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Cyberattacks are on the rise, and artificial intelligence is making it easier for bad actors to scam individuals and businesses alike. In response, Visa is launching a new initiative that offers businesses tailored data to better combat cybercrime. Today, August 6, Visa unveils its new Cybersecurity Advisory Practice, providing customers and businesses with access to advanced tools designed to protect against the growing threat of cybercrime. Over the past year, the digital payments giant says it has invested billions in cybersecurity infrastructure and enhanced its global payments network by deploying generative AI to detect and block fraud. With its latest initiative, Visa plans to share those capabilities directly with clients to address mounting concerns around information security in the AI era. The new practice will leverage Visas internal fraud-fighting insights and adapt them to meet the specific needs of each business. Utilizing AI and drawing from a team of 2,000 consultants, data scientists, and product experts, Visa aims to help clients defend against increasingly sophisticated cyberattacks. Visas Cybersecurity Advisory Practice emerged from what Carl Rutstein, the companys global head of advisory services, describes as a clear need from clients for deeper, more proactive support amid a rapidly evolving threat landscape. As online commerce grows, so does cybercrime. There has been a nearly 300% increase in internet fraud just over the last few years, he tells Fast Company, prompting businesses to seek new ways to proactively identify, evaluate, and obviously mitigate emerging cyber threats. According to cybersecurity and compliance firm VikingCloud, cybercrime could cost businesses as much as $10.5 trillion by years end, and up to $15.63 trillion by 2029. The FBI reported that in 2024 the top three internet crimes were phishing/spoofing, extortion, and personal data breaches. Cybercriminals are increasingly turning to AI, using it to crack passwords, manipulate or poison data, and create deepfakes. Rutstein says fraud has escalated as bad actors adopt AI to exploit the financial system. Visa, he notes, blocked $14 million in presumed fraud in 2024a 30% increase over 2023. The Cybersecurity Advisory Practice is intended to build on Visas current payment ecosystem, offering services such as dark web threat detection, vulnerability testing, enumeration defense, employee training, and cybersecurity maturity assessments. Other digital payments providers are also responding to the growing threat. Just last month, Mastercard announced its Security Solutions Program, which includes financial investments in startups that are developing cybersecurity and fraud prevention technologies. Much like Mastercards strategy of investing in next-gen security, Visa says its approach focuses on advising businesses of all sizes directly, emphasizing a proactive, rather than reactive, stance. We built it to just help our clients, Rutstein said. We do exactly what you would expect an advisory firm connected to a network to be doing, and therefore these are resources and capabilities that are available.
Category:
E-Commerce
Two of the tech industrys AI hardware companies are seeing their share prices drop after they reported their most recent quarterly earnings after the closing bell yesterday. The stock prices of Super Micro Computer, Inc. (Nasdaq: SMCI) and Advanced Micro Devices, Inc. (Nasdaq: AMD) are down significantly over investor fears that artificial intelligence-related growth is lagging expectations. Heres what you need to know. Supermicro misses expectations Shares in Super Micro Computer (aka Supermicro) are trading sharply lower in premarket as of the time of this writing. Currently, SMCI shares are down more than 16.2% to $47.95. The reason for this dramatic stock price drop has everything to do with the companys just-announced Q4 2025 results. The server maker announced Q4 net sales of $5.8 billion, which was up significantly from the $4.6 billion it posted in Q3. Net income for the quarter was $195 million, which was also up from Q3, when the company posted $109 million in net income. Finally, its Q4 earnings per share (EPS) were 41 cents, up from 31 cents in Q3. So if Supermicro’s results were up over the last quarter, why is the stock falling? Its a combination of expectations and sales that fall short of past quarters. While Supermicro posted net income of $195 millionaround $86 million more than the previous quarterthat was down from its $297 million in net income during the same quarter a year earlier. As noted by CNBC, the year-over-year Q4 net income decline is partially attributable to Supermicro’s costs from President Trumps tariffs. However, costs arent the only thing bugging Super Micro Computer investors. The company’s results also didnt meet investor expectations. LSEG consensus estimates for the quarter were an EPS of 44 cents, three cents short of what Supermicro delivered. Investors also expected revenue of $5.89 billionmore than the $5.76 billion that Supermicro reported. As Reuters notes, many attribute the companys lower-than-estimated revenue to Supermicro losing out on AI server sales to its bigger competitors, including Dell and HP. Finally, Super Micro Computer also disappointed investors by forecasting full-year fiscal 