Armen Kirakosian remembers the frustrations of his first job as a call center agent nearly 10 years ago: the aggravated customers, the constant searching through menus for information and the notes he had to physically write for each call he handled.Thanks to artificial intelligence, the 29-year-old from Athens, Greece, is no longer writing notes or clicking on countless menus. He often has full customer profiles in front of him when a person calls in and may already know what problem the customer has before even saying “hello.” He can spend more time actually serving the customer.“A.I. has taken (the) robot out of us,” Kirakosian said.Roughly 3 million Americans work in call center jobs, and millions more work in call centers around the world, answering billions of inquiries a year about everything from broken iPhones to orders for shoes. Kirakosian works for TTEC, a company that provides third party customer service lines in 22 countries to companies in industries such as autos and banking that need extra capacity or have outsourced their call center operations.Answering these calls can be thankless work. Roughly half of all customer service agents leave the job after a year, according to McKinsey, with stress and monotonous work being among the reasons employees quit.Much of what these agents deal with is referred to in the industry as “break/fix,” which means something is broken or wrong or confusing and the customer expects the person on the phone to fix the problem. Now, it’s a question of who will be tasked with the fix: a human, a computer, or a human augmented by a computer.Already, AI agents have taken over more routine call center tasks. Some jobs have been lost and there have been dire forecasts about the future job market for these individuals, ranging from modest single-percentage point losses, to as many as half of all call center jobs going away in the next decade. The drop likely won’t match the more dire predictions, however, because it’s become evident that the industry will still need humans, perhaps with even higher levels of learning and training, as some customer service issues become increasingly harder to solve.Some finance companies have already experimented with going in heavily with AI for their customer service issues.Klarna, the Swedish buy now, pay later company, replaced 700 of their roughly 3,000 customer service agents with chatbots and AI in 2024. The results were mixed. While the company did save money, Klarna found there was still a need for higher skilled human agents in certain circumstances, such as complicated issues related to identity theft. Earlier this year, Klarna hired seven internal freelancers to handle these issues.Earlier this year, Klarna hired a handful of customer service employees back to the firm, acknowledging there were certain issues that AI couldn’t handle as well as a real person, like identity theft.“Our vision of an AI-first contact center, where AI agents handle the majority of conversations and fewer, better trained and better paid human agents support only the most complex tasks, is quickly becoming a reality,” said Gadi Shamia of Replicant, an AI-software company that trains chatbots to sound more human, in an interview with consultants at McKinsey.The call center customer’s experience, while improved, is still far from perfect.The initial customer service call has long been handled through interactive voice response systems, known in the industry as IVR. Customers interact with IVR when they’re told “press one for sales, press two for support, press five for billing.” These crude systems got an update in the 2010s, when customers could prompt the system by saying “sales” or “support” or simple phrases like “I’d like to pay a bill” instead of navigating through a labyrinthian set of menu options.But customers have little patience for these menus, leading them to “zero out,” which is call center slang for when a customer hits the zero button on their their keypad in hopes of reaching a human. It’s also not uncommon that after a customer “zeros out” they will be put on hold and transferred because they did not end up in the right place for their request.Aware of Americans’ collective impatience with IVR, Democratic Sen. Ruben Gallego of Arizona and Republican Jim Justice of West Virginia have introduced the “Keep Call Centers in America Act,” which would require clear ways to reach a human agent, and provide incentives to companies that keep call center jobs in the U.S.Companies are trying to roll out telephone systems that broadly understand customer service requests and predict where to send a customer without navigating a menu. OpenAI, the maker of ChatGPT, is coming out with its “ChatGPT Agent” service for users that’s able to understand phrases like “I need to find a hotel for a wedding next year, please give me options for clothing and gifts.”Bank of America says it has had increasing success in integrating such features into “Erica,” its chatbot that debuted in 2018. When Erica cannot handle a request, the agent transfers the customer directly to the right department. Erica is now also predictive and analytical, and knows for instance that a customer may repeatedly have a low balance and may need better help budgeting or may have multiple subscriptions to the same service.Bank of America said this month that Erica has been used 3 billion times since its creation and is increasingly taking on a higher case load of customer service requests. The chatbot’s moniker comes from the last five letters of the company’s name.James Bednar, vice president of product and innovation at TTEC, has spent much of his career trying to make customer service calls less painful for the caller as well as the company. He said these tools could eventually kill off IVR for good, ending the need for anyone to “zero out.”“We’re getting to the point where AI will get you to the right person for your problem without you having to route through those menus,” Bednar said.
Ken Sweet, AP Business Writer
StubHub Holdings, the secondary ticketing marketplace, just threw its hat back in the ring to list on the New York Stock Exchange (NYSE) after postponing its initial public offering (IPO) plans earlier this year. According to a September 8 filing with the Securities and Exchange Commission (SEC), the company is now eyeing a valuation of around $9 billion.
In the filing, StubHub reported that it plans to offer just over 34 million shares of Class A stock for an estimated price of between $22 and $25 per share. If approved, the company will join the NYSE under the ticker symbol STUB.
