Oracle Corp. started September by making headlines for layoffs. Then, on Tuesday, September 9, it reported first-quarter financial results that missed the mark for revenue and earnings.
Yet, you wouldnt guess any of this based on how its stock has rallied.
The software companys shares (NYSE:ORCL) rose over 32% through after-hours and into premarket trading on Wednesday.
The boost comes down to Oracles revenue projections rather than the lackluster results for fiscal year (FY) 2026s first quarter. The company predicts that Oracle Cloud Infrastructures entire FY 2026 revenue will reach $18 billiona 77% jump year-over-year (YOY).
Thats just the start. Oracle further expects revenue for its cloud infrastructure business to reach $32 billion in 2027, $73 billion the following year, and $114 billion and $144 billion in 2029 and 2030, respectively.
‘The who’s who of AI’
Oracle signed four multibillion-dollar contracts during quarter one, stemming from three different customers, it said. CEO Safra Catz stated in the report that the company expects to sign several more multibillion-dollar customers over the next few months.
Then there was the July announcement that Oracle is teaming up with OpenAI to create 4.5 gigawatts of Stargate data center capacity in the U.S.
Clearly, we had an amazing start to the year because Oracle has become the go-to place for AI workloads. We have signed significant cloud contracts with the who’s who of AI, including OpenAI, xAI, Meta, Nvidia, AMD, and many others, Catz said in an earnings call. At the end of Q1, Remaining Performance Obligations, or RPO, now top $455 billion. This is up 359% from last year and up $317 billion from the end of Q4. Our cloud RPO grew nearly 500% on top of 83% growth last year.
Catz predicted that Oracles RPO will likely surpass $500 billion in the coming months.
So with these developments in mind, investors dont seem bothered by Oracle reporting $14.93 billion in quarter one revenue, falling short of Wall Streets predicted $15.04 billion, according to consensus estimates cited by CNBC.
There was also a slight miss in earnings per share, reaching $1.47 adjusted, rather than the $1.48 expected.
Oracle Cloud Infrastructures tremendous predicted growth further overshadowed recent layoffs, which were reported by local outlets in the San Francisco Bay Area, Seattle, Kansas City, and elsewhere.
Global shares mostly rose Wednesday, echoing record rallies on Wall Street after the latest update on the job market bolstered hopes the U.S. Federal Reserve will cut interest rates.France’s CAC 40 rose 0.8 in early trading to 7,809.80. Germany’s DAX edged up 0.6% to 23,856.74. Britain’s FTSE 100 rose 0.2% to 9,263.14. U.S. shares were set to be mixed with Dow futures down 0.1% at 45,700.00, while S&P 500 futures gained 0.3% at 6,537.75.Japan’s benchmark Nikkei 225 gained 0.9% to finish at 43,837.67. Australia’s S&P/ASX 200 added 0.3% to 8,830.40. South Korea’s Kospi jumped 1.7% to 3,314.53.Hong Kong’s Hang Seng rose 1.0% to 26,200.26, while the Shanghai Composite edged up 0.1% to 3,812.22. Uncertainty is still in the air over U.S.-China tariff issues as bilateral talks continue.U.S. President Donald Trump has raised taxes on imports from China, triggering a tit-for-tat tariff war. The U.S. is currently charging an additional 30% tariff on Chinese goods and China is charging a 10% tariff under a de-escalation deal reached in May.Investors are also watching for the U.S. Federal Reserve possibly cutting its main interest rate for the first time this year at its next meeting in a week, in order to prop up the slowing job market. A report on Tuesday offered the latest signal of weakness, when the U.S. government said its prior count of jobs across the country through March may have been too high by 911,000, or 0.6%.That was before President Donald Trump shocked the economy and financial markets in April by rolling out tariffs on countries worldwide.The bet on Wall Street is that such data will convince Fed officials that the job market is the bigger problem now for the economy than the threat of inflation worsening because of Trump’s tariffs. That would push them to cut interest rates, a move that would give the economy a boost but could also send inflation higher.“The broader narrative is increasingly anchored on expectations that the Fed will deliver a rate cut at next week’s meeting,” said Ahmad Assiri, research strategist at Pepperstone.In energy trading, benchmark U.S. crude added 58 cents to $63.21 a barrel. Brent crude, the international standard, rose 56 cents to $66.95 a barrel.The rise in oil prices came amid escalation of tensions in the Middle East. Israel struck the headquarters of Hamas’s political leadership in Qatar on Tuesday as the group’s top figures gathered to consider a U.S. proposal for a ceasefire in the Gaza Strip.In currency trading, the U.S. dollar inched up to 147.53 Japanese yen from 147.37 yen. The euro fell to $1.1695 from $1.1714.
Yuri Kageyama is on Threads
Yuri Kageyama, AP Business Writer
Today, one of the most closely watched fintech initial public offerings of the year takes place. Shares of the buy now, pay later (BNPL) juggernaut Klarna Group make their stock market debut. Heres everything you need to know about Klarnas IPO.
