President Donald Trump started in sales mode, using his State of the Union address to deliver an upbeat vision of the U.S. economy.
But that portrayal collides with the sentiment of Americans who remain anxious about their finances and feel they haven’t benefited from Trump’s policies. He took the high road to honor the gold medal-winning U.S. mens Olympic hockey team and a war hero before pivoting abruptly to a darker tone as he ridiculed Democrats.
Here are takeaways from the speech.
Trump’s roaring economy is at odds with sour public sentiment
Much of the nation is worried about the direction of the economy, but Trump says the good times are here, insisting repeatedly that rising costs are no longer a problem.
The roaring economy is roaring like never before, he said. He cheered the lower cost of gasoline, mortgage rates, prescription drug prices and the rising stock market: Millions and millions of Americans are all gaining.
Such optimism, as so many Americans are feeling economic strains, risks painting Trump as out of touch. Just 39% of U.S. adults approved of Trump’s handling of the economy in February, according to AP-NORC polling.
Still, the president focused much of the first hour of his speech on the economy, something Republicans had urged him to do as they head into the midterm elections.
Trump wraps himself in the flag
For a president who always seems to be spoiling for a fight, Trump also tried to summon Americans innate patriotic impulses. In addition to the hockey team, he singled out war heroes and those who had taken brave stands in other countries, using the moment to bestow numerous presidential medals in an effort to give the address a more positive gloss.
It underscored the president’s media savvy and understanding that even if a moment isn’t appreciated completely in real time, it can have an afterlife in the days following speech, especially on social media.
Yet in one revealing moment, Trump lamented why he couldn’t give a congressional medal to himself.
Taking aim at Democrats
Tributes to the Olympic hockey team and a World War II veteran didn’t unify the room for long.
The Republican president soon took aim at Democrats and blamed them for many of the nations ills.
Trump said rising health care premiums are caused by you, suggested Democrats are not protecting Social Security and blamed them for the nations affordability crunch. You caused that problem. You caused that problem, Trump said as he glared at the Democratic side of the room.
He seemed to get angrier as the speech progressed.
These people are crazy, Im telling you, theyre crazy, he said. Democrats are destroying this country.
Trumps MAGA base loves such aggression. Its unclear, however, if the rest of the country feels the same.
The Supreme Courts unfortunate decision
By Trumps standards, he held his tongue when it came to the Supreme Court.
After the court struck down his tariff policy last week, Trump said the justices who voted against one of his signature issues were an embarrassment to their families. By Tuesday, he simply called the ruling unfortunate.
Trump sought to treat the ruling with indifference, insisting that tariff revenues were saving the U.S., ignoring the fact that the levies havent made a significant dent in government debt. He said the tariffs were paid by foreign countries even as virtually every study concludes that costs have been paid by U.S. firms and consumers.
At one point, he seemed to take the long view that history would ultimately vindicate him even if the Supreme Court would not.
As time goes by, I believe the tariffs paid by foreign countries will, like in the past, substantially replace the modern day system of income tax, taking a great burden off the people that I love, he said.
That is unlikely. The federal income tax is authorized by the 16th Amendment to the Constitution and the power to collect revenue is ultimately defined by Congress, not the president.
Trump vows action on election ‘cheating’
The president also used the speech to reprise his attack on the integrity of U.S. elections.
Cheating is rampant in our elections, Trump said.
Trump has made such claims for years, focused on his 2020 election loss, claims rejected by dozens of courts and his own attorney general at the time.
But the timing of Tuesdays prime-time claims, less than nine months before voters across America are scheduled to decide control of Congress, was noteworthy. So, too, was Trumps suggestion that he would take action to address a problem that doesnt appear to exist.
They want to cheat. They have cheated, and their policy is so bad that the only way they can get elected is to cheat, Trump said of Democrats. And were going to stop it. We have to stop it.
Trump is calling on Congress to pass a bill requiring voters to show a photo ID before casting ballots. But he also recently vowed to enact an executive order to address the issue, although the White House has not clarified what it might entail.
No mention of Minneapolis
Sometimes whats not said is as notable as what is.
Trump has highlighted immigration since the very first speech in which he announced his 2016 presidential campaign. And on Tuesday night, he revived much of the same language hes used throughout the past decade, blasting criminal aliens and warning of drug lords, murderers all over our country.
What he didnt mention: the most aggressive immigration enforcement tactics that threatened to bring the U.S. to the brink earlier this year. He didnt mention the deaths of two U.S. citizens in Minneapolis last month at the hands of federal agents.
Indeed, it was Rep. Rashida Tlaib, D-Mich., who shouted that Alex wasnt a criminal, referring to Alex Pretti, one of the U.S. citizens killed in Minneapolis.
During her Democratic rebuttal, Virginia Gov. Abigail Spanberger said law enforcement must work to build trust in communities and said Trump every minute spent sowing fear is a minute not investigating murders.
Trump said nothing of his administrations shift in tactics, including a drawdown of agents in the Twin Cities. And he made no acknowledgment of the broad concerns in the U.S. about Trumps approach on immigration, as demonstrated by the 60% of U.S. adults who disapproved of his handling of the issue in February, according to AP-NORC polling.
Drumbeat for war gets louder
Trump has already built up the largest U.S. military presence in the Middle East in decades. And in his speech, he outlined a rationale for using those forces to launch a major military strike against Iran.
The president said that Iran and its proxies have spread nothing but terrorism, death andhate, adding that its leaders killed at least 32,000 protesters in recent weeks, which is at the further end of estimates over the death toll. The U.S.-based Human Rights Activist News Agency has so far counted more than 7,000 dead and believes the death toll is far higher. Irans government offered its only death toll on Jan. 21, saying 3,117 people were killed.
