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The world’s largest tech showcase does not come without theatrics. Innovations and gadgets like a lollipop that sings to you as you consume it, a laundry-folding robot, and a “smart” LEGO brick have stolen the spotlight so far at CES 2026. But underscoring this year’s programming is a strong focus on an industry that relies on a similar theatrical flair: entertainment. More than 25 different panels and events related to the entertainment industry are on the schedule in Las Vegas, focusing on both the traditional studio side of the industry and the digital side driven by content creators. The programming has posed questions about the cinematic capabilities of AI, how a…

In a vision of the near future shared at CES, a girl slides into the back seat of her parents’ car and the cabin instantly comes alive. The vehicle recognizes her, knows it’s her birthday and cues up her favorite song without a word spoken. “Think of the car as having a soul and being an extension of your family,” Sri Subramanian, Nvidia’s global head of generative AI for automotive, said Tuesday. Subramanian’s example, shared with a CES audience on the show’s opening day in Las Vegas, illustrates the growing sophistication of AI-powered in-cabin systems and the expanding scope of personal data that smart vehicles may collect, retain, and use to shape the driving …

By now, the headlines almost write themselves: humanoid robots everywhere, AI in everything. Consumer Electronics Show (CES) 2026 didn’t disrupt that narrative—it confirmed it. What changed was the subtext. This was the year AI stopped feeling experimental and started feeling infrastructural. Intelligence has shifted from novelty to baseline, forcing harder questions about consequence, control, and agency—not just what technology can do, but how it reshapes systems once opting out is no longer realistic. For years, progress at CES has been measured in speed, scale, and spectacle. In 2026, a different metric quietly surfaced: judgment. The most advanced products we…

As CES 2026 gets underway, Havas Media Network North America is publishing its 2026 Predictions Forecast, outlining the forces we believe will define the year ahead and separate brands that grow from those that fade. This perspective is drawn directly from that report and grounded in what leaders are seeing, discussing, and debating in Las Vegas this week. CES has always been where the future shows up first. But walking the floors this year, one thing is unmistakable: The industry is no longer dazzled by what’s possible. It’s demanding proof of what works. As technology accelerates, consumer expectations fragment, and financial scrutiny intensifies, 2026 is…

Working from home might be frowned upon at some companies these days, but the rising number of layoffs last year and the growing collection of workers who are launching their own businesses means the number of people working out of a home office is on the rise. If you’re among them, you’ve no doubt learned that to make it a comfortable experience, you need a lot more than a laptop and a convenient table. At the Consumer Electronics Show (CES) in Las Vegas this year, plenty of items on display seemed well-suited to make work life easier for home-based employees. Here’s a look at the most notable tools. Xebec Tri Screen 3 If you’re used to a multi-monitor set…

CES is a show that’s all about the future. Usually, that future is within the next year or two. Companies show off products to kick off marketing campaigns and begin building consumer demand. Sometimes, though, they offer a peek a good bit further down the road. Several prototypes at this year’s CES offered clues about how companies expect the consumer electronics world to evolve. Many, of course, will fall by the wayside. Almost all of them will experience changes before getting anywhere close to market. Despite that, though, they offer a look into a consumer electronics crystal ball. Here are some trends they’re prophesizing for the years to come. Smart watc…

IBM announced on Monday it is acquiring Confluent for $11 billion, sending shares of the data streaming platform up about 29% in morning trading. By midday trading, at the time of this writing, Confluent (CFLT) stock was holding steady, up 29%. International Business Machines Corporation (IBM) stock was up about 1.5%. Confluent provides a leading open-source enterprise data streaming platform that connects, processes, and governs reusable and reliable data and events in real time, foundational for the deployment of AI. The deal is an example of how IBM is actively engaging in the increasingly competitive, high-stakes AI arms race that’s now dominating technolo…

