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Digital PR is about to matter more than ever. Not because it’s fashionable, or because agencies have rebranded link building with a shinier label, but because the mechanics of search and discovery are changing. Brand mentions, earned media, and the wider PR ecosystem are now shaping how both search engines and large language models understand brands. That shift has serious implications for how SEO professionals should think about visibility, authority, and revenue. At the same time, informational search traffic is shrinking. Fewer people are clicking through long blog posts written to target top-of-funnel keywords. The commercial value in search is consolidating around high-intent queries and the pages that serve them: product pages, category pages, and service pages. Digital PR sits right at the intersection of these changes. What follows are seven practical, experience-led secrets that explain how digital PR actually works when it’s done well, and why it’s becoming one of the most important tools in SEOs’ toolkit. Secret 1: Digital PR can be a direct sales activation channel Digital PR is usually described as a link tactic, a brand play or, more recently, as a way to influence generative search and AI outputs. All of that’s true. What’s often overlooked is that digital PR can also drive revenue directly. When a brand appears in a relevant media publication, it’s effectively placing itself in front of buyers while they are already consuming related information. This is not passive awareness. It’s targeted exposure during a moment of consideration. Platforms like Google are exceptionally good at understanding user intent, interests and recency. Anyone who has looked at their Discover feed after researching a product category has seen this in action. Digital PR taps into the same behavioral reality. You are not broadcasting randomly. You are appearing where buyers already are. Two things tend to happen when this is executed well. If your site already ranks for a range of relevant queries, your brand gains additional recognition in nontransactional contexts. Readers see your name attached to a credible story or insight. That familiarity matters. More importantly, that exposure drives brand search and direct clicks. Some readers click straight through from the article. Others search for your brand shortly after. In both cases, they enter your marketing funnel with a level of trust that generic search traffic rarely has. This effect is driven by basic behavioral principles such as recency and familiarity. While it’s difficult to attribute cleanly in analytics, the commercial impact is very real. We see this most clearly in direct-to-consumer, finance, and health markets, where purchase cycles are active and intent is high. Digital PR is not just about supporting sales. In the right conditions, it’s part of the sales engine. Dig deeper: Discoverability in 2026: How digital PR and social search work together Secret 2: The mere exposure effect is one of digital PR’s biggest advantages One of the most consistent patterns in successful digital PR campaigns is repetition. When a brand appears again and again in relevant media coverage, tied to the same themes, categories, or areas of expertise, it builds familiarity. That familiarity turns into trust, and trust turns into preference. This is known as the mere exposure effect, and it’s fundamental to how brands grow. In practice, this often happens through syndicated coverage. A strong story picked up by regional or vertical publications can lead to dozens of mentions across different outlets. Historically, many SEOs undervalued this type of coverage because the links were not always unique or powerful on their own. That misses the point. What this repetition creates is a dense web of co-occurrences. Your brand name repeatedly appears alongside specific topics, products, or problems. This influences how people perceive you, but it also influences how machines understand you. For search engines and large language models alike, frequency and consistency of association matter. An always-on digital PR approach, rather than sporadic big hits, is one of the fastest ways to increase both human and algorithmic familiarity with a brand. Secret 3: Big campaigns come with big risk, so diversification matters Large, creative digital PR campaigns are attractive. They are impressive, they generate internal excitement, and they often win industry praise. The problem is that they also concentrate risk. A single large campaign can succeed spectacularly, or it can fail quietly. From an SEO perspective, many widely celebrated campaigns underperform because they do not generate the links or mentions that actually move rankings. This happens for a simple reason. What marketers like is not always what journalists need. Journalists are under pressure to publish quickly, attract attention, and stay relevant to their audience. If a campaign is clever but difficult to translate into a story, it will struggle. If all your budget’s tied up in one idea, you have no fallback. A diversified digital PR strategy spreads investment across multiple smaller campaigns, reactive opportunities, and steady background activity. This increases the likelihood of consistent coverage and reduces dependence on any single idea working perfectly. In digital PR, reliability often beats brilliance. Dig deeper: How to build search visibility before demand exists Get the newsletter search marketers rely on. See terms. Secret 4: The journalist’s the customer One of the most common mistakes in digital PR is forgetting who the gatekeeper is. From a brand’s perspective, the goal might be links, mentions, or authority. From a journalist’s perspective, the goal is to write a story that interests readers and performs well. These goals overlap, but they are not the same. The journalist decides whether your pitch lives or dies. In that sense, they are the customer. Effective digital PR starts by understanding what makes a journalist’s job easier. That means providing clear angles, credible data, timely insights, and fast responses. Think about relevance before thinking about links. When you help journalists do their job well, they reward you with exposure. That exposure carries weight in search engines and in the training data that informs AI systems. The exchange is simple: value for value. Treat journalists as partners, not as distribution channels. Secret 5: Product and category page links are where SEO value is created Not all links are equal. From an SEO standpoint, links to product, category, and core service pages are often far more valuable than links to blog content. Unfortunately, they are also the hardest links to acquire through traditional outreach. This is where digital PR excels. Because PR coverage is contextual and editorial, it allows links to be placed naturally within discussions of products, services, or markets. When done correctly, this directs authority to the pages that actually generate revenue. As informational content becomes less central to organic traffic growth, this matters even more. Ranking improvements on high-intent pages can have a disproportionate commercial