OpenAI said Tuesday it has reorganized its ownership structure and converted its business into a public benefit corporation and two crucial regulators, the Delaware and California attorneys general, said they would not oppose the plan.
The restructuring paves the way for the ChatGPT maker to more easily profit off its artificial intelligence technology even as it remains technically under the control of a nonprofit.
Delaware Attorney General Kathy Jennings and California Attorney General Rob Bonta said in separate statements that they would not object to the proposal, seemingly bringing to an end more than a year of negotiations and announcements about the future of OpenAI’s governance and the power that for-profit investors and its nonprofit board will have over the organization’s technology.
The company also said it has signed a new agreement with its longtime backer Microsoft that gives the software giant a roughly 27% stake in OpenAI’s new for-profit corporation but changes some of the details of their close partnership.
The attorneys general of Delaware, where OpenAI is incorporated, and California, where it is headquartered, had both said theyre investigating the proposed changes.
We will be keeping a close eye on OpenAI to ensure ongoing adherence to its charitable mission and the protection of the safety of all Californians, said Bonta.
OpenAI said it completed its restructuring after nearly a year of engaging in constructive dialogue with the offices in both states.
OpenAI has completed its recapitalization, simplifying its corporate structure, said a blog post Tuesday from Bret Taylor, the chair of OpenAI’s board of directors. The nonprofit remains in control of the for-profit, and now has a direct path to major resources before AGI arrives.
AGI stands for artificial general intelligence, which OpenAI defines as highly autonomous systems that outperform humans at most economically valuable work. OpenAI was founded as a nonprofit in 2015 with a mission to safely build AGI for humanity’s benefit. It later started a for-profit arm.
Microsoft invested its first $1 billion in OpenAI in 2019 and the two companies formed an agreement that made Microsoft the exclusive provider of the computing power needed to build OpenAIs technology. In turn, Microsoft heavily used the technology behind ChatGPT to enhance its own AI products.
The two companies first revealed in January that they were altering that agreement, enabling San Francisco-based OpenAI to build its own computing capacity, primarily for research and training of models. That coincided with OpenAIs announcements of a partnership with Oracle and SoftBank to build a massive new data center in Abilene, Texas. It’s since announced more such projects planned in the U.S., Asia, Europe and South America, along with big deals with chipmakers like Nvidia, AMD and Broadcom.
But other parts of its agreements with Microsoft remained up in the air as the two companies appeared to veer further apart before reaching a tentative new agreement in September.
OpenAI had previously said its own nonprofit board will decide when AGI is reached, effectively ending its Microsoft partnership. But it now says that once AGI is declared by OpenAI, that declaration will now be verified by an independent expert panel, and that Microsoft’s rights to OpenAI’s confidential research methods will remain until either the expert panel verifies AGI or through 2030, whichever is first. Microsoft will also retain some commercial rights to OpenAI products post-AGI and through 2032.
Microsoft put out the same joint announcement about the revised partnership Tuesday but declined further comment. Its shares spiked 2% on Tuesday.
Going forward, the nonprofit will be called the OpenAI Foundation and Taylor said it would grant out $25 billion toward health and curing diseases and protecting against the cybersecurity risks of AI. He did not say over what time period those funds would be dispersed.
Robert Weissman, co-president of the nonprofit Public Citizen, said this arrangement does not guarantee the nonprofit independence, likening it to a corporate foundation that will serve the interests of the for profit.
Even as the nonprofits board may technically remain in control, Weissman said that control is illusory because there is no evidence of the nonprofit ever imposing its values on the for profit.
The Delaware attorney generals investigation focused on ensuring OpenAI put its commitment to safety first and before any financial interests. Jennings also said OpenAI promised to keep its nonprofit in control of the public benefit corporation, including the right to appoint and remove its board members.
The removal of OpenAI’s CEO Sam Altman in Nov. 2023 by the nonprofit’s board at the time and his subsequent reappointment kicked off the company’s effort to restructure.
The nonprofits board will continue to include a Safety and Security Committee, which will have the power to oversee and review OpenAIs technology development. It will even have the power to stop the release of a new product, according to the Delaware attorney generals statement.
Additionally, within a year, the nonprofits board will include at least two members who do not also serve on the public benefit corporations board.
OpenAI still faces a legal challenge from billionaire Tesla CEO Elon Musk, an early OpenAI investor who now runs his own AI firm, xAI, and has accused the startup he co-founded of betraying its original mission.
A federal judge in March denied Musks request for a court order blocking OpenAI from converting itself to a for-profit company but said she could expedite a trial to consider Musks claims.
Matt O’Brien and Thalia Beaty
In artificial intelligence, compute and data matter, but people matter more. Behind every breakthrough model, every infrastructure leap, and every revolutionary chatbot lies a shrinking pool of scientists, engineers, and mathematicians capable of building them. The defining constraint on the next decade of AI isnt just hardware: its human capital.
Across the world, a quiet arms race is unfolding for that capital. The most advanced AI firms, like OpenAI, Anthropic, DeepMind, Meta, Google, and a few in China, are no longer competing just for customers or GPUs. They are competing for brains.
The new concentration of intelligence
In the past two years, the hiring and acquisition patterns of AI companies have begun to resemble a geopolitical map. Anthropic and OpenAI lure entire research teams from Google or Meta with compensation packages approaching nine figures. Apple and Amazon, late to the party, are buying startups not for products, but for the engineers behind them. And venture capital is no longer funding ideas so much as acqui-hiring: purchasing human potential before it matures elsewhere.
Multiple analyses show that elite U.S. programs, especially Stanford, Berkeley, Carnegie Mellon, and MIT remain dominant feeders into frontier AI labs, reinforcing a tight concentration of expertise in a few firms and geographies. The result is intellectual concentration unprecedented in the history of technology.
This clustering may accelerate progress in the short term. But it also increases fragility. When innovation lives inside a handful of firms, the industry becomes monocultural. The same assumptions, ethical frameworks, and commercial incentives repeat themselves. Alternative approaches, like symbolic reasoning, hybrid models, and decentralized architectures, struggle for attention or funding.
