended and scaled.
Next is a Derivative Use Laddera pricing framework that reflects how far an AI-generated asset strays from the original commission. Minor edits or resizes might be included in the base fee. AI-generated variants used within the same campaign could carry a modest uplift. Broader reuse across platforms, regions, or product lines would trigger higher fees or require relicensing. The goal isnt to over-monetize creativity. Its to avoid ambiguity and allow both sides to plan with confidence.
For brands building longer-term systems, where a model trained on original artwork might generate thousands of outputs, a royalty-bearing model license may be the most aligned. This could take the form of a flat fee per generated asset, a quarterly revenue share, or a pooled royalty structure when multiple artists contribute to a shared model. The mechanics can vary. What matters is the principle: as the system creates more outputs, more value should flow back to the creative source.
Each of these frameworks can integrate into existing production workflows. But together, they offer something more powerful: a shift in mindset from we own what we paid for to we share in what we build together.
What Artists Want (and Brands Can Offer)
Artists arent looking to halt innovation. Most understand the value of generative tools. Many already use them in their own workflows.
What they want is transparency, consent, and a fair share of the value created when their work is used to teach machines.
That doesnt mean every output requires a payment. But it does mean brands should be prepared to offer clear termsnot just to protect themselves legally, but to build trust with the creative talent they rely on.
A Reputation-Forward Approach to AI
As generative AI becomes normalized in creative production, scrutiny is rising: lawsuits over unlicensed training data, open letters from illustrators, AI-generated brand work that backfires online.
In this environment, its no longer enough to stay quiet and hope no one asks. Responsible AI use is becoming part of a brands public posture. A clear, fair compensation model for human contributors isnt just ethically soundits reputationally smart.
Put simply: compensating the people who make your model smarter is good business.
Pay the Source
The creative economy is shiftingfrom artifact to algorithm, from fixed deliverables to living systems, from single commissions to ongoing creative loops.
In that new reality, we need new rules.
Payig the source isnt about holding onto the past. Its about designing a future where artists, technologists, and brands can build together, with clarity and trust.
That future is already arriving. The only question is whether we meet it with contracts that reflect the tools we useor keep pretending the old ones are enough.
Logan Ivey has tried everything to cut down on his screen time. He bought a modern dumbphone thats designed to be used as little as possible, tried a device called a Brick that removes distracting apps and notifications from a smartphone, and even resorted to a classic flip phone when all else failed. Still, nothing was working. So he turned his iPhone into a 6-pound weight.
The 6 Pound Phone Case is a bulky, stainless steel contraption designed to make your smartphone extremely annoying to use. Inspired by the aesthetics of an 80s brick phone, the case transforms a typical, ultra-portable iPhone into a cumbersome eyesoreand thats the whole point. Ivey, who has been using the case for the past two months, says it has helped cut his screen time in half. Currently, the 6 Pound Phone Case is just a prototype, but Ivey is raising money through a Kickstarter page to sell a small batch of the cases for a whopping $210 each (the hefty price tag, he says, is due to the high manufacturing costs and current tariffs on steel).
[Photo: Matter Neuroscience]
Iveys invention is the latest in a recent series of out-there projects designed to help smartphone users hack their brains into cutting the doomscroll short. In the late 2010s, dumbphones enjoyed a spike in popularitybut since then, many users have met with the unfortunate reality that they need smartphone functions like maps, Google, email, and other services to navigate the day-to-day.
Creative minds have thought up all kinds of solutions to this conundrum, including an app that forces you to literally touch grass before you scroll, a phone case that doubles as a tiny screen, and an app that uses an animated bean character to guilt-trip you out of going on social media. The 6 Pound Phone Case is the newest addition to this wacky smartphone detox lineupand it might just be the most effective.
