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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. This week, I’m focusing on the increasing pressure on the AI industry’s wunderkind, OpenAI. I also look at the change in AI leadership at Apple, and at the music industry’s new cooperation with AI music generation apps. 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 (formerly Twitter) @thesullivan. Is Op…

Ralph Lauren revealed Team USA’s Milan Cortina Winter Olympics looks Thursday, complete with Americana knit sweaters and plenty of vintage call-backs. The formal opening ceremony look pairs a patterned red, white and blue knit sweater with tailored cream trousers and a matching wool coat. Moving sportier, the closing ceremony outfit features a graphic puffer coat inspired by vintage ski kits over a color-blocked sweater. “We are creating something that we know has to become timeless and has to be something that people will wear forever and appreciate forever,” said David Lauren, the Chief Branding and Innovation Officer at Ralph Lauren. “So in creating jackets like this…

There’s a very common question asked of people working in space exploration: Why explore space when we have so many problems on Earth? From Wi-Fi, to satellite images of real estate, to matters of national security, much of our daily lives has been made possible by policy changes in the 1990s that permitted the deployment of low-Earth-orbit satellites. But the tangible benefits to space exploration may not always be obvious, according to Jack Kilray, director of government relations for The Planetary Society, a nonprofit dedicated to advancing space science and exploration. “What we discover in space invariably helps life on Earth,” Kilray said at last month’s Wor…

Adidas defeated an appeal on Wednesday by U.S. shareholders who said the footwear and apparel maker fraudulently concealed antisemitic and other improper behavior by Ye, formerly known as Kanye West, before its partnership with the rapper and fashion designer imploded in 2022. The 9th U.S. Circuit Court of Appeals in San Francisco said Adidas did not mislead shareholders in its annual reports by saying improper behavior by partners from the entertainment industry could have a negative spill-over effect on business. “A reasonable investor would know that a partnership with a celebrity partner like Ye would come with inherent risks relating to improper behavior,” a …

The longest government shutdown on record cost Delta Air Lines an estimated $200 million, CEO Ed Bastian said Wednesday in the first disclosure by a U.S. airline regarding the shutdown’s financial impact. Bastian told investors that refunds “grew significantly” while bookings slowed amid the uncertainty in air travel caused by the 43-day shutdown, contributing to Delta’s loss of about 25 cents per share. The shutdown, which began Oct. 1, led to long delays at major airports and historic flight cancellations at 40 of the country’s busiest airports as more unpaid air traffic controllers missed work, citing additional stress and the need to take on side jobs. As the shutdo…

Candles and lights are typically a festive part of the holiday season but, this year, Yankee Candle has little reason to celebrate. Its parent company, Newell Brands, has announced that it will lay off over 900 employees worldwide—about 10% of its professional and clerical workforce. Layoffs in the U.S. will mostly occur this month, while international employees—like those from countries with greater worker protections—will see layoffs take place through 2026, “subject to local law and consultation requirements.” Newell Brands also owns Oster, Rubbermaid, Elmers, and Sharpie, among others. Some Yankee Candle stores will shutter by January 2026 Newell …

Jeff Bezos last month went public with his new AI firm, which is currently being called Project Prometheus. The effort had been in development for a while, but is still relatively secretive. There’s no website and only a sparse LinkedIn page describing itself as “AI for the physical economy.” The $6.2-billion startup may be facing lots of competition from other AI companies, including giants like Microsoft and OpenAI. At the same time, it may also have to contend with another mysterious and more modest effort that happens to have already filed a trademark application for an AI company with the exact same name. On November 17 — the same day the New York Times ran a…

Shopping assistant chatbots were a novelty a year ago. Now, they’re everywhere. After rolling out AI-powered assistants, online retailers and tech companies have been adding more artificial intelligence features to make online shopping easier and more convenient. The latest crop of AI-powered shopping services and tools made their debut in recent weeks, just in time to kick off the holiday shopping season that begins with Black Friday. Here’s a rundown of existing and newly released AI services that can help with your search for the perfect gift in the run-up to Christmas: Retail chatbots Amazon led the way by rolling out its Rufus chatbot in 2024. Other ecommerc…