Trump also warned that the nation has developed missiles that can threaten Europe and is working on missiles that will soon reach the U.S.
My preference is to solve this problem through diplomacy. But one thing is certain, I will never allow the worlds number one sponsor of terror, which they are, by far to have a nuclear weapon. Cant let that happen.
On brand, the speech was the longest SOTU ever
The president, ever mindful of records that allow him to say he was the first, the best or had done the most, succeeded clearly on one thing: he beat his own record for the longest, clocking in at just under 1 hour, 48 minutes.
By STEVEN SLOAN and STEVE PEOPLES Associated Press
Its no secret that fast casual restaurants have struggled in recent years, with some companies turning to cheaper options as a way to lure customers back.
The latest chain to do so is Panera Bread, which just announced its first-ever value menu. It includes 10 items that are each $4.99.
Customers must pick at least two items to use the menu and will get the typical free side of an apple, chips or bread.
Anyone who has been to Panera will recognize it as a scaled-down version of the long-standing You Pick Two deal.
[Photo: Panera]
There are four half sandwiches, three half salads, and three cups of soup. There will be a rotating seasonal item, but to start Paneras value menu will include:
Sandwiches
Toasted Italiano
Toasted Caprese Focaccia
Bacon Turkey Bravo
Cranberry Walnut Chicken Salad
Salads
Fuji Apple Chicken
Ranch Parm BLT
Caesar
Soups
Creamy Tomato
Homestyle Chicken Noodle
Bistro French Onion
Paneras value menu follows similar offerings that have popped up from restaurant chains like Taco Bell, McDonald’s, and more.
Theyve come as high inflation caused fast food menu prices to shoot up and customers to revolt. In 2024, McDonald’s released its $5 value meal, a move that has proved successful in increasing sales, The New York Times reported earlier this month.
Panera has also faced controversies and layoffs of late
Alongside changing spending trends, Panera has also been rocked by controversies.
In 2023, the company faced multiple lawsuits over deaths allegedly related to its high-caffeine Charged Lemonade drinks. Two deaths were due to cardiac arrest. Panera has since settled the lawsuits and removed the Charged Lemonade drink from its menu, NBC reported.
Panera also laid off 72 employees last year after shutting down a production facility in Missouri, USA Today reported. It follows the shutdown of four other facilities in the United States.
AMC, the worlds largest movie theater chain and a one-time darling of meme stock traders, said this week that it expects to continue closing more movie theaters than it opens going forward.
While the move is sure to disappoint cinephiles, AMC believes that shuttering certain cinemas will ultimately be better for the companys bottom line. Heres what you need to know about the upcoming AMC theater closings.
Whats happened?
On Monday, AMC Entertainment Holdings reported its fourth-quarter 2025 financial results as well as its full-year 2025 results. Its fair to say the company did not have a blockbuster quarter or year.
For the companys Q4 2025, which ended on December 31, AMC reported total revenue of $1.28 billion. Thats a drop of 1.4% from the $1.3 billion the company reported for the same quarter a year earlier.
Fewer people are attending movies
AMC said that both its global and international attendance figures were down.
For Q4 2025, AMC’s total attendance equalled 56.3 million. Thats a drop of nearly 10% from the 62 million during the same period a year earlier. U.S. attendance was down less (about 7.5%) for the quarter than international attendance (down about 15%).
However, for its full fiscal 2025, AMC did slightly better.
Total full-year revenue was actually up about 4.6% to $4.84 billion. And its attendance figures, while still down across the board, didnt fall as much as it did in the forth quarter.
Still, the downward trend in attendance was obviously a blow to AMC, which relies on attracting foot traffic to its theaters so it can sell tickets and high-margin concessions.
Attendance problems are not unique to the company. In recent years, movie theaters worldwide have struggled with declining foot traffic.
The reasons most often cited for those declines include higher ticket prices, fewer films with mass-market appeal, and increasing competition from streaming services like Netflix, which stream original feature film content right into viewers homes.
Declining foot traffic can turn some theater locations into a financial burden instead of a guranteed positive revenue source, so it was little surprise when, in addition to annoucning its financials, AMC revealed that in the years ahead it is planning to close more theaters than it opens.
AMC reveals it will close more theaters than it opens
AMC currently has about 860 theaters across the globe, making it the largest theater chain in the world.
Yet on the companys financial earnings call earlier this week, CFO Sean Goodman revealed that AMC will be closing underperforming locations in the futuresomething the chain has already been doing for some time.
The CFO further revealed that since 2020, AMC had already closed 213 locations, while opening just 65 new ones during the same timeframe.
Which AMC movie theaters are closing?
The company did not provide a list of theaters that it plans to close, but local media outlets have reported numerous closures in their respective communities over the last year. AMC location closures in 2025 have included:
An Alabama location in March
A Kansas location in April
A Georgia location in August
Three Illinois locations in August
A Colorado location in September
A Buffalo, New York, location in December
The ongoing reshaping of our footprint reflects our commitment to improve asset productivity, expand margins, and position AMC for sustainable long-term growth, Goodman said on the companys financial call, according to a PitchBook transcript.
When asked about the companys portfolio footprint by an analyst, Goodman said that about 10% of the chains theaters come up for lease renewal each year, and those renewals give AMC the opportunity to renegotiate leases or shutter the locations.
“Like most organizations or companies with a retail footprint, our theaters are a kind of normal distribution and there is a tale of underperforming or loss-making theaters,” he said. “And we see an opportunity to close those theaters or renegotiate leases and then take on new theaters that are significantly, very significantly, more profitable.”
He added that investors can expect a similar pace going forward and that the company will be “closing more theaters than we open, but the new ones that we open are generating significantly more profit than the ones that we close.
