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Silicon Valley is rallying around a new extinction narrative. Agentic AI, autonomous systems capable of executing workflows on their own, could make traditional software-as-a-service (SaaS) applications obsolete. Big Tech investors worldwide argue that if artificial intelligence agents can update customer relationship management (CRM) records, create project tickets, and resolve support requests autonomously, companies may soon question whether to continue to pay per-seat subscription fees for software designed primarily for human operators. Public markets have reacted as if that future is already underway. Since early 2026 (January to February), the S&P 500 Softw…

A recent Wall Street Journal survey found a 38-point gap between how executives and employees experience AI at work. C-suite leaders report saving eight or more hours weekly. Two-thirds of front-line workers say the tools save them less than two hours—or nothing at all. Most leaders read that as a rollout problem. A training problem. A communication problem. It’s none of those things. This month, a National Bureau of Economic Research study of 6,000 executives confirmed what the WSJ data was already pointing to: the vast majority are seeing no measurable productivity gains from AI. Not a small shortfall. A near-total disconnect between investment and results. …

In the past few years, while navigating the streets of San Francisco, bus and trolley operators have documented a growing presence on the city’s streets: Waymo robotaxis, often devoid of any front-seat human driver, causing problems. Sometimes, they report the cars for signs of an illegal maneuver, like when in September, a driver operating the city’s 45 electric bus noticed a Waymo trying to pass on double solid yellow lines at Stockton and Columbus, an intersection along its route. Or for a near miss—like, when, last December, a Waymo was caught by a city light rail train’s video camera making a dangerous left turn at “high speed.” Very often, transit operators flag a s…

You know Graza—or, at least, you’ve probably seen its squeeze bottles of extra-virgin olive oil (EVOO) on grocery store shelves. They’re green, opaque to protect the contents, and sold in two variations: Sizzle, for cooking, and Drizzle, for finishing. Since the brand launched its direct-to-consumer site in 2021, it’s become a staple of the olive oil aisle. With national distribution across stores like Whole Foods, Kroger, and Costco, its squeeze bottles (sometimes accompanied by its beer-can refills) are sold in more than 28,000 stores. It has also been making small excursions into other parts of the store, with Ithaca using Graza oil for a co-branded hummus. B…

Hello and welcome to Modern CEO! I’m Stephanie Mehta, CEO and chief content officer of Mansueto Ventures. 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. In today’s business environment, uncertainty is the new norm: 70% of current CEOs surveyed by management consulting firm AlixPartners say their companies face high levels of disruption. To lead through such terrain, boards and recruiters searching for future CEOs need to focus less on a can…

Issey Miyake’s latest design is a pair of sunglasses inspired by the art of pottery. The glasses, called “Uroko,” are part of Miyake‘s Spring Summer 2026 collection, Dancing Texture. Rather than the typical two-lens structure, they feature eight separate lenses that curve around the temples like a trippy optical illusion. While the design itself reads futuristic, the texture of the frames is almost organic—like a relic of an ancient advanced society. They’re set to debut on Miyake’s website in mid-March for $680. Each piece of the Dancing Texture collection, which includes structured garments alongside billowing, patterned textiles, pulls inspiration from the …

Shares in Hims & Hers Health (NYSE: HIMS) are soaring this morning after an unconfirmed report that the telehealth company is entering into a deal with Novo Nordisk A/S (NYSE: NVO) to sell its popular GLP-1 weight-loss drugs, including Wegovy. The rumored deal is as surprising as Hims & Hers’s surging stock price this morning, especially considering that just last month, Novo was threatening to sue the telehealth provider. Here’s what you need to know. What’s happened? Late on Friday, Bloomberg reported that Hims & Hers has reached an agreement with the Danish drugmaker Novo Nordisk to sell Novo’s weight-loss drugs, including the popular GLP-1 pill…

Logitech may be known for keyboards, webcams, and gaming gear, but CEO Hanneke Faber is going beyond AI-first. She explains how she’s leading the hardware brand through an AI shift, approaching it as a leadership challenge, not just a tech one. Faber also shares lessons from competitive diving and navigating ever-shifting global tariffs. 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 with today’s top business leaders navigating real-time challenges. Subscribe to Rapid Response wherever you…

When leaders think about burnout, they often imagine visible distress, absence, emotional overwhelm or resignation. However, burnout does not always look like struggle. Often, it looks like competence. It looks like the person who always delivers. The one who volunteers to pick up the slack. The one answering work emails while watching their son’s nativity play, so they do not let anybody down. The one who says, “It’s fine, I’ll sort it.” The one who absorbs tension in the room so others do not have to. These people are not on a performance plan or raising red flags. They are not the ones asking for help. They are functioning. And those around them may not see…

A fascinating paradox about expertise is that we use our experiences from the past to prepare ourselves for the future. We do that in several ways—some of which are more backward-looking and others of which prepare you for the future. The most obvious of the backward-looking strategies is habits. When you develop a habit, you are associating a specific environment with a particular behavior. When you engage in a habit, you are basically letting your past actions dictate what you do in the moment. And that isn’t a bad thing. Many aspects of the world are pretty stable, and you should continue to do what has worked for you in the past when nothing in the world has chang…