When the British designer Fred Rigby released his first furniture collection in 2021, he knew from the outset he would prioritize a U.S. audience—a bigger market with more sales opportunities, he says. Rigby designs and manufactures elegantly crafted furniture in the Oxfordshire countryside, and has built strong relationships with interior designer clients in cities like New York, L.A. and Miami. For a few years, things went according to plan. As his studio grew, 60–70% of sales came from the U.S. market. Then in 2025, all of that changed. “We had a healthy-looking pipeline, but when the tariffs came in, we just saw more and more projects disappear,” says Rigby. S…

Since Pantone began naming its Color of the Year in 2000, we’ve seen two flavors of both brown and yellow, three variations of purple, blue, and turquoise, and four distinct takes on orange. But for the first time ever, Pantone’s color is essentially a non-color. Or you could call it every color. Pantone’s 2026 Color of the Year is a white. In Pantone language, that’s code 11-4201—aka Cloud Dancer. Pantone—which operates somewhere between a trend forecaster and social psychologist—argues that Cloud Dancer is part of a great cultural reboot. In the era of AI, everything feels like it’s changing on a daily basis, and the overstimulation of the internet is only…

Fifty-two-year-old Dinam Bigny sank into debt and had to get a roommate this year, in part because of health insurance premiums that cost him nearly $900 per month. Next year, those monthly fees will rise by $200 — a significant enough increase that the program manager in Aldie, Virginia, has resigned himself to finding cheaper coverage. “I won’t be able to pay it, because I really drained out any savings that I have right now,” he said. “Emergency fund is still draining out — that’s the scary part.” Bigny is among the many Americans dependent on Affordable Care Act marketplace health insurance plans who are already struggling with the high cost of health care, accordi…

As Americans grapple with $1.23 trillion in credit card balances, Klarna Group is introducing a new way to access premium rewards—one that doesn’t require a credit card at all. The Swedish fintech company launched its Premium ($19.99/month) and Max ($44.99/month) membership tiers in the United States on Thursday, expanding upon its existing Core and Plus offerings and mirroring successful rollouts in the UK and EU. The move positions Klarna squarely in the territory long dominated by high-end credit cards like the Amex Platinum and Chase Sapphire Reserve, but with none of the spending thresholds, APRs, or annual fees that usually define that segment. The timi…

Small changes in routines can create significant improvements in how much gets accomplished in a day. Here, experts share 15 practical habits that can boost productivity and lead to better results in your work and personal life. Plan Your Week Every Friday Afternoon One small habit that’s made the biggest long-term difference in my productivity is making a plan every Friday for the coming week. Most people start their Mondays feeling behind before they’ve even begun. Their inbox dictates their day, and they spend valuable energy reacting instead of leading. I used to do the same thing—until I started ending each week with a simple Friday planning ritual. Be…

Raquel Urtasun is the founder and CEO of self-driving truck startup Waabi as well as a computer science professor at the University of Toronto. Unlike some competitors, Waabi’s AI technology is designed to drive goods all the way to their destinations, rather than merely to autonomous vehicle hubs near highways. Urtasun, one of Fast Company’s AI 20 honorees for 2025, spoke with us about the relationship between her academic and industry work, what sets Waabi apart from the competition, and the role augmented reality and simulation play in teaching computers to drive even in unusual road conditions. This Q&A is part of Fast Company’s AI 20 for 2025, our roundup…

As gaming platforms Roblox and Fortnite have exploded in popularity with Gen Alpha, it’s no surprise that more than half of children in the U.S. are putting video games high on their holiday wish lists. Entertainment Software Association (ESA) surveyed 700 children between the ages of 5 and 17 and found three in five kids are asking for video games this holiday season. However, the most highly requested gift isn’t a console or even a specific game: It’s in-game currency. The survey didn’t dig into which currency is proving most popular, but the category as a whole tops the list with a 43% request rate, followed by 39% for a console, 37% for accessories, and 37% …

Most people say they want to live to a ripe old age. But that isn’t really true. What people really want is to live to a ripe, old age in good mental and physical health. Some of us actually get to live this dream. These folks are known as super-agers and they make it well into their 80s not just in decent physical shape, but also with minds at least as sharp as people 30 years younger. How do they manage it? That’s the question Northwestern University researchers have been aiming to answer with a 25-year-long study. It examined the brains and lifestyles of almost 300 super-agers. As you’d expect, a quarter century of data shows it really helps to be born with lu…

