Another round of Epstein filesapproximately three million documentswas released January 30, and this batch included a lot of prominent names. That list included philanthropist and business magnate Bill Gates, entrepreneur Elon Musk, and author, doctor and longevity influencer Peter Attia. They were all allegedly connected to Epstein in different ways, and as a result, their mentions in the documents are varied. But its their responses that offer lessons to others in the business world about how to respond when faced with a crisis.
Dealing with one of this magnitude is no easy feat, and it requires absolute trust between a client and a crisis manager, Beverly Hills celebrity PR and crisis expert Eric Schiffer tells Fast Company.
Addressing allegations
Its true that when it comes to forward-facing events, being included in something like the Epstein files is the type of calamity a lot of leaders in the business world arent likely to be faced with. But bosses can learn from high-profile, high-stakes examples as some of the nations most powerful men grapple with allegations like these.
Gates is dealing with the fallout from an email Epstein sent to himself. In it, Epstein alleges that Gates hid a sexually transmitted disease he allegedly contracted after engaging in presumed sexual activities with Russian girls affiliated with Epstein from his then-wife, initially released a statement via spokesperson. The allegations were decried as absolutely absurd and completely false. The Microsoft founder was forced to directly address the allegations this week, telling Australian television channel 9News the claim is false and speculated that Epstein may had been attempting to blackmail him. Apparently, Jeffrey wrote an email to himself. That email was never sent, Gates added. The email is false.
Musk appears to have emailed Epstein trying to coordinate plans to visit Epstein’s private island. In one email apparently exchanged between the pair in 2012, Musk indicated he planned to bring then-wife Talulah Riley and asked, What day/night will be the wildest party on your island? The tech founder turned to X to vehemently deny he participated in any untoward behavior alongside or by way of Epstein: I have never been to any Epstein parties ever and have many times call[ed] for the prosecution of those who have committed crimes with Epstein, he wrote on January 31. The acid test for justice is not the release of the files, but rather the prosecution of those who committed heinous crimes with Epstein.
And Attia, a wellness influencer who has courted controversy over the years, appeared to exchange a series of emails with Epstein in which the pair made disparaging comments about female genitalia. A separate set of emails made it seem Attia and Epstein were together while the formers wife was in the hospital with their son. Attia denied he was not involved in any criminal activity in a lengthy statement also shared to X.
All three men have, at various points, been considered leaders within their business communities and among the great minds of our collective experience. Though Musk has already experienced a steep tumble from years past when he was revered by many, Gates and Attia are wading into some of the murkiest waters in their professional lives.
Staying truthful
Crisis PR expert Schiffer says navigating this requires absolute trust between a client and a crisis manager.
As a crisis manager, youve got to ensure you get the absolute truth from your client, he says. And then, once you have the truth, then the goal is to begin to repair whatever challenge that the facts may reveal without doing any further damage.
Unfortunately, thats the stage when a lot of clients still mess things up.
What occurs in these situations is clients that are attempting to manage their crisis can end up creating even bigger problems, because they may not reveal the entire truth, or they may obfuscate the facts, Schiffer adds. And they create all these secondary challenges.
At the core of the issue is a strong need to quickly rebuild trust with the public. In order to do that, a crisis manager has to know with complete certainty they can trust their own clientand if they find out someone is lying, the cord has to be cut immediately.
This is a place for absolute honesty, and I need to know what you’re dealing with, he says. And then if I find out that in any way that you were not 100% truthful, I’m out.
Presuming a client is being completely truthful, though, the next steps depend on the underlying facts: Part of what Gates, Musk, and Attia are dealing with is that its difficult to get all of the details out.
What’s kept this Epstein matter alive is that there’s more to reveal, Schiffer says, It’s not over yet. So all of it hasn’t gotten out, and it’s extending the story. This is a story that should have been over a long time ago, had they just released all the records.
He continues: You’ve got a lot of powerful people who are in the mix, and so you want to understand where you are in the cycle. And the cycle right now is still . . . I’d say we’re probably two-thirds through the cycle. It’s not complete, that’s for sure.
Crisis PR is a two-way street, Schiffer later explained. Its vital that theres an ethical alignment between client and manager. Some [managers] will take the perspective, well, they’re the same as a defense attorney, and a defense attorney would take on a case of charges against someone who might be seen as a pedophile or allegations against that, he said. But it’s not something that interests me.
