United Airlines, American Airlines, and Delta Air Lines said they will refund tickets for customers starting on Friday, November 7, after the Federal Aviation Administration (FAA) announced a 10% reduction in flights at 40 major airports, which is expected to affect some 3,500 to 4,000 flights daily.
The reductions come amid the ongoing federal government shutdown, which has created a shortage of air traffic controllers, nearly 11,000 of whom are not being paid.
“Any customer traveling during this period is eligible for a refund if they do not wish to flyeven if their flight isn’t impacted,” United Airlines CEO Scott Kirby said in a statement. “That includes nonrefundable tickets and those customers with basic economy tickets.”
News of the refunds comes after Transportation Secretary Sean Duffy warned that the air traffic controller shortage could result in disruptions and would likely “lead to more cancellations.”
American Airlines told Fast Company that it expects the vast majority of its customers travel will be unaffected, and long-haul international travel will remain as scheduled. As schedule changes are made, American said it will proactively reach out to customers who are affected.
“During the impacted travel period, customers whose flights are canceled for any reason, or who choose not to travel, will be able to change their flight or request a refund, without any penalty,” American Airlines confirmed in an email statement to Fast Company.
American also urged leaders in Washington to reach an immediate resolution to end the shutdown: “We remain grateful to the air traffic controllers, TSA [Transportation Security Administration] officers, CBP [Customs and Border Protection] officers, and other federal employees who are working right now without payall to get our customers where they need to be safely.”
In a statement on its website, Delta Air Lines said it expects to operate most flights as scheduled, including all long-haul international flights.
“We are providing additional flexibility to our customers traveling to, from, or through the impacted markets during the impacted travel period to change, cancel, or refund their flights, including Delta Main Basic fares, without penalty during this travel period,” the company said.
Southwest Airlines, JetBlue Airways, and Alaska Airlines have not yet determined a refund policy, according to USA Today.
The airlines and travel experts recommend using the airlines’ mobile apps to get the latest information on cancellations and delays.
40 U.S. airports likely to be most affected by delays
The FAA has not finalized the list of the 40 airports that will be affected by 10% flight reductions. But New York, Atlanta, and Los Angeles airports are likely to be among them.
Here is a preliminary list, according to multiple sources including ABC News, CBS News, and USA Today:
Anchorage International (ANC)
Hartsfield-Jackson Atlanta International (ATL)
Boston Logan International (BOS)
Baltimore/Washington International Thurgood Marshall (BWI)
Charlotte Douglas International (CLT)
Cincinnati/Northern Kentucky International (CVG)
Dallas Love (DAL)
Ronald Reagan Washington National (DCA)
Denver International (DEN)
Dallas/Fort Worth International (DFW)
Detroit Metropolitan Wayne County (DTW)
Newark Liberty International (EWR)
Fort Lauderdale/Hollywood International (FLL)
Honolulu International (HNL)
Houston Hobby (HOU)
Washington Dulles International (IAD)
George Bush Houston Intercontinental (IAH)
Indianapolis International (IND)
New York John F. Kennedy International (JFK)
Las Vegas Harry Reid International (LAS)
Los Angeles International (LAX)
New York LaGuardia (LGA)
Orlando International (MCO)
Chicago Midway (MDW)
Memphis International (MEM)
Miami International (MIA)
Minneapolis/St. Paul International (MSP)
Oakland International (OAK)
Ontario International (ONT)
Chicago O`Hare International (ORD)
Portland International (PDX)
Philadelphia International (PHL)
Phoenix Sky Harbor International (PHX)
San Diego International (SAN)
Louisville International (SDF)
Seattle/Tacoma International (SEA)
San Francisco International (SFO)
Salt Lake City International (SLC)
Teterboro (TEB)
Tampa International (TPA)
If sweating it out on a Peloton helps you stay fit, be sure to see if youre affected by a major new recall from the exercise bike maker.
Peloton issued a major recall for some bike models on Thursday, warning that the seat posts of affected models could break and potentially injure their users. The recall is based on three reports of seat post malfunctions. In two of those incidents, Peloton users were injured after falling off the bike. Though the number of incidents is very small, the recall applies to 833,000 units manufactured in Taiwan and sold in the U.S.
