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Year-end giving can be a moment of reflection, but for businesses and philanthropy alike, it should also include looking forward and asking the question, whats next? One throughline from this past year is uncertainty. Uncertainty has rewritten how we work, live, and lead. Yet, one thing that still holds true is we share a responsibility to keep systems strong so no one is left behind, especially children. Ive seen firsthand how instability isnt just economic, its deeply human. Ive seen it in a mother whose babys survival depended on something as small as a packet of therapeutic food. In that moment, you understand that systems created as large scale solutions change lives. GO DEEPER ON PURPOSE Purpose has become one of the most overused words in business, but the leaders who will define whats next are treating it differently. Theyre going deeper. The smartest changemakers are cutting through tokenistic giving and refocusing on whats core to their mission. Theyre aligning personal and corporate philanthropy not around optics, but around outcomes that truly matter like health, equity, sustainability, and opportunity. STRENGTHEN WHATS STABLE, TO WITHSTAND WHATS NOT If recent years have taught us anything, its that the systems we depend on are only as strong as the most vulnerable people within them. Business leaders understand this intuitively. A 2024 survey showed that 45% of global CEOs expect significant business model disruption within three years. Social trust and resilience are key to future competitiveness. Trusted companies can be worth up to four times more than their competitors and 89% of business leaders identified resilience as a major priority in their organizational strategy. Put simply, future-proofing your business means building stronger systems that will support future generations. Your future workforce, customers, and investors are todays children and adolescents. When children thrive, societies stabilize and markets follow. NOT JUST A NUMBER When global supply chains break down, its not just balance sheets that suffer; the livelihoods of entire communities feel the impact. Too often, those disruptions get reduced to numbers on a page like drops in GDP and productivity losses, but whats really at stake is livelihoods. And sometimes the clearest illustration of why stability matters comes down to a single moment. When I was a new mom, I met a Sudanese mother in a refugee camp in Ethiopia near the Sudan border. The woman was holding her baby, who was severely underweight but just beginning to show signs of alertness. She was feeding her child a small packet of ready-to-use therapeutic food, a peanut-based paste that treats severe acute malnutrition. Its a simple, scalable solution with life-changing impact. Malnutrition remains one of the most pressing yet solvable challenges in global health. Addressing it requires the kind of smart, forward-leaning, systems-level innovation UNICEF and its partners are scaling across the world. MAKE GENEROSITY A YEAR-ROUND STRATEGY Uncertainty shouldnt stop you from leading or giving. Support from the private sector can be pivotal for nonprofits, but the greatest impact requires relationships, not just transactions. It requires companies that cocreate with nonprofits, sharing expertise, networks, and long-term commitment to help unlock lasting and innovative solutions. WHATS NEXT The future will be shaped by those who act now. Heres how to do that. Invest in stability. Give toward systems that protect children and strengthen communities. These are the same systems your business relies on for a stable workforce, market, and future. Collaborate with intention. Align your business and your values. Strategic giving builds trust, reinforces brand purpose, and connects you with the partners and consumers who share it. Give forward. Treat generosity as leadership strategy. Its how you future-proof impact for your company, your community, and the world your business depends on. As you take a moment of gratitude during this holiday season, give to whats urgent now and what will define whats next. Michele Walsh is executive vice president and chief philanthropy officer of UNICEF USA.
Category:
E-Commerce
OpenAI on Thursday released its answer to Googles impressive Gemini 3 Pro modelGPT-5.2and by the looks of some head-to-head benchmark test scores, it looks like a winner. The new model took the highest score on a number of benchmark tests covering coding, math, science, tool use, and vision. (Benchmarks should, of course, be combined with real-world use to tell the whole story. But still . . .) OpenAI says GPT-5.2, which is a reasoning model, achieved expert-level performance scores on its own GDPval benchmark, which evaluates performance on 44 real professional tasks including things like spreadsheet creation, document drafting, presentation building, and more. GPT-5.2 topped Gemini 3 Pro on the SWE-Bench Pro benchmark (software engineering tasks) with a score of 55.6% (versus Gemini 3 Pros 43.3%). It achieved an 86.2% on the ARC-AGI-1 abstract reasoning benchmark, compared to Gemini 3 Pros 75% score. It scored a 92.4% on the GPQA Diamond benchmark (science questions), compared with Gemini 3 Pros 91.9% score. The new model comes in three variants. GPT-5.2 Instant is good for seeking information and how-tos, skill-building and study, and career guidance. GPT-5.2 Thinking is good for harder professional tasks like spreadsheet formatting and slideshow creation. GPT-5.2 Pro, the company says, takes longer to generate answers but is its smartest and most trustworthy model for generating accurate answers in complex domains like programming. For the many developers that are now developing agents, OpenAI says GPT-5.2 with reasoning is its strongest offering yet, bringing significant improvements across general intelligence, long-context understanding, agentic tool-calling, and vision.OpenAI reportedly pushed to release GPT-5.2 before the end of the year so that it could counter the release of Googles Gemini 3. The company released GPT-5 in August, heralding it as the next major leap forward in its AI research. GPT-5 was a system of models, using a router to direct the right queries to specialized models. Its referring to GPT-5.2 as a unified system that automatically chooses how to respond based on task complexity. The GPT-5.2 models increased capacity for processing and reasoning about multi-modal input (audio, video, images, text, etc.) is significant, because Google Gemini 3 does this very well. For example, the new model was asked to analyze the features of an image of a circuit board and then identify and label all the small components. OpenAI says GPT-5.2 did this with far more detail and accuracy than its earlier GPT-5.1 model could. When reasoning is introduced, the model may be able to diagnose problems in mechanical systems by recognizing the visual signs. All three variants of GPT-5.2 are available in ChatGPT today, starting with paid subscribers and available to developers through the API. Microsoft, a major investor in OpenAI, says its bringing GPT-5.2 to Microsoft 365 Copilot and Copilot Studio users worldwide today. In related news, OpenAI also announced that it had struck a licensing deal with Disney that will allow Sora 2 users to use Disney characters in images they generate and share using the app. In addition, Disney will make a $1-billion equity investment in OpenAI, with an option to purchase more equity in the future.
