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Hello again, and welcome back to Fast Company’s Plugged In. When the software engineer and entrepreneur Deon Nicholas was CEO of Forethought, a customer service automation platform, he had an executive assistant to manage the minutiae of his workday. Not surprisingly, he appreciated the help. “That was something that I found was critical, something that actually helped me as a leader,” he explains. Few of us who aren’t in the executive suite have the luxury of calling on another person to wrangle our schedule, triage email, and otherwise keep the chaos of our professional and personal lives under control. As Nicholas contemplated the frenzy of excitement over AI agents…

Bill Gross has a long history of betting on technological shifts and watching those bets pay off. But the latest proposition from one of Silicon Valley’s most storied founders and investors depends on forces far beyond the Bay Area. With ProRata, Gross is betting he can build a market in which publishers and creators can see how their work informs AI-generated outputs and get paid accordingly. He doesn’t expect AI companies to participate out of goodwill. In fact, Gross has already launched a spinoff, Gist, which allows ProRata partners to generate additional revenue from ProRata’s indexing of their work. Instead, he believes outside pressures will eventually leav…

Starbucks Corporation has announced that it will lay off 300 corporate employees in the United States. The layoffs represent the third round of job cuts that the coffee chain has initiated in the last 15 months. They come as the company is in the midst of efficiency and cost-cutting measures under the leadership of CEO Brian Niccol, who assumed the role in 2024. Here’s what you need to know about the latest Starbucks layoffs. Starbucks to cut 300 corporate jobs in the U.S. On Friday, Starbucks confirmed that it was cutting 300 corporate jobs in the United States. The news was first reported by CNBC. The job cuts will not impact the majority of the comp…

As the preeminent internet encyclopedia, Wikipedia is known for having articles on every topic under the sun. From the commonplace to the esoteric, if it’s at all noteworthy in the grand scheme of the universe, it’ll have its own Wikipedia entry. But what about everything that never happened? Meet Halupedia, a new online encyclopedia dedicated to “topics that have received insufficient attention in mainstream reference works,” as the site’s homepage reads. In other words, every entry on Halupedia is entirely invented—or rather, hallucinated—by AI. No matter what you’re looking for on Halupedia, there will be an entry for it. Visitors to the site can press the “Stu…

With its AI credit limits officially up and running, design software maker Figma has just notched another successful quarter under its belt. The company reported $333.4 million in revenue for quarter one—a 46% increase year-over-year (YOY). The boost follows 40% and 38% revenue growth YOY during the two previous quarters. Figma attributes its improving performance, in large part, to its AI-powered tools. “Our outperformance in quarter one was fueled by stronger than expected seat expansion across entire organizations, driven by design’s growing importance and adoption of our AI products including Figma Make, MCP, and Figma Weave,” Figma CFO Praveer Melwani sa…

Giddy up, Yellowstone fans: The epic saga of the Dutton family continues. The Western drama, which began humbly in 2018, has since grown into one of television’s most valuable franchises. A Bloomberg story from last year estimated that it generated nearly $3 billion in sales and $700 million in profit. Today, the sequel series Dutton Ranch premieres on both the Paramount Network and Paramount+. Beth and Rip are ready to make a new start in Texas. But just how did they wind up there? Here’s everything you need to know before tuning in. How did Yellowstone end? Taylor Sheridan and John Linson co-created Yellowstone, which ran for five seasons beginning in 20…

There’s a quiet trade-off happening inside high-growth companies right now. We’re moving faster than ever, and teams are more efficient. AI is handling work that used to take hours, and asynchronous communication means decisions don’t have to wait for meetings. On paper, it’s all an upside. But underneath the speed, something else is happening. Leaders are moving further away from their teams. Not intentionally and not dramatically—just gradually enough that you don’t notice it until alignment shifts: decisions that need to be revisited, priorities that aren’t as clear as you thought, or challenges surfacing later than they used to. The assumption that new…

When you’re building sets for a musical that’s populated by flying vampires, you have to challenge yourself to think three-dimensionally. But Dane Laffrey is used to challenging himself. Over the course of his decades-long career in theater, the Tony-winning scenic designer has been tasked with bringing to life some of the most memorable sets in recent Broadway history—from a sandy, 360-degree Caribbean archipelago for the 2017 revival of Once on This Island to the futuristic South Korea setting of 2024’s Maybe Happy Ending. Now Laffrey’s set designs are literally soaring to new heights—while also sinking to new depths—in The Lost Boys, a dynamic and a…