What is Klarna?
Klarna Group is a Swedish fintech company founded in 2005. It’s headquartered in Stockholm.
Klarna is one of the largest players in the buy now, pay later (BNPL) space, which has revolutionized the consumer financial landscape over the past few years.
BNPL allows consumers to buy itemseverything from computers to burritosin installments, instead of paying a single total fee upfront. The installments are repaid over a period of weeks or months and are interest-free, provided payments are made on time.
But while BNPL services allow consumers to fund purchases they may not otherwise be able to afford upfront, the financing option has been met with much criticism, one of the biggest ones being that BNPL can be a debt trap to consumers, particularly younger Gen Z ones who dont have a lot of experience in financial planning or literacy.
Klarna by the numbers
According to Klarnas Form F-1 filing with the U.S. Securities and Exchange Commission (SEC), the companys key metrics include:
Gross merchandise volume (GMV) of $105 billion in 2024 (up from a GVM of $53 billion in 2020).
Operations in 26 global markets.
93 million active consumers.
A network of 675,000 merchants.
$2.8 billion in total revenue in 2024 (up from $2.2 billion in total revenue in 2023).
Net profit of $21 million in 2024 (up from a net loss of $244 million in 2023).
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When is Klarnas IPO?
Klarnas IPO has been a long time coming. The company announced its intention to make its stock market debut in March of this year. But shortly after, President Trumps Liberation Day tariffs wreaked havoc on markets, causing Klarna to postpone its public offering plans.
But earlier this month, Klarna began announcing details of its postponed IPO, suggesting a date was near. Klarna priced its shares on Tuesday and is expected to list today: Wednesday, September 10.
What is Klarnas stock ticker?
Klarnas shares will trade under the ticker KLAR.
What exhcnage will Klarna trade on?
Klarna shares will trade on the New York Stock Exchange (NYSE).
What is the IPO share price of KLAR?
Klarnas shares were priced at $40 each. Thats well above a target price range of between $35 and $37 that the company originally forecast.
How many KLAR shares are available in its IPO?
In total, there are 34,311,274 ordinary shares of KLAR available in the IPO. However, a majority of those shares are not being offered by the company itself.
As a matter of fact, just 5 million ordinary shares are being sold by Klarna. The remaining 29.3 million shares are being sold by some of the companys existing shareholders.
How much will Klarna raise in its IPO?
Klarnas IPO raised $1.37 billion, according to Reuters. However, Klarna itself will not benefit from that total sum as the companys existing private shareholders sold a majority of the shares on offer.
As Klarna stated in a press release, Klarna will not receive any proceeds from the sale of ordinary shares by the selling shareholders.
How much is Klarna worth?
Klarna is now worth around $15.11 billion after its IPO price of $40 per share, according to Reuters. While that valuation is nothing to sneeze at, it is still well below Klarnas estimated valuation of more than $45 billion back in 2021.
Niklas Kammer, an analyst for Morningstar, sees a 12.5% upside to Klarna’s IPO price, according to a recent note.
“We believe the offer price of USD 40 per share undervalues the substantial growth we expect these agreements to drive,” Kammer wrote, citing agreements with payment service providers that will expand Klarna’s reach. “Growth is what it is all about for Klarna. While its platform is currently just breaking even, starting to eke out a marginal operating profit, the company is poised for a big shift.”
Klarna is the latest high-profile tech IPO in 2025
While Klarnas stock market debut will no doubt be closely watched by industry insiders and investors today, the tech company is by no means the only high-profile one to go public this year.
Other major tech IPOs in 2025 have included Chime, Circle, Figma, eToro, and Bullish.
In fact, Klarna isn’t even the only tech-focused company going public this week; others include Via Transportation, Legence Corp, and Gemini Space Station.
Yet despite the relative success that some tech IPOs have enjoyed this year, the global tech IPO scene in 2025 is currently a far cry from the busy landscape a few years ago.
Recent ata from CB Insights shows that in the second quarter of 2025, global tech IPOs generated $6.3 billion in proceeds. But that pales in comparison to the $34.9 billion that tech IPOs generated in the same quarter of 2021. That also happens to be the same time that Klarna had its sky-high valuation of over $45 billionthree times higher than now.
Disclosure: Fast Company is owned by Morningstar founder Joe Mansueto.
PsiQuantum, the Palo Alto-based startup thats been tapped to build quantum computers in Chicago and Brisbane, Australia, has raised a $1 billion dollar Series E that values the 9-year-old company at $7 billion. The round was led by BlackRock, Baillie Gifford, and Temasek, and includes NVentures, the venture capital arm of chip maker Nvidia. The deal is one of the largest single private investments in quantum computing technology to date.
While your average person would be hard-pressed to explain what a quantum computer does, or why youd want one, investors have decided that they want in.
