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Johann Pauwen and Michaele Simmering founded their furniture design business, Kalon, in Los Angeles in 2007. At the time, the U.S. was entering a major recession with many industries headed for total implosion. Pauwen and Simmering, committed themselves to finding local manufacturing relationships and logged countless hours looking for factories that could deliver on their solid wood designs within the United States. It wasnt an easy process, and the founders had to write their own playbook as they went. We really had to beat the streets and find these places on our own, says Simmering. Sometimes literally youd drive past an open roller door, see certain machines or materials, and say, Oh my God, theyre making X, Y, or Z and thats how wed find them. Now, nearly 20 years in, all of Kalons products, except for its baby crib, are made in the U.S. The profitable business supports their family as well as those of their five employees. From the outside, it might appear that Kalon is entirely insulated from the roller-coaster tariff storyline unfolding every day here in the U.S. And to some degree they are: Simmering and Pauwen say their supply chain is strong and reliable and they have few doubts about their ability to deliver their product to customers as expected. Still, the pair is pretty stressed. Theyve noticed that many of their peers in the industry are losing business and, in some cases, carrying out layoffs. Kalon itself marked its worst sales month in history in April, on the heels of Trump tariff news. I cant believe we built this healthy business out of nothing in a really inhospitable industry: two collapses, a pandemic, and multiple wars, says Pauwen. And, a move to domestic manufacturing freaks out the consumer so much, no one will spend money. Maybe that will kill us, even though were U.S.-produced. [Photos: Courtesy of Kalon] Its been an emotional roller coaster Pauwen and Simmering represent an ecosystem of founders whove invested the time and money to make and sell things in the U.S. Theyve cultivated relationships with mom-and-pop manufacturing outfits. Theyve created jobs in the local economy. Theyve made it work in the name of sustainability and community. And now, as the Trump administrations wildly shifting tariff policy has shaken the foundation of how so many small and midsize designers do business both abroad and at home, these founders of American-made brands dont feel any more at ease than their counterparts who sit at the helm of globally produced supply chains. [Photo: Courtesy of Kalon] Whats coming next is truly anybodys guess, and many designers in positions similar to Pauwen and Simmering say theyre just bracing for the next jolt, whether thats due to consumer insecurity, price swings in raw materials, a dearth of manufacturing options, or something else theyve not yet considered or experienced. Its been an emotional roller coaster, says Clare Vivier, founder, CEO and creative director at leather handbag brand Clare V. Viviers company, which is based in Los Angeles, sits at the nexus of Trumps tariffs. She works with five separate manufacturers in L.A., along with 17 manufacturing partners across India, Europe and Asia. The leather and hardware used to make Clare V. bags, says Vivier, come from Italy and Asia respectively. Were a great case study of whats going on, she says. Seventeen years into this company, we have 14 stores and are sold in close to 200 shops around the world. Fifty percent of our product is made in L.A. and the other 50 overseas. [Photo: Courtesy of Clare V.] Vivier says shes structured her business this way out of necessityto tap into different forms of workmanship. We dont have the options to make woven leathers and basket bags here in the U.S. she says. Those artisans arent here. If they were, says Vivier, shed already be using them. These types of skills and jobs, she says, went away years ago, as the industry was retooled for less hands-on, more mechanized manufacturing methods. In other countries, though, artisans (and the infrastructure to train new talent) are still a part of local economies. These are not widget-producing jobs, says Vivier. These are artisans who are trained for many years. [Photo: Courtesy of Clare V.] Vivier has considered bringing more of her manufacturing in-house. One of the manufacturing partners she works with in Burbank, California, is family-owned and run, and the owners are looking for a succession plan as retirement nears. But for Vivier, its just not in the cards. We arent in the position to be a manufacturing business, she says, likening the endeavor to the knowledge jump a writer would have to make in order to suddenly buy and run a printing press. This is a highly specialized industry you cant expect companies to just jump into. . . . My husband is French and we have a place in France. Vuitton has opened a huge training facility outside of our town thereto train artisans. I think, wow. We just arent doing that in the U.S. It would be amazing. [Photo: Courtesy of Clare V.] For Simmering and Pauwen, theyve decided to relocate their crib manufacturing to the United States. And while the decision aligns with their ethos to manufacture in their own communities, it presents a tough balance and some hard decisions around quality and cost. Producing in Germany is