The recall affects Peloton Original Series Bike+ units with model number PL02 and serial numbers that start with T. The bikes were manufactured between December 2019 and July 2022 and were sold through Peloton, Dicks Sporting Goods, eBay, and Amazon from January 2020 through April 2025. Another 44,800 units sold in Canada were also recalled, though no falls or malfunctions were reported outside the U.S.
The integrity of our products and our Members well-being are our top priorities, Peloton said in a statement provided to Fast Company. We are taking this opportunity to make replacement seat posts available to all affected Bike+ users, and we encourage them to contact us to receive the redesigned seat post as soon as possible.
To find your bikes serial number, look inside the front fork, behind the front fork, or behind the flywheel. Once you locate it, you can look up the serial number on Pelotons website to see that bike models history.
Peloton users with affected models should take a break from cycling until they are able to get a fix from the company. Happily, that fix is pretty straightforward: Peloton will send you a new seat free of charge. Just order the replacement seat post online or contact customer service by phone. Installing the new post looks pretty straightforward, and owners can follow an instructional video from Peloton to do it themselves at home.
The new recall is the second time the company has had to issue a warning about the safety of its seat posts. In 2023, Peloton announced a voluntary recall of seat posts for its original Bike model, similarly sending out replacement parts due to worries about the post breaking and causing people to fall off. Peloton said the seat post problem posed a risk to users with larger builds who weighed 250 pounds or more, though no injuries were reported at the time.
Peloton says that bikes manufactured after 2023 include redesigned seats that eliminate the risk associated with both seat post recalls. At a high level, the design and quality enhancements include a fail-safe mechanism intended to ensure that in the rare event of a break, the seat will not detach from the post, mitigating the risk of injury, a Peloton spokesperson told Fast Company. We feel confident about the quality of our redesigned seat post. We are also committed to continuously innovating on our product quality and designs.
Peloton will report its quarterly earnings later on Thursday, though that call will likely turn toward the new recall as well, and not just be about the companys financials.
Peloton pedals in some new directions
Last month, Peloton announced that it would raise prices across its subscriptions and its workout hardware. The company is also throwing its weight behind advanced tech on new high-end equipment options that integrate computer vision and AI to track users movement and personalize their workouts.
Peloton also recently launched a new Pro line of commercial workout bikes, treadmills, and rowing machines designed for high-use areas like hotel gyms, where wear and tear can add up much more quickly than on an at-home machine that sees a fraction of the use.
Today’s consumers want the flexibility to work out anytime, anywhere, and that means they expect top-tier fitness amenities in the places where they live, work, and travel, Peloton chief commercial officer Dion Camp Sanders said of the companys new line, which paired with the launch of a new commercial business division.
President Donald Trump unveiled a deal Thursday with drugmakers Eli Lilly and Novo Nordisk to expand coverage and reduce prices for their popular obesity treatments Zepbound and Wegovy.
The drugs are part of a new generation of obesity medications known as GLP-1 receptor agonists that have soared in popularity in recent years.
But access to the drugs has been a consistent problem for patients because of their cost around $500 a month for higher doses and insurance coverage has been spotty.
Coverage of the drugs for obesity will expand to Medicare patients starting next year, according to the administration, which said some lower prices also will be phased in for patients without coverage. Starting doses of new, pill versions of the treatments also will cost $150 a month if they are approved.
(It) will save lives, improve the health of millions and millions of Americans, said Trump, in an Oval Office announcement in which he referred to GLP-1 as a fat drug.”
Thursday’s announcement is the latest attempt by the Trump administration to rein in soaring drug prices in its efforts to address cost-of-living concerns among voters. Drugmakers Pfizer and AstraZeneca recently agreed to lower the cost of prescription drugs for Medicaid after an executive order in May set a deadline for drugmakers to electively lower prices or face new limits on what the government will pay.
As with the other deals, its not clear how much the price drop will be felt by consumers. Drug prices can vary based on the competition for treatments and insurance coverage.
Obesity drugs have become increasingly popular, but are costly
The obesity drugs work by targeting hormones in the gut and brain that affect appetite and feelings of fullness. In clinical trials, they helped people shed between 15% and 22% of their body weight — up to 50 pounds or more in many cases.
Patients taking these drugs usually start on smaller doses and then work up to larger amounts, depending on their needs. Because of obesity being considered a chronic disease, they need to take the treatment indefinitely or risk regaining weight, experts say.
The fast-growing treatments have proven especially lucrative for drugmakers Eli Lilly and Co. and Novo Nordisk. Lilly said recently that sales of Zepbound have tripled so far this year to more than $9 billion.