2026 net sales to total at least $33 billion. Previously, the company had said it expected net sales of around $40 billion in 2026. All this has led to growth fears: While the AI revolution may mean high demand for servers that are needed for artificial intelligence, Supermicro isnt benefiting from that demand as much as hoped. AMD missed expectations, too AI chipmaker AMD is also facing stock price declines this morningthough not as severe as Super Micros. The company posted its Q2 2025 results after the bell yesterday, and since then its shares are down nearly 7% to $162.16 in premarket trading as of the time of this writing. AMD posted a Q2 revenue of $7.7 billion and net income of $781 million. Its earnings per share (EPS) for the quarter was 48 cents. However, as with Supermicro, AMDs EPS was below expectations. As noted by CNBC, the LSEG consensus was that AMD would report an EPS of 49 cents. The company also suffered hundreds of millions in lost sales after the Trump administration banned sales of its MI308 chips to China. However, this ban may soon be reversed. As Reuters notes, AMD did post a 14% revenue rise in its important data center unit, yet this sum of $3.2 billion was also slightly below expectations, suggesting investors fear that AMD isnt benefiting to the maximum degree that it can from the AI chip boom. Stock price history and future challenges Before todays premarket decline for Supermicro and AMD, shares in both companies have had a good run in 2025. As of yesterdays close of market, AMD shares had risen 44% in 2025. SMCI shares surged 87% in the same period. Looking back over the past 12 months, AMD shares were up nearly 30% as of yesterdays close. SMCI shares were down nearly 6% for the same period. However, the company had been plagued last year and earlier this year by an accounting crisis that had risked its delisting from the Nasdaq. It eventually filed delinquent forms with the Securities and Exchange Commission (SEC) in February.
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E-Commerce
The CEO of Disney is the most renowned CEO job in America. Wondering who will succeed Bob Iger and be just the eighth person to hold the job in the companys 102-year history has been a parlor game/obsession in Hollywood and beyond since, well, at least October 2011 (!), when Disneys board first started succession planning. Igers early successes (acquiring Pixar and Marvel, reviving Disney Animation) have made him hard to replace, and his general refusal to leave hasnt helped either. Iger will announce his successor in early 2026 (in theory!) and then step away (for real this time!) later next year, at age 75. While most speculation has centered on two to four internal candidates, theres a singular leader who should be Disneys next chief executive: Brian Chesky, Airbnbs cofounder and CEO. In this piece, premium subscribers will learn: How running Airbnb is the perfect training to lead Disney now The key relationship Chesky brings that no one else can offer Why Disney needs a tech CEO to survive the 21st Century Disney is now a hospitality and experiences company Dont get distracted by The Fantastic Four: First Steps or the Alien: Earth series. Disney may have movie studios, TV production companies, and streaming services, but it is not an entertainment company. Look to where the companys growth story is and where much of its profits are coming from. They arent from Disneys Entertainment or Sports divisions. No, theyre thanks to its Experiences division, which houses Disney theme parks, hotels, cruise ships, and merchandise. In Disneys fiscal 2024 (which ended September 30 last year), Experiences made $34.2 billion in revenue and $9.3 billion in operating income (an internal measure of segment profitability, minus some restructuring and other expenses). Its Entertainment division garnered $41.2 billion in revenue, the largest slice of its revenue pie, but just $3.9 billion in operating income. Heres the revenue breakdown in percentage form: Entertainment: 44%Experiences: 37%Sports: 19% Now consider operating income:Experiences: 60%Entertainment: 25%Sports: 15% Disneys investments in its future also signal the direction of the company. In September 2023, it committed to spend approximately $60 billion over the next decade on capital expenditures for the Experiences division, expanding parks and adding cruise ships. In May, Iger used the companys earnings call to announce that Disney had partnered with the Miral Group to build its first-ever theme park in the Middle East (he was actually in Abu Dhabi during the call). There is no comparable investment to grow the entertainment business. Thats a business of managed decline at the moment, largely driven by a failure of imagination. Disney has oversaturated the market with superhero movies and TV spinoffs, live action remakes of animated classics, as well as sequels, reboots, and reimaginings. (The forthcoming Freakier Friday being emblematic of the latter trend.) The company makes about half as many movies as it did when Iger took over, despite him acquiring the rival studio 20th Century Fox in 2017. That strategy needs a creative reset. Disneys broadcast network, ABC, will air just five hours of scripted programming this fall in primetime (which is 22 hours) and ordered just one new show. The rest of the schedule is sports, reality, and