The world’s richest man was just handed a chance to become history’s first trillionaire.Elon Musk won a shareholder vote on Thursday that would give the Tesla CEO stock worth $1 trillion if he hits certain performance targets over the next decade. The vote followed weeks of debate over his management record at the electric car maker and whether anyone deserved such unprecedented pay, drawing heated commentary from small investors to giant pension funds and even the pope.In the end, more than 75% of voters approved the plan as shareholders gathered in Austin, Texas, for their annual meeting.“Fantastic group of shareholders,” Musk said after the final vote was tallied, adding “Hang on to your Tesla stock.”The vote is a resounding victory for Musk showing investors still have faith in him as Tesla struggles with plunging sales, market share and profits in no small part due to Musk himself. Car buyers fled the company this year as he has ventured into politics both in the U.S. and Europe, and trafficked in conspiracy theories.The vote came just three days after a report from Europe showing Tesla car sales plunged again last month, including a 50% collapse in Germany.Still, many Tesla investors consider Musk as a sort of miracle man capable of stunning business feats, such as when he pulled Tesla from the brink of bankruptcy a half-dozen years ago to turn it into one of the world’s most valuable companies.The vote clears a path for Musk to become a trillionaire by granting him new shares, but it won’t be easy. The board of directors that designed the pay package require him to hit several ambitious financial and operational targets, including increasing the value of the company on the stock market nearly six times its current level.Musk also has to deliver 20 million Tesla electric vehicles to the market over 10 years amid new, stiff competition, more than double the number since the founding of the company. He also has to deploy 1 million of his human-like robots that he has promised will transform work and home he calls it a “robot army” from zero today.Musk could add billions to his wealth in a few years by partly delivering these goals, according to various intermediate steps that will hand him newly created stock in the company as he nears the ultimate targets.That could help him eventually top what is now considered America’s all-time richest man, John D. Rockefeller. The oil titan is estimated by Guinness World Records to have been worth $630 billion, in current dollars, at his peak wealth more than 110 years ago. Musk is worth $493 billion, as estimated by Forbes magazine.Musk’s win came despite opposition from several large funds, including CalPERS, the biggest U.S. public pension, and Norway’s sovereign wealth fund. Two corporate watchdogs, Institutional Shareholder Services and Glass Lewis, also blasted the package, which so angered Musk he took to calling them “corporate terrorists” at a recent investor meeting.Critics argued that the board of directors was too beholden to Musk, his behavior too reckless lately and the riches offered too much.“He has hundreds of billions of dollars already in the company and to say that he won’t stay without a trillion is ridiculous,” said Sam Abuelsamid, an analyst at research firm Telemetry who has been covering Tesla for nearly two decades. “It’s absurd that shareholders think he is worth this much.”Supporters said that Musk needed to be incentivized to focus on the company as he works to transform it into an AI powerhouse using software to operate hundreds of thousands of self-driving Tesla cars many without steering wheels and Tesla robots deployed in offices, factories and homes doing many tasks now handled by humans.“This AI chapter needs one person to lead it and that’s Musk,” said financial analyst Dan Ives of Wedbush Securities. “It’s a huge win for shareholders.”Investors voting for the pay had to consider not only this Musk promise of a bold, new tomorrow, but whether he could ruin things today: He had threatened to walk away from the company, which investors feared would tank the stock.Tesla shares, already up 80% in the past year, rose on news of the vote in after-hours trading but then flattened basically unchanged to $445.44.For his part, Musk says the vote wasn’t really about the money but getting a higher Tesla stake it will double to nearly 30% so he could have more power over the company. He said that was a pressing concern given Tesla’s future “robot army” that he suggested he didn’t trust anyone else to control given the possible danger to humanity.Other issues up for a vote at the annual meeting turned out wins for Musk, too.Shareholders approved allowing Tesla to invest in one of Musk’s other ventures, xAI. They also shot down a proposal to make it easier for shareholders to sue the company by lowering the size of ownership needed to file. The current rule requires at least a 3% stake.-This story corrects that Rockefeller wealth was in oil, not railroads.
Bernard Condon, Associated Press
The United States has about 640 million acres of public land, covering national parks to conservation areas and wild rivers to lake shores.
These lands contain resources like oil and gas reserves, or minerals like lithium and copper that could be mined. But theyre also home to hiking trails, camping sites, fishing spots, and all sorts of outdoor recreational activitiesactivities that contribute billions of dollars to our economy.
Outdoor recreation specifically on federal public lands and waters generates $128 billion in economic activity every year, according to a new report by the Outdoor Recreation Roundtable (ORR), a coalition of trade associations and outdoor organizations.
That translates to $351 million a day from access to outdoor recreation on public lands and watersor $14.6 million in economic value every hour.
The ORR report is a first-of-its-kind assessment meant to highlight the value of keeping public lands open and available to such activities, rather than closing them off to outdoor enthusiasts so that they can be mined and drilled for resources.
The report comes amid the longest government shutdown in U.S. history, during which national parks have limited staff and so may also limit public access.
The study also follows multiple attacks on public lands by President Donald Trump, from considering selling off millions of acres to actually opening up public lands to more drilling and mining.
[Photo: Robert Cocquyt/Adobe Stock]
Outdoor recreation as an economic engine
Outdoor recreation in the U.S. is a $1.2 trillion industry, supporting more than five million jobs and made up of more than 110,000 businesses (plus the countless individuals who partake in all sorts of activities, from boating to RVing to hiking).
Whitney Potter Schwartz, ORRs senior vice president of communications and operations, calls this industry one of Americas greatest economic engines.