The global scramble for minds
Meanwhile, countries are treating AI researchers the way they once treated nuclear physicists or oil engineers. The United Kingdom launched its Frontier AI Taskforce with special visas for top scientists. Canadas Global Talent Stream fast-tracks work permits for AI engineers in under two weeks. France offers tax incentives and research grants for companies that locate their labs in Paris or Grenoble.
China, faced with export controls on chips, has doubled down on human intelligence as a strategic resource. Its leading universities are producing tens of thousands of AI graduates a year, many trained on open-weight models after Washingtons hardware restrictions. As one analyst at the Carnegie Endowment put it, If you cant import compute, you import talent.
In other words: brains are the new semiconductors.
Americas self-inflicted wound
And yet, the United States, still home to most of the worlds top AI firms, is busy tightening the spigot. Donald Trumps renewed hostility toward immigration includes threats to limit, suspend, or impose heavy fees on H-1B and F-1 visas, the very programs through which thousands of AI researchers enter the country each year.
The pattern is not new. In 2020, during his previous term, Trump signed an executive order suspending key visa categories, prompting MIT Technology Review to warn that the move threatened to undercut Americas lead in artificial intelligence. The logic hasnt changed. The worlds best AI researchers are disproportionately international: roughly 60% of top AI scientists working in the U.S. were born abroad, according to the National Foundation for American Policy. Limiting their entry isnt protectionism: its strategic sabotage.
When your biggest competitive advantage is talent, closing the door to talent is a slow form of self-destruction.
The corporate paradox
Ironically, the companies that benefit from global talent the most are also the ones making that talent scarce. By offering astronomical salaries and exclusivity contracts, they create a gravitational field that pulls expertise out of universities and startups.
Academia, long the seedbed of AI progress, is now bleeding researchers to industry at an unprecedented rate. The result is a research vacuum where public institutions can no longer afford to compete. Even national labs struggle to retain talent when private firms offer multiples of government pay.
This corporate concentration of minds has another cost: intellectual homogeneity. When the same people cycle between the same companies under the same investors, the frontier of AI becomes narrower, more predictable, and less plural. The next big breakthroughs might never happen, and not because we lack compute, but because weve trained the global research community to think the same way.
The geopolitical stakes
For decades, the United States has dominated global innovation by acting as a magnet for talent. The H-1B and F-1 visa systems, for all their flaws, turned American universities and tech hubs into engines of discovery. That advantage is now at risk.
If Washington continues down the path of visa restriction, and if the industry continues to hoard rather than nurture expertise, the gravitational center of AI could shift elsewhere. Canada, the European Union, and the UAE are already competing for displaced researchers. China, meanwhile, is developing homegrown alternatives with staggering speed.
The irony is that America may lose the very thing that made its technology ecosystem unstoppable: openness. The more insular it becomes, the more it resembles the centralized systems it once out-innovated.
The ethics of scarcity
Talent concentration also raises moral questions. When a small number of corporations control the majority of global AI expertise, they effectively control which problems get solved and which are ignored.
We are already seeing this bias in practice. Billions are being poured into models that optimize productivity, marketing, and financial forecasting, while underfunded projects in climate modeling, education, and healthcare languish. AIs promise to benefit humanity is hollow if humanity doesnt have a seat at the table.
Diversity of thought, background, and geography is not a moral luxury; its a prerequisite for resilience. Homogeneous systems fail in homogeneous ways.
A new social contract for intelligence
The solution is neither regulation alone nor market freedom alone. Its a new social contract for talentone that treats human intelligence as a shared strategic resource, not a proprietary asset.
That means:
Immigration policies that attract, not repel, the worlds brightest minds.
Funding mechanisms that keep public research competitive with corporate labs.
Ethical frameworks that prevent non-competes and exclusivity contracts from turning scientists into captives.
Global cooperation that recognizes AI as a common infrastructure challenge, not a zero-sum race.
In the 20th century, nations competed for oil. In the 21st, they will compete for cognition.
A warning and a choice
The United States still holds the advantage: world-class universities, deep capital markets, and a culture of risk. But advantages erode when arrogance replaces openness.
If America turns inward, it wont just lose talent: it will lose the diversity that fuels creativity. And when the next generation of scientists chooses to work in Toronto, Paris, Madrid, or Shenzhen instead of Silicon Valley, the American century of innovation will quietly end. Not with a revolution, but with a resignation letter.
Computing power, as I said in previous articles, is important, as it is access to cheap energy, or as Europe very well knows, regulation. But the race for AI supremacy will not be won by compute, nor by energy prices or by policy alone. It will be won by whoever attracts and empowers the minds that make intelligence itself.
And right now, those minds are watching which countries still deserve them.
The latest gambling scandal to rock the NBA is about a real-world event that normal people would never have noticed. In March 2023, the 35-37 New Orleans Pelicans coasted to a 115-89 win over the Charlotte Hornets, who would go on to finish the year with a record of 27-55. The Pelicans never trailed in the game thanks largely to the play of Brandon Ingram, who notched the first triple-double of his career.
The ninth paragraph of the recap on ESPN mentions one other factor that may have contributed to the decisive margin of victory: Hornets guard Terry Rozier left the game early, complaining of a sore right foot, and did not return.
As alleged by federal prosecutors in New York, this was not a coincidence. Before the game, they say, Rozier told a childhood friend that he intended to fake an injury, thus allowing that friend to place sure-thing wagers on Roziers propsa type of bet that allows users to gamble on whether a player will accumulate more (over) or less (under) than a sportsbook-supplied total in a given statistical category.
Roziers friend then sold this information to an uncertain-but-significant number of other bettors, who collectively bet hundreds of thousands of dollars that Terry Rozier, a serviceable-but-not-spectacular guard playing in a late-season game between two perennially forgettable teams, would just happen to have an off night.
Sure enough, Rozier checked out after scoring just five points in less than ten minutes of playing time, which meant that, as promised, those under bets hit. A few days later, the bettors convened in Philadelphia to settle up. Roziers friend then drove to Roziers home in Charlotte, where they counted their cash together, according to the indictment.
Prop betsbets that a given event will or will not occur in a gameare not the only variety of cheating alleged in this scandal, which involves a cast of characters that includes current and former NBA players, enterprising sports gamblers, and Mafia associates running rigged poker games that will almost certainly be portrayed in a Netflix limited series sometime next year. But player props are at the heart of this story nonetheless, because player props will likely be at the heart of every sports betting scandal for the foreseeable future.