[Photo: Matter Neuroscience]
Designing a 6-Pound Phone Case
Ivey uses social media for a living. Hes both an independent creator and a full-time social media producer for Matter Neuroscience, a company he describes as dedicated to bridging the gap between everyday behavior and molecular science. Part of Matter Neurosciences mission has included building an app that lets users track their emotions every week to understand what kind of behaviors drive happiness. Through this project, Ivey says, he realized just how much his phone was sapping his energy and blocking his feel-good neurotransmitters.
After trying dumbphones, a flip phone, and app blockers, Ivey realized that, especially given his job in social media, it was just too inconvenient to try replacing his smartphone. Instead, he needed a way to make his iPhone feel more like a tool than an addictive pastime.
[Photo: Matter Neuroscience]
I asked myself, How can I keep all the functionality of my phone, but still use it less? Ivey says. Then I thought, like, What if my phone was just really heavy and inconvenient to use?
Matter Neuroscience partnered with Ivey to help make the idea reality. He turned to the clunky form factor of an 80s brick phone as inspiration, designing a case with one flat surface and two jutting rectangles on its top and bottom. Cutouts for charging, volume buttons, power, and a tapered camera hole keep every part of the phone functionalbut its stainless steel construction, which can be removed only by unscrewing four screws with an Allen wrench, makes it physically difficult to hold for too long.
At 6 pounds, your hands and arms physically get tired while using it, the cases Kickstarter page reads. That fatigue reminds you to put the phone down. Further, it adds, the cases size is inconveniently big, purposefully preventing the user from tucking it in their pocket. You have to carry it in a bag like a laptop, or leave it in another room. That means fewer phantom notifications, fewer sidewalk swipes, and fewer brain rot sessions while pooping (and maybe less hemorrhoids).
[Image: courtesy Logan Ivey]
In Iveys experience, the 6 Pound Phone Case has cut his screen time from four and a half hours per week to just two. While Ivey does hope to sell some of the cases through his Kickstarter with Matter Neuroscience, he doesnt have plans to patent the design, and sees it as a concept that could have genuine potential for other phone case companies.
Those little moments in life where you just instinctively reach for your phone, I don’t do anymore, Ivey says, because I either don’t have it on me or it’s too heavy.
If you’ve noticed that the internet feels different latelymore cluttered, harder to navigateyoure not imagining it. The system is breaking down in real time, and by 2026, researchers predict that 90% of web content will be AI-generated. Quality journalism is disappearing behind paywalls while feeds fill with noise designed purely to capture attention. An innovation that was supposed to democratize information is now drowning us in it.
I know this intimately because I helped build it. As founder of AppNexus, which sold to AT&T for $1.6 billion, and former CTO of Right Media, I created the technology that became the backbone of digital advertising, a multibillion-dollar industry and the economic engine funding everything from major newsrooms to niche blogs. Now that engine is stalling.
You are now the product
Heres what happened: instead of paying for what you have actually read or watched, the advertising system turned you into the product. Every click, search, and scroll got auctioned to the highest bidder. You became the currency. And once the dollars followed your data rather than content quality, the value of real information slipped into the background.
The effects are everywhere. News organizations are consolidating rapidly or shuttering entirely. AI-generated slop is creeping into YouTube and other online communities, and flooding search results with spam. Trust in the media and the online ecosystem is on the brink of collapse. Shoes chase you around the internet, misinformation spreads faster than facts, and billions vanish to fraud. It feels like the end. But Ive seen this before.
A recurring pattern
The internet has a pattern: it breaks, people panic, and then it is rebuilt into something much better. Web 1.0 gave us static pages and basic connectivity. Web 2.0 brought user-generated content and social interactionbut not before people warned it would destroy traditional media entirely. Each transition looked catastrophic while it was happening. Remember when mobile first arrived? Mobile websites were impossible to read. Ads covered half your screen. Everything required pinch-to-zoom and patience. Companies spent years trying to shove desktop experiences onto phones before they figured out that mobile needed its own infrastructure. It felt broken and annoying, until it didnt. With phones constantly in hand and the first screen for most people, we barely remember the awkward transition.