impact. A relatively small number of high-quality, relevant links can outperform a much larger volume of generic links pointed at top-of-funnel content. Digital PR should be planned with these target pages in mind from the outset. Dig deeper: How to make ecommerce product pages work in an AI-first world Secret 6: Entity lifting is now a core outcome of digital PR Search engines have long made it clear that context matters. The text surrounding a link, and the way a brand is described, help define what that brand represents. This has become even more important with the rise of large language models. These systems process information in chunks, extracting meaning from surrounding text rather than relying solely on links. When your brand is mentioned repeatedly in connection with specific topics, products, or expertise, it strengthens your position as an entity in that space. This is what’s often referred to as entity lifting. The effect goes beyond individual pages. Brands see ranking improvements for terms and categories that were not directly targeted, simply because their overall authority has increased. At the same time, AI systems are more likely to reference and summarize brands that are consistently described as relevant sources. Digital PR is one of the most scalable ways to build this kind of contextual understanding around a brand. Secret 7: Authority comes from relevant sources and relevant sections Former Google engineer Jun Wu discusses this in his book “The Beauty of Mathematics in Computer Science,” explaining that authority emerges from being recognized as a source within specific informational hubs. In practical terms, this means that where you are mentioned matters as much as how big the site is. A link or mention from a highly relevant section of a large publication can be more valuable than a generic mention on the homepage. For example, a targeted subfolder on a major media site can carry strong authority, even if the domain as a whole covers many subjects. Effective digital PR focuses on two things: Publications that are closely aligned with your industry and sections. Subfolders that are tightly connected to the topic you want to be known for. This is how authority is built in a way that search engines and AI systems both recognize. Dig deeper: The new SEO imperative: Building your brand Where digital PR now fits in SEO Digital PR is no longer a supporting act to SEO. It’s becoming central to how brands are discovered, understood, and trusted. As informational traffic declines and high-intent competition intensifies, the brands that win will be those that combine relevance, repetition, and authority across earned media. Digital PR, done properly, delivers all three. View the full article

Move brings an end to internal battle over who will replace longtime bossView the full article

Tech billionaire and platform’s former chief Linda Yaccarino summoned for ‘voluntary interviews’ in April View the full article

If you’re shopping at Home Depot in Milwaukee, you can take advantage of several promo codes that can greatly improve your savings. From discounts on kitchen appliances to exclusive offers for Pro Xtra members, there’s a variety of options available. You can even score a $5 coupon for your next purchase over $50. To maximize your budget, it’s crucial to combine these offers effectively. Let’s explore the specific codes that can help you save more on your next visit. Key Takeaways New email subscribers can use a $5 off coupon for in-store purchases over $50, valid until September 1, 2026. Seasonal promotions offer additional discounts on Milwaukee tools, potentially saving 5% to 15% on select items. Pro Xtra members enjoy exclusive 5-15% discounts on over 4,000 Milwaukee products, with personalized deals applied at checkout. Daily deals and flash sales can provide up to 60% off select items, with significant savings during events like Black Friday. Combine multiple offers, such as mobile coupons and rewards points, for enhanced savings on Milwaukee purchases at Home Depot. Up to 35% Off Home Depot Promo Code & Coupons If you’re looking to save money on your next purchase at Home Depot, you can take advantage of promo codes and coupons that offer up to 35% off on a variety of items, including kitchen appliances and energy tools. These discounts are available until January 1, 2026, allowing you ample time to plan your shopping. Make sure to check for home decor coupons, as they often include substantial savings on a range of products. Additionally, you can find specific Home Depot promo code Milwaukee, which may qualify Milwaukee tools for extra discounts, especially during seasonal promotions like Black Friday. Signing up for Home Depot’s email newsletters grants you access to exclusive offers, including savings on Milwaukee products. If you join the Pro Xtra program, you can enjoy discounts of 5-15% on bulk purchases and gain access to specialized promotional codes that improve your savings further. Get $5 Off Your Next Purchase Milwaukee shoppers can take advantage of a fantastic opportunity to save even more at Home Depot with a $5 off coupon on your next in-store purchase of $50 or more. To receive this discount, simply sign up for Home Depot’s email newsletter. New subscribers can benefit from this verified offer, which remains valid until September 1, 2026. By joining the newsletter, you’ll additionally gain access to periodic promotional codes and exclusive offers customized to your home improvement projects. This $5 off coupon can be combined with other promotions, allowing you to maximize your savings on tools, equipment, and materials. When you’re ready to redeem the coupon, just present it at checkout or apply it during online purchases, following the specified terms and conditions. Don’t miss out on this opportunity to improve your shopping experience and save money on your next visit to Home Depot. Save Up to $1,700 on Samsung Appliances + 2-Year Warranty Home Depot is offering remarkable savings of up to $1,700 on a wide selection of Samsung appliances, making it an ideal time for you to upgrade your kitchen or laundry room. Each purchase in addition includes a complimentary 2-year warranty, ensuring you have added peace of mind. With a variety of appliances available, you can find options that suit your specific needs. Appliance Type Potential Savings Warranty Offered Refrigerators Up to $1,200 2 Years Washers & Dryers Up to $1,500 2 Years Ranges & Ovens Up to $1,700 2 Years This promotion is set to expire on December 2, 2025, so it’s advisable to act quickly to take advantage of these discounts. Combine these savings with other promotions for even greater deals on your home improvement purchases. Daily Deals: Up to 40% Off Select Items At Home Depot, you can take advantage of daily deals that offer up to 40% off on select items, making it easier to save on everything from tools to home decor. These limited-time offers change regularly, so it’s smart to check back often to catch the best discounts available. Furthermore, you can set up mobile alerts to stay informed about new promotions and never miss a chance to save. Limited-Time Offers Available When you’re looking to save on tools