Since the start of September, the quantum computing industry has seen some of its largest funding rounds yet, including a $320 million Series B for Finnish company IQM and a $600 million capital raise for Quantinuum, a joint venture of Honeywell, at a $10 billion pre-money valuation. Also this week, Infleqtion announced plans to go public via special-purpose acquisition company (SPAC), targeting proceeds of about $540 million.
An ‘aggressive road map’ to big systems
PsiQuantum cofounder and chief science officer Pete Shadbolt says the new funding will help the company realize its plans to build a photonics-based, utility-scale quantum computer. (PsiQuantum has tested key components of its system but has not yet built a complete quantum computer.)
PsiQuantum has been shifting from the centimeter scale work of chip and device design, Shadbolt says, to focus on the kilometer scale work of building out cooling cabinets and other infrastructure for data-center-size computing facilities. He says the new funds will also help PsiQuantum scale up its manufacturing of the bespoke parts and materials that will be used in intermediate-scale systems.
We do have a very aggressive road map to get to big systems, but were not trying to do it all in one leap, he says.
The round includes existing investors Third Point Ventures and T. Rowe Price Associates, along with newcomers such as Macquarie Capital, Qatar Investment Authority, Counterpoint Global (Morgan Stanley), and S Ventures (SentinelOne). PsiQuantum has now raised just over $1.8 billion, according to the company.
AI exuberance meets quantum computing
The AI-level influx of capital into quantum computing in recent weeks could be a sign of the technology maturing, or of investors with AI FOMO trying to catch the next big thing. Or both.
“AI is built on classical computing, which has underpinned the last 50 years of technology, Tony Kim, head of the Fundamental Equities Technology Group at BlackRock, said in the funding announcement for PsiQuantum. Now, we are at the dawn of an adjacent computing platformrooted in quantum mechanicsthat will allow us to simulate the physical world with transformative accuracy. The tech stack of the future will integrate quantum computing and AI, paving the way for machine superintelligence.”
Luke Ward, private companies investment manager at Baillie Gifford, an early PsiQuantum investor, said in the announcement, The company has consistently hit technical milestones while forging deep partnerships across industry and government. With a vision rooted in practicality, PsiQuantum is now positioned at the forefront of what could be a trillion-dollar industry, able to solve some of humanitys biggest challenges. This goes beyond what is possible with AI.
Both statements help explain the entry of Nvidia into the space, which marks a remarkable turnaround. At his CES keynote talk in January 2025, Nvidia CEO Jensen Huang had suggested that useful quantum computers were still about 20 years away, sending publicly traded quantum-related stocks plunging.
But he has apparently revised his assessment, declaring at the GPU Technology Conference (GTC) in Paris this June that quantum computing is reaching an inflection point. Now the company is putting money on it. NVentures investment in PsiQuantum is its third quantum deal since the start of the monthand its third quantum deal ever.
NVentures also joined the latest funding round for Quantinuum, which uses trapped-ion technology in its computers. And yesterday, QuErawhich makes quantum computers that use so-called neutral atomsannounced an unspecified investment from NVentures to expand a $230 million Series B round announced in February.
Collaborating with Nvidia
In addition to the investment support from NVentures, PsiQuantum is collaborating with Nvidia across a broad range of development areas, including quantum algorithms and software, the integration of quantum processors and GPUs in so-called hybrid systems, and PsiQuantums silicon photonics platform.
No quantum computer is going to be useful in a vacuum, says Shadbolt. Quantum computers are going to generate data [for AI] and they also need input from GPU clusters. So, thats a really natural place for Nvidia to get involved. Already in the Japanese quantum computing ecosystem there’s a big Nvidia GPU cluster plugged into a bunch of quantum computers. That’s sort of a growing trend around the world.
PsiQuantums extensive work in photonicsthe transmission of information via lightmake it an appealing strategic partner, as makers of AI super computers are increasingly looking to integrate photonics to keeping up with the massive data transmission and energy demands of AI systems as they grow. Earlier, this week, chipmaker Taiwan Semiconductor Manufacturing Company (TSMC) showed off its new COUPE (Compact Universal Photonic Engine) process for manufacturing densely layered chips that fuses photonic integrated circuits and electronic integrated circuits, at the Silicon Photonics Global Summit in Taiwan.
Nvidias investments across three different quantum computing platformseach pursuing a different technology for generating qubits, the fundamental units of quantum informationsuggest that it is hedging its technological bets.
The competition, says Shadbolt at PsiQuantum, is simultaneously frustrating and very exciting. Its frustrating that we all use different technologies and its vociferously debated. On the other hand, I think that’s a symptom of this being a journey that is just beginning, and I’d rather be on a journey that’s beginning than a journey that is coming to its end.
If the scariest thing for a studio head to contemplate is a flop, executives with plenty of horror flicks in the pipeline have little to fear.