roughly on par with the U.S. in terms of material and labor costs, but the level of craft and know-how is significantly higher there, which means the end product is often of superior qualitya failure of America’s industrial policy, says Simmering. The U.S. partner were working with [on the crib] was surprised by the quality of our Eastern European production and acknowledged that matching it would be a challengeand at a much higher cost, at least 150% more. The long game of factory building Some businesses, like East Fork Pottery in Asheville, North Carolina, have built out a manufacturing arm to their business from the start, which has helped hedge the pile-on effect happening with tariffs. Cofounder and potter Alex Matisse says that East Fork makes more than 650,000 pieces of pottery per year in its two factories. We are relatively insulated, says Matisse. Our material supply chain is domestic. Clay isnt expensive, but we put value into it. Our greatest fear is that if we do slide into a recession, it will impact us all. Building factories takes a long time. Its hard to think about when confidence is so unsure. Tyler Hays, artist and founder at furniture maker BDDW, which owns two of its own manufacturing facilities, says hes grateful he made the decision to keep all pieces of his business under one umbrella so many years ago. We have always had the slow business approach, he says. And we are patting ourselves on the back a little bit. But the way this is happening is bananas, with no plan. This should have been a five-year-plan. There should have been funding for small businesses; its reckless. One way Hays has been able to thrive during this time is via an auction platform thats allowed BDDW to circumvent traditional retail altogether, offering up pieces at a discount. Hays says thats kept consumers engaged and buying: Its becoming more popular, but we have seen a 5% reduction in closing price at auction. Still, even with the confusion and chaos around tariffs, many of these founders remain deeply passionate about being American-made and revel in the spirit of community and localization it can foster. For CEO Bill Banta at Decked, being American-made is just baked into his companys brand. Decked designs, makes and sells organizational systems that fit on the beds of pickup trucks. Theres nothing more American than a pickup truck, says Banta. Its core to the customer and theres a lot of expectation that comes with an American-made product. Plus what we make is big and heavy and hard to ship. [Photo: Courtesy of Decked] Banta says some of the machines used to make Decked products are as heavy as 737 aircraft, and that as the company has grown, so has its manufacturing capabilities. The business, which is based in Idaho, Utah, and Ohio, now accounts for close to 400,000 square feet of manufacturing space and tens of millions of investment in injection molding. We are seeing volatility in raw materialssteel, resin, he says. Theyve been all over the place for four or five weeks. Bantas focus has been working with suppliers to stabilize pricing as best as possible so the price for a Decked system is the same when customers initially consider it, as when they actually buy it a month later. Additionally, as consumer insecurity dips, so do truck sales, which is directly tied to the Decked value prop. If that binds up and the automotive supply chain gets whacked by tariffs, well feel that, too. [Photo: Courtesy of Decked] A wholesale shedding of small businesses For now, says Simmering, its too soon to guess what any of this means. It comes down to the mindset of the consumer, she says. Will consumers, at the end of the day, feel it’s more valuable to invest in American-made products? Will the tariffs last? There isnt clarity. Industrial retooling is expensive and a lot of independent businesses wont be able to hang in there to see how it shakes out. One pivot the Kalon founders have made is to offer consulting services to other American businesses looking to make things here, too. Their goal is to help other founders navigate the complexities of local sourcing, supply chain restructuring, and sustainability-first practices with insight grounded in our two decades of experience, says Simmering. From the beginning, part of Kalons mission has been to model a different way of doing thingsto build a values-based business that responds to the realities of our time: the global environmental crisis, mass overconsumption, and wasteful production. This feels like a natural extension of that original intenttaking this as an opportunity to help others navigate this shift and continue working toward transformation from within the industry. And while the dust of tariff swings begins to settle, says Pauwen, larger, big box businesses have the resources to relocate their operations to the U.S., pushing smaller companies out of their manufacturing relationships in one swift movement, able to promise bigger manufacturing runs and longer contracts. At first blush, when the government is saying, Were in this for the Americans, thats a great impulse, says Simmering. I see that we cant all be titans of industry. We want to have national resources and jobs with integrity and meaning. But the way this seems to be executed, its a land grab and happening at the highest levels. There is a wholesale shedding of independent business.