Another phase
Were in that awkward phase again. Our attention is fragmented across more platforms, devices, and channels than ever. We seek information and entertainment everywhere, and we have higher expectations: we want access without annoyance, quality without cost, personalization without intrusion. The current infrastructure wasnt built for this reality.
Now, AI has cascaded into everything. Its generating slop thats flooding search results and feeds, yes, but its also the tool were using to rebuild. We are reorganizing our lives around it: how we work, how we find information, how we consume content. What some are calling the “agentic AI economy”where AI is integrated as an intelligent intermediary that reasons, plans, and acts to solve problemsis starting to take shape. The internets infrastructure will be fine once it catches up to that shift and the industry rethinks its fundamental economics.
Course correction
Licensing deals, revenue sharing, and pay-per-crawl compensation models are taking shape to course correct and ensure publishers start to be paid for their value and those will continue to evolve as the industry sees what sticks. Meanwhile, AI companies themselves, OpenAI being the most recent, are investing in advertising infrastructure, recognizing that if chat and AI engines are here to stay as primary channels, they need sustainable business models beyond subscriptions.
New targeting approaches leveraging agentic AI are also on the horizon, offering the promise of eliminating waste and fraud that would otherwise go toward funding made-for-advertising websites or AI slop. Companies like mine, Scope3, offer agentic advertising, using AI agents to match ads to specific content themes and values rather than relying on personal data or demographics.
Try this: copy a page youve browsed and paste it into ChatGPT, then ask it to produce an ad and compare the result to whats actually on the page. More likely than not, ChatGPT gave a better ad without even needing your browser history or data. This makes content the product again, not you. Quality publishers get rewarded while content farms and fraudulent sites are starved of revenue.
These are proof points that the economic infrastructure is being rebuilt.
A turning point
The internets promise doesnt have to die with its decline. Were at a turning point where we know AI will shape the webthats inevitable. Now we decide what kind of system we build with it.
If the attention economy monetized distraction, the agentic AI economy has the chance to monetize trust. We can use AI to filter noise instead of creating it. We can reward publications that invest in fact-checking and original reporting. We can connect ads based on values and genuine interest rather than demographic profiles. Or we can let the internet collapseeither descending into unusable chaos where AI slop buries everything of value or splitting into a world where quality content exists only behind paywalls most people cant afford.
The builders who understand this moment, those championing dynamics that reward quality and trust, are ready to shape whats next. The internet we want is possible. We just have to choose to build it.
Its a soundand smellcar commuters have become intimately familiar with: the noxious fumes of asphalt repaving. U.S. road maintenance and highway expansion require a massive quantity of asphalt every year, roughly 400 million tons a year on average, according to Asphalt magazine, a publication of the international trade association Asphalt Institute. But a new process developed by St. Louis-based firm Verde Resources seeks to streamline the process, making it more sustainable and odorless.
Verdes new BioAsphalt process, which has been in development since 2022, utilizes whats called biochar, or natural wood remnants from forestry waste that get added into the traditional asphalt material mixture of limestone and granite aggregates. This allows the road mixture to sequester a small amount of carbon. Verde CEO Jack Wong estimates that for every 100 tons of BioAsphalt that gets laid, 10 tons of carbon dioxide gets sequestered.
Were essentially creating a no-brainer model for the industry to transition to, making the product as competitive as traditional asphalt with environmental advantages and benefits, Wong says.
Asphalts environmental footprint is significant. In addition to using petroleum-based materials and requiring extensive energy for heating and installation, it also releases dangerous particulate matter as cars and trucks drive atop it. The National Asphalt Pavement Association estimated that laying down the material results in 20 million metric tons of carbon dioxide emissions annually in the U.S.; for comparison, thats about one-seventh the amount of emissions created by the nations commercial airline industry.
Earlier this summer, BioAsphalt passed the initial stages of a test at the National Center for Asphalt Technology at Auburn University in Alabama. A section of BioAsphalt roadway was tested for a year, with staff running modified 80-ton trucks across the test bed to verify its durability. The material, one of a handful trying to make asphalt less environmentally damaging, has been given an okay for lower-impact applications like local roads and parking lots.