The conversation is changing. For the first time ever, the person or thing on the other side of an interaction isn’t always human. Every time I talk with other executives, the “agentic future” comes up. It’s a compelling idea: agents replacing old systems to actually solve problems for us without oversight. With more than a billion AI agents poised to handle everything from customer complaints to complex trades by 2029, the hurdle isn’t the tech itself. It’s whether we can actually trust it. The reality is that most businesses are stuck in the pilot stage. Not for failure of imagination, but because we don’t have the right tools to move from a cool demo to a smart sys…

Tor Myhren is going to kind of hate this article. Because it’s about him, not his entire team. Because I want to talk about his shift from agency chief creative officer to leading marketing for the most pristine marketer on the planet, not to mention one of the world’s most valuable companies. Because I want to talk about how he’s been doing it for 10 years in an industry where brands change senior marketing executives as frequently as their socks. And because I want to start with the worst moment of his decade at Apple. At the time, Myhren had a singular focus. In early 2024, Apple’s VP of marketing communications was sitting with his team, thinki…

The University of Chicago has announced a new initiative to provide financial support for students to attend the college for free. Starting in fall 2027, UChicago will offer free tuition for undergraduate students from families with an annual income less than $250,000. The private institution will also provide free tuition, fees, housing, and dining to students from families making less than $125,000. “At a time when many families are uncertain about what the cost of college means for them, we created this initiative to radically expand and simplify our support for students,” said James G. Nondorf, the school’s dean of admissions and financial aid, in a statemen…

North America’s largest commuter rail system is facing a potential shutdown as a deadline nears to reach a deal with unionized workers to avert a strike. The Long Island Rail Road that serves New York City’s eastern suburbs has been negotiating for months on a new contract with labor officials representing locomotive engineers, machinists, signalmen and other train workers. A strike was temporarily averted in September when President Donald The President’s administration agreed to help. Those efforts ended without a deal, giving both sides 60 days — ending 12:01 a.m. Saturday — to again try to resolve their differences before the union was legally allowed to go on strik…

The Centers for Disease Control and Prevention (CDC) has updated the public on ongoing Salmonella outbreaks linked to backyard poultry. Unfortunately, the outbreaks have continued to spread and have now infected nearly 200 individuals in 31 states, with children making up an alarming number of cases. Here’s what you need to know. What’s happened? As Fast Company previously reported, the CDC in April warned the public about a concerning Salmonella outbreak that had then spread to 13 states. The outbreak was alarming because those infected with Salmonella were found to have strains of the bacterium resistant to fosfomycin, a drug commonly used to treat the infec…

The closest thing to the idealized mall you recall either from personal memory or from cultural lore exists on a block in the Soho neighborhood of New York City, New York Magazine aptly dubbed “Tween Row.” On a recent spring afternoon, tween girls outfitted in cable knit cardigans, pink camis, hoodies, and lowrise jeans, chatted with each other (or their willing parents) as they popped into favorite shops: Brandy Melville, Edikted, Princess Polly. As of May 14, Tween Row will get a new tenant jockeying for their attention: Victoria’s Secret’s Pink. The store, the first designed by creative director Adam Selman, points to the retail experiences Gen Z and Gen Alph…

When SpaceX filed an FCC application earlier this year proposing to launch a million satellite data centers into orbit, the company argued the project would have no meaningful environmental impact. On SpaceX’s website, Elon Musk made the case for space-based AI infrastructure in simpler terms: “It’s always sunny in space,” he wrote, arguing that orbital data centers are “obviously the only way to scale.” When SpaceX filed an FCC application earlier this year to launch a million satellite data centers into space, the company said that the plan wouldn’t have any environmental impact. But researchers say the climate calculus is far more complicated than that. Yes…

Ah, the olden days of choosing where to spend your money on dining, travel, and all that connected those experiences. Neighborhood restaurants would drop flyers in your apartment lobby to let you know they were there. Hotels would rent space on billboards and place ads in newspapers and magazines. Some joined industry groups, such as the Leading Hotels of the World, which got its start by promising ship passengers when they arrived at their destinations there would be appropriate accommodation for them. The go-to reference for figuring out where to eat would have been the iconic burgundy Zagat guides, one of the original crowdsourced review guides with quotes from ordinar…