Not only did The Conjuring: Last Rites have the largest opening for a horror movie in history over the weekend, earning $194 million worldwide, but it was just the latest example of a scary movie surpassing industry expectations this year. At a time when even superhero tentpoles no longer reliably turn out filmgoers, horror has become the closest thing to a safe bet that studios can hope for these daysthe final girl of the box office.
The genres dominance this year wasnt a foregone conclusion back in January. Horror stumbled out of the gate in 2025, with Universals Wolf Man taking in just $34 million worldwide on a $25 million budget. Director Leigh Whannells previous stab at reviving a Universal monster property, The Invisible Man, brought in a much-more-lethal $144 million back in February 2020, making it tempting to view the two films as a case study in pre- and post-pandemic box office. Luckily, it turned out to be a fluke.
Other horror movies released in January followed a more typical pattern for the genre of low budget and low risk. Steven Soderberghs experimental haunted house outing, Presence, grossed a paltry $10 million, but avoided flop status because Soderbergh made it for an even-paltrier $2 million. It was followed by the late-January AI-gone-wrong chiller, Companion, which nearly quadrupled its $10 million budget. Of course, these January bright spots were only a sneak preview of where horror was headed this year.
Franchises and indie horror thrive
The Conjuring: Last Ritesthe ninth film in a multi-headed series that includes Annabelle and The Nun sub-franchisesfollowed a slew of horror hits of all shapes and sizes. There were IP-extending reboots like Final Destination: Bloodlines ($307 million) and 28 Years Later ($150 million); original stories from exciting directors, like Ryan Cooglers Southern-fried vampire opus Sinners ($366 million) and Weapons ($251 million and counting), the follow-up to Zach Creggers surprise 2022 hit, Barbarian; along with pure schlock like Clown in a Cornfield, which made nearly $13 million on a $1 million budget, making it Independent Film Company’s (IFC’s) biggest horror hit in its 25-year history. No other genre is enjoying so much success with both originals and beloved IP.
Scary movies have remained a sturdy enticement for moviegoers in the years since COVID-19 and the rise of streaming led to a post-2019 theatrical downturn. Recent hits like Alien: Romulus, Nosferatu, Nope, Smile and Terrifier 3 have regularly lured crowds from their couches over the last few years. What seems different in 2025, though, is how consistently this genre has been overperforming at the box office, confounding industry analysts.
The new Conjuring, for instance, was projected to bring in $50 million at the domestic box office this past weekend, and ended up with $83 million. Weapons was tracking for $25 million to $30 million, but opened to $43 million instead, and managed to stay on top for three of the next four weekends. The new Final Destination similarly overshot expectations for its first weekend by about $12 million, and went on to outgross the series previous top entry, 2009s The Final Destination, by about $120 million.
The success of Sinners, meanwhile, has become one of the biggest Hollywood stories of the year. After it beat opening weekend estimates of $40 million by $8 million, several insider publications poured cold water on that victory, pointing out that Sinners would have to make somewhere between $185 million and $300 million to break even on its relatively high $90 million budget and complicated back-end deals. The film ultimately blew right past the highest of those projected figures, beating the curse of the second weekend drop-off.
These horror movies arent just hitting big relative to their budget sizeslike Februarys The Monkey, which made nearly seven times its $10 million price tagtheyre bona fide blockbusters, surging like superhero movies did in the 2010s.
A year of big-budget bombs
As for the actual superhero movies, theyre continuing to adjust expectations downward after the 2019 peak of Avengers: Endgame, which made $2.8 billion and remains the second-biggest movie of all time, just behind Avatar. Long gone are the days when the $200 million budgets and $100 million marketing spends for Marvel movies made financial sense, as one or two of them were practically guaranteed to crack a billion dollars each year. Indeed, none of the three Marvel movies released in 2025 surpassed the first Ant-Man movies $519 million take a decade ago, although The Fantastic Four: First Steps came close, with $515 million. At the time of Ant-Mans release, amid Marvels imperial era, it wasnt even considered that big a hit.
Former juggernaut Pixar is also a long way from its billion-dollar glory days, with this summers Elio tapping out at $153 million. And while the live-action remake of Disneys Lilo and Stitch was a massive success, becoming the only Hollywood movie this year to cross the billion-dollar mark, another live-action Disney remake, Snow White, was a costly bomb that didnt even earn back its $209 million budget, making the live-action remake subgenre a mixed bag at best.
Horror movies, on the other hand, are looking like the only sure thing left for theatrical releases in 2025. Even rare disappointments like the killer robot sequel M3GAN 2.0 ($39 million on a $25 million budget) and slasher reboot I Know What You Did Last Summer ($60 million on an $18 million budget) have an enviably low floor for losses. And with a slate for the remainder of the year that includes sequels for Predator, The Black Phone and Five Nights at Freddysalong with Guillermo del Toros Frankensteinhorror is poised to continue making a killing in 2025.
