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Theres not a more fairy-tale story in business. Nike CEO Elliott Hill began as an intern. Worked about every job imaginable at the company. Was passed up as a fave for the CEO role in 2020 when John Donahoe was brought in from Bain. And then, finding himself retired, and charter member of a silver fox baseball league in Austin, the swoosh boomeranged in from the clouds and Hill hitched a ride back to Beaverton. Now, after a year at the helm, Hills still dealing with Nikes COVID hangover, brought about (at least in part) by Donahoe, who bolstered profits by selling waves of retro sneakers to people at home, all while reorganizing the core innovation team structure that had made Nike successful for decades. When Hill showed up in 2024, Nike revenue was down 10% yoy. This year, its down 9.8%, and Trumps tariffs took a $1.5 billion bite out of Nikes net profits. One point five billion, fires off Hills tongue as we sit together in the swank office at the top of Nikes Lebron James Innovation Center in Beaverton, ORa number I dont feel a need to say aloud thats clearly been imprinted in his psyche. Following a year of Hills media quarantine, I was invited alongside a small group of global journalists to get a peek at what Hill has up his sleeveand let me be honest in admitting that it felt a little strange to be back so soon. I was just at Nike in March 2024 profiling Donahoes swansong when I wrote our Spring cover story. The campus was a little dead back then; and more than one executive seemed to be biting their tongue. Keep in mind, most of Nike leadership is a collection of people whove been there for decades (often 20 and 30 years). They have an earned ownership of Nikes POV, like a family sharing kitchen cabinets. And I dont think its just the endless buffets of salmon and vegan lox Nike plowed on the press talking: Campus did feel more energized. Interviews felt less guarded. But more so, Nikes new product lines are genuinely more exciting than about anything thats come out of Nike for years. Nike didnt invite us here for a casual photo opp; it is quite intentionally seeding its own turnaround narrative. The company has something to prove to fans and shareholders alikenamely, that it can still innovate. But its making a strong case that it can. From its Project Amplify exoskeleton-in-a-shoe, to Nike Mind brain-hacking footwear, to a new inflatable jacket called Project Milano, to recycled fabrics known as Aero-FIT that are 2x more breathable, every big new idea out of Nike looks more promising than another Dunk colorway. Here are my four big takeaways on what is going on at Nike, and where the company is going next. [Photo: Nike] Elliott Hill seems like the guy for this moment Elliott Hills job is to get Nike growing again. (And you can read my full Q&A with Hill here.) But as Hill put it to me, not all one percents of revenue are created equal. And accomplishing just 1% growth for Nike, which is $500,000,000 by the way, means it has to essentially launch the equivalent of a new company every year. Will Nikes onslaught of new innovation help achieve this revenue growth? On that he hedges a bit. The lowest hanging fruit is still simply spreading the Nike gospel farther across the world. (Thats my sacrilege not his.) Elliott Hill [Photo: Nike] Sport exists in every country, and we’re doing business in almost 190 countries. And . . . we’re not meeting our full potential in some of these countries, says Hill, citing southeast Asia and Malaysia in particular. We have tremendous opportunity to still grow there, when we run our offense. Keep in mind Hills earliest duties at the company involved hopping on the phone and pitching Nike products to shops, building its retailer network. The same network that Donahoe torched thousands of small retailer relationships by pivoting the company to direct-to-consumer. Hills job has been a lot like the task ahead of whichever president follows Trumpreinstituting dismantled systems just to get the machine running again. Hill has been repairing retailer relationships. Hes relaunched marketing under Just Do It. And hes also rewound the entire innovation engine of the company back to its old structure. Donahoe blew up about 40 years of Nike hierarchies when he reorganized all product development under Mens, Womens, and Kids. Hill put these teams back into sports like running and basketball. Look, I talked to Hill for all of 17 minutes. He really feels like some platonic ideal of a Nike executive, with a penchant for slapping you in the knee when he makes a point. Theres a sort of wake up, stay focused energy to him. Execs on Hills payroll have called him more trusting and unflinchingly supportive. Ive gotten to meet, and re-meet, a lot of Nike execs and designers over the last decade. And truly, they all have a new bounce in their step. But I also appreciated how Jannett Nichol, a 32-year Nike veteran who is VP, Apparel & Advanced Digital Creation Studio Innovation, threw lukearm water on my question: Was all of the new product I was seeing the result of Hill taking charge with a more aggressive innovation strategy? I mean, I think Elliot coming on has been fantastic. There’s no denying what he brings to the company . . . he’s always been that personality type, she says. But the work was in flight. And it was going to happen, whether it was Elliot or not. [Photo: Nike] The truth Nike wont tell you: Its a wellness