Chanel’s new showman, Matthieu Blazy, took his designs on the road Tuesday — or rather, underground, with a buzzy New York runway show staged on an actual subway platform. The designer, just weeks after his splashy Paris debut for Chanel in October, took over a decommissioned part of Manhattan’s Bowery station for his first Métiers d’Art collection. The annual show, which takes place in a different city each year, celebrates the craftsmanship of the artisans that partner with Chanel. In this case, it was two shows—one in the afternoon and one in the evening. And befitting the first Chanel shows in New York since 2018, there were VIPs aplenty: A$AP Rocky, Tilda Swinton, …

The majority of us see change as a blind scary leap into the unknown—a scary evolution that demands we give up on everything we know. But what if we reframed change, not as something that happens to us, but as something we actively choose? Traditionally people perceived change in black-and-white terms: either you can change, or you can’t. That kind of thinking sets us up for failure by assuming that change requires some grand, perfect plan or major shift in direction. However, we also have the power to make small changes, no matter how minor they seem. And it’s these small changes that, over time, lead to profound transformation. Fear Takes the Wheel The most …

Below, Ann Tashi Slater shares five key insights from her new book, Traveling in Bardo: The Art of Living in an Impermanent World. Slater has published fiction, essays, and interviews in The New Yorker, The Paris Review, The New York Times, The Washington Post, Guernica, and Granta, among others, as well as in The Penguin Book of Modern Tibetan Essays and American Dragons (HarperCollins). Her speaking and teaching engagements include Princeton, Columbia, Oxford, the American University of Paris, the Rubin Museum of Art, and Asia Society. What’s the big idea? Traveling in Bardo interweaves explorations of impermanence in our everyday existence with Slater’s girl…

Change is often presented as an enigma. Unlike a traditional management task, you can’t just devise a plan and execute it. To be an effective change leader, you need to embrace a certain amount of uncertainty because change, by definition, involves doing new things, and that always involves some measure of unpredictability. Still, that doesn’t mean change is mysterious. We actually know a lot about it. In Diffusion of Innovations, researcher Everett Rogers compiled hundreds of studies performed over many decades. Around the same time, Gene Sharp led a parallel effort to understand how large-scale political movements drive social and institutional change. So while…

The Fast Company Impact Council is an invitation-only membership community of leaders, experts, executives, and entrepreneurs who share their insights with our audience. Members pay annual dues for access to peer learning, thought leadership opportunities, events and more. Since ChatGPT’s launch in 2022, it feels like artificial intelligence is finally going mainstream. From Fortune 500 board rooms to dinner tables, everyone is talking about AI, its applications, and its promise. With more than $500 billion flowing into AI infrastructure investments, many investors predict the AI wave is just gaining momentum. Those investors are right, AI still has a long way…

Tech is shifting faster than the models we built our impact on. And that means even thriving nonprofits face a choice: Keep optimizing what works—or rebuild for what’s coming. Back in June, our leadership team made a decision that felt both risky and obvious: Change a strategy that was still working to accommodate an AI future. We’d been writing and speaking for years about the need for the social sector to stop talking and start doing—and we realized it was time to take our own advice. For the last five years, our organization has helped nonprofits worldwide build tech solutions in partnership with leading tech companies. It worked. It made a difference. But by 2…

Culture change is a big topic—and a big consulting business. When I Googled “culture change consulting business,” three of top five (non-sponsored) responses were Bain, BCG, and McKinsey (in that order). Because changing culture is a prominent issue for executives—and often a very frustrating one—I decided to tackle it in this Playing to Win/Practitioner Insights (PTW/PI) called Culture Change Strategy: Three Rules for Making Change Happen. And as always, you can find all the previous PTW/PI here. The culture change consulting pitches It was fun to take a quick look at the culture change pitches of Bain, BCG, and McKinsey. Bain’s was aspirational: “Culture is b…