Once honesty and alignment are in place, manager and client should work together to identify the best outcome, and then make that happen. Secondary implications, such as other details that could surface or anticipated legal parameters, will also need to be considered.
And then? You build a strategy from that, Schiffer concluded.
Known as the self-help guru whose tagline let them has encouraged millions to stop worrying what others are doing or saying, and focus on their own personal growth, has another significant lesson: dont be afraid to keep moving forward to goals.
During an interview with Norah ODonnell on CBS Sunday Morning this week, Robbins said, “If you feel stuck in your life, it doesn’t mean you’re broken. It means that what’s missing in your life is growth. And if I can get you to grow and learn in any area of your life, you start to change.”
The 57-year-old mother and former lawyerwho, at one time in her 40s, was unemployed and over a million in debtshares her motivational mindset and messages through her books, including The Let Them Theory, and the accompanying namesake podcast. Still, 15 years later, her loyalists still refer to her iconic 2011 TED Talk, “How to Stop Screwing Yourself Over.”
In this CBS interview, Robbins said we to accept change in ones life trajectory, building the comparison to sustainable needs:
“When you’re thirsty what do you need?”
“Water.”
“When you are hungry, what do you need?”
“Food.”
When youre stuck, do you know what you need? Growth.
This motivation for self-advocacy can be an astounding motivator for personal growth and change. When one accepts they are ready to move forward, do the work and make the change, positive results happen.
And theres data to back this up. Growth mindset interventions are increasing in popularity and can be effective, according to a study published in the journal Psychological Bulletin. A meta-analysis of 53 prior analyses revealed positive effects on academic outcomes, mental health, and social functioning, especially when interventions are delivered to people expected to benefit the most.
Furthermore, understanding that change is inevitable can be scary, but key to personal growth, according to an article in Psychology Today. The article offered pointers for self-growth, including to adopt a growth mindset, to engage in activities that broaden perspectives and push you out of your comfort zoneand to remind yourself of the progress youve made thus far.
All opportunities that only exist if you feel stuck.
After all, being stuck is really just a way to access your full potential:
3 questions that will help you regain momentum when youre stuck
Change is a choice: Embrace your power to transform
How to train your brain to embrace change
And, if being stuck makes you feel like youre broken or behind or a failureremind yourself of your progress, and of your end goal. Envisioning what life looks like once youve achieved your accomplishments can be a great source of motivation, whether its pursuing more education, starting a business, or changing career paths.
One quote from Robbins book sums how you can move from what you interpret as being broken, to being an achiever: You dont need anyone elses permission to be happy, to pursue your passions, express yourself more, or to live the life youve always dreamed of. The only permission you need is your own.
Last week, Google released Project Genie, a powerful new AI-powered platform for videogame design.
Project Genie, which is currently only available for Googles AI Ultra subscribers, uses AI to build virtual worlds.
That sounds interesting, if not necessarily revolutionary. Videogame developers already model and build virtual worlds all the time.
Project Genies simple concept, though, belies the techs potential impact. The new system, and the Genie 3 model behind it, have the potential to forever change how videogames are built and played.
Model the World
Most videogames today rely on a handful of game engines to render their virtual worlds so they look realistic for players.
Engines like Unreal and Unity have long dominated the space. To build a game within them, developers first create virtual spaces, populating them with 3D digital models of objects, characters, buildings and the like.
They then release players into their worlds. As a player explores, the game engine renders the currently-visible portions of the virtual world in near real-time, creating the seamless experience of wandering through a realistic environment.
Game engines revolutionized game design because they allowed developers to hand off messy and complex things like physics and lighting to the engine.
Instead of worrying about modeling how fur moves in a breeze or how fast bullets travel, they could focus on creative jobs like building delightfully scary monsters or realistic weaponry.
Game engines come with their own set of limitations, though. Although players are free to explore a world as they please, developers still generally need to create every element of that world themselves.
Todays virtual worlds are massive. Players could reportedly spend as many as 130 real-world hours exploring the worlds inside games like No Mans Sky without seeing the same part twice.
But even so, everything in that virtual world had to be put there on purpose. The worlds feel huge, but nothing in them is truly new.
Worlds on the fly
Googles new Project Genie is different. Rather than creating a world piece by piece, the new tool allows developers to upload concept art or even a simple text prompt.
Google Genie 3 model, which underlies the system, then transforms those inputs into a seamless, virtual space that players can move within.
Crucially, though, Project Genies worlds arent bounded, like the worlds of traditional game engines. Genie 3 imagines its worlds on the fly, literally creating them fresh as a player explores.