But for many Americans, their cost has made them out of reach.
Medicare, the federally funded coverage program mainly for people ages 65 and over, hasn’t covered the treatments for obesity. President Donald Trumps predecessor, Joe Biden, proposed a rule last November that would have changed that. But the Trump administration nixed it last spring.
Few state and federally funded Medicaid programs, for people with low incomes, offer coverage. And employers and insurers that provide commercial coverage are wary of paying for these drugs in part because of the large number of patients that might use them.
The $500 monthly price for higher doses of the treatments also makes them unaffordable for those without insurance, doctors say.
Medicare now covers the cost of the drugs for conditions such as type 2 diabetes and cardiovascular disease, but not for weight loss alone.
Trump showing he is in touch with cost-of-living concerns
The effort to lower costs barriers to popular GLP-1 drugs comes as the White House is looking to demonstrate that Trump is in touch with Americans frustrations with rising costs for food, housing, health care and other necessities.
Republican gubernatorial candidates in New Jersey and Virginia faced a drubbing in Tuesdays election in which dour voter outlook about the economy appeared to an animating factor in the races.
Roughly half of Virginia voters said the economy was the top issue, and about 6 in 10 of these voters picked Democrat Abigail Spanberger for governor, powering her to a decisive win, according to an AP voter poll.
In New Jersey, Democrat Mikie Sherrill won about two-thirds of voters who called the economy the top issue facing the state, the poll found. She defeated a Trump-endorsed Republican candidate Jack Ciattarelli. More than half of New York City voters said the cost of living was the top issue facing the city. The Democratic mayor-elect Zohran Mamdani won about two-thirds of this group.
The White House sought to diminish the effort by the previous Democratic administration as a gift to the pharmaceutical industry because the proposal did not include adequate price concessions from the drug makers.
Trump, instead, consummated a belt and suspenders deal that ensures that Americans arent unfairly financing the pharmaceutical industrys innovation, claimed a senior administration official, who briefed reporters ahead of Thursdays Oval Office announcement by Trump.
Another senior administration official said coverage of the drugs will expand to Medicare patients starting next year. Those who qualify will pay $50 copays for the medicine.
Lower prices also will be phased in for people without coverage through the administrations TrumpRx program, which will allow people to buy drugs directly from manufacturers. starting in January.
The officials said lower prices also will be provided for state and federally funded Medicaid programs. And starting doses of new, pill versions of the obesity treatments will cost $149 a month if they are approved.
The officials briefed reporters on the condition of anonymity under ground rules set by the White House.
Doctors applaud the price drop
Dr. Leslie Golden says she has roughly 600 patients taking one of these treatments, and 75% or more struggle to afford them. Even with coverage, some face $150 copayments for refills.
Every visit its, How long can we continue to do this? Whats the plan if I cant continue?, said Golden, an obesity medicin specialist in Watertown, Wisconsin. Some of them are working additional jobs or delaying retirement so they can continue to pay for it.
Both Lilly and Novo have already cut prices on their drugs. Lilly said earlier this year it would reduce the cost of initial doses of Zepbound to $349.
Dr. Angela Fitch, who also treats patients with obesity, said she hoped a deal between the White House and drugmakers could be the first step in making the treatments more affordable.
We need a hero in obesity care today, said Fitch, founder and chief medical officer of knownwell, a weight-loss and medical care company. The community has faced relentless barriers to accessing GLP-1 medications, which has ultimately come down to the price, despite the data we have supporting their effectiveness.
Tom Murphy, Aaamer Madhani, and Jonel Aleccia, Associated Press
The term brand entertainment is tough to define. For many people, its an oxymoron and these two words should never be in the same room as one another.
For many others, though, its simply when brands make stuff we actually want to pay attention to. It could be a short ad, or a feature-length film, or a live event. What it isnt is an annoying waste of time interrupting our attention from actual entertainment like TV, sports, music, and movies.
Ive spent a lot of time on the Brand New World podcast looking at different ways different brands are doing this right. From WhatsApp creating a Netflix doc about the Mercedes F1 team, to Dicks Sporting Goods formally establishing an internal entertainment studio that has already been winning Emmys.
But in September, an unprecedented deal was struck between one of the worlds biggest advertisers and arguably the globes biggest streaming platform. AB InBevthe parent to beer brands like Budweiser, Bud Light, Michelob Ultra, and Coronasigned a wide-ranging partnership deal with Netflix.
