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The United Kingdom will build new nuclear-powered attack submarines, get its army ready to fight a war in Europe and become “a battle-ready, armor-clad nation,” Prime Minister Keir Starmer said Monday, part of a boost to military spending designed to send a message to Moscowand Washington.Starmer said Britain “cannot ignore the threat that Russia poses” as he pledged to undertake the most sweeping changes to Britain’s defenses since the collapse of the Soviet Union more than three decades ago.“The threat we face is more serious, more immediate and more unpredictable than at any time since the Cold War,” Starmer told workers and journalists at a navy shipyard in Scotland. A new era of threats Like other NATO members, the U.K. has been reassessing its defense spending since Russia’s full-scale invasion of Ukraine in February 2022.The government announced military plans in response to a strategic defense review commissioned by Starmer and led by George Robertson, a former U.K. defense secretary and NATO secretary general. It’s the first such review since 2021, and lands in a world shaken and transformed by Russia’s full-scale invasion of Ukraine in 2022, and by the re-election of President Donald Trump last year.Months after Britain’s last major defense review was published in 2021, then-Prime Minister Boris Johnson said with confidence that the era of “fighting big tank battles on European landmass” are over. Three months later, Russian tanks rolled into Ukraine.Starmer’s center-left Labour Party government says it will accept all 62 recommendations made in the review, aiming to help the U.K. confront growing threats on land, air sea and in cyberspace. Submarines and weapons The measures include increasing production of submarines and weapons and “learning the lessons of Ukraine,” which has rapidly developed its drone technology to counter Moscow’s forces and even hit targets deep inside Russia.The government said the U.K, will also establish a cyber command to counter “daily” Russia-linked attacks on Britain’s defenses.Monday’s announcements include building “up to 12” nuclear-powered, conventionally armed submarines under the AUKUS partnership with Australia and the United States. The government also says it will invest 15 billion pounds in Britain’s nuclear arsenal, which consists of missiles carried on a handful of submarines. Details of those plans are likely to be kept secret.The government will also increase conventional Britain’s weapons stockpiles with up to 7,000 U.K.-built long-range weapons.Starmer said rearming would create a “defense dividend” of thousands of well-paid manufacturing jobsa contrast to the post-Cold War “peace dividend” that saw Western nations channel money away from defense into other areas. Deterring Russia comes at a cost Defense Secretary John Healey said the changes would send “a message to Moscow,” and transform the country’s military following decades of retrenchment, though he said he does not expect the number of soldierscurrently at a two-century lowto rise until the early 2030s.Healey said plans for defense spending to hit 2.5% of national income by 2027 a year are “on track” and that there’s “no doubt” it will hit 3% before 2034.Starmer said the 3% goal is an “ambition,” rather than a firm promise, and it’s unclear where the cash-strapped Treasury will find the money. The government has already, contentiously, cut international aid spending to reach the 2.5% target.Starmer said he wouldn’t make a firm pledge until he knew “precisely where the money is coming from.”Even 3% falls short of what some leaders in NATO think is needed to deter Russia from future attacks on its neighbors. NATO chief Mark Rutte says leaders of the 32 member countries will debate a commitment to spend at least 3.5% of GDP on defense when they meet in the Netherlands this month. Bolstering Europe’s defenses It’s also a message to Trump that Europe is heeding his demand for NATO members to spend more on their own defense.European countries, led by the U.K. and France, have scrambled to coordinate their defense posture as Trump transforms American foreign policy, seemingly sidelining Europe as he looks to end the war in Ukraine. Trump has long questioned the value of NATO and complained that the U.S. provides security to European countries that don’t pull their weight.Starmer said his government would make “Britain’s biggest contribution to NATO since its creation.”“We will never fight alone,” he said. “Our defense policy will always be NATO-first.”James Cartlidge, defense spokesman for the main opposition Conservative Party, welcomed more money for defense but was skeptical of the government’s 3% pledge.“All of Labour’s strategic defence review promises will be taken with a pinch of salt unless they can show there will actually be enough money to pay for them,” he said. Jill Lawless and Pan Pylas, Associated Press
Category:
E-Commerce
Jeffrey Katzenberg has long backed ambitious venturesfrom cofounding animation studio DreamWorks to championing digital innovation through his investment firm WndrCo. Now, hes supporting a bold new vision for the future of advertising. WndrCo has co-led a $15.5 million Series A investment in Creatify, an AI video ad platform that has quietly reached $9 million in annual recurring revenue just 18 months after launch. Co-led alongside Kindred Ventures, the latest round brings Creatifys total funding to $23 million, with Katzenberg also joining the companys board. Founded by a trio of engineers who previously built video ad products at Snap, Meta, Airbnb, and Metas AI research lab FAIR, the San Francisco-based startup helps businesses rapidly produce high-performing, AI-powered video ads for social mediawithout relying on traditional production or content creators. Ive spent my career looking for the tools that give storytellers an edge. Thats why Im excited about AI video, Jeffrey Katzenberg, cofounder and CEO of DreamWorks SKG and WndrCo, tells Fast Company. Brands today need hundreds of custom ads across dozens of platforms, fast and cost-effectively. Traditional production just cant keep up, but AI can. Thats what makes it a game changer. The platform features a library of over 750 lifelike AI avatars and more than 140 natural-sounding voices, enabling brands