That means Genies worlds are effectively infinite. As a player reaches the bounds of the world, the Genie 3 model simply expands them, imagining new parts that have never existed before.
In an example video, Google shows a developer asking the system for an undersea world. Project Genie spins up a virtual coral reef environment, with the player controlling a realistic-looking fish.
As the fish swims around the reef, Project Genie adds new parts seamlessly. As the player-controlled fish swims upwards, the system even creates realistically-shimmery water above the virtual reef.
The user could presumably have their fish leap from the ocean into the air, and Project Genie would go right on imagining new parts of the worldperhaps an ocean landscape complete with (hopefully friendly) seagulls, buoys and boats.
Truly open worlds
Currently, Project Genie has some serious limitations. It can only perform its magic for about 60 seconds at a time, before its imagined worlds go off the rails.
Its also limited to 24 frames per secondimpossibly slow for a modern game, where FPS can easily hit 120 on a powerful computer. Practically, this means Project Genies worlds have movement thats too choppy for real world use.
Project Genies demo games also lack actual gameplay elements, like rules and goals. You can only swim around as a fish for so long before getting boredeven if the virtual reef around you is being automatically generated by an insanely powerful AI.
The bones are there, though. And the implications for the future of gaming are massive.
As the Genie 3 model improves, game designers could use it to create worlds that players could explore forever. Each time players loaded a game, theyd be experiencing something completely newand theyd never run out of territory in which to play.
Genie 3 could potentially also create bespoke models of a world, tailored to individual players. Imagine playing a game like Grand Theft Auto, but with the action taking place in your hometownwhether you live in Los Angeles or Lincoln, Nebraska.
And Genie could create entirely new kinds of gamesones where the player actively participates in building the world. Because Genie can accept prompts and imagery, players could provide input on the places theyd like to explore. Genie could then build them a custom world based on their ideas.
Traditional game designers are clearly taking note. The stocks of gaming companies like Nintendo and Roblox promptly dropped when Project Genie was announced.
So-called open world gameswhere players explore an environment for hours on end, sometimes without specific goalsare already massively popular. Making those worlds truly open and unbounded using Genie would almost certainly make the games more compellingand better selling.
For now, Project Genie is a cool demo. Soon, though, its AI magic could spell disruption for an entire industry.
The 2026 Winter Olympic Games kick off in Italy on Friday, with top athletes from across the world competing for not just any prize, but for the most expensive medals in Olympics history.
The Milano Cortina-based games come as the value of precious metals have skyrocketed, most notably gold and silver. Gold was worth about $2,500 per ounce when the Paris Summer Olympics took place in 2024.
Now, less than two years later, gold sits at just over $4,800 per ounceand even thats a significant drop from its recent record-high of about $5,600 per ounce just last week.
Silver averaged around $28 per ounce during the last Olympic games, but is now valued at about $77 per ounce. Again, this is a downturn from a high of over $121 per ounce at the end of January.
[Photo: Fondazione Milano Cortina 2026]
How much are Olympic medals worth during the 2026 winter games?
At time of writing, a rough calculation shows that each gold medal is worth about $2,176up from about $900 in Paris. Meanwhile, a silver medal is valued at about $1,245, based on the metals current worth.
Notably, the Olympic gold medals havent been pure gold in over 100 years, as CNN previously reported. Instead, they are now made up of 500 grams of silver and just six grams of gold. The silver medal is solely made of 500 grams of, well, silver.
There will be 735 Olympic medals and 411 Paralympic medals awarded during the two events. Each medal is a thickness of just 10 millimeters with an 80 millimeter diameter.
Of course, the cost of each medal is more significant for the manufacturer than the recipient (you can learn more about how the Olympic medals are made here). Olympic medals are not commonly sold and, when they are, typically go for a lot more than face value. In January, swimmer Ryan Lochte sold three gold medals for about $385,000, Swimming World reports. Previously, he sold six Olympic medals for $166,000.
Large-language models (LLMs) have taken the world by storm, but theyre only one type of underlying AI model. An under-the-radar company, Fundamental, is set to bring a new type of enterprise AI model to the masses: large tabular models, or LTMswhich could have an even bigger impact for businesses.
What are LTMs?
A major difference between LLMs and LTMs is the type of data theyre able to synthesize and use. LLMs use unstructured datathink text, social media posts, emails, etc.
LTMs, on the other hand, can extract information or insights from structured data, which could be contained in tables, for instance.