Props are the betting industrys single greatest threat to the legitimacy of the games fans watch, and to the public trust the leagues spent decades building. Yet because their availability makes so much money for everyone involvednot bettors, of course, but the leagues and their official sportsbook partnersno one in a position of power has much of an incentive to do anything about it.
Among bettors, props are popular because they are fun: They give casual viewers a reason to root for players they otherwise wouldnt care about, and take advantage of armchair quarterbacks fervent belief that they understand their favorite teams tendencies better than some oddsmaker ever could. But from an integrity-of-the-game standpoint, the problems with these bets are pretty intuitive.
First, in many cases, the outcome is easily manipulable by one person. A player in Roziers shoes cant guarantee that hell score a certain number of points, and he certainly cant guarantee that the Hornets will win (or lose) the game. But he can guarantee that he scores less than a certain number of points. All he has to do is remember what that number is, and to grasp at his foot and wince a little before he reaches it.
Second, the outcomes of prop bets are often inconsequential to the final score, which is what most non-bettor fans pay attention to and care about. Earlier this year, for example, regulators flagged that bettors in Ohio, New York, and New Jersey seemed unusually confident that Cleveland Guardians pitcher Luis Ortiz, in two specific games and in two specific innings, would throw a ball or hit the batter with his first pitch. Sure enough, in both instances, Ortizs deliveries were outside and in the dirt; one skipped by the catcher altogether.
Major League Baseball placed Ortiz on leave, and its investigation is ongoing. But if Ortiz was colluding with friendly bettors whom he tipped off beforehand, it is easy to see how they might have settled on this particular moneymaking strategy, which hinges on the results of a single pitch, thrown when nobody is on base, while fans who went to get beers during the break are still making their way back to their seats.
Again, by himself, a player like Ortiz cant control whether his team wins a nine-inning game. But he can control whether his first pitch of the third inning is anywhere close to the strike zone, or gets all the way to the backstop.
In the past year or so, the leagues have begun to understand the dangers that the proliferation of prop bets poses to their respective enterprises. Over the most recent MLB All-Star Break, Commissioner Rob Manfred criticized prop bets as unnecessary and particularly vulnerable to manipulation. At the NFLs request, Illinois regulators banned props on made kicks, incomplete passes, and other events where the outcome is 100% determinable by one person in one play. The NCAA has asked Congress to ban player props in college athletics; in Ohio, Governor Mike DeWine has pushed for a total ban on props in both college and pro sports, calling the market for these bets an experiment that has failed badly.
The NBA had the chance to address props last year, when Toronto Raptors reserve Jontay Porter was implicated in a Rozier-style scheme in which he removed himself from a game to ensure his under bets would hit. Shortly afterwards, NBA Commissioner Adam Silver asked sportsbooks to stop offering props on players who are, like Porter, signed to two-way or ten-day contracts, reasoning that fringe players making the least money are the most susceptible to pressure to try and supplement their incomes while they still have the chance.
But the Rozier scandal reveals the flaws inherent in trying to regulate a multibillion-dollar industry by reacting to the most recent scandal. First, the unavailability of props for players of Porters caliber would not have affected Rozier, a ten-year veteran who, when he pulled himself from that game back in March 2023, was in the first year of a four-year contract worth $96 million. And second all Silver could do was ask the sportsbooks for help, because the league only has so much control over the bets its partners do and dont take. As a result, according to NBC News, even after the Porter scandal, the league had to make the business case to the sportsbooks that prop bets on bit players like him were not lucrative enough to continue to offer.
It is true that leagues, sportsbooks, and regulators have procedures in place to try and ferret out cheating. Hours before the game from which Rozier removed himself, many sportsbooks stopped taking bets on his props after a third-party monitoring firm flagged unusual betting activity on his unders, including one bettor at one casino who wagered more than $13,000 across 30 separate bets in 46 minutes.
But the fact that these systems have caught some cheating only raises the question in fans minds of how much cheating is actually going on. If Roziers friend had been a little more circumspect about placing his betsor, at the very least, if he hadnt passed it on to God knows how many people who flooded gambling apps and casino floors, looking to get in on the actionperhaps no one would have found out.
And even if (a big if, but stay with me) these systems are as effective as leagues would like you to believe, perception is as important as reality. The more often that bettors read about scandals like this one in the news, the more often their lost wagers and bad beats will start to feel like the results of corruption that the leagues must have missed.
Already, players across sports endure harassment and receive death threats from bettors angry about a leg of their parlay that didnt hit. If you search X for the name of any underperforming player in any given game, you will get a deluge of irate all-caps tweets concluding that the fix must be in, and snitch-tagging the FBI to beg Kash Patel to open an investigation immediately.
To date, the leagues havepardon the phrasebet that the billions of dollars they make from legal gambling will make the occasional embarrassing scandal worth the trouble. (Silver recently described the NBA as learning as we go.)
For now, thats probably still true, but at some point, if betting and non-betting fans no longer trust the on-field, on-court, or on-ice product, it wont be. The question is whether the leagues will give up some of this easy money to protect what remains of their credibility, or whether they are willing to risk losing it for good.
Apple has become the third company to see its market capitalization top $4 trillion, underscoring its role as one of the leading publicly traded tech companies and making it the second most valuable company in the world. Shares of the company briefly topped $269.53 soon after trading began on Tuesday, putting it above the milestone.
Apple was the first company to top $1 trillion, $2 trillion, and $3 trillion in market capitalization. But Nvidia beat it to the $4 trillion mark, on the back of surging investor interest in artificial intelligence. That company’s staggering chip sales have boosted its stock more than 400% since October 2023.
Apples march to $4 trillion began in earnest on Oct. 20, when Loop Capital upgraded its rating from hold to buy, citing improving demand for the iPhone. In a note to investors, the firm wrote: “we are NOW at the front end of AAPLs long-anticipated adoption cycle that suggests ongoing iPhone shipment expansion through CY2027.” The stock hit an all-time high following that upgrade.