This will not only get these major beer brands front and center in Netflix’s push into live sports, but also get them early access to placement and integration into other Netflix programming like shows and movies.
This kind of thing will have marketers drooling, but everyone else skeptically side-eyeing the idea of a bigger brand presence in entertainment, and its potential effect on the quality of our favorite movies and TV shows.
So, this episode Im talking to Jae Goodman, cofounder and CEO of Superconnector Studios, who not only helped broker the NetflixAB InBev deal, but has also helped giants like Nike and LVMH set up their own entertainment strategies.
Here he breaks down this new deal, what it means, and how it may be setting the stage for the future of brands in Hollywood.
Goodman says the key to the deal is that each company respects the goals and ideals of the other, which is the lens through which any brand integration is considered: Netflix and AB InBev have each become acutely aware of each other’s priorities. And so Netflix is great about sharing their priority projects with AB InBev, and AB InBev has been very clear about the brand ethos. Netflix is extremely aware when they read a script for a new show or when they see the next season come in for an already hit show, they already know, That’s a Stella show. That’s a Corona show, that’s a Budweiser show, because they’re aware of the brand alignment.
Why brands should avoid Hollywoods independent financing model: There is a very small subset of producers who believes that brands are the answer to independently financing projects that aren’t selling on spec. And so there are some producers out there whose pitch (to brands) is essentially, You give me millions of dollars, I will go make this show or this movie, and it will totally sell. We’re gonna get it into Sundance, and then there’s gonna be a bidding war.
Independent financing of film and television is rare, and in television it’s extremely rare and it’s risky. There are professionals who put their money at risk for independent financing, it’s a whole business and it’s a challenging business, and it’s more challenged by the fact that there are fewer buyers now.
So, I’m just going to say it very clearly: It is bad for both industries to have brands fully financing entertainment as a business model. There are instances where it makes sense, but it needs to be in the context of not being the primary model.
It is just not a good reason to do it. There’s so much money. Maybe there’s going to be less spending on content year over year, I haven’t seen the number. But I do know Netflix is going to spend $19 billion on content this year. So when they’re going to spend $19 billion on content, tell me why every brand in town needs to go to an independent producer and fully finance a movie that’s ‘totally gonna sell to Netflix.’ Go to Netflix first and see if they’re interested.
The average rate on a 30-year U.S. mortgage ticked up for the first time in five weeks after falling to its lowest level in more than a year last week.
The average long-term mortgage rate moved up to 6.22% from 6.17% last week, mortgage buyer Freddie Mac said Thursday. A year ago, the rate averaged 6.79%.
Last weeks average rate was the lowest since Oct. 3, 2024, when it was 6.12%.
Borrowing costs on 15-year fixed-rate mortgages, popular with homeowners refinancing their home loans, also rose this week. The average rate rose to 5.5% from 5.41% last week. A year ago, it was 6%, Freddie Mac said.
Mortgage rates are influenced by several factors, from the Federal Reserves interest rate policy decisions to bond market investors expectations for the economy and inflation. They generally follow the trajectory of the 10-year Treasury yield, which lenders use as a guide to pricing home loans.
The 10-year yield was at 4.09% at midday Thursday, down from 4.16% Wednesday.
Lower mortgage rates boost homebuyers purchasing power and benefit homeowners eager to refinance their current home loan to a lower rate.
The average rate on a 30-year mortgage has been stuck above 6% since September 2022, the year mortgage rates began climbing from historic lows. The housing market has been in a slump ever since.
Sales of previously occupied U.S. homes sank last year to their lowest level in nearly three decades. Sales have been sluggish this year, but accelerated in September to their fastest pace since February as mortgage rates eased.
Mortgage rates began declining in July in the lead-up to the Federal Reserves decision in September to cut its main interest rate for the first time in a year amid growing concern over the U.S. labor market.
The Fed lowered its key interest rate again last week in a bid to help boost the wobbling job market. However, Fed Chair Jerome Powell warned that there is no guarantee the U.S. central bank will cut again at its final meeting of 2025 in December.
The Fed could also pump the brakes on more rate cuts if inflation climbs further amid the Trump administrations expanding use of tariffs, because lower rates can worsen inflation.
