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Experts have compressed their predictions for when artificial general intelligence (AGI)the type of AI that can equal or exceed human intelligencewill arrive. When predictions were first made in 2023, AGI was expected to arrive in 50 years. Newer estimates say five years. When GPT-5 came out this summer, it demonstrated surprising leaps in reasoning and memory, further accelerating those timelines. Progress is moving faster than anyone anticipated, and what once felt speculative now feels inevitable. Meanwhile, small teams are shipping products that would have required 100-person companies two years ago. The gap between the AGI debaters and the builders (those who are developing AGI systems) isn’t philosophicalit’s economic. While everyone waits for perfect AI, builders are dominating markets with today’s “broken” tools, those that are functioning, albeit with some quirks, that will be worked out as the technology evolves. They arent betting on future breakthroughs, theyre betting on momentum. WHAT’S ACTUALLY HAPPENING This wave of adoption isnt happening in research labs. Its happening inside companies solving boring, repetitive problems. The shift isnt about science fiction-level AI. Its about shipping fast and iterating now. As has been covered in Fast Company: Cursor went from launch to 40,000 customers by letting developers code faster with AI. Glean hit $100 million in annual revenue helping companies search their own documents. These aren’t hypothetical AGI use cases. They’re real businesses built on today’s imperfect AI. And theyre growing because theyre solving problems that already existnot waiting on capabilities that might. At Fireflies, we process billions of conversations across sales, recruiting, and customer success. Our AI doesn’t just transcribe. It identifies deal risks, surfaces customer objections, and tracks competitive mentions across entire organizations. Its not flawless, but there isnt an AI yet that is, but an AI tool that can provide actionable insights today beats a perfect AI that never ships. Were seeing the same pattern across the board: AI thats just good enough is already creating leverage. Take “vibe coding” platformsthey let non-programmers create apps simply by describing what they want in natural language without a single line of code. Are these apps perfect? No. Do they work well enough to solve real problems? Absolutely. That means were entering a phase where anyone with a problem and a prompt can build a product. THE COMPOUND EFFECT The hardest part of adopting AI? Knowing where to start. Begin with the boring stuff. Find the repetitive task in your workflow that nobody wants to do. Apply todays AI, and ship when the product or service is 80% good. Then, fix as you go. Most companies think they need a moonshot AI strategy. What they need is a simple use case. The advantage isnt having the smartest model, its in learning the fastest. AI rewards iteration, so the teams that adopt early build intuition, infrastructure, and momentum that compound. Early adoption gives you more than toolsit gives you an internal muscle for how to think with AI. This is what builders do while large companies form AI committees. And every day the builders ship, they get stronger. Every interaction improves their product. Every customer teaches them something new. Every iteration makes switching to their solution more inevitable. By the time AGI arrives (whether that’s 2027 or 2047), these builders will own entire markets. Not because they had better AI, but because they started using what was available. BUILD OR LOSE The world will keep running, but ownership of entire industries will have already changed hands. From companies waiting for perfect AI to builders who shipped with what they had. OpenAI itself proved this path works: They’ve improved their models not through some breakthrough to AGI, but by shipping o1 models that spend more computing power on reasoning at inference time, the moment a model is generating answers in response to a prompt. Messy iteration beats elegant planning. Stop waiting for the perfect model. Stop debating timelines. The builders aren’t waiting for history. They’re making it. Krish Ramineni is CEO and cofounder of Fireflies.ai.