Since many enterprises rely on structured data, often contained in spreadsheets, to run their operations, LTMs could have an immediate use case for many organizations.
What does Fundamental do?
San Francisco-based Fundamental, founded roughly 18 months ago by CEO Jeremy Fraenkel, has made a public LTM model, NEXUS, which will allow organizations to tap into that data to make predictions and forecasts.
The data types in the mix could include customer behavior, information from various sensors, or myriad other thingsbut again, its all locked up in rows and columns.
If you look at what LLMs have done with unstructured data, its been amazing. But it only covers 20% of [overall] data, Fraenkel says. Thats the opportunity were going after.
Its potentially a big deal, because Fraenkel says that roughly 80% of enterprise data used by companies to make predictions and decisions is structuredmeaning that its on private servers in columns and rows, not really usable by LLMs.
You can try things with LLMs, but theyre not really adapted to do it, Fraenkel says. They dont work well with the structured data. They can work with, say, 100,000 rows. But a bank might have tens of billions of rows of data, which can overwhelm the model. Fundamental’s aim is the ability to make better predictions using that structured data.
Fundamental is also announcing that its closed a $225 million Series A funding round. The round was led by Oak HC/FT, and included participation from Battery Ventures, Valor Equity Partners, and Salesforce.
And it’s already worked out some big partnerships, too. That includes one with Amazon Web Services, meaning AWS customers can buy and deploy NEXUS directly through AWS dashboard, and even make payments using Amazon credit, and its available today. Well be fully integrated with AWS, Fraenkel says. AWS customers will have access to Fundamentals model through their existing contracts, and any company can use it out of the box.
Annie Lamont, the founder and managing partner at VC firm Oak HC/FT, which led Fundamentals Series A round, says that at first, she was a little skeptical, but that was soon replaced by excitement as to what the company could be capable of.
Werent these LLM companies, with endless capital, going to do this? Theyre not. Theyre different, she says. We knew that LLMs are great with unstructured data, but theres a hole when it comes to structured datawe hadnt heard of anybody solving the problem.
Nobody has commercialized [this type of AI model] for enterprise, so they have a good head start, she adds.
As for whats ahead? Deployment, adoption, and proliferation, Fundamental hopes. And if LTMs take off as LLMs did, theres a very high ceiling: A few years from now, every Fortune 50 will need to rely on these models to make better business decisions, Fraenkel predicts.
Work has a way of waking up parts of us we thought wed outgrown.
You can move forward professionally, take on more visible roles, and be widely regarded as capableand still find yourself unsettled by moments that seem, on the surface, fairly ordinary. A comment lingers longer than expected. A meeting leaves you tense for days. A role you worked hard to earn suddenly feels exposing rather than energizing.
When that happens, its tempting to assume something is wrong now: that youre underprepared, out of your depth, or simply not built for this level of responsibility. But often, whats being stirred up has less to do with the present moment than with experiences that shaped you much earlier in your career.
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The past isnt gone. Its patterned.
Consider Anna, a senior public health leader who had built a reputation for sound judgment and steady leadership. When she accepted a high-profile role in government, it looked like a natural next step.
Internally, it felt like a step backward.
Almost immediately, she began doubting herself in ways that were unfamiliar. She grew anxious before meetings and unusually sensitive to tone and hierarchy. After speaking, she would replay her comments, convinced shed revealed some fundamental gap.
What made this disorienting was that nothing objectively negative was happening. Her colleagues were engaged. Her supervisor was supportive. Her performance was strong.
And yet her body reacted as if the stakes were much higher.
Over time, a pattern became clear. Anna had trained in an elite graduate program where intimidation was framed as rigor. Public critique was common. Questions were treated as exposures. Authority felt unpredictable.
At the time, she adapted in ways that made sense. She became meticulously prepared. She learned to anticipate criticism before it arrived. She made herself intellectually airtight.
That strategy worked. She succeeded. She moved on.
Except that some part of her never quite did.
Her new role didnt create anxietyit activated an old internal map, one shaped in an environment where visibility carried real risk. Intellectually, she knew she belonged. Psychologically, she was responding to an earlier chapter.
This is how the past often shows up at work: not as a memory, but as a reflex.
Why some roles feel heavier than others
Psychologists have long observed that unresolved experiences dont fade with time. They flatten. They remain emotionally vivid and are reactivated when something feels familiar enoughespecially situations involving evaluation, authority, or public exposure.