Bond investors demand higher returns as long as inflation remains elevated, so if inflation ticks upward that could translate into higher yields on the 10-year Treasury note, pushing up mortgage rates.
The central bank doesnt set mortgage rates, and even when it cuts its short-term rates that doesnt necessarily mean rates on home loans will necessarily decline.
Last fall after the Fed cut its rate for the first time in more than four years, mortgage rates marched higher, eventually reaching just above 7% in January this year. At that time, the 10-year Treasury yield was climbing toward 5%.
The broader pullback in rates has helped spur homeowners who bought in recent years after rates climbed above 6% to refinance their home loan to a lower rate.
Mortgage rates would have to drop below 6% to make refinancing an attractive option for many homeowners. Thats because about 80% of U.S. homes with a mortgage have a rate below 6% and 53% have a rate below 4%, according to Realtor.com.
Matt Ott, AP business writer
The erosion of freedom rarely happens overnight; its written into law, one ruling at a time. ACLUs Chase Strangio lays bare how the U.S. legal system is failing its people under a growing wave of authoritarianism and systemic rollbacks of civil liberties.
Welcome to AI Decoded, Fast Companys weekly newsletter that breaks down the most important news in the world of AI. Im Mark Sullivan, a senior writer at Fast Company, covering emerging tech, AI, and tech policy.
This week, Im focusing on a new court filing that sheds more light on the reasons for Sam Altmans ouster from OpenAI two years ago. I also look at Amazons kerfuffle with Perplexity over AI shopping agents, and at another court ruling that using copyrighted data for AI training is fair use.
Sign up to receive this newsletter every week via email here. And if you have comments on this issue and/or ideas for future ones, drop me a line at sullivan@fastcompany.com, and follow me on X (formerly Twitter) @thesullivan.
Two years after OpenAI boardroom drama, a lot is riding on Altmans trustworthiness
OpenAI CEO Sam Altman has done more than anyone else to whip up faith and trust that the next industrial revolutionAIis imminent and inevitable. That faith and trust have already loosed hundreds of billions of investment in infrastructure needed to support the transition. Some say the infusion of cash is single-handedly propping up the U.S. stock market, and, by extension, the economy. The faith and trust have moved Washington to all but abandon its oversight role in favor of acting as enabler and cheerleader.
But questions of Altmans trustworthiness wont go away. Some troublesome details about Altmans famous 2023 firing by his board (and subsequent rehiring and board reshuffle) came to light with the recent (unsealed) court filing of part of a deposition of OpenAI cofounder and ex-chief scientist Ilya Sutskever in a case brought against the company by Elon Musk.
At the time of Altmans ouster, the board said that he had kept key facts about the business from them. The board had also considered reports that Altman undermined his executives and pitted them against each other. Sutskever confirmed to attorneys during the seven-hour deposition that he believes Altman lied habitually. He testified that Altman had been pitting Mira Murati, the CTO at the time, against Daniela Amodei, who eventually left with her brother Dario Amodei and others to form Anthropic.
We learn that Altmans alleged behavior wasnt short-term or a reaction to a crisis, but part of a pattern. Sutskever said he and fellow board member Murati had been documenting Altmans indiscretions and preparing to oust him for more than a year before proposing it to the board. (They delayed the firing until Altman loyalists on the board were too few to stop it, Sutskever said.)
One board member, Helen Toner, said a year after departing that OpenAI executives (likely Sutskever and Murati) began talking to the board about the Altman problems in the month before the November 2023 dustup. The two of them suddenly started telling us . . .how they couldnt trust him, about the toxic atmosphere he was creating, Toner said during a TED AI podcast. They used the phrase psychological abuse, telling us they didnt think he was the right person to lead the company to AGI, telling us they had no belief that he could or would change.
Sutskever, in fact, wrote a 52-page-long memo describing Altmans indiscretions (at the request of fellow board member Adam DAngelo, and possibly board members Helen Toner and Tasha McCauley). He wrote another memo about then-president and board chair Greg Brockman, who resigned after Altman was fired.
Toner has offered other examples of Altmans lies of omission, including a failure to tell the board about plans to launch ChatGPT, or that he personally owned the OpenAI startup fund even though he constantly was claiming to be an independent board member with no financial interest in the company, Toner said. Toner added that Altman gave the board inaccurate information about the small number of formal safety processes OpenAI had in place, so the board had no way of knowing how well those safety processes were working. (Toner is an AI safety expert.)
