Michigan has 24,000 known contaminated sites, a legacy of heavy manufacturing where industries carelessly discarded hazardous materials with minimal regulatory oversight. Taxpayers are often left to clean up these abandoned locations, known as brownfields, while the sheer volume of toxic sites has overwhelmed state regulators.
With a little effort, these spaces can be more than a permanent blight on the landscape. Kelly Thayer, senior policy advocate with the states Environmental Law & Policy Center, envisions a future where Michigans brownfields are transformed into sites for diverse solar energy projects.
The potential for new solar siting in Michigan aligns with growing nationwide support of the technology, according to a survey co-led by the University of Michigan. Among residents living within three miles of solar energy developments, positive opinions about the projects outnumbered negative ones by almost a 3-to-1 ratio.
For the study, a large-scale solar project was defined as a ground-mounted photovoltaic system that generates one megawatt or more of direct current. The majority of respondents lived near new greenfield solar sitesdisturbed industrial locations or retiring coal plants were strongly preferred for solar development over forests or productive farmland.
Thayer, from Frankfort on the shores of Lake Michigan, said there is already precedent for solar on former industrial land in his home state. A 120-megawatt solar array on a long-vacant mining operation in Michigans Upper Peninsula, for example, was met by residents with little controversy.
Yet, a Michigan Department of Natural Resources proposal to transition a former oil-and-gas plot in Gaylord to solar energy was met with substantial public backlash in January. Following resident protests against tree and grassland removal for the solar array, the agency extended the public comment period and halted state land leases for solar projects.
This limbo period gives Michigan a chance to readjust its solar siting approach, with an emphasis on distressed lands that would allow the technology to flourish, Thayer said.
The work now is to chart the near-term future of how Michiganders get their energy, said Thayer, whose advocacy group focuses on renewable energy and clean transportation solutions for the Midwest. This can be talked about through the lens of climate or the environment, but the public health ramifications are enormous as well.
A Vital Asset
Last year, the state of Michigan won a $129 million grant from the EPA for utility-scale renewable energy projects, including those on brownfields. These orphan industrial plotslandfills, auto plants and other properties left to molder by private industryare vital assets for a state seeking to reduce its reliance on fossil fuels, noted Thayer.
Michigan aims to be a national climate action leader, driven by Governor Gretchen Whitmers 2050 carbon neutrality goals. Among the tenets of the MI Healthy Climate Plan is streamlining the siting process for wind, solar and battery storage projects. State legislation like Senate Bill 277, meanwhile, includes solar facilities as a permitted use for farmers under the Farmland and Open Space Preservation Act.
Thayers organization, the Environmental Law & Policy Center, also views retiring coal plants as potential solar energy hubs, considering that they are already connected to the energy grid. For instance, the organization helped develop a blueprint for the Dan E. Karn coal plant site, slated as the future home for an 85-megawatt solar energy site expected to be operational in 2026.
These are flat, highly-disturbed sites that also have a substation in place thats hard-wired to the grid, Thayer said. Having that infrastructure saves millions in development, and saves time because it takes four or five years to add new energy resources to the grid.
Some Michigan clean energy projects are hindered by years-long grid connection delays as well as restrictive zoning ordinances that impede their development. In addition, Michigan lacks a comprehensive database of brownfields that detail key characteristics sought by solar developers, said Julie Lowe, brownfield coordinator for the remediation and redevelopment division of the Michigan Department of Environment, Great Lakes, and Energy (EGLE).
Developers will have to use multiple resources to site projects on known sites of contamination, said Lowe. They need databases for tree canopy cover, or have to do site reconnaissance to eyeball the slope and see if it fits their needs.
An Array of Solar Options
EGLE does offer a list of guidelines for anyone asking to purchase a contaminated property for renewable energy development. Prospective buyers must conduct a two-phase Baseline Environmental Assessment before moving ahead with a project. Due diligence may encompass a deep dive into a sites former use, as well as comprehensive testing of soil or groundwater samples.
You may have to go back to the 19th century to determine what the property was used for, Lowe said. And there might be drilling or radar work needed to see if theres something in the ground. For brownfields, we see solvents [in the soil] for dry cleaning or auto repair, because those were chemicals used in those activities.
Various brownfield incentives and programs may subsidize environmental remediation or any additional assessment a site requires, added Lowe. EGLEs Brownfield Tax Increment Financing utilizes the rise in tax revenue from a revitalized site to reimburse developers for the cleanup and demolition work that generated that increase.
That is not to say developers should always foot the bill, said Thayer. A series of polluter pay lawswhich force parties responsible for contamination to pay for site cleanup and remediation costsare currently being proposed by Michigan lawmakers. Thayer also advocates for virtual power plant programs, enabling utilities to pay homeowners with solar and battery storage to contribute stored power during peak demand.
Community solar, which involves installing arrays on vacant lots or working farmlands, can be another multibillion-dollar boon for Michigan, said Thayer. According to a 2021 study by Michigan State University, community solar could deliver a nearly $1.5 billion boost to the states economy over the next 30 years.
For now, Michigan officials should prioritize cleaning up and advancing solar energy projects on the states innumerable polluted brownfields, said Sarah Mills, a University of Michigan researcher who directs the Center for EmPowering Communities at the Graham Sustainability Institute.
I go to meetings about large renewables projects, and its mostly for farmland, said Mills. People will say, Why here, why not a brownfield? From a community acceptance perspective, this is what most people consider a no-brainer.
By Douglas J. Guth, Inside Climate News
This article originally appeared on Inside Climate News. It is republished with permission. Sign up for its newsletter here.
Grindr is expanding its scope in a way that is entirely on brand. On Tuesday, the company unveiled Woodwork, a telehealth service that will help users access medication for erectile dysfunction. Currently available to Grindr users in Illinois and Pennsylvania, Woodwork will expand nationwide throughout the rest of 2025, according to the company.
Grindr CEO George Arison says the company performed internal research that found more than a third of its users take erectile dysfunction drugs. “That gave us a very clear opportunity,” he tells Fast Company in an exclusive, in-depth interview on how he’s growing Grindr’s scope. “Users want it, but theyre buying these products from companies that in no way speak to who they are.”