Yet, there hasnt been a comprehensive picture of exactly how federal lands specifically contribute to all those numbers, she adds, until the study out this week.
The $128 billion generated by such activities includes at least half a billion dollars that go straight to federal coffers through park passes, entrance fees, permits, and leases. Then theres federal taxes revenue, which totals $5.8 billion. State and local taxes add another $5 billion.
But outdoor recreation also benefits American businesses and American workers. Of the outdoor recreation industrys five million jobs, one in five depend on federal public lands.
When people visit public lands, they usually spend money on food, hotels, or recreational equipment. Direct annual spending by recreational visitors to federal public lands totals $72 billion, per the report.
Federal agencies, like the Bureau of Land Management and the U.S. Forest Service, produce their own economic reports, but this is the first time all the information has been pulled together to provide a collective picture of outdoor recreation on public lands, says Rob Southwick, a senior adviser at Southwick Associates, which conducted the study.
Economic models helped fill in the gaps, like to understand how much Americans spend outside of these sites.
[Photo: Mick Haupt/Unsplash]
A sustainable, long-term revenue source
Using federal public lands for outdoor recreation provides a value that is sustainable, recurring, and long term, the report shows. Thats counter to the idea of generating revenue from public lands through resource extraction including oil, gas, and minerals.
Interior Secretary Doug Burgum has proposed leveraging the countrys public lands to pay off its national debt, specifically by ramping up drilling and mining. He has said he views public lands and waters as part of the countrys balance sheet, full of valuable assets just waiting to be extracted.
But such resources are finite, the ORR report notes.
When the oil, gas, or minerals are gone, so are the associated jobs, income, and tax revenues, it reads. Furthermore, the land may require remediation before it is fit for other uses or it may never return as a revenue-bearing asset.
Outdoor recreation, in contrast, is a sustainable and appreciating asset, Schwartz says. Americans can hike, camp, and climb on the same piece of land over and over again, continuously generating money.
Recreation can also support more jobs than other activities. Its the largest source of economic returns from U.S. Forest Service lands, the report notes, supporting 161,000 jobs.
In comparison, forest products, livestock grazing, mineral extraction, and energy production support a combined 103,200 jobs.
Access to recreation is this economic powerhouse, Schwartz says, and it delivers these compounding returns year after year for the econoy.
In a new holiday ad for Starbucks, set to the tune of Im Gonna Be (500 Miles) by The Proclaimers, two adorable animated figures traipse across Starbuckss red holiday cups to reunite. Its a sweet video that highlights Starbuckss transition into the winter holidays, one of the biggest sales moments of the year for the company.
But while the iconic red cups are starring in Starbuckss early holiday promotion, theyve also become the center of an ongoing dispute with Starbucks Workers Unitedand a potential strike.
On November 6, Starbucks released its holiday menu in stores, including seasonal beverages, treats, and cups. The rollout heralds the arrival of Red Cup Day on November 13, an annual event when Starbucks offers free reusable cups to any customer who makes a holiday beverage purchase. Last year, an internal memo from Starbucks CEO Brian Niccol, obtained by The Wall Street Journal, showed that Red Cup Day 2024 was the companys best U.S. sales day of all time.
Meanwhile, on November 5, Workers United overwhelmingly voted to authorize a proposed strike, starting on November 13, if Starbucks fails to finalize a fair contract with the union by then. Union baristas are prepared to turn Starbucks Red Cup Day into the Red Cup Rebellion, a press release from the union reads.
Today, its been nearly four years since Starbucks workers organized their first store, with no contract agreement in sightand, as the holidays roll around, its becoming clear that while the red cup symbolizes a huge financial win for Starbucks, its become a symbol of frustration for the union.
Whats happened between Starbucks and its union?
Starbucks and its union have been embroiled in a dispute over the companys contracts since 2021. In the broadest of terms, the union is looking to secure better wages, benefits, and guaranteed hours for its employees. Starbucks, meanwhile, claims that it already offers the best overall wage and benefits package in retail.
In April 2025, the union rejected a contract proposal from Starbucks, which it says failed to improve wages or benefits in the first year of the contract and didnt put forth proposals to address chronic understaffing. Since then, negotiations between the two parties have broken down. Now, per a press release, Workers United says that union workers are prepared to strike in more than 25 cities as an “opening salvo, if Starbucks does not offer new contract proposals which address workers demands for better staffing, higher pay, and a resolution of unfair labor practice charges.
Jaci Anderson, Starbuckss director of global communications, says that the union represents a small percent of Starbuckss workforce, including 550 stores in total. Starbucks customers, she adds, should feel assured that the vast majority of the companys more than 10,000 company operated and 7,000 licensed locations in the U.S. will be open on November 13, regardless of the unions plans.
We are disappointed that Workers United, who only represents around 4% of our partners, has voted to authorize a strike instead of returning to the bargaining table, she says. When theyre ready to come back, were ready to talk.
In a letter published on Starbucks’s website on November 5 in response to Workers Uniteds strike authorization, chief partner officer Sara Kelly wrote, Starbucks offers the best overall wage and benefits package in retail, worth on average $30 per hour for hourly partners, going on to add, Workers United proposes pay increases of 65% immediately and 77% over three years with additional payments on top of this for almost every aspect of the job, including for working within three hours of opening or closing, for working on the weekend, for receiving inventory, or on a day when Starbucks runs a promotion.
A Workers United spokesperson told Fast Company that Kellys letter intentionally obfuscated the union baristas goals. They pointed out that the $30 an hour figure includes both wages and benefits togetherwhile, in 33 states, the starting wage for a barista is $15.25. Further, they added, the proposals that she attributes to the union are outdated and were never offered as a package deal, but rather as a variety of options available on the bargaining table.