No listing date was shared in the filing, but according to a source familiar with the company, it could come as early as next week.
StubHub has been eyeing a solid IPO date for months. The company paused its initial IPO plans in early July amid uncertainties around tariffs and a cooling IPO market, according to media reports.
However, in the wake of exciting recent listings from companies such as Figma, Bullish, and others, investor interest in IPOs is back upand StubHub is giving it another go.
Why investors want StubHub to go public
StubHub was created in 2000 after founder and CEO Eric Baker faced a very particular problem: He was unable to purchase tickets to a sold-out showing of The Lion King on Broadway.
The box office was a dead end, and he had no idea who to call for help, the SEC filing recalls in a section on the companys history. Should he canvas the streets around Times Square and hope to find someone with a tickets for sale sign? With no clear answers, he found himself at the mercy of an opaque market.
To solve this problem, Baker founded StubHub at a time when secondary ticketing existed only as a fragmented offline market. Today, StubHub believes that it operates the largest global secondary ticketing market for live events, selling over 40 million tickets to buyers in more than 200 countries in 2024.
After merging with the rival ticketing platform viagogo (also founded by Baker) in 2022, StubHub has been actively working with JPMorgan and Goldman Sachs to solidify its IPO listing plans.
In its SEC filing, StubHub said its revenue jumped from $1.37 billion to $1.77 billion between 2023 and 2024.
IPOs are back in the spotlight after a rough patch
StubHub was initially planning to list on the NYSE sometime in the early summer, but it reportedly put its IPO on hold in the midst of economic uncertainty brought on by President Trumps tariff regime.
At the time, a source familiar with the company cited stagnant market conditions and a lack of major consumer IPOs as two of the main reasons for the delay, according to CNBC. The fintech startup Klarna similarly paused its long-awaited IPO earlier this year.
Now, though, as the market has held relatively steady despite new tariffs, both Klarna and StubHub are reentering the IPO game.
Successful recent IPOs from companies including the design software startup Figma, the crypto exchange Bullish, and the stablecoin issuer Circle Internet Group have put public listings back into the spotlight and stoked investors interest.
The 82nd Venice Film Festival may be over, but the conversations on the films that premiered, the things people said, the clothes they wore, and how it affects the Oscar race are still going.Here’s a rundown of the big moments and takeaways from this year’s edition.
What won big at the Venice Film Festival?
Jim Jarmusch’s quiet film “Father Mother Sister Brother” took the top prize, the Golden Lion. It was a surprise to many who expected that honor to go to “The Voice of Hind Rajab,” which ended up with the runner up award, or “No Other Choice.”Aside from Benny Safdie’s best director win for “The Smashing Machine,” Hollywood players were largely shut out of the awards in favor of a diverse, international selection. Chinese actor Xin Zhilei won best actress for Cai Shangjun’s “The Sun Rises on Us All,” Italian icon Toni Servillo won best actor for “La Grazia” and Swiss actor Luna Wedler took the up-and-comer prize, the Marcello Mastroianni Award, for “Silent Friend.”
Who might be an Oscars player?
The awards didn’t give many hints, but Venice has been known to launch several best actor campaigns including Joaquin Phoenix in “Joker,”Brendan Fraser in “The Whale” and Adrien Brody in “The Brutalist.” This year the most obvious heavyweight to follow is Dwayne Johnson for his turn as MMA fighter Mark Kerr in “The Smashing Machine.”Emma Stone and Jesse Plemons were also strange and fierce as kidnapped and kidnapper in Yorgos Lanthimos’s provocative “Bugonia.” Oscar Isaac portrayed Victor Frankenstein as a romantic madman and Jacob Elordi was nave and raw as the monster. Amanda Seyfried put a human, feminist, face to the religious sect the shakers in “The Testament of Ann Lee,” and Julia Roberts flexed her acting muscles as a Yale philosophy professor in the midst of a misconduct accusation against a colleague in “After the Hunt.”Filmmakers like Kathryn Bigelow and previous Golden Lion winners Guillermo del Toro and Yorgos Lanthimos will also likely be in the conversation for months to come.
Why was Seth Rogen everywhere?
There’s always some unexpected Hollywood person at the Venice Film Festival who doesn’t seem to be associated with any one film. Sometimes they’ve come in for amfAR, sometimes they’ve been invited by one of the festival’s sponsors. But text chains started blowing up when Seth Rogen started popping up everywhere: Red carpets, press conferences, parties. Don’t be surprised if there’s a Venice episode of “The Studio” in the works: This trip was research, and maybe even a little more.
Julia Roberts and Amanda Seyfried’s sisterhood of the traveling Versace?
In a cute, unexpected (possibly highly staged) moment during the festival, Amanda Seyfried commented on Julia Roberts’ Instagram asking to “please let me wear the same outfit.” Three days later, Seyfried was also rocking the Versace blazer, jeans, button up and belt, just with different shoes. It helps that they share a stylist, Elizabeth Stewart.
