This year has not been a great one for grocery stores, with chains like Kroger and Safeway closing locations in recent months.
Now, the Southeastern grocery chain Winn-Dixie appears to be following in their footsteps, with its parent company planning to sell or possibly shutter 32 Winn-Dixie stores by the end of 2025 as its focus shifts to its home state of Florida.
It will also transition or close eight Harveys Supermarket locations. The 40 stores impacted span Alabama, Georgia, Louisiana, and Mississippi.
Southeastern Grocers (SEG), the Jacksonville, Florida-based company that owns both chains, posted a list of stores that it will transition, with some identifying new operators such as Piggly Wiggly and Super 1 Foods, and others marked “pending.”
It’s unclear which of the pending stores will close and which will transition to new ownership. Reached for comment by Fast Company, SEG reiterated that it has “reached agreements or is advancing plans with multiple grocers.” It said store closures are expected by the end of the year, but did not elaborate.
SEG further noted that southern Georgia will maintain stores in Brunswick, Folkston, Lake Park, St. Simons Island, and Valdosta. The company expects the transitions will be completed by early 2026.
A new name for a new era
SEG announced the transitions and closures alongside news that it will rebrand as the Winn-Dixie Company. The new name will roll out by early 2026.
The change honors Winn-Dixies century-long legacy while positioning the grocer for growth through investments designed to modernize stores, enrich the customer experience, and reimagine the neighborhood grocer for the next 100 years, the soon-to-be Winn-Dixie Company stated in a press release.
The company is also expanding, despite the divestitures. Its acquiring Hitchcocks Markets in three Florida cities: Alachua, Keystone Heights, and Williston. Each will become a Winn-Dixie, with the Williston location expected to open by the end of the year and the other two locations slated for summer 2026.
These new stores and transitions will leave the company with about 130 grocery stores and 140 freestanding liquor stores.
SEG is also moving forward with dozens of remodels while growing its liquor store portfolio and its own product offerings. Plus, it will be piloting tools such as third-party delivery and return kiosks.
Breakfast has started to get a little riskier. More than six million eggs have been recalled since Sept. 29 over salmonella concerns. This week those concerns grew when the FDA expanded its earlier recall from Arkansas-based Black Sheep Egg Company and elevated the recall to Class I, which describes the highest possible risk to public health.
The move follows a string of other recent egg recalls. In August, the FDA announced the recall of large brown cage-free Sunshine Yolks produced by Country Eggs, LLC of Lucerne Valley, California, and sold under the Nagatoshi Produce, Mizuho, and Nijiya Markets brands. Those products reportedly sickened at least 95 people across 14 states. Other recent recalls have also affected Costcos Kirkland brand eggs.
Why the uptick in food recalls?
If it seems like there has been an uptick in recalls recently, that’s not entirely unfounded. Food recalls have increased by around 20% from 2020 to 2023, according to a Trace One report. However, experts say that much of the reason for a greater number of recalls is because tests are more sensitive to picking up contamination. This heightened sensitivity leads to more recalls, as contamination is identified earlier and more accurately, says Darin Detwiler, LP. D., author of Food Safety: Past, Present, and Predictions and a professor at Northeastern University.
Likewise, food safety regulations have gotten more stringent since the Food Safety Modernization Act of 2011, which means recalls are triggered more easily. Since the passing of the act, “theres been a huge improvement in food supply regulation,” Toby Amidor, MS, RD, CDN and author of Health Shots said last year. “Regulations such as all facilities are required to have a preventative control plan, enhanced produce safety rules, and more frequent FDA facility inspections have helped with improvement.”
Amidor added, “In addition, facilities must give the FDA access to food safety records, greater authority over imported food, and comply with the agency to issue mandatory recalls.”
The growing list of recalled eggs
Per the Oct. 20 recall notice, the recall now includes Black Sheep Egg Company brand 12- and 18-count cartons of Free Range Large Grade A Brown Eggs with Best By dates of 8/22/2025 through 10/31/2025. Likewise, Kenz Henz of Santa Fe, Texas recalled its 12-count containers of “Grade AA Large Pasture Raised eggs”, which came from Black Sheep Egg Company over possible contamination. The affected cartons are marked with UPC code 86949400030, Julian dates 241244 and 246247, with best-by dates of October 11th through the 14th and October 16th and 17th.
The FDA also said that the eggs have been distributed to other companies in Arkansas and Missouri from July 9 through Sept. 17, and said some of the products may have been repackaged. The notice explained that the list will be updated as the FDA receives new information with the potential for more products to be added to the recall list.