With Woodwork, Grindr is working with telehealth provider OpenLoop to connect users to clinicians who will prescribe compounded versions of common erectile dysfunction drugs tadalafil (Cialis) or sildenafil (Viagra) that dissolve in the mouth. The company said OpenLoop clinicians have received inclusive care training and Grindr offers educational materials tailored to the LGBTQ community.
“Theres a set of warnings [with Woodwork prescriptions] that are actually very specific to our users,” Arison says. “I don’t think most services like this would say, Do not take this medication with poppers. We do.”
Woodwork is Grindr’s first foray into telemedicine, but its part of a push from the company to add a host of featuresincluding several powered by AI, like a chatbot for improving messagesto show that it can be more of a social network for LGBTQ users. Arison has called this his effort to make the app into a “global gayborhood in your pocket.” In the past few months, Grindr has expanded its “Right Now” feature (which lets users signal to each other that they’re looking for a quick hookup) to 15 additional markets, including London, New York, Paris, and Chicago.
Arison also told Fast Company he wants to add more standard dating features to the app to satisfy users who are looking for relationships. “For our users sake, we need to offer them better dating experiences and better dating features to satisfy their needs,” he says.
In March, Grindr reported a 33% year-over-year increase in revenue in 2024. Its share price is up 70% over the past year. That’s as companies behind more traditional dating appsin particular Match Groupstruggle, especially among younger users.
“If you dont build a product that Gen Zers want, theyre not going to use it,” Arison says. “Thats where I think some of our peers have fallen flat.”
George Arison is telling me about a hookup.
Arison, the 47-year-old CEO of the LGBTQ dating app and social network Grindr, recalls an encounter with a man who ranked low in physical chemistryit was in my bottom quartile of hookups, he says, as if reviewing a spreadsheet of thembut high in intellectual compatibility. That bottom-quartile hookup is now a good friend of his. To Arison, the story illustrates how meaningful relationships can grow from the random connections Grindr facilitates. And if Grindrs short time as a public company is any indication, solid financials can too.
Its been a rough stretch for dating apps. Match Group, which owns Tinder and Hinge, among others, commands roughly 42% of the dating services industry, according to market research firm IBISWorld. But its earningswhich stood at $551 million in 2024have been steadily declining since 2022, even amid modest revenue gains. As of February, Match had replaced its CEO twice in the past three years, and activist investors have been pushing it to reverse declines in usage, particularly among Gen Z.
Grindr, meanwhile, continues to grow after going public in 2022. The company increased revenue 33% last year, to $345 million, and boosted monthly average users 7% to reach 14.2 million people, with more than 1 million of them paying. Investors have been pleased: At press time, Grindr stock was up 70% over the past year.
More importantly, among its core audience of gay and bisexual men, the appwhich eschews dating-app features like swiping and matches for a distance-based grid of available usersremains synonymous with hooking up. Arison, who joined Grindr in October 2022 from used-car marketplace Shift, says the company still has plenty of room to grow.
[Photo: Grindr]
The married father of twos vision for Grindr is for it to become the global gayborhood in your pocket, a kind of digital version of the Castro in San Francisco or Boystown in Chicago, where queer people meet up every day for companionship and commerce.
The company is taking the next step in building that gayborhood: incorporating telemedicine services into the app. Users in Illinois and Pennsylvania can now sign up with Woodwork, an online service similar to Hims & Hers that offers easy access to erectile dysfunction medications. Woodwork will roll out nationally throughout 2025.
Arisons pitch, in a nutshell, is that other telemedicine services are for straight people. Woodwork, whose website features photos and videos of jacked dudes writhing on beds and grinding on logs, is a service proudly by and for gay men. If it works, Grindr could begin to peel off some of the nearly $3 billion that Grand View Research says ED treatments command.
But there are no guarantees. Similar companies have sought growth by exploring adjacent marketsremember Bumbles app for finding friends?and discovered that their user base only really wanted one thing from them. (Bumble stock is down roughly 60% over the last year.)
But Arison has an expansive vision for building out Grindr to appeal to people looking for relationships while still bolstering the companys core business as a hookup app. His experimental approach of testing and refining new featuresmany driven by AIthat could eventually attract paying subscribers is a tall order, and he knows it. Arison pushes employees to work at least 10-hour days and promises that he pushes himself even harder. In conversation, he uses the word hardcore enough that it begs a comparison to Elon Musks approach to running businesses. Elon Musk is the greatest entrepreneur that the world has ever produced, Arison says, though he allows that there are a lot of things about Elon that are not great.
Born under Soviet rule in Georgia (he moved to the U.S. at age 14), Arison relishes proving people wrong and pushing for high performance. The only limitation on your ability to be better is your own belief that you cannot be better, he tells me. One of my fundamental mottoes in life is Do impossible things. Most people think Im nuts, but Im just like, my entire life is impossible. So you cannot prove to me that what Im saying doesnt make any sense, because everything Ive done in life so far has shown that actually its true.
Inside Grindrs San Francisco officewhere a neon eggplant emoji radiates on a nearby wallhe discusses Woodwork, the pressure of leading an LGBTQ-focused public company, and why hes always in founder mode.
This interview has been edited and condensed.
Lets start with the big news. Grindr is venturing into telemedicine by offering erectile dysfunction pills through a service called Woodwork. On one hand, this move feels obvious. Lots of gay guys use ED medicines recreationally. On the other hand, I never predicted Grindr would have a telemedicine division. How did you guys get here?
When I started talking to shareholders, part of the conversation was: What do we want Grindr to be? Just a dating app or something more? Their view was very strong: We want to be a lot more. And so we developed a strategy for that, which was: We want to be the global gayborhood in your pocket. That involves making the core product exceptional, making AI front and center, and building out neighborhood expansion opportunities. What are other things that you get in the neighborhood when youre there that you might not be getting on Grindr, but we could offer? We wanted to do things that were aligned with what users want and already use.