game shows. Unsurprisingly, the ostensible leading internal candidate to be the next CEO is Josh DAmaro, who runs the Experiences division. DAmaro, 54, has worked for Disneys theme parks since 1998 and been chairman of Disney Experiences since 2020. The other rumored internal candidates are the chair of ESPN, Jimmy Pitaro, and the cochairs of Disney Entertainment Dana Walden and Alan Bergman. Although DAmaro arguably runs a larger business than Cheskys Airbnb, $34.2 billion to $11.1 billion, Airbnb is the most innovative, disruptive hospitality company to emerge since, what, Holiday Inn in 1952? Also, if you were to consider Airbnbs gross booking value (the total sum consumers spend on Airbnb), that number, $81.8 billion, swells well past Disneys Experiences business. Chesky speaking at the Fast Company Innovation Festival in New York City, 2023. [Photo: Eugene Gologursky/Getty Images/Fast Company] Chesky is a generational talent Airbnbs cofounder and CEO, who turns 44 on August 29, is one of the most successful startup CEOs of the last two decades. Chesky has taken a kernel of an ideapeople sharing their homes for travelers in lieu of a hoteland grown it into a global behemoth thats more valuable than any other hotel company in the world. (Marriott, at about $71 billion, is the largest traditional hotel chain.) Hes done this in the face of extreme doubters, existential crises, local regulatory fights, and more. Chesky is a designer by training. Hes capable, as he puts it, of seeing the world through the eyes of a child. He believes in spending as much time in the field as in the lab, routinely experiencing Airbnbs offering as both a host (having people in his own San Francisco home) and as a guest, traveling the world. As a Y Combinator graduate (winter 2009 batch), hes guided by the deceptively simple precept make something people love. Think about someone with that mindset and approach running Disney. Chesky is a showman, exactly what Disney needs The CEO of Disney not only has to run the company but be the public face of the brand, the emissary for millions of fans. Former CEO Michael Eisner (19842005) hosted Disneys iconic Sunday night ABC TV showcase. Iger is a fixture at premieres and theme park openings, exuding the kind of easy charisma that had some people thinking he could run for president. Lacking this ability is fatal in the role. Look no further than Bob Chapek, who replaced Iger as CEO in February 2020 until he was fired in November 2022 and Iger returned. Chapek skipped the Disney fan event, D23, in 2021 for fear of being booed and then was booed by some fans in 2022, even amid his effort to soften his chilly image by growing a beard. Chesky is well suited to this public-facig part of the job, with his boundless energy and penchant for grand gestures. He has shifted Airbnbs product releases into winter and summer reveals designed to garner more attention than most companies usual drip-drip-drip of product updates. Airbnb has also found a clever marketing hack with iconic, often movie-related home experiences from Barbies Malibu Dream House to re-creations the balloon house in Up and Rileys internal control center in Inside Out 2. Chesky with a replica of the house from Disney’s 2009 film Up, 2024. [Photo: Jesse Grant/Getty Images for Airbnb] But more than being the companys chief evangelist, to thrive as Disney CEO, you have to be in founder mode, treating the company as your own. In September 2024, Y Combinator founder Paul Graham, who admitted Airbnb into the startup accelerator, lauded a Chesky talk about how, as Graham put it, conventional wisdom about how to run larger companies is mistaken. Shifting into being a manager rather than retaining some aspect of how you ran your company as a startup is a trap that damaged rather than helped company leaders. Chesky has described founder mode as being willing to be in the details, pushing people to think bigger, and having a direct connection to the leaders in charge of every part of the company. Although the current Experiences chief, DAmaro, has some fans among theme park obsessives, all the internal candidates feel more like management suits rather than founder showmen. How Disney thinking built Airbnb I got this text message from Brian one night. It said, Snow White. Ill tell you later. So begins the video above, an introduction to how Chesky and Airbnb redesigned its entire end-to-end customer experience in 2012, inspired by how Walt Disney himself created the first animated feature film. I realized that Disney as a company was actually at a similar stage where we are now when they created Snow White, Chesky told Fast Company at the time, relaying how a Disney biography proved foundational in how he thought about the companys next chapter. As we wrote: [Disney] had success with shorter cartoons, but Walt wanted to create a feature-length film with enough depth that people would care about, not just laugh at, the characters. He wanted to tell a complete story. Airbnbs process included hiring a Pixar animator to storyboard the new customer experience, conveying the emotion they wanted guests to feel. He would go on to hire Bruce Vaughn, former head of Disney Imagineering and the person who led the redesign of California Adventure and helped develop Star Wars Land, to work on the design of Airbnbs real-world experience. In the last