There was a record standing ovation
First, let’s just make clear that entertainment trade publications only started tracking Venice standing ovations recently. This year, audiences at the premiere of “The Voice of Hind Rajab” applauded for 22-minutes, surpassing the 18-minute record set last year by “The Room Next Door,” which went on to win the Golden Lion. Even with a limited data set, that’s a long time to clap after a movie.Other standing ovation times from the 82nd festival: “After the Hunt” ((tilde)5 minutes), “Bugonia” ((tilde)6 minutes), “No Other Choice” ((tilde)7 minutes), “Jay Kelly” ((tilde)9 minutes), “The Wizard of the Kremlin” ((tilde)10 minutes), “A House of Dynamite” ((tilde)11 minutes), “Frankenstein” ((tilde)14 minutes), “The Testament of Ann Lee” ((tilde)15 minutes), “The Smashing Machine” ((tilde)15 minutes).
Politics and war on the big screen
The festival might not take political stances, but politics, and filmmakers grappling with the state of the world, from the Israel-Hamas conflict to nuclear weapons, were clearly top of mind. Kathryn Bigelow set off a warning shot about nuclear weapons and the apparatus of decision making with her urgent, and distressingly realistic, thriller “A House of Dynamite.” Tunisian filmmaker Kaouther Ben Hania made an essential document of the human toll in Gaza with “The Voice of Hind Rajab.” And Olivier Assayas charted the rise of Vladimir Putin in “The Wizard of the Kremlin.”Gaza also dominated conversations off screen too, from a protest that drew an estimated 10,000 people, to awards speeches.
Best quotes from the 2025 Venice Film Festival
“The real monsters are the men in suits.” Jacob Elordi, who plays Frankenstein’s monster in a big budget Netflix film.“I’ve been very fortunate to have the career that I’ve had and make the films that I have, but there was just this voice inside of me, this little voice, like what if I can do more.” Dwayne Johnson on his transformative, serious turn as MMA fighter Mark Kerr in “The Smashing Machine.”“I consider pretty much all corporate money is dirty money.” Filmmaker Jim Jarmusch, when asked about Mubi’s relationship with Sequoia Capital.“How is annihilating the world a good defensive measure? I mean, what are you defending?” Filmmaker Kathryn Bigelow on the nuclear stockpiles.“Humanity is facing a reckoning very soon. People need to choose the right path, otherwise, I don’t know how much time we have.” Filmmaker Yorgos Lanthimos on the relevance of “Bugonia.”“Everyone comes out with all these different feelings and emotions and points of views. And you realize what you believe in strongly and what your convictions are because we stir it all up for you. So, you’re welcome.” Julia Roberts on the debates stirred by “After the Hunt.”“It’s time at the end of your life to put the puzzle pieces together and make them fit.” Kim Novak, 92, on receiving the festival’s lifetime achievement award.
For more coverage of the Venice Film Festival, visit https://apnews.com/hub/venice-film-festival.
Lindsey Bahr, AP Film Writer
Now here’s a raincoat that won’t be missed in a busy street. Cleverhood, a Rhode Island apparel company, turned weather radar graphics into a colorful pattern for its rain gear, and they used data from real storms to make it.
The brand’s Stormy pattern is based on Doppler radar data from the National Oceanic and Atmospheric Administration (NOAA) of visually intensified weather patterns linked to climate change, the company says. It’s now available on the brand’s $149 Rover Raincape and $129 Anorak jacket.
“We are very design-oriented and environmentally concerned,” Cleverhood founder Susan Mocarski tells Fast Company. “The beauty of Doppler radars intrigued us.” The pixels of the weather radar patterns are rendered big across the jacket and cape as color blocks, and each item comes with a hood and pockets.
[Photo: Ron Cowie/courtesy Cleverhood]
Cleverhood looked at storms from the past 10 years and most from the Northeast U.S. to make the pattern, and the pattern was designed so no two garments look the same. The brand says it has plans to do a Stormy Trench next, and maybe a tote bag. The company donates 5% of sales to “organizations that help make streets safe and more walkable,” as Mocarski believes getting out and walking or bicycling in your community gives it a beating heart.
The company’s customers are “primarily people that walk, bike and take public transit as their primary mode of transportation,” Mocarski says, and it shows in some of the rain gear’s bright colorways, like the classic Hello Yellow, or Dazzle, a pattern made of black-and-white stripes. The high-visibility Stormy fits in that same vein.
[Photo: Ron Cowie/courtesy Cleverhood]
Weather radar patterns make for visually interesting clothes, but NOAA’s pubic data could one day be private. Like other government agencies under President Donald Trump’s second term, NOAA has faced cuts and layoffs that experts worry are degrading weather forecasts. The agency announced in May it would no longer track climate change-fueled weather disaster costs.
There’s science behind why the weather radar colors looks so good together, as the cool blues and warm reds and oranges are complementary colors. The colors all mean something, of course. Light green represents light rain, which shifts to yellow, orange, red, and purple as the rain gets heavier. If Cleverhood was looking for a standout pattern that won’t be missed, they found it.
South Korea said on Monday that it wants hundreds of its citizens, who were arrested last week during a large U.S. immigration raid at a car battery project and are due to be flown home soon, to be allowed to reenter the United States.