[Photo: Grindr]
The three big buckets that we thought were worth investigating were health and wellness, travel and luxury lifestyle, and local discovery. Health and wellness made the most sense to start with because Grindr already dabbles there; we were instrumental in making PrEP [pre-exposure medication to prevent HIV infection] acceptable and popular. We went to users and asked, If we were to do things in health, what would you want? One of the first things that came out was that a third of Grindr users actually use ED medications. That gave us a very clear opportunity. Users want it, but theyre buying these products from companies that in no way speak to who they are. Like, Ive never seen a gay ad for a competitor product.
How are you thinking about what other telemedicine services you could provide? Can you imagine offering PrEP or post-exposure medication to prevent STIs [DoxyPEP]?
We already partner extensively with PrEP providers. But I dont think ED meds will be the only thing. Itd be logical to extend into haircare, skincare, and other things of that nature.
One area of health and wellness Im hoping well get to is helping you find the right physician. I used to go to the Stanford LGBTQ clinic and had a very good doctor there, but then he stopped doing clinical work. I really wanted a gay doctor, purely because its an easier conversation to have. I could not find a doctor I liked who was available in the Bay Area within 20 minutes of where I live. So now I have a straight concierge doctor, whos very nice, but I do cringe about certain conversations that I have to have with him.
If I, the CEO of Grindr, who, frankly, has a lot of financial means, have had such a hard time finding the doctor I want, then everybody else probably has the same experience, except its a lot worse. That feels like a unique opportunity to create access to medical practitioners, especially in a telehealth sense, potentially for people who are in rural communities.
Its been a tough year for dating apps, with lots of talk about Gen Z avoiding dating apps altogether. But Grindr stock is up. How are you bucking the trend?
This whole Gen Z-avoiding-apps thing makes no logical sense. Gen Z loves TikTok and loves Reels and thinks you can read something in Google and youre an expert in it, but theyre not gonna do dating online?
What I do think, and what makes logical sense, is that if you dont build a product that Gen Zers want, theyre not going to use it. Thats where I think some of our peers have fallen flat.
Grindr is fortunate. Our younger, 18-plus cohort wants to be in an environment where there are older people as well. Friendships between younger and older people are much more common in our community. Secondly, we have a robust free product, which benefits younger users. And thirdly, we are doing product-led processesits not just monetize, monetize, monetize. Were saying: Build new things, and those things will lead to revenue.
Do you see dating-app fatigue at Grindr? Is Grindr in a different business than Hinge?
Were partly in the dating business, but were actually a social network. So we dont see dating fatigue here. What I do see is we need to do a much better job of making it easier for people who want to date to date. If there is one thing that people try other products for, its datingand then they come back to Grindr. But they tried those other ones because we dont have dating features like Hinge or Tinder. We have something that they dont have, which is a critical mass of users. So for our users sake, we need to offer them better dating experiences and better dating features to satisfy their needs.
We did a big survey of gay and bi men right before the election, mostly for our education. One of the most striking numbers was that for people 35 and under, 50% of gay men want to be in a monogamous relationship at some point. And 25% said they wanted to have kids. When I wanted to have kids, I was like 1 in 100. So to now be in a place where you have 25 of 100 people saying they want to have children is a game changer.
Andrew Sullivan, back in the day when he was making a case for gay marriage, a lot of it was like, if you normalize gay marriage, then a lot of gay men will actually move more in the direction of wanting to be in monogamy. And I think the reality is proving him out to be correct in that senseand I think thats really encouraging, but also a message to Grindr that we do need to have a much better set of dating features.
Lets talk AI. Youve talked a lot about building an AI wingman in Grindr. Hows that coming?
So, I want an AI chat inside Grindr that is basically the wingman for your Grindr user experiencethat can help you in any of the things that youre doing. Its composing the messages that youre sending, or helping you find the right people to talk to, or helping you make your photos better. So thats the goal.
Given where the technology is right now, to make this be good is actually really hard. And so you could either say, okay, its gonna take me two years to make this be as awesome as I want it to be. Or, Im gonna build a bunch of little things, and each of them is going to then create the circle that is the AI wingman. Were building these little agents, and as we build more and more of them, they will kind of unify into one big tool.
[Photo: Grindr]
Most of the road map for this year is around using AI to create really unique and new experiences in the product. One of the things that I’m super psyched about, and we think will be really awesome, is what’s called A List. This looks at your entire chat historyobviously, with users’ permissionand comes up with people that we believe you should reengage with based on your past conversations and then over time, based on your other conversations as well. It is now in beta testing, live to a set of users. It’s for [$40 per month] Unlimited users only at this point, partly because it’s all AI and running it is actually quite expensive.
Ive read complaints about charging for things that used to be free. Cory Doctorow famously called this enshittificationthe idea that pressure to grow revenues results in a worse user experience over time. How do you think about that?
I think about it a lot. I dont want Grindr to end up like some of our competitors, who hollowed out their products focusing only on monetization and building nothing. We have built a lot of very cool new experiences for people over the last three years. And if you create value for people, its a reasonable thing for people to have to pay for those experiences.
Albums [which lets users share collections of photos with other users] was not in existence until 2022; over 2 billion albums were sent last year. Every user has access to a free album; if youre a paying customer, you have access to more. We just launched Right Now [a feature focused on quick hookups], which is available to everybody for free. Its fair to assume that at some point, some parts of the Right Now experience will be paid, but by no means will all of it be.
Maintaining a robust free product is critica. We want free users to be very, very happy. But the way we can afford to have a very strong team to build all these new things is by having people pay for it.
You faced a significant backlash in 2023 after you announced a return-to-office policy that led to half the workforce resigning. Was the scale of that turnover intentional? Do you have any regrets about it?
It was not intentional. We tried really hard to get people to stay. But people were presented with a choice about how we wanted to work; return-to-office was a small component of that.
For a bunch of people who were here before I got here, weve become an awesome company, frankly. And for a bunch of people, its not what they wanted. Ultimately, I was hired to do something, and that was to take this company public and then to drive incredible growth. For that, you needed people who would be on board and wanted to do that. I think we did the right stuff to make it happen.
Transforming the team into one that is much more hardcoreand I dont shy from that word, honestlywas really important. Working 50 or 55 hours a week should be completely reasonable at a tech company. We pay extremely well. We have very good stock packages. Everyones an owner at this company, and I want them to think like an owner.
