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Aerospace company Starfighters Space, which operates the world’s only commercial supersonic aircraft fleet out of NASA’s Kennedy Space Center, is down double digits after major gains following completion of its initial public offering (IPO) last week. Starfighters Space’s stock price has had a volatile ride in the days since, and Tuesday was no exception. On Tuesday, shares of the stock, which are trading under the ticker symbol FJET, were down 55%, just one day after Monday’s record gains, when it soared a whopping 371%. The Florida-based company completed its IPO last Wednesday, with shares beginning to trade on the NYSE American the next day. The company ra…

The fintech industry has spent the last decade obsessing over seamless experiences and bringing financial products inside the tools that consumers were already hooked on. Instant approvals, one-click funding, and frictionless onboarding became the benchmarks of success. And for good reason; they removed friction that had frustrated their customers for generations. But here’s what we’re learning as embedded finance matures: The consumers and businesses that use embedded financial products repeatedly and stay loyal to their platforms are not just staying for the technology and platform. They’re staying because when they need it, they’re able to get help from people who …

Last weekend, a gnarly power outage in San Francisco took out a number of traffic lights, which, in turn, sent a number of self-driving Waymo robotaxis into a sort of fugue state. Instead of driving, some of the Waymos responded to these now-analog intersections by turning on their hazard lights, blocking traffic, and, well, not doing much of anything. There were multiple instances of Waymo cars clogging up roads, turning futuristic technology into glorified bollards. The city quickly asked the company to turn off the service. The immediate issue has been resolved—the power is back on and the Waymo service had resumed in San Francisco as of Sunday. But questions ling…

The Federal Communications Commission on Monday said it would ban new foreign-made drones, a move that will keep new Chinese-made drones such as those from DJI and Autel out of the U.S. market. The announcement came a year after Congress passed a defense bill that raised national security concerns about Chinese-made drones, which have become a dominant player in the U.S., widely used in farming, mapping, law enforcement,ss and filmmaking. The bill called for stopping the two Chinese companies from selling new drones in the U.S. if a review found they posed a risk to American national security. The deadline for the review was Dec. 23. The FCC said Monday the re…

Meta’s decision to end its professional fact-checking program sparked a wave of criticism in the tech and media world. Critics warned that dropping expert oversight could erode trust and reliability in the digital information landscape, especially when profit-driven platforms are mostly left to police themselves. What much of this debate has overlooked, however, is that today, AI large language models are increasingly used to write up news summaries, headlines, and content that catch your attention long before traditional content moderation mechanisms can step in. The issue isn’t clear-cut cases of misinformation or harmful subject matter going unflagged in the absenc…

The governor of Niigata on Tuesday formally gave local consent to put two reactors at the Kashiwazaki-Kariwa nuclear power plant in the north-central prefecture back online, clearing a last hurdle toward restarting the plant idled for more than a decade following the 2011 meltdowns at another plant managed by the same utility. Gov. Hideyo Hanazumi, in his meeting with Economy and Industry Minister Ryosei Akazawa, conveyed the prefecture’s “endorsement” to restart the No. 6 and No. 7 reactors at the Kashiwazaki-Kariwa plant, accepting the government’s pledge to ensure safety, emergency response and understanding of the residents. Restart preparations for No. 6 reac…

The U.S. Food and Drug Administration approved Novo Nordisk’s weight-loss pill on Monday, giving the Danish drugmaker a leg up in the race to market a potent oral medication for shedding pounds as it looks to regain lost ground from rival Eli Lilly. The pill is 25 milligrams of semaglutide, the same active ingredient in injectable Wegovy and Ozempic, and will be sold under the brand name Wegovy. Novo already sells an oral semaglutide for type 2 diabetes, Rybelsus. The approval could help spur a turnaround for Novo after a rocky year of sliding shares, profit warnings and slowing sales of its injectable Wegovy amid intense competition from Lilly and pressure from c…

Across the country, a growing sentiment suggests the university degree is an artifact of a bygone era, a depreciating asset in an economy obsessed with speed. A recent Gallup poll confirms this shift, revealing that Americans’ confidence in the value of a college education has plummeted to a 15-year low. Nowhere is this skepticism louder than in my own backyard. In Silicon Valley, the “skip college” mantra has evolved from a “hot take” to accepted wisdom. Fueled by the rise of generative AI, the logic is seductive: If artificial intelligence can code, write copy, and analyze data faster than a junior employee, why spend four years and a small fortune on skills a bot w…