and home improvement products, checking out daily deals at Home Depot can be a smart choice. These limited-time offers often feature discounts of up to 40% on select items, making it easier for Milwaukee shoppers to find substantial savings. Keep in mind that daily deals change frequently, so it’s beneficial to check back often to catch the best offers. The Milwaukee promotion highlights 24-hour flash deals that can lead to significant discounts on various Milwaukee products. To stay informed, consider signing up for alerts about upcoming daily deals. Since these offers can expire quickly, acting fast is crucial to secure the best discounts available. Daily Discounts on Tools Daily discounts on tools at Home Depot present an excellent opportunity for Milwaukee shoppers to find significant savings on a wide range of products. These daily deals often feature discounts of up to 40% off on select tools, energy equipment, and accessories, catering to both DIY enthusiasts and professionals. One standout offer is the “Special Buy of the Day,” a 24-hour flash sale showcasing specific items at steep price reductions. Milwaukee tools frequently appear in these promotions, allowing you to access high-quality equipment at reduced prices. To maximize your savings, it’s wise to check the Home Depot website regularly, as deals change frequently and can expire quickly, ensuring you don’t miss out on valuable discounts. Seasonal Promotions and Savings Seasonal promotions at Home Depot provide an excellent opportunity for Milwaukee shoppers to secure substantial savings on tools and equipment. With daily deals offering discounts of up to 40% off select items, you can find significant bargains on Milwaukee products. These limited-time offers change daily, so it’s wise to check back frequently. Seasonal promotions often align with major shopping events, making it an ideal time for purchasing at reduced prices. You can sign up for email alerts to stay informed about daily deals and seasonal savings opportunities. Plus, don’t forget that these deals can be combined with other promotions, like the Pro Xtra program, for even greater discounts. Deal Type Savings Daily Deals Up to 40% Off Seasonal Promotions Varies Email Alerts Notifications Combined Promotions Extra Savings Special Buy of the Day: Flash Deals Up to 60% Off Home Depot’s Special Buy of the Day offers an impressive opportunity for Milwaukee shoppers to save considerably, with flash deals providing discounts of 40% to 60% off select items for a limited 24-hour period. These daily deals often include popular Milwaukee products, allowing you to purchase high-quality tools and equipment at competitive prices. To maximize your savings, it’s vital to regularly check Home Depot’s website or subscribe to alerts for notifications on new deals. Keep in mind that discounts from the Special Buy of the Day can’t be combined with other promotions or promo codes, so it’s important to choose the best available deal for your needs. This feature is particularly beneficial for budget-conscious shoppers looking to improve their home improvement projects without overspending. Pro Xtra Membership: Unlock Exclusive Discounts As a Pro Xtra member, you can activate exclusive discounts ranging from 5% to 15% on over 4,000 Milwaukee products, helping you save considerably on your tool purchases. Membership furthermore guarantees personalized discounts that apply automatically when you log in, giving you the best prices available. In addition, you’ll gain access to special bulk pricing, mobile coupons, and a price matching guarantee, making it easier to maximize your savings on Milwaukee tools. Membership Benefits Overview If you’re looking to maximize your savings on tools and home improvement supplies, consider the Pro Xtra membership at Home Depot, which offers an array of exclusive benefits customized for frequent shoppers. Here’s a quick overview of what you can expect: Volume Pricing Discounts: Enjoy 5-15% off on thousands of products, including Milwaukee tools. Personalized Discounts: Automatic discounts applied to your account simplify your savings on regular purchases. Mobile Coupons: Access special mobile promotions that improve your overall savings. Rewards Point System: Earn points on purchases that you can redeem for future discounts. With a price match guarantee plus an extra 10% off competitors’ prices, the Pro Xtra membership greatly boosts your savings potential. Exclusive Discounts Explained Revealing exclusive discounts through the Pro Xtra membership can considerably improve your shopping experience at Home Depot. This program offers discounts ranging from 5% to 15% on over 4,000 products, making it crucial for regular shoppers. You’ll likewise enjoy special bulk pricing on select items, leading to substantial savings on larger purchases. Here’s a quick overview of Pro Xtra benefits: Discount Type Details Percentage Discounts 5% to 15% on 4,000+ products Bulk Pricing Savings on large purchases Personalized Discounts Automatically applied at checkout Mobile Coupons Exclusive offers available Price Match Guarantee Additional 10% off Price Matching Plus Extra Savings When shopping at Home Depot, taking advantage of their price matching policy can greatly boost your savings. By matching identical, in-stock items from competitors, you can enjoy additional discounts. Here are some ways to maximize your savings: Price Match Guarantee: Match competitors’ prices and receive an extra 10% off the matched price in-store. Pro Xtra Loyalty Program: Join to access exclusive flooring deals and bulk purchase discounts. Seasonal Sales: Take advantage of significant discounts during events like Black Friday, leveraging price matching for top Milwaukee tools. Combine Offers: Use ongoing promotions, such as the 10% off for newsletter sign-ups, to amplify your savings even further. Price matching is a strategic way for Milwaukee shoppers to save more, especially when paired with limited-time offers and flash sales that can provide discounts up to 75% off select items. Frequently Asked Questions How to Get Extra Discount at Home Depot? To get extra discounts at Home Depot, start by signing up for their Pro Xtra program, which offers exclusive savings. Use promo codes like SAMPLESAVE10 for discounts on eligible items. New subscribers can additionally receive a $5 off coupon by joining the email newsletter. Don’t forget to check the Special Buy of the Day for daily flash deals. If you’re military, register for a 10% discount, but remember it can’t combine with other codes. Can You Use a Promo Code and Military Discount at Home Depot? You can use a military discount and a promo code at Home Depot, but not during online checkout. Only one discount applies when shopping online. Nevertheless, if you shop in-store, you can combine both discounts. Remember, to access the military discount, you’ll need to verify your status through SheerID. Furthermore, check the terms of the promo code, as some may exclude specific product categories from the discount. Does Home Depot Have a Senior Discount Code? Home Depot doesn’t offer a specific senior discount code. Nevertheless, seniors can benefit from various other discounts. For