Thats founder mode. Ive been in founder mode my whole life.
What are big misconceptions Wall Street has about Grindr?
The first is around people thinking of Grindr as purely a dating app. The biggest question there is around Is there a significant risk that the same thing [that happened to dating apps] happens here?
Dating products have a shelf life. They constantly go out of favor. But weve been around for 15 years. We were here when OkCupid was really popular, and we were here when Tinder was really popular, and were around now, when Hinge is really popular. Think of us as a combination of a dating product and a social network. We monetize the dating part of the social network, but we do a lot more. Thats the single biggest area where we need to so some education.
As the CEO of one of the only public companies focused on serving gay men, what kind of unique pressure do you feel? Its a little different from running a marketplace for cars.
Ive been fortunate in that Ive never actually experienced as much homophobia as a lot of people have experienced in their lives. I did a lot of work in places where youd expect there to be homophobia. When I was doing Shift, I never ran into that; car dealers or car companies were always very supportive and everything. But it was surprising the level of homophobia that I experienced when I took this jobnot on a personal level, but in a professional sense.
There was a bank that we wanted to work with at one point, and they just werent able to do that. I dont think individually anyone was homophobic, but as an organization, they couldnt come to a place of saying yes. But now that bank is an extremely big supporter. I think the fact that we were public for a year, we execute really well, weve shown what we can dothat changed the organizations mind and made a lot of people inside the organization extremely happy.
To me, that has created incredible motivation, because part of our mission has to be we do super well as a business and we force everybody to change.
Given that, how do you think Grindr should navigate politics at this moment, given that LGBTQ+ is inherently political?
Our policy is were not in politics. We are in the business of creating a space for our users to have fun. In some ways, our users want to forget about politics when theyre in their app. Secondly, our user base is not monolithic. Its actually far broader in its point of view than most people would expect. So I think my job is to do everything I can to create a safe, fun, happy space for them.
There are some things that its actually very important for us to be very loud on, and they involve human rights and access to healthcare, especially internationally. We have Grindr for Equality, which does a lot of work around human rights and health access abroad, working with organizations in those different countries and giving them access to the Grindr app for advertising. We do similar stuff in the U.S. We do that generally under the radar and dont talk about it, but we do a lot of messaging around issues inside the app. Where we know our user base is fully in alignment, were actually very willing to take a position.
What are users aligned on?
Gay marriage. So if that ever comes under threat, we will be very, very loud about it.
The Fast Company Impact Council is an invitation-only membership community of leaders, experts, executives, and entrepreneurs who share their insights with our audience. Members pay annual dues for access to peer learning, thought leadership opportunities, events and more.
For years, banks have known their customer experience needs to catch up to the digital expectations set by tech and retail giants. Now, with AI dominating the boardroom agenda, the temptation is to bolt on yet another tool and call it transformation. But real progress doesnt come from piling on more toolsit comes from using AI to intelligently orchestrate smarter, more connected customer journeys.
Recently, Ive spent time with several banking leaders exploring how theyre applying AI across their operations, from servicing and support to fraud detection and lending. What Ive seen confirms a pattern: The most successful organizations arent chasing hype. Theyre focused on orchestration.
What AI is really solving for in banking
For most consumers, banking is about trust, simplicity, and confidence. They want fast answers, frictionless support, and personalized help when it counts, whether theyre applying for a mortgage, reporting a lost card, or just resetting a password.
Too often, those journeys are fragmented. Customers bounce between bots, forms, and phone calls. Agents are left trying to stitch together context. The experience is frustrating for both sides, and every one of those missed moments erodes trust.
AI has the potential to fix this. But only if its used in the right way.
The real opportunity isnt automation for automations sakeits intelligent orchestration. That means building systems where AI helps guide the customer from start to finish, hands off to a human when it makes sense, and ensures everyone involvedespecially the agenthas the context they need.
From automation to orchestration
In one conversation, a financial services team showed how they reimagined the mortgage prequalification journey. What stood out wasnt just the AIit was how the experience stayed focused, relevant, and responsive across every interaction. AI agents collected essential details, routed inquiries accurately, and passed full context to human advisors. Customers felt supported. Advisors were prepared. And the whole process moved faster.
The shift was clear: not more technology, but better design. AI used not as a standalone fix, but as connective tissue across the customer journey.
Its not about replacing peopleits about designing better systems
Theres still a lot of fear that AI means fewer jobs. In reality, the best implementations are making people better at their jobs. Human agents become “super agents”equipped with real-time summaries, suggested responses, and full visibility into a customers journey.
And this isn’t just about contact centers. Product, compliance, and CX teams are increasingly hands on in designing and refining AI-led experiencesoften without writing a single line of code. Thats a meaningful shift in how organizations move from experimentation to execution.
Why connected experiences matter more than ever
Consumers now expect connectedness, not just availability. In recent banking demos, AI agents were able to detect user intent more effectively than traditional natural language understanding systems, guide conversations toward specific outcomes, and seamlessly escalate when needed, all while maintaining continuity.
In one example, a customer exploring refinancing options asked a mix of basic and advanced questions. The AI not only responded accurately, but also captured key qualifying details and facilitated a warm handoff to a human loan officer. The advisor didnt need to repeat questionsthe context traveled with the customer. Thats orchestration in action.
From system of record to system of action
Traditional systems were built to store data, not act on it. But modern platforms must be systems of action, capable of interpreting signals and responding in real time. This means using AI to go beyond logging interactions and instead drive proactive engagementsurfacing insights, anticipating needs, and guiding the next best action.
Whether its a lost card or a mortgage inquiry, the most successful brands are rethinking the architecture behind the experiencenot just layering AI on top.
This is a window of opportunity
Retail has already started to rethink how it delivers value through AI. Banking is close behindbut with higher stakes, more regulation, and bigger complexity. That makes clarity even more important.
This moment isnt about racing to launch the next chatbot. Its about reimagining how every part of the customer journey connectsand whether it delivers the kind of trust, empathy, and outcomes that consumers expect from their bank.