In boardrooms and startup accelerators around the world, a counterintuitive truth is emerging: the leaders who move fastest are often the ones who deliberately slow down. While our Western culture glorifies the perpetual sprint, elite performers are discovering what Navy SEALs have known for decades”slow is smooth, and smooth is fast.”
The Tyranny of Chronos
Our modern productivity obsession is rooted in what the ancient Greeks called chronoslinear, measurable time that ticks relentlessly forward on our calendars and clocks. This is the time of deadlines, sprint cycles, and quarterly earnings reports. It’s quantitative, urgent, and unforgiving.
But the Greeks recognized another dimension of time entirely: kairosthe right time, the opportune moment, time that’s qualitative rather than quantitative. Kairos is the difference between sending an email at 2 a.m. because you can, and sending it when your recipient is most likely to engage meaningfully with your message. It’s the difference between filling your calendar with back-to-back meetings versus creating space for the kind of strategic thinking that actually moves the needle.
The most successful entrepreneurs and leaders I’ve worked with have learned to dance between both types of time, but they’ve discovered that honoring kairos often requires the courage to slow down in a chronos-obsessed world.
The SEAL Philosophy in the C-Suite
When Navy SEALs say “slow is smooth, and smooth is fast,” they’re describing a mindset that prioritizes precision over speed, preparation over reactive rushing. In high-stakes military operations, moving too quickly can mean missed details, poor communication, and catastrophic failure. The same principle applies to business leadership.
Consider the CEO who spends an extra week refining their product strategy rather than rushing to market. That deliberate deceleration often prevents months of costly pivots later. Or the manager who invests time in really understanding a team conflict rather than applying a quick fix that creates deeper resentment.
This isn’t about moving slowly for its own sakeit’s about moving at the speed of insight rather than the speed of anxiety.
The Three-Part Rhythm of Peak Performance
The most effective leaders operate in a rhythm I call “Move. Think. Rest.”or MTR, pronounced motorthree integrative phases that honor both chronos and kairos time:
Move: This is the phase to step away from your desk, to get out of your head and into your body so that you can activate those feel-good hormoneslike serotonin, endorphins and dopaminein order to bring calm to the chaos and energy to blah thinking. It could take the form of an in-person walking meeting; a walking meeting on the phone, sans video; or a team standing meeting. It might also take the form of a dance break.
Humans are designed to move, and the type of movement I describe is intentional and finite. It helps you to shift away from rushing to entering a flow state.
Think: This is your kairos timespace for backcasting (reflection, memory, metacognition) as well as forecasting (imagination, dreaming, and daydreaming). It’s when you pause to step back from the tactical and zoom out so that you can actually think more strategically. Many leaders skip this phase, jumping from one action item to the next, then wonder why they feel perpetually reactive rather than proactive.
Rest: True rest isn’t just for physical recoveryit’s purpose is also for cognitive and emotional renewal. It’s the space where your subconscious continues processing complex challenges while your conscious mind recuperates. It allows for your default mode network to kick in. The DMN is the meaning-making part of the brain and it goes to work when you are not engaged with the world. The leaders who understand this phase gain access to insights that their always-on competitors miss.
The Value of Emotional Recovery
This emotional recovery component of MTR is particularly crucial for leaders. As executive coach Scott Peltin pointed out to me, leaders spend their days absorbing the emotional energy of their teamsfielding frustrations, celebrating wins, navigating conflicts, and holding space for others’ anxieties and ambitions. Without intentional emotional recovery, leaders become depleted reservoirs, unable to provide the steady presence their organizations need.
Emotional recovery isn’t just about taking a vacation or getting enough sleep (though both help). It’s about creating regular practices that allow you to process and release the emotional residue of leadership. This might mean a daily walk without podcasts or music, journaling to externalize swirling thoughts, or simply sitting quietly for 10 minutes between high-stakes meetings to reset your emotional baseline.
Practical Applications for the Overwhelmed Executive
How do you implement this philosophy when your calendar is already packed and expectations are sky-high? Start small:
Introduce “Think Time” blocks in your calendar. Even 15 minutes before major decisions can shift you from reactive to strategic mode.
Practice the “24-hour rule” for important communications. Draft that crucial email or decision, then sit on it overnight. You’ll be amazed how often this prevents costly mistakes.
Create “slow lanes” in your workflow. Designate certain projects or decisions as nonurgent, allowing them the time they need to marinate for optimal outcomes.
Build in emotional recovery rituals. Schedule brief transition moments between intense meetings. Even three minutes of deep breathing or stepping outside can prevent emotional buildup that clouds judgment later in the day.
Embrace strategically saying no. Every yes to something urgent is often a no to something important. Slow leaders understand that protecting their kairos time sometimes means disappointing people who operate purely in chronos time.
The Competitive Advantage of Deliberate Pace
In our hyperconnected world, the ability to slow down becomes a differentiator. While your competitors are spinning their wheels in perpetual motion, you’re gaining the clarity that comes from operating at the speed of wisdom rather than the speed of fear.
