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For all the talk of how artificial intelligence will revolutionize the way we live and work, there are few industries where generative AI has already had a profound impact. Across the education space, however, from K-12 schools to universities, AI has been widely adopted by students and teachers alike. Educators are using AI to create lesson plans and save time on administrative work and even grading. And students now regularly use AI chatbots in the classroom and for help with assignments—to varying results. The rapid clip of AI adoption has raised fraught questions about academic integrity and responsible use of the technology, among both teachers and students. But …

Capital One is buying Brex in a $5.15 billion stock-and-cash deal that underscores how traditional banks are turning to fintech startups to modernize the way businesses manage money. The acquisition, announced Thursday, would bring the San Francisco–based corporate card and expense management company into the fold of one of the largest U.S. financial institutions. The transaction is expected to close in mid-2026, pending regulatory approval and customary conditions. Brex CEO and cofounder Pedro Franceschi will continue to lead the company as part of Capital One. At first glance, the deal looks like a straightforward expansion into corporate cards. In reality, it i…

Patagonia, the outdoor apparel company, is suing Pattie Gonia, the drag queen and environmentalist, for trademark infringement—a move the company says is necessary to “protect the brand [it has] spent the last 50 years building.” In a lawsuit filed in California federal court this week, Patagonia argues that Pattie Gonia’s name, particularly when used on apparel or in support of environmental sustainability, competes “directly” with the products and advocacy work core to Patagonia. Patagonia claims in its complaint that the overlapping names have already confused customers, and that a recent move from the drag queen to sell her own branded apparel goes against a…

Everyone is talking about it in group chats, at the supermarket, and at the gas pump. No, it’s not Heated Rivalry—it is the “monster” winter storm that is set to hit the U.S. this weekend, traveling from Texas across the Southwest, into the Southeast, and finally into the Mid-Atlantic states and into New England. The storm is forecast to dump a whopping ten to 20 inches of snow, creating dangerous conditions for about half the nation, according to the Washington Post. Widespread heavy snow, sleet, damaging ice, and a potential nor’easter could affect as many as 230 million Americans from Friday, January 23 to Monday, January 26, bringing temperatures below zero, …

If you have travel plans this weekend and don’t necessarily need to travel, you may be in luck. A massive winter storm is forecasted this weekend—dubbed Winter Storm Fern by the Weather Channel—and could bring crippling ice and heavy snow to more than 30 states stretching from Arizona to Maine. With some 230 million Americans potentially affected, many airlines are preemptively warning travelers about potential weather-related disruptions and offering travel waivers in advance. The major U.S. carriers have issued alerts to travelers with flights scheduled out of airports across more than 20 states, though the terms for changing your travel plans can vary significa…

One of the giants of the gaming business has tumbled off a cliff. Ubisoft, the French game publisher best known for the Assassin’s Creed series, just announced plans to dramatically reorganize its business. In the process, the company will kill six games it had in the works, including a long-awaited Prince of Persia title that was expected this month. Ubisoft shares dropped by more than 30% following the news. The game publisher said the changes are designed to make it more agile in order to drive a “sharp rebound” for the company, which has seen its stock tank over the last five years. To chart that course, Ubisoft said it will selectively close the game studios…

With birth rates down around the world, Procter & Gamble is leaning into premium diapers to bolster sales figures. Specifically, the conglomerate is planning to sell diapers made with silk fibers in China, the company’s second-largest market, in hopes of attracting new parents. The news came out of Procter & Gamble’s earnings conference call on Thursday, during which president and CEO Shailesh Jejurikar discussed the logic behind leaning into the premium diaper category with “Pampers Prestige.” “The China team created a product,” he said, “that leveraged Chinese history with silk. The shiny, soft-yet-strong, luxurious material has been a status symbol for …

Autodesk, Inc. announced Thursday it plans to lay off about 1,000 employees, largely in sales roles. The announcement comes just a week after another tech company, Meta, announced it would eliminate up to 1,500 positions. Here’s what you need to know about the latest tech company layoffs. What’s happened? The plan will reduce the company’s workforce by approximately 7%. Autodesk indicated a significant number of the affected jobs would be in customer-facing sales roles. The plan will also reallocate resources to accelerate strategic priorities, The Wall Street Journal reported. CEO Andrew Anagnost assured employees in a letter that these layoffs were …

Valentino, who died on Monday at 93, leaves a lasting legacy full of celebrities, glamour and, in his words, knowing what women want: “to be beautiful”. The Italian fashion powerhouse has secured his dream of making a lasting impact, outliving Karl Lagerfeld and Yves Saint Laurent. Valentino was known for his unique blend between the bold and colourful Italian fashion and the elegant French haute couture—the highest level of craftsmanship in fashion, with exceptional detail and strict professional dressmaking standards. The blending of these styles to create the signature Valentino silhouette made his style distinctive. Valentino’s style was reserved, and over…

Large language models feel intelligent because they speak fluently, confidently, and at scale. But fluency is not understanding, and confidence is not perception. To grasp the real limitation of today’s AI systems, it helps to revisit an idea that is more than two thousand years old. In The Republic, Plato describes the allegory of the cave: prisoners chained inside a cave can only see shadows projected on a wall. Having never seen the real objects casting those shadows, they mistake appearances for reality, and they are deprived from experiencing the real world. Large language models live in a very similar cave. LLMs don’t perceive the world: they read a…

Welcome to AI Decoded, Fast Company’s weekly newsletter that breaks down the most important news in the world of AI. I’m Mark Sullivan, a senior writer at Fast Company,covering emerging tech, AI, and tech policy. I’m dedicating this week’s newsletter to a conversation I had with the main author of Anthropic’s new and improved “constitution,” the document it uses to govern the outputs of its models and its Claude chatbot. Sign up to receive this newsletter every week via email here. And if you have comments on this issue and/or ideas for future ones, drop me a line at sullivan@fastcompany.com, and follow me on X @thesullivan. A necessary update Amid growin…