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Recent breakthroughs in generative AI have centered largely on language and imageryfrom chatbots that compose sonnets and analyze text to voice models that mimic human speech and tools that transform prompts into vivid artwork. But global chip giant Nvidia is now making a bolder claim: the next chapter of AI is about systems that take action in high-stakes, real-world scenarios. At the recent International Conference on Learning Representations (ICLR 2025) in Singapore, Nvidia unveiled more than 70 research papers showcasing advances in AI systems designed to perform complex tasks beyond the digital realm. Driving this shift are agentic and foundational AI models. Nvidias latest research highlights how combining these models can influence the physical worldspanning adaptive robotics, protein design, and real-time reconstruction of dynamic environments for autonomous vehicles. As demand for AI grows across industries, Nvidia is positioning itself as a core infrastructure provider powering this new era of intelligent action. Bryan Catanzaro, vice president of applied deep learning research at Nvidia, described the companys new direction as a full-stack AI initiative. We aim to accelerate every level of the computing stack to amplify the impact and utility of AI across industries, he tells Fast Company. For AI to be truly useful, it must evolve beyond traditional applications and engage meaningfully with real-world use cases. That means building systems capable of reasoning, decision-making, and interacting with the real-world environment to solve practical problems. Among the research presented, four models stood outone of the most promising being Skill Reuse via Skill Adaptation (SRSA). This AI framework enables robots to handle unfamiliar tasks without retraining from scratcha longstanding hurdle in robotics. While most robotic AI systems have focused on basic tasks like picking up objects, more complex jobs such as precision assembly on factory lines remain difficult. Nvidias SRSA model aims to overcome that challenge by leveraging a library of previously learned skills to help robots adapt more quickly. “When faced with a new challenge, the SRSA approach analyzes which existing skill is most similar to the new task, then adapts and extends it as a foundation for learning, Catanzaro says. This brings us a significant step closer to achieving generalization across tasks, something that’s crucial for making robots more flexible and useful in the real world. To make accurate predictions, the system considers object shapes, movements, and expert strategies for similar tasks. According to one research paper, SRSA improved success rates on unseen tasks by 19% and required 2.4 times fewer training samples than existing methods. Over time, we expect this kind of self-reflective, adaptive learning to be transformative for industries like manufacturing, logistics, and disaster responsefields where environments are dynamic and robots need to quickly adapt without extensive retraining,” Catanzaro says. Biotech breakthroughs The biotech sector has traditionally lagged in adopting cutting-edge AI, hindered by data scarcity and the opaque nature of many algorithms. Protein design, essential to drug development, is often hampered by proprietary data silos that slow progress and stifle innovation. To address this, Nvidia introduced Proteínaa large-scale generative model for designing entirely new protein backbones. Built using a powerful class of generative models, it can produce longer, more diverse, and functional proteinsup to 800 amino acids in length. Nvidia claims it outperforms models like Google DeepMinds Genie 2 and Generate Biomedicines Chroma, especially in generating large-chain proteins. According to a paper on Proteína, the team trained the model using 21 million high-quality synthetic protein structures and improved learning thanks to new guidance strategies that ensure realistic outputs during generation. This breakthrough could transform enzyme engineering (and, by extension, vaccine development) by enabling researchers to design novel molecules beyond what occurs in nature. “What makes it especially powerful is its ability to generate proteins with specific shapes and properties, guided by structural labels, Catanzaro says. This gives scientists an unprecedented level of control over the design processallowing them to create entirely new molecules tailored for specific purposes, like new medicines or advanced materials. A new AI tool for autonomous vehicles Another standout from ICLR 2025 is Spatio-Temporal Occupancy Reconstruction Machine (STORM), an AI model capable of reconstructing dynamic 3D environmentslike city streets or forest trailsin under 200 milliseconds. With minimal video input, it produces detailed, real-time spatial maps that can inform rapid machine decision-making. Nvidia sees STORM as a tool for autonomous vehicles, drones, and augmented reality systems navigating complex, moving environments. “One of the biggest backlogs in current models is that they often rely heavily on optimizationan iterative process that takes time to refine