The future belongs to leaders who can resist the cultural pressure to confuse motion with progress, who understand that in an age of infinite information and constant connectivity, the scarcest resource isn’t timeit’s attention. And attention, like wine, improves with the right kind of patience.
Remember: in a world obsessed with faster, the leaders who master the art of strategic slowness don’t just survivethey flourish.
By now weve all heard of tech debtthe costs well have to incur in the future to maintain suboptimal software and technology decisions from the pastbut in three decades as a tech executive, Ive come to observe a far more insidious phenomenon that threatens to undermine business transformation: process and data debt.
Unlike tech debt, process debt isnt just ITs problem. The accumulation of manual workarounds, inconsistent data practices, and inefficient workflows that build up over time spreads throughout the organization, affecting every department, from accounting to supply chain. And process debt is the number-one thing that will stand in the way of a companys ability to adopt AI to innovate and reinvent itself. Process debt doesn’t just slow down AI initiatives; it fundamentally stops them from reaching their potential as we move toward more autonomous systems.
The Tomato Problem
Consider something simple: ordering 1,000 kilograms of tomatoes. Due to natural moisture loss, only 950 kilograms arrive. The supplier invoices for the full amount. Most systems escalate this to human review.
But when operational foundations are clean, autonomous AI approaches this differently. It understands tomatoes typically lose 5% in transport, factors in seasonal patterns, then processes autonomously. More importantly, it builds institutional knowledge for future decisions.
This is the difference between AI that frustrates and AI that transforms.
Your Roof Collapses
In insurance, we’ve seen property claims processing transformed from days-long research into minutes of intelligent analysis. AI systems now handle complex items, such as custom artwork, by leveraging deep databases and sophisticated reasoning.
The results: an 80% reduction in processing time and a 23% improvement in pricing accuracy, representing millions of dollars in annual value while dramatically improving the customer experience.
The lesson wasn’t about efficiency gains. It was about how AI performs when you design processes around its capabilities rather than retrofitting it onto existing workflows.
The Learning Gap
What we’re seeing validated in research confirms what many suspected: there’s a fundamental difference between organizations that succeed with AI and those that don’t. Recent MIT research shows that 95% of enterprise AI initiatives struggle to deliver value, not because of technology limitations, but because most systems cannot adapt and integrate effectively into existing workflows.
Gartner reinforces this trend, predicting that by 2030, more than 50% of AI models will be domain-specific, tailored to industry or function, up from 5% today. The pattern is clear: generic solutions cannot address the unique operational challenges that define real business value.
An Agentic Order of Operations
The most impactful AI transformations start with addressing process and data debt first. Organizations that clean up their operational foundations unlock AI’s full potential. Those that don’t find themselves constrained by legacy inefficiencies, regardless of their technology investment.
This creates an interesting dynamic. As AI becomes more autonomous, competitive advantage increasingly belongs to organizations willing to do the hard work of liquidating process debt before deploying sophisticated systems.
What This Means for Leaders
We’re entering an era where AI does not just assist. It makes autonomous decisions and manages entire business ecosystems. The organizations that understand this are building the foundations that will define tomorrow’s competitive landscape.
In my experience, the answer lies not in the sophistication of your AI models, but in the quality of the operational foundation you build to support them. That foundation work happening today determines who leads in the autonomous economy of tomorrow.
I often say, There is no artificial intelligence without process intelligence. The companies that understand this distinction will be the ones that thrive.