Our fight is about actually making Starbucks jobs the best jobs in retail, Jasmine Leli, a three-year Starbucks barista and strike captain, said in the Workers United press release. Right now, its only the best job in retail for Brian Niccol.
Red Cup Rebellion 2.0
If the strike proceeds as planned, it wont be the first Red Cup Rebellion in Starbucks history.
Back in 2023, union baristas held a similar protest at more than 200 stores, which, at the time, was the largest strike in the unions history. At the time, the union explained that, due to its popularity, Red Cup Day is one of the hardest days for Starbucks workers, due to an explosion in foot traffic and chronic understaffing.
For this Red Cup Rebellion, a Workers United spokesperson told Fast Company, union workers are prepared to make a potential strike bigger and longer than any strikes in years past.
As the dispute between Starbucks and Workers United continues with no clear end in sight, the red holiday cup has become the ultimate symbol of how the company’s corporate goals clash with union barista’s demands.
Senate Republicans are moving to try to end the government shutdown by preparing a new bipartisan package of spending bills and daring Democrats to vote for it, but it was unclear if their plan would work.Many Democrats said they would continue to hold out for an extension of expiring health care subsidies, which was not expected to be part of the legislation.Senate Democrats, who have now voted 14 times not to reopen the government, left their second caucus meeting of the week Thursday with few answers about whether they eventually could find a compromise with Republicans or even with each other on how to end the shutdown.A test vote on the new package, which had not yet been publicly revealed, could come as soon as Friday. Democrats will then have a crucial choice to make: Do they keep fighting for a meaningful deal on extending health care subsidies that expire in January, while extending the pain of the shutdown? Or do they vote to reopen the government and hope for the best as Republicans promise an eventual health care vote, but not a guaranteed outcome?Emboldened by overwhelmingly favorable elections earlier this week, many Democrats say the fight isn’t over until Republicans and President Donald Trump negotiate with them on an extension.“That’s what leaders do,” said Democratic Sen. Ben Ray Lujan of New Mexico. “You have the gavel, you have the majority, you have to bring people together.”Hawaii Sen. Brian Schatz said Democrats are “obviously not unanimous” but they are unified that “without something on health care, the vote is very unlikely to succeed.”Other Democrats have been working on a deal that would reopen the government with only an agreement for a future vote on the health care subsidies. Lawmakers in both parties were feeling increased urgency to alleviate the growing crisis at airports, pay government workers and restore delayed food aid to millions of people now that the shutdown has become the longest in U.S. history.Senate Majority Leader John Thune’s decision to keep the Senate in session Friday, and perhaps over the weekend, came after Trump urged Senate Republicans at a White House breakfast Wednesday to end the shutdown. Trump said he thought the six-week impasse was a “big factor, negative” for Republicans in Tuesday’s elections.
A new effort to reopen the government
The bipartisan package Thune is proposing would fund parts of government food aid, veterans programs and the legislative branch, among other things and extend funding for everything else until December or January.The new package would replace the House-passed bill that the Democrats have repeatedly rejected. That legislation would only extend government funding until Nov. 21, a date that is rapidly approaching after six weeks of inaction.The details were still to be worked out, but the new legislation mirrors a tentative plan that moderate Democrats have been sketching out in hopes of finding agreement. The proposal led by New Hampshire Sen. Jeanne Shaheen would also take up Republicans on their offer to hold a vote on extending the expiring Affordable Care Act subsidies at a later date.It was still unclear what Thune, who has refused to negotiate while the government is closed, would promise on health care and if enough Democrats would agree to move ahead. Republicans have for weeks been five votes short of the 60 they need.
Johnson delivers setback to bipartisan talks
Democrats are facing pressure from unions eager for the shutdown to end and from allied groups that want them to hold firm. Many Democrats have argued that the results for Democrats in Tuesday’s election show voters want them to continue the fight until Republicans yield and agree to extend the health tax credits.A vote on the health care subsidies “has got to mean something,” Vermont Sen. Bernie Sanders, an independent who caucuses with the Democrats, said this week. “That means a commitment by the speaker of the House, that he will support the legislation, that the president will sign.”But Speaker Mike Johnson, R-La., made clear Thursday morning he won’t make any commitment to Democrats. “I’m not promising anybody anything,” Johnson said when asked if he could promise a vote on a health care bill.Johnson’s clear refusal was a setback for negotiators. Michigan Sen. Gary Peters, one of the moderate Democrats involved in negotiations, said the speaker’s comments were “a significant problem.”“We have to make sure we have a deal that we can get broad support for,” Peters said.Senate Democratic leader Chuck Schumer, D-N.Y., has not yet weighed in on the latest push. He has repeatedly called for Trump to sit down with Democrats a meeting that seems unlikely to happen.“Donald Trump clearly is feeling pressure to bring this shutdown to an end,” Schumer said Thursday.
Closed-door negotiations become public
A group of Democrats and Republicans that has been quietly negotiating for weeks insisted they were making steady progress on a deal.In a new development Thursday, Republicans suggested they might be open to including language in a final agreement that would reverse some mass firings of government workers by the White House, according to two people familiar with the private talks granted anonymity to discuss them. But it was unclear if that proposal would be included in the new package of bills.Senate Appropriations Committee Chairwoman Susan Collins, a moderate Republican who has been talking to Democrats, says she wants furloughed workers to be given back pay and workers who have been fired during the shutdown to be “recalled.”“We’re still negotiating that language,” she said.