and produce accurate 3D reconstructions,” says Catanzaro. “STORM tackles this by achieving high-accuracy results in a single pass, significantly speeding up the process without sacrificing quality. STORMs potential extends beyond vehicles. Catanzaro envisions applications in consumer tech, such as AR glasses capable of mapping a live sports game in real timeallowing viewers to experience the event as if they were on the field. STORMs real-time environmental intelligence moves us closer to a future where machines and devices can perceive, understand, and interact with the physical world as fluidly as humans do, he says. While STORM is built to help machines understand the physical world in real time, Nvidia is also pushing the boundaries of how large language models reasonthrough a project called Nemotron-MIND. This 138-billion-token synthetic pretraining data set is designed to enhance both mathematical and general reasoning. At its core is MIND, a new framework that turns raw math-heavy web documents into rich, multi-turn conversations that mirror how humans work through problems together. By turning dense math documents into conversations between people with different levels of understanding, MIND helps AI models break down problems step by step and explain them naturally. This method doesnt just teach models what the right answer isit helps them learn how to think through problems like a person would. According to its research paper, a seven-billion-parameter model trained on just four billion tokens of MIND-style dialogue outperformed much larger models trained on traditional data sets. It showed significant gains on key reasoning benchmarks like GSM8K (grade school math), MATH, and MMLU (massive multitask language understanding), and achieved a 2.5 percent boost in general reasoning when integrated intoan LLM. Can startups and researchers keep up? Training and deploying advanced AI models requires substantial GPU resources, often out of reach for smaller players. To close this gap, Nvidia is rolling out its next-gen AI models through Nvidia Inference Microservices (NIMs), a suite of containerized, cloud-native tools designed to simplify deployment across different infrastructures. NIM includes prebuilt inference engines for a wide array of models, helping organizations integrate and scale AI with fewer computing resources. Improving efficiency has always been a major focus for us, Catanzaro says. Ultimately, our goal is to democratize access to AI capabilities and make deployment practical at every scale, regardless of their computing resources, to harness the power of AI.” As agentic and foundational AI becomes more capable and more embodied, the future of tech may hinge on how effectively it works with humans. Its critical to identify and support use cases across diverse fields, Catanzaro says.
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A little over two years ago, AI avatars took the internet by storm as people flocked to apps like Lensa, which generated idealized, often fantastical portraits of themselves. But in the ever-elusive offline world, another, quieter trend has been bubbling up: real portraits, made by real people. Portrait commissions have been on the rise. In 2024, the Royal Society of Portrait Painters, headquartered in London, saw a 40% increase in portrait commissions from American clients now make up roughly 20% of their total. The U.S. has a fascination with the Royal Family more than we do sometimes, says Martina Merelli, fine art commissions manager at the Royal Society of Portrait Painters. Its an acknowledgment of the quality of work. It’s no wonder Americans are fascinated. Since its founding in 1891, the Royal Society of Portrait Painters, also known as RP, has been the society of choice for the British Royal Familys public and private commissions. Its members have famously painted the late Queen Elizabeth II, Princess Diana, the Duke of Edinburgh, the Prince and Princess of Wales, and Prince Harry. Notable figures like Dame Judy Dench, Sir David Attenborough, and Stephen Hawking have also been captured on canvas. [Image: Courtesy of Ben Sullivan/the Royal Society of Portrait Painters] But the commission service isn’t limited to the elite. As long as you have disposable income (a head and shoulder begins at around $6,500) anyone can commission a portrait. At a time where AI is squashing many artists, this particular art form is enduringperhaps as a symbol of our need for tangible human connection. A brief history of portraiture Portraits, like art more broadly, have long been seen as a mirror to society. Before the camera was invented, the only way to record someone’s likeness was to paint, or sculpt, a portrait of them. But portraits were never just a recordthey were signifiers of wealth, taste, and power. In ancient Egypt, painted portraits were placed over mummies to guide them into the afterlife. In Ancient Rome, they were used to commemorate the dead and assert lineage. Emperors used them to reinforce authority. Dictators turned them into propaganda tools. One of the first portraits to depict a merchant couple from the middle ranks of society appeared during the