to deliver personalized messages in up to 29 languages. It also includes a built-in scriptwriting tool for crafting ad narratives. Creatifys cofounder and CEO, Yinan Na, says his experience working on Snap Spotlight and Meta video ads taught him that great creative content, when guided by the right algorithms, naturally finds its audience. I saw videos unique power to engage audiences at scale, but also how complex and out of reach video advertising can be for most businesses. Those experiences shaped my vision for Creatify as the Shopify of video adsan AI-driven platform that automates as a one-click video advertising experience, Yinan says. Its about harnessing AI to democratize creativity and empower entrepreneurs everywhere to scale their storytelling and grow their businesses. Creatify has grown to over one million users, with brands like Zumper, NewsBreak, Binance, and Alibaba.com using the platform to launch hundreds of ad creatives each month. To advance automation further, Creatify is now launching an AI agent that autonomously generates, tests, and optimizes short-form video ads. Ive seen firsthand how technology opens new doors, from hand-drawn to CGI animation, and now AI. What excites me about Creatify is that its breaking down barriers around video creation. When production takes minutes instead of weeks, more people get to tell their stories. Thats a real shift, says Katzenberg. AdMax: An AI Agent for Ad Creatives The startups pitch is simple yet disruptive. Video accounts for 82% of internet traffic, yet only 35% of ad spend. Why? Because high-quality video production doesnt scale fast enough for todays digital economy. Creatify aims to solve this with AdMax, an end-to-end AI platform that can generate dozens of video ad variations in minutes. Built for performance-driven platforms like TikTok and Metas ad ecosystems, AdMax autonomously analyzes top-performing competitor ads to generate creative insights, then creates dozens of UGC-style videos featuring AI avatars and tests them directly on Meta and TikTok. At the heart of the platform is Ad Intelligence, a proprietary engine that identifies which scripts, visuals, and formats convert best. AdMax learns which creative elements drive better results and autonomously adjusts campaigns on the fly, continuously improving outcomes with minimal human input, says Yinan. The system uses LLMs to script tailored ads, while powerful VLMs and diffusion models edit and generate the corresponding imagery and video contents. It acts like a 24/7 creative strategist, content producer, and media optimizerrolled into one with the power of AI. With API integrations and team workspaces, AdMax is designed to streamline production workflows for large marketing teams. AdMax is a real breakthrough. What used to take weeks and cost tens of thousands now happens in minutes for a fraction of the price, Katzenberg says. Thats not just efficiency; its creativity and effectiveness, and its a fundamental shift in how this business will work. Scalable Creativity, Engineered by Industry Veterans Creatifys founding team brings significant AI engineering experience. CEO Yinan Na is joined by chief scientist Ledell Wu, formerly of Metas FAIR lab and a contributor to open-source projects like PyTorch-BigGraph, for which she earned an ICML Test-of-Time Award. CTO Xin Zhou, a veteran of Meta and Airbnb, specializes in building scalable AI systems and recommendation engines. Now joining the board, Katzenberg brings decades of experience shaping the entertainment and media industries. He began his career at Paramount Pictures, rising from assistant to president of production under Michael Eisner and contributing to classics like Indiana Jones: Raiders of the Lost Ark. In 1984, Katzenberg joined Disney as Chairman of Walt Disney Studios, revitalizing its film division into a box office powerhouse. After leaving Disney in 1994, he cofounded DreamWorks SKG with Steven Spielberg and David Geffen, producing hits like Gladiator, Shrek, Kung Fu Panda, and A Beautiful Mind. After taking the studio public and later selling it to NBCUniversal for $3.8 billion, Katzenberg founded WndrCo in 2017. He believes technology should turn storytelling into business results. To him, Creatify isnt just a new tool, its a creative shift. When I joined Disney in 1984, animation was still painted by handincredible work, but slow and tedious. Today, theres no ink-and-paint department, yet more people work in animation than ever before. Technology didnt take those jobs, it transformed them, Katzenberg says. Thats the pattern: innovation expands opportunity and pushes creativity forward. A New Era of Advertising Early adopters are already seeing impact. Real estate platform Zumper produces over 300 video ads monthly using Creatify, saving about $20,000 each month. NewsBreak advertisers launch tailored creatives in minutes instead of days, reporting improved engagement across audience segments. Marketers no longer wait weeks for agencies to deliver polished campaigns. Weve designed our AI to act as a strategic copilotnot a replacement. Our full-funnel intelligence draws from a rich blend of brand guidelines, historical performance, and real-time industry trends to generate creatives, says Yinan. Marketers are always in controlthey can review, refine, and approve any AI-generated asset. Our goal is to empower them with better data and sharper ideas that drive conversions, all while preserving their unique voice and creative intuition. Whats Next for Creatify? With the fresh capital, Creatify plans to grow its R&D team, enhance customer success efforts, and roll out new features. Upcoming releases include Batch Mode 2.0 for generating hyper-targeted ad variations in bulk, along with AI-powered market insights and automated multichannel publishing. As AI tools evolve from assistants to autonomous creators, a deeper question emerges: what becoes of agencies, creative teams, and the craft of storytelling when a model can do it all on demand? The human touch is still everything. AI doesnt work on its own, it follows vision, direction, and feedback, Katzenberg says. Creatify isnt replacing marketers; its a copilot, not the pilot itself. The best technology has always done the same thing: helped people do what they do bestonly faster, smarter, and at greater scale.