Associated Press writers Joey Cappelletti, Kevin Freking and Lisa Mascaro contributed to this report.
Mary Clare Jalonick, Associated Press
Ice cream maker Dreyers Grand Ice Cream Company has issued a voluntary recall of select Häagen-Dazs Chocolate Dark Chocolate Mini Bars after discovering they might have wheat in them.
An investigation is underway, but Dreyers believes that food with wheat was put in the wrong packaging at the start of a production run, according to its announcement, published by the Food and Drug Administration (FDA).
There are no related illnesses or injuries as of Dreyers announcement on Monday, November 3.
As Dreyers states, Those with an allergy or severe sensitivity to wheat run the risk of serious or life-threatening allergic reaction if they consume these products.
According to the Cleveland Clinic, between 0.2% and 1.3% of individuals live with a wheat allergy worldwide.
Which products are affected?
The recall only affects a specific batch of Dreyers Häagen-Dazs Chocolate Dark Chocolate Mini Bars. Impacted products are in a six-count package with the following batch code and best by date:
LLA519501: Best by January 31, 2027
This information should be visible on the side of the packaging, but an image of the product is available on the FDAs website.
Where and when was the product sold?
Dreyers didnt provide an exact timeframe for when it shipped the affected ice cream bars.
However, it did state that the recalled Häagen-Dazs Chocolate Dark Chocolate Mini Bars were distributed to two retailers, Kroger and Giant Eagle. Below are the states where shipments were sent.
Kroger:
Alabama
Alaska
Arizona
Arkansas
California
Colorado
Georgia
Idaho
Illinois
Indiana
Kansas
Kentucky
Michigan
Mississippi
Missouri
Montana
Nebraska
Nevada
New Mexico
Ohio
Oregon
South Carolina
Tennessee
Utah
Virginia
Washington
West Virginia
Wisconsin
Wyoming
Giant Eagle:
Indiana
Maryland
Ohio
Pennsylvania
West Virginia
These two grocers are the only ones with recalled ice cream bars, with no other batches or Häagen-Dazs products affected.
What should I do if I have this product?
If youre not allergic to wheat, then its up to you whether to eat the Häagen-Dazs Chocolate Dark Chocolate Mini Bars.
According to Dreyer’s, Consumers with a wheat allergy or sensitivity who have purchased the affected product are urged not to consume the product and instead dispose of it or return it to their place of purchase for a full refund.
The Federal Aviation Administration (FAA) has mandated that, beginning today, flights across America will be reduced at 40 airports due to the ongoing government shutdown.
According to the agency, the flight reductions are being implemented due to safety issues stemming from a shortage of air traffic controllers, who are not being paid during the shutdown.
The reductions are expected to lead to a wave of flight cancellations, the number of which is set to increase every day between now and November 14. Heres what you need to know about the flight reductions, including the full list and a map of the 40 airports affected.
Why is the FAA mandating flight reductions?
The FAA says it has safety concerns stemming from the ongoing government shutdown, which began on October 1 and is the longest US government shutdown in history.
Hundreds of thousands of government workers have been furloughed without pay during the shutdown. But some federal employees, including air traffic controllers, are designated as essential workers. Those workers are required to stay on the job during a shutdown, though their pay is paused.
The problem is that those essential workers still have bills to pay, so as the shutdown drags on, necessity dictates that some are resigning to take on other paid roles in the private sector, while others are calling in sick.
Fewer air traffic controllers and other essential airport staff reporting to work means the risk to flier safety increases. To help mitigate that growing risk, the FAA has now decided to restrict a select number of flights at 40 U.S. airports.
What are the specifics of the FAAs flight reductions?
In a notice posted to the FAAs website yesterday, the agency said that it would initiate a 10% reduction in flights at 40 U.S. airports starting today, Friday, November 7.
However, the reductions will be phased in gradually over the next week. The first reduction begins today, with the full 10% taking effect a week later. Here is how the reduction phases will work:
Friday, November 7: 4% reduction in flight operations
Tuesday, November 11: 6% reduction in flight operations
Thursday, November 13: 8% reduction in flight operations
Friday, November 14: 10% reduction in flight operations
Announcing the reductions, FAA Administrator Bryan Bedford said that the agency was seeing signs of stress in the system, so we are proactively reducing the number of flights to make sure the American people continue to fly safely.
He also warned that the FAA will not hesitate to take further action if needed.
What airports are affected by the FAA reductions?
Most of the major airports in the country are impacted by the reductions, including central hubs like John F. Kennedy International Airport in New York, Hartsfield-Jackson Atlanta International Airport, Los Angeles International Airport, and Chicago OHare International Airport.
The full list of airports affected is as follows:
ANC Ted Stevens Anchorage International Airport
ATL Hartsfield-Jackson Atlanta International Airport
BOS Boston Logan International Airport
BWI Baltimore/Washington International Airport
CLT Charlotte Douglas International Airport
CVG Cincinnati/Northern Kentucky International Airport
DAL Dallas Love Field
DCA Ronald Reagan Washington National Airport
DEN Denver International Airport
DFW Dallas/Fort Worth International Airport
DTW Detroit Metropolitan Wayne County Airport
EWR Newark Liberty International Airport
FLL Fort Lauderdale/Hollywood International Airport
HNL Honolulu International Airport
HOU William P. Hobby Airport
IAD Washington Dulles International Airport
IAH George Bush Houston Intercontinental Airport
IND Indianapolis International Airport
JFK New York John F. Kennedy International Airport
LAS Las Vegas McCarran International Airport
LAX Los Angeles International Airport
LGA New York LaGuardia Airport
MCO Orlando International Airport
MDW Chicago Midway International Airport
MEM Memphis International Airport
MIA Miami International Airport
MSP MinneapolisSt. Paul International Airport
OAK Oakland International Airport
ONT Ontario International Airport
ORD Chicago OHare International Airport
PDX Portland International Airport
PHL Philadelphia International Airport
PHX Phoenix Sky Harbor International Airport
SAN San Diego International Airport
SDF Louisville International Airport
SEA SeattleTacoma International Airport
SFO San Francisco International Airport
SLC Salt Lake City International Airport
TEB Teterboro Airport
TPA Tampa International Airport
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What flights will be reduced?
