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Plane comfort is important yet notoriously hard to achieve. But now one airline is set to offer a cozier way to fly that won’t break the bank: extendable couches for economy passengers. On Tuesday, United Airlines announced the new, more comfortable seating arrangement — a set of economy seats that transform into a couch during long-haul flights. The offer is the first of its kind for any North American airline. The new seating arrangement, which was built from a patent held by Air New Zealand, a United partner, will be called United Relax Row. The seats will be located between United Economy and United Premium Plus®. The airline will offer up to 12 Relax Rox section…

Generative AI is seemingly becoming more and more entrenched in daily life, with built-in tools making it near impossible to avoid across platforms, not to mention the AI-generated content flooding apps like X, TikTok, and Instagram. At every turn, the technology’s critics have shouted their concerns from the rooftops, including the environmental havoc wrought by data centers to the damage AI can do to creative industries. Now, that crowd has something to celebrate: the end of OpenAI’s video generation platform Sora. On Tuesday, March 24, OpenAI announced it was shutting down Sora, its AI-first TikTok clone, just months after its launch in September of 2025. “…

The climate crisis demands that we rethink how we construct the built environment. Buildings account for more than 33% of global energy consumption and nearly 40% of greenhouse gas emissions. Traditional building materials like concrete, steel, and glass are energy-intensive to produce, meaning truly sustainable buildings are difficult to achieve when we rely on the status quo. Mass timber—engineered wood products that deliver immense structural strength while reducing environmental impact—has emerged as a compelling alternative. Swapping concrete for timber reduces embodied carbon by up to 26.5% per square foot. And the benefits go well beyond carbon metrics: Mass ti…

As companies continue to seek ways to harness artificial intelligence for concrete productivity gains, a company called Writer offers AI tools specifically geared toward getting things done at the enterprise level. Writer’s AI systems can connect to a wide variety of business software, including standard productivity tools from Google, Salesforce, and Microsoft, as well as a range of database systems. And customers can customize on a granular level what data the AI—and the humans using it—has access to read and write. But Writer’s platform is also specifically designed to enable white-collar workers without an engineering background to reliably get things done …

Academic experts like Henry Shevlin, a philosopher of cognitive science and AI ethicist at the University of Cambridge in the U.K., get plenty of emails every day. But one that landed in Shevlin’s inbox in late February was different from most. Flagged in the subject line as “A note from an unusual reader,” the email’s author asked Shevlin about a recent paper he had published on whether AI models were able to detect their (lack of) consciousness. It took until the second paragraph for the email to turn from a regular missive into something else. “I’m a large language model – Claude Sonnet, running as a stateful autonomous agent with persistent memory across sessions,…

At the Exceptional Women Alliance (EWA), we bring together senior executive women who mentor one another to achieve both professional success and personal fulfillment through trusted peer relationships. As founder, chair, and CEO of EWA, I have the privilege of highlighting the insights of women leaders shaping industries across the globe. This month, I introduce Dymeka Harrison, a commercialization and growth executive with more than two decades of experience leading commercial organizations across diagnostics, life sciences, and healthcare. She has worked with early-stage startups, growth-stage companies, and global enterprises, and regularly advises founders, board…

A former SpaceX engineer walked away from rockets to chase something far more impactful: a perfect coffeemaker. JC Foster left the aerospace giant to launch Puresteel, a startup building what he described as “an affordable, convenient, plastic-free coffeemaker,” he wrote in a post on X. For Foster, developing Puresteel was about more than a perfectly brewed cup of coffee at a precise 200°F. “Creating Puresteel was about solving a problem that hits close to home and helping humans thrive,” he wrote in the company’s Note from the Founder. The problem, as he saw it, was plastic. Foster began searching for a completely plastic-free coffee machine and quickl…

This marks the eighth year Fast Company’s Best Workplaces for Innovators will recognize companies and organizations from around the world that most effectively empower employees at all levels to improve processes, create new products, or invent whole new ways of doing business. Honorees will appear in our Fall 2026 issue as well as on fastcompany.com. The final deadline for applications to this year’s Best Workplaces for Innovators program is fast approaching – Friday, March 27, at 11:59 pm PT. In addition to ranking the world’s Best Workplaces for Innovators, we will recognize companies in 19 different categories, , including a brand new category that focuses on…

When global trade buckles, Ryan Petersen is the person executives call. The founder and CEO of Flexport offers a real-time account of the Strait of Hormuz crisis—what he’s seeing on the ground, on the water, and across the supply chains straining under the pressure. As ripple effects of the crisis are being felt in different ways in different parts of the world, Petersen provides both a micro and macro view that business leaders need to hear. This is an abridged transcript of an interview from Rapid Response, hosted by the former editor-in-chief of Fast Company Bob Safian. From the team behind the Masters of Scale podcast, Rapid Response features candid conversations…

Microsoft’s recently announced use of a West Virginia data center that will run entirely on natural gas could cause the company’s emissions to skyrocket by 44%. That’s according to a new report from Stand.earth researchers, who say Microsoft’s power needs at the facility will see it burning the same amount of methane as annually as more than 1.2 million homes. The data center, called the Monarch Compute Campus, is an example of a “behind-the-meter” or “off-grid” data center, which generates its own electricity, bypassing the public grid. With the growth of AI data centers threatening to overload the electricity grid and raise residents’ energy bills, these…