AMC stock price has been getting hammered
Since announcing its latest quarterly results on Monday, shares of AMC Entertainment (NYSE: AMC) have been relatively flat.
The stock price currently sits at around $1.16 a share in premarket trading as of the time of this writing.
That’s only a fraction of what the companys shares were once worth during its heyday as a meme-stock darling in the early pandemic years. During that time, meme stock traders on Reddit poured money into buying AMC shares, driving the price to almost $650 per share in June of 2021.
Todays share price of around $1.16 represents a more than 99% decline from AMCs nearly $650 high.
Women’s sports continue to thrive. Record-breaking WNBA viewership, a flood of new brand investment, and now Unrivaled: the women’s basketball league built by players, for players. Commissioner Micky Lawler pulls back the curtain on what it really takes to launch a high-stakes sports startup in the full glare of the public eye. The question is no longer whether women’s sports can compete. It’s how fast they can grow.
This is an abridged transcript of an interview from Rapid Response, hosted by the former editor-in-chief of Fast Company Bob Safian. From the team behind the Masters of Scalepodcast, Rapid Responsefeatures candid conversations with todays top business leaders navigating real-time challenges. Subscribe to Rapid Responsewherever you get your podcasts to ensure you never miss an episode.
I first came upon Unrivaled last year around this time. I’m a basketball fan, but other 3-on-3 leagues didn’t really connect for me. But Unrivaled, it grabbed my attention right away. The format, the players, the model of playing in one location in Miami, adopting what the WNBA did during the pandemic bubble, it’s fun.
You felt what I felt when I first heard about it. I loved it from the start. I could see it, I could feel it. And what’s not to like about the name, Unrivaled?
And the timing for the league when it came out was great. It was just as the Caitlin Clark mania was surging, although I know Caitlin hasn’t competed on Unrivaled. But women’s leagues overall were accelerating, the WNBA, the NWSL. How much did that timing matter for you?
Look, I’ve spent a lifetime working in professional sports, and in particular in tennis, most of it in women’s tennis, and so I could see the momentum. And sometimes the world has a way of working in mysterious ways, because the timing was also perfect for me, having just retired from the WTA.
Were you into basketball before this? I mean, your life was obviously tennis, so that was where your time and your energy was focused.
When you work in sports, it’s your microcosm, so I was very familiar with the opportunity of women’s basketball, and I always loved it. When my kids played sports, basketball was my favorite season because it’s so much fun to watch. And I did play in high school, very badly, so basketball was not entirely foreign to me, but it’s like you lived in San Francisco and now you’re moving to New York. It’s the same country, but it’s two very different cities. Does that make sense?
Yeah. Part of Unrivaled’s appeal for the players is financial. WNBA salaries remain modest. Players generally have to look for other paying gigs in the off-season. It’s why Brittney Griner went to Russia. You’re offering sort of an alternative to going overseas. Your salary pool isn’t enormous, but there are other benefits, including equity. This is part of the selling point to the players is the financial opportunity, and I guess the vibe in Florida where Unrivaled happens.
As a professional athlete, when you are competing six months of the year, you need to have another source of competition. Income, yes, but also competition. You need to stay sharp, you need to stay in shape, you need to keep working on your craft, on your game. So both Breanna and Napheesa are mothers, and for them it was increasingly difficult to go overseas for three months, and also for their own brand exposure in the market. So we looked at this as a way to really build the entire ecosystem of women’s basketball and support what clearly is a very interesting league, which is the WNBA.
SAFIAN: Yeah. You’re separate from the WNBA, right?
LAWLER: Yes. Yes.
But as you say, you travel in these concentric circles with players and media partners and sponsors. How do you approach that relationship?
Well, we have 54 WNBA players here in-house, so our approach is to really deepen the focus on players, getting them into the public eye. And so, we hope that this is all very, very positive and good for the environment in which the WNBA operates. So the relationship is complimentary.
You’re deep into Unrivaled’s second season. The playoffs start February 28th, the end of the month. The business of the league keeps evolving. More sponsors, more facilities, more teams. You added the 1-on-1 tournament mid-season, took the league on the road to Philadelphia, and the semi-finals will be right near me at the Barclays Center in Brooklyn. This sort of business roadmap, how does it compare to your efforts growing the WTA? How much do you look at and focus on, what’s the lowest hanging fruit, what’s easiest to get versus long shot plans?
At the WTA, you have a structure where owners, tournaments, and players sit on the same board. There’s a 50/50 ownership. The players, they’re not contracted by the WTA, so they are self-employed and they have their own commercial rights. So the tour has to try to elevate the whole thing with limited assets, getting to a point that perfects the pressure on the players, not overstressing them, but you also have to answer to players number one to 250. And the number one is going to play many more matches. But in any case, it’s a lot to juggle.
Over here you’ve got a clean slate and you’re giving players real equity from the start. So the players were very, very fast to understand that the more Unrivaled grew, the better for them from every angle. The more that they could participate in telling brand stories, the more their own story would be relevant. So it’s completely different because you don’t have to argue about the value of social media like we did with the WTA many years ago. We need to change the media requirements from a post-match interview to giving some time to the social side. In tennis, that took a long time. Here it’s front and center.
They want to be doing it.
They understand the holistic side to the business, that it’s not just about being a phenomenal basketball player. You have to be good at social. You have to serve the press, serve all your fans, create an environment that is community. If I had any doubt that this was going to work, well, that was quickly gone because of the intensity of the fans and the intimacy. Sephora Arena is a place where you come to be very happy and entertained, and you see just stellar performances.
The players are aware that it’s a start-up, but they’re also aware that everything goes to serve them. We are highly, highly focused on making sure that they have everything that they need. Having two player founders in Breanna and Napheesa, we know they need a glam room. They need, of course, a weight room. They need training, and a very good training room and a training team. The best childcare. Saunas. Infrared for inflammation and recovery. I can’t do it justice.