We used to argue whether design was about aesthetics or about functionality. But in 2025, those conversations seemed downright quaint. Simpler debates for a simpler time. Now we’re wondering if craft can survive the age of AI, and if we’ll ever escape the politicization of every brand and object again. For the December episode of our podcast By Design, I discussed these trends and more with Fast Company senior editor Liz Stinson. We were joined by some of our brightest friends in the industry who shared their biggest own moments in design for the year, including Paola Antonelli (senior curator at MoMA), Cliff Kuang (FC Design’s first editor and senior staff d…

Santa keeps delivering for quantum computing investors this year. On Monday, shares of well-known quantum computing firms shot up by double digits, with D-Wave Quantum stock up almost 15% and Quantum Computing Inc. up 11%. Shares of IonQ Inc. and Rigetti Computing were likewise up roughly 10%. The exact catalyst spurring those increases is unclear. It may have initially been sparked in part by D-Wave’s Monday announcement that it would be attending the CES 2026 trade show next month. The Palo Alto-based company plans to showcase its “award-winning annealing quantum computing technology, hybrid quantum-classical solvers, and real-world customer use case…

In December 2024, our survey with Harris Poll asked B2B marketers to share their top areas for investment in 2025. Artificial intelligence tools were at the top of the list. It also wasn’t surprising to see the AI architects named Time magazine’s Person of the Year as the ripple effects of the technology continue across every sector. And in 2026, we will see B2B decision makers do something new: return to basics andembrace AI to reimagine what’s possible. This approach reveals a compelling duality in how marketers are planning for 2026. There’s a return to what we’ve always known while also betting big on AI as a force not only reshaping work, but rewriting today’s B2…

Hello and welcome to Modern CEO! Each week this newsletter explores inclusive approaches to leadership drawn from conversations with executives and entrepreneurs, and from the pages of Inc. and Fast Company. If you received this newsletter from a friend, you can sign up to get it yourself every Monday morning. From technological advances and geopolitical changes to workplace culture shifts and market pressures, 2025 has been a year of change, uncertainty, and disruption. I’m Gwen Moran, and for nearly three years as Modern CEO’s editor, I’ve had a front-row seat as Mansueto Ventures CEO and Chief Content Officer Stephanie Mehta talks to business leaders and expert…

In November, Apple laid off dozens of sales employees in a rather unexpected move for the tech giant. Apple is the rare tech company that has steered clear of mass layoffs, particularly among its peers in the trillion-dollar club. The layoffs “came as a surprise” for those who lost their jobs, according to a Bloomberg report—and they impacted some employees who had been with the company for decades. The post-pandemic job market has come to be defined by layoffs, in tech and beyond: A Glassdoor analysis finds that there was a peak in 2023, but layoffs have since continued at a more frequent cadence relative to the years prior. A variety of sectors have been hit hard—a…

As the Consumer Electronics Show (CES) returns to Las Vegas from Jan. 6 to 9, the tech industry is gearing up for its annual spectacle of prototypes, silicon benchmarks and AI-branded gadgets. But one of the most consequential shifts in enterprise technology over the coming year will unfold far from the keynote stages and demo floors. HP, the 85-year-old Silicon Valley company long defined by PCs, printers, and enterprise hardware, is repositioning itself as a work-intelligence platform—where devices learn continuously, services anticipate needs, and AI dissolves the traditional boundaries between hardware, software, and the cloud. Under Jim Nottingham, senior vice p…

At 10:24 p.m., while brushing his teeth, my husband’s phone pings. It’s not an emergency. No one is bleeding. No building is on fire. It’s an email that begins with the words, “Just circling back.” In France, this would be illegal. Or at least deeply frowned upon. Since 2017, French workers at companies with more than 50 employees have had a legally protected right to disconnect. That means, employers can’t expect workers to answer emails or messages after hours. Similar policies exist across Europe, including Spain, Belgium, and Greece. Meanwhile, in America, we’re circling back at bedtime. The Country That Turned “Always On” Into a Personality Trait …

Everybody loves the idea of feedback, defined broadly as information provided to someone about their performance, behavior, or actions. This makes a great deal of sense. Indeed, many studies have consistently shown that feedback from others plays an important role in helping us understand who we are, including how we differ from others. It is vital for improving managers’ and leaders’ performance and for helping people evolve and develop, both professionally and personally. Conversely, being feedback-deprived, or having a tendency to ignore it, increases the gap between how good you think you are, and how good you actually are—at times, to painfully delusional lev…