Rachel Taylor began her career as a creative director in the advertising business, a job that gave her plenty of opportunity to micromanage the final product. “I had control of the script,” she remembers. “I could think about the intonation, and I could give the actor notes.” That was before she pivoted to helping AI companies shape the personality of their assistants. Rather than handing a digital helper a script, the best she can do is point it in the right direction: The technology “sometimes feels like a toddler that you give a permanent marker to and see what it writes on the wall,” she says. After joining DeepMind cofounder Mustafa Suleyman’s startup Inflect…

What if the chatbots we talk to every day actually felt something? What if the systems writing essays, solving problems, and planning tasks had preferences, or even something resembling suffering? And what will happen if we ignore these possibilities? Those are the questions Kyle Fish is wrestling with as Anthropic’s first in-house AI welfare researcher. His mandate is both audacious and straightforward: Determine whether models like Claude can have conscious experiences, and, if so, how the company should respond. “We’re not confident that there is anything concrete here to be worried about, especially at the moment,” Fish says, “but it does seem possible.” Earlier …

Andreessen Horowitz investors (and identical twins) Justine and Olivia Moore have been in venture capital since their undergraduate days at Stanford University, where, in 2015, they cofounded an incubator called Cardinal Ventures to help students pursue business ideas while still in school. Founding it also gave the Moores an entry point into the broader VC industry. “The thing about starting a startup incubator at Stanford is all the VCs want to meet you, even if you have no idea what you’re doing, which we did not back then,” Olivia says. At the time, the app economy was booming, and services around things like food delivery and dating proliferated, recalls Just…

A few years ago, Tara Feener’s career took an unexpected pivot. She’s spent nearly two decades working on creative tools for companies like Adobe, FiftyThree, WeTransfer, and Vimeo, and was content to keep working in that domain. But then the Browser Company came along, and Feener saw an opportunity to build something even more ambitious. Feener—one of Fast Company’s AI 20 honorees for 2025—is now the company’s head of engineering, overseeing its AI-focused Dia browser and its earlier Arc browser. The browser is suddenly an area of intense interest for AI companies, and Feener understands why: It’s the first stop for looking up information, and it’s already connec…

Artificial intelligence is radically changing how healthcare providers tackle vision loss, with tools that can be used from diagnosis to treatment and even follow-up care. One such example is Visilan, which uses smartphone imaging, telemedicine, and AI to screen, diagnose, and monitor patients for vision care. And with this technology, more of the 1 billion-plus patients who live with vision loss can be treated, Jordan Shuff, executive director and founder of Visilan, said at last month’s World Changing Ideas Summit, cohosted by Fast Company and Johns Hopkins University in Washington, D.C. But in this race to expand care, it’s also important to have guardrail…

Headlines about a shredded cheese recall affecting more than a quarter of a million cases of various products have been making the rounds for the last few days, understandably alarming consumers. Yet the recall itself is not new, despite only being widely publicized at this time. Here’s what you need to know. What’s happened? Back in early October, a company called Great Lakes Cheese Co of Hiram, Ohio, reportedly issued a large-scale recall that impacted a range of shredded cheese products. The recall was initiated after Great Lakes Cheese was informed by one of its suppliers that some of its “Low-Moisture Part-Skim Mozzarella” may have been contaminated …

We Googled “Labubus.” We searched for “beaded sardine bags,” and recipes like “cabbage boil” and “hot honey cottage cheese sweet potato beef bowl.” We wanted information about Charlie Kirk and Zohran Mamdani, about Sinners, Weapons, and KPop Demon Hunters. We desperately needed to know why kids kept saying “6-7.” Together, these queries defined 2025. The 24th edition of Google’s Year in Search, the company’s annual top 10 lists of users’ most-searched items, debuted today. These hundreds of lists both validate our own obsessions and take us out of our own bubbles and echo chambers, offering insights into what our fellow humans are interested in. …

The healthcare industry faces major challenges in creating new drugs that can improve outcomes in the treatment of all kinds of diseases. New generative AI models could play a major role in breaking through existing barriers, from lab research to successful clinical trials. Eventually, even AI-powered robots could help in the cause. Nvidia VP of healthcare Kimberly Powell, one of Fast Company’s AI 20 honorees, has led the company’s health efforts for 17 years, giving her a big head start on understanding how to turn AI’s potential to improve our well-being into reality. Since it’s likely that everything from drug-discovery models to robotic healthcare aides would be …