In those moments, the brain doesnt reliably distinguish between then and now. The body responds as if the original stakes have returned.
This helps explain why certain roles or environments feel disproportionately taxing. Its not always about the workload or the people involved. Sometimes its about what the role resemblesearlier contexts where the cost of being visible, wrong, or unprepared felt genuinely high.
Professional life has a developmental history
We tend to think of our professional selves as separate from our psychological development. But careers have formative periods, too.
Early mentors, first failures, environments where we learned what was rewarded, punished, or ignoredthese experiences quietly shape how we lead, speak, take risks, and respond to authority years later.
Most of us already accept this logic when it comes to parenting. We know that unexamined childhood experiences can spill into how we parenthow we discipline, soothe, or overcorrect.
Professional life follows the same pattern.
Unprocessed career experiences dont show up as stories we consciously tell ourselves. They show up as leadership styles, communication habits, and emotional reflexes that can feel confusing in hindsight.
What effective leaders tend to notice
Leaders who navigate this terrain well arent necessarily the most confident or fearless. Theyre often the most curious.
They notice when a reaction feels bigger than the situation warrants. They pause before assuming the problem is a lack of skill or effort. Theyre willing to ask whether an old pattern is being activatedand whether it still fits the present context.
That kind of reflection doesnt make leaders less decisive. If anything, it tends to make them steadier. Decisions become less reactive. Authority feels less charged. Visibility becomes tolerable rather than threatening.
Letting the present have more say
This isnt about fixing yourself or endlessly revisiting the past. Most high-performing professionals are already capable, conscientious, and deeply invested in doing their work well.
Whats often missing isnt insight, but the space to notice whats being activated and to treat those reactions as information rather than directives.
Unexamined professional experiences tend to resurface indirectly: as tension, hesitation, over-effort, or a familiar sense of bracing. Its easy to mistake those signals for evidence that something is wrong now, rather than residue from an earlier context.
Over time, what tends to change isnt the absence of discomfort, but how much authority its given.
The past doesnt disappear. It simply stops running the meeting. And for many people, thats what makes work feel steadier again.
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Bobs Discount Furniture, a Connecticut-based furniture retailer backed by Bain Capital, is putting it all on the table.
The company is going public, with shares expected to begin trading on Thursday, February 5, after being priced at $17.
The retailer raised $331 million in its initial public offering (IPO). Shares will trade on the New York Stock Exchange (NYSE) under the symbol BOBS.
The IPO was originally announced last month.
The company’s retail operations are expansiveit has more than 200 locations in 26 states as of September of last year, but the East Coast is its stronghold.
Data from Renaissance Capital shows that 61% of its revenue came from stores in New England, New York, and the Mid-Atlantic.
Retail headwinds and risk factors
Bob’s listing will test investor appetite for traditional retail businesses as the space has faced headwinds. Many brick-and-mortar chains are pushing through a difficult environment and market conditions, particularly as consumers have struggled with increased prices in recent years.
Home furnishings retailers, in particular, have had a rough run lately. Chains including Circle Furniture, American Signature, and At Home have all filed for bankruptcy, along with adjacent retailers such as Bed Bath & Beyond and Big Lots.
Another important detail: Bobs sources a lot of its furniture stock from Vietnam, Thailand, Malaysia, and Cambodia, which are subject to (or could become further targeted by) the Trump administrations tariffs.
It’s a risk factor that stands out in the company’s filing with the Securities and Exchange Commission (SEC).
We may not be able to fully or substantially mitigate the impact of these or future tariffs, pass price increases on to our customers or secure adequate alternative sources of products, which would have a material adverse effect on our business, operating results and financial performance,” the filing reads.
The company has been performing well, however. It reported net revenue of more than $1.7 billion for the nine months ended September 28, 2025, which was an increase of more than 20% during that same period the year prior, per the filing. During that same period, net income rose 64%.