instance, they can use the 10% military discount if they’re veterans or active service members. In addition, Home Depot frequently has sales and promotions, especially during holidays. Signing up for the email newsletter can likewise provide exclusive offers, including a coupon for $5 off a purchase over $50, which can help you save money. Does Home Depot Give Promotions? Yes, Home Depot frequently offers promotions, including seasonal sales, flash deals, and exclusive discounts on select products. You can find significant savings, such as up to 35% off kitchen appliances and substantial discounts on Samsung appliances. Furthermore, their “Special Buy of the Day” features 24-hour flash deals with discounts of 40-60%. Joining the Pro Xtra program or signing up for the email newsletter likewise grants you access to exclusive offers and coupons. Conclusion By utilizing these promo codes and discounts, Milwaukee shoppers can greatly improve their savings at Home Depot. From substantial reductions on appliances to exclusive offers for Pro Xtra members, the opportunities are plentiful. Don’t forget to check daily deals and seasonal sales for even more savings. Combining these offers can lead to exceptional value, making it easier to get the tools and materials you need for your projects as you stay within budget. Start saving today! Image via Google Gemini This article, "7 Must-Use Home Depot Promo Codes for Milwaukee Shoppers" was first published on Small Business Trends View the full article

Google spoke about its year-end report on the crawling challenges Google faced in 2025 when crawling and indexing the web for Google Search. The biggest challenges include faceted navigation and action parameters, which make up about 75% of those challenges, Gary Illyes from Google said. This was on its latest Search Off the Record podcast, published this morning. What is the issue. Crawling issues can cause your site to lag and slow, it can overload your server, and make your website unusable and inaccessible. If a robot goes off on your site and gets into some infinite loop of crawling, it can take some time for the site to recover. “Once it discovers a set of URLs, it cannot make a decision about whether that URL space is good or not unless it crawled a large chunk of that URL space,” Gary said. By then it is too late and your site has slowed to a halt. The biggest crawling challenges. Here are the biggest crawling challenges based on the report: 50% are related to faceted navigation. This is a common issue for e-commerce sites where you can have infinite ways to filter products by size, colors, price, and so on. 25% are related to action parameters. This is when URL parameters that trigger a specific action rather than changing the page content significantly. 10% are related to irrelevant parameters. These are things like session IDs, UTMs or other parameters in the URL. 5% are related to plugins or widgets. Some plugins or widgets can cause URL issues and confuse crawlers. 2% are related to other “weird stuff.” This is like a catch all of URL issues including issues like double-encoding URLs. Why we care. Ensuring you have a good URL structure, without many of these URL traps for bots is essential for (1) making sure your server is healthy, (2) your pages load quickly and (3) search engines don’t get confused on what are your canonical URLs. The recording. Here is an embed of the podcast recording: View the full article

Discounting has been part of retail’s toolkit for decades, and it can be effective, especially during high-stakes shopping seasons. But as promotions become more frequent across the industry, companies are taking a closer look at the downside: Short-term sales gains don’t always come with long-term loyalty or durable margins, and customers remember how a brand made them feel far more than what they saved at checkout. What’s often missing from the conversation is the role of experience-led value. Loyalty isn’t built through price alone—it’s built through moments that make a customer feel recognized, appreciated, and confident they made the right choice. When brands compete only on discounts, they sacrifice those moments in favor of short-term volume. This coming year, retailers may feel the urge to pull the markdown lever more than ever. While the National Retail Federation pegged retail sales during the recent holiday shopping season to exceed $1 trillion, retailers saw fewer unit sales as shoppers dealt with tariff-driven sticker shock. As a result, 2025 marked a significant change in consumer behavior as shoppers across the board sought value and deals. That shift is likely to persist through 2026, increasing pressure on retailers to use markdowns to move inventory. The risk isn’t that retailers will discount, it’s that discounting becomes the strategy rather than the symptom. WHEN DISCOUNTS COST MORE THAN THEY DELIVER Kohl’s offers a useful illustration of this tension. In the third quarter of 2025, the retailer reported a modest year-over-year increase in gross margin, while operating income declined amid softer sales. The results underscore how difficult it can be to translate promotional activity and operational improvements into sustained profitability when demand remains under pressure. This dynamic isn’t unique to Kohl’s. Shifting consumer preferences, lingering supply-chain complexity, and intensified competition have forced many retail leaders to make difficult decisions about pricing and inventory. Target faced a similar challenge in 2022, when excess inventory—particularly in home and apparel—prompted the company to take decisive markdown and inventory-reduction actions. While those moves helped rebalance inventory levels, they also weighed on near-term profitability. More recently, Lululemon has contended with elevated promotional activity amid signs of slowing demand in the U.S. and increased competition in the athleisure category from brands like Vuori and Athleta. Analysts have pointed to higher markdown levels as retailers across the space work to maintain traffic and manage inventory in a more competitive environment. Taken together, these examples reflect a broader pattern in retail: promotions can help stabilize revenue in the short term, but they don’t always improve operating leverage or long-term customer value. Discounts move inventory—but they rarely move customer lifetime value in the same direction. WHY DISCOUNTING FEELS INEVITABLE BUT ISN’T SUSTAINABLE Discounting has intuitive appeal. In a crowded market with shrinking discretionary budgets, deals cut through the noise. Spending trends underscore just how price-sensitive shoppers have become, with a growing percentage planning holiday-season purchases early and hunting for discounts across channels. Yet this rush to save can produce a dangerous feedback loop: 1. Shoppers learn to wait for deals. 2. Brands feel pressured to offer deeper discounts. 