Imagine that it’s time to file expenses. Instead of logging into a portal, uploading photos of your crumpled receipts, filling out 10 information fields, and then waiting a week for your manager to sign off, you simply answer a text with a photo of a receipt and a short note about what it’s for.Done.That is, to me, the golden experience, says Diego Zaks, VP of design at Ramp, the $22.5 billion fintech company that’s reinventing the business expense landscape.Ramp as a platform is in the business of simplifying. It consolidates corporate cards, expense management, bill payments, and accounting automation into a single system, making it easier for companies to track expenses and keep their finances in order. In the era of AI, Zaks believes the company can do even more to simplify the software for the people who use it. He envisions a world where Ramp’s customers can accomplish any task with the push of a single button. And his ultimate goal? Someday youll forget altogether that youre using Ramp.I don’t want anyone using Rampbecause every minute that you’re on Ramp, it’s a minute that you’re dealing with expenses and not actually doing the job that you’re hired to do, he explains. We actually measure engagement and time spent on Ramp going down as the signal that we are trying to get.A better AI agentIn July, Ramp introduced Ramp Agents, an autonomous, AI-driven system built atop OpenAI’s latest reasoning models. Ramp Agents work behind the scenes to review expenses, enforce company spend policies, and even suggest improvements to those policieswithout users needing to intervene or monitor every transaction manually.Instead of relying on rigid rules or requiring employees to learn new workflows, these agents reason through real business context, handling approvals, flagging anomalies, filling forms, and learning from every bit of feedback. They don’t require a prompt to do things; instead, they do everything on their own, so people interact as little as possible, if at all.[Image: Ramp]People didnt come to Ramp to engage with AIthey come to do a specific job, and we have AI in the background doing 90% of that job or as much of that job as we possibly can and just displaying the outcome, Zaks says. We skip 17 steps and we just got [managers] to the last moment of Does this look good? And they can just say yes, and it’s done.The agents are part of Ramps larger ecosystem. When companies sign up for Ramp, they receive corporate charge cards with preconfigured spending policies and limits. Employee transactions trigger receipt capture through email integrations, mobile apps, or merchant partnerships with Amazon Business, Lyft, and Uber. The system categorizes expenses, enforces policies in real time, and flags violations automatically.Zaks believes that when deployed smartly, agents will be able to eliminate nearly all of the grunt work that once fell to humans. The agents currently approve 85% of expenses without human review, and early customers report 99% accuracy in expense approvals. The AI doesn’t just process receiptsit cross-references calendar data, checks policy nuances, and delivers outcomes that make sense to human managers.Zaks says this vision is most clearly exemplified by the SMS example. After using his Ramp card, Zaks receives a text asking what the expense was for. The system checks his calendar, sees a scheduled one-on-one meeting, and when he confirms it was for that meeting, the entire expense process completes automatically. No apps to open, no forms to fill, no categories to select.Managers no longer see dashboards filled with every transaction. Instead, they find two categories: expenses that look good to go with a single approval button, and transactions that need attention with focused context about why. Each flagged item includes a summary in 15 to 20 words, the full policy context highlighted on demand, and a feedback mechanism that improves the system’s accuracy.It’s not an AI view. It’s like a transaction view. You have the receipt, all the information you need, Zaks says. And there’s a module at the top that just says a recommended outcome for the manager to take and the reasoning why.From left: Ramp founders Karim Atiyeh, Eric Glyman, and Gene Lee [Photo: Ramp]Why Ramp existsRamp’s move toward the near-total elimination of UX is logical, given the companys mission. Ramp’s founders, Eric Glyman, Karim Atiyeh, and Gene Lee, all worked in Capital One’s credit card division in the late 2010s. They joined after Capital One acquired their company Paribus, a price-tracking app that secured refunds for 10 million users when online purchase prices dropped.At Capital One, they realized there was a fundamental tension in the business model: Credit card companies incentivized spending, while businesses desperately wanted to save money. In early 2019, they left the bank to start Ramp.Ramps core premise flipped the script. Instead of rewards programs that encourage more spending, the company built a financial operations platform that actively helps companies spend less while automating the tedious work that consumes finance teams.For accounts payable, invoices are processed through customizable approval workflows and payments are scheduled automatically. All transactions sync to business management software in real time. Ramp generates revenue primarily through interchange fees earned on every card transaction (typically 1.5% to 2.5% of the purchase value shared among Visa, the issuing bank, and Ramp). Ramp is now one of the hottest tech unicorns, with a valuation of $22.5 billion after capturing les than 2% of the U.S. corporate card market. The company claims that its customers save an average of 5% on spending, close their books 75% faster, and have collectively saved more than $10 billion and 27.5 million hours of work. [Image: Ramp]Building an invisible interfaceSo much of Ramps success hinges on the idea that the best AI is the AI you cant see. Zaks calls this background AI, and its what will power the next generation of Ramps zero-interface ambitions.Right now, every time a human makes a decision on Ramp’s platform that information is used to create a better experience. When a manager disagrees with an agent’s decision, for example, their explanation is fodder for better policies. The agents can alert teams to suspicious receipts and invoices, uncover trends that signal fraud or careless spending, answer employee questions about spend policy, and suggest edits to company expense policies based on usage patterns.The experience data aggregates into policy suggestions for finance teams. Zaks explains that the system basically says, Hey, your policy could be a little clearer about these five things on the work-from-home stipend, for example. If the finance team agrees, they can approve policy updates with one click.Eventually, Ramp will be so optimized that its UI will disappear in the future. Thats Zakss objective: He wants most users to forget Ramp even exists. My approach has been to just pretend like we’re already in 2030 and that AI is just standard, nobody cares, it’s just always in the background, he says. Kind of like how software now is in the cloud. We don’t make a big deal out of that. It just is.
Lyft is hoping to get smartphone users out of their routines.
The ride-sharing app is rolling out a new “Check Lyft” campaign in New York City and San Francisco, and it’s designed to nudge people into considering a second travel option for a change.
“Our customer obsession led us to discover that most people were on rideshare autopilothabitually opening the same app without thinking they had optionseven though our data shows riders are happier and drivers strongly prefer us,” Lyft CMO Brian Irving tells Fast Company. He says they found their most loyal customers kept saying the same thing of their friends: “They just need to wake up and check Lyft.”
Hence the new campaign, which Lyft is rolling out with out-of-home advertising and influencer collaborations, like with Subway Takes host Kareem Rahma. (Hey, guys, don’t forget about us!)
[Photo: Lyft]
Switching costs
Getting smartphone users to change their habits can be hard. Researchers at the University of Cardiff found smartphone users tend to use a few popular apps every time they open their phonefollowing that, there’s a steep drop-off. An individual’s second most popular app is about 73% less popular than their first, and their third most popular app is about 73% less popular than their second, a pattern that continues until reaching increasingly unpopular apps, according to the study, published in 2019.
That’s great news for popular apps like Uber, the leading rideshare app by marketshare, but it leaves competitors like Lyft fighting for screen time. “When talking to our audiences about why they choose Lyft, it’s a combination of emotional and rational decisions,” Irving says. “You have to be there on-time and be competitive on prices. That’s the baseline rational work that we excel at.”
[Image: Lyft]
Signalling a new Lyft
By leaning into other differentiators, though, like allowing women to match with female drivers, an updated app for older riders called Lyft Silver, Lyft is hoping to set itself apart further. It seems to be working. On its most recent earnings call, CEO David Risher said the company had a record number of active riders in the second quarter.
“A new Lyft is emerging,” Risher said. “Not only are we consistently delivering for riders and drivers, but that customer obsession is producing record results quarter after quarter, and our momentum is building.”
If riders prefer Lyft rides but Lyft isn’t their preferred ride-sharing app, the company faces an uphill battle in getting users to switch more often. Muscle memory with app habits is real, but a simple “Check Lyft” campaign could help.
I still remember the first time I tried on Google Glass. I was 12, and a friend of my parents had just gotten oneI was completely mesmerized. It felt like a glimpse of the future.
More than a decade later, that future never arrived. Instead, were surrounded by a graveyard of clever wearables that never quite stuck. So whats actually missing?
Today, a new generation of AI-enabled wearables is emerging with devices that promise to embed intelligence directly into the objects we carry and wear every day.
And yet, most of what were seeing still feels like déj vu from the early smartwatch era: a mic, a board, and a vague promise of productivity. The focus is on what the device does, not how it lives in the world.
Minimalism Isnt Enough
Apples clean, brushed-aluminum aesthetic dominates tech for a reason. And yes, it even works in wearables. The Apple Watch proved that minimalism can cross over when its paired with personal expression. It wasnt just a mini-iPhone on your wrist; it came with metal, leather, and fabric straps, Herms collaborations, and countless ways to signal identity. In other words, it worked because it became part of peoples personal style, not in spite of it.
The moment you ask someone to wear something, the rules change. It stops being a tool and becomes a reflection. Youre not just shipping a product, youre asking someone to let the world see them differently.
The Adoption Equation
The winning AI wearable solves two problems simultaneously:
Functional utilitymaking life meaningfully easier
Social acceptanceblending seamlessly into the world so it stops being a gadget and starts being part of you
Most devices today are designed for tech reviewers and hackathons, not actual people. Theyre clunky, obvious, and force users to justify their presence. Adoption dies the moment someone has to explain a device to everyone around them.
If we look at the Oura Ring, it doesnt just track sleep, it fits into peoples jewelry stacks. It passes the real test: Would you still wear it if it ran out of battery? Most gadgets fail that test. Cultural objects dont.
Why This Moment Matters
Apples September event will unveil the iPhone 17, Watch Series 11, and Watch Ultra 3. Early reporting suggests new AI-driven health features. But as powerful as these may be, the form remains rugged, utilitarian, and unmistakably tech. That opens space for new entrants to redefine the categorynot as gadgets, but as personal objects of meaning.
At the same time, Gen Z is leading a wave of hyper-personal style, curating every detail of their aesthetic to signal identity. Fashion-tech in 2025 is becoming more human and more automated, blending physical expression with digital layers. If wearables are going to matter, they must live at this intersection of culture and intelligence.
The Missed Opportunity
Marshall McLuhan once wrote that that media and tools are extensions of ourselves. Glasses extend our vision. Clothing extends our skin. Cars extend our legs. In that sense, a truly personal AI wearable extends memory, attention, and presence. Invisible AI isnt about stealth, its about blending into life seamlessly. Thats not an afterthought; thats the goal.
AI wearables could be the most personal consumer tech ever. Devices that know your context, understand preferences, and anticipate needs in real time.
Most of todays devices miss that opportunity. Theyre function-first, culture-last. They have to exist where people already express themselves: in clothing, jewelry, glasses, and watches . . . objects that have meaning before they have circuitry.
The Real Challenge
For those of us building in this space, the goal isnt just better features or faster chips. Were being asked to design something that people are willing to wear, which means it has to reflect who they are, not just what the tech can do.
Thats the real test for an AI wearable: would someone still wear it even if it ran out of battery?