company One of Hills best decisions was promoting Matt Nurse to become Nikes chief science officer. Nurse is a researcher who runs Nikes big athlete testing facility, the Nike Sports Research Lab. (For some reason, whenever Im there, Nike has hired these fitness models to demonstrate sports, and the soccer players, seemingly carved from marble, always have their shirts off. Doesnt Nike sell shirts? NIKE DO YOU NEED ME TO LEND YOU A SHIRT?!?) Anyway, Nurse has always seen Nike as something more than shoes. And thats important for Nike. Sneakers are increasingly commoditized. Even Nikes marathon-busting Vaporfly shoes were quickly copied by the entire footwear industry. Nurse has to juggle a somewhat complicated narrative that underlies Nike. They are inspired by the elite athlete, and their dialogues with these superhumans is intimate and ongoingas evidenced when chief innovation officer Tony Bignell swiped through his own text message thread with Eliud Kipchoge to pull up a picture. But their other message is that, um, also, well if you have a body youre an athlete! Nikes marketing and business model has a lot of ways to grow in this regard, and I think Nurses team sits at the fulcrum in making that work. [Photo: Nike] One of Nurses pet projects is the launch of Nike Mind, two new neurophysiological shoes that poke into your feet to measurably calm down your brain. I compare Nike Mind to Nintendos Brain Age moment, when with a single app, it expanded its premise and addressable market from gamers to anyone concerned about aging. [Photo: Nike] It starts with these shoes that essentially force mindfulness by connecting pressure points on your foot to textures on the ground. 22 foam nodes stick through the outsole, angling and resonating shapes and sensations straight into your foot. Theyre funky to walk in. You can feel blades of grass, even trough socks. They increase alpha waves in your brain, just like meditation, though Nurse admits they dont reach the point of “meditation shoe. Cognitive neuroscience, and the way products and spaces measurably affect us, is the cutting edge of design right now. Two decades of worldwide academic research are just begging to be commercialized. And these Mind shoes are just a taste of what that could be as Nike neurosciences the hell out of the rest of your body. [Image: Nike] You can imagine where we’re headed, says Nurse. You start thinking about tapping into [our] sensory systems. The foot is one area . . . youve got a whole body . . . this whole canvas. He points out that we have all sorts of emotional states that we might want to activate, other than calm. Another area where Nike is inherently thinking outside sport is in its Project Amplify exoskeleton, or a robotic Achilles tendon that clips onto the back of a shoe. Cognitive neuroscience, and the way products and spaces measurably affect us, is the cutting edge of design right now. Project Amplify isnt built for Lebron. Vaporfly broke marathoning with 4% energy return. Project Amplify will offer something more like a 20% boost in energy when it debuts mid-ish next year. At launch, Nike imagines a similar market to people who bought e-bikesathletes who want to adventure further, faster. But in my opinion, so much energy amplification offers a new opportunity for Nike to shift the narrative from just being faster to being more able-bodiedsomething that will resonate with the aging population in particular. [Photo: Nike] Thats not Be Like Mike stuff! But Nike has the potential to be the first and most aggressive to democratize the exoskeleton as a slip-on shoe, or an ebike for your feet as the company is positioning it. If all Amplify does is help you hike or run another few miles, its a failure. This is a training tool. A rehab tool. A healthcare tool. A way to keep boomers (and every generation that comes after them) walking consistently and healthily through their lives, not necessarily to dunk, but to buy groceries. [Image: Nike] Nurse gets this but is treading carefully. “Maybe you just need to get around the city, he muses. We got you. It’s okay. You’re still moving. We’re going to help you. The Apple Watch is now a $17 billion business for Apple and all it does is display texts and track some health metrics. Apple found a way to appeal to athletes and people worried about a fall. Nike needs to master that same balance to grow. Quite simply: The global footwear industry is worth somewhere around $150 billion. The global wellness industry is worth $6.3 trillion. Hills revenue answer exists everywhere off the track, court, or pitch. [Photo: Nike] One of Nikes most important investments is architecture Nike has invested about $1 billion in new architecture since 2017, and following my four visits over the last 14 years, I cant begin to emphasize how important these investments were. [Photo: Nike] With apologies to buildings named after Mia Hamm and Tiger Woods, so much of HQ feels like an office park stuck in the 90s. Meanwhile four new buildingsincluding the Lebron James Innovation Center (one giant staircase, designed to look fast, where athletes sweat in rooms straight out of Dragon Ball Z and a lot of the designers work) and the Serena building (a million square feet of undulating offices with a stunning events space on the roof)are both a pleasure to be in, and bring a sense of possibility. These are modernist marvels set to a backdrop of Oregon forest. They exemplify the mix of nature and