“We’ve had plenty of materials and ideas come through the test track over the years, but few show the carbon reduction potential that Verde’s Biochar Asphalt does, and it’s definitely the first technology on the track with a carbon sequestration component,” said Nathan Moore, assistant director for test track research at NCAT, in a statement. While the early validation confirms its suitability for light-duty pavements, continuous evaluations are underway to determine its long-term viability for medium- to high-traffic roadways and even runways, as part of NCAT’s multiyear test cycle.
The secret to Verdes process is a proprietary emulsifying agent that blends with a liquid asphalt binder to create a specialized emulsion, bonding the biochar and aggregate. This offers an alternative to the petroleum-based bitumen that traditionally binds roads Wong wouldnt reveal the exact additives in the firms process, other than to say theyre nonhazardous. A self-proclaimed Dune fan, he calls them spice. But they bond the roadway mixture without needing the heat required during the traditional asphalt laying process, which can hit 300 degrees Fahrenheit.
This opens up new opportunities for the road construction industry. On-site crews dont need to cart gas canisters or additional gear to heat up the asphalt, so they can travel more lightly. In addition, since heat isnt needed in the application process, they can work longer into the cold months of the year, expanding when they can repair and resurface roads and parking lots. This also means that the factories that make the asphalt mix dont need to use heat as well.
Wong added that while the BioAsphalt is about 15% to 20% more expensive to make, by weight, due to the different materials, its engineered to require a thinner layer when applied. So it actually ends up being slightly cheaper when energy savings and reduced material volume are factored in.
Wong hopes to scale up quickly. BioAsphalt doesnt need to be heated with traditional furnaces, but it can be made in the same factory settings as traditional asphaltmeaning that existing infrastructure can make the mix without needing to spend money on powering industrial furnaces. Verde is working with Ergon Asphalt & Emulsions, one of the largest liquid asphalt producers in North America, on arranging distribution and licensing the proprietary process to other producers. Wong hopes to ramp up production substantially in the next year and eventually capture 10% of the market.
Roadways, of course, arent just sources of pollution themselves. But they can be considered fossil fuel infrastructure because they support the use of cars and trucks burning gasoline and diesel fuel. In response, Wong says that he feels Verde’s product offers a practical way to immediately reduce emissions that go into roadway repair and expansion.
Were providing an immediate solution to the day-to-day needs for our very robust and mature road network, Wong says.
With more than a decade of experience working as a design and tech analyst, Andrew Hogan is all in on the efficiency and ease that tech brings to our lives. But lately at home with his daughters (ages 4 and 18 months), Hogan is grappling with something unwieldy and undefined: how parents, kids, and technology interact, from smartphones to screen time to AI.
We are so eager to remove frictionavoid it and smooth over the rough spots, especially as parents, Hogan says.
In fall 2024, Hogan began writing a newsletter called Parent.Tech, designed to help him, and other parents, better understand how to navigate the increasingly complex world of tech and consumer products. Some of the topics covered include parenting apps, parental controls, AIs place (or not) in homework, and how to build a framework for kids tech use.
I want to be a better dad, and Parent.Tech was a path to doing that, Hogan says. Its given me some scaffolding and context to make decisions.
Hogan is parenting children who are on the back end of the anxious generation, named for a book written by social psychologist and New York University professor Jonathan Haidt. Touted by Oprah Winfrey and Katie Couric, the book links the steep decline in adolescent mental health to the increased reliance on screens and technology, calling this period in our culture the great re-wiring of childhood.
Haidt advocates for more time steeped in unfettered play and fewer hours tethered to tech. While Haidts messaging isnt entirely new (documentaries Screenagers in 2016 and The Social Dilemma in 2020, and the Wait Until 8th campaign have all introduced similar conversations), its spurred a renewed interest among parents to seek out new ways to manage tech.