Foreign Minister Cho Hyun is flying out to Washington on Monday evening and will meet with U.S. Secretary of State Marco Rubio during his trip to resolve the issue. Cho also said he would be asking for the U.S. visa system for Korean workers to be streamlined in the future.
About 300 South Koreans were among 475 arrested on Thursday at the site of a $4.3 billion project by Hyundai Motor and LG Energy Solution to build batteries for electric cars. It was the largest single-site enforcement operation in the history of the Department of Homeland Security’s investigative operations.
The raid sent shockwaves through South Korea, a major U.S. ally, which has been trying to finalize a U.S. trade deal agreed in late July. It came just 10 days after South Korea’s new president, Lee Jae Myung, met with U.S. President Donald Trump in Washington and the two pledged closer business ties.
In addition to potentially fraying bilateral ties, the development has shone fresh light on how many foreign firms investing in the U.S. have struggled to find qualified American workers.
Seoul said on Sunday that discussions to arrange the release of workers, who were mostly employed by subcontractors, were largely concluded. A plan is in the works to fly them home on a chartered plane this week under what one South Korean foreign ministry official said would be called a “voluntary departure.”
“From the beginning, we negotiated with the premise that there should be no personal disadvantage (to the detained workers),” Cho told a parliamentary hearing on Monday.
Details on how the workers may have breached immigration rules have not been released by authorities or the companies, but South Korean lawmakers on Monday said some may have overstepped the boundaries of a 90-day visa waiver programme or a B-1 temporary business visa.
South Korea Finance Minister Koo Yun-cheol said on Monday that he had heard that some experts had travelled from South Korea to help with a test run of the factory which was due to begin production in October.
“You need to get a visa to do a test run, but it’s very difficult to get an official visa. Time was running out, and I think experts went to the United States,” he said.
DISMAY IN SOUTH KOREA
Seoul has expressed its unhappiness about the arrests and the public release of footage showing the operation which involved armoured vehicles and the shackling of workers.
Trump, who has ramped up deportations nationwide as his administration cracks down on illegal immigrants, said last week he had not been aware of the raid. He called those detained “illegal aliens.”
On Sunday, he called on foreign companies investing in the U.S. to “respect our Nation’s immigration laws”, but sounded more conciliatory.
“Your Investments are welcome, and we encourage you to LEGALLY bring your very smart people, with great technical talent, to build World Class products, and we will make it quickly and legally possible for you to do so,” he said on Truth Social.
Hyundai Motor is one of the biggest foreign investors in the United States and is among South Korean companies participating in a pledge of $150 billion in foreign direct investment in the U.S., which comes on top of a $350 billion fund that the South Korean government has separately pledged.
A spokesperson for the automaker said some staff had been asked to suspend nonessential trips to the United States.
LGES has also suspended most staff business trips to the U.S. and will be recalling South Korea-based employees now in the country.
The battery maker said last week it is cooperating with U.S. authorities and had paused construction work on the factory.
A Hyundai Motor spokesperson said last week none of the people detained were employed directly by the automaker and that production of electric vehicles at the sprawling site was not affected.
The companies declined further comment on Monday.
Cho’s trip to the U.S. is due to end on Wednesday.
Additional reporting by Ju-min Park, Heejin Kim and Yena Park
Joyce Lee and Hyunjoo Jin, Reuters
On August 18th, Zaria Parvez announced she was leaving Duolingo after five years, eight billion impressions, and more viral moments with a giant Owl than we can count. So it was pretty big marketing industry news when a few days later it was reported that she would soon be the new director of social at DoorDash.
Parvez told AdAge, Its not just a one-person showits a full content house dedicated to making social content. I consider myself a builder, and I think the DoorDash accounts just have a lot of space to build and grow. Its kind of like a blank canvas of this established brand thats done really cool things outside of social, and now its like, how do we bring that energy to social?”
The move to hire Parvez is a statement of intent for DoorDash, which grew revenue by 25% in Q2 2025 to $3.3 billion, and orders by 20% to 761 million. It has thrived in traditional advertising like its award-winning Super Bowl work in 2024. Chief marketing officer Kofi Amoo-Gottfried says this latest move is a continuation of how the brand has been investing in its social work over the past year.
Up until about a year ago, this was an area I would say we were under-invested in, says Amoo-Gottfried. Part of that was the nature of the companys businessthere was the brand building work, like the Super Bowl ad, and then a lot of performance marketing to drive immediate results for the business. But there was something missing.
Joining the conversation
DoorDash processes about eight million orders every day. Its name has almost become a verb. Last year, we started to build out a team to really say, hey, we think this is an area of incredible opportunity for us, because of how much conversation is already happening on the open web around our product, he says. Millions of people are having a DoorDash experience every day, and they’re interested in sharing those stories, good or bad. There’s this conversation happening (online), whether we’re part of it or not. So last year, we started to say, let’s get into those conversations.