I loved the 1-on-1 tournament that happened.
Yeah.
When you go to the players and you say, “Hey, what about doing a 1-on-1 tournament?” Are they like, “Oh, that’s great. We play 1-on-1 against each other all the time,” or are they like, ̴Oh, I don’t know. It’s more work for me”?
Both. You have the players that shy away from it a little bit, but once they play, they’re all-in. And it is, again, the crowd was so into it. The men talk about it, how much they would love it, and so we did it. And these women, they leave no stone unturned. They fight.
Well, that was part of what I loved about it. They looked exhausted. You could physically see they’re not dogging this. Sometimes in an all-star game, you can tell the players are a little sort of they’re in it.
Totally in. Personally, in year one I thought, “Oh my gosh, this is starting to look like a tennis tournament. Is this the right place?” But it has been a big success. Players love it.
Ten years ago, I ended a meeting at WeWork with an offer to grab a free beer on tap. Last week, I ended it with a similar offer, except this time the beverage on offer was kombucha. The seemingly innocuous shift is symbolic of a bigger evolution underway at the coworking giant: less coolness, more functionality.
WeWork is growing up, and its newest location in downtown Manhattan is the most visible proof yet: 250 Broadway, which opened in January, is WeWork’s first outpost in the city since 2019the year WeWork abandoned its initial public offering and ousted cofounder Adam Neumann as CEO. The space adds 60,000 square feet to the company’s New York portfolio, which already exceeds 3 million square feet. And it’s yet another outpost in a global network that now spans 600 locations worldwide.
Except this isn’t WeWork as you might remember it: There are no neon signs, no beer o’clock, and no ping-pong tables. Instead, the walls are hung with paintings sourced through ArtLifting, an art consultancy that works with artists living with homelessness or disabilities. The bar is stocked with kombucha and espresso machines. And the once-labyrinthine corridors you could navigate only by asking for directions are now marked with pristine wayfinding signs.
This is WeWork 2.0, and its already a hit: 250 Broadway is 94% occupied across five floorsincluding one that wont open until spring.
[Photo: WeWork]
The rise and fall (and rise again) of WeWork
WeWork’s story is by now a familiar parable of Silicon Valley excess. Founded in 2010 by Neumann and Miguel McKelvey, the company spent a decade expanding on billions from SoftBank’s Vision Funda Saudi-backed mega-fund that poured tens of billions into high-growth tech startups like WeWorkalong with a cultish faith in Neumann’s vision of community as business model. Then came the botched IPO in 2019, a belated stock market debut that failed to turn the tide, and, in November 2023, a Chapter 11 bankruptcy filing.
By the time WeWork reemerged in June 2024, it had shed roughly $4 billion in debt, closed hundreds of locations, and installed global commercial real estate firm Cushman & Wakefield veteran John Santora as its new CEO.
[Photo: WeWork]
WeWork 2.0: From cool to functional
The seeds for WeWork 2.0 were sown in 2019, but according to its chief design officer, Ebbie Wisecarver, the company hadnt reset its design values until last year. Today the goal is for WeWork locations to feel familiar and engaging. But where previous locations stuck to a recognizable WeWork brand (think: industrial loft meets Brooklyn coffee shop), new locations are designed to feel timeless rather than trendy.
“WeWork’s culture and what it stands for has evolved,” Wisecarver told me during a tour of 250 Broadway. “I don’t think it’s diminished this idea of community and connection, I just think we’ve adapted in a lot of ways to providing more spaces that are more suitable for what people are doing there.”
Before 2019, every location had to conform to a prescribed aesthetic, “and I think that actually restricted some locations from really being what they could be,” she said. Now the design team isn’t afraid to go slightly off-brand if the building calls for it.
At 250 Broadway, the team drew from the history of Lower Manhattan itself. The iconic Woolworth Buildingvisible from nearly every office windowis echoed in the spaces stone tile floors and its art deco-style reeded glass dividers. The sconces lighting up the lounge area were sourced from Brooklyn-based lighting design studio In Common With, while much of the furniture was made by New Jersey millwork firm Bestmark.
The upgrades, however, go deeper than aesthetics. Private offices, once outfitted with wooden floors that members complained amplified noise, are now carpeted. The mothers’ roomhistorically a corporate afterthoughthas been given a window with a view of Manhattan. Even the phone booths, supplied by office design company Room, have been rethought and positioned in clusters near lounge areas rather than scattered across the floor. According to Wisecarver, that was a direct response to members asking for quiet spaces adjacent to communal ones.
[Photo: WeWork]
A flexible workspace for the post-COVID era
The 250 Broadway location came about in part by necessity: WeWork’s lease next door, at 222 Broadway, was expiring as the building converted to residential. But the timing of what WeWork has built there speaks to something bigger than a single office move.
Since the pandemic, the way we work has fundamentally changedperhaps permanently. The old WeWork, with its beer taps and open-plan optimism, was a result of working styles before COVID-19. Now hybrid schedules have made flexibility a basline expectation rather than a perk. Workers want spaces that are quiet when they need focus and communal when they need connectionsometimes within the same hour. WeWork’s new design strategy is a response to that shift.
Today WeWork’s numbers suggest the office isn’t as dead as some proclaimed it would be. Across New York City, WeWork’s occupancy sits at 82%, with Midtown running at 90%. Globally, the company has climbed from 70% to 77% occupancy and is targeting 80% this year. Several markets are already well past that threshold: Dublin’s One Central Plaza is at 100%, Barcelona and Milan are both north of 90%, and Toronto has jumped from 73% to 85%. (San Francisco sits at 76%, up from 64%).