Entrepreneurs are listening. In the past decade, dozens of products have hit the market with the intention of giving kids and their families (everyone, really) the tools to reclaim attention, relationships, and presence.
Businesses like Yondr are making it easier for kids to go phone-free in school; startups like Tin Can ($75) are bringing back the landline; and mobile-phone makers including Light Phone ($699), Pinwheel ($119), and Gabb Wireless (phones starting at $149) are offering phones free of social media and web access. Plus, there are untold numbers of toys that promise to help children enjoy the screen-free fun they deserve. These companies have identified a real needit’s clear by now that willpower alone is not enough to keep humans off their screens. And together they are channeling our techno-anxiety into a new and growing market of products that parents are increasingly willing to shell out for.
Determining the size of this market is still tricky because the products dont fit into a neat box, despite their shared mission, says Audrey Chee-Read, principal analyst in Forresters CMO practice. What you have isnt really an established category with specific guardrails [e.g., theres tech like Gabb thats considered kids consumer tech versus Yondr thats not a tech], she says. So there is probably a forecast out there on consumer or family tech products [of which Gabb, Tin Can, and Light Phone would be under] but that will also encapsulate other things like gaming.
Still, its clear that these businesses are growing: From 2020 to 2023, Gabb grew 895%, nabbing a spot on the 2024 Inc. 5000 list, while Pinwheel landed in the top 5% of that same list. Jacqueline Nesi, psychologist and assistant professor at Brown University who writes a newsletter called TechnoSapiens and runs a consultancy called Tech Without Stress, says the shift is undeniable: People realize we cant get rid of technology so [theyre asking] How do we learn to live with it in a way that promotes our well-being rather than detracts from it?
[Photo: Tin Can]
Building protected spaces that mimic the before
While most children havent experienced life without screens, for most parents (especially Gen Xers), theres a distinct before and after. An increasing number of adults, says Chee-Read, want to tether back to a time when phones werent in every pocket and we didnt feel the pull to check social feeds at school or work. Distraction wasnt as pervasive in our culture and there was a level of freedom to be in the moment.
For Graham Dugoni, grappling with the desire to spend more time in the before made him a founder. His company, Yondr, makes and sells lockable neoprene pouches that allow people to leave their personal tech behind at school, work, concerts, and for other experiences to remove distraction and foster connection. Dugoni refers to the Yondr mission as creating a sort of National Park system of protected spaces.
[Photo: Yondr]
Its a big exercise in social psychology, he says. What happens in a phone-free space is at some level giving people a sense of freedom that they cant find in other walks of modern life. We view ourselves as part of a counterculture movement.
[Photo: Yondr]
Inspired by philosophers such as Martin Heidegger, who explored what it means to be in the world, and Marshall McLuhan, who studied the effects media has on society, Dugoni started the business in 2014, hand-making the pouches and selling them out of his Toyota RV. Since then, hes scaled Yondr to reach more than 300% year-over-year growth.
Dugoni hopes his product will become a form of infrastructure for a world with less screen time. The company now works with schools in 35 countries and 50 U.S. states, including one-third of all New York City secondary public schools. Los Angeles Public Schools (80% of middle schools and high schools in the district) work with the company, too, and Yondrs neoprene pouches are also used at Madison Square Garden and at comedy clubs throughout the U.S.
In fact, one of the first big relationships Dugoni secured was with comedian Dave Chappelle, who asks his audience members to store their phones in Yondr pouches during his shows to protect his act from online leaks and to maintain a distraction-free audience experience. Says Dugoni: Its so wildly traditional, it might be revolutionary.
A big piece of being in any emerging market, he says, is buy-in and consumer education. At schools, that takes the form of writing letters to parents, holding community forums, meeting with school administration, and step-by-step, day-by-day guidance for students and adults on what a phone-free school day looks like.
We always start with a why, says David Franklin, Yondrs manager of partner programming. We need to change the school culturethat changes attitudes and it pushes this idea forward.