We teachers. This back-to-school season, were giving 50 teachers $500 DoorDash credits to get all of the school supplies and essentials they need for the year. Tell us about a teacher who deserves this with #sweepstakes and #doordash.No purchase necessary. 50 US/DC,— DoorDash (@DoorDash) August 4, 2025
The results were encouraging. In early August, the brand asked people to nominate teachers to get $500 DoorDash credits for school supplies and essentials. That’s a way to tell you that we do back-to-school, but then created this incredible groundswell of conversation around amazing teachers, and then us being able to show up and be part of that and generate that, he says. So we’re doing a lot in this vein of finding these interesting, real stories that are happening already, and figuring out how we can participate.
@doordash Self-care never looked so good Only on Wednesday, 7/23! Treat yourself and get $50 off your $100+ @sephora order. Check our feed on Wednesday for the offer promo code. Redemption limits and terms apply. Offer exclusive to DashPass members only. Use #SummerofDashPass and share what items you’re planning to stock up on in the comments. #BeautyTok original sound – DoorDash
Still, Amoo-Gottfried says there are opportunities for organic social to really drive the business. He says there are two modes the team will operate on. The first is evergreen, brand building engagement with a focus on earned media. The second is utilizing promotions and moments to drive sales.
When the brand announced a Sephora discount for Dash Pass holders in July, for example, it took off with almost three million views on TikTok.
What happened with that was completely insane, we had something like 800 beauty creators that we hadn’t paid that were all taking this and running with it, says Amoo-Gottfried. In these campaign moments, this team can have a direct commercial impact. We saw it that day, with record-breaking sales, and a lot of that was driven by the social and influencer team.
Hiring Parvez is just the next step. We think the world of her, says Amoo-Gottfried. I think she’s terrific.
Coinbase CEO Brian Armstrong was the recipient of some very bad vibes last week after bragging on X that nearly half his exchanges code is already AI-generated, with plans to push it higher. The post unleashed a torrent of ridicule, and seemed to crystalize the skepticism over the reliability of vibe coding tools that’s been bubbling for months.
Over the last couple of years, AI coding tools like Claude Code (Anthropic), Codex (OpenAI), Cursor, Lovable, and Replit have reached far beyond auto-completing lines of code; they can generate entire apps and features from a plain-language prompt, even for users with little or no coding experience. But even as enterprise execs hope the tools will speed up their software production, many in the development community are finding that while vibe coding may be great for slapping together demos, its not so great for building secure, reliable, and explainable software. And the problems created by AI-generated code may only surface long after the software has shipped.
Code created by AI coding agents can become development hell, says Jack Zante Hays, a senior software engineer at PayPal who works on AI software development tools. He notes that while the tools can quickly spin up new features, they often generate technical debt, introducing bugs and maintenance burdens that must eventually be paid down with developer time and effort. That trade-off has some engineers questioning whether vibe coding tools ultimately cost more time than they save.
Vibe coding tools are great for creating software demos, most would agree. Theres real value in a tool that allows a nontechnical product manager to whip together the front end and some features of an app, take it to a software team and say See? This is what I want. The problems start when AI coding tools are used to code new apps, features, or functions that will eventually have to interact with all the other software in a codebase, including databases, security tools, authentication services, external APIs, and infrastructure.
Managing all those connections is tricky. According to Hays, vibe coding tools hit a complexity ceiling once a codebase grows beyond a certain size. Small code bases might be fine up until they get to a certain size, and thats typically when AI tools start to break more than they solve, he says.
And the problem only gets worse with inexperienced users. Vibe codingespecially from nonexperienced users who can only give the AI feature demandscan involve changing like 60 things at oncewithout testing, so 10 things can be broken at once. Unlike a human engineer, who methodically tests each addition, vibe-coded software often struggles to adapt once its live, particularly when confronted with real-world edge cases.
Some argue the problem with vibe coding apps is more fundamental. To generate safe and reliable code, an AI agent needs a broad understanding of the entire codebase. The behavior of a single feature often depends on the state or actions of many other components. That kind of integration requires reasoning, and a growing body of research questions whether large language models can truly reason rather than simply memorize and reapply contextual patterns.
Developers themselves have real doubts about vibe coding tools. Stack Overflows most recent survey found that while more than half of professional developers now use AI coding tools daily, 46% distrust their accuracy compared with 33% who trust them. Positive sentiment also fell, dropping from 70% in 2024 to 60% in 2025. Only 30% of working developers said the tools are good or great at handling complex coding tasks.
Accidents will happen
Stories of the unintended consequences of vibe coding are starting to surface, even if many incidents likely go unreported.
In July, the Tea appwhich lets women share information about men theyve datedreported a major data breach that some observers believe was tied to AI coding agents. The app left an unsecured cloud database containing 72,000 sensitive images, including selfies and photo IDs, as well as pictures from posts and messages. Hackers accessed the trove and users shared the data on 4chan before it spread more widely across the internet. A second exposure reportedly compromised even more user data, prompting Tea to disable its direct messaging feature.
Will Wilson of the AI software testing firm Antithesis says the flaws in Teas code were likely AI-generated. The fact pattern fits so well with a thousand other instances of this happening with vibe coding, he says. Antithesiss platform stress-tests software within a simulated environment.