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E-Commerce
Americas small businesses are the backbone of our economy. They create two-thirds of new jobs, power innovation, and anchor communities across the country. But that backbone is under real strain. Rising healthcare costs dominate the headlines, but whats missing from the conversation is how deeply they impact the small businesses that keep our economy running. At Gusto, we see this strain firsthand. Our latest Small Business Jobs Report showed hiring slowed in November as owners continue to navigate higher costs and uncertainty. Rising healthcare premiums arent the only challenge, but theyre making it that much harder to grow and hire with confidence. Since 2022, small business health insurance costs have climbed 23% since 2022far faster than inflation or wage growth. For the smallest employers, those with just two to five employees, the increase is even steeper: up 18%, reaching nearly $8,500 per worker. Looking ahead to 2026, premiums are projected to rise another 9.5%, the sharpest jump in 15 years. Those numbers have real consequences. They show up in delayed hires, scaled-back hours, or founders skipping their own coverage to keep their team insured. SMALL BUSINESSES ARE HOLDING THE LINE Despite the pressure, small businesses are doing everything they can to support their people. More than one in five small employers still offer health insurance. This is a clear reflection of how much they value their teams. That investment pays off. Gustos data shows that employees with health coverage are 25% less likely to quit in their first year, and businesses that offer it are 13% more likely to report no difficulty hiring. Healthcare isnt just a benefitits a competitive advantage and retention tool for these small businesses. That said, its also becoming unsustainable. Every year, more small business owners are forced into impossible choices. They can keep offering coverage and absorb higher costs, drop it and risk losing the people who make their business work, or pass more of the expense on to employees, who may already be feeling stretched. A HIDDEN HEADWIND FOR ENTREPRENEURS Entrepreneurship in America is thriving. More people are starting businesses now than at any point in recent history. But rising healthcare costs are creating a new kind of barrier: They make it harder to start, grow, or hire. For many would-be founders, leaving a traditional job means losing access to affordable coverage. That doesnt always stop them, but it adds risk and limits what they can do once they start. Some stay solo longer than they want to. Others delay hiring. Some take on extra work to cover premiums. In other words, healthcare isnt necessarily halting entrepreneurship, but its most certainly holding it back. Its keeping too many small business owners from growing to their full potential. HOW SMALL BUSINESSES ARE ADAPTING The good news is that small business owners are incredibly resourceful. Theyre rethinking what benefits look like and finding creative ways to offer support. Many are experimenting with level-funded plans, high-deductible options paired with Health Savings Accounts (HSAs), and Health Reimbursement Arrangements that let employees choose coverage that fits their needs. Others are expanding voluntary benefits like dental, vision, or mental health programs that provide real value without breaking the bank. At Gusto, we help small employers find the right mixbecause the best benefits strategy isnt one-size-fits-all. Flexibility and innovation are key. THE SOLUTION: FLEXIBILITY, POLICY, AND INNOVATION Small businesses cant solve this challenge on their own. The U.S. healthcare system was built around large employers, not the millions of small business owners and self-employed workers who drive todays economy. Its time to modernize that system so healthcare is portable, affordable, and built to support entrepreneurship. Congress already has practical solutions within reach. Lawmakers can codify and strengthen Individual Coverage Health Reimbursement Arrangements, which give employers flexibility to help workers buy their own coverage. A temporary tax credit for small businesses offering these plans for the first time would make coverage more affordable and expand access quickly. Congress can also expand HSA eligibility to include Affordable Care Act Bronze and catastrophic plans, giving small employers and their teams the same tax advantages that large companies enjoy. If we want small businesses to keep creating jobs, serving their communities, and fueling our economy, we need to make healthcare affordable for the people behind them. Tomer London is cofounder and chief product officer of Gusto.
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E-Commerce
At a time when Americans are frustrated and angry over the high cost of living, the government released a report Thursday showing that inflation had cooled unexpectedly in November. But economists quickly warned that last month’s numbers were suspect because theyd been delayed and likely distorted by the 43-day federal shutdown. And most Americans have not felt any let up in the high prices they are paying for food, insurance, utilities, and other basic necessities. The Labor Department reported Thursday that its consumer price index rose 2.7% in November from a year earlier. Yet, year-over-year inflation remains well above the Federal Reserve’s 2% target. Americans, dismayed by high prices, handed big victories to Democrats in local and state elections last month. The inflation report was delayed eight days by the shutdown, which also prevented the Labor Department from compiling overall numbers for consumer prices and core inflation in October and disrupted the usual data-collecting process. Thursdays report gave investors, businesses, and policymakers their first look at CPI since the September numbers were released on