At concerts and comedy clubs, Yondr employees cruise the line into the venue, talking to attendees about the pouches, how they work, and why theyre a key part of that nights audience experience. Sometimes, Dugoni says, people resist the idea, wanting to keep their phones available. Other times, folks are happy to try the pouch for a phone-free night.
The majority of our work is around experience design, he says. What things have to be true for this thing to work? It’s about how you approach people and make it conducive to their understanding: This is a special experience and what you are stepping into is worth everyone being there for it.
[Photo: Light Phone]
Seizing gaps in the attention economy
Around the same time Dugoni founded Yondr, Kaiwei Tang met his now business partner Joe Hollier at a Google incubator program in 2014. The two founded Light Phone, one of the first dumbphones on the market, a year later. The spark for Light Phone was a desire to sidestep the attention economy and a frustration with the available options. Now on its third iteration, Light Phone III (priced at $699) offers people a chance to leave the house with a way to communicate, check the weather, listen to music, or find directions, all while free of the nagging distractions that often come along with smartphones.
And while Tang knew there was a market for his product, he also quickly learned thered be tension around its adoption. Change can be awkward, and as much as Light Phone built something for people who want some space from always-on tech, there would also be some friction around what using Light Phone means on a granular level.
[Photo: Light Phone]
We got so much feedback from our users; when people used it, the first 15 or 20 minutes were really nerve-racking, Tang says. Everyone had this anxiety. Standing to pay for your groceries and you dont know what to do. After 15 or 20 minutes, you get over the FOMO, you remember whats happening, you pay attention to the details of the buildings or trees you never really noticed.
[Photo: Light Phone]
Managing that dissonance, Tang says, has been a big part of the companys growth. Askig anyone to change a longtime behavior is going to be hard, he admits. We see it with food. We know were eating too much grease. We cant help ourselves. Were trying to show the benefits of the organic and healthy food brands, but were not asking everyone to become vegan. Its the same thing with Light Phone. Were trying to show the benefits of breaking away from the smartphone.
Gabb Wireless is another business aiming to knock off a sliver of this market, selling Samsung phones dressed in the companys proprietary software, built specifically for kids and teens. Gabb phones and watches have no internet and no social media. Parental controls are built in, with safety and developmentally appropriate communication tools tailored for kids. Parents also have access to a Gabb app on their phones, allowing them to tap into location sharing, video calls, and text flagging capabilities on their kids devices.
CEO Nate Randle says that while businesses in the category started when the conversation around kids and smartphones wasnt really much of a thing, the market opportunity has been clear from the start. We talk about TAM [total addressable market], he says. There are more than 60 million kids in the U.S. alone between the ages of 5 and 16. There is a wide-open market for an alternative solution to smartphones.
And for Gabb, showing up as a solution for families and kids has required an awareness around what it means to be a kids tech brand. Traditionally, when someone thinks of a kids brand, they go to rainbows and stars, says Brad Dowdle, VP of creative at Gabb Wireless. This is Generation Alpha. Theyve grown up around technology. Theyre savvy. It has to be aspirational, and they cant feel were designing down to them.
When business opportunity and cultural change collide
As these solutions emerge and build a following, its also important to zoom out on attitudes toward technology, privacy, and life online. For instance, says Chee-Read, while 63% of adults say theyre concerned about online behavior being tracked, less than half of youth report feeling similarly. At the same time, grassroots organizations are pushing for legislation in California, New York, Pennsylvania, and other states to ban phones from school.
[Photo: Tin Can]
A company like Tin Can, which has a mission to make the landline cool again, is showing up on national news and having a viral moment on Instagram. Jerry Chen, the founder of Firewalla, which sells cybersecurity software to homes and businesses to shield everything from baby cameras and laptops to speakers and phones, says in its first five years the business doubled in revenue annually, followed by a slowdown of 100% growth every two years. On top of all of this, of course, is a vanishing amount of institutional knowledge and understanding. As technology progresses, the number of people available to provide relevant support and advice on how to manage itespecially as parentsis disappearing.