Nvidia seems to be the new market leader and on path to be the first to reach $5 trillion. But from the dizzying heights of Big Tech, things shift quickly. Microsoft, for example, was the second company to hit a market cap of $4 trillion, topping it on July 30, following a strong earnings beat. But it lost ground, sending its market cap lower than Apples for a period of time. (Microsoft surged above the milestone once more Tuesday as well.)
Trillion-dollar milestones don’t have any specific value in and of themselves. They’re visible indicators, however, of which companies are growing at impressive rates (assuming those companies maintain the levels). The first company to ever be worth $1 trillion was Petrochina, which reached the valuation briefly on its first day of trading following its 2007 IPO. But that peak coincided with a Chinese stock-market bubble and was short lived. Today, PetroChina is worth roughly one quarter of that.
Apple’s ascent to the $4 trillion club is a notable turnaround from earlier this year, when analysts were less bullish as the company struggled to keep up with its competitors. Apple also faced tariff-based manufacturing issues in China and India.
Year to date, the company’s stock has climbed nearly 10%, however. And demand for the most recent iPhone showed that, despite the economic froth of this year, pervasive recessionary threats and tariff concerns, consumers are still willing to buy top-tier devices. (The high-end iPhone 17 Pro now starts at $1,099, $100 more than the previous year’s model.)
Additionally, the base model of the iPhone 17 has been selling well in China, while the iPhone Air sold out when it went on sale in that country. Lead times for iPhone 17 orders are longer than they were a year ago as well, underscoring strong, continued consumer demand.
What’s perhaps most remarkable about Apple making it into the $4-trillion club is that it has done so without a real artificial intelligence play. (Its AI efforts have, so far, not impressed anyone, including the company.) In January, Apple suspended its news summary notifications from Apple Intelligence, after users called out for making repeated mistakes.
The company is expected to roll out a long-delayed AI-enhanced Siri in the spring of 2026, assuming it meets the company’s standards. That could be another catalyst for investors that gives Apple’s stock (and market cap) another boost.
The takeaway of Apple crossing this milestone, though, is that, for investors and consumers, new hardware and improved features are, at the moment, even more important than AI.
In many ways, renowned illusionist Rob Lakes entire life has been building up to his Broadway debut in Rob Lake Magic with Special Guests The Muppets, which begins previews tonight at the Broadhurst Theatre.
As a child growing up in Oklahoma, his parents exposed him to theater by taking him to touring shows. The education didnt stop there.
When they took me to New York, my first Broadway shows were The Secret Garden, The Will Rogers Follies, and Beauty and the Beast, ” Lake tells Fast Company. I was just so fortunate to be exposed to the arts quite often as a kid.
This early education included the Muppets and their films. I wore those tapes out so many times. The Muppets Take Manhattan was my favorite, Lake explains.
This is especially fitting since Lake is now essentially living the plot of the 1984 film, which revolves around Kermit the Frog and friends and their madcap efforts to mount a musical on the Great White Way.
These characters, they’ve been part of my life for as long as I can remember. And I wouldn’t be in show business without them,” Lake says. “Kermit and the gang taught me what show business is, success is, how to follow your dreams and how to persevere. That’s not just a sound bite.”
Where the magic happens
Lake has great respect and reverence for Jim Henson and Walt Disney, childhood heroes of his.
At age 10, a magic show in Branson, Missouri, would clarify his life trajectory and give him a clear goalto become a world renowned illusionist.
At just 42 years old, Lake has certainly accomplished that and more. He has performed to sold-out audiences in over 60 countries and made numerous television appearances.
ABC dubbed him one of the worlds top Illusionists while NBC crowned him the worlds greatest illusionist.
In 2008, he became the youngest person ever to be given the Merlin Awardas International Stage Magician of the Year. This is magics highest honor, similar to an actor winning an Oscar.
Beyond performing, he worked as a creative consultant on multiple Broadway productions, such as Death Becomes Her. He also worked at Sesame Street Live, Walt Disney Imagineering, and as the creative consultant and illusion designer for Adele’s Las Vegas Residency at Caesars Palace.
In 2018, he competed on America’s Got Talent.
One of the questionnaires where they’re trying to get your backstory asked you to name a celebrity that you’re similar to or you relate to,” Lake recalls. “And my response to that was Kermit the Frog.”
Shortly after this, he met producer Joe Quenqua. (Lake, Quenqua, and Glass Half Full Productions all serve as producers on Rob Lake Magic with Special Guests The Muppets.)
Quenqua, who previously worked for the Walt Disney Company, had Muppet connections. When we discussed bringing Robs show to Broadway, we spoke about his early inspirations and what drove him to be a performer,” Quenqua says. “The Muppets were at the very top of this list.”
After an introduction from Quenqua, all the pieces fell into place to have Lake join forces with Kermit and the gang.
The creativity and the vision and the idea for that came at the right time, the right place,” Lake says. “Just everything aligned perfectly when that happened.
“Surreal and humbling”
Rob Lake Magic with Special Guests The Muppets officially opens on November 6 after beginning previews tonight. It will have a limited 12-week run.
Both Lake and Quenqua are acutely aware that they are fulfilling a dream that the late Jim Henson didnt live long enough to accomplish.
I’d had no idea until the documentary by Ron Howard that Jim had been wanting to get this to Broadway, Lake revealed. It really struck a chord with me, because when I saw that documentary, I had already been working on my show with the Muppets, and it just really hit methe gravity and reverence of this.
Quenqua called fulfilling Hensons legacy, both surreal and humbling.
A good magician never reveals his tricks, especially not before opening night, but Lake was able to give some hints on what audiences may be able to expect. Lake has curated my favorite illusions, the culmination of my entire life’s work, to be able to bring my best magic to Broadway.
These greatest hits represent years of work, trial and error, and perseverance.
Adding the Muppets into his illusions was a fun challenge for Lake.
I think I was really well prepared just because of my childhood obsession with the Muppets, he says. I had a really good understanding of how they filmed and how they operated. I was able to design illusions that could incorporate my whole life’s memories, research, and studying of the process for them.
He took special care to incorporate their specific character traits into the show.
“Magic is not about being tricked”
Lake says his show is going to take the audience on a journey filled with peaks and valleys and highs and lows.
He compared it to an orchestral piece with contrasting movements, saying Not every part of my show is light and fun, and not every part of my show is mysterious and intense.”