technology. Nike convincingly claims they have the best facilities to measure human performance on the planet, and they will become increasingly important as tools for Nikes teams to break out of their own silos. The Lebron building, for instance, is off limits for most Nike employees to visit, given the sensitivity of the designs inside. But Nikes new head of innovation, Tony Binell, has worked to shift development spaces up a level, and open the first flooran atrium celebrating Lebrons first 30,000 points thats ensconced by many meeting roomsto all 3,500 people on Nikes product creation teams, so that people who work on different sports can share ideas and mingle. That’s how you get some of that sharing we sort of missed because I can’t be bothered to walk across campus, you know? says Binell. But actually, [it should be like] That shoelace is cool! We could use that shoelace!’ [Photo: Nike] Nike ACG gets even hauter To grow its business, one thing Nike wants to do is expand its brandsand Hill told me hes even open to acquiring the right companies to do so. But the entire technical and trail-inspired outdoor industry, ranging from The North Face to ArcTeryx, is one of its fastest growing categories in sport, worth around $130 billion a year by Nikes estimation. And as it happens, Nike has had a very respected, slightly underground (for Nike) label called ACG that plays in this space. ACG puts out some of the most experimental, hypebeastiest drops each year. And Nike is about to put it front-and-center on the podium at the Milan Winter Olympics. (RIP EVERYONE WHO LIKED ACG AS A PERSONALITY TRAIT.) Their new Air Milano jacket reinterprets Nike Air as a haute, inflatable winter jacket. Its computationally quilted baffling catches the light in a captivating way. (Youd never know that pattern is actually an abstraction of the ACG logo.) And a handheld inflater puffs the jacket up in about 10 seconds, creating insulation on demand. This coat is wild. Absurd. Beautiful. I love it. [Image: Nike] It also feels high-end. Nike intends to relaunch ACG around this moment, making the sub brand the pinnacle expression for an athlete, with the reemergence of ACG in a new premium way, according to Nichol. “[Its the] most technical garment we’ve ever made that’s not going to space, Nichol says. In other words, its going to be expensive. Consider: this probably means that Nike is selling air for more than down. Thats a somewhat wild possibility to comprehend! The ultimate margins are likely appealing on a balance sheet. But I do also worry that if Nike stays too premium with this tech, it’ll get Sketchersed or Sheined to death before it can own the space. When I mention to Nichol that the jacket felt like it would make a great sleeping bag or tent, I asked, does stuff like that make sense for Nike? I think through the lens of ACG it fits perfectly, she says. Nike simply cannot look new while looking so old Nike hit its low point in 2023 with the release of Ben Afflecks Air. A company that was about to get trounced for doing nothing more than rereleasing old shoes gave the whole company the Argo treatment. How do you ruin Michael Jordan? By making his story look old instead of timeless. Look, Nike Air is from 1978. That shit is almost 50 years old. The last incredible, mainstream tech release was its Flyknit material in 2012. And the truth is, Nikes launched its last category-busting product almost a decade ago now, with its Alphafly shoes that returned 4% of someones stride and literally broke long distance running. This was 2017lifetimes agopre COVID and ChatGPT. And lets be very honest: In this moment of massive technological advancement, consumers are naturally developing higher expectations as to what constitutes a breakthrough. Nobody beyond the most advanced athletes are interested in 4% margins anymore. This is the moment to reinvent how we live. Nike has made billions off of its classic IPs, remixed with new colorways and design sensibilities. But its hard to see the sheer scale of modern collab culture as anything but late stage capitalism. Every designer I know is lamenting the thirst of the social/product feed. And through that lens, Nikes days of selling fancy foams feel numbered. But erase a few bad news cycles, and I challenge you to name a company more exciting than Nike right now in terms of sheer potential. Consider that Nike is a UX company that doesnt really make software, and a technology company that doesnt touch phones. It builds products for the human bodythings to make us move faster, more comfortably, and more joyfully. Im excited about Nike because slip-on exoskeletons and brain-activating apparel introduce the possibility to reshape our day-to-day lives. But most of all, Im hopeful that Nike seems to be recognizing that its potential is so much greater than what we stereotypically think of as footwear and apparelof that 1970s brown Argo filter fogging over the swoosh. Nikes new tagline, born from its EVP and chief innovation, design & product officer, Phil McCartney, is Make epic shit. The remit really is both that hard and that simple.