The problem is, while WeWork once revolutionized coworking, competition has never been stiffer. Industrious, acquired by CBRE for $400 million in early 2025, has built a premium alternative that competes directly for enterprise clients. IWG, the parent company of Regus and Spaces, has long been profitable where WeWork was not. And in WeWork’s own backyard in New York City’s financial district, WSA has bet that blending coworking with arts programming and cultural events is the next frontier of flexible work.
Which may be exactly why 250 Broadway feels more like a thesis statement. This summer, WeWork is opening a new location at 245 Fifth Avenue in Manhattan’s NoMad neighborhood. A new floor is being added to its 1 University Avenue location in Toronto. Upgraded offices are also coming to 1201 Wilson in Washington, D.C. Underpinning all of it is a commitment to reinvest roughly $80 million annually in modernizing its portfolioa figure the company spent in 2025 and is repeating again in 2026.
Only time will tell if the thesis will prove out across these future locations.
Early drivers steered cars by pushing a lever left and right. That was fine at slow speeds, but disastrous when you accelerated. It took years before the steering wheel arrived. Granola CEO Chris Pedregal says AI interfaces are still in the lever era.
Pedregal, who in 2019 sold the edtech startup Socratic to Google, says were just beginning to figure out how humans should interact with AI. Three years after the launch of ChatGPT, people still associate AI with typing into a chat box.
Granola is betting on a new approach to AI-enhanced note-taking. The London-based startup doesnt record audio or video or send bots into your meetings. Instead, its tool sits on your computer or phone, transcribing in real time while you maintain control.
Chris Pedregal [Photo: Granola]
You can jot notes alongside its transcription, building a personal knowledge base instead of a raw archive of recordings. The viral spread of its tool helped the company raise $43 million last year, bringing its total funding to $67 million at a valuation of $250 million. Its also grown from a team of 4 to 35.
Fast Company spoke with Pedregal about the steering wheel moment still ahead for AI interfaces and the surprising ways people are using Granola to take notes on everything from therapy to vet visits. The conversation has been edited for length and clarity.
Youve described Granola as a steering wheel for large language models. What do you mean by that?
I think its very, very early days in this new wave of AI, particularly on the user interface interaction side of things. The technology developed very quickly, but it takes human time to figure out the right interaction patterns.
I looked it upit was over three years from when the iPhone came out to when Instagram launched. I think we’re in that time period right now. People might be like, ChatGPT has been out for three years, and we’re still just dealing with chatbots. Is that the end of it? I think it’s just early days.
Early cars were driven with a lever, literally a stick that you’d move left and right to steer. It was fine if youre going slowly, but the moment you started going quickly, it was easy to go off the road. It took quite a while for them to develop the steering wheel. Once they figured out the steering wheel, it became very natural and it stuck. AI interfaces are still in their lever era.
Granola deliberately doesn’t record audio. Why make that choice when competitors do?
Granola doesnt record audio by design, which is probably annoying if you ever try to use Granola for interviews. But it makes it less invasive for work conversations, because really what you want are the notes. The goal is not to have an audio recording.
The way I think about it is: What’s the minimum amount of invasiveness for the most value? That’s how you have to thread the needle. AI is here, we’re all going to be using tools like this in the future because they’re so useful. But what are the norms? What’s the thoughtful, ethical design of these tools so that we maximize the gains for the cost?
How is Granola different from Otter, Fathom, and other meeting notetakers?
It all really comes down to this: Granola feels like a tool that lets you be your best self in meetings. The operative word there is tool, and that means you control it. You can write your own notes. When the AI generates notes, you can edit them. The AI is subservient, augmenting your abilities. Its your personal place where you have all this information.
I think a lot of the other toolsOtter is like 9 years old at this pointare really about meeting capture, meeting recording. You log in and heres all your meeting recordings. Thats useful, but it feels very different than when you open Granola. Its like, heres my personal context where I can ask questions. It’s not really about the meetings. It’s about the notes, the knowledge inside of it.
As we look towards the future, Granola and those other tools are going to look more and more different. I see Granola as being much more of a contextual workspace where Granola has all this helpful context about you. Now if I need to go write an article or a blog post, or institute some process changes inside the company, I will go into Granola and write that first draft because it has all that context. I can’t imagine doing that in Otter or Firefliesit just doesn’t feel like the right place for it.
You’ve found that mixing work and personal contexts in Granola is actually more useful. Why?
Right now, I use Granola for all my work meetings, therapy sessions, and logistics conversations about my life. If you had sat me down two years ago and asked if that’s really useful, I would have said noI want those things separate. It turns out when you’re asking Granola questions, it having a 360-degree view of different things that are going on in your life is very useful. When you’re making decisions, you’re weighing all those constraints and prioritiesnot just the ones tied to this specific project at work.
I was just at the vet this morning, and I used Granola because it’s my mom’s cat and I’m not going to remember exactly what the vet says. Moments like going to the doctor, parent-teacher conferences, talking to a construction worker or plumberany situation where there’s sometimes technical language that’s really important to get right, that you’re not familiar withare incredibly valuable to capture accurately.
Theres a different question around data ownership. I dont necessarily want my company to have my therapy notes. But as models get better, the AI having access to the right context makes all the difference in terms of the quality of the response.
What’s appropriate etiquette around recording conversations with Granola?
I think right now, the etiquette is simple: Ask.
I imagine that the norms around this will change quickly, but it will remain very situation-dependent. Inside our company, its expected that meetings are Granola’d unless someone asks not to be. But in social environments the norms will be very different. Ive tried some of these pendants that record everything, and the idea of wearing those at a party just makes me feel a bit icky.