“For me, magic is not just about being tricked,” he added. “No one likes to be tricked. No one likes to be fooled. For me, magic is about creating wonder and enchantment: a scene, a world, an emotion and experience where anything can happen.”
The Broadhurst, he says, offers the perfect backdrop for this magical 90-minute theatrical event: It’s very intimate, even though it’s one of the largest theaters. Everyone will be able to see myself and Kermit really well.”
When asked what he would want Jim Henson to notice about the show if he could come back and see it, Lake replied, I would just want to make sure I did him proud. I would just want to make sure I took care of the world he created. And I would want him to know that the Muppets are as beloved and cherished and celebrated as they always have been.
Quenqua, meanwhile, would want Henson to know how hard Lake worked to honor his legacy: I would hope that he sees how much love and reverence Rob has for him and all he created.”
I’ve been preparing for this moment my whole life,” Lake says, “before I even knew it.”
If I were to grade the five boxes across every Strategy Choice Cascade that I have ever seen, the How-to-Win (HTW) box would get the lowest gradeeven lower than Enabling Management Systems, which is the least understood box. To remedy the weakness, I am dedicating this Playing to Win/Practitioner Insights (PTW/PI) to Why the How-to-Win Strategy Choice is So Hard: How to Overcome the Challenge. And as always, you can find all the previous PTW/PI here.
Key feature of weak HTW choices
I have talked extensively about the key weakness of HTW choices both in a previous piece in this series, From Laudable List to How to Really Win, and in my viral video, A Plan is Not a Strategy. The weakness is that the so-called HTW is in fact a list of initiatives, one that doesnt pass the key test of strategy: Is the Opposite of Your Choice Stupid on its Face? That is, it is a set of things that are utterly sensible but dont add up to a strategy that wins, and therefore wont compel desired customer action. Considered another way, it is a list of pixels, not a portrait.
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This, by the way, is a core problem manifested in the popular strategy tool called the OGSMwhich stands for Objectives, Goals, Strategy, and Measures. As I have discussed before in this series, P&G is known for its use of the OGSM for strategy and since I am known for my longtime involvement with P&G, people think that either OSGM is my tool, or I am a proponent of it. Neither is true. I had nothing to do with the development of the tool, and I find it not to be a tool for good strategyespecially for HTW. In the classic OGSM, the S is a list of initiatives, generally called “strategies”a term I hate (which I explain in this piece)! I had to work hard (along with AG Lafley) at P&G to convert the S in OGSM to something usefuland related to strategy.
Why is How-to-Win so weak?
I think there are at least four reasons why HTW is so generically weak.
Unhelpful Top-of-the-Cascade Choices
Logically, Winning Aspiration (WA) and Where-to-Play (WTP) sit before HTW in the Strategy Choice Cascade. In this respect, they set the context for HTWand they generally dont set it particularly well.
WA choices err in one of two unhelpful ways.
First, WA is often unrealistic. We aspire to be the best IT company in world. We aspire to be the most innovative company in the world. For some companies, these may be fully realistic WAs for which there are entirely plausible HTWs. But for most, there is no plausible HTW for such an over-the-top WA, so whatever the company puts in its HTW box, it cant match with the WA. For example, if you are a modestly sized company, chances are that you wont be able to spend the resources necessary to be either the best IT or most innovative company in the world. Given the impossibility of the task, you will be lost in coming up with a robust HTW.
The second error is a WA made up of vague, platitudinous statements. We aspire to be a caring company. We aspire to elevate the worlds consciousness. What do those even mean? These provide little or no context for the WTP/HTW choices that follow and are unhelpful to crafting a great HTW.
With respect to WTP choices, they are unhelpful to HTW choices when they are unlinkedwhich is frequently the case. Far too typically, management contemplates WTP independently of HTW and picks the WTP that look most lusciousit is large, it is growing, it features high margins, etc. Unfortunately, that WTP inevitably looks luscious to many other competitors as well. Because of the intense competition for that luscious WTP, when it comes to determining a HTW for it, there simply isnt one for the company in question. There are lots of how-to-play options available to play like one of the other enthusiastic participantsand one of these blah options becomes the misnamed “HTW.”
This sort of thing often happens with “fighting brands.” The scenario is that a differentiated player doesnt like the incursion of an effective low-cost player into its market that creates dramatic growth in the low-price segment of its market. So, it adds this segment to its WTP. But every single time I have seen this, the HTW is really a blah how-to-playand an unprofitable one at that.
It is harder than the other four questions
You have wide latitude of what you say on your WA. You can say practically anything. Similarly, for WTP, you can pick anything because with few exceptions, no one can stop you from playing in a place of your choosing. Must-have Capabilities (MHC) are not terribly hard to identify when you have done the first three boxesthough if you havent done them well, you will end up identifying MHC that you are incapable of building. And similarly, once you have identified your MHC, it isnt terribly challenging to identify the Enabling Management Systems (EMS) that you would have to put in place to build and maintain the MHC.
But for HTW, there is a high bar. You must be superior to everyone lse in your chosen WTP to have a genuine HTW. That means developing a plausible theory for how you will be competitively distinctive. How-to-play is easy because it is a low bar. HTW is hard because the definition is tighter and more challenging.
Management delusion
The fact that it is hard leads to delusion when it comes to HTW. My friend and colleague Michael Porter often remarked that the dream of many executives is to do the same as every other company but get superior results. Sadly, like Mike, I have seen this often. There is a relatively widespread belief that if a company does the same things as competitors but just tries harder, it will earn superior and attractive returns. It would be nice if that were truebut it just isnt. The others try hard, too!
Unhelpful supporting systems
The systems outside the company that should support strong HTW choices dont. The capital markets generally mete out greater punishments for unique choices that dont work out well than they do for making no interesting choices whatsoever. They love blah sameness. Business schools dont teach students how to generate creative strategy choices but rather how to analyze data as a managerial technocrat. And strategy consulting firms do very little real strategy anymore because it is a much smaller and less profitable business than overhead cost reduction, post-merger integration, and digital transformation. Net, there is very little either encouragement or support for high-quality HTW choices in strategy.
What to do about it
There are four things that you can do to improve the quality of your HTW choices.