If your flight is among the reductions, it will be canceled.
But it appears that those cancellations will not be decided by the FAA itself. Instead, it will be left up to the airlines to decide which flights they will cut to meet their reduction requirements.
In the memo the FAA posted, the agency states that The order does not require a reduction in international flights. Carriers may use their own discretion to decide which flights are canceled to reach the orders goal.
Can I get a refund if my flight is canceled?
Yesterday, Fast Company reported that many major U.S. airlines, including United Airlines, American Airlines, and Delta Air Lines, confirmed that they would issue full refunds to passengers whose flights are canceled. However, other airlines remained silent on the matter.
But now it appears airlines will not have a choice in the matter. The FAAs memo states that Airlines will be required to issue full refunds.
However, the FAA says airlines will not be responsible for covering secondary costs, such as hotel stays.
That means if your flight is canceled, you can get a full refund from the airline, but if that cancellation requires you to stay at a local hotel until you can get on another flight, the airline will not be responsible for covering your hotel costs.
Will flight cancellations get worse?
That remains to be seen and is largely dependent on how long the government shutdown drags on.
What’s certain is that cancellations will increase from today until next Friday, when the full 10% reduction order takes effect. But there is no guarantee that reductions will remain capped at 10%.
The FAA says that Decisions to increase or decrease these flight reductions will be informed by safety data.
A decade ago, Ben Collins quit his job as a corporate accountant and started teaching other people how to use spreadsheets more effectively.
That move, terrifying as it seemed at the time, paid off brilliantly. Today Collins is the proprietor of an online spreadsheet training academy and the author of a weekly newsletter dedicated entirely to Google Sheets tips. Some 50,000 people subscribe.
And yet once again Collins is finding himself facing a sense of uncertainty over what’s nextas the very nature of what a spreadsheet even is enters a dizzying spiral of transformation.
“We’ve had more innovation in the last two years than in the 20 before that,” Collins says, referencing the explosion of generative AI technology and its effect on the spreadsheet arena.
He isn’t exaggerating. Up until recently, figuring out how to use a spreadsheet to its full potential was akin to learning a foreign language: You had complex formulas, mountains of cryptic functions, and a labyrinth of overwhelming options to decipher. If you were trying to do anything beyond just putting a few pieces of basic data into cells, you practically needed a dedicated spreadsheet expert to figure out how to make it happen.
But generative AI is currently reshaping the humble and stubbornly complex spreadsheetwhich, for the most part, seems to be a good thing. After all, no one wants a massive project (or migraine) every time the need for crunching numbers comes up. And while generative AI has plenty of issues both practical and ethical, working within the confines of a single spreadsheet and the black-and-white world of objective data seems to be where those limitations are least troubling, and where AI’s strengths are primed to shine.
Still, there’s no escaping that a whole new era is upon us. The biggest question now is how, exactly, it all plays out from hereand whether the need for a spreadsheet expert, be it an independent consultant like Collins or the go-to problem-solver within any office or organization, is bound to evolve or destined to become a relic from a bygone time.
The spreadsheet in the AI era
When Collins quit his accounting job in 2014 and embarked on a self-made, spreadsheet-centric career path, Anna Monaco was 11 years old.
Today, at the ripe old age of 22, Monaco is the founder and CEO of Paradigm, a next-gen spreadsheet service that makes Excel look like an abacus by comparison.
Anna Monaco [Photo: Paradigm]
The idea behind Paradigm is to take all the complexity and manual effort out of spreadsheets and make managing data simple. Instead of worrying about formulas and functions and formatting, you just upload your dataor even tell the service what sort of data you need and let it source it for you.
Paradigm creates your spreadsheet, makes it look slick and professional, and suggests next-step actions to work with the data and put it to practical use.
“Manual data entry shouldn’t exist,” Monaco says. “We’re not just a spreadsheet. We’re replacing weeks of labor.”
Paradigm and its AI-centric spreadsheet startup contemporariesservices such as Sourcetable, Grid, and Juliusaren’t only replacing labor. They’re also replacing an entire way of thinking about spreadsheets and their role in our lives.
And while the reigning spreadsheet-service royalty aren’t exactly rushing to rebuild their long-established interfaces, the same basic principle is already appearing in those environments as well, albeit on a much smaller scale and in a more tacked-on sense.
To wit: Microsoft’s AI Copilot is now thoroughly integrated into Excel and can be summoned to help you create formulas and analyze data without needing to do all the traditional heavy lifting. And Google is doing something similar with Gemini in Sheets, now making the chatbot available on demand in any cell with a simple (though extremely familiar-feeling to any longtime spreadsheet user) “=AI” command for summoning its assistance.
“You dont need to be an AI or spreadsheet expert to do it,” Google wrote in its announcement of the expansion.