The updated recall comes after salmonella was found at the company’s processing facility in Walnut Ridge, Arkansas in late September. During the inspection, 40 environmental samples tested positive for salmonella, including seven different strains of the bacteria. Per the announcement, the “FDA does not have information available at this time to suggest that this firm is the source of an ongoing outbreak. “
Black Sheep Egg Company said in a Facebook post that while the FDAs tested non-food contact surfaces which found salmonella, however, the eggs “tested negative for salmonella and showed no signs of contamination. The post continued, Out of an abundance of caution and with the safety of our consumers in mind, we made the proactive decision to initiate a voluntary recall on certain lots of eggs.”
The Center for Disease Control and Prevention estimates that Salmonella causes “about 1.35 million illnesses, 26,500 hospitalizations, and 420 deaths” per year in the U.S.
It doesn’t look like a Rivian truck, but a new electric bike took shape at the EV company.
A startup called Also, which spun out from the EV maker earlier this year and raised $105 million, launched the $4,500 e-bike today, along with a delivery quad for logistics companies and another four-wheeler that consumers could use instead of a typical cargo bike.
[Photo: Also]
The idea sparked three years ago, after Rivian founder RJ Scaringe met with Chris Yu, head of product and innovation at the bike brand Specialized. We connected over a really basic question, which is: why doesn’t that magical experience that you get out of a Rivian exist in anything smaller than a car? says Yu.
Scaringe had long believed that the EV companys approachdesigning its own software and hardware and building a vehicle from scratchwould also make sense for e-bikes and other forms of micromobility.
[Photo: Also]
We saw this huge transformation that had happened in the electric car space, Yu says. Early electric cars were mostly conversions that replaced a gas motor with an electric motor and batteries, so the driving experience didnt change much. Then came companies like Tesla and Rivian.
These pure play, vertically integrated, ground-up EV companies took the approach of, well, if we have the ability to craft the software, the electronics, the hardware from a clean slate, you can design an ownership and user experience that is just fundamentally different in almost every way, he says.
In 2022, Yu helped start a skunkworks inside Rivian to explore how smaller EVs could follow the same clean-slate approachan idea that would eventually lead to a new kind of e-bike.
[Photo: Adam Wells/Also]
An interchangeable design
The first difference with the new bike, called the TM-B (or “transcendent mobility” bike), is that it can convert to different forms. At the push of a button, the top frame can be unlocked and swapped with a cargo bike seat with a sturdy rack for carrying groceries or children. It can also be swapped for a different size, so more than one rider can easily share the same bike. Another attachment makes the bike more like a scooter, with a low bench seat.
[Photo: Also]
The designers wanted to tackle a common pain point for anyone considering an electric bike: there are so many different options on the market that it can be difficult to choose. “I was just talking to my neighbor about thisthey were thinking about buying a utility bike for carrying their kid to school, but they looked at all these utility bikes and thought they don’t look that fun to ride,” Yu says.
Buyers can get stuck trying to decide between a utility bike and a fun weekend bike and not end up getting anything. “Or end up like me, with 10 bikes in their garage,” he says. Instead of buying multiple bikes, Also’s system allows them to get less-expensive attachments. If a couple wants to have an e-bike as an extra vehicle for running errands, they can get two sizes to fit each person.
Like a car, you can use your phone to unlock the bike as you approach it. If the bike has multiple riders, it automatically recognizes who you are and your preferences, from whether you want to manually shift to your destinations in the navigation system.
[Photo: Adam Wells/Also]
Pedal by wire
Like electric cars and trucks, which use a “drive by wire” designmeaning that the accelerator pedal isn’t mechanically connected to the wheels, but s just a sensorthe bike uses a “pedal by wire” approach. “It’s fully software defined,” says Yu. “What that means is there is zero mechanical connection between you pedaling the cranks and what the motor is telling the wheel to do.”
When you pedal, the pedals feel like an ordinary bike, but the ride is much smoother, he says. The default mode is automatic, so a rider doesn’t have to figure out how to shift and adjust the amount of pedal assist that they’re getting, though that option exists. (When you shift, the bike gives haptic feedback so it feels like a gear is shifting.) The bike has roughly twice as much torque as most other e-bikes, so it’s easier to quickly accelerate to join traffic or change lanes.
[Photo: Bryson Malone/Also]
On a hill, the bike offers “hill flattening,” meaning that it automatically feels like riding on a road that’s less steep, or even completely flat. Going downhill, the bike can also automatically flatten the ride so you can keep pedaling and regenerate the battery. Unlike most e-bikes, 90% of the time that you’re braking, that happens through regenerative braking.
“It’s much more akin to a modern electric car experience, where the braking experience is much more consistent, much more reliable, and importantly, the brake pad service life is dramatically longer than otherwise would be,” Yu says.