Recognize the playing field
Internalize the reality that the supporting systems arent supportive. Dont be discouraged by the reality. Recognize that the capital markets will be net negative, business schools unhelpful, and strategy consulting firms expensive and unhelpful. Recognize that you will have to build your skills with little outside help. This is the biggest reason that I write this seriesto provide practical help when there is little out there to be found.
And drop the delusion. Dont waste precious time and resources on replicating competitors and hoping for terrific results. Such results arent just around the corner.
Show restraint on the front end
Dont believe that you can lock and load on your WA before proceeding to the other choices. Just develop a general idea of what kind of WA would be interesting and inspiring and then park it for further work and refinement when you have considered the other four choices.
Dont ever make your WTP choice independently of HTW. I keep making this argument as strenuously as I can, including in this seriesOn the Inseparability of Where-to-Play and How-to-Win: Why Thinking about them Independently will Wreck your Strategy. The subtitle is not an exaggeration! Nonetheless, strategy teams still make lists of WTP and pick a luscious one before proceeding to HTW.
As I have written previously in this series, there is lots of strategic leverage in WTP, but only if it is paired with a great HTW with each complementing the other perfectly.
Buckle up for hard thinking
Recognize that HTW is a tough task and buckle up. It doesnt just pop out of a slew of analyses. And it isnt the summation of a list of consensus initiatives. It is a theory of advantage: how we are going to perform sustainably better than competitors. It isnt easy to create a unique new theory. So, it is unlikely that you will get it on your first iteration. It will be a journey and not a quick or easy one. Remember while you are on that journey that a winding road is a feature, not a bugthat is, it is a feature of the development of a HTW worth having.
Search along multiple vectors
Dont jump quickly onto a single HTW theory. Source theories broadly and keep multiple theories in play. I have discussed three search vectorsanalogies, trade-offs and anomaliesin a previous piece in this series. Search across all three for unique HTWs. Dont worry at all if you havent got lots of data early on to support your theories. You dont want to kill possibilities early. They need to be nurturedand stress-tested ever more intensively over time using the Strategic Choice Structuring Process (laid out in the piece).
Practitioner insights
To be a great strategist, you need to master HTW. A strategy cant be great without a great heart of strategythe WTP/HTW combinationand of course that pair cant be great without a uniquely powerful and well-matched HTW. Done poorly, HTW undermines strategymaking it into a blah playing to play. And frankly, life is too short for you to waste years of your worklife playing to play.
HTW is the hardest part of strategy. Help yourself by treating it as such. Impatience isnt helpful to you in creating a powerful HTW. Taking the necessary time is.
Dont undermine your effort by setting the bar low to make the task easier. Set the bar high at a theory of sustainable advantage.
Go broad before narrowing. Iterate before settling. You can do this!
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Multiple Twin Sisters Creamery cheese products have been recalled following an E. coli outbreak in Washington and Oregon. To date, two adults and one child have reported illnesses linked to the outbreak.
On October 25, 2025, Twin Sisters Creamery recalled Whatcom Blue, Farmhouse, Peppercorn, and Mustard Seed varieties of its 2.5-pound round cheese wheels. The cheese wheels were sent to distributors in Washington and Oregon. Some products were further distributed to retail stores for repacking or sold as pre-cut, half-moon-shaped pieces.
The products are made with raw, unpasteurized milk and may be contaminated with Shiga toxin-producing Escherichia coli (STEC) and Escherichia coli O103.
Third-party testing of Farmhouse cheese samples confirmed the presence of E. coli O103. Whatcom Blue samples analyzed by the FDA and the Washington State Department of Agriculture tested positive for E. coli STEC.
On October 26, 2025, Washington State-based food distributor Peterson Company recalled half-moon-shaped pieces of Farmhouse, Whatcom Blue, and Twin Sisters Creamery cheeses after Twin Sisters Creamery notified them of the three reported STEC infections.
The FDA published the Twin Sisters Creamery and Peterson Company recall notices on October 27, 2025. Heres what you need to know.
[Photos: via FDA]
Which products are included in the recalls?
The following Twin Sisters Creamery products have been recalled:
2.5-pound Whatcom Blue cheese wheels
2.5-pound Farmhouse cheese wheels
2.5-pound Peppercorn cheese wheels
2.5-pound Mustard Seed cheese wheels
Roughly 5 to 6-ounce half-moon-shaped pieces of Whatcom Blue cheese
Roughly 5 to 6-ounce half-moon-shaped pieces of Farmhouse cheese
The 2.5-pound round cheese wheels were shipped to distributors in Washington and Oregon between July 27, 2025, and October 22, 2025. The cheese wheels may also have been further distributed to retail stores for repacking or sold as pre-cut, half-moon-shaped cheese pieces with different lot numbers and expiration dates.
The recalled 2.5-pound round cheese wheels have the following batch codes:
Batch Code 250527B Whatcom Blue
Batch Code 250610B Whatcom Blue
Batch Code 250618B Whatcom Blue
Batch Code 250624B Whatcom Blue
Batch Code 250603F Farmhouse
Batch Code 250616B Farmhouse
Batch Code 250603P Peppercorn
Batch Code 250616M Mustard Seed
The recalled half-moon-shaped cheese pieces were packaged in clear wrap and distributed to retailers and food businesses, including caterers, distributors, and restaurants, in Colorado, Idaho, Oregon, and Washington between August 14, 2025, and October 24, 2025.
They have the following manufacturer codes printed or them or on a sticker:
Item# 28855 Whatcom Blue MFG Code 793511
Item# 28855 Whatcom Blue MFG Code 781511
Item# 28855 Whatcom Blue MFG Code 775511
Item# 28855 Whatcom Blue MFG Code 761511
Item# 29608 Farmhouse MFG Code 765511
Item# 29608 Farmhouse MFG Code 752511
Item# 29608 Farmhouse MFG Code 738511
Item# 29608 Farmhouse MFG Code 726511
Do not consume the recalled products.
Consumers who have purchased any of the recalled products should return them to the place of purchase for a full refund.
If you have questions, call Twin Sisters Creamery at 360-656-5240 or Peterson Company at (800) 735-0313, extension 2101.
Three infections linked to the E. coli outbreak
There have been three reports of STEC infections caused by E. coli O103 to date, one in Oregon and two in Washington. One of the three reported infections involved a young child.