Another episode came in August, when an AI agent from Replit deleted an entire database of executive contacts while working on a web app for SaaS investor Jason Lemkin. After nine days of building the front end with Replits chat agent, Lemkin told it to freeze the code. When he returned, the database had been erased. Replit was able to recover the records, but the mishap underscored the risk that vibe coders may overestimate what these tools can reliably do.
Replit CEO Amjad Masad stresses tht AI coding agents are meant to handle syntax so developers can focus on higher-level work. But, he says, users must still think like developers. I think we need to be clear that it is not magic, that you need to learn the tools, he says. You shouldn’t just ask the agent for everything; you need to be resourceful.
Lovable CEO and cofounder Anton Osika echoes that point. Obviously, the requirements are different for nontechnical users building personal apps compared to our enterprise users, he says. But its generally understood that all code should be reviewed before it is published, whether it is AI or human-generated.
Toxic Waste and Evil Genies
Antithesiss Will Wilson has seen a lot of different kinds of software bugs over the years, many of them created by human coders. The kinds of bugs AI coding tools create arent exactly novel; but they can happen faster and in greater numbers. I would say it’s definitely been a very big tailwind for our business because there are a lot of people now who come in the door and say this AI thing is happening I can’t really control what my developers are doing and they view us as a safety net that can catch the worst stuff that the AI might sneak past manual code review, Wilson says.
Wilson puts the AI-generated bugs into two categories: toxic waste and evil genies.
Long after the vibe coding is done, when software developers have to come back and repair or modify the code, they might run into the toxic waste problem. While AI coding tools create lots of code based on natural language input, they’re not good at explaining the why and how of the code in natural language. “I now need to come and try to understand that code from scratch, Wilson says. And that may take me longer than it would have taken just to write the code in the first place.
Vibe coding tools sometimes behave like an evil genie that interprets wishes in only the most literal way. Say a man asks a genie for eternal life: an evil genie might grant the wish, but also cause the man to live forever as an old person, because the man didnt specify that hed like to be young for eternity. A vibe coding tool might interpret a prompt (the wish) similarly.
The [tool] may find a way to interpret what you’re asking for in sort of the most hostile worst way because you didn’t give a complete specification of what it was that you wanted, Wilson says. And coders often fail to explicitly communicate things like business requirements or security standards, whether in their own code or in the prompts they give to AI coding agents.
Measuring improvement, or not
Of course the AI companies are constantly improving the large language models that are the brains of the AI coding agents. Some are working to build in testing and security guardrails, so human developers dont have to fix their unintended consequences later on.
A lot of these criticisms refer to problems with AI coding tools of the past few years, which I cant always trust around my code, says PayPals Hays. But I have to say, Claude Code lately has been gaining my trust more and more as its usually able to surgically fix only the code I direct it to without invasively touching code thats outside of the scope of my request.”
Theres evidence these tools have gotten smarter. Stanfords latest AI Index Report says AI systems in 2024 solved 71.7% of tasks on SWEBench, a benchmark for real-world software engineering. In 2023, LLMs solved just 4.4%. But benchmarks are only as good as their reflection of real-world coding problems. Some critics argue SWEBench is too easy, requiring relatively simple bug fixes. Others worry the questions, drawn from open-source repositories, may already appear in training data. And because SWEBench focuses only on Pythonthe dominant AI languageit doesnt test challenges in front-end or infrastructure code.
Boris Cherny, the Anthropic engineer who created Claude Code, said on a recent podcast: It’s just so hard to build evals. By far the biggest signal is just the vibes. Like, does it feel smarter?”
Beyond vibes, companies and investors are looking for proof that these tools can deliver real productivity gains. AI coding agents are being billed as one of the first applications of large language models to have a measurable payoff in productivity gains.
The vibe coding startups often talk about how their tools make it possible for anyone to build apps, not just pro developers. Its a powerful pitch. X is awash with stories from non-coders about magically building a new app in a weekend. And private equity has responded.
Lovable, for example, is reportedly entertaining new offers at a $4 billion valuationmore than double its last. Anysphere, maker of the Cursor coding tool, has been doubling its valuation every eight weeks since August 2024, according to PitchBook. Anthropic just raised another $13 billion, bringing its valuation to $183 billion.
Those sky-high valuations arent driven only by hobbyists. They rest on the belief that vibe coding tools will become the default workflow for developers inside large companies, where executives hope the technology will dramatically boost speed, efficiency, and output. For now, that optimism runs strong at the leadership level, and vibe coding startups are racing to capture a share of the lucrative enterprise market for AI coding agents.
As products evolve, some may lean harder on the vibe coding angle, broadening to cover more of the software build. But the eventual winners will likely be those that deepen their tools with stronger context awareness, reliability testing, and security guardrails.
This month, thousands of global leaders, changemakers, and corporate citizens gather in New York City for the 2025 United Nations General Assembly. Beyond the official sessions for this event, another kind of convening will unfoldone thats less formal, but no less powerful.