several years, almost every longform interview Chesky has given features references to Disney. (Apple is the only other company Chesky mentions besides his own.) I convinced my dad to buy some Disney stock, he told Amy Devers on the Clever podcast in 2020, recalling an early experience with the Walt Disney Company as a teenager. We couldnt buy a lot, but if you became a shareholder at Disney you could get this thing called the Annual Report and the Annual Reports, they used to be these beautiful magazines, with these paintings of theme parks. And I became obsessive about kind of reimagine [sic] the design of theme parks. Walt Disney’s 1957 ‘flywheel’ graphic. [Image: Disney] There have been Disney-obsessed techies before, of course. The famed 1957 Disney flywheel graphic is oft-cited in tech circles. Jason Kilar, who went from Amazon exec to Hulu CEO and then Warner Bros. chief, was also obsessed with Disney, but he rubbed some Hollywood people the wrong way with his brash style, particularly his 2020 decision to put all of WBs theatrical movies onto the Max streaming service at the same time for a year. That decision still looms large in Hollywood, so another tech leader taking over a studio (that, again, is much more a travel experiences company today) would likely be met with significant resistance in the highly insular entertainment business. But . . . Disney desperately needs to figure out a real tech future For as many things that Disney has arguably done well in the last 30 years, developing a coherent, sustainable digital strategy is not among them. Eisner bought a big stake in third-rate search engine Infoseek in 1998 and then doubled down on that strategy a year later in creating the ill-fated Go.com to compete as userss starting point on the internet. Igers tenure has had one successful tech acquisition (paying about $2.5 billion to control BAMTech, the infrastructure to power its streaming services) and one opportunistic deal in 20056 to be the first to sell movies and shows on AppleiTunes. But Igers reign also been marked by several disappointing and/or disastrous big-ticket digital acquisitions and investments: Disney acquired the massive multiplayer online game Club Penguin in 2007 for $350 million. The growth of the childrens game failed to meet early goals, its popularity waned, and it shuttered in 2017. It acquired the social gaming company Playdom in 2010 for at least $563.2 million, was doing layoffs within six months, and shut the whole thing down in 2016. In 2014, it spent $500 million to buy the popular YouTube network of channels, Maker Studios, a poor fit within Disney, which quickly lost its appetite to create original shows for the video streaming giant. In 2015, it put $400 million into the then high-flying Vice Media; it wrote that investment down to zero in 2019. Along the way in the mid-2010s, as Iger was initially preparing to leave the first time, he considered buying Snap, Spotify, and Twitter, any of which would have given Disney the kind of modern digital distribution platform it still desperately needs. But its track record of managing consumer internet acquisitions doesnt present a compelling Sliding Doorsstyle scenario for any of those apps. Meanwhile, Chesky is Silicon Valley royalty By contrast, Chesky started and built a tech platform with an approximately $80 billion market cap. Hes also a leading member of the Y Combinator mafia. When fellow YC alum Sam Altman was removed as CEO of OpenAIthe most important tech company of the last decadeChesky played a key role rallying support for Altman during those few days. As a YC board member, Chesky has an early look at some of the most impressive young founders, their companies, and the tech trends they represent. A connected player like Chesky gives Disney its best possible chance to compete with Netflix, Amazon, and YouTube and maybe even surpass them by finding the next big thing early before anyone else and then nurture rather than stymie it. The cockroach Disney needs Hollywood currently faces a cataclysmic series of challenges, AI chief among them. Worse, the leadership of entertainment companies seem largely powerless and/or disinterested in doing anything about saving Hollywood from being further diminished in the broader popular culture. What it needs in this moment is a cockroach, in Y Combinator parlance. Meaning, it needs someone who is effectively unkillable and refuses to let their company die, someone built to survive events that would kill lesser leaders. Someone like Chesky, whom YC founder Paul Graham complimented as one of these cockroaches. COVID should have killed Airbnb. Lord knows a lot of people thought it was a goner in March 2020 when Chesky saw 80% of his business evaporate seemingly overnight. But Chesky would not let that happen to Airbnb, and after a series of rapid moves, he not only stabilized the company but pulled off a successful IPO in December 2020. Hes told the story innumerable times, and if you want to hear it, check out this particularly good version of the tale: Many people are convinced that Apple should, and perhaps will, buy Disney. But if Disney is to survive and thrive as an independent company, then it needs a young, tireless cockroach to bring it into the 21st Century. It needs Brian Chesky.
Category:
E-Commerce
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