A group of college students braved the frigid New England weather on Dec. 13, 2025, to attend a late afternoon review session at Brown University in Providence, Rhode Island. Eleven of those students were struck by gunfire when a shooter entered the lecture hall. Two didn’t survive. Shortly after, a petition circulated calling for better security for Brown students, including ID-card entry to campus buildings and improved surveillance cameras. As often happens in the aftermath of tragedy, the conversation turned to lessons for the future, especially in terms of school security. There has been rapid growth of the nation’s now US$4 billion school security industry. …

If a single type of building could define our present time, it would undoubtedly be the data center. Underpinning the increasingly online way we work, shop, and entertain ourselves, data centers provide the computing power and storage to handle all the Zoom calls, Amazon purchases, and Netflix streams a person can cram into their day. And now as compute-hungry artificial intelligence dominates the future of nearly every sector of the economy—and possibly society as a whole—the data center will become even more ubiquitous. A headlong data center building boom is already underway. One report finds that average monthly spending on data centers has increased 400% in the l…

A few weeks ago, I led a leadership workshop for a group of executive women leaders in Birmingham, Alabama. Before I begin leadership workshops, I ask the participants what they want out of our time together. This year, one answer has emerged consistently on top: connection. This isn’t surprising. As executives rise to higher levels of leadership, they often report increased feelings of loneliness. One Harvard Business Review survey found that 55% of CEOs acknowledge experiencing moderate but significant bouts of loneliness, while 25% report frequent feelings of loneliness. As your expertise becomes more specialized, it can be harder to find other leaders who understand …

The recent announcement by McKinsey & Company that it plans to cut roughly 10% of its workforce has sent ripples through the consulting world, reigniting debate about the future of the industry. This is not about one firm, one round of layoffs, or one business cycle. It signals an irreversible shift in how value is created in consulting. Having spent a significant part of my career at McKinsey, I saw it grow and flourish in an era when information was scarce. Even basic market intelligence required large teams working for months to gather and synthesize data. The digital age brought a data explosion and democratized access, and McKinsey adapted again by expanding …

Resilience is a much-needed skill in today’s tough job market. Despite the headlines lambasting young employees as “lazy” and “entitled”, a Big Four consulting firm is taking matters into its own hands and offering training for recent grads. PwC will give its new young hires “resilience” training to toughen them up for careers as management consultants. The firm has introduced the initiative in the UK to help Gen Z brush up on their “human skills,” including communication with clients and handling day-to-day work dynamics, like pressure or criticism. “Quite often we are struck that the graduates that join us… don’t always have the resilience; they don’t always h…

Over the past five years, the remote work revolution has changed life as we know it for corporate folks like myself. And while I’m on the record singing the praises of working from home, I’d like to set the record straight: It’s not without its faults. Don’t get me wrong, I’ve enjoyed my weekday afternoon naps and time away from co-workers. But I’ve also come to realize that before the pandemic, we were putting a little bit too much gas on working from home. Is WFH convenient? You bet your ass it is. Waking up and not having to get out of bed — or get in the shower or get dressed because I’m taking all my meetings with the camera off — is a lifestyle I’ve come to appr…

Tesla CEO Elon Musk’s net worth surged to $749 billion late Friday after the Delaware Supreme Court reinstated Tesla stock options worth $139 billion that were voided last year, according to Forbes’ billionaires index. Musk’s 2018 pay package, once worth $56 billion, was restored by the Delaware Supreme Court on Friday, two years after a lower court struck down the compensation deal as “unfathomable.” The Supreme Court said that a 2024 ruling that rescinded the pay package had been improper and inequitable to Musk. Earlier this week, Musk became the first person ever to surpass $600 billion in net worth on the heels of reports that his aerospace startup SpaceX…

With its goofy block lettering and bright colors, the MetroCard feels like a relic, which it sort of is—an early 1990s design, complete with gradients and drop shadows, that’s managed to stick around long enough to become one of New York’s defining symbols. At a time when generic minimalism and the sheen of AI-generated graphics have taken over, its unmistakable graphics feel refreshing. And the fact that a 31-year-old fare payment system is still in circulation when most tech today becomes obsolete in a matter of months is a remarkable achievement. But the end is near: on December 31st, the MTA will stop selling MetroCards and completely phase them out on an imminen…