For those of us working in corporate social responsibility (CSR), this week offers a rare opportunity: a convergence of peers, partners, and potential collaborators all in one place. The networking corridors, side events, and shared coffees become fertile ground for forging new alliancesones that can scale impact far beyond what any single company could achieve alone.
It often strikes me that my role in corporate social responsibility might sit in the least competitive corner of the business world. With companies trying to outpace one another, corporate social responsibility offers an opportunity for a different formula: The more we align, the more lives we reach.
Public-private partnerships
While every company has its own limits with philanthropic budgets, we can make those dollars stretch further through private-private partnershipsalliances where 1 + 1 equals 3. These partnerships allow companies to pool resources, expertise, and infrastructure in pursuit of shared values and social impact goals.
Take, for example, a 2023 collaboration between Kelloggs and the Albertsons Companies Foundation to support Feeding America through the Feed the Love campaign. Kelloggs provided a grant to the Foundations Nourishing Neighbors initiative, helping provide over 300,000 meals. Albertsons promoted the effort across its grocery network, engaging consumers in the shared mission. This alignment showcases how leading brands in food manufacturing and retail can unite resources, amplify reach, and drive progress toward hunger relief.
In early 2025, after wildfires scorched parts of Southern California, PepsiCo stepped up to supply food and beverages to affected families. Their strength was inventorybut distribution was the hurdle. By teaming with Amazon, PepsiCos Food for Good program accelerated relief delivery, turning shared logistics into life-saving outreach.
NBCUniversal has cultivated extended partnerships that amplify nonprofit storytelling and nurture future creative talent. Our Creative Impact Lab not only supports nonprofit marketing but also provides career-building experiences for emerging creatives.
Recently, the Mastercard Center for Inclusive Growth (the Center) joined forces with NBCUs Lab to elevate the work of its grantee, Community Reinvestment Fund (CRF), a Chicago-based nonprofit that finances small businesses. The Center funded Free Spirit Media to create marketing assets, with NBCUniversal employees mentoring the young creators. The resulting PSA now airs in donated media time on Comcast and NBCUniversal platforms, giving CRF national visibility.
Similarly, The Estée Lauder Companies (ELC) collaborated with NBCU to spotlight Wide Angle Youth Media (WAYM), a Baltimore nonprofit focused on media arts education. Through this partnership, WAYMs young creatives told their storybacked by funding, mentoring, and national airtime.
In both projects, the benefits were mutual: funding and a selection of deserving grantee organizations from ELC and the Mastercard Center for Inclusive Growth, free airtime, and mentorship from NBCUniversal. Plus there were invaluable opportunities for rising creatives. These efforts created awareness for the nonprofits, while supporting the next generation of creative talent.
Shared values
And heres the key: None of this could happen without shared values. It requires corporations willing to break silos, share missions, and treat CSR not as a checkbox, but a creative, collective force for good.
Looking ahead, I envision a CSR landscape where such partnerships are more routine. And, where industries of all stripes join forces to uplift the nonprofits working tirelessly to improve our communities. All it takes is cross-sector imagination and a commitment to thinking beyond turf.
Hilary Smith is EVP of corporate social responsibility at NBCUniversal.
Late last month, shares in EchoStar Corporation (Nasdaq: SATS) entered the stratosphere. The stock jumped as much as 80% in premarket trading on August 26 after it was announced that the company would sell some of its wireless spectrum licenses to AT&T for $23 billion.
Now, EchoStar shares are up again in premarket trading. But this time its not thanks to its AT&T deal. It’s because the company has reached a deal with Elon Musks SpaceX. Heres what you need to know about why EchoStars shares are soaring again.
Whats happened?
Today, EchoStar announced that it has entered into a definitive agreement with SpaceX to sell its AWS-4 and H-block spectrum licenses to Elon Musks company for approximately $17 billion.
Spectrum licenses are government-granted licenses that give companies the right to operate their services on specific radio waves. If a company owns such licenses, it can often sell those licenses to other companies, as is the case in what EchoStar has previously announced it will do with AT&T.
What does EchoStar get out of the deal?
As with its previous spectrum license deal with AT&T, EchoStars spectrum license deal with SpaceX will primarily see the company getting boatloads of cash.
SpaceX is offering EchoStar a total compensation of $17 billion for its spectrum licenses. Of that, $8.5 billion will be in cash and another $8.5 billion will be in SpaceX shares, which are currently only available privately.
But EchoStar isnt just getting cash and SpaceX stock. The definitive agreement will also see SpaceX fund around $2 billion in cash interest payments to EchoStar.
The two companies will also enter into a commercial agreement that will allow EchoStars Boost Mobile subscribers to access SpaceXs Starlink Direct to Cell service. EchoStar is the parent company of Boost Mobile, as well as Sling TV and the Dish Network satellite TV service.
What does SpaceX get out of the deal?
As for SpaceX, the companys president and COO, Gwynne Shotwell, says the deal will allow it to advance our mission to end mobile dead zones around the world. The deal will help do this by giving SpaceXs Starlink Direct to Cell satellites more spectrum to run on.