I also think the video conference providers will adapt and make it easy to show meeting participants that you are using something like Granola, so ou won’t have to think about it. I think it really comes down to the social nuances of the situation.
I usually frame it simply: Talk about it in terms of notes and transcription. Is it okay if I take notes? This thing will transcribe so I don’t forget the important stuff you say. That’s basically what I say.
What’s been your biggest mistake as you’ve grown Granola?
The biggest mistake I’ve made so far was that we didn’t grow the team fast enough. We had product-market fit in a fast-moving space, and I didn’t recognize that early enough. By the time I did, we were drowning in user tickets, requests for billingall the kinds of stuff that happens when you grow. There were only four of us on the team when we launched the product.
I was trying to use my playbook from my last startupkeep the team super small, grow slow and steady. [I realized] that’s great, Chris, but actually the world wants this and you have to respond. I thought growing quickly meant sacrificing how thoughtful we could be about product, and I wasn’t reactive enough. We’re 35 people now, and most of that has happened in the last couple of months.
What are some surprising ways people are using Granola?
All the personal stuff was surprising at firsttherapy, vet visits, parent-teacher conferences. Then there were these founders early on who used Granola as their collective brain. They logged in with the same account and would record every conversation they had because they were early in their startupevery brainstorm, every argument. It became a single shared memory between the two of them.
One user followed this famous sales methodology where every conversation falls into one of 14 buckets. He created very specific templates for each bucket, and at the end of the meeting he’d select the right one. Granola would basically spit out all the next steps to win that deal based on that framework. He encoded his entire sales process into itsuper intricate. I didn’t see that coming.
Some bad news for all the mutual fund managers out there: A new study from researchers at Harvard Business School seems to support the fear that artificial intelligence and machine learning could do their jobs. But here’s the catchwith only about 71% accuracy, depending on how predictable their trades are.
The working paper Mimicking Finance from Lauren Cohen, Yiwen Lu, and Quoc H. Nguyen, published this month by the National Bureau of Economic Research, finds “that 71% of mutual fund managers trade directions can be predicted in the absence of the agent making a single trade.”
The paper goes on to say, For some managers, this increases to nearly all of their trades in a given quarter. Further, we find that manager behavior is more predictable and replicable for managers who have a longer history of trading and are in less competitive categories.”
What does that mean? Basically, that the trades of more senior managers, especially those who are in less competitive areas, are easier to mimic (and thereby, those jobs might be easier to replace with AI).
The findings are based on data the researchers analyzed from 1990 to 2023 that took into account the size of the fund, the broader economic indicators, and investor flows.
Perhaps what’s most alarming for mutual fund managers, though, is the paper’s conclusion: “For some managers,” AI predicted “nearly all of their trades in a given quarter”which is the equivalent of a mic drop.
However, there are a few big caveats. The paper finds that the larger the ownership stake of the manager in the fund, the less predictable their behavior. It also found less predictable managers strongly outperform their peers, while the most predictable managers significantly underperform.
Even within each manager’s portfolio, the research shows “those stock positions that are more difficult to predict strongly outperform those that are easier to predict” (a bright spot for fund managers who want to keep their jobs).
The study is significant because it explores which tasks could be automated using AI, and how that could affect jobs in the financial sector. It estimates the U.S. asset management industry to be worth about $54 trillion.
Through the end of the 2010s, people were a companys infrastructure. Large workforces provided the scaffold upon which a business could build capacity for complexity: hire more people, take on more work.
Artificial intelligence has upended this relationship, decoupling a companys potential productivity from its headcount and redefining which businesses will fare best.
As a result, Americas mid-sized companies are disappearing: the number of businesses with between 250 and 499 employees has fallen by 22.5% since 2020. Meanwhile, the independent professional economy is quickly growing to take their place: 30.4 million U.S. solopreneurs (businesses with a single employee) now collectively generate over $1.75 trillion in output, rivaling that of larger firms.
As mid-size companies dwindle, their economic role will be replaced by individuals using AI as their infrastructure. The next five years will see the rise of an entirely new model of work, one in which savvy service professionalsfrom lawyers to plumberswill operate at a scale previously possible only for mid-sized or even larger companies.
EXPANDING SOLO WORK
When surveyed, entrepreneurs note that they spend 36% of their working hours on administrative tasks, leaving little capacity to think about business growth or transformation.
Single process automations have historically helped to free up some of this brain space, but AI does this on an entirely different level. Pearls proprietary research shows 50% of white-collar workers believe AI could handle over half of their job responsibilities in the next five years. For a new crop of solopreneurs, AI will completely assume their burdensome administrative work.
But AI wont be just another force multiplier akin to digitizing invoices in QuickBooks or tracking a customers status in Salesforce. For solopreneurs, AI will add entirely new forces, equipping them with super agents to expand their business to the heft of a mid-sized firm while leaving them room to focus on mastering their craft.
Middle-sized companies used to occupy a protected niche, gathering trusted groups of professionals to offer formalized work too specialized for large enterprises and too complicated for solo workers. Now, a solopreneur can harness the power of a 250-person firm, not by replacing hundreds of employees but by using AI to replicate the coordination that previously made this size staff necessary.
THE DIGITAL WORKFORCE
Solopreneurs will match the quantity and quality of work of a mid-sized business by assembling a digital workforce to coordinate across five distinct categories:
Sales and Marketing
The solopreneur already has a distinct advantage over mid-size companies in acquiring customers: their singular voice. AI helps them extend this voice to find new leads far beyond their network and maintain sales relationships at a capacity far higher than what one person can manage alone.
Businesses are currently using AI to make faster marketing decisions and even automate entire workflows, such as sending tailored emails to capture a potential customer who has abandoned their cart and tracking the results. Future sales and marketing will hand off even more of the strategic work to AI, allowing it to lead entire accounts, negotiate pricing, and derive new messaging based on real-time customer signals, all to extend a professionals personal reach.