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The government shutdown has reopened debate on what has been a central issue for both major political parties in the last 15 years: the future of health coverage under the Affordable Care Act.Tax credits for people who get health insurance through the marketplaces created by the Affordable Care Act, also known as Obamacare, expire at the end of the year.Democrats say they won’t vote to reopen the government until Republicans negotiate an extension of the expanded subsidies. Republicans say they won’t negotiate until Democrats vote to reopen the government. Lawmakers in both parties have been working on potential solutions behind the scenes, hoping that leaders will eventually start to talk, but it’s unclear if the two sides could find compromise.As Congress circles the issue, a poll from The Associated Press-NORC Center for Public Affairs Research found that about 6 in 10 Americans are “extremely” or “very” concerned about their health costs going up in the next year. Those worries extend across age groups and include people with and without health insurance, the poll found.A look at the subsidies that are expiring, the politics of the ACA and what Congress might do: Enhanced premium help during the pandemic Passed in 2010, the ACA was meant to decrease the number of uninsured people in the country and make coverage more affordable for those who don’t have private insurance. The law created state by state exchanges, some of which are run by the individual states, to try to increase the pool of the insured and bring down rates.In 2021, when Democrats controlled Congress and the White House during the COVID-19 pandemic, they expanded premium help that was already in the law. The changes included eliminating premiums for some lower-income enrollees, ensuring that higher earners paid no more than 8.5% of their income and expanding eligibility for middle-class earners.The expanded subsidies pushed enrollment to new levels and drove the rate of uninsured people to a historic low. This year, a record 24 million people have signed up for insurance coverage through the ACA, in large part because billions of dollars in subsidies have made the plans more affordable for many people.If the tax credits expire, annual out-of-pocket premiums are estimated to increase by 114% an average of $1,016 next year, according to an analysis from KFF. Democrats push to extend subsidies Democrats extended those tax credits in 2022 for another three years but were not able to make them permanent. The credits are set to expire Jan. 1, with Republicans now in full control.Lacking in power and sensing a political opportunity, Democrats used some of their only leverage and forced a government shutdown over the issue when federal funding ran out on Oct. 1. They say they won’t vote for a House-passed bill to reopen the government until Republicans give them some certainty that the subsidies will be extended.Democrats introduced legislation in September to permanently extend the premium tax credits, but they have suggested that they are open to a shorter period.“We need a serious negotiation,” Senate Democratic leader Chuck Schumer has repeatedly said. Republicans try to scale the ACA back, again The Democratic demands on health care have reignited longstanding Republican complaints about the ACA, which they have campaigned against for years and tried and failed to repeal in 2017. Many in the party say that if Congress is going to act, they want to scrap the expanded subsidies and overhaul the entire law.The problem is not the expiring subsidies but “the cost of health care,” Republican Sen. Rick Scott of Florida said Tuesday.In a virtual briefing Tuesday, the libertarian Cato Institute and the conservative Paragon Health Institute branded the subsidies as President Joe Biden’s “COVID credits” and claimed they’ve enabled fraudsters to sign people up for fully subsidized plans without their knowledge.Others have pitched more modest proposals that could potentially win over some Democrats. Senate Majority Leader John Thune, R-S.D., has said he is open to extending the subsidies with changes, including lower income limits and a stop to auto-enrollment that may sign up people who don’t need the coverage.The ACA is “in desperate need of reform,” Thune has said.House Republicans are considering their own ideas for reforming the ACA, including proposals for phasing out the subsidies for new enrollees. And they have begun to discuss whether to combine health care reforms with a new government funding bill and send it to the Senate for consideration once they return to Washington.“We will probably negotiate some off-ramp” to ease the transition back to pre-COVID-19 levels, said Maryland Rep. Andy Harris, the head of the conservative House Freedom Caucus, during a virtual town hall Tuesday. Is compromise possible? A number of Republicans want to extend the subsidies. Sen. Josh Hawley, R-Mo., said most people who are using the exchanges created by the ACA “don’t really have another option, and it’s already really, really expensive. So I think there are things we can do to reform the program.”Hawley said he had been having conversations with other senators about what those changes could be, including proposals for income limits, which he said he sees as a “very reasonable.”Bipartisan groups of lawmakers have been discussing the income limits and other ideas, including making the lowest-income people pay very low premiums instead of nothing. Some Republicans have advocated for that change to ensure that all enrollees are aware they have coverage and need it. Other proposals would extend the subsidies for a year or two or slowly phase them out.It’s unclear if any of those ideas could gain traction on both sides or any interest from the White House, where President Donald Trump has remained mostly disengaged. Despite the public stalemate, though, lawmakers are feeling increased urgency to find a solution as the Nov. 1 open enrollment date approaches.Democratic Sen. Jeanne Shaheen of New Hampshire has been talking to lawmakers since the shutdown began, trying to find areas of compromise. On Tuesday, she suggested that Congress could also look at extending the enrollment dates for the ACA since Congress is stalled on the subsidies.“These costs are going to affect all of us, and it’s going to affect our health care system,” she said. Associated Press writers Lisa Mascaro and Joey Cappelletti in Washington and Ali Swenson in New York contributed to this report. Mary Clare Jalonick, Associated Press