People say that political infighting happens within every company. Thats probably true. People say that CEOs are like politicians; they have to balance competing priorities and personalities within the company, so a certain amount of finessing of the truth is expected. Ill buy that too.
And the context is important. OpenAIs history, and the recent history of generative AI, had a lot to do with setting up the conflict. OpenAI started out as an idealistic little AI lab, but a few years later it made a breakthrough discovery that AI models got predictably smarter as they were supersized and given massive amounts of computing power. Developing frontier AI models became a very expensive undertaking, requiring massive capital. OpenAI had to spend massively to maintain its lead in the frontier model arms race that ensued, and needed consumer and enterprise revenue streams to help pay for it. (CFO Sarah Friar said Wednesday that OpenAI may look to the government to guarantee its infrastructure loans.)
Its not easy to run a business like a nonprofit in that situation. Yet Altman was answering to a nonprofit board of directors. Toner said as much on the TED AI podcast. The board is a nonprofit board that was set up explicitly for the purpose of making sure that the companys public good mission was primary, was coming firstover profits, investor interests, and other things, Toner said on the podcast. Maybe something had to give.
But . . .
But if the CEO was (or is) hiding truths from the board, something is wrong. Given the potential risks of AI, its disturbing that one of Altmans lies of omission, according to Toner, concerned safety measures. Superhuman AI doesnt care about the corporate structure of its creators. If not responsibly aligned and governed, its potential for doing harm is the same.
Amazon to Perplexity: Keep your agents out of our market
Amazon is apparently not ready for the AI agent revolution. Amazon accused Perplexity of computer fraud after the AI company’s Comet browser allowed users to search for and purchase items on Amazon’s platform. Amazon believes Perplexity needs permission from the e-commerce giant to let users do that. Its attorneys sent Perplexity CEO Aravind Srinivas a cease-and-desist, saying, in effect, that the Comet shopping agents are no longer welcome on Amazon.
Were in the early innings of AI agents. Some of the first consumer agents, Perplexity included, can navigate e-commerce websites and even make purchases. In the future agents may routinely do our business by interacting with other agents using a secure agent-to-agent interfaceno need for a traditional web interface at all.
Perplexity says Amazon sent an “aggressive legal threat” via a cease-and-desist letter dated October 31, demanding the company stop enabling purchases through its Comet Assistant. Amazon’s lawyers say that Perplexity lacks authorization to access Amazon user accounts or account details using what they described as “disguised or obscured” AI agents. Amazon has already taken steps in recent months to block external AI agents from OpenAI, Google, Meta, and others from crawling product information at its website.
Perplexity accused Amazon of “bullying,” and argued that a tool that makes shopping easier for the consumer can only benefit the e-commerce giant. Perplexity suggested that Amazon is more focused on manipulating shopper decisions by showing ads, injecting upsells and confusing offers, and pushing sponsored products in search results. Amazon says Perplexity’s agents hurt shoppers by skipping over personalized product recommendations, and potentially not displaying the fastest available delivery speeds for customers. Amazon and Perplexity did not respond to a request for comment.
In theory, Amazon could change its terms of service to more explicitly ban third-party shopping agents from its site. But what if such agents create real value (time savings) for consumers? Can Amazon easily ban some agents but not others?
U.K. court says AI companies can use copyrighted material to train models
The AI industry has notched another legal win for its practice of scraping copyrighted digital content from the web and using it to train AI models. Getty Images filed suit in the High Court of Justice of England and Wales, claiming that Stability AI violated copyright when it downloaded millions of Getty photos without permission for the purpose of training its Stable Diffusion image generator. Judge Joanna Smith ruled this week that since the Stable Diffusion model didnt store or reproduce the Getty images it cant be said to have copied the images under U.K. copyright law. The court also declared that Getty would have to drop the copyright claim in the U.K. court because the training didnt physically happen within its jurisdiction. Getty also filed its complaint in the U.S., in the Southern District of New York, but that trial is still ongoing.
Neil Chilson, former chief technologist for the FTC and currently head of AI Policy with the Abundance Institute, called the decision “consistent with the nature of the technology and a successful result for continued AI innovation.