Research
For client work already secured, solopreneurs are using tools like Perplexitys Deep Research to create expert-level briefs in minutes, earning the company an $18 billion valuation from investors betting on AI-driven knowledge work.
From synthesizing multiple earnings call transcripts to surfacing the latest news on competitors and novel techniques, AI is giving sole proprietors access to an exponentially wider breadth of knowledge and eliminating the fluff so they can absorb only the most consequential information.
As AI matures, it will help solopreneurs continually update a research memory bank, question initial output for factuality, and flag missing data.
Execution
For a legal issue, for example, customers would rather avoid paying for the overhead of a large firm and work solely with the most experienced lawyer. AIs execution power finally enables this, connecting trusted experts directly with customers.
The most advanced sole proprietors today compete with mid-size companies by running multiple specialized agents, automating workplace tasks like drafting informed email responses, summarizing meetings through different expert lenses, and preparing tailored reports. Already, U.K. civil servants have reported that they save an average of two weeks per year with similar AI automations.
In the next five years, AI will evolve from requiring explicit instructions to only needing intent. Instead of requesting email drafts for review, a solo lawyer might ask AI to keep a client warm or move this deal forward and let an agent do the rest. Humans will still play the most important role, consulting on nonnegotiable accuracy checks and strategy decisions.
Compliance
Though famously unsexy, compliance is essential to company growth and what keeps many smaller firms from venturing outside their core pursuits. With AI anticipating compliance issues, solopreneurs can more quickly expand into new areas of business, rivaling larger firms whose governance teams protect them in these pivots.
AI compliance platforms already track and map relevant changing regulations, allowing solopreneurs to keep up with shifting legal obligations without a large compliance team. What will come next is AI-generated audit trails and compliance assessments for real-time operations, shifting the work of keeping a company in line completely into the background.
Management
Coordinating an entire infrastructure of autonomous agents will be essential to scaling a business with only one human employee. The startup period will likely be much more extensive than for a human-staffed company, with the solopreneur needing to define a vision fo the business and reiterate it to management agents to get processes right.
When management agents are finally aligned with the company leader, theyll be able to predictively schedule subordinate agents, balance workloads, and uplevel important considerations before they turn into problems. Today, an AI agent can launch tens of others to complete a complex process. Tomorrow, a network of management agents will continuously reprioritize work to meet the solopreneurs long-term goals.
SCRAMBLING THE PROFESSIONAL FIELD
Rather than a distant vision, the multi-million-dollar solo business is already here. In just six months, Maor Shlomo alone built vibe coding platform Base44. He garnered tens of thousands of customers and sold it to Wix for $80 million. Meanwhile, 50% of global freelancers are already earning more on projects when they use AI tools.
62% of GenZers are interested in starting their own business so America can expect a continuing increase in sole-proprietor firms from the next generation of knowledge workers. However, not every professional will be equipped to immediately become a solopreneur. They will still need training grounds like enterprises, continuing education programs, and peer mentorship to hone the expertise necessary to justify staking out on their own. What AI has changed is that anyone in the professional sphere can now go solo, they just have to choose the right moment in their career.
Even as more Americans consult AI for advice, they will continue to seek out human experts for the best service. Increasingly, however, these professionals will be powered by AI infrastructures complex enough to rival mid-sized firms.
As the Barack Obama Presidential Center takes shape ahead of its June 2026 opening, some observers have pointed feedback about an element of the building’s design.
The Chicago tower features all-caps lettering that wraps around two sides of the building. But for many people, the textan excerpt from the former presidents speech in 2015, on the 50th anniversary of the marches from Selma to Montgomery, Alabamais nearly impossible to read.
Its designers say legibility isn’t the onlyor even the primaryfunction of the lettering.
“One of the key questions I asked at the beginning was, are people supposed to read this?” says designer Micheal Bierut, who typeset the lettering with a team at Pentagram, led by designer Britt Cobb. “Is legibility the primary goal here? Do we want people to be able to stand on the ground, look up at this tower, and read those words? And that was discussed on the client end, and the answer came back, ‘No, it should have the promise of meaning, it should be decipherable, everything should be spelled right and it should make sense.
[Rendering: The Obama Foundation]
Letters as texture
Early concepts of the Obama Presidential Center designed by Tod Williams Billie Tsien Architects (TWBTA) showed a perforated upper section depicted in drawings as an abstract, irregular pattern. At one point, architects considered filling the space with a bunch of words, like a word cloud, though that idea didn’t feel quite dignified enough for a presidential library. Instead, they decided to use an excerpt from one of Obama’s speeches.
“Just as a million people go to the Lincoln Memorial, some of them will stand and read every word of the second inaugural; some people will just admire the statue in the building and kind of take it in, and a couple of words will jump out, but not the whole thing,” Bierut tells Fast Company. “It’s in that tradition that I think we were operating.”
The function of the feature is to serve as a space on the building that would be illuminated to the outside at night; from the inside, it’s a viewing area. Bierut says it was “never intended to look or feel or communicate as an applied sign stuck on the building.” It’s part of the architecture, not separate from it.
Not everyone is a fan, though.
Chicago Sun-Times architecture critic Lee Bey wrote on X that the text was “tough to read to me, giving off the lorem ipsum vibes,” referring to the Latin dummy text designers use as a placeholder when typesetting, while other X users joked the full quote can only be fully read by a drone as a dual dig against the design and against the Obama administration’s drone warfare program.
[Photo: E. Jason Wambsgans/Chicago Tribune/Tribune News Service/Getty Images]
Typesetting an architectural feature
The words are load-bearing, which added an element of complexity to the design process.