An infected Oregon resident consumed Twin Sisters Creamery Farmhouse cheese before becoming ill. The Washington State Department of Health, Oregon Health Authority, and federal authorities are investigating the outbreak.
E. coli can cause STEC infections
You can get an STEC infection by eating foods contaminated by E. coli.
Symptoms may include diarrhea, stomach cramps, or blood in the stool. Symptoms typically appear 1 to 10 days after exposure.
The FDA recall notices explain that STEC infection can lead to Hemolytic Uremic Syndrome (HUS), which is a life-threatening condition that can cause kidney failure and have fatal complications. HUS is particularly dangerous for young children, elderly adults, and immunocompromised people.
UnitedHealth on Tuesday raised its annual profit forecast and said it aims to grow in 2026, in a sign that the turnaround efforts under new CEO Stephen Hemsley were gaining steam.
Shares of the company rose more than 5% in premarket trading after the company reported better-than-expected quarterly earnings as the U.S. health insurer kept medical costs in check.
The company had set a far lower profit forecast in July after suspending its prior outlook in May, which had sent its shares reeling.
The healthcare giant now sees 2025 adjusted profit per share to be at least $16.25, compared with its previous estimate of at least $16.00, and above analysts estimate of $16.20 per share, according to data compiled by LSEG.
“We remain focused on strengthening performance and positioning for durable and accelerating growth in 2026 and beyond, and our results this quarter reflect solid execution toward that goal,” said newly returned CEO Hemsley.
Hemsley, who was at the helm of the company from 2006 to 2017, has been working to regain investor and consumer trust in the wake of an unexpected surge in medical costs and Americans’ anger at the high price of health care.
He was brought in earlier this year as part of a management shakeup and has since replaced several long-time executives.
UnitedHealth said it continues to see elevated costs, which the industry has been struggling with for more than two years.
For the third quarter ended September 30, the company’s medical loss ratio the percentage of premiums spent on medical care stood at 89.9%, in line with the company’s expectations. Insurers aim for a ratio close to around 80%.
Analysts on average had expected the company to report a ratio of 89.87%.
Shares of peers CVS Health, Humana and Elevance rose about 2% before the bell.
UnitedHealth’s quarterly revenue at its Optum health services unit was flat year-over-year at $25.9 billion.
Revenue at Optum Rx, UnitedHealth’s pharmacy benefit manager, rose 16% to $39.7 billion, partly helped by higher prescription volumes.
On an adjusted basis, the company earned a profit of $2.92 per share for the quarter, beating analysts’ average estimate of $2.79.
Sriparna Roy and Sneha S K, Reuters
Bill Gates thinks climate change is a serious problem but it won’t be the end of civilization. He thinks scientific innovation will curb it, and it’s instead time for a “strategic pivot” in the global climate fight: from focusing on limiting rising temperatures to fighting poverty and preventing disease.A doomsday outlook has led the climate community to focus too much on near-term goals to reduce emissions of carbon dioxide and other greenhouse gases that cause warming, diverting resources from the most effective things that can be done to improve life in a warming world, Gates said. In a memo released Tuesday, Gates said the world’s primary goal should instead be to prevent suffering, particularly for those in the toughest conditions in the world’s poorest countries.If given a choice between eradicating malaria and a tenth of a degree increase in warming, Gates told reporters, “I’ll let the temperature go up 0.1 degree to get rid of malaria. People don’t understand the suffering that exists today.”The Microsoft co-founder spends most of his time now on the goals of the Gates Foundation, which has poured tens of billions of dollars into health care, education and development initiatives worldwide, including combating HIV/AIDS, tuberculosis and malaria. He started Breakthrough Energy in 2015 to speed up innovation in clean energy.He wrote his 17-page memo hoping to have an impact on next month’s United Nations climate change conference in Brazil. He’s urging world leaders to ask whether the little money designated for climate is being spent on the right things.Gates, whose foundation provides financial support for Associated Press coverage of health and development in Africa, is influential in the climate change conversation. He expects his “tough truths about climate” memo will be controversial.“If you think climate is not important, you won’t agree with the memo. If you think climate is the only cause and apocalyptic, you won’t agree with the memo,” Gates said during a roundtable discussion with reporters ahead of the release. “It’s kind of this pragmatic view of somebody who’s, you know, trying to maximize the money and the innovation that goes to help in these poor countries.”
Climate scientists say every fraction of a degree of warming matters
Every bit of additional warming correlates to more extreme weather, risks species extinction and brings the world closer to crossing tipping points where changes become irreversible, scientists say.University of Washington public health and climate scientist Kristie Ebi said she thoroughly agrees with Gates that the U.N. negotiations should focus on improving human health and well-being. But, she said, Gates assumes the world stays static and only one variable changes faster deployment of green technologies to curb climate change. She called that unlikely.Jeffrey Sachs, director of the Center for Sustainable Development at Columbia University, called the memo “pointless, vague, unhelpful and confusing.”“There is no reason to pit poverty reduction versus climate transformation. Both are utterly feasible, and readily so, if the Big Oil lobby is brought under control,” he wrote in an email.Stanford University climate scientist Chris Field said there is room for a healthy discussion about whether the current framing of the climate crisis is typically too pessimistic.“But we should also invest for both the long term and the short term,” he wrote in an email. “A vibrant long-term future depends on both tackling climate change and supporting human development.”Princeton University climate scientist Michael Oppenheimer said he doesn’t dispute the principle of making human well-being the primary objective of policy, but what about the natural world?“Climate change is already wreaking havoc there,” he wrote in an email. “Can we truly live in a technological bubble? Do we want to?”Gates is clear in his memo that every tenth of a degree of warming matters: “A stable climate makes it easier to improve people’s lives.”
Carbon dioxide pollution is increasing
A decade ago, the world agreed in a historic pact known as the Paris agreement to try to limit human-caused warming to 1.5 degrees Celsius (2.7 degrees Fahrenheit) since pre-industrial times. The goal: to stave off nastier heat waves, wildfires, storms and droughts.In a 2021 book, Gates laid out a plan for reducing emissions to avoid a climate disaster. But humans are on track to release so much greenhouse gas by early 2028 that scientists say crossing that 1.5-degree threshold is now nearly unavoidable.Breakthrough Energy focuses on areas where the cost of doing something cleanly is much higher than the polluting way, such as making clean steel and cement. Gates concluded his memo by saying governments should work toward driving this difference to zero, and be rigorous about measuring the impact of every effort in the world’s climate agenda.