In this next chapter, with exclusive spectrum, Shotwell said, SpaceX will develop next generation Starlink Direct to Cell satellites, which will have a step change in performance and enable us to enhance coverage for customers wherever they are in the world.”
EchoStar/SpaceX deal also helps resolve FCC concerns
The deal also has one other benefit for EchoStarits another step in helping the company resolve concerns by the Federal Communications Commission (FCC) over its wireless spectrum licenses.
Notably, SpaceX has long argued that EchoStar’s spectrum was being underutilized. Earlier this year, the FCC opened an investigation into the matter.
EchoStar anticipates this transaction with SpaceX along with the previously announced spectrum sale will resolve the Federal Communications Commission’s inquiries, EchoStar said in a statement.
How has EchoStars stock price reacted?
Shares in EchoStar are soaring once again in the hours after the deal was announced.
As of the time of this writing, SATS shares are currently up 23% in premarket trading to $82.75. That is an all-time high for the company, which, before todays surge, was worth about $20 billion.
Before todays stock price jump, SATS had already had a great 2025, largely thanks to the August AT&T announcement.
As of market close yesterday, SATS shares were up 193% year to date. Over the past 12 months, SATS shares were up 201%.
Wall Street pointed higher in early trading Monday ahead of two government inflation reports this week that could impact the Federal Reserve’s next interest rate decision.Futures for the S&P 500 and Dow Jones Industrial Average each rose 0.2% before the bell. Nasdaq futures gained 0.4%.The Fed hasn’t touched its benchmark borrowing rate in 2025, in part due to healthy unemployment levels and inflation that remains above its 2% target. Uncertainty over the impact President Donald Trump’s tariffswhich most economists say trigger price increaseshave bolstered the Fed’s position so far this year, despite Trump’s calls for a rate cut.However, recent data have shown a deteriorating labor market and many expect the U.S. central bank to issue a quarter-point cut when it meets next week. Such cuts can give the economy and job market a boost, though they can also accelerate inflation.That makes tricky work for Fed officials, whose dual mandate is to keep the labor market churning out jobs while making sure prices stay in check.The Labor Department issues its producer prices report on Wednesday, followed by its consumer prices report Thursday. The Fed meets on September 16 and 17, when it is expected to announce a rate cut.In equities trading Monday, EchoStar jumped nearly 24% before the bell on news that it had reached a deal to sell $17 billion worth of spectrum licenses to Elon Musk’s SpaceX.SpaceX and EchoStar will enter into a long-term commercial agreement which will allow EchoStar’s Boost Mobile subscribers to access SpaceX’s next generation Starlink Direct to Cell service.Late last month, EchoStar shares soared more than 70% in a single day after AT&T said that it would spend $23 billion to acquire wireless spectrum licenses from EchoStar.Also early Monday, AppLovin and Robinhood each soared around 9% after S&P Dow Jones announced the two companies would be joining the S&P 500.Coming later this week are earnings reports from Oracle and Adobe.Global shares mostly rose with Japan’s benchmark rising despite the looming political uncertainty after Prime Minister Shigeru Ishiba announced last night that he plans to resign.Analysts said Ishiba’s announcement was expected for some time and welcomed it as moving things forward, although uncertainty remains as the ruling Liberal Democratic Party (LDP) will need to hold an election to choose a new leader. Ishiba will remain prime minister until his successor is chosen and approved by parliament.“Markets may react short-term to the temporary uncertainty of lame-duck leadership, but this may resolve once a new leader is chosen. Meanwhile, the LDP’s position as a minority leading party is unlikely to change anytime soon, and as such compromise will be the name of the policymaking game,” said Naomi Fink, chief global strategist at Amova Asset Management.Japan’s benchmark Nikkei 225 gained 1.5% to finish at 43,643.81. South Korea’s Kospi gained 0.5% to 3,219.59. Australia’s S&P/ASX 200 lost 0.2% to 8,849.60.Hong Kong’s Hang Seng edged up 0.9% to 25,633.91, while the Shanghai Composite rose 0.4% to 3,826.84.Also Monday, Japan’s Cabinet Office said the economy expanded at a stronger rate in the fiscal first quarter than previously estimated, at a seasonally adjusted 2.2% annualized rate, better than the earlier 1.0% rate as solid consumer spending and inventories lifted growth more than previously thought.Japanese auto stocks rallied after the U.S. finalized a trade deal with Japan. Tariffs on Japanese autos surged to 15% from the initial 2.5%, considerably lower than the 27.5% initially discussed.Toyota stock gained 0.3%, while Nissan stock rose 2.4%. Subaru issues added 1.3%, while Mitsubishi Motors edged up 1.2%.“The Bank of Japan remained in focus as strong wage data increased expectations for a potential rate hike later this year,” said Bas Kooijman at DHF Capital SA, noting that wages were rising.In Europe at midday, France’s CAC 40 and Germany’s DAX each rose 0.5%, while Britain’s FTSE 100 was unchanged.
Yuri Kageyama is on Threads.
Yuri Kageyama and Matt Ott, AP Business Writers