3. Margins shrink, forcing even steeper promotions next cycle. Over time, this turns what should be a preference decision into a pricing decision, and pricing decisions rarely build durable brands. LOYALTY IS BUILT BEYOND THE TRANSACTION If discounting tells a shopper, “Buy now because it’s cheap,” then true loyalty says, “Buy again because it matters.” The difference is subtle, but profound. Loyalty isn’t a transaction with a strike price; it’s a series of experiences that make a customer feel recognized, appreciated, and connected. It doesn’t live at checkout. It’s built in the moments of fulfillment, engagement, and emotional connection that follow. Yet many retail strategies still prioritize pre-purchase price incentives over post-purchase relationship building. That’s why promotions dominate inboxes, but customer lifetime value stagnates. A BETTER PATH FORWARD Some brands are finding a way out of this loop by shifting emphasis away from discounts and toward experience-led value. This includes deploying value-oriented pricing structures that don’t train customers to wait for sales. Retailers can also offer post-purchase experiences that reinforce brand affinity without discount hooks. They can also provide more personalized engagement that acknowledges the shopper as an individual rather than a deal seeker. Retailers who embrace these strategies in 2026 signal something important: you matter to us, not just your wallet. And that distinction, over time, fuels repeat business in a way discounts never can. Discounts will always have a place—especially during peak shopping seasons when consumer attention is fragmented and competitive pressure is intense. But when discounting becomes the foundation of a pricing strategy rather than a tactical lever, it eats into profits and inwardly rewires customer expectations. The retailers that will win in 2026 and beyond won’t be the ones offering the biggest discounts. They’ll be the ones who understand how customers remember brands, through moments of appreciation, relevance, and experience that extend beyond the transaction. As the past holiday season showed, even the most sophisticated retailers can fall into the trap of equating promotional volume with lasting value. The brands that win in the long run will resist that reflex—and instead focus on creating moments that customers remember, not just prices they respond to. Elery Pfeffer is the CEO at Nift. View the full article

You wouldn’t pay a surgeon to file your tax return, and you wouldn’t ask your accountant to perform your appendectomy. The same is true for AI: Organizations should start realizing that different AI providers excel at different needs, from coding to specialized research or creative design. Over the coming year, enterprises will absorb a variety of these AI providers’ technologies in earnest and at scale—department by department, role by role. Legal teams will standardize on tools like Harvey. Customer service teams will rely on Glean or purpose-built agents. Development teams may choose resources from Anthropic. Marketing, engineering, finance, and HR will similarly gravitate toward AI resources from Microsoft, xAI, or OpenAI, optimized for their specific needs. In other words, enterprises will evolve from the idea that single-provider AI resources will solve their needs to an era of targeted, role-based, or need-based AI. Making matters even more complicated, many AI providers are now beginning to roll out their own browsers. Enterprise leaders thus face a new challenge: how to manage the onslaught of AI needs that are now arriving. HISTORY IS REPEATING ITSELF Enterprises have been here before. When cloud computing emerged, many dipped their toes in the water by standardizing on a single provider. The logic was simple: fewer vendors, lower cost, less risk. But as cloud usage expanded, different workloads demanded different strengths, and organizations diversified their cloud infrastructure. The same dynamic emerged with data platforms. Early efforts focused on centralized applications like data lakes, but as use cases multiplied, organizations often found that no single system served every real-world use case equally well. Most enterprises responded by adopting multiple tools around a shared data foundation. In both cases, organizations that had prepared themselves for flexibility were better positioned. AI is following this same trajectory, only faster. And unlike cloud or data infrastructure, AI adoption isn’t happening quietly behind the scenes. It’s happening in daily workflows across departments, often without central coordination. Leaders can therefore best help their organizations succeed by embracing many tools, each chosen for what it does best, while managing them through shared controls. THE RISK OF AI TOOL SPRAWL As AI systems and use cases proliferate, failing to prepare poses real risks to the enterprise. This proliferation extends beyond standalone AI tools. Increasingly, SaaS applications from CRM systems and productivity suites to finance and HR platforms embed their own AI. In many cases, AI adoption will happen by default, not by deliberate choice. With these tools, teams will also inherit fragmented security policies, inconsistent controls, and limited visibility. Tools that seem harmless in isolation can create meaningful risk in aggregate. This is the rise of shadow AI: systems introduced to solve real problems, but without the oversight to manage them responsibly. With agentic AI, where systems act on users’ behalf, those risks compound: permissions expand and accountability becomes harder to trace. If these tools are left unchecked, leaders will lose sight of where AI is used, what data it touches, and which systems act autonomously on the organization’s behalf. Experimentation and innovation should not be allowed to scale faster than oversight. GOVERNANCE IS THE MISSING LAYER Multimodal flexibility does not have to come at the expense of visibility and security. Again, we have been here before. With SaaS, enterprises don’t manage a wide variety of capabilities by forcing everyone onto one system. They manage it by establishing shared controls across many tools. Enterprises need a governance layer that sits above all AI vendors. That layer should provide: Visibility across AI usage Policy enforcement independent of model provider Guardrails for data access Safe experimentation Support for bringing your own device, contractors, and distributed teams Governance doesn’t restrict freedom. It enables it by allowing organizations to choose every model they want and assign them across their teams without introducing new risk. And true governance can’t rely on technology alone. Leaders must cultivate a culture of AI literacy, where every employee can confidently evaluate, validate, combine, and challenge AI systems. Then organizations can embrace a multitude of AI tools, safely, and effectively. PREPARE FOR MULTI-MODEL SUCCESS Much like SaaS, the cloud, and data platforms before it, AI will soon spread across roles, workflows, and applications. Leaders that build in the capacity to manage all these models—through visibility, governance, and an AI-fluent workforce—will be best positioned to capture all of AI’s advantages without compromising safety, trust, or control. Steve Tchejeyan is president of Island. View the full article