Ben Collins [Photo: Ben Collins]
Of curse, not everyone is ecstatic about the in-your-face AI in those more traditional spreadsheet setupsespecially people who arent seeking out such features and find their presence can be annoying or even downright dangerous. AI features often insert themselves into situations regardless of whether they’re actively summoned. And while AI-introduced errors within a spreadsheet generally seem at least a little less egregious than generative AI at its most hallucinogenic, Microsoft is warning that Copilot is best suited for “scenarios where deterministic accuracy is not required” and not for “any task requiring accuracy or reproducibility” (ouch).
So where, then, does all of this leave the spreadsheet expertsfolks like Ben Collins who have spent decades building up deep knowledge in the inner workings of the spreadsheet and all the logic around it?
The answer, it turns out (much like the conventional spreadsheet itself) is complicated.
Expertise, reinvented
Collins sees what’s happening with spreadsheets at Google and Microsoft, and at the more ambitious scrappy spreadsheet startups like Paradigm, as an unambiguous net positive.
“All the AI stuff is democratizing spreadsheets in the same way it’s doing for coding,” he says. “It lets more people have access to those insights and that knowledge rather than just the technically savvy crowd.”
And yetlike in so many other industries right nowit’s impossible to avoid questions over the effects this shift could have on the future. We’re all living through a transition where some say AI is taking away countless jobs and others insist it’s creating as many as it’s killing, or at the very least just changing what types of roles matter. As with many careers, the only real certainty surrounding spreadsheet-related professions right now is a complete and utter sense of uncertainty.
Collins, for his part, remains upbeat. He says he’s seen a shift in the sort of information knowledge workers are seeking around spreadsheets but that he continues to see a strong demand for a deeper understanding of the tools themselves and the data philosophies around them.
“There’s still a need to have a foundation of knowledge and an understanding of how these things work,” Collins says, even if only so you can figure out how to ask an AI assistant for what you need and then assess the quality of what you’re given in return.
“It’s less emphasis on pure syntax and the mechanics and more [on] how we can use these tools at a higher level and be more effective,” he adds.
Collins also notes that for all the buzz around newer AI-centric spreadsheet tools, the vast majority of peopleand businessesare so deeply engrained in the Google or Microsoft ecosystems and so familiar with those environments and the security assurances around them that they won’t be making a major night-and-day change anytime soon. Even if AI does slowly seep its way into their work within those domains.
That’s a point Monaco is well aware of. She sees Paradigm as being less of a play at pulling the masses away from Sheets or Excel and more of a forward-looking option for a different generation of businesses.
“There’s a new way that companies are being built, where smaller teams are commanding a lot more resources and doing a lot more powerful things with the resources they have,” she says. “Paradigm is building for that future.”
One thing she and Collins agree on is that the need for expertise isn’t going anywhere. Monaco says she’s already seeing the emergence of what she calls “Paradigm consultants”people who specialize specifically in supporting the tool she created and helping users figure out how to get the most out of it.
“It’s a different expertise,” Monaco says. “There’s still a huge value in becoming a power user and knowing how to harness these tools. There’s an even bigger value now that these tools are more powerful.”
Collins also envisions his role evolving. And he is 100% up to the challenge of adapting right alongside that.
“The need for training is as strong as ever,” he says.
And that, it seems, is something where a genuine human touch and the type of critical-thinking perspective AI can’t entirely emulate remainsfor the current moment, at leastas important as ever.
The debate around AI ROI has gotten loudand, frankly, a little cyclical. One moment, were hearing that AI is the key to exponential growth; the next, that 95% of AI pilots fail.
At Addi, weve been able to leverage AI to grow 4x faster while operating at ~2x the profitability of BNPL peers. This year alone, weve saved more than $500,000 from our AI initiatives.
But how have we accomplished such strong AI ROI? The difference between performative AI and AI with returns isnt in which model or tool youre using; its how your team is using them.
Heres how weve driven genuine AI-native team adoption and built a workflow/data pipeline that actually makes sense.
1) Hire and grow for fluency
We run nationwide, admissions-style assessments to find talent in unexpected places (from the Amazon to the Ecuador border), then teach AI-native workflows from day one. From our intern program through our senior leadership, we design our interview process for the AI age. We assign a relevant projectsomething candidates could use AI to help withbut then have a panel interview where they present their project, ensuring that candidates actually know the ins and outs of their work without an AI aid.
Our interviews additionally probe into potential candidates own familiarity with AI tools, while our intern cohorts get hands-on with agents and graduate into teams already expecting that fluency. The pipeline is designed to recruit for an AI era from the get-go, versus being an afterthought once already employed.
2) Codify AI-native rituals into culture
When it comes to cultivating an AI-native work culture, AI-native is a learned behavior. We invested in extensive AI onboarding and habit-building, pairing every knowledge worker with the right agent or copilot, and encouraging AI usage as the company default.
Today, more than 90% of our engineers are weekly active copilot users and ~80% of AI-generated code is accepted. This translates into efficiency gains of up to 60% without increasing headcount. Weve kept our core product engineering team flat for three years while shipping more products. The story here isnt in the savings; its in the deep level of AI adoption weve witnessed among our employees by securing their buy-in, setting expectations for an AI-friendly environment, and offering targeted training.
Rollouts fail when AI is treated as a here only if you need it tool. They work when companies rewire rituals around ite.g., code reviews with AI diffs, CX stand-ups that inspect agent transcripts, legal postmortems that include our AIs outputsto normalize the behavior. You might even consider baking AI proficiency into employee reviews.
In other words, dont over-index on tools; over-index on culture. That cultural shift is why AI usage at Addi is voluntary yet ubiquitous.