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E-Commerce
In January, Fortune Brands Innovations, whose portfolio includes home and security brands such as Moen and Master Lock, announced it was consolidating its regional U.S. offices into one state-of-the-art campus in Deerfield, Illinois. As part of that effort, they are requiring the majority of corporate employees to move to the Chicago suburb. When asked to relocate, most of these employees declinedbut the company said it expected that, and in a conversation about the transition, CEO Nicholas Fink framed the changes ahead as a positive for the company. He added that while many opted out of relocation, the company still exceeded industry benchmarks for the number of people who said yes to the move. To be candid, its a big change for a lot of people, says Fink, who declined to share more specific figures. There are people who are committed to their communities and their families and arent interested in a move. . . . And then there are people who are very excited to be a part of this. The company asked employees from eight sites across the U.S., as well as some remote employees, to relocate. It will eventually ask employees from a ninth site to relocate as well. The companys manufacturing facilities, distribution centers, and international sites, as well as its digital-focused San Francisco office, will remain open. Among the Fortune Brands sites that will be closing are Master Locks headquarters in Oak Creek, Wisconsin, Moens headquarters in North Olmsted, Ohio, and Therma-Tru Corps headquarters in Maumee, Ohio. The larger return-to-office push Fortune Brands isnt alone in its desire to bring employees together after a pandemic that isolated many and led to the remote-work boom, which some employers are now rolling back via return-to-office mandates. In April, CNBC reported that Google had asked remote employees to begin reporting to a Google office three days per week in order to keep their jobs amid cost cuts. Amazon has also asked some corporate employees to relocate amid its full time return-to-office push, prompting a number of workers to resign. While RTO mandates arent unusual, whats less common is requiring a full relocation to a central headquarters. Last year, in a somewhat similar move, Walmart required employees to relocate to its Arkansas headquarters or another main hub, prompting some executives to resign, according to Quartz. Organizing a mass relocation Employees who were asked to relocate were offered an expenses-paid visit to Deerfield, relocation assistance, and, in most cases, an increase in base pay to account for higher cost of living in the Chicago area. Employees who opted out of relocating are receiving severance packages and at least a 90-day notice of their last day of work, the company said. The moves will happen in phases, beginning at the end of this summer. By the end of 2027, Fortune Brands says it will have room for over 1,000 employees at its new headquarters. That includes relocated employees as well as new employees the company is currently in the process of hiring. The move will create about 400 new jobs for professionals in the Chicago area, an exciting prospect for Fink. Were seeing a level of talent applying very proactively to join our company that we really hadnt seen when we were dispersed, he says. There are some jobs that have had 1,400 applicants. Fink adds that he wants to be crystal clear about how much the company values its current talent, though he feels new hires will help give the company a technological edge. In a press release about the new headquarters, the company also announced simplified leadership changes that involve eliminating the role of group president. Creating a central headquarters The location in Deerfield, about 30 miles north of Chicago, was selected based on the potential talent pool in the area as well as tax credits given by the state of Illinois, the company says. The new campus, formerly home to a pharmaceutical company, occupies two buildings connected by walkways, and boasts an on-site gym, daycare center, cafeteria, coffee bar, and recreational activities including golf simulators and a bowling alley. With the move, Fink says he hopes employees who were previously scattered across the countryand across the company’s various brandswill be able to connect more easily and quickly. In fact, hes already seen it happen in the temporary space the company is currently occupying. Im having members of my team walk into my office and say, I just bumped into so-and-so, or, I just ran into someones office and we made a decision in five minutes, Fink says. That might previously have been: Schedule a meeting, someone prepares a deck, someone presents the deck, then you have a conversation about it, and maybe you make a decision or maybe you dont, then you get off the Zoom . . . Fink believes the streamlined communication will allow for higher productivity and greater innovation, which will drive products and services. The company reported mixed financial results in a first-quarter earnings call earlier this month. Sales fell 7% year-over-year, with the company attributing the drop in part to softer consumer demand. However, earnings per share met analyst expectations. In response to the earnings release, the companys stock price dropped 2.78%, closing at $54.31. While Fink believes strongly in the importance of having employees in one headquarters, he says there are no plans to change his companys current hybrid-work policy, which requires three days a week in-office. Thats created a lot of value for people, he says. But theres also value in being together, so were trying to find the perfect balance. Some of the people who arent making the movefor us have found other jobs where they can work remotely. I would think that, over time, that will lead to underperformance relative to the people who are getting together and making decisions much faster. Its a hypothesis, but one were eager to prove out.
Category:
E-Commerce
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