Category:
E-Commerce
A quiet shift is reshaping the trajectory of wealth in America, but it isnt happening in the boardrooms of Wall Street or the halls of Silicon Valley. Its unfolding in neighborhoods, driveways, and home offices across the country, powered by teachers, software engineers, nurses, military families, and small-business owners who never expected to become real estate investors at all. As the cofounder and CEO of a rental technology company that supports independent property owners (and as an investor myself), I see this transformation every day. What starts as an unexpected ownership moment often turns into a thoughtful plan for long-term financial stability. Many investors simply kept a first home when they moved for work. Some inherited a property from aging parents. Others bought a place for a college-age child and discovered the economics made surprising sense. While these beginnings may have been accidental, rental owners are discovering that, with support from intelligent technologies, theyre able to operate it with a level of clarity, confidence, and professionalism. They are becoming strategic wealth builders and redefining what small-scale investing looks like in America. And theyre doing it with intention: leaning on smart systems rather than putting in extra hours, to operate their investments with the kind of discipline, insight, and confidence historically attributed only to large institutional players. THE RISE OF THE MODERN, SMALL-SCALE INVESTOR Across the country, independent property owners are already operating with a sophistication level once limited to professional firms. Theyre using technology to streamline operations, reduce friction, and gain clarity. What once required a stack of paperwork and late-night phone calls now lives inside simple, reliable systems that elevate the investors role from administrator to strategist. Smart investors are no longer scaling effort; theyre scaling insight, spending more time understanding the story the numbers telland less time performing the manual tasks that used to consume nights and weekends. This shift is happening every day, in homes someone once lived in, inherited, or never intended to treat as a business. These properties are becoming the foundation of long-term financial wellbeing because their owners are operating with intention, clarity, and professional-level structure. A NEW PATH TO FINANCIAL FREEDOM What stands out to me is how everyday investors are redefining the American dream itself. Financial freedom is no longer tied exclusively to stock options, venture bets, or legacy wealth. Its being built one smart, well-run property at a time by people who value resilience over speculation. And because investors are managing their assets with data and systemsrather than instinct alonetheyre achieving a stability that once seemed to be reserved for much larger players. Small investors now own more than 90% of single-family rental housing in the United Statesa sign of just how central theyve become to the countrys housing infrastructure. This isnt a fringe pocket of the market or a niche economic group. Its one of the most significant forces shaping communities and stabilizing local economies. WHEN ACCIDENTAL INVESTORS BECOME INTENTIONAL OPERATORS When the operational burden lifts, strategy takes its place. Thats exactly whats happening as more independent investors adopt smart systems. Accidental investors are building predictable experiences for their residents, strengthening the predictability of their own financial outcomes. Rent collection is a good example. Smart operators are using automated reminders and autopay to keep cash flow consistent, and the impact is striking. Our data shows that residents enrolled in autopay pay on time 99% of the time, compared with 88% for those not using it, giving investors far clearer monthly stability. Maintenance coordination is often the most dreaded part of owning a rental property, but smart investors are already turning it into one of the most manageable systems. Shared portals with in-app chats keep everything organized, and residents submit issues the moment they notice them (often with a photo or quick video) so investors understand whats happening before a small problem becomes a big one. Work orders stay orderly, responses stay timely, and the entire process remains calm and predictable on both sides. This level of operational clarity matches the professionalism that accidental investors bring from their careers. Whether someone is balancing shift work, teaching classes, running a business, or logging into a late-night deployment, the systems supporting their properties keep everything moving smoothly so they can stay focused on the bigger picture. Accidental investors are discovering that thoughtful, system-supported management creates opportunities that simply werent available when everything depended on manual effort. Theyre building stability in a way that fits into their lives. DEMOCRATIZE WEALTH CREATION What stands out most is how accessible this path has become. With the right tools, even one well-managed property can serve as the foundation for long-term financial wellbeing. And as these investors gain confidence, many expand their portfolios. This approach is democratizing real estate investing. Its giving more Americans the chance to build multigenerational stability without needing to become full-time operators or navigate complex financial strategies. Its turning ordinary life events into opportunities for resilience. THE NEXT ERA OF THE AMERICAN DREAM The next era of American wealth is being built quietly and steadily. Its unfolding in spare bedrooms, inherited duplexes, starter homes, and small multifamily buildings. Its being shaped by everyday investors who are thoughtful, organized, and forward-looking. These are people who might never describe themselves as real estate people, yet are operating their investments with impressive savvy. They are wealth builders who are transforming accidental beginnings into intentional, long-term advantage, creating financial stability that grows with them, supports their families, and strengthens their neighborhoods. The shift isnt loud, but its powerful. And its redefining the American dream for new generations. Ryan Barone is cofounder and CEO of RentRedi.
Category:
E-Commerce
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