Shares in Palantir Technologies (Nasdaq: PLTR) are rising this morning, one day after the AI data analysis software company with significant U.S. government contracts reported better-than-expected Q4 earnings. Here’s what you need to know about Palantir’s latest results and its rising stock price. Palantir’s Q4 2025 beat Wall Street expectations Yesterday, Palantir announced its Q4 2025 earnings, and investors breathed a sigh of relief. For Palantir’s Q4, which ended on December 31, the company brought in $1.41 billion in revenue, signaling 70% year-over-year growth. The majority of that revenue comes from Palantir’s U.S. customers, which is split roughly evenly between the U.S. government and commercial U.S. businesses. Palantir said U.S. government revenue totaled $570 million for the quarter, representing 66% year-over-year growth in that vertical. U.S. commercial revenue totaled $507 million—137% year-over-year growth. But more important than those actuals was what Wall Street had been expecting. And Palantir easily surpassed those expectations, leading to the rapid rise in its stock price today. As cited by CNBC, London Stock Exchange Group (LSEG) estimates expected Palantir to bring in $1.33 billion for the quarter. The company ended up surpassing that estimate by around $80 million. Analysts were also expecting an earnings per share (EPS) of 23 cents. Palantir’s actual EPS for the quarter was 25 cents. PLTR shares are still down from their all-time highs Palantir released its earnings results after the closing bell yesterday, and today its stock price is reaping the rewards of those results, enjoying double-digit growth in premarket trading. As of this writing, PLTR shares are up 11.35% to $164.55. The company’s share had closed at $147.76 yesterday. That share price pop will be music to the ears of Palantir investors. Before this morning’s premarket trading bump, PLTR shares were down nearly 17% year-to-date. Its current premarket price rise doesn’t quite put PLTR shares back in the black for the year, but it’s definitely a move in the right direction. Palantir shares had hit an all-time high of above $207 in November, after seeing a phenomenal year of growth. The previous November, in 2024, started with shares sitting in the low-40s range. But increasing government contracts and AI optimism throughout the remainder of 2024 and into 2025 sent PLTR shares surging. Then came December 2025, and PLTR shares got pummeled. Between December 24 and 31, the company’s stock price fell from the $194 range to around $177. That fall reflected both rising concerns about Palantir’s lofty valuation and broader worries about a potential AI bubble. Where does PLTR go from here? Despite Palantir beating expectations for Q4, the future of its stock price likely hinges on its ability—or not—to continue delivering results that justify its valuation. As of yesterday’s close, Palantir was valued at around $352 billion and traded at a price-to-earnings ratio of more than 230, which is incredibly high for even a tech company. The company’s stock price could also be significantly impacted if upcoming Big Tech earnings do not meet expectations and thus reignite fears of an AI bubble. If investors turn sour on AI stocks, Palantir shares could once again be hit hard. For instance, Google parent Alphabet—the best performing of the so-called Magnificent 7 tech stocks—will report earnings on Wednesday. Fellow tech giant Amazon will report the following day. Later this month, meanwhile, AI chip giant Nvidia Corporation will report its results. Investor sentiment around AI could be deeply impacted by the results of any one of those companies. As for Palantir itself, the firm issued guidance yesterday for both its current Q1 2026 and its full-year 2026. For its Q1, Palantir said it expects revenue of between $1.53 billion and $1.54 billion. That’s more than the $1.32 billion that many analysts were expecting. For its full-year 2026, Palantir expects revenue of $7.18 billion to $7.2 billion. That is nearly $1 billion more than many analysts were expecting. View the full article

President Donald The President said Monday that he’s “not ripping down” the Kennedy Center but insisted the performing arts venue needs to shut down for about two years for construction and other work without patrons coming and going and getting in the way. The comments strongly suggested that he intends to gut the John F. Kennedy Center for the Performing Arts as part of the process. “I’m not ripping it down,” the Republican president told reporters in the Oval Office. “I’ll be using the steel. So we’re using the structure.” Such a project would mark the Republican president’s latest effort to put his stamp on a cultural institution that Congress designated as a living memorial to President Kennedy, a Democrat. It also would be in addition to attempts to leave a permanent mark on Washington through other projects, the most prominent of which is adding a ballroom to the White House. Shortly after taking office last year, The President dismissed Kennedy Center board members who had been appointed by Democratic presidents and replaced them with loyalists, who voted to make him chairman. He helped choose the recipients of the 2025 Kennedy Center Honors, a program he avoided during his first term. He later hosted the event, and the board voted late last year to rebrand the Kennedy Center by adding his name to the building and website. The President announced Sunday on social media that he intends to temporarily close the performing arts venue on July 4 for about two years “for construction, revitalization, and complete rebuilding,” subject to board approval. The announcement followed a wave of cancellations by leading performers, musicians, and groups since the president took over leadership of the arts institution. The President did not mention the cancellations in his announcements, or during his comments Monday. Kennedy Center Arts Workers United, which includes several unions representing the institution’s arts workers, said in a statement that it was aware of The President’s announcement but had received no formal notice or briefing about his plans. The group pledged to enforce its members’ contractual rights. “Should we receive formal notice of a temporary suspension of Kennedy Center operations that displaces our members, we will enforce our contracts and exercise all our rights under the law,” the statement said. “We expect continued fair pay, enforceable worker protections, and accountability for our members in the event they cannot work due to an operational pause.” Promising ‘the highest-grade everything’ Recalling his past career in construction and real estate, The President said, “you want to sit with something for a little while before you decide on what you want to do.” Speaking of the Kennedy Center, he said: “We sat with it. We ran it. It’s in very bad shape,” asserting that the building is “run down,” “dilapidated” and “sort of dangerous.” Roma Daravi, a Kennedy Center spokesperson, said in a social media post that “decades of gross negligence” has led to $250 million of deferred maintenance needs and that temporarily closing the institution “is the most logical choice to allow for comprehensive renovations, efficient project completion, and responsible use of taxpayer dollars.” Deborah Rutter, the Kennedy Center president