AI is no longer a nice to have in the CX stackits becoming the connective infrastructure. But only if its applied intentionally, not reactively. The gap between brand ambitions and customer expectations is shrinking. And for banks that act now, with a focus on orchestration, that gap becomes a window of competitive advantage.
The organizations that get this right wont just modernize. Theyll leadbecause customers will follow the brands that make things easier, safer, and smarter.
John Sabino is CEO of LivePerson.
The Fast Company Impact Council is an invitation-only membership community of leaders, experts, executives, and entrepreneurs who share their insights with our audience. Members pay annual dues for access to peer learning, thought leadership opportunities, events and more.
In just a few short years, generative artificial intelligence has begun demonstrating its tremendous business potential. Stanford Universitys latest AI Index report reveals that global corporate investment in AI grew nearly 45% in 2024 to reach $252.3 billion. With private investment in generative AI up 8.5 times over 2022 levels, forecasts suggest that AI could soon contribute trillions of dollars to the American economy alone. By 2028, agentic AI, the next stage in AIs evolution, could be making at least 15% of day-to-day decisions at work and bring greater efficiency, productivity, and innovation.
Were already seeing how AI is creating new businesses, products and services with the potential to expand access to new quality jobs and build new sources of wealth. Today, workers are using AI to inject creativity into their current jobs and start and grow their own businesses. Two-thirds of small businesses that use AI say their own employees are introducing AI tools to the workplace to improve operations, reduce costs and spark innovation.
Many organizations are understandably focused on the near-term time- and cost-savings this emerging technology brings about. But pure efficiency wont unlock the true value of AI; that will require tapping into the expertise and creativity of their employees. To fully realize AI’s potential to revolutionize our economy, we need to put workers at the center of the process of deciding where and how it shows up in the workplace.
What does that look like in practice?
AI training
First, organizations should offer more AI trainingfrom basic literacy to implementation. AI usage at work is surging, according to a new study from my team at JFF. Two years ago, only 8% of individuals used AI at work. Today, its 35%. Those who use AI say AI is making them more efficientand their jobs more interestingby reducing the number of tedious tasks and allowing them to focus on more strategic and creative work. More training means more people experiencing these benefits and contributing to decision making around AI.
Yet our survey also found wide training gaps. Fewer than one third (31%) of workers say their employers provide training on AI fundamentals or specific AI tools and systems. Slightly more than one third (34%) of employees not receiving AI training at work say they want their employer to offer it.
This lack of access to training is creating barriers to the effective implementation of AI at work. Previous JFF research shows that nearly 60% of small businesses cited workforce readiness as the most common barrier to incorporating AI technology into their businesses. To overcome that barrier, organizations can start by providing affordable and practical AI literacy training that help employees learn how to get the most out of AI and become responsible users of this emerging technology.
Employee-driven innovation
Second, organizations should catalyze employee-driven innovation. Workers are already eager to use AI: according to JFFs recent survey, 20% of employees say theyre taking the initiative to use AI at work in the absence of formal direction from their employers, while nearly 30% of workers are leveraging AI tools for strategic growth and innovation. Theres a good business case to be made for bottom-up transformation. Research suggests that when workers are asked for their input, organizations are more likely to make effective use of AI tools and improve the quality of workers jobs.
To unlock growth using AI, businesses should involve their employees in piloting and deploying AI tools and processes across multiple roles and functions throughout an organization. Frontline employeesexperts on their own workflowsare often in the best position to help improve and refine development of AI tools and processes. Theyre the ones companies should call on to find uses of AI that can create value and drive innovation.
AI and human collaboration
Finally, organizations should reconsider how their employees spend their time, the nature of the work they do, and their unique skills so they can unlock the best parts of collaboration between AI and humans. The immediate goal of AI implementation should be about enabling workers to prioritize work that creates new products, services and value that helps businesses grow.
Collaboration between humans and AI has enormous potential. As a Harvard Business School working paper suggests, AI can help professionals significantly boost performance, expertise, and social connectivity in team settings. As AI becomes more capable of making its own decisions and completing complex tasks, humans will spend more time supervising AI, discerning and evaluating AI outputs, and managing interpersonal and collaborative activities with other humans. Weve also seen that AI appears to significantly increase the value of human leadership in interpersonal and highly cognitive tasks like staffing organizations, building relationships, and guiding and motivating teams.
Employers have an opportunity to prepare for this shift by designing high-quality jobsand involving their workers in this processthat can get the best out of collaboration between humans and AI.
The transformation of work is underway. Businesses seeking to navigate it should support employees in their earnest desire to develop AI literacy and skills, catalyze creativity and innovation throughout the organization, and intentionally redesign jobs to unlock the strengths of both AI and humans. Previous technological revolutions have shown that the benefits of progress are not distributed equally. But if companies keep their employees at the center, they can fulfill AIs potential as a force to expand access to quality jobs and economic opportunity for all.
Maria Flyn is president and CEO of Jobs for the Future.
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Every accumulation becomes the means of new accumulation. This is what Karl Marx has to say about capital. He does not get enough credit for being one of the more accurate predictors of capitalism because people understandably do not like his solution. But the truth is, most philosophers do not even present a solution and he understood the problem as well as anyone.
We saw more bankruptcies in 2024 than in the last 14 years, and consumer discretionary was the leading bankruptcy sector. This problem will only increase as AI proliferates. And while the linked article cites other reasons, we think the larger reason is Amazon. Amazon has achieved a level of automation and scale through what can only be described as accelerating accumulation. This is the major reason brick and mortar retail has become so tough, and Amazons control of the supply chain makes it harder for online businesses to compete. But why do we think this is just the beginning?
We are seeing a clear increase in funding and headcount towards AI. Eighty-seven percent of Y Combinators latest batch of companies focus on AIa huge sign we are only scratching the surface of a move towards automation that can threaten small businesses. Soon it will not just be smaller businesses in the consumer cyclical sector threatened by this concerted push towards automation. But it is not just the startup world seeing this trend. Even our most successful companies are slowing down their hiring; at the same time the top 50 AI startups are accelerating at close to a 200% rate.