The Trump administration announced Wednesday that it wants to create a critical minerals trading bloc with its allies and partners, using tariffs to maintain minimum prices and defend against China’s stranglehold on the key elements needed for everything from fighter jets to smartphones.Vice President JD Vance said the U.S.-China trade war over the past year exposed how dependent most countries are on the critical minerals that Beijing largely dominates, so collective action is needed now to give the West self-reliance.“We want members to form a trading bloc among allies and partners, one that guarantees American access to American industrial might while also expanding production across the entire zone,” Vance said at the opening of a meeting that Secretary of State Marco Rubio hosted with officials from several dozen European, Asian and African nations.The Republican administration is making bold moves to shore up supplies of critical minerals needed for electric vehicles, missiles and other high-tech products after China choked off their flow in response to President Donald Trump’s sweeping tariffs last year. While the two global powers reached a truce to pull back on the high import taxes and stepped-up rare earth restrictions, China’s limits remain tighter than they were before Trump took office.The critical minerals meeting comes at a time of significant tensions between Washington and major allies over President Donald Trump’s territorial ambitions, including Greenland, and his moves to exert control over Venezuela and other nations. His bellicose and insulting rhetoric directed at U.S. partners has led to frustration and anger.The conference, however, is an indication that the United States is seeking to build relationships when it comes to issues it deems key national security priorities.While major allies like France and the United Kingdom attended the meeting in Washington, Greenland and Denmark, the NATO ally with oversight of the mineral-rich Arctic island, did not.
A new approach to countering China on critical minerals
Vance said some countries have signed on to the trading bloc, which is designed to ensure stable prices and will provide members access to financing and the critical minerals. Administration officials said the plan will help the West move beyond complaining about the problem of access to critical minerals to actually solving it.“Everyone here has a role to play, and that’s why we’re so grateful for you coming and being a part of this gathering that I hope will lead to not just more gatherings, but action,” Rubio said.Vance said that for too long, China has used the tactic of unloading materials at cheap prices to undermine potential competitors, then ratcheting up prices later after keeping new mines from being built in other countries.Prices within the preferential trade zone will remain consistent over time, the vice president said.“Our goal within that zone is to create diverse centers of production, stable investment conditions and supply chains that are immune to the kind of external disruptions that we’ve already talked about,” he said.In Beijing, Chinese Foreign Ministry spokesperson Lin Jian said in response to a question about the trading bloc that “we oppose any country undermining the international economic and trade order through rules set by small cliques.”To make the new trading group work, it will be important to have ways to keep countries from buying cheap Chinese materials on the side and to encourage companies from getting the critical minerals they need from China, said Ian Lange, an economics professor who focuses on rare earths at the Colorado School of Mines.“Let’s just say it’s standard economics or standard behavior. If I can cheat and get away with it, I will,” he said.At least for defense contractors, Lange said the Pentagon can enforce where those companies get their critical minerals, but it may be harder with electric vehicle makers and other manufacturers.
US turns to a strategic stockpile and investments
Trump this week also announced Project Vault, a plan for a strategic U.S. stockpile of rare earth elements to be funded with a $10 billion loan from the U.S. Export-Import Bank and nearly $1.67 billion in private capital.In addition, the government recently made its fourth direct investment in an American critical minerals producer, extending $1.6 billion to USA Rare Earth in exchange for stock and a repayment deal. The Pentagon has shelled out nearly $5 billion over the past year to spur mining.The administration has prioritized the moves because China controls 70% of the world’s rare earths mining and 90% of the processing. Trump and Chinese President Xi Jinping spoke by phone Wednesday, including about trade. A social media post from Trump did not specifically mention critical minerals.Heidi Crebo-Rediker, a senior fellow in the Center for Geoeconomic Studies at the Council on Foreign Relations, said the meeting was “the most ambitious multilateral gathering of the Trump administration.”“The rocks are where the rocks are, so when it comes to securing supply chains for both defense and commercial industries, we need trusted partners,” she said.Japan’s minister of state for foreign affairs, Iwao Horii, said Tokyo was fully on board with the U.S. initiative and would work with as many countries as possible to ensure its success.“Critical minerals and (their) stable supply is indispensable to the sustainable development of the global economy,” he said.
Agreements and legislation move forward
The European Union and Japan together as well as Mexico announced agreements to work with the United States to develop coordinated trade policies and price floors to support the development of a critical minerals supply chain outside of China. The countries said they would develop an agreement about what steps they will take and explore ways to expand the effort to include additional like-minded nations.Also Wednesday, the Republican-controlled House approved a bill to accelerate mining on federal land despite objections from Democrats and conservation groups that it amounted to a blank check to foreign-owned mining corporations.The bill, which next heads to the Senate, would codify Trump’s executive orders to boost domestic mining and processing of minerals important to energy, defense and other applications.
Associated Press writers Matthew Daly and Ken Moritsugu in Beijing contributed to this report.