3) Design AI as a colleague
Theres a reason our in-house agents have regular names like Addri and Aegis. Every agent at Addi is treated like an employeeone with a clear scope, service-level agreements (SLAs), and metrics. Addris job is first-contact resolution with target customer satisfaction (CSAT); the merchant agent owns KYP throughput and reactivation; Aegis owns escalation latency and evidentiary completeness. Human owners review outputs and tune prompts like they would a new hires playbook, and we always welcome teamwide feedback on how our fellow agentic employees can improve before their next review cycle.
Moreover, our AI employees have the same depth of contextual knowledge and understanding that a human employee would, to help them function side-by-side with our team and minimize the frustration that comes with false or limited context. Our agents are tailored to specific roles, not catchalls from an outside vendor that shoehorns a base agent into a wide variety of situations. We ensure theyre trained with high-quality, high-volume, company-owned data. We spent four-plus years building a world-leading data platform, ensuring more than 40 terabytes of data was instantly available as it began building AI agents, giving our digital teammates the best possible training.
4) Invest in the right foundations
AI-first isnt what works; data-first is. This is how you ensure your AI colleagues have that employee-like context.
More than four years ago (pre-LLMs!) we made the decision to invest in a next-generation data engine that would ensure everything that happened on our platform (from a single text message to a full underwriting analysis) would be stored and could be queried by anyone and anythingtraditional AI models, human analysts, and, yes, even LLMs via vectorization.
With a single monorepo and an event-based system that logs everything, we have nearly perfect context: 50 terabytes of clean, searchable data. If you dont own your stack (i.e., control your data and event logs) you will rent your advantage to a vendor. Set your AI-native team up for success by logging everything, and reap the benefits of a database that can be read by humans and AI alike.
5) Celebrate adoption
Reward employees usage of AI by celebrating adoption rates, cycle-time reduction, and defects avoided.
This year, our AI initiatives saved upwards of $500,000 in annual operating costs. For lean teams where a startups success is their teammates success, these metrics (and transparency) matter. That $500K isnt a bottom-line cut; its $500K back into the pockets of our employees in the form of raises, better benefits packages, and profit sharing. Tie budgets to solved tickets, minutes saved, merchants activatedthen compound wins into subsequent quarters.
That mindset of AI gains are your gains is why AI can comfortably power half of our legal and coding throughput, a big chunk of CX, and critical onboarding flows.
In Summary
Train your people to be AI-native and give them the infrastructure to thrive. The models will change. The muscle you build wont. This approach is how weve been able to launch more products more quickly while maintaining a generally lean teamand its why Im confident the best AI ROI stories are still to come.
For decades now, we have been told that artificial intelligence systems will soon replace human workers. Sixty years ago, for example, Herbert Simon, who received a Nobel Prize in economics and a Turing Award in computing, predicted that machines will be capable, within 20 years, of doing any work a man can do. More recently, we have Daniel Susskinds 2020 award-winning book with the title that says it all: A World Without Work.
Are these bleak predictions finally coming true? ChatGPT turns 3 years old this month, and many think large language models will finally deliver on the promise of AI replacing human workers. LLMs can be used to write emails and reports, summarize documents, and otherwise do many of the tasks that managers are supposed to do. Other forms of generative AI can create images and videos for advertising or code for software.
From Amazon to General Motors to Booz Allen Hamilton, layoffs are being announced and blamed on AI. Amazon said it would cut 14,000 corporate jobs. United Parcel Service (UPS) said it had reduced its management workforce by about 14,000 positions over the past 22 months. And Target said it would cut 1,800 corporate roles. Some academic economists have also chimed in: The St. Louis Federal Reserve found a (weak) correlation between theoretical AI exposure and actual AI adoption in 12 occupational categories.
Yet we remain skeptical of the claim that AI is responsible for these layoffs. A recent MIT Media Lab study found that 95% of generative AI pilot business projects were failing. Another survey by Atlassian concluded that 96% of businesses have not seen dramatic improvements in organizational efficiency, innovation, or work quality. Still another study found that 40% of the business people surveyed have received AI slop at work in the last month and that it takes nearly two hours, on average, to fix each instance of slop. In addition, they no longer trust their AI-enabled peers, find them less creative, and find them less intelligent or capable.
If AI isnt doing much, its unlikely to be responsible for the layoffs. Some have pointed to the rapid hiring in the tech sector during and after the pandemic when the U.S. Federal Reserve set interest rates near zero, reports the BBCs Danielle Kaye. The resulting hiring set these firms up for eventual workforce reductions, experts saida dynamic separate from the generative AI boom over the last three years, Kaye wrote.
Others have pointed to fears that an impending recession may be starting due to higher tariffs, fewer foreign-worker visas, the government shutdown, a backlash against DEI and clean energy spending, ballooning federal government debt, and the presence of federal troops in U.S. cities.
For layoffs in the tech sector, a likely culprit is the financial stress that companies are experiencing because of their huge spending on AI infrastructure. Companies that are spending a lot with no significant increases in revenue can try to sustain profitability by cutting costs. Amazon increased its total CapEx from $54 billion in 2023 to $84 billion in 2024, and an estimated $118 billion in 2025. Meta is securing a $27 billion credit line to fund its data centers. Oracle plans to borrow $25 billion annually over the next few years to fulfill its AI contracts.
Were running out of simple ways to secure more funding, so cost-cutting will follow, Pratik Ratadiya, head of product at AI startup Narravance, wrote on X. I maintain that companies have overspent on LLMs before establishing a sustainable financial model for these expenses.