Big tech hiring slows
Live Data Technologies on Big Tech Headcount Growth
Source: Live Data Technologies
Source: Live Data Technologies
Live Data Technologies recent analysis offers insight on the growth and profitability trends of these companies.
Contrasting Magnificent Seven companies that lean on AI versus more pure AI plays in the AI 50, you can see the scary trend towards more complete automation. Larger commitments to automation could further acceleration reduction in headcount, especially for engineering positions. Google recently announced that over 25% of its code was written by AI. If some of the most talented engineers in the world at Google can no longer compete with their AI, how much longer do small and medium sized businesses have before, at the very least, their funding environment becomes more difficult as a result, and bankruptcy ensues?
Traditionally, small caps have lower profitability but higher growth potential, while large caps are the opposite. But heres what our data found: Companies with a profitability score above 90, typically large or mega caps, are now growing at nearly the same rate as small caps. Its not just a statistical fluke. This pattern has only emerged during past industrial revolutions, when large companies leveraged new technologies, from railroads to oil, to dominate markets. Today, AI is the catalyst, and its the big players like Nvidia that are reaping the benefits.
These profitability and growth forecasts are built on analyst predictions and economic simulations, and scaled on a bell curve with about 2,000 other stocks/ETFs.
What is even more alarming about these numbers is those of the largest companies. Stocks in the 90th percentile or above in Prospero.ais profitability rating are growing more than 80%. This is strong evidence that even the most profitable companies are not being slowed down by their size. Generally it is easier to grow at faster rates if your company is less mature from a profitability standpoint. The fact that the smallest companies < 10 are also projected to grow at slower rates than <20 is perhaps even more shocking. Companies with the smallest revenue should have the easiest time growing at a faster rate. Moving from $1 million in revenue to $2 million from one year to the next is easier than going from, say, $25 million to $50 million.
Profit fuels growth
If you are looking for the flagship demonstration of tis idea, look no further than Nvidia. It generates billions of dollars in profit each quarter, while still achieving massive growth. Revenue from fiscal 2025 was up 114%. Looking for a benchmark number led us to Amazon, one of the greatest growth stories of our time. Amazon posted 60.52% growth when comparing Q4 2024 and Q4 2023 quarterly operating income, and posted its best quarter in the last 15 years. And it did that at roughly half of Nvidias revenue.
That is what makes the Nvidia story so interesting. In 2023, Nvidia had a 98% market share in data center GPUs. Other domestic and international companies have been trying to compete with them in this market, and they simply cannot. Nvidias financial strength allows it to attract the best talent and develop cutting-edge AI technologies, creating a cycle where profit fuels growth, which then drives more profit.
Now what does this mean for small caps? I think the implications are pretty clear. Were seeing the monopolization ramp up, just as we did in past revolutions. Large companies, flush with cash, have the means to capitalize on advantages of scale in ways that small players simply cant match. This makes it harder and harder for small cap companies to compete on the type of growth metrics it takes to attract the needed capital to compete in ever more competitive spaces. The rich get richer, and the competitive gap widens.
So, whats the bottom line? AI-driven bankruptcy isnt just a matter of companies failing; its a symptom of an economic shift where capital accumulation accelerates faster than ever before. This isnt just a chapter in bankruptcy law, its a chapter in how AI will redefine capitalism itself.
George Kailas is CEO of Prospero.Ai.
Just beyond a fenced-off access road in fields of tall grass on public land in Pennsylvanias northwest sits a natural gas well pad that sat idle for close to a decade. The old fracking site suddenly roared back to life in 2022, spewing noise and pollution and rattling residents who were used to hunting pheasant on the quiet, bucolic terrain.
Diversified Energy turned on the well pad, known as Longhorn Pad A, to funnel the natural gas into on-site generators powering cryptocurrency-mining supercomputers that churn away at numbers at all hours. The company set up and started the mine without securing a required air quality permit from state regulators, Capital & Main reported last year.
Now, after a little more than two years, the company has packed up and left, abandoning the wells and associated crypto infrastructure in violation of state law, according to state regulators.
Diversified Energy, which disputes the states finding that it abandoned the wells, has billed itself as innovative, giving new life to aging, low-producing gas wells that would otherwise be uneconomical to operate. Cryptocurrency aids that goal: It allows the company to monetize wells that lack pipeline infrastructure that is typically crucial to selling gas.
The company has, in just a few years, amassed a portfolio of wells bigger than that of any of its peers in the U.S., many of those wells low-producing, despite evidence that Diversified may not have adequate resources to plug them all at the end of their lives. This has stoked concerns among environmentalists about who will be on the hook for cleanup should the company abandon them. When a wellhead crypto mine suddenly shuts down it raises a host of new concerns, chief among them: What happens when operators decide its time to move on without plugging the wells?
Worries about the long-term environmental costs have mounted in Appalachian and other oil and gas-producing communities across the country. Diversified appears eager to try to squeeze a few more years profits out of old wells by burning the remaining gas to power energy-hungry computers. But they have shown less zeal when it comes to safely closing them, often shirking their obligations to plug them to prevent the ongoing release of greenhouse gas pollution.
Companies abandon wells when they walk away from them without plugging them after they’re no longer lucrative, increasing the likelihood that they’ll be left to leak planet-warming methane gas into the atmosphere for years to come. Abandoning wells violates the Pennsylvania Oil and Gas Act and saddles states with the cost and responsibility of plugging them. Pennsylvania, the birthplace of the U.S. oil industry, has an estimated 350,000 orphaned and abandoned oil and gas wells, more than any other state and responsible for close to 8% of the states methane emissions.
The wells, which sit atop a pad called Longhorn A on state game lands in rural Horton township, were drilled under the ownership of another natural gas company, EQT, in 2011, but sat inactive for all those years, considered abandoned by regulators. Diversified Energy brought them back to life in December 2022. The company applied for a permit for generators to power cryptocurrency mining equipment atop the pad but didnt wait to receive them from state regulators before firing up the loud and polluting equipment.
