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If you were building global teams in 2025, you wouldn’t need me to tell you it was a crazy year. We experienced economic volatility and AI disruption. Plus, tightened borders caused companies to adjust and readjust their approaches. 2026 won’t be calmer. But the elements we need to master to stay competitive are now coming into focus: Navigating mobility disruption, creating unity across increasingly distributed workforces, and building the transparent, compliant infrastructure needed to employ people anywhere. 1. Rethink mobility strategies After a decade or so of relative calm, global mobility is now being disrupted from every angle. That’s because geopolitic…

Elon Musk took over X and folded in Grok, his sister company’s generative AI tool, with the aim of making his social media ecosystem a more permissive and “free speech maximalist” space. What he’s ended up with is the threat of multiple regulatory investigations after people began using Grok to create explicit images of women without their permission—and sometimes veering into images of underage children. The problem, which surfaced in the past week as people began weaponizing the image-generation abilities of Grok on innocuous posts by mostly female users of X, has raised the hackles of regulators across the world. Ofcom, the U.K.’s communications regulator, has made…

Six decades after it was created by Congress, the nonprofit that brought America Mister Rogers’ Neighborhood and Sesame Street will shut down for good. The Corporation for Public Broadcasting announced this week that it would officially shut down, ushering in an uncertain new era for the future of public broadcasting. The organization historically administers funds for NPR, PBS, and more than 1,000 local TV and radio stations nationwide. The nonprofit entity was signed into law by the Public Broadcasting Act of 1967 to manage federal funds for educational TV and radio shows, but it fell victim to a defunding campaign initiated by the The President administration …

Morgan Stanley is seeking regulatory approval to launch exchange-traded funds tied to the price of cryptocurrency tokens, according to filings with the U.S. Securities and Exchange Commission on Tuesday, the first such move by a big U.S. bank. The bank is looking to launch ETFs tied to the price of cryptocurrencies bitcoin and solana, according to the filings, aiming to deepen its presence in the cryptocurrency space. Regulatory clarity under U.S. President Donald The President has encouraged mainstream finance companies to embrace digital assets, which were once considered merely speculative instruments. In December, the Office of the Comptroller of the Curre…

In moments of political chaos, deepfakes and AI-generated content can thrive. Case in point: the online reaction to the US government’s shocking operation in Venezuela over the weekend, which included multiple airstrikes and a clandestine mission that ended with the capture of the country’s president, Nicolás Maduro, and his wife. They were soon charged with narcoterrorism, along with other crimes, and they’re currently being held at a federal prison in New York. Right now, the facts of the extraordinary operation are still coming to light, and the future of Venezuela is incredibly unclear. President Donald The President says the U.S. government plans to “run” the co…

Kim Kardashian’s apparel brand Skims is outfitting American athletes at the Olympics for the fourth time in a row, and this year’s collection is its cheekiest one yet. Skims and Team USA have established something of an annual tradition. The brand has dressed Olympic and Paralympic athletes in new loungewear-slash-underwear capsules at the Tokyo 2020, Beijing 2022, and Paris 2024 Games—and now, it’s back for Milano Cortina 2026. This year’s collection includes everything from Americana-themed panties to cozy pajama sets, tasteful sweaters, menswear, and accessories. The collection will be available to average folk starting on January 8 at Skims.com and some Skims…

A golden phone that President Donald The President‘s family business promised to release last year remains mysteriously under wraps as the technology industry serves up a glut of new gadgets at CES in Las Vegas this week. When the The President Organization launched a mobile phone service last June, it was supposed to be a stage setter for a new smartphone bathed in gold with a $500 price tag — a bargain compared to Apple’s latest iPhone models that sell for anywhere from $800 to $1,200. The newly formed The President Mobile targeted its T1 phone for an August or September release. What’s more, The President Mobile initially hailed T1 as a device that would be “pr…

Pipeline safety regulators on Monday assessed their largest fine ever against the company responsible for leaking 1.1 million gallons of oil into the Gulf off the coast of Louisiana in 2023. But the $9.6 million fine isn’t likely to be a major burden for Third Coast to pay. This single fine is close to the normal total of $8 million to $10 million in all fines that the Pipeline and Hazardous Materials Safety Administration hands out each year. But Third Coast has a stake in some 1,900 miles of pipelines, and in September, the Houston-based company announced that it had secured a nearly $1 billion loan. Pipeline Safety Trust Executive Director Bill Caram said this spill …