Charlie Javice, the founder of a startup company that promised to revolutionize the way college students apply for financial aid, was sentenced Monday to more than seven years in prison for cheating JPMorgan Chase out of $175 million by greatly exaggerating how many students it served. Javice, 33, was convicted in March of duping the banking giant when it bought her company, called Frank, in the summer of 2021. She made false records that made it seem like Frank had over 4 million customers when it had fewer than 300,000. Addressing the court before she was sentenced, Javice, who was in her mid-20s when she founded the company, said she was “haunted that my failure has …

On Friday, cable companies Charter Communications and Cox Communications announced that they’ve agreed to merge. Charter will acquire Cox in a deal valued at $34.5 billion. This is one of the biggest deals of the year. Charter, known more widely by its brand Spectrum, is one of the largest television communications operators in the country. The proposed transaction will result in Charter acquiring Cox’s commercial fiber and managed IT and cloud businesses, and Cox will contribute its residential cable business to Charter. The joint press release noted that the merger will “create an industry leader in mobile and broadband communications services, seamless v…

While dozens of companies have suddenly retreated from DEI efforts this year, leaders in inclusivity say there’s reason to be hopeful that this work is continuing—albeit more quietly than before. Even as companies like Target, IBM, and Goldman Sachs have ditched their diversity, equity, and inclusion programs, other leaders still firmly believe that diverse teams offer a competitive advantage. There has been progress in the past decade-plus, but it has looked like three steps forward and two steps back—which underscores that such work has never been more important, according to Jana Rich, founder of Rich Talent Group. “What you’re seeing, I think, are some re…

In the high-stakes premium travel race of 2025, every major credit card issuer is trying to claim the loyalty of affluent travelers—and airport lounges have become the most visible battleground. American Express is refreshing its Platinum Card and launching a new fast-format Sidecar lounge. Capital One’s Venture X card has become a darling among travelers, thanks to its hyperlocal boutique-style lounges. And Citi has returned to the ultra-premium arena with the $595 Strata Elite card. As for Chase? Fresh off raising its Sapphire Reserve annual fee to $795 and launching its Sapphire Reserve for Business card, the finance giant is now signaling that its lounges are…

OpenAI just released Instant Checkout for ChatGPT—a new feature that lets users directly make purchases within the ChatGPT interface. ChatGPT can now spend your money for you. It’s a huge deal—both for users, brands, and the future of agentic AI. Here’s why. Stickers at the ready Consumers are already enthusiastically turning to chatbots like ChatGPT to research products before deciding what to buy. As TechCrunch shared earlier this year, referrals from chatbots to top merchant websites are up almost 400% year over year. I personally used ChatGPT to research an $800+ laptop purchase this summer. Before, users could do their research in ChatGPT, …

ChatGPT wants to be your personal shopper. PayPal announced Tuesday that its digital payment system will be integrated into ChatGPT, inviting anyone who uses it to shop directly from the chatbot. Starting next year, ChatGPT users will be able to check out with a click through a PayPal account and connect directly with the tens of millions of sellers who rely on PayPal’s payments system. “By partnering with OpenAI and adopting the Agentic Commerce Protocol, PayPal will power payments and commerce experiences that help people go from chat to checkout in just a few taps for our joint customer bases,” PayPal CEO Alex Chriss said in a press release. PayPal’s shares ro…

ChatGPT maker OpenAI’s value has soared to a sky-high $500 billion following a secondary sale of its shares held by current and former employees. Reuters reported Thursday that the group of employees unloaded around $6.6 billion in shares in the deal, pushing OpenAI’s valuation well north of its current valuation of $300 billion. During the secondary sale’s open window, OpenAI shareholders offloaded their stock to an investor group that included SoftBank, Thrive Capital, T. Rowe Price, Dragoneer Investment Group, and Emirati state-owned AI investment firm MGX, according to a source who described the deal’s details to Reuters. While $6.6 billion in shares cha…

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 role of NSFW material on AI platforms, which could be complicated when AI platforms turn into social platforms. I also look at a powerful new Anthropic model for free Claude chatbot users. 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. Sam Al…