[Photo: Also]
An approachable design
The bike doesn’t look like a Rivian truck, apart from a similarly shaped light. But “the underlying principles are very shared,” says Yu. “We’re sibling brands that have a common fabric.” The design team tried to balance performance and approachability, he says. “We wanted something that was very welcoming, very simple, geometrically . . . As capable and high-performance as it is, we don’t want it to be precious, either. We want it to be easy and part of your family’s life.”
The team carefully considered each detail of the bike, from integrated turn signals in the frame to a security system that locks everything, including the wheels, when you walk away. (If the bike is stolen, you can track it on an app and remotely disable the whole thing until you get it back.) A custom navigation system, shown in a small touchscreen on the handlebars, shows bike-specific directions and how much range you have left on the battery.
The bike has two options for power banksone that can give you up to 100 miles of range, depending on how much you’re using pedal assist, and a smaller option with up to 60 miles of range. The power bank can also be pulled out of the bike and used to quickly charge a laptop or anything else that plugs into USB-C.
[Photo: Also]
The startup also designed a few accessories, including a helmet that has noise-cancelling microphones so you can take a phone call as you ride. “We tuned the audio experience such that you can be riding at 25 miles an hour, take a phone call, and the other person will not know, will not have any idea that you’re riding on a bike with wind noise,” says Yu. A custom pannier is precisely sized to fit a grocery bag from Trader Joe’s.
All of this comes at a price. The TM-B Performance, the premium version of the bike, will be $4,500 when it launches next spring. The company hasn’t yet announced the price of the basic version of the bike, but says that it will be less than $4,000. Accessories and additional top frames add to the cost. By contrast, a budget e-bike might cost less than $1,000. But Also’s models are well within the range of other high-end bikes, some of which can cost more than $10,000.
[Photo: Adam Wells/Also]
Beyond the bike
Like Rivian EVs, which have a “skateboard” under the vehicle with the battery and other tech that can be used across multiple trucks or cars, the bike’s basic technology can be used in other vehicles. The startup also designed a four-wheeled cargo bike, or quad, that can be used for deliveries in dense cities.
From the outside, it looks similar to the pedal-assist EVs that UPS, Amazon, DHL, and other companies are already using in some areas. But Yu says that Also’s vertical integration makes it easier to connect with the software that logistics companies use for features like route optimization. The vehicle is also designed from the groud up for durability, so it can last far longer than typical delivery quads.
The design will launch later in 2026, along with a simplified consumer version of the same vehicle. The company also announced today that it’s partnering with Amazon on a custom version of the delivery vehicle that the retail giant could use in its dozens of micromobility hubs across Europe and the U.S.
The same basic technology that went into the bike and quads could also be used in other vehicles. It could eventually help electrify other small vehicles, like mopeds or motorcycles, that are more common than cars in countries outside the U.S. The transition to electric “can really be accelerated if we can deliver experiences that aren’t just electric, but they’re just fundamentally better product experiences that happen to be electric,” Yu says.
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Zillow economists just published their updated 12-month forecast, projecting that U.S. home pricesas measured by the Zillow Home Value Indexwill rise +1.2% between August 2025 and August 2026.
Heading into 2025, Zillows 12-month forecast for U.S. home prices was +2.6%. However, many housing markets across the country softened faster than expected, prompting Zillow to issue several downward revisions. By April 2025, Zillow had cut its 12-month national home price outlook to -1.7%.
However, in recent months, Zillow has stopped issuing downward revisions. In August, it revised its 12-month outlook to +0.4%. In September, the forecast increased to +1.2%, and now Zillow has upgraded its 12-month national home price forecast to +1.9%.
While Zillows national home price forecast is no longer negativeit isnt exactly bullish either.
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Among the 300 largest U.S. metro area housing markets, Zillow expects the biggest home price increase between September 2025 and September 2026 to occur in these 15 metros:
Atlantic City, NJ +5.4%
Rockford, IL +5.1%
Concord, NH %5.1%
Knoxville, TN +5.0%
Saginaw, MI +4.9%
Fayetteville, AR +4.8%
Hilton Head Island, SC +4.8%
Torrington, CT +4.8%
Kingston, NY +4.8%
Hartford, CT +4.5%
New Haven, CT +4.5%
Vineland, NJ +4.5%
Jacksonville, NC +4.4%
Morristown, TN +4.4%
Manchester, NH +4.3%
Among the 300 largest U.S. metro area housing markets, Zillow expects the biggest home price decline between September 2025 and September 2026 to occur in these 15 metros:
Houma, LA -7.4%
Lake Charles, LA -6.9%
Lafayette, LA -4.3%
New Orleans, LA -4.0%
Shreveport, LA -3.8%
Beaumont, TX -3.7%
Alexandria, LA -3.4%
Odessa, TX -3.3%
Corpus Christi, TX -2.4%
Monroe, LA -2.1%
San Francisco, CA -2.0%
Chico, CA -2.0%
Punta Gorda, FL -1.9%
Austin, TX -1.8%
Santa Rosa, CA -1.8%
U.S. home prices, as measured by the Zillow Home Value Index, are currently up +0.01% year over year. If Zillows latest 12-month outlook (+1.9%) comes to fruition, it would represent a small acceleration nationally.