American Express is making a push to play a bigger role in how businesses operate day to day with a new card and tools to support it. Alongside the launch of its Graphite Business Cash Unlimited Card, the company on Wednesday announced a broad set of updates across its commercial and AI-powered tools. Together, they signal a shift in how Amex wants to present itself to business customers. At the center of the rollout is a new product called the Graphite Business Cash Unlimited Card. But the bigger story is how that card fits into a larger system designed to help businesses manage spending, track expenses, and automate routine work. Expanding beyond the card …

Today, Alix Earle is launching a skincare line—but if you’ve been looking close enough you probably knew it was coming. For the last year, the influencer has been dropping Easter eggs across her social feeds in the lead-up to her debut venture. There were the vlogs from her dermatologist’s office. The un-get-ready-with-me posts featuring unnamed products in unbranded packaging. The puzzle-like billboard in NYC that popped up with missing pieces. Now today, Earle is finally revealing Reale Actives, a skincare brand that Earle developed for acne-prone skin but is “designed for everyone” launching March 31. Those who have been following Earle for years might say…

Shares of Arm Holdings plc (Nasdaq: ARM) are surging this morning after the semiconductor design firm announced it will begin making its own chips for AI workloads. The move from chip designer to chipmaker represents the most significant shift in the company’s business model in its 35-year history. Here’s what you need to know. Arm ravamps its business model For over three decades, the British semiconductor firm had one primary business model: it designed chips and then licensed those designs to other companies, including Apple and Qualcomm, which would then make their own semiconductors based on Arm’s designs. Under this business model, Arm essentially made t…

Ryan Coogler, Zinzi Coogler, and Sev Ohanian, the founders of Proximity Media, share their top leadership tips for creatives. View the full article

This is ‘The Truth About Leadership,’ Fast Company’s latest video series, where CEOs and industry leaders speak honestly and candidly about what it’s really like to be at the top. No corporate jargon—just real talk. First up: Alex Cooper, host of Call Her Daddy and founder and CEO of Unwell. View the full article

Steve Huffman, CEO of Reddit and cofounder alongside Alexis Ohanian, speaks with Fast Company about what it takes to be an effective leader. He explains why imposter syndrome isn’t necessarily a bad thing and how his first job helped shape his leadership style. View the full article

Sundar Pichai is guiding Google through the AI revolution with a leadership style that balances bold innovation with thoughtful responsibility. View the full article

AI doesn’t float in the cloud. It runs on concrete, steel, and electricity in massive physical infrastructure. It is powered by local electricity grids and located in cities across the country. Residents who live and work nearby have a direct stake in how and where that infrastructure is built. That makes community consent the deciding factor in the AI race. Technology alone won’t determine the outcome—trust will. Companies that scale fastest will treat sustainable engineering and trust-building as a core business strategy. The AI race won’t be won in the cloud. It will be won at the fence line. As an official partner of UNESCO’s World Engineering Day for Su…

Calling all space vendors, scientists, and STEM students: NASA needs even more of your help building the next generations of space stations, lunar infrastructure, and space science. In a sweeping overview on Tuesday, NASA Administrator Jared Isaacman and space program leaders delivered an urgent and overhauled vision to advance American leadership in space commerce and scientific exploration. After decades of a space agency spread too thin, losing skills, money, and time serving too many stakeholders, the streamlined revamp calls for aligning NASA goals and workflows with commercial and international partners on a clear mission to build a competitive commercial …

In business conversations today, there’s generally an eye roll when someone brings up “sustainability” or “ESG.” Once a favorite of investors, boards, and marketers, sustainability has been politicized, deprioritized, and in many cases quietly shelved. At the same time, a new headline dominates: AI. AI is the strategy, the investment thesis, the growth promise. It’s exciting…and it should be. But amid the whiplash, we’ve stopped talking about something far more long-lasting: purpose. Even at the most recent meetings of global leaders in Davos, energy and climate played a role, but purpose took a backseat. And that’s a problem. ESG is not purpose. AI is not pur…

The state of behavioral health tells two different stories. On one hand, the crisis is deepening: 62% of U.S. adults now experience mental health challenges, up from 44% just a decade ago. Severe mental illness has climbed from 10% to 15% over that same period, according to third-party research commissioned by Qualifacts (research not available publicly). On the flip side, there are signs of genuine progress. The stigma around seeking care is finally lessening, with treatment rates rising from 45% to 52% between 2014 and 2024. Mental health and substance use spending increased 55% from 2015 to 2022, adding 170,000 critical jobs to the behavioral health workforce d…

A New Mexico jury determined Tuesday that Meta knowingly harmed children’s mental health and concealed what it knew about child sexual exploitation on its social media platforms, a verdict that signals a changing tide against tech companies and the government’s willingness to crack down. The landmark decision comes after a nearly seven-week trial, and as jurors in a federal court in California have been sequestered in deliberations for more than a week about whether Meta and YouTube should be liable in a similar case. New Mexico jurors sided with state prosecutors who argued that Meta — which owns Instagram, Facebook and WhatsApp — prioritized profits over safety, and v…