Oct. 24. Consumer prices had risen 3% in September from a year earlier, and forecasters had expected the November CPI to match that year-over-year increase. Its likely a bit distorted, said Diane Swonk, chief economist at the tax and consulting firm KPMG. The good news is that its cooling. Well take a win when we can get it. Still, Swonk added: The data is truncated, and we just dont know how much of it to trust. By disrupting the economy especially government contracting the shutdown may have contributed to a cooling in prices, she said. Kay Haigh, global co-head of fixed income and liquidity solutions at Goldman Sachs Asset Management, warned that the November numbers were noisy … The canceling of the October report makes month-on-month comparisons impossible, for example, while the truncated information-gathering process given the shutdown could have caused systematic biases in the data.” Many economists don’t expect to get a reliable read on inflation until next month when the Labor Department releases CPI numbers for December. Energy prices, driven up by sharply higher fuel oil prices, rose 4.2% in November. Excluding volatile food and energy prices, so-called core inflation rose 2.6%, compared with a 3% year-over-year gain in September and the lowest since March 2021. U.S. inflation remains stubbornly high, partly because of President Donald Trumps decision to impose double-digit taxes on imports from almost every country on earth along with targeted tariffs on specific products like steel, aluminum and autos. The presidents tariffs have so far proved less inflationary than economists feared. But they do put upward pressure on prices and complicate matters at the Fed, which is trying to decide whether to keep cutting its benchmark interest rate to support a sputtering job market or whether to hold off until inflationary pressures ease. The central bank last week decided to reduce the rate for the third time this year, but Fed officials signaled that they expect just one cut in 2026. “The Fed will instead focus on the December CPI released in mid-January, just two weeks before its next meeting, as a more accurate bellwether for inflation,” said Haigh at Goldman Sachs. Trump delivered a politically charged speech Wednesday that aired live during prime time on network television, seeking to pin the blame for economic challenges on Democrats. The speech was a rehash of his recent messaging that has so far been unable to calm public anxiety about the rising cost of groceries, housing, utilities and other basic goods. As the holiday season approaches, Americans are dipping into savings, scouring for bargains and feeling like the overall economy is sputtering, a new AP-NORC poll finds. The vast majority of U.S. adults say theyve noticed higher than usual prices for groceries, electricity and holiday gifts in recent months, according to the survey from The Associated Press-NORC Center for Public Affairs Research. Roughly half of Americans say its harder than usual to afford the things they want to give as holiday gifts, and similar numbers are delaying big purchases or cutting back on nonessential purchases more than they would normally. Trump has promised an economic boom, yet inflation has stayed elevated and the job market has weakened in the wake of his import taxes. Trumps tariffs are taking a toll on companies like Wolverine Worldwide, which makes footwear brands like Merrell and Saucony. Facing extra tariff costs of $10 million this year and $55 million in 2026, the Rockford, Michigan, company had to increase prices between 5% and 8% on some products in June, and will have to raise prices again next year. Its put a freeze on hiring and capital investments. The company is getting squeezed even as it diversifies its sourcing network away from China, which now makes less than 10% of its products. During Trumps first term, Wolverine shifted production to Vietnam. Now its moving to Bangladesh, Cambodia and Indonesia. The problem isnt just the cost of the tariffs. Its the uncertainty caused by the unpredictable way that Trump rolls them out. From a business leaders perspective, its one thing if theres bad news, said Wolverine CEO Christopher Hufnagel. Just tell me what the bad news is, and Ill go work to try to solve for it. Its the uncertainty of how it actually plays out that causes so much trouble because then were modeling all these different scenarios and it seems like things can change in the middle of the night. Paul Wiseman and Anne D’Innocenzio, AP business writers
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E-Commerce
Christmas is coming, and our bank accounts are getting, well, obliterated. But luckily, it’s no longer just your quirky aunt who appreciates a good secondhand store: Shopping for gently used items, especially during the holidays, is now on trend. And if you get on board, you might be able to save a bundle by swapping your mall run for a day of thrifting. In recent years, “Thriftmas”or shopping for Christmas gifts at stores like Good Will, The Salvation Army, Savers, and online platforms that sell used itemshas been creeping into the mainstream. And this year is no different. According to global data from online store ThredUp, in 2025, shoppers plan to dedicate nearly 40% of their holiday budgets to secondhand giftsa pretty significant jump, even from last year alone. And in 2025, the U.S. secondhand market is worth an estimated $56 billion, up 14.3% from in 2024. Why the trend? For starters, Gen Z loves all things vintage, whether it’s Polaroid cameras, a pair of flares, or iPods. So it makes sense that thrifting is gaining traction, especially among younger generations. A new survey from Affirm found that 24% of Gen Zers chose to thrift or DIY their home decor, while 40% blend new with secondhand; and 23% shopped for secondhand clothes while 35% mixed thrifted with new clothing. Of course, it’s not