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Its been a wild 24 hours for the stock prices of Americas big four publicly traded quantum computing companies, which include D-Wave, IonQ, Quantum Computing Inc., and Rigetti. Yesterday, all four quantum firms saw their stock prices fall significantly along with a broader market selloffmostly related to fears about a growing trade war with China and disappointing tech earnings. But today, shares of the Quantum Four are up on the rumors that the Trump administration is interested in taking an equity stake in quantum computing firms. Heres what you need to know. Commerce Department reportedly interested Last night, the Wall Street Journal reported that the U.S. Commerce Department was in talks with several quantum computing companies over equity stakes in those firms in return for federal funding. Specifically, the Journal said D-Wave, IonQ, and Rigetti were in discussions with the federal government about the matter. The report stated that Quantum Computing Inc. and the privately held Atom Computing were considering similar arrangements. Fast Company has reached out to all the quantum firms named in the WSJs report. IonQ declined to comment. Others did not immediately reply. The exact terms of any such deal are unknown. However, the report states that minimum federal government funding awards would be for $10 million each. It is unknown how much equity the U.S. government would want in exchange for funding, though the level of equity and the amount of funding will likely be correlated. The funding would come from the Chips Research and Development Office, which is overseen by Commerce Secretary Howard Lutnick. The Commerce Department did not immediately reply for comment. window.addEventListener("message",function(a){if(void 0!==a.data["datawrapper-height"]){var e=document.querySelectorAll("iframe");for(var t in a.data["datawrapper-height"])for(var r,i=0;r=e[i];i++)if(r.contentWindow===a.source){var d=a.data["datawrapper-height"][t]+"px";r.style.height=d}}}); The next frontier in computing That the Trump administration is reportedly interested in an equity stake in Americas quantum computing firms is of little surprise. This past year alone, the administration has taken stakes in chipmaker Intel. and rare earths mining operator MP Materials. The link between these two companies is that they produce products and materialsadvanced chips and rare earth elementsthat are seen as vital to Americas national security supply chain. Intels chips power everything from navigation systems to military technology, and MP’s rare earths are needed to make the components that go into critical electronics used by the government and military. Quantum computing differs in that, as of now, quantum computers dont play a critical role in powering the tools behind U.S. economic, military, or security power. But that is expected to change in the years ahead as quantum computers advance and have the potential to be more revolutionary than even AI. Quantum computers are different than the classical computers we use today. A classical computer operates using bits, where each bit of data can either be a one or a zero. However, a quantum computer utilizes qubits, where each unit of data can represent a one and a zeroor anything in betweenat the same time. This means that quantum computers can carry out computation tasks in a matter of minutes or hours that would take a classical computer thousands of years or more to compute. Given the potential for quantum computers to revolutionize everything from materials science to healthcare to communications and security, its no surprise that countries, including the United States and China, are deeply interested in the development of this technology. Quantum Four stocks jump on Thursday After the WSJ report broke, shares of the four publicly traded quantum computing companies spiked in premarket trading on Thursday morning. As of the time of this writing, all quantum four stocks are currently up significantly, including: D-Wave Quantum Inc. (NYSE: QBTS): up 13% IonQ, Inc. (NYSE: IONQ): up 12% Quantum Computing Inc. (Nasdaq: QUBT): up 11% Rigetti Computing, Inc. (Nasdaq: RGTI): up 9% Todays price jump helps wipe out much of the losses that the Quantum Four experienced yesterday amid a broader market selloff. Yesterday, D-Wave closed 15% lower, IonQ closed down 6%, Quantum Computing Inc. lost 7%, and Rigetti lost 9%. Over the past 12 months, the stock prices of the Quantum Four have surged. As of yesterdays close, D-Wave was up 2,174%, IonQ was up 269%, Quantum Computing Inc. was up 1,215%, and Rigetti was up 2,831%
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