Weve seen this act before. When companies are financially stressed, a relatively easy solution is to lay off workers and ask those who are not laid off to work harder and be thankful that they still have jobs. AI is just a convenient excuse for this cost-cutting. Last week, when Amazon slashed 14,000 corporate jobs and hinted that more cuts could be coming, a top executive noted the current generation of AI is enabling companies to innovate much faster than ever before. Shortly thereafter, another Amazon rep anonymously admitted to NBC News that AI is not the reason behind the vast majority of reductions. On an investor call, Amazon CEO Andy Jassy admitted that the layoffs were not even really AI driven.”
We have been following the slow growth in revenues for generative AI over the last few years, and the revenues are neither big enough to support the number of layoffs attributed to AI, nor to justify the capital expenditures on AI cloud infrastructure. Those expenditures may be approaching $1 trillion for 2025, while AI revenuewhich would be used to pay for the use of AI infrastructure to run the softwarewill not exceed $30 billion this year. Are we to believe that such a small amount of revenue is driving economy-wide layoffs?
Investors cant decide whether to cheer or fear these investments. The revenue is minuscule for AI-platform companies like OpenAI that are buyers, but is magnificent for companies like Nvidia that are sellers. Nvidias market capitalization recently topped $5 trillion, while OpenAI admits that it will have $115 billion in cumulative losses by 2029. (Based on Sam Altmans history of overly optimistic predictions, we suspect the losses will be even larger.)
The lack of transparency doesnt help. OpenAI, Anthropic, and other AI creators are not public companies that are required to release audited figures each quarter. And most Big Tech companies do not separate AI from other revenues. (Microsoft is the only one.) Thus, we are flying in the dark.
Meanwhile, college graduates are having trouble finding jobs, and many young people are convinced by the end-of-work narrative that there is no point in preparing for jobs. Ironically, surrendering to this narrative makes them even less employable.
The wild exaggerations from LLM promoters certainly help them raise funds for their quixotic quest for artificial general intelligence. But it brings us no closer to that goal, all while diverting valuable physical, financial, and human resources from more promising pursuits.
Dole invented a new fruit.
The Dole Colada Royale Pineapple is sweet and tangy with notes of coconut and, as the name suggests, pia colada. Unlike its golden yellow counterpart, the Colada Royale has a cream-colored pulp with a green-to-golden shell. It also took more than 15 years to get it just right. The suggested recipes the company released with the new fruit include snacks like a pineapple and coconut carpaccio and a basil-wrapped pineapple with pine zest. Clearly this is meant to be a luxury pineapple experience.
The fruit, which is now available in select grocery stores in the U.S. and Canada, is 100% non-GMO and naturally bred. The company didn’t share its suggested retail price, but the Colada Royale comes amid a wider trend toward “designer” pineapples. Just last year, Fresh Del Monte released a pink pineapple it called the Pinkglow, which it followed up with a $400 Rubyglow.
[Photo: Dole]
A new growing process
Developing new pineapples requires patience since the natural process can stretch out for nine years or more.
“You have to go through thousands of pollinations and develop thousands of seeds and then have the capacity to pinpoint that particular plant that combines what you are looking for,” says Roberto Young, director of pineapple breeding at Doles farm in La Ceiba, Honduras. He led the team that developed the Colada Royale variety.
The new pineapple also had be grown in different seasons, since temperature can affect the taste of the finished product. All in all, that means it takes thousands of attempts that go wrong in hopes of getting one that goes right.
Dole pineapple breeder Roberto Young [Photo: Dole]
“Usually, you have to discard most of the fruit because it could taste very good during the summer, but in the winter you cannot really taste it because it’s too tangy, it’s very acidic,” Young tells Fast Company.
Plant breeders consider factors like size, productivity, and color as they’re developing a new product, but taste, of course, is the most important.
“It doesn’t help if the fruit is a good size, good productivity, but doesn’t taste like pineapple,” Young says.
Dole’s new pineapple had the right taste, but its cream-colored pulp was at first a concern since consumers today are used to yellow pulp in pineapples. At the produce and floral trade show in Anaheim, California, where Dole unveiled the Colada Royale in October, Young says people were hesitant about the fruituntil they tasted it. Then, he says, their reaction was Wow, this is something different.
[Photo: Dole]
Developing a new market
The goal from the beginning was to develop a unique flavor and bring something new to the market.
Pineapple is genetically very variable, Young says, and the biggest challenge was consistency. Plant breeding doesn’t have a high success rateIf you are a plant breeder, you might be successful, or you might not,” he concedesand pineapple is especially tricky since it has a relatively long harvest cycle.
The process requires first planting parents, which take about a year to produce flowers that can be pollinated. From there, it’s about five more months until the fruit can be harvested. The seeds from that harvest are then planted to get all new plants, repeating the cycle.
[Photo: Dole]
The results need to be repeatable to ensure the fruit can be mass-produced, so it takes at least three generationsroughly nin yearsto develop a new product. The Colada Royale took longer, and Young, a Honduran native who’s been with Dole for 28 years, has been on the project from the start. He considers it his legacy.
“I feel really very, very grateful,” he says.
Dole is also looking at the new fruit as a legacy play of its own. The company plans to reinvest a portion of the proceeds of every box of the pineapple sold to create a community center in La Ceiba that will provide healthcare services, language classes, and vocational training.
In its most recent earnings report, Dole said its second-quarter 2025 revenue was $2.4 billion, an increase of 14.3% over the same period in 2024. The company is expected to report third-quarter financials on November 10.
Designer pineapples may sound like a novelty, but since they can be upsold, fruit growers and grocers alike may find they’re a sweet addition to the produce section.