Capital & Main reported last year that the firm was unresponsive to questions from state agencies about its plans with the well pad, even as residents raised concerns about noise and its threat to neighbors and wildlife. The company received its permit to add crypto-mining equipment to the well pad in December 2023.
A Pennsylvania Department of Environmental Protection inspector visited the well pad earlier this year to find the cryptocurrency mining equipment gone. Inspection reports from a March 4 visit show metallic sheds sitting empty on the gravel well pad.
The department issued Diversified a notice of violation for abandoning the well on March 10, requesting a response from the company within two weeks.
Daniel O. Frick, a director in the Environmental Health, Safety Regulatory Department at Diversified Energy, told regulators in a March 18 email that technically the site isnt abandoned, and that the company plans to resume pulling gas from the well.
Regulators have also accused the Birmingham, Alabama-based company of violating a consent order and agreement when it abandoned Longhorn A. In the 2021 agreement that company representatives signed when it acquired the wells from fracking company EQT, Diversified agreed to plug them and 13 others at the end of their lives.
Diversified Energy did not respond to Capital & Mains requests for comment.
State officials arent the only ones concerned. Environmental advocates have warned for years about the environmental risks of Diversified Energys large portfolio of low-producing wells across Pennsylvania, West Virginia, Kentucky, and Ohio. They now fear abandonment of wells snatched up by the company across Appalachia for short-term windfalls will leave the public with the long-term costs of closure and cleanup.
Diversified must not be allowed to walk away and leave others to clean up its mess, said Charles McPhedran, senior attorney at Earthjustice, an environmental law nonprofit. McPhedran has previously urged regulators not to issue Diversified a permit for crypto mining at the site, citing noise concerns and the companys unaddressed environmental violations.
Dave Gustafson, deputy executive director of the Pennsylvania Game Commission, which regulates and eases out the state game lands on which Longhorn A sits, said the agency wouldnt consider these wells abandoned and that the company had not expressed their plans to move forward with production nor have they indicated they intend to plug the well.
The Pennsylvania Department of Environmental Protection disagrees.
The wells are not equipped for production, Tom Decker, a department spokesperson, told Capital & Main in an email. Diversifieds claim that the wells are still equipped is contrary to the Departments observations during the recent inspection and has not been further verified by Diversified.
The department has given the company until September to plug the wells.
Plugging a well can cost more than $100,000, so its common for operators to try to avoid those obligations, said Ted Boettner, senior researcher at the nonprofit think tank Ohio River Valley Institute.
They lift the well and get it to produce some puffs of gas and say, Were back in our active status, and they wont check for another 10 years, Boettner said.
A 2022 report by the Ohio River Valley Institute argued Diversified Energy was operating with a business model built to fail Appalachia because it relied on obtaining aging wells from other operators and squeezing the value out of them before the end of their useful lives, all without having enough funds to plug its entire inventory of assets.
In doing so, Diversified has acquired the largest portfolio of low-producing wells in Appalachia, which the Institute researchers wrote could become a wave of soon-to-be-orphaned wells that could be offloaded onto the public.
In recent months there have been new doubts raised about the companys commitment to well-plugging. In December, Diversified reached a settlement in a class-action lawsuit brought by West Virginia landowners who argued the company had abandoned wells on their properties; it agreed to plug nearly 3,000 wells across Appalachia by 2034. Within the first two weeks of January, the Department of Environmental Protection slapped Diversified with 11 notices of violation for abandoning shale gas wells in Pennsylvania.
Boettner said the state should do more to penalize the practice of abandoning wells. Without strong enforcement, he said, Were going to end up left with all of these wells to plug. Theres nothing stopping them.
Meanwhile, even as it is walking away from well pads, Diversified is expanding its offerings. Just days after inspectors visited Longhorn A, Diversified announced a large-scale partnership with fuel cell company FuelCell Energy and energy infrastructure company TESIAC to power a growing industry of off-grid data centers using natural gas from fracking wells and coal mines. Its one of many natural gas companies throwing its weight behind the coming AI boom, threatening to prolong the life of polluting industries.
But the Longhorn A well abandonments raise questions about the companys ability to care for such projects at the end of their lives, as a broader data boom raises concerns among environmentalists about air pollution. The company has also applied for state grants for well-plugging elsewhere in Pennsylvania, according to records Capital & Main obtained under Pennsylvanias Right-to-Know Law.
Diversified CEO Rusty Hutson Jr. bought his first set of oil and gas wells in 2001 as a personal investment, taking out a home equity loan to afford a package of 35 wells that his father, a third-generation oil and gas worker, found in a deal, he said in a 2023 interview with Mountaineer Media.
Wed go out in cold, heat, fix leaks, work on wells together, Hutson said. And I did that for two or three years before we started really growing the company.
As it has added new wells to its portfolio, Diversified has written into its balance sheets lower-than-industry-standard asset retirement obligationsor estimates for the cost of plugging and closing off wells at the end of their lives.
The strategy has alarmed environmentalists, who fear the company is, at best, giving a lifeline to wells in need of decommissioning and, at worst, creating a massive taxpayer liability should it go under.
But Hutson is proud of his firms unique strategy. While most oil and gas companies focus on drilling new assets, Diversified keeps its eyes on their leftovers.
Our game is acquiring existing mature production, operating it more efficiently than everyone else would, driving costs down, enhancing production on wells that hadnt been given much time, or attention, or capital, driving margins and then paying dividends to our shareholders, he told Mountaineer Media.
The company was listed only on the London Stock Exchange until December 2023, when it went public in the U.S. on the New York Stock Exchange.
That same day, House Democrats opened a probe into the firms practices and emissions.
Diversified Energy is responsible for remediating a substantial share of the countrys aging oil and gas wells, but we are concerned that your company may be vastly underestimating well cleanup costs, members of the House Committee on Energy and Commerce wrote in a letter to Hutson. The company responded at the time, saying its business model is based on stewardship that includes delivering well retirement and reclamation efforts.
Boettner estimates that all but a small fraction of the vast trove of old wells Diversified has acquired in recent years are totally uneconomical, and one of his reports found that more than half could, by some definitions, be classified as inactive. In 2022, the company offloaded a set of 2,500 of them in Ohio. In January 2024, the company sold another part of its stake in Appalachia.