“We’re moving around typography, adjusting letter sizes and letter spacing, and suddenly you’re typesetting 5-foot letters that are bearing tons of weight,” Cobb says. “It gets to a point where it becomes [more] about structural design. . . . I might say how I wish that letter could be three inches closer, but no, sorry, it’s bearing all this weight. It’s got to be here instead of there.”
The letters are set in an adapted version of Gotham, Obama’s presidential campaign font, and the excerpt comes from one of Obama’s most famous speeches as president. Given at the Edmund Pettus Bridge, the National Historic Landmark where police attacked civil rights marchers on Bloody Sunday 1965, Obama tied Selma to the broader American story in his speech.
The excerpt reads: “You are America. Unconstrained by habit and convention. Unencumbered by what is, ready to seize what ought to be. For everywhere in this country, there are first steps to be taken, there is new ground to cover, there are more bridges to be crossed. America is not the project of any one person. The single most powerful word in our democracy is the word We. We the People. We Shall Overcome. Yes We Can. That word is owned by no one. It belongs to everyone. Oh, what a glorious task we are given to continually try to improve this great nation of ours.”
The text as it appears on the building wasn’t designed to be a billboard or read as a speech. It’s a pep talk to America. You are America. We the people. Yes we can. Even if glanced only in snippets, these words still hold power.
Say what you will about business and media mogul Kim Kardashian, but if theres one thing she undoubtedly excels at, its building a personal brand so recognizable that all of her ventures scream Kim. Shes done it once again with her new energy drink brand Update, which looks like it couldve organically spawned in the walk-in fridge of her sleek Los Angeles home.Update is a four-year-old energy drink brand founded by CEO Daniel Solomons. On February 24, the brand revealed a full packaging and design overhaul and introduced Kardashian as a cofounder in its new era. In an interview with Fast Company, Solomons said that Kardashian had been a steady customer since 2023 and began offering feedback on the brands formula and packaging, which ultimately led to her formally joining the team. In addition to Kardashians sign-on, Update also announced a 4,000-store distribution deal with Walmart, which will begin on March 1.[Photo: Update]This isnt just a celebrity brand endorsement. Since joining Update, Kardashian has worked closely with the team to completely rethink Updates branding, taking it from what Solomons describes as a masculine tech bro look to a can that feels perfectly natural in Kardashians hand. This shift taps into the refined personal brand that Kardashian has built over the past several yearsone thats perhaps most exemplified by her ultra-successful apparel company Skims, which embraces simple, minimalist shapes; a color palette of neutrals offset by pops of pastels; and a futuristic yet grounded ethos.For Kardashian, Update is essentially Skims in a can: a drinkable version of the aspirational aesthetic thats at the core of all of her business ventures.Onboarding the right agency for the jobDesigning a modern energy drink is no small task. The energy drink aisle is notoriously crowded, and its only getting busier as functional beverages take off among wellness-focused young consumers. According to the agency Grand View Research, the global energy drinks market was estimated at $79.39 billion in 2024 and is projected to reach $125.11 billion by 2030. To design a beverage that would actually stand out on shelves, Update turned to an agency with a healthy background in thinking up breakout brands for saturated markets: Day Job, the design wizards behind brands like Fly by Jing, the adaptogen drink Recess, and the viral protein bar brand David, which recently exploded in popularity in no small part due to its ultra-minimalist, refined look. The lesson we take from the success of naming and branding David is that a brand doesnt need to be your friend, says Rion Harmon, Day Jobs executive creative director. It just needs to be very, very good. People want excellent products. And its okay for your branding to reflect that.For Update, that meant leaning into Kardashians tonal, minimalist aesthetic that aspirational shoppers are already familiar with, rather than attempting to design an energy drink for the everyman. [Photo: Update]Designing a drink that “feels like Kim, without saying Kim”Updates original branding included a palette of bright (almost neon) metallic hues, paired with a stenciled wordmark and some highlighted nutrition info. The overall look was akin to a beverage one might expect to see in the Tron universe or in a gamers streamneedless to say, it was far off base from something Kardashian might design.Previous branding for Update. [Photo: Update]“The category of energy drinks is extremely loud,” Harmon says. “Lots of color, lots of neons, lots of overlapping graphics, lots of chaos.”But, according to Harmon, Kardashian had a vision for the brand as soon as she joined the team. She wanted it to express a clean, premium futurism to reflect the innovative approach to energy, he says. (Updates formulation relies on the ingredient paraxanthine, a molecule that the body naturally converts into caffeinewhich the brand says gives its products a less jittery feeling.)Day Job took this concept and spun it into a variety of different cans, all totally different in their approach to logo, layout, type, and color. Kardashian then selected her top cans and provided the team with specific notes for each.She was very involved, from initial vision to minor refinements, creative directing all along the way, Harmon says. She has a very sharp eye, her feedback is always clear, she has real aesthetic vision, but shes collaborative as well.[Image: kimkardashian/Instagram]The final design brings together a palette of muted metallic blue, pink, maroon, and yellow, all of which look like they could star in the next NikeSkims collection. As it did with the packaging for the protein bar David, Day Job minimized any text on the cans to the barest of bones, leaving only subtle notes on flavor, calories, and sugar content. They replaced the techy logo font with a bolded sans serif. Harmon calls it a nearly non-logosomething simple and default, but with a reflective materiality to evoke futurism.In sum, Update is a beverage that would look perfectly natural next to a pair of ballet-core joggersor nestled in Kim Kardashians expertly manicured hand.Kims body of work has a recognizable quality, and thats something we wanted to inform the brand identity, Harmon says. It needed to feel like Kim, without saying Kim. We wanted to find the line between something that fits in her fridge, and the fridges of Walmart.”