Didi Tang, Josh Funk and Matthew Lee, Associated Press
AI coding agents are suddenly everywhere, the latest thing Silicon Valley cannot stop talking about. From venture-backed startups to splashy big tech keynotes, the promise sounds the same: just describe what you want, and the AI will build it for you. It is a seductive idea, especially in a world where software projects are notorious for moving slowly. But inside large companies, that vision is already starting to unravel.
What looks impressive in a demo often falls apart in the real world. As soon as AI-generated code runs into actual enterprise data, the problems show up. Schemas clash, governance breaks down, and a supposed breakthrough can quickly turn into a liability.
Coding agents tend to break down when theyre introduced to complex enterprise constraints like regulated data, fine-grained access controls, and audit requirements, Sridhar Ramaswamy, CEO of Snowflake, tells Fast Company.
He says most coding agents are built for speed and independence in open environments, not for reliability inside tightly governed systems. As a result, they often assume they can access anything, break down when controls are strict, and cannot clearly explain why they ran a certain query or touched a specific dataset.
This gap between what AI can write and what it actually understands is becoming one of the most expensive problems in enterprise AI. Gartner predicts that 40% of agentic AI projects will be canceled by 2027 because they lack proper governance, and only 5% of custom enterprise AI tools will ever make it into production.
Ramaswamy says the core issue in enterprise AI is writing functional code in a way that is secure, transparent, and compliant from the start. He argues that companies need to put trust, accuracy, and accountability ahead of unchecked automation, and that most coding agents today sit outside existing data governance systems instead of being built into them.
Snowflakes answer is Cortex Code, a data-native AI coding agent designed to work directly inside governed enterprise data, not as a layer sitting on top of it. It comes alongside with a newly announced $200 million partnership with OpenAI. Together, they reflect a contrarian bet that the real battle for enterprise AI will be won at the data layer.
AI Coding Agents Dont Understand Enterprise Context
Most AI coding agents are great at writing code on their own, but they struggle once that code has to run inside a real company. Large organizations live with constant constraints, from security rules and uptime demands to shared business logic that evolves over time. Agents trained mostly on public code and synthetic examples rarely absorb those realities, and the disconnect shows up almost right away.
Enterprise data also lives across data warehouses, third-party platforms, and legacy systems, and it carries layers of organizational meaning with it. Most coding agents treat that data like any other dataset, instead of the most tightly regulated asset a company has. The fallout shows up fast in production. Some enterprises say they spend weeks cleaning up AI-generated code that ignores internal data standards.
In production, agents most often fail due to poor data integration, lax identity and security permissions, and hallucination for complex code workflows,” says Arun Chandrasekaran, vice president and analyst at Gartner. “Vendors often underestimate the gap because they assume that enterprises have centralized data and codified access policies, which isnt true in most large enterprises.
Chandrasekaran adds that AI agents are embedded into developer IDEs without grounding in enterprise system semantics, which is the key reason why this issue persists. This can result in trust erosion and security exposure,” he says, “which can hinder production.
According to a CodeRabbit study, AI-generated code introduces 1.7 times more issues than human-written code, including 75% more logic errors and up to twice the security vulnerabilities, conflicting with enterprise standards. Likewise, another study found that 45% of AI-generated code samples fail security tests, posing critical web application security risks.
Ramaswamy says the most immediate consequence is slowed development. In some cases, teams quietly abandon agents altogether after early pilots fail governance checks. Even when the consequences are minor in nature, the perception of risk alone can cause organizations to roll back or freeze AI initiatives until stronger guardrails are in place, he says.
According to Anahita Tafvizi, Snowflakes chief data analytics officer, this pattern points to a deeper design problem: Many coding agents can generate technically correct code, but they do not understand how business rules are applied, how access controls limit what is allowed, or how audit requirements determine whether a system can actually be trusted once it goes live.
Meaningful enterprise innovation depends on context, she says. When an agent understands not just how to write code, but why certain controls exist and how decisions are governed, teams can build with confidence.
Snowflakes Thesis: Context Beats Cleverness
Snowflakes latest product, Cortex Code, is a data-native AI coding agent built directly into its governed data platform, rather than layered on top of it. That distinction matters. Instead of trying to guess enterprise rules from prompts, Cortex Code is designed with built-in awareness of schemas and operational constraints. The company says the goal is to make AI follow the same rules people already do.
Ramaswamy says Cortex Code is not just about producing code faster than tools like Claude Code, but about understanding the realities of enterprise environments. Its value, he argues, comes from what he calls its deep awareness of the context and constraints that shape how large organizations operate, which allows a much wider range of employees to build solutions that are safe and reliable, even without advanced technical skills.