The next wave of AI will be defined by agentic systems that can take actions: query databases, navigate portals, retrieve records, and increasingly interact with public digital infrastructure at scale. That shift is already showing up as traffic hitting government sites and services is becoming machine traffic. Some of it is benign (search and discovery). Some of it is ambiguous (scraping and automated browsing). And some of it could become actively harmful if agents can reserve scarce services, submit fraudulent requests, or generate volume that overwhelms public systems. The problem is that the government’s current interfaces were not designed for agent-to-gove…

Mojtaba Khamenei, a son of Iran’s late supreme leader, has been named as the Islamic Republic’s next ruler, authorities announced Monday, as Tehran widened its attacks across the Mideast to strike oil and water facilities crucial to its desert sheikdoms. With Iran’s theocracy under assault by the U.S. and Israel for more than a week, the country’s Assembly of Experts chose as the next supreme leader a secretive, 56-year-old cleric who maintains close ties to the country’s paramilitary Revolutionary Guard. The Guard has been firing missiles and drones at Israel and Gulf Arab states since the younger Khamenei’s father, Ayatollah Ali Khamenei, was killed Feb. 28 during the …

Any avid reader undoubtedly recognizes him: the sleek, inquisitive bird frozen inside an orange oval that’s become Penguin Random House’s distinctive logo. With its new brand refresh, Penguin Random House UK is setting that iconic penguin free. The brand just unveiled a delightful series of hand-drawn illustrations, named the “Playful Penguins,” which show the penguin jumping, strutting, dancing, and doing a whole lot of reading. The illustrations will show up everywhere across the Penguin Random House’s global markets, from seasonal campaigns to social initiatives and point-of-sale displays—and they’re designed to bring some added joy and movement to the brand as it appr…

The list of Saks Fifth Avenue and Neiman Marcus store locations set to close continues to grow. On March 6, 2026, parent company Saks Global announced it would close 15 additional retail locations. This is part of a broader restructuring plan following the luxury retailer’s Chapter 11 bankruptcy filing in January. Here’s what you need to know: What’s happening? According to a court document filed last Friday with the U.S. Bankruptcy Court for the Southern District of Texas, Houston Division, Saks Global will close an additional 15 store locations. The Saks Fifth Avenue on Chicago’s Magnificent Mile is included on the list. Most of the locations are …

After losing an hour of shut-eye, thanks to daylight savings time, sleep is one many people’s minds today. The day after we “spring forward,” people are significantly more tired—and cranky—due to that lost hour of sleep, which disrupts our natural circadian rhythm, increasing the risks of car accidents, strokes and even heart attacks, according to John Hopkins’s Bloomberg School of Health. In honor of Sleep Awareness Week—that elusive thing many Americans just don’t get enough of—we though we would introduce you to the Dutch method for getting a good night’s rest. In the U.S., “sleep hygiene” a popular way to clean up your sleep routine, is a hack that comes…

The deadline to claim the Super Early rate for Fast Company’s Brands That Matter is this Friday. Rates go up March 13 at 11:59 p.m. ET. This is the sixth year that Fast Company will be honoring brands that have turned their marketing and branding strategies into cultural relevance for their core audience. It will also mark the third year that Brands That Matter will recognize CMOs of the Year—the marketers who are propelling their organizations to new heights through their ambitious, effective leadership, thoughtful and creative executives who are finding effective ways to keep their brands top of mind for consumers. For 2026, there are two exciting new recognit…

One of the powers of the latest Claude AI model is that it can use any multiple external Python tools to perform complex tasks. And, as software engineer and AI expert Ashe Magalhaes has discovered, it turns out that the model can use these powers to build a Truetype font that you can install in your computer from any scanned page showing a full set of characters. It’s a great, easy way to turn your handwriting into a font, but you can use it to create any typeface you can imagine as long as long as you have the adequate drawing skills. I tried it myself and it was pretty simple! Before AI, you needed specialized tools like Calligraphr, HandFonted, or FontForge i…

If 2024 was the Year of AI, 2025 became the Year of AI Slop. In the race to maximize all of its potential, we came to view AI results as a finished product. But as Balaji Srinivasan points out, AI is intended to function middle-to-middle; humans, by contrast, are end-to-end. By ceding it all to AI, outputs suffered; we suffered. Both people and machines settled for less than what was possible. Generic, hollow, clean, and devoid of subjective taste or judgement. Master of summary but without significant depth. Yet capable of complex analysis and able to perform tasks or generate high volume outputs with unprecedented ease and speed. This is the reality of AI. …

Investors in the live entertainment giant Live Nation are feeling optimistic this morning after reports that the company has settled its civil antitrust lawsuit with the Department of Justice (DOJ) and 39 participating states. The settlement will cost Live Nation, but it means that the company has narrowly avoided a forced breakup with its popular subsidiary, Ticketmaster. The reports come after a week-long trial in which the DOJ laid out its argument that Live Nation and Ticketmaster rely on anticompetitive conduct to create a monopoly over the live events industry in the U.S., leading the DOJ to call for a separation of the brands. On March 9, sources close to…

Caitlin Kalinowski, an OpenAI employee who oversaw hardware within the robotics division, is leaving the company. Kalinowski’s decision came shortly after OpenAI’s deal with the Pentagon was announced in late February. In a post on social media, Kalinowski explained that the decision was about “principle” in regard to the recent deal. “I care deeply about the Robotics team and the work we built together. This wasn’t an easy call,” Kalinowski wrote. “AI has an important role in national security. But surveillance of Americans without judicial oversight and lethal autonomy without human authorization are lines that deserved more deliberation than they got.” OpenAI’s de…