who was ousted by The President, declined comment Monday. In the past, she has said allegations from The President and others about the center’s management were false. A representative for David Rubenstein, the board chairman who was also pushed out by The President, said Rubenstein was not available Monday to comment. The President, citing the complaints of a workman he said has been laying marble at the Kennedy Center, said the closure is needed because “you can’t do any work because people are coming in and out.” He pegged the cost at about $200 million, including the use of “the highest-grade marbles, the highest-grade everything.” “We’re fully financed and so we’re going to close it and we’re going to make it unbelievable, far better than it ever was, and we’ll be able to do it properly,” The President said. Congress earmarked $257 million for the Kennedy Center in a tax cut and spending bill that The President signed into law last summer. What kind of work is involved The White House said after the president spoke that some of the maintenance includes work on the building’s structural, heating and cooling, plumbing, electrical, fire protection and technical stage systems. Work on the building’s exterior, security standards and parking are also included. Daravi, the Kennedy Center spokesperson, declined comment when asked how the closure would affect the annual Mark Twain Award and Kennedy Center Honors events this year. The President said last October, also on social media, that the venue would stay open during construction. But on Monday he said that plan was no longer feasible. “I was thinking maybe there’s a way of doing it simultaneously but there really isn’t, and we’re going to have something that when it opens it’s going to be brand new, beautiful,” The President said. “The steel will all be checked out because it’ll be fully exposed,” he said. “It’s been up for a long time, but as anybody knows it was in very bad shape. Wasn’t kept well, before I got there,” he said. “So we’re going to make it, I think there won’t be anything like it in the country.” The Kennedy Center opened in 1971. Senator Sheldon Whitehouse, D-Rhode Island, who in November opened an investigation into the Kennedy Center’s financial management, said the planned closure is part of The President’s “demolition tour of Washington.” Whitehouse is the senior Democrat on the Environment and Public Works Committee, which oversees public buildings, and is an ex-officio member of the Kennedy Center’s board. Since The President returned to the presidency, the Kennedy Center is one of many Washington landmarks that he has sought to overhaul in his second term. He demolished the White House East Wing and launched a massive $400 million ballroom project, is actively pursuing building a triumphal arch on the other side the Arlington Bridge from the Lincoln Memorial, and has plans for Washington Dulles International Airport. —- Associated Press writers Hillel Italie in New York and Steven Sloan in Washington contributed to this report. —Darlene Superville, Associated Press View the full article

Microsoft has rolled out multi-turn search globally within Bing search results. Microsoft will add a Copilot search box to the bottom of the Bing search results, as you scroll down the search results page, this feature will dynamically appear. What is multi-turn search. This is when a searcher goes from the Bing search results, types in a follow up query into the Copilot search box at the bottom of the search results. Here is a screenshot of this feature: Here is a video of it in action: What Microsoft said. Jordi Ribas, CVP, Head of Search at Microsoft, posted this news on X – he said, “After shipping in the US last year, multi-turn search in Bing is now available worldwide.” Jordi Ribas added “Bing users don’t need to scroll up to do the next query, and the next turn will keep context when appropriate.” “We have seen gains in engagement and sessions per user in our online metrics, which reflect the positive user value of this approach,” he added. Why we care. Many search engines, like Google and Bing, are trying to get more users to use its AI engines. Google made AI Overviews flow more into AI Mode, despite how we may not like how it treats publishers. And now Bing fully rolled out, after testing it for several months, the Copilot search box at the footer of the search results. View the full article

Former UK business secretary used talking points in conversations with US official about financial crisis measuresView the full article

I’ve spent over 20 years in companies where SEO sat in different corners of the organization – sometimes as a full-time role, other times as a consultant called in to “find what’s wrong.” Across those roles, the same pattern kept showing up. The technical fix was rarely what unlocked performance. It revealed symptoms, but it almost never explained why progress stalled. No governance The real constraints showed up earlier, long before anyone read my weekly SEO reports. They lived in reporting lines, decision rights, hiring choices, and in what teams were allowed to change without asking permission. When SEO struggled, it was usually because nobody rightfully owned the CMS templates, priorities conflicted across departments, or changes were made without anyone considering how they affected discoverability. I did not have a word for the core problem at the time, but now I do – it’s governance, usually manifested by its absence. Two workplaces in my career had the conditions that allowed SEO to work as intended. Ownership was clear. Release pathways were predictable. Leaders understood that visibility was something you managed deliberately, not something you reacted to when traffic dipped. Everywhere else, metadata and schema were not the limiting factor. Organizational behavior was. Dig deeper: How to build an SEO-forward culture in enterprise organizations Beware of drift Once sales pressures dominate each quarter, even technically strong sites undergo small, reasonable changes: Navigation renamed by a new UX hire. Wording adjusted by a new hire on the content team. Templates adjusted for a marketing campaign. Titles “cleaned up” by someone outside the SEO loop. None of these changes look dangerous in isolation – if you know before they occur. Over time, they add up. Performance slides, and nobody can point to a single release or decision where things went wrong. This is the part of SEO most industry commentary skips. Technical fixes are tangible and teachable. Organizational friction is not. Yet that friction is where SEO outcomes are decided, usually months before any visible decline. SEO loses power when it lives in the wrong place I’ve seen this drift hurt rankings, with SEO taking the blame. In one workplace, leadership brought in an agency to “fix” the problem, only for it to confirm what I’d already found: a lack of governance caused the decline. Where SEO sits on the org chart determines whether you see decisions early or discover them after launch. It dictates whether changes ship in weeks or sit in the backlog for quarters. I have worked with SEO embedded under marketing, product, IT, and broader omnichannel teams. Each