The factors present five years ago in terms of managing the way technology influences daily life are nearly irrelevant today. And five years from now, well be immersed in entirely new circumstances.
Founders who can manage that kind of market speed and the dissonance around technology and its place in our lives stand to create solutions with real staying power. Entrepreneurs and CEOs like Dugoni, Randle, Tang, and Chen are selling products, yes, but theyre also shaping a new version of what it means to grow up and live in our world. This is not a market built to reject tech but rather to redefine how we relate to it. And for now, Hogans hope is that continuing to work on Parent.Tech in his off-hours will help him find the middle path in managing tech tools for himself and his kids. People need to design these tools, and then we need to pay for these tools, Hogan says. We have to figure it out. No one is coming to change it for us.
There’s no shortage of inspiration for what to do with a part of the house that’s not quite looking its best. Interior design magazines and furniture blogs are stuffed with idealized bedrooms, and online vision boards make it easy to cast a dragnet over the myriad images of classy lounges or perfectly ordered home offices. But there’s always the unavoidable catch that while these images may be helpful references for how to rethink a room, they don’t actually represent your room.
A new AI tool offers a more personalized alternative. Created by the online interior design service Havenly, it’s an app-based AI design assistant that takes user-submitted images of rooms and instantly offers modifiable design alternatives. Using AI image generation and a chatbot-based conversation about the type of design a user wants, the tool quickly pops out multiple options, with prompts to add or change things. An interactive interface allows users to swap out or even buy actual products and furnishings shown in the design concepts.
[Image: Havenly]
“It’s built on real design,” says Havenly CEO Lee Mayer. She cofounded the company in 2014, and for the past several years Havenly has been collecting its online design work in a broad database that covers more than 2 million individual design decisions and data points. Combining that with the inventories of several furnishings brands Havenly has acquired over the years, the company had the raw training materials for a large language model, the backbone of AI chatbots like ChatGPT.
[Image: Havenly]
“You’ve got products, you can shop those products, you can say I want to swap this product for that product and sort of see that in the space,” Mayer says. “It’s a really great tool to play and tinker and maybe even design your home. It’s not as fully featured and fully figured as a design experience would be, but it’s quite a big step above some of the LLM models that are out there, just in terms of your ability to execute on the design.”
[Image: Havenly]
Designing an AI design assistant
The tool was developed almost unintentionally. Havenly, which pairs users virtually with interior designers who offer consultations online, was having trouble keeping up with the demand for human designers. “One of the things we started to do last year was really invest in automation-based tooling for our designers themselves, largely so they could service more people as well and as effectively as they could,” Mayer says.
It was essentially a time saver that lets AI handle the top-line design questions of a project before pulling in a human design expert. As the company was developing the tool for this internal purpose, they started to play with it. “We realized it was kind of fun,” Mayer says. “Why not expose it to the consumer?”
[Image: Havenly]
Now available as a beta version on Havenly’s iOS app, the AI design assistant is a free way for users to start to visualize what a redesigned room could become.
Testing out the tool ahead of its official launch, I asked it to offer some ideas for a few places in my own house. Not unlike my experiences with other AI chatbots that have emerged in recent years, the process was sometimes a bit clunky and confused. My first request was for ideas on filling a small space beneath a window in a children’s playroom with either storage, a bench, or a small table.
Apparently caught up by the part of my prompt noting that this was located in a spare bedroom, the tool generated three fully outfitted bedroom designs. When I tried to clarify, the chatbot seemed to understand what I was looking for but then gave me three more bedroom designs.
Switching to a less-specific approach, I uploaded an image of my house’s entryway and asked for suggestions on improving coat and shoe storage. The designs the tool offered were straightforward and useful, and the overall look largely matched the existing entry, albeit with much nicer furnishings. While I’m not likely to spend $600 on the small shoe shelf one design included, it did prompt some thinking about how I could more efficiently manage what can often become a jumble.
[Image: Havenly]
For some users, this could easily become a gateway to buying that shoe shelf (from Havenly) or opting for a paid design service (from Havenly). It could also be a more informed way for people to rethink their space without the information overload of the internet.