Snowflake’s $200 million partnership with OpenAI further reinforces its architectural bet. Its a direct, first-party relationship that allows OpenAIs models to operate natively inside Snowflake, on top of enterprise data, Ramaswamy says. By bringing OpenAIs frontier model capabilities into Snowflake, we remove the operational friction of stitching together disparate tools and significantly lower the barrier to deploying advanced AI responsibly.
An Inflection Point or a Higher Bar?
Industry experts say that while Snowflake is making a big bet on a data-first approach with Cortex Code, it is far from alone. Rivals such as Databricks, Google BigQuery, and AWS Redshift are moving in the same direction, putting governance and auditability ahead of raw speed.
Experts say Snowflakes main point of differentiation is how closely Cortex Code is tied to production data. As Doug Gourlay, CEO of data stoage company Qumulo, puts it, most companies have grafted increasingly capable agents onto developer tools and then tried to manage risk after the fact. Snowflake, he says, is flipping that model by treating governance and data semantics as the foundation on which AI operates. (While rivals excel in niche strengths like machine learning flexibility or platform scale, Cortex Code is built for teams that need governed, low-maintenance AI coding directly on live enterprise data.)
Over time, this approach is likely to become table stakes. Enterprises will increasingly view AI that operates outside their governed data fabric as an unacceptable risk, regardless of how impressive its capabilities appear in isolation, says Gourlay.
Coding tools such as Anthropics Claude Code, for instance, are largely optimized for developer-centric workflows, emphasizing controls like explicit change approvals and tight IDE integrations. Claude Code, in practice, requires being combined with additional governance layers or secure platforms for enterprise compliance. Snowflake and Anthropic recently partnered to enable the direct integration of Claude models into Snowflake Intelligence and Cortex AI, allowing its models to run inside Snowflakes governed data environment.
Snowflake says its edge comes from working directly with enterprise metadata and semantic context. The company is betting that as organizations grow more cautious, they will turn away from agents that appear powerful but act unpredictably. If that proves true, those who ignore data context may define todays hype, while those who embrace it will shape what comes next.
What can viewers expect from Bad Bunny’s highly anticipated Super Bowl halftime performance? So far, all we know is that he’s expected to perform solely in Spanish, bringing Latin identity at the center of America’s most-watched television event.But Bad Bunny could reveal more details Thursday in San Francisco when the Grammy winner speaks ahead of Sunday’s game.Apple Music’s Zane Lowe and Ebro Darden will interview Bad Bunny and pregame performers beginning at 10 a.m. Pacific time on Thursday. The Puerto Rican superstar has become one of the world’s most streamed artists with albums such as “Un Verano Sin Ti” and “Debí Tirar Más Fotos,” which won album of year at Grammys Sunday night. It’s the first time an all Spanish-language album has taken home the top prize.Last year, Bad Bunny’s historic Puerto Rico residency drew more than half a million fans.Apple Music will broadcast the interview on its platform and social media sites like YouTube and Facebook.The pregame media session might reveal some details about the performance, but headliners often keep a few secrets. Rihanna sure did, waiting until her Super Bowl performance in 2023 to reveal she was pregnant with her second child.The Super Bowl will be held Sunday at the Levi’s Stadium in Santa Clara, with the Seattle Seahawks facing off against the New England Patriots.
Who else is performing at the Super Bowl?
The Super Bowl pregame show will open with several standout performers in Northern California: Charlie Puth will hit the stage to sing the national anthem, Brandi Carlile will take on “America the Beautiful” and Coco Jones will sing “Lift Every Voice and Sing.”The national anthem and “Lift Every Voice and Sing” will be performed by deaf performing artist Fred Beam in American Sign Language. Julian Ortiz will sign “America the Beautiful.”Before the game, Green Day will play a set to celebrate the 60th anniversary of the Super Bowl. The band, which has its roots in the Bay Area, plans to “Get loud!” according to lead singer Billie Joe Armstrong.In a historic first, the halftime show will include a multilingual signing program featuring Puerto Rican Sign Language, led by interpreter Celimar Rivera Cosme. All signed performances for the pregame and halftime shows will be presented in collaboration with Alexis Kashar of LOVE SIGN and Howard Rosenblum of Deaf Equality.
For more on the Super Bowl, visit https://apnews.com/hub/super-bowl
Jonathan Landrum Jr., AP Entertainment Writer