More AI coverage from Fast Company:
AI is going to be a game changer for Black Friday
AI hardware is reinventing the humble dictaphone
Here are the best mobile AI apps
Stability AI largely wins U.K. court battle against Getty Images
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Today, institutional landlordsthose owning more than 1,000 homesremain a relatively small part of the national single-family housing market. They own less than 1.0% of the total U.S. single-family housing stock and have accounted for only about 0.3% of transactions over the past three years. Yet, two decades ago, they didnt even really exist.
When Blackstone began buying single-family rentals in 2011, there wasnt a single firm that owned at least 1,000 U.S. single-family homes. By late 2016, Blackstones fund, Invitation Homeswhich the firm later took public in 2017 and fully exited by 2019had grown its portfolio to nearly 50,000 single-family rentals. As of the end of Q3 2025, Invitation Homes wholly owned 86,139 single-family rentals.
Institutional funds buying at the bottom of the housing crash, from 2011 to 2013, marked the birth of the modern institutional single-family rental asset class.
Sean Dobson, CEO and chairman of the Amherst Groupwhich, according to Parcl Labs, owns at least 42,973 single-family rentalssaw that shift firsthand. After the federal government tightened lending, the housing bubble burst, and single-family homes began selling below replacement cost, the government was practically begging institutional capital to step into the market around 2010, believing they could serve as a shock absorber.
Dobson illustrates the point by noting, When we [Amherst] first started this [single-family rental] business, we had a handshake to buy 50,000 houses from Fannie Mae in one trade. While that trade didnt occur, it illustrates the backdrop at the time.
On Friday, Dobson will be among the speakers at ResiDay 2025a one-day conference hosted by ResiClub in New York City.
I did a pre-interview with Dobson (the full video is posted on YouTube). Below are some of his key takeaways.
National home prices: Grinding sideways, with affordability as the constraint
Dobson emphasized that the housing market is unlikely to see dramatic national home price swings in the near term. Neither another national boom, nor crash.
He admits theres some downward pressure on home prices, given the affordability environment were in, however, theres not enough resale supply hitting the market to actually manifest a national level crash like 2007-2011.
According to Dobson:
Home prices we think would be lower if there are more sellers, obviously. But there’s good reason there aren’t more sellers, right? So many people got such low interest rate mortgages that at a time when the demand would naturally fall from rising interest rates, rising interest rates also caused the [new listings] supply to fall.
I think the overall message is that we’re on the lookout for something that changes the velocity of this whole thing and [we] can’t find it. We spent a lot of time on the Airbnb guys. I thought those guys might be the weak hands, because it’s like, who has to sell? And we have a pretty good model on how supply affects home prices. But even when you just radically change supply, it moves home prices [down] in single digits we think you’re looking at a decade of difficulties for people to get into buying a home.
That’s why we think we’re talking about really a next decade of a lot of demand for rental, because it’s the choice of, how do I get the size, how do I get the features that come with that home, like the school location? And that’s how long we think it’s going to take for what we would see as sort of long-term depth of some of the standards for affordability to be recaptured, because we think it has to come from income growth. And that’s staring in the face of all this business and AI, which [some] people are arguing might be driving [real incomes] down [in the future].
Fixing affordability starts with housing credit reform
The further the Pandemic Housing Boom fades into the rearview mirrorand as national income growth continues to outpace national home price growthDobson believes national housing affordability will gradually improve.
That could be sped up, he says, if some of lending tightening done during and following the Great Financial Crisis were un-done.
His argument isnt to recreate the reckless lending of the mid-2000s, but to reintroduce responsible credit risk-taking and allow back in some of the lower credit homebuyers that were in the market in, say, the 1980s and 1990s.
In Dobsons view, if lending were loosened to allow some of those lower credit score homebuyers back into the market, it wouldnt magically improve affordability overnight; however, it would create a steady stream of housing demand for builders who could produce more lower-end single-family homesor even manufactured homesthat werent bilt in the years following the Great Financial Crisis. He believes that would improve affordability over time.
Says Dobson:
We get consulted by governors, by senior people in the federal government. Everyone kind of wants the playbook: Tell me what to do and I’ll fix it. And we tell them [to] make more subprime mortgages. And they tend to fold up their notebooks and head on… People are frustrated, right? People are super frustrated because you have this expectation that: I did all these things, and now I should be able to buy a house, and I can’t. You want to blame somebody, right? And if you see me [Amherst] buying it, well, you’re like, well, it must be his fault, so I get itI think it [that thinking] is dangerous.