Workplace training invites are dropping in many employees’ inboxes now that the new year is underway. Most employers require staff to complete multiple HR modules annually: training on harassment, workplace relationships, or conflicts of interest, for example, followed by a quick quiz. Recently, however, a new TikTok trend imagining fake workplace “training modules” is going viral. “It’s 5 pm and you notice one of your colleagues is crying at their desk,” creator @pepsimasc posted in November. “Do you A: check in and ask how they’re doing, or B: tell them to shut the fuck up?” the skit begins. He continues on to the next imaginary scenario: “You’re in a meetin…

It’s not just XRP that is having a good 2026 so far. One of the world’s oldest assets, gold, is also having a good run in the first week of the year. Here’s where the precious metal stands, and why its price is rising. An ounce of gold is close to its all-time high The price of one ounce of gold reached $4,497.20 on Tuesday, according to data from Yahoo Finance. That price represents a 1% gain for the precious metal for the day so far, or an increase of $45.70 per ounce. At over $4,497, gold is now near its all-time high of $4,549.74, which it reached just weeks ago on December 26. Since the year began, gold has now risen about 2.8%. As Reuters notes, 20…

While the Lego Group has dipped its toes into tech waters before, the company hasn’t strayed far from its analog roots. But on Monday, the 94-year-old company unveiled a new product line that embraces the digital age, without abandoning its core business. At CES, Lego announced the upcoming launch of the Lego Smart Play system, an interactive technology that lets users’ Lego creations respond to player actions with tailored sounds, lights, behavior, and more. The company says it’s a way to further engage digital native kids without having them stare at yet another screen. While the toy market has struggled for the past few years, sales at the Lego Group have remai…

Nvidia, AMD and Intel all had important chip and AI platform announcements on the first day of CES 2026, but all audiences wanted to see more of was Star Wars and Jensen Huang’s little robot buddies. CES is a huge opportunity annually for companies both large and small to parade products they plan to put on shelves this year. As predicted, artificial intelligence was anchored in nearly everything as tech firms continue to look for AI products that will attract customers. Here are the highlights from Day 1: Nvidia gets physical The biggest buzzword in the air at CES is “physical AI,” Nvidia’s term for AI models that are trained in a virtual environment using compu…

For retirement savers and retirees, the new year brings more than the usual inflation adjustments to retirement contributions. The retirement legislation known as Secure 2.0 will also continue to phase in, and the One Big Beautiful Bill Act will have impacts too. Here’s a roundup of three key changes and some moves to consider. Roth-only catch-up contributions for high-income 401(k) investors Thanks to a provision in the Secure 2.0 retirement legislation, high-income earners (with $150,000 or more in FICA income in the prior year) who are over 50 and investing in 401(k) or other company retirement plans must make catch-up contributions to their plans’ Roth option,…

The U.S. took the unprecedented step Monday of cutting the number of vaccines it recommends for every child — a move that leading medical groups said would undermine protections against a half-dozen diseases. The change is effective immediately, meaning that the U.S. Centers for Disease Control and Prevention will now recommend that all children get vaccinated against 11 diseases. What’s no longer broadly recommended is protection against flu, rotavirus, hepatitis A, hepatitis B, some forms of meningitis or RSV. Instead, protections against those diseases are only recommended for certain groups deemed high risk, or when doctors recommend them in what’s called “shared dec…

GameStop Corp. is forging ahead with efforts to reduce its physical footprint in the first weeks of 2026. The video game retailer is closing stores in numerous states this month, according to local media reports, and emails and store signage shared by customers on social media, part of its ongoing effort to reduce costs and adapt to changes in shopping habits. The closures are not completely unexpected. In its third-quarter earnings report on December 9, GameStop said it had already closed 590 stores in the United States during the previous fiscal year as part of a “store portfolio optimization review.” In a December filing to the Securities and Exchange Comm…

Popular cryptocurrency XRP had a lackluster 2025, starting the year at around $2.32 per token while finishing at around the $1.84 mark. But in the past 24 hours, the price of XRP has jumped more than 11% to $2.37 per coin—a price not seen since the early part of November. So what’s driving the rise? Here are the two strongest factors. Spot ETF inflows are rising XRP is the native token of the XRP Ledger from Ripple Labs. Like some other well-known cryptocurrencies, XRP tokens are available to purchase directly or through exchange-traded funds (ETFs). Traditional retail investors tend to prefer to invest in the token through ETFs for convenience and ta…

A new year, a new quantum computing breakthrough: D-Wave, one of the quantum industry’s rising stars, announced “an industry-first breakthrough” on Tuesday as it works to make quantum computing commercially viable. The company says it has demonstrated “scalable, on-chip cryogenic control for gate-model qubits,” claiming it is the first in the industry to do so, and that the breakthrough helps overcome “a long-standing obstacle to building commercially viable and scalable gate-model quantum computers.” The issue, as Trevor Lanting, D-Wave’s chief development officer, tells Fast Company, is that adding qubits to a quantum system requires additional resources, such a…