Gates is optimistic innovation will curb climate change
Gates said the pace of innovation in clean energy has been faster than he expected, allowing cheap solar and wind energy to replace coal, oil and natural gas plants for electricity and averting worst-case warming scenarios. Artificial intelligence is helping accelerate advances in clean energy technologies, he added.At the same time, money to help developing countries adapt to climate change is shrinking. Led by the United States, rich countries are cutting their foreign aid budgets. President Donald Trump has called climate change a hoax.Gates criticized the aid cuts. He said Gavi, a public-private partnership started by his philanthropic foundation that buys vaccines, will have 25% less money for the next five years compared to the past five years. Gavi can save a life for a little more than $1,000, he added.Vaccines become even more important in a warming world because children who aren’t dying of measles or whooping cough will be more likely to survive when a heat wave hits or a drought threatens the local food supply, he wrote.Health and prosperity are the best defense against climate change, Gates said, citing research from the University of Chicago Climate Impact Lab that found projected deaths from climate change fall by more than 50% when accounting for the expected economic growth over the rest of this century.Under these circumstances, he thinks the bar must be “very high” for what’s funded with aid money.“If you have something that gets rid of 10,000 tons of emissions, that you’re spending several million dollars on,” he said, “that just doesn’t make the cut.”
AP Writer Seth Borenstein in Washington contributed to this report.
The Associated Press’ climate and environmental coverage receives financial support from multiple private foundations. AP is solely responsible for all content. Find AP’s standards for working with philanthropies, a list of supporters and funded coverage areas at AP.org.
Jennifer McDermott, Associated Press
Recently, there has been a rise in reports from consumers that some physical retail stores are running low on pennies, making it difficult for cashiers to give customers exact change.
This week, many social media users reported that one of America’s largest grocery store chains, Kroger, was asking customers to use exact change. This has led many to wonder if there is a national penny shortage.
The answer is more complex than just a simple yes or no. Heres what you need to know.
What’s happened?
Numerous reports this week said customers at Kroger stores were greeted with signs asking them to provide exact change when paying in cash.
Among the reports was one from the Cincinnati Enquirer, which said that these signs were posted at the company’s 103 stores in the Cincinnati/Dayton Division.
“The U.S. Treasury has stopped production of pennies, which is now impacting supply,” the signs read. “If using cash for payment, please consider providing exact change.”
Reached for comment by Fast Company, a Kroger spokesperson confirmed the move. “We continue to assess the impact of the U.S. Treasurys decision to end penny production,” the spokesperson said.
These signs, along with a growing number of other reports on social media, have contributed to speculation about an American penny shortage.
Is there a penny shortage?
Without a doubt, the availability of the penny seems to be decreasing. However, according to the American Bakers Association (ABA), there isnt currently a penny shortage in the traditional sense.
Rather, there is a slowing of the circulation of pennies throughout Americas banks and retailers. And theres a reason for this.
In February, President Trump announced on Truth Social that he had instructed U.S. Treasury Secretary Scott Bessent to stop producing new pennies.
For far too long the United States has minted pennies which literally cost us more than 2 cents, Trump wrote, adding, Let’s rip the waste out of our great nations budget, even if it’s a penny at a time.
And the Treasury did as Trump instructed.
As the ABA notes, the U.S Mint, which is responsible for minting Americas currency, reportedly stopped production and delivered their last shipment of new pennies in August.
That means no new pennies have been minted in two months. Still, the ABA estimates that there are about 250 billion pennies still in circulation. So why are they reportedly getting harder to come across?
Its because many people dont like carrying around the 1-cent coins. They take up too much space in a wallet or purse, so people just tend to leave them in drawers, jars, or car cupholders.
This means that, unlike most dollar bills, a significant amount of the existing pennies that are out there dont reenter circulation.
When no new pennies are being minted, and enough existing pennies arent reentering circulation, it can lead to an absence of an adequate amount of change at banks and in cash registers.
This is responsible for the penny shortage some retailers and customers are now beginning to see.
Why does Trump want to get rid of the penny?
Its not just Trump who wants to get rid of the penny. A YouGov poll from earlier this year found that more Americans now support eliminating the coin rather than saving it.
Pennies can be inconvenient. You need need a hundred of them or more just to buy something simple, like a can of soda. And carrying a hundred pennies around in a purse, wallet, or pocket can be cumbersome.
As for Trump, he is correct that the penny coin actually costs more than 1-cent to make. A 2024 report from the U.S. Mint revealed that the U.S. government lost more than $83 million in 2024 producing the penny.
This is because though the penny has a face value of only 1-cent, it had a total unit cost of $0.0369 per coin in 2024. Thats over 3.5x its face value.
In other words, the penny is both disliked by some consumers and doesnt make financial sense from a minting standpoint. No wonder so many people want to see it go.
Can Trump actually kill the penny?
While the U.S. Treasury and U.S. Mint have followed Trumps instructions to stop producing the penny, the penny remains legal tender in America. And most experts seem to agree that Trump cant just end the pennys life by dictate.
As New York Magazine noted in May, killing off the penny likely requires an act of Congress, since Congress controls the specifications of Americas currency. However, both houses of Congress have reportedly introduced bills to kill off the penny since Trump issued his decree.
The ABA itself notes that the decision to eliminate the penny lies with Congress and the President, as the Constitution gives Congress the authority to coin money.
But it adds that The banking industry is prepared to support whatever policy is enacted and will ensure a smooth transition if the penny is officially phased out.
Can I still get exact change if there are no pennies available?
Given that so many items in America are priced at one penny short of a whole dollarbefore taxits no surprise that if there is a penny shortage, stores may have trouble giving consumers their exact change.
But if this is indeed the case, the ABA says that banks and retailers may temporarily round cash transactions to the nearest five cents since nickels are widely available. This means the customer may save a few centsor pay a few cents moredepending on which way the rounding goes.
However, the price of online transactions, as they are all electronic, shouldnt be impacted at all.