Renaissance, when the focus expanded from rulers, nobility, and clergy, to wealthy merchants, bankers, and scholars. Today, portraiture remains intertwined with global politics and economic tides. Its no secret that many of our clients are brokers, bankers, hedge fund managerspeople whose decisions are deeply affected by how the market is going, Merelli says. In 2024, the U.K. saw two major elections. These ushered in a transition from a conservative to a Labour government that directly impacted the tax structures around private schooling. Merelli recalls one acquaintance with three daughters in private schools remarking that taxation money used to be their art money. The new faces of portraiture [Image: Courtesy of Frances Bell/the Royal Society of Portrait Painters] Despite its exclusive history, over the past few decades, the art of portraiture has become more accessible. Frances Bell, an RP member who has been painting portraits for over 20 years, says her clientele now includes newlyweds, young professionals, and parents wanting to leave behind a tangible heirloom. Its a time stamp, she says. Something important they will carry on. Institutional portraits of CEOs, lawyers, chancellors, and the like still account for a big portion of the market. (Bell has also painted members of the royal family but these are cloaked in NDAs.) She believes the impulse behind a portrait commission often goes deeper than vanity. “I’m not saying it’s not there, I think it’s there for all of us, but I get people who want a little thrum of the life force to be put on into the canvas to last forever,” she says. “It’s that feeling of posterity, and permanence.” Unsurprisingly, that kind of posterity doesnt come cheap. Merelliwho often acts as “cupid” between prospective clients and painters at the RPsays the average price for a portrait in 2025 has decreased from what it used to be, but it still hovers around $13,000$20,000. “You can go up to $130,000 depending who the artist is, what brief you have, but a comfortable number is probably $66,000 to $80,000 if you want a full length of yourself with your house in the background and the dogs.” (Frances, who was trained at the prestigious Charles. H. Cecil Studios in Florence, charges $10,000 and upwards for a head and shoulders paintingor about $4,000 for a charcoal drawing.) A proud antithesis to AI That portraiture remains popular is both a rejection of the zeitgeist and, paradoxically, a natural extension of it. It is a slow process that can take countless hours over many sittings, and that i precisely why it is appealing. “It’s quite confessional,” says Bell, who places great importance on the in-person sittings. “I have their secrets coming out of my ears.” Everyone interviewed for this story emphasized the intimacy of the sitting process. Something about two people breathing the same air, in the same room, and looking at each other for hours. For Anthony Connolly, president of the Royal Society of Portrait Painters, this dynamic even shapes the vocabulary painters use. While photographs shoot, painters find a presence, come to a lightness. “You’re there, with your model and it’s like a triangular conversation, where the third point of the triangle is the thing you’re making,” says Connolly. The connection goes both ways. For the painter, its an act of seeing. For the sitter, its an act of being seen. Its a bonding experiencean art formthat no algorithm can ever replicate. An investment piece Claudia Fisher, an American who moved to the UK around the beginning of the pandemic, was not allowed to divulge the cost of her paintinga head and shoulder by painter Paul Brason. Having never owned a piece of art before, the cost was “one giant gulp,” she says. But she has no regrets. [Image: Courtesy of Paul Brason/the Royal Society of Portrait Painters] Fisher, now 69, was reading a book about the social history of tiaras when I called her. After a multifaceted career as an opera singer and a classical architecture designer, she has turned to fashion and today runs a fashion label called Belle Brummell, which makes luxury jackets inspired by 18th and 19th century British couture. Fisher wanted her portrait to act as a marketing tool for her designs. She had just wrapped up the first prototype of her jacket, when it dawned on her: what better way to evoke the historical spirit of her brand than to be portrayed in one of her own designs, in a composition reminiscent of the era? “I’ve always loved the idea of getting a portrait done because I had vision of myself being in a gorgeous dress,” she says with a laugh. “It wasn’t about immortalizing me, I just wanted a pretty dress.” She got a pretty jacket instead. Fisher made four separate trips to Bath, where Brason lives, on four separate occasions. Brason also traveled to her and her husband’s house in Brighton to get a sense of her personality at home, take reference photos, and do a pencil sketch. The two are still in touch. “If were in the area Ill call and see if hes around,” she says. “These relationships continue.”
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E-Commerce
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