As the United States prepares to celebrate its 250th birthday, an auction in New York will feature rare items that trace the nation’s history. The event Friday at Christie’s, dubbed “We the People: America at 250,” will bring together foundational political texts, iconic American art and rare historical artifacts. Among the highlights is a rare 1776 broadside printing of the Declaration of Independence produced in New Hampshire by printer Robert Luist Fowle, estimated at $3 million to $5 million. “It’s historically significant because you get to see what people at the time actually saw,” said Peter Klarnet, senior specialist for books, manuscripts and Americana at Chri…

After spending much of his career in marketing, Daniel Hebert pivoted into Software as a Service (SaaS) sales for a high-growth startup in 2018. But what started out as a dream job soon turned into a nightmare. Like many tech startups, the business went from growth mode to scaling down as the market turned in 2022. As the head of the sales team, Hebert found himself on the front lines of that cost-cutting campaign. “I would be assigned a team and have to fire half the people. Then I’d have to rebuild the process and rebuild the team. I did three or four cycles of that in 15 months, and I just got so insanely burnt out,” he says. “I just randomly started getting [s…

Pantone’s professional color matching kits can cost anywhere from several hundred dollars to upwards of several thousand dollars for pros who work in industries like fashion and interiors. Its newest, though, is a single-fan book with more than 600 spot colors, and it’s priced at just $99. Pantone for beginners. Pantone on Thursday announced its Pantone Capsule: Signature Edition. Housed in a collectible, cylindrical case that wouldn’t look out of place in a Sephora, the guide is a sort of Pantone 101 that come on coated and uncoated paper stock with colors selected from across more than 60 years of Pantone history. “At Pantone, we have spent a lot of time speakin…

Sometimes Warren Buffett says something so simple, so obvious, that you almost want to roll your eyes. At 95 years young, he has offered plainspoken advice that has shaped one of the most successful careers in history. But when you hear it, you know it’s truth and part of you wonders: Why haven’t I applied this yet? When we slow down long enough to sit with some of his wisdom—really let it sink in, not just skim it on our phones—his principles can reshape how we lead, how we work, and how we show up in life. The challenge, of course, is in the follow-through. How many of us can read something today and honestly say, “I’m going to start doing this tomorrow”? If you…

A new neighborhood under construction near Sacramento, California, in the rolling foothills of the Sierra Nevada mountains, looks like a typical subdivision. But it’s one of the first developments designed at a neighborhood scale to withstand wildfires. Each house goes farther than California’s latest building requirements for high-fire-risk zones, from enclosed, ember-resistant eaves to dual-paned, tempered glass windows that can better withstand extreme heat in a fire. The design considers not just each house, but how homes interact, spacing buildings at least 10 feet apart and removing combustible features to prevent fire from spreading between them. Called Sto…

A century ago, work was unsafe and openly adversarial. Strikes were common. Turnover was extreme. Productivity suffered. HR—then called personnel—was created to manage this instability. Its job wasn’t to make work fulfilling. It was to reduce friction between employees and the company, keep people on the job, and protect output. As companies matured, so did HR. The function expanded to include hiring, pay, benefits, training, grievance handling, and legal compliance. On paper, this evolution gave HR a broad view of how people experienced work—and the potential authority to shape it. But that authority was never fully claimed. Instead, HR generally settled into adminis…

People know when a brand genuinely cares about well-being—for employees, customers, and humanity at large. In many cases, it’s an intangible truth they can simply feel—in how they’re treated, how decisions get made, and whether a company’s stated values actually show up in practice. Plenty of brands talk about purpose and people. Fewer live it. And the difference is increasingly obvious. That gap is why “brand well-being” is emerging as a meaningful framework for companies that want to build durable growth—not just short-term performance. At its core, brand well-being recognizes that a brand isn’t a logo or a campaign. It’s a living ecosystem made up of people, cultur…

Hello and welcome to Modern CEO! I’m Stephanie Mehta, CEO and chief content officer of Mansueto Ventures. This bonus newsletter from Davos explores the strategic relationship between CEOs and chief technology officers. If you received this newsletter from a friend, you can sign up to get it yourself every Monday morning. In my previous life as a technology journalist, I wrote and edited countless stories about corporate chief technology officers (CTOs) emerging as key partners to their counterparts in the C-suite. When marketing functions became more data-driven, chief marketing officers clamored for attention from product and engineering. Today, chief financial offic…

Chances are, you have an opinion about Palantir. “With any person, company, or concept, the general public really only has space in their head for one characteristic of it,” says Palantir alum Marc Frankel, cofounder, board member, and former CEO of Manifest, which creates software and AI “bill of materials”—think ingredient labels for critical software. “Biden: old. AI: scary. Palantir: secretive.” Frankel worked at Palantir from 2013 to 2018, and whether the one idea in your mind about Palantir is secretive or something else, it likely exists somewhere in this band of public opinion from the past year. Believers: Palantir’s a “category of one” company, accordi…

Gold Zone, NBC Sports’ whip-around coverage of the Olympics, didn’t debut with the 2024 Summer Games in Paris. As far back as the Sochi Winter Olympics in 2014, the network had experimented with the format—using multiple screens to cover simultaneous live events, a technique that had been popularized since 2005 by RedZone coverage of the NFL. But Paris did mark the first time that Gold Zone had run on NBCUniversal’s streaming service Peacock, providing real-time coverage of all 39 sports with zero embargoes. Gold Zone will return on Peacock for the 2026 Milan Cortina Winter Games in February. Molly Solomon: We decided to create a new class of Olympics programming. We …