just vintage-loving young people, but escalating financial worries that are driving the trend, too: 85% of shoppers say they expect gifts and other holiday-related items to cost more this year due to Trump’s tariffs, per the National Retail Federation. Likewise, 84% of consumers expect to cut back on overall spending due to rising prices and economic pressure, per PwC Holiday Outlook. However, Americans are hooked on gifts. While nearly two-thirds (63%) say they wish their family traditions were less focused on gifts, only one in five are considering giving less. The art of Thriftmas Enter: Thriftmas, which looks a bit different from hitting up Target, Hollister, and Home Goods. And it might take some warming up to, if you’ve never been big on shopping secondhand. However, your wallet will thank you. And popular influencers, who are pretty skilled at breathing new life into old things, are driving the movement with content about how to do Thriftmas right. They make choosing items at the thrift store to givesometimes along with something homemade like butter or baked goods, or with something newlook like an absolute art. Rebecca Miller, an expert secondhand shopper based in Northeast Ohio, runs the popular Instagram account My Thrifted Abode. Miller tells Fast Company that even though thrifting is majorly on trend in modern times, it’s not new to her. “Thrifting has always been a part of my life,” says Miller. “I grew up in a family where money was tight at times. I remember going to auctions and thrift stores with my mom as a little girl. Its been a way of life for me for as long as I can remember.” Miller has only been sharing her thrift store finds for two years, but her Instagram already has over 114,000 followers, and there’s a reason why: She’s a talented thrifter who is skilled at teaching her audience how to thrift and gift. And according to her, people are more interested in thrifting because they are fed up with the holiday gift-giving craze and are seeking more sustainable options. “Theres been more of a light shed on the massive overconsumption issue we have,” she says, adding that the sheer amount of items that are bought new, then quickly disposed of is “truly concerning.” She’s not wrong: 11.3 million tons of textile waste end up in landfills yearly in the U.S., accounting for 7.7% of all landfill waste. During the holidays, the waste multiplies exponentially. Retailers say that 25% of returns end up being tossed out, leading to an extra 5.8 billion pounds of landfill wastemerely from returned items, not to mention all of the other holiday trash. A more personal (and very vintage) touch Miller says thrifting can contribute to a holiday season that’s more environmentally friendly, sustainable, and cheaper. But it’s not just about affordability. It’s about a more personal touch that puts genuine thought back into the holidays. “I love giving old things a new life and being a part of that items history,” she explains, noting that reimagining how to use old items scratches her “creative itch.” Taking a look at some of the fun and eclectic ways that Miller has styled items, it’s clear that it requires a bit more effort than clicking the “Buy Now” button on Amazon and slapping a bow on it the next day. In a recent video, Miller showed off adorable baskets for kids, with secondhand puzzles, books, and more. “I always thrift gifts for my kids for their birthday and Christmas, and let me tell you, it does not make a difference to them whether they are new items or not!” she wrote in the caption. But it’s likely not just kids who wouldn’t mind a thrifted giftespecially because the items don’t look like the things everyone else has. They’re vintage, unique, and require searching. “Its such a thrill to walk into a thrift store, full of junk, and never knowing what treasures youll find,” says Miller. “Theres nothing like the thrill of the hunt.” While many Americans will still flock to shop the big brands this season, it’s tough to miss that Thriftmas is about to show up in more homes than ever. And with influencers and Gen Z driving the trend, it feels about as welcomed as Santa sliding down the chimney with his bag of tricks. This year, it’s all about Thriftmasand it’s just as merry.
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E-Commerce
Welcome to AI Decoded, Fast Companys weekly newsletter that breaks down the most important news in the world of AI. Im Mark Sullivan, a senior writer at Fast Company, covering emerging tech, AI, and tech policy. This week, Im focusing on Big AIs biggest sales pitchthe quest for AGIand the idea that the industry should focus on more modest and achievable tasks for AI. I also look at Databrickss new $4 billion-plus funding raise, and at Googles new Gemini 3 Flash model. Sign up to receive this newsletter every week via email here. And if you have comments on this issue and/or ideas for future ones, drop me a line at sullivan@fastcompany.com, and follow me on X (formerly Twitter) @thesullivan. Yann LeCun calls BS on artificial general intelligence Big AI companies like OpenAI and Anthropic like to talk about their bold quest for AGI, or artificial general intelligence. The definition of that grail has proved to be somewhat flexible, but in general it refers to AI systems that are as smart as human beings at a wide array of tasks. AI companies have used this quest narrative to win investment, fascinate the tech press, and charm policymakers. Now one of AIs most important pioneers, Turing Award winner Yann LeCun, is calling the whole concept into question. LeCun, outgoing Metas chief AI scientist, argues that even human beings arent really generalists. Theyre good at some physical tasks, and very good at social interactions, but can easily be defeated at chess by a computer and cant perform math as fast and accurately as a calculator can. There are tasks where many other animals are better than