Theyre able to squeeze out this money in these assets because of economies of scale, Boettner said. The only thing they can do is keep buying wells, and as long as they dont have to be accountable for those liabilities, it works.
On the ground in Horton township, home to Longhorn A, local supervisor PJ Piccirillo said hes heard nothing from Diversified staff about their plans to abandon the wells and remove the associated crypto mine. He believes the company stopped running the well pad after the township issued an ordinance setting noise and light pollution limits on Bitcoin mines in 2023, shortly before the state issued Longhorn A its permit.
The generators had been pulled and those big tanks had been pulled out, he said.
Without any communication from the company, Piccirillo is concerned about future industrial development. He runs into abandoned wells in his corner of Elk County often that, he said, I dont know if anybody knows about. The township lacks jurisdiction over well abandonment, so theres nothing he can do about them from his position as a supervisor.
All we know is that that property seems to have been abandoned, he said of Longhorn A. What might be next?
This piece was originally published by Capital & Main, which reports from California on economic, political, and social issues.
Haliey Welch, better known as the hawk tuah girl, is ready for a rebrand.
After being thrust into the spotlight in 2024 thanks to her now-iconic hawk tuah catchphrasefeatured in a video interview uploaded by the Tim & Dee TV YouTube channelWelch experienced a crash course in the highs and lows of viral fame.
In early December, she announced the launch of her own cryptocurrency memecoin, $HAWK. The coin quickly tanked, leaving fans upset and prompting an investigation by the U.S. Securities and Exchange Commission (SEC).
Anyhoo, Im gonna go bed, Welch said as she ended a livestream on X on December 4. She wasnt heard from again until three months later, when an Instagram Reel circulated highlighting headlines surrounding her absence. In the video, a voiceover says, The Hawk Tuah Girl has died, before Welch wakes up from what appears to be a dream.
Welch isnt deadbut she is ready for a reset.
Im in the middle of rebranding right now, Welch said in a recent interview with PokerNews Connor Richards. Ive had a lot of time to think. I want to rebrand. As for what that will look like? I guess youll have to watch and see.
Step one is clearing her name. The SEC has officially closed its investigation into the HAWK coin, finding no evidence of wrongdoing, according to International Business Times.
Next is telling her story. Welch is the subject of an upcoming documentary developed by Emmy-winning production company Bungalow Media + Entertainment. The film will chronicle Welchs unexpected rise to fame, the scrutiny that followed, and reveal the incredible power social media has to crown and crucify its internet darlings, per the press release.
Then comes her return to the spotlight. According to TMZ, Welch will make a cameo in Glen Powells upcoming series Chad Powers. Shes also relaunching her podcast Talk Tuah, following her split from Jake Pauls Betr Holdings.
Vanity Fair recently profiled Welchs reemergence and the hard lessons shes learned. You got to be really careful what you tie your name to, and you definitely need to know what youre getting yourself into when you agree to do it, she told the outlet. Thats something I definitely should have done beforehand.
The following day, Welch headed to Las Vegas for her first public appearance since the crypto fallout: a Celebrity Poker Tour event. When asked what the event involved, she glanced at her publicist. I dont know. I dont know, really, how it works. I just tell them Ill be there, and then I kind of be there, she said.
When Vanity Fair pressed her about the optics of promoting a gambling event so soon after fans lost money on her coin, Welch seemed confused and asked him to repeat the question. Her publicist quickly intervened, requesting they move on.
Daniel George, the founder and CEO of AI company TwinMind, has quite the resume.
He was a part of a Nobel Prize-winning team that worked on using artificial intelligence (AI) to detect gravitational waves and black holes. He also worked on AI projects at companies like Wolfram and Google X. Perhaps most notably, he created an AI tool that automated his own job as a VP at JPMorgan, allowing him to spend a few years traveling the globe.
And now, George counts himself as a startup founder, and he’s bringing his latest project to the masses: TwinMind, an AI platform that listens to everything you do, say, and browse, and its all stored locally and encrypted, he says.
TwinMind can be downloaded as an app on an iPhone and functions like Jarvis in your pocket.”
‘Proactive’ AI that runs your life?
Effectively, users turn it on and can leave it running all day (if they choose to). The app listens to and digests the users surroundings, and produces end-of-day reports or wrap-ups, capturing things that you may have forgotten or missed. Everything is processed as its ingested and transcribed on the fly.
George claims that this helps with security issues, as audio isnt actually stored or saved anywhere. All that is saved are the final outputs of the model, for privacy considerations, he says.
For iPhone users, the mic icon will always display when the app is listening and transcripts don’t actually identify “who said what words exactly.”
Given how the app functions, however, it does seem possible that people could be caught in the background as the app is running without knowing it. TwinMind says it encourages users to ask for consent according to local laws.
TwinMind runs as an app on existing hardware and stores information locally, then uses what it learns to be proactive and surface relevant information for users when and as needed.
Attracting users and Silicon Valley investors
The app launched in late March and has already attracted thousands of users through word-of-mouth, George says.
It has also attracted the attention of Silicon Valley investors, including Anand Rajaraman, Dan Roth, and Michael Liou, who collectively were some of the earliest investors in companies like Facebook, Robinhood, and others. Data from PitchBook clocked TwinMind’s valuation at $30 million last year, while George says its latest valuation is $50 million.
George and his two cofounders, CTO Sunny Tang and chief scientist Mahi Karim, all met working at Google X. He says they’re now living together in a Bay Area house while they build and scale TwinMind, working 100-hour weeks for the past year-and-a-half.
The app works in more than 100 languages and, according to George, can run for more than 12 hours without sapping a smartphones battery, as it uses an LLM to process speech directly and produce a daily memory, or rundown, that resembles a bulleted memo comprising each session.
It really understands everything youve gone through, everyone you know, and your values, George says.
TwinMinds app is available for download and is free to use. As for whats next, George says TwinMind is now planning a Series A funding round and for the first time is speaking with VC firms while the company grows. He says it’s amassed roughly 10,000 users so far.
Once people use it, they wont stop, George predicts. I cant live without it.