They [homebuilders] don’t have demand [from that lower credit score homebuyers like they used to], and they don’t have demand because their customers don’t have financing. And they [some sidelined buyers] don’t have financing because the mortgage market doesn’t take credit risk like [it used to]… So what we [Amherst] provide is a solution today.
Tightened credit boxed out homebuyers and helped draw institutional capital into the housing market
Dobson says the typical Amherst tenant has a credit score too low to qualify for a mortgage in todays market. Without single-family rental options, many of those households wouldnt be able to live in the same neighborhoods or school districts they do now, he argues.
That challenge reflects a broader shift in the mortgage market. In Q1 1999, borrowers in the bottom 10th percentile of mortgage credit scores had scores of 597. By Q3 2025, that threshold had risen to 660, reflecting that many lower-credit households had been locked out of homeownership following the bust, Dobson says.
In Dobsons view, those tighter lending standardsimplemented after the housing bust that began in 2006helped pave the way for institutional investors like Amherst to step in and fill the gap through single-family rentals.
Says Dobson:
I sat with Chairman Bernanke, I sat with Yellen, and I begged them to try to get in the way of Dodd-Frank, because I knew what was going to happen, and we lost that. I said, Okay, well, we’re going to get these families in these houses some way, and we have a lease and we have financing, we can operate the real estate. So let’s get the people in the homes and get their kids in the schools, and then let all the wizards figure out, like, whats the better solution? Because today, there isn’t one until someone with a 625 FICO can go borrow money at about the same rate that you and I can borrow at, there isn’t a better solution. And so that’s, you know, if you want to blame somebody, it’s the knee jerk, explainable, but too long in place reaction to the subprime mortgage crisis.
Greater homebuilding activity is helping improve affordability more quickly in Florida and Texas
During our conversation, I asked him for his thoughts on the current regional housing market variationspecifically, why pockets of Florida and Texas have weakened more than markets in the Midwest and Northeast.
According to Dobson:
The common theme amongst the markets that are retracing? So Austin, you mentioned Jacksonville, which is not quite as bad Western Floridathe Tampa Bay area, Cape Coral has been really, been really tough. I would say the common theme is those are places [where] it’s pretty easy to build, and as home prices moved above, kind of their construction costs, they naturally kind of tend back down. And so those places, the market did what the market is supposed to do, right? Prices were rising and rising quickly, and homebuilders came in and they built a lot of supply, even in a place like Dallas. So we [Amherst] tend to spend [time looking at local data]because we’re like you [ResiClub], were in the housing market [data] all day, every day. So we don’t really do that much work on like the U.S. housing market. We do work on much smaller micro footprints. But if you take a place like DallasDallas overall [in aggregate], seems like it’s okay, healthy, not great, [but] not weak. But if you bifurcate the homes by vintage year, and look at their price movements, then Dallas looks a lot like Cape Coral [in certain areas]. The new home construction market [areas] in Dallas looks a lot like Cape Coral. So builders came outthey did, you know, getting land permitted, getting lots of them platted, getting horizontals in all takes time. So there’s always a lag between when the housing market really wants to buy the homes and when builders can deliver them. And that oftentimes [it] creates too much supply [at once] trying to squeeze through a channel that [also has] waning demand.
Institutional single-family homebuying has slowedcould it accelerate again?
At the height of the Pandemic Housing Boom, institutional homeownersthose owning at least 1,000 single-family homesmade up an all-time high of 2.4% of home purchases in Q2 2022, according to John Burns Research and Consulting.
That period, at the tail end of the boom, was when yields were particularly attractive as borrowing costs were ultra-low, home prices were soaring, and rents were climbing rapidly.
However, since mortgage rates spiked and capital markets shifted, their share has fallen to around 0.3% of transactions over the past three years. The math isnt as favorable now.
What, if anything, could pull more institutional capital back into the single-family housing market?
According to Dobson:
We really think the answer to that question comes in this investor adoption question, right? Will state pension funds allocate and scale to single-family rental?
The time that we’ve had to operate the [single-family] real estate has also made that core investor group aware that you can collect rents [from single-family rentals], you can provide good service, you can operate this as a piece of real estate. That track record is helpful, but the next wave of investing won’t come from the same sources of capital [private equity]. It’ll come from those core investors [like pension funds] finally saying, You know what, a 5% or 6% cash on cash return that outpaces inflation by 50 plus percent every year has a spot in my portfolio and scale.