“Where we are in the AI wave is just understanding what people want with it and how they interact with it. I think our initial hypothesis is there is a group of people that frankly don’t need full design help,” Mayer says. “Is it perfect? No. Does it replace the designer? I don’t think so.”
But it can help solve problems. Mayer says one of the beta users had more than 200 back-and-forth exchanges with the chatbot to refine ideas for upgrading a basement space.
Even Mayer herself has put the tool to use, asking it to help outfit a guest bedroom on short notice. “I had guests coming within three weeks. I needed to place orders that day. I was like, all right, let’s just see what it comes up with,” she says. After a few minutes chatting with the bot, Mayer got a design that fit the room and furnishings that fit the budget. “I placed the orders,” she says. “I got the rug, the bed, and the bedding.”
A makeup illusionist, a photography project, and an innovative DJ are among the winners of Instagrams inaugural Rings awards.
The award, whose recipients were announced on Thursday, celebrates 25 creators who, in the companys words, bring people together over creativity and arent afraid to take creative chances and do it their way.
Among the winners is Mimi Choi, known for turning her face into mind-bending works of art. Celebrating her win, she penned in an Instagram post: Because of its visual nature, Instagram has really helped spread my work and jump-start my career, providing me with numerous different types of collaboration opportunities that I couldnt have even dreamed of when I began this journey.
Then there’s Life on Film. Run by Grant Weintrob, Christian Baiocco, and Griffin Katz, the Instagram-first creative project hands out disposable cameras to strangers, as well as to some recognizable faces, turning their candid shots into cinematic Reels.
[Image: Instagram]
DJ AG Online, another winner, has accrued tens of millions of views online by transforming the streets of London into spontaneous DJ sets. Self-identifying as an open format DJ, he joins the list of creatives awarded with both a physical gold ring designed by Grace Wales Bonner and a golden halo that sits around their profiles.
The full list of 2025 winners are Aki and Koichi, Ari Miller, Brian Lindo, Chris Brickley, Cole Bennett, Ashley Gordon, Dolly Singh, Elyse Myers, Futuradosmil, Gabriel Moses, Golloria, Laufey, lifeonfilm, Linda Lomelino, Mimi Choi, Nigel Sylvester, Mika Ninagawa, Olivia Dean, Adrian Per, Sebastian Jern, Katie Krejci, Mohammed and Humaid Hadban, Thalita and Gabriela Zukeram, Tyshawn Jones, and Zarna Garg.
While many of the winners have established followings, that wasnt a factor in the judging process. Instead, each winner was honored by their peers. A panel of creativesspanning fashion and makeup to sports and entertainmenteach nominated their own favorite creators and voted on which 25 of Instagrams 3 billion users would be among the first to receive the honor.
[Image: Instagram]
The panel of judges included fashion and jewelry designer Grace Wales Bonner, who designed the gold ring each winner will receive; movie director Spike Lee; fashion designer Marc Jacobs; artist Kaws; makeup artist Pat McGrath; influencer Marques Brownlee, aka MKBHD; actress Yara Shahidi; pastry chef Cédric Grolet; Olympic rugby player Ilona Maher; music producer and songwriter Tainy; photographer Murad Osmann; Instagram exec and fashion journalist Eva Chen; and head of Intagram Adam Mosseri.
This award is for the creators who dont just participate in culturebut shift it, break through whatever barrier holds them back to realize their ambitions. Because every act of creativity, big or small, can lead to something great,” Instagram said in its press release.
Were witnessing a new era of digital entertainment, Maria Rodriguez, vice president of marketing and communications at Open Influence, a creator marketing company, told Fast Company. Just as the Oscars, Emmys, and Grammys celebrate excellence in film, television, and music, its only fitting that we recognize the talent, innovation, and artistry thriving on the platforms where audiences now spend most of their time.
Keep an eye out for the exclusive gold ring around each winners profile.