Below is what the current year-over-year rate of home price growth looks like for single-family and condo home prices. The Sun Belt, in particular Southwest Florida, is currently the epicenter of housing market weakness right now.
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A year ago, 6 of the nations 50 largest metros were buyers markets; this September, buyers have the edge in 15 metros. Zillows market heat index shows the strongest buyers markets are Miami, New Orleans, Austin, Jacksonville and Indianapolis. Thats due, in large part, to a surge of new construction in many of those areas in recent years. The hottest markets for sellers are in the Northeast and Bay Area: Buffalo, Hartford, San Jose, San Francisco and New Yorkplaces where builders face some of the most stringent land use restrictions, wrote Kara Ng, a senior economist at Zillow, in a report published on Monday.
Meta, which owns and operates Facebook and Instagramas well as Threads, Messenger, and WhatsAppannounced on Wednesday it is laying off about 600 employees from its new AI “superintelligence” research lab. The news was first reported by Axios.
Fast Company has reached out to Meta for comment.
That lab, dedicated to pursuing an artificial intelligence system that would reportedly surpass human intelligence, was announced back in June after Meta said it was investing $14.3 billion in Alexandr Wang’s Scale AI and bringing him on board.
The cuts come as Big Tech ramps up its investment in artificial intelligence, pouring billions in an increasingly competitive, high-stakes AI arms race. Meta CEO Mark Zuckerberg says the social technology company plans to invest between $60 billion and $65 billion in capital expenditures in 2025 alone.
At the same time, Meta has been rolling out AI advertising features at a dizzying rate, and is also reportedly building a large Manhattan data center to power its AI offerings.
“By reducing the size of our team, fewer conversations will be required to make a decision, and each person will be more load-bearing and have more scope and impact,” Meta chief AI officer Alexandr Wang wrote in a memo, Axios reported.
Meta financials
Shares in Meta Platforms, Inc. (NASDAQ: META) took a dip in morning trading on Wednesday, but for the most part recovered, and were trading down 0.4% by midday at the time of this writing.
In its second quarter 2025 earnings release, for the period ending on June 30, Zuckerberg wrote, “We’ve had a strong quarter both in terms of our business and community: I’m excited to build personal superintelligence for everyone in the world.”
The company beat expectations with revenue coming in at $47.52 billion, versus estimates of $44.80 billion. Earnings per share (EPS) came in at $7.14, higher than the expected $5.92.
The company’s third quarter 2025 financial results will be released after market close on Wednesday, October 29.
From July 14 to November 9, 2023, the American actors’ union SAG-AFTRA, representing 160,000 people, went on strike over a labor dispute with the Alliance of Motion Picture and Television Producers. Eventually, both sides agreed to terms that theoretically would put limits on how actors images and output could be used. Strike over, everybody went back to work and the entertainment industrial complex started humming again. But they apparently never took heed of the lessons offered by a somewhat obscure 2013 movie, The Congress, which eerily anticipated the crisis Hollywood is now facing.
Caught by surprise? Really?
Fast-forward to September of 2025. Dutch actor and comedian Eline Van der Veldens company Particle6 released an AI “actor” named Tilly Norwood with the express intention of her becoming the next Scarlett Johansson. The bot had its own social media presence, appeared in comedy sketches, and breathlessly declared, “I may be AI, but I’m feeling very real emotions right now. I am so excited for what’s coming next!”
The news that there were agents in talks to sign Norwood, the way they might sign a real actor, sparked an incredible Hollywood firestorm. Lots of denunciations of this use of technology. Lots of claims that this was unfair. And lots and lots of workplace anxiety. But should they really have been this surprised? Futurist Amy Webb suggests not. As she says, Lets not kid ourselves: theyve had more than a decade to prepare for this.
Toy Story, launched in 1995, was the first full-length feature film to be fully animated, followed by a string of other hits that did very well without real actors, thank you very much. Lara Croft, the Tomb Raider game star that was launched in 1996, became a movie character in 2001. In 2002, a simulated movie star played the lead in the science fiction movie Simone. In 2011, Japanese idol group AKB48 introduced a new memberAimi Eguchi. She became popular and was added to the band only to graduate when her identity as a composite of the bands other actors was revealed. By 2016, we had AI-generated influencers like Lil Miquela who appear in advertisements, garner thousands of followers, and are paid to endorse brands. And the precedent for Tilly signing with an agent has already been establishedMiquela signed on with CAA as its first virtual client as far back as 2020.