placement created a different set of constraints. When SEO sits too low, decisions that reshape visibility ship first and get reviewed later — if they are reviewed at all. Engineering adjusted components to support a new security feature. In one workplace, a new firewall meant to stop scraping also blocked our own SEO crawling tools. Product reorganized navigation to “simplify” the user journey. No one asked SEO how it would affect internal PageRank. Marketing “refreshed” content to match a campaign. Each change shifted page purpose, internal linking, and consistency — the exact signals search engines and AI systems use to understand what a site is about. Dig deeper: SEO stakeholders: Align teams and prove ROI like a pro Positioning the SEO function Without a seat at the right table, SEO becomes a cleanup function. When one operational unit owns SEO, the work starts to reflect that unit’s incentives. Under marketing, it becomes campaign-driven and short-term. Under IT, it competes with infrastructure work and release stability. Under product, it gets squeezed into roadmaps that prioritize features over discoverability. The healthiest performance I’ve seen came from environments where SEO sat close enough to leadership to see decisions early, yet broad enough to coordinate with content, engineering, analytics, UX, and legal. In one case, I was a high-priced consultant, and every recommendation was implemented. I haven’t repeated that experience since, but it made one thing clear: VP-level endorsement was critical. That client doubled organic traffic in eight months and tripled it over three years. Unfortunately, the in-house SEO team is just another team that might not get the chance to excel. Placement is not everything, but it is the difference between influencing the decision and fixing the outcome. Get the newsletter search marketers rely on. See terms. Hiring mistakes The second pattern that keeps showing up is hiring – and it surfaces long before any technical review. Many SEO programs fail because organizations staff strategically important roles for execution, when what they really need is judgment and influence. This isn’t a talent shortage. It’s a screening problem The SEO manager often wears multiple hats, with SEO as a minor one. When they don’t understand SEO requirements, they become a liability, and the C-suite rarely sees it. Across many engagements, I watched seasoned professionals passed over for younger candidates who interviewed well, knew the tool names, and sounded confident. HR teams defaulted to “team fit” because it was easier to assess than a candidate’s ability to handle ambiguity, challenge bad decisions, or influence work across departments. SEO excellence depends on lived experience. Not years on a résumé, but having seen the failure modes up close: Migrations that wiped out templates. Restructures that deleted category pages. “Small” navigation changes that collapsed internal linking. Those experiences build judgment. Judgment is what prevents repeat mistakes. Often, that expertise is hard to put in a résumé. Without SEO domain literacy, hiring becomes theater. But we can’t blame HR, which has to hire people for all parts of the business. Its only expertise is HR. Governance needs to step in. One of the most reliable ways to improve recruitment outcomes is simple: let the SEO leader control the shortlist. Fit still matters. Competence matters first. When the person accountable for results shapes the hiring funnel, the best candidates are chosen. SEO roles require the ability to change decisions, not just diagnose problems. That skill does not show up in a résumé keyword scan. Dig deeper: The top 5 strategic SEO mistakes enterprises make (and how to avoid them) When priorities pull in different directions Every department in a large organization has legitimate goals. Product wants momentum. Engineering wants predictable releases. Marketing wants campaign impact. Legal wants risk reduction. Each team can justify its decisions – and SEO still absorbs the cost. I have seen simple structural improvements delayed because engineering was focused on a different initiative. At one workplace, I was asked how much sales would increase if my changes were implemented. I have seen content refreshed for branding reasons that weakened high-converting pages. Each decision made sense locally. Collectively, they reshaped the site in ways nobody fully anticipated. Today, we face an added risk: AI systems now evaluate content for synthesis. When content changes materially, an LLM may stop citing us as an authority on that topic. Strong visibility governance can prevent that. The organizations that struggled most weren’t the ones with conflict. They were the ones that failed to make trade-offs explicit. What are we giving up in visibility to gain speed, consistency, or safety? When that question is never asked, SEO degrades quietly. What improved outcomes was not a tool. It was governance: shared expectations and decision rights. When teams understood how their work affected discoverability, alignment followed naturally. SEO stopped being the team that said “no” and became the function that clarified consequences. International SEO improves when teams stop shipping locally good changes that are globally damaging. Local SEO improves when there is a single source of location truth. Ownership gaps Many SEO problems trace back to ownership gaps that only become visible once performance declines. Who owns the CMS templates? Who defines metadata standards? Who maintains structured data? Who approves content changes? When these questions have no clear answer, decisions stall or happen inconsistently. The site evolves through convenience rather than intent. In contrast, the healthiest organizations I worked with shared one trait: clarity. People knew which decisions they owned and which ones required coordination. They did not rely on committees or heavy documentation because escalation paths were already understood. When ownership is clear, decisions move. When ownership is fragmented, even straightforward SEO work becomes difficult. Dig deeper: How to win SEO allies and influence the brand guardians Healthy environments for SEO to succeed Across my career, the strongest results came from environments where SEO had: Early involvement in upcoming changes. Predictable collaboration with engineering. Visibility into product goals. Clear authority over content standards. Stable templates and definitions. A reliable escalation path when priorities conflicted. Leaders who understood visibility as a long-term asset. These organizations were not perfect. They were coherent. People understood why consistency mattered. SEO was not a reactive service. It was part of the infrastructure. What leaders can do now If you lead SEO inside a complex organization, the most effective improvements come from small, deliberate shifts in how decisions get made: Place SEO where it can see and influence decisions early. Let SEO leaders – not HR – shape candidate shortlists. Hire for judgment and influence, not presentation. Create predictable access to product, engineering, content, analytics, and legal. Stabilize page purpose and structural definitions