Organizations are increasingly turning to “Culture Coaches” to address workplace challenges that traditional management approaches can’t solve. These specialized professionals bring outside perspective and emotional intelligence strategies to help teams build stronger communication patterns, employee engagement, and alignment. In this article, experts share insights on how culture coaching is reshaping the way companies approach employee growth, leadership development, and organizational success. Leaders Shape the Operating System of Business Companies are hiring Culture Coaches because many leaders are finally recognizing that culture is not a perk and not a mood.…

Five years ago this month, Kia took what seemed at the time to be a sledgehammer to its brand in the form of an inscrutable new logo. Today, its U.S. sales have never been higher. Kia America announced a 7% sales increase in 2025 after selling a record 852,155 units in the U.S. last year. It’s the third consecutive annual sales record for the South Korean automaker’s U.S. division, and the feat was driven by strong sales growth for vehicles like its K4 sedan and its Sportage and Telluride SUVs. Kia’s U.S. market share has never been greater. North America CEO Sean Yoon said in a news release that the numbers indicate “the strength of the Kia brand and the competit…

On December 1, podcaster and venture capitalist Harry Stebbings posted on LinkedIn that candidates were 200 times more likely to get into Harvard University than they were to get a job at the $6.6 billion valuation AI startup ElevenLabs. According to his statistic, out of 180,000 applicants in the first half of the year, only 0.018% were hired by the AI voice agent platform. That figure—extrapolated from a July spike in applications—may have been hyperbole. But it still went viral. And out of tens of thousands of applications, just 132 candidates eventually got the job at ElevenLabs—indeed, much lower than Harvard’s 3% to 4% admission rates. “On average, we’re se…

As a child growing up with his grandmother in Haiti, the artist Wyclef Jean developed an early appreciation for the idea that any worthy pursuit requires a blend of agency and preparation. On the day I spoke to him, Jean recalled a time when a missionary visited his village. “At five years old, a car pulls up and a man gets out and this was like my first time seeing a white person ever. I looked at my grandma and I said, ‘Do you know who this is?’ And my grandma was like, ‘This is Jesus Christ.’” Later, Jean came to understand this man was a missionary, bringing rice and beans to his village. “When he’s leaving, I look at my grandma, and I’m like, ‘Yo, how come Jesus …

McDonald’s limited-time McRib sandwich is a cultural icon. And like any item of its ilk, it’s divisive. On the one hand, the saucy, vaguely rib-esque boneless pork sandwich has a fan base so dedicated that it’s inspired its own Reddit megathread, merch, and a website called the McRib Locator. But on the other, the McRib has long been critiqued for its off-putting form factor and dubious ingredients. Now, a new class action lawsuit is asking the question that’s always plagued the sandwich: Is the McRib actually rib? The lawsuit, which was filed on December 23, 2025, in the Northern District of Illinois, alleges that McDonald’s has purposefully been misleading cust…

The founder of Slack once deemed email “the cockroach of the internet.” He wasn’t the first to lament the extreme survivability of our inbox. From text messages to social media to office messaging platforms, all sorts of communication technologies have teased the promise of killing email by connecting us to others in faster, richer ways. And yet, more than 50 years after its invention, ye olde email is more popular than ever. Some 1 billion people spend three hours a day in email—adding up to more than a trillion hours collectively per year, according to the email app Superhuman. And there’s no sign of this slowing down. “More people use Gmail every single month than…

Michael Jordan is widely recognized as one of the best basketball players to ever live. In a recent interview, Jordan revealed one of the secrets to his success: His love of the game. Jordan says he loved the game so much that he made sure to have a special clause included in his contract when playing with the Chicago Bulls, one which he’s “positive” players today don’t have: the “love of the game” clause. “If I was driving with you down the street, and I see a basketball game on the side of the road, I can go play in that basketball game,” Jordan told NBC’s Mike Tirico. “And if I get hurt, my contract is still guaranteed.” Jordan went on to explain that c…

Yann LeCun, Meta’s outgoing chief AI scientist, says his employer tested its latest Llama model in a way that may have made the model look better than it really was. In a recent Financial Times interview, LeCun says Meta researchers “fudged a little bit” by using different versions of Llama 4 Maverick and Llama 4 Scout models on different benchmarks to improve test results. Normally researchers use a single version of a new model for all benchmarks, instead of choosing a variant that will score best on a given benchmark. Prior to the launch of the Llama 4 models, Meta had begun to fall behind rivals Anthropic, OpenAI, and Google in pushing the envelope. The comp…