View this post on Instagram A post shared by Tilly Norwood (@tillynorwood)
Willful blind spots
Now seemingly caught by surprise, what did the strategists in Hollywood miss?
Most likely, too much focus on their own industry. Fractious labor relations, contract negotiations, and changing entertainment consumption behavior can eat up a lot of executive bandwidth. This leads to not thinking in terms of the larger arenas in which competition takes place. The big threat to this business was not other industry players but something coming along that made what they did unnecessary, undesirable, or too expensive.
Once an innovation has demonstrated its efficacy, particularly if it is popular and making money for someone, it is almost impossible to put the genie back in its bottle (see: targeted Internet advertising or ride-sharing).
It is also no secret that some moviemakers longed to put AI-generated actors in leading roles, even experimenting with bringing some back from the dead.
But perhaps the most significant reason I believe they didnt pick up on the weak signals is because they didnt want to. Accepting the idea of digital acting and the creation of digital worlds means accepting the idea that expertise, talent, and painfully acquired skills will become obsolete. Unfortunately, the law of disruptionin which the complicated and difficult becomes easy and the expensive becomes cheapdoesnt really care about your preferences.
Preparing for an existential threat
What might they have done to prepare? They could have launched small-scale experiments using digital actors to learn about audience acceptance, production workflows, and creative possibilities. They could have allocated resources to dedicated teams exploring new forms of storytelling. With the constraints of physical acting and reality removed, stories could be developed that could be as revolutionary as the movies themselves were when they created new possibilities beyond what could be done on a physical stage. They could have worked with regulators and their unions to establish a glide path for AI in their sector that would be fair with respect to intellectual property. They could have seriously invested in the digital technologies used to create these new forms of entertainment, rather than leaving all this to technology companies such as Netflix.
The end of mass market entertainment?
Tilly Norwood isn’t the disruptionshe’s the warning shot. The real disruption comes when AI can generate not just actors, but entire films, on demand, personalized to individual viewer preferences, at essentially zero marginal cost.
The studios that survive won’t be the ones with the biggest IP libraries or the most prestigious awards. They’ll be the ones who recognize that the fundamental assumptions of their industrythat content is scarce, that talent is human, that stories are fixedare all being systematically dismantled, and come up with new business models that take advantage of the post-inflection point world.
The weak signals are there. The question is: who has the appetite to listen?
San Diego-based Shield AI is developing a first of its kind fighter jet: a 2,000-mile-range pilotless plane that takes off and lands vertically and uses artificial intelligence to fly itself, even when adversaries jam navigation and communication systems.
Like the company’s smaller, combat-tested autonomous drone, the V-BAT, the X-BAT doesn’t need a runway, allowing it to launch from remote islands or the decks of aircraft carriers or drone ships. But with its larger blended wing body design, the X-BAT can carry missiles and electronic weapons. Instead of propellers, it’s powered by an afterburning jet engine.
Airpower without runways is the holy grail of deterrence, said Brandon Tseng, Shield’s cofounder and president.
The aircraft could join a new class of AI-piloted fighter jets being developed for the Pentagon and other defense agencies, where the aim is to deploy robotic wingmen alongside human pilots or as part of separate drone squadrons. Taking their cue from the fierce drone war in Ukraine, military officials around the globe are eyeing layers of cheaper, more disposable AI-powered drones on air, land, and sea, with a single soldier responsible for an entire swarm. A separate race is on to field counter-drone systems.
Investors have followed suit, pouring cash into a range of defense-tech firms, including Shield rivals like Anduril, Helsing, and publicly traded AeroVironment, or AV. Globally, venture capital investment in defense companies surged to $31 billion last year, a 33% increase over the previous year, according to McKinsey. Anduril, founded in 2017, is the largest of the so-called “neo prime” contractors, with a valuation at around $30 billion. Shield, founded in 2015 and valued at $5.3 billion, is the next biggest defense startup. (Fast Company named it a Most Innovative Company in 2020.)
The X-BAT’s tail-less blended wing body aims for added lift [Image: Shield AI]
With the X-BAT, Shield joins a number of startups and legacy contractors developing AI aircraft that can match the capabilities of an F-16 but in a smaller form factor. Last month, Shield was picked by the Air Force to provide the AI software for the YFQ-44, Anduril’s entrant in the service’s Collaborative Combat Aircraft (CCA) competition.
Defense giant RTX was selected to build the software for the other drone prototype being considered by the Air Force, the YFQ-42, built by General Atomics. Both drones are roughly the same size as the 26-foot-long X-BAT, which is about a third as large as a conventional fighter jet.