we are, LeCun said on a recent Information Bottleneck webcast. We think of ourselves as being general, but its simply an illusion because all of the problems that we can apprehend are the ones that we can think ofand vice versa, LeCun said. So were general in all of the problems that we can imagine, but theres a lot of problems that we cannot imagine. And there are lots of mathematical arguments for this. So this concept of general intelligence is complete BS. Lots of people in AI and neuroscience disagree with LeCun. Just because humans arent the best at all tasks, or tasks we cant imagine, it doesnt mean were not generalistsespecially in comparison to machine savants like calculators, they argue. I dont know whos right, but LeCun is making a broader point. He believes that AI labs should focus on specific real-world things that AI can dothings that create value or reduce suffering, perhapsand bring those solutions to market. LeCun says the transformer-based large language models of today are useful enough to be applied in some valuable ways, but also believes they arent likely to achieve the general or human-level intelligence needed to do high-value work tasks now reserved for human brains. In order to navigate real-world complexity like humans do, the AI would need a much-higher-bandwidth training regimen than just words, images, and computer code, LeCun argues, and a different architecture to structure all the data. Notably, The Financial Times reports that LeCun is raising $585 million at a $3-billion valuation for a new AI startup that will look to build world modelsAI systems capable of learning from images, video, and spatial data, rather than only from text and large language models. Databricks pulls in another $4B+, evaluation rises to $134 billion Data and AI company Databricks raised more than $4 billion in a new Series L funding round led by Insight Partners, Fidelity, and J.P. Morgan Asset Management, with Andreessen Horowitz, BlackRock, and Blackstone kicking in. The companys valuation rose to $134 billion with the new round. The valuation reflects Databrickss positioning within the booming market for AI cloud services. For years the companys primary offering was secure cloud storage for sensitive enterprise data, including data owned by companies in regulated industries such as healthcare and finance. Over the past five years, Databricks has gone deep on developing the AI side of its business. Its value proposition is allowing customers to run their data through powerful AI models hosted within the same secure cloud. More recently, the company has set up a secure platform for developing and deploying autonomous agents that can, for example, assemble complex business intelligence reports based on diverse datasets stored in the Databricks cloud. The company also enables customers to run their data through third-party models from OpenAI and Anthropic, among others, hosting those models natively within the secure cloud. Now Databricks says both its data-warehousing business and its AI business each have revenue run rates of more than $1 billion. The company reported a revenue run rate of $4.8 billion during the third quarter of 2025, representing growth of about 55% from the same period in 2024. Almost exactly a year ago, Databricks raised a massive $10 billion funding round, one of the largest ever for an AI company, and achieved a $62 billion valuation. (The valuation moved up to $100 billion when the company raised a $1 billion round in August.) The San Francisco-based company says itll use the new capital to develop new AI-driven applications, fund future acquisitions, support R&D, and pay employees (most likely including expensive AI research talent). With hundreds of customers each contributing more than $1 million in annual revenue, and a high customer retention rate, Databricks is considered a strong IPO candidate. The company may be waiting for the optimal market conditions in which to file. Google releases a Gemini 3 model, Flash, for the rest of us Now even people who cant afford a monthly subscription can enjoy the magic of Google DeepMinds new Gemini 3 model. Google released the first Gemini 3 model, Pro, in November, but it was available only to paid subscribers. Its new Gemini 3 Flash variant is now the default in the Gemini app, and is available globally in Google Searchs AI Mode. Flash is said to be three times faster at responding than Gemini 2.5 Pro, and almost as good at reasoning as the Gemini 3 Pro model. Flash is designed to be cost-effective, making it a great option for developers and businesses, according to Google. The new model shows some impressive marks on PhD-level reasoning and knowledge benchmarks such as GPQA Diamond (90.4%) and Humanitys Last Exam (33.7% without tools). Those scores come close to those of larger models including Gemini 3 Pro and OpenAIs GPT-5.2. Flash also achieved the highest score of any model81.2%on the MMMU Pro benchmark, which measures the ability to understand and reason over a mx of text and visual data. When processing at the highest thinking level, Gemini 3 Flash can modulate how much it thinks, Google says. For more complex questions itll spend more time processing the data it collects in its memory to get to an answer. But it also uses 30% fewer tokens (on average) than Gemini 2.5 Pro to complete simpler, everyday tasks. Researchers at Big AI labs have been working hard to make AI models store the (often voluminous) contextual data they collect in memory more efficiently, and use it more effectively. More AI coverage from Fast Company: Every AI founder thinks they want a mega investing round. Trust me, you dont 5 predictions for AIs growing role in the media in 2026 DOGE leader at Treasury is looking to buy thousands of ChatGPT licenses Who should pay for the power grids race to keep up with data centers? 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