The service has said it plans to choose a design for production by fiscal year 2026, and has indicated it may select multiple companies. Last month, Breaking Defense reported that the Navy had selected another set of drone designs by Anduril, Northrop Grumman, Boeing, and General Atomics for its own collaborative combat aircraft competition. The Army and the Marine Corps are also making plans for their own “loyal wingmen.”
Tseng declined to comment on Shield’s role in the current CCA program, or on the potential of X-BAT to enter a future competition.
Still, he said the aircraft’s price, at around $27 million, is in the same range as the Collaborative Combat Aircraft programs, with variations based on mission systems and configurations. That translates to about a tenth of the cost per effect compared to legacy fifth-generation aircraft, Tseng said.
X-BAT also represents a major development for Shield AIs business, the company said in a press release.
We believe the greatest victory requires no war, said Tseng. To make that belief real, were executing a simple but ambitious master plan: Prove the value of autonomy, scale it across domains, and reimagine airpower. X-BAT represents the next part of that plan.
The X-PAD on its launch pedestal [Photo: Shield AI]
Up and down
Shield AIs plans have taken several turns in recent years. Founded in 2015 by brothers Brandon and Ryan Tseng and Andrew Reiter, the 1000-person company has sold hundreds of its V-BAT drones. But after it landed a $240 million funding round in March, Brandon told Bloomberg that the company would place more of an emphasis on its AI software, which had been a larger focus before it bought longtime V-BAT maker Martin UAV in 2021.
The company has generated billions of dollars in revenue, and had planned to reach profitability by 2025. But as Forbes reported in May, those projections were scrapped after a service member had his fingers partially severed during a V-BAT landing in 2023. Shortly before Forbes published its story, Ryan Tseng stepped down as CEO, and Gary Steele, a Cisco executive, took the helm. (Ryan became chief strategic officer and remains on the board of directors.)
Shield AI founders Brandon and Ryan Tseng [Photo: Shield AI]
Company officials have said they have taken a number of steps to address safety concerns, including adding unassisted launch and land capabilities to the V-BAT. The service member has since fully recovered.
Today, V-BAT retains a perfect record of no injuries when following trained procedures, Tseng told Forbes. While the accident “delayed” the decisions of prospective customers, “we are back on track now,” he said.
A human still in the loop
In recent months, Shield’s software division has entered partnerships with legacy defense contractors including RTX, Airbus and shipbuilder HII to incoporate AI into their vehicles and weapons systems. Shield’s Hivemind softwarewhich grew out of Chief Technology Officer Nathan Michael’s research at Carnegie Mellon University, as well as AI startup Heron Systems, which Shield acquired in 2021can help pilot vehicles ranging from attack drones to F-16s, helicopters and boats, operating individually or in swarms.
Shield conducts wind tunnel tests on an X-BAT mock-up [Photo: Shield AI]
Last year, Air Force Secretary Frank Kendall flew in a test fighter piloted by Shield AI’s algorithms, taking on a manned F-16 in a simulated dogfight over the California desert.
Shield AI aspires to service the autonomous needs for the defense sector, like Palantir services its intelligence needs,” Brandon Tseng told Bloomberg in March. (Shield also announced a partnership with Palantir last year, under which the firms would use each others software.)
Shield AI also continues to develop the V-BAT. The 9-foot-long drone, which can fly more than 80 miles and stay aloft for more than 13 hours, carrying a payload of about 40 pounds, has been used by Ukraine, Israel, and other countries to carry out reconnaissance and targeting operations. U.S. special forces have deployed the V-BAT, and the Coast Guard, which has a five-year contract with Shield AI worth $200 million, has used the drone with “joint forces” to interdict billions of dollars worth of narcotics, Tseng said.
Shield engineers with a V-BAT [Photo: Shield AI]
Through over 150 V-BAT deployments in Ukraine, the AI software has also been put through its paces in places where GPS and other communications aren’t available.
“Youre telling the aircraft, hey, this is your zone of operations, we want you to do X-Y-Z in this area,” Armor Harris, Shield’s senior vice president of aircraft, told The War Zone. And “given its last set of instructions and the rules of engagement for what its allowed to do, what its not allowed to do, itll go and itll continue its mission autonomously when those comms links are not there.” That capability is “where the system is more advanced than anything else in the world to date.”
Still, not everything is autonomousyet. “Fundamentally [at] Shield AI, we believe that a human should be on-the-loop for an offensive kill decision,” Harris said.
All-out drone push
The Collaborative Combat Aircraft programs are part of an all-out push at the Pentagon (and in Silicon Valley) for AI and drones. In June 2025, President Donald Trump issued an executive order called Unleashing American Drone Dominance that aims to accelerate commercialization of drone technologies, and the administrations budget request has allocated billions of dollars to unmanned systems and AI.
That includes an effort to onshore the supply chain for drones and the electronics and minerals they require, which is currently dominated by China. Shield AI has some experience here: In March, the Chinese Ministry of Commerce placed 15 U.S. entities, including Shield AI, on its export control list, barring them from the export of dual-use commodities.
[Photo: Shield AI]
Shield is working with Pratt & Whitney and GE to develop the X-BAT’s jet engine. Company officials declined to share further details on the engine, or how it handles takeoff and landing. But Tseng pointed to subsystems built with proven U.S. partners to ensure performance, reliability, and resilient American supply chains.
Tseng said the company expects to conduct initial vertical takeoff and landing demonstrations for X-BAT as early as fall 2026, followed by all-up flight testing and operational validation in 2028.
As for possible X-BAT manufacturing sites, Tseng said, we are in discussions with several states and their leadership.” And if some defense agency eventually places an order, he added, “the selected location will create thousands of jobs and generate billions in economic value.”
Ukraine’s state security service has unveiled an upgraded sea drone it says can now operate anywhere in the Black Sea, carry heavier weapons and use artificial intelligence for targeting.Ukraine has used the unmanned naval drones to target Russian shipping and infrastructure in the Black Sea. The Security Service of Ukraine, known by its Ukrainian acronym SBU, has credited strikes by the unmanned vessel known as the “Sea Baby” with forcing a strategic shift in Russia’s naval operations.The range of the Sea Baby was expanded from 1,000 kilometers (620 miles) to 1,500 kilometers (930 miles), SBU said. It can carry up to 2,000 kilograms (about 4,400 pounds) of payload, SBU officials said.At a demonstration attended by The Associated Press, variants included vessels fitted with a multiple-rocket launcher and another with a stabilized machine-gun turret.SBU Brig. Gen. Ivan Lukashevych said the new vessels also feature AI-assisted friend-or-foe targeting systems and can launch small aerial attack drones and multilayered self-destruct systems to prevent capture.
Developing a new kind of naval warfare
Drone strikes have been used in successful attacks against 11 Russian vessels, including frigates and missile carriers, SBU said, prompting the Russian navy to relocate its main base from Sevastopol in Crimea to Novorossiysk on Russia’s Black Sea coast.“The SBU became the first in the world to pioneer this new kind of naval warfare and we continue to advance it,” Lukashevych said, adding that the Sea Baby has evolved from a single-use strike craft into a reusable, multipurpose platform that expands Ukraine’s offensive options.Authorities asked that the time and location of the demonstration not be made public for security reasons.The craft are operated remotely from a mobile control center inside a van, where operators use a bank of screens and controls.“Cohesion of the crew members is probably the most important thing. We are constantly working on that,” said one operator who was identified only by his call sign, “Scout,” per Ukrainian military protocol.
Ukrainian sea drones helped push back Russia’s navy
The SBU also said sea drones helped carry out other high-profile strikes, including repeated attacks on the Crimean Bridge, most recently targeting its underwater supports in a bid to to render it unusable for heavy military transport.The Sea Baby program is partially funded by public donations through a state-run initiative and is coordinated with Ukraine’s military and political leadership.The evolution from expendable strike boats to reusable, networked drones marks an important advance in asymmetric naval warfare, Lukashevych said.“On this new product, we have installed rocket weaponry that will allow us to work from a large distance outside of the attack range of enemy fire. We can use such platforms to carry heavy weaponry,” he said. “Here we can show Ukrainians the most effective use of the money they have donated to us.”
Associated Press journalists Alex Babenko, Yehor Konovalov and Volodymyr Yurchuk contributed to this report.
Follow AP’s coverage of the war in Ukraine at https://apnews.com/hub/russia-ukraine
Efrem Lukatsky and Derek Gatopoulos, Associated Press
Spending just 36 minutes listening to your own brain waves, over four sessions, can reduce stress and anxiety, according to a new study by neuroscientists at the Wake Forest University School of Medicine.
Published in the journal Global Advances in Integrative Medicine and Health, the study looked at how to reduce stress-related symptoms in 144 healthcare workers with moderate-to-high levels of perceived stress.
The healthcare workers were placed in two groups: one that received four sessions of a sound-based relaxation intervention over two weeks, and another that was put on a control group waitlist.
The workers spent a little over half an hour relaxing in a zero-gravity chair with their eyes closed as closed-loop, acoustic neuromodulation technology translated their brainwaves into personalized tones in real time, the idea being that the echoed tones interact with the brain to balance and quiet itself and release stress patterns.
When researchers measured the results after six-to-eight weeks, they found the participants reported meaningful reductions in stress, anxiety, and insomnia, as well as significant reductions in fatigue and depression, and improved subjective cognition.
These results suggest that closed-loop acoustic neuromodulation is a safe, scalable, and effective option to complement organizational strategies for supporting healthcare worker brain health and well-being, said Charles H. Tegeler, M.D., professor of neurology at Wake Forest University School of Medicine and principal investigator of the study. We are eager to identify ways to broadly offer the intervention to teammates across our health system and beyond.
What makes this different from previous studies on neuromodulation is that it streamlined the treatment process with fewer, shorter sessions, making the treatment more practical and accessible for real-world application. It also included study participants regardless of their medication or substance use.
Data shows that workers and bosses are already at war over where to work, with management demanding more days in the office and employees trying to buck these mandates. But according to a recent report, a new front has opened in the battle over workplace flexibility. It centers not on where employees work but when.
When videoconferencing company Owl Labs surveyed 2,000 U.S. workers for its 2025 State of Hybrid Work report, almost half reported they did not have enough flexibility in regard to when they worked. What kind of flexibility were they hoping to get?
Something that Owl Labs calls microshifting. You may know it simply as breaking up your day as you see fit, taking an hour or so to run an errand or recharge when you need and returning to your work whenever suits you best.
Whether you use the latest business jargon for microshifting or not, its clear that its popular with employees. Sixty-five percent said theyd like to work this way, and 37 percent said they would turn down a job that did not provide flexible scheduling. But experts suggest workers should be careful what they wish for.
A new term for an old phenomenon
Microshifting might be the new buzzword, but the idea of working whenever suits you best isnt new. Its been on the rise since the pandemic exploded old expectations about how our workdays are organized.
Back in 2022, Microsoft researchers looking at data on the use of the companys products documented the rise of what they called the “triple-peak day. Workers, the numbers showed, were most active on their computers before lunch and after lunch. Thats as youd expect from a traditional office workday. But there was a new third spike in the usage data, too. Many of us were logging in during the quiet hours right before bed.
The Microsoft researchers called this mass return to our laptops around 9 or 10 at night the triple-peak day. Owl Labs analysts would probably look at the same numbers and see it as evidence of microshifting in action.
The problem with an undefined workday
Just as previous research suggests that microshifting isnt a new phenomenon, it also offers several reasons why workers might want to think carefully before they demand it as a formal policy from their organizations.
The appeal of microshifting is obvious. Weve all had a dentist appointment or kids soccer game we need to be at during traditional work hours. The ability to step out for these obligations and make them up another time makes the juggle massively easier. But making the workday amorphous and open-ended also comes with costs.
A variety of pandemic-era data shows that when workers are offered more flexibility in where and when they work, their workdays tend to balloon. Yes, they have more control over their time. But they also tend to end up working more hours. Different studies came up with slightly different figures, but flexibility seems to have stretched the workday by an hour or two.
In real life, asking your boss for the flexibility to run out for some errands often translates to giving them permission to urgently email you at 8:30 at night and expect a prompt reply.
Does microshifting actually reduce stress?
Not only can asking for microshifting embolden management to expect more after-hours responsiveness, but other research suggests it might not be as good for workers peace of mind as they expect. When Google asked workers to report whether they prefer to keep their work and home lives rigidly separate (they labeled these folks segmentors) or blend the two (integrators), the search giant discovered one approach was associated with higher life satisfaction.
We found that, regardless of preference, Segmentors were significantly happier with their well-being than Integrators. Additionally, Segmentors were more than twice as likely to be able to detach from work (when they wanted to), Google reported.
Interweaving work and life sounds appealing. But it can also lead to a blurring of boundaries that can lead not only to longer hours but also higher stress and less relaxation.
Be careful what you ask for
All of this isnt to say that workers have no idea whats good for them and they should welcome being basically chained to their desks from 9 to 5. Adults have complicated, busy lives and have every right to demand the flexibility to handle personal issues during work hours when they arise. Thats a matter of smple practicality and respect.
But by turning an everyday level of understanding into a formal policy with a buzzy label, microshifting runs the risk of going a step further. It doesnt just stretch the boundaries of the workday to accommodate real life. It threatens to dissolve them.
That might sound good at first. But evidence suggests that saying the workday is whenever seems convenient can have unforeseen consequences for workers. If you can declare its easier for you to get something done at 11 p.m., why cant your boss? Or, for that matter, your constantly-on-the-clock brain?
Its one thing to ask to step away for an hour here and there. Its another to allow work to leak into every moment of your life. Before you advocate for microshifting, make sure thats not what youll end up with.
The opinions expressed here by Inc.com columnists are their own, not those of Inc.com.
Jessica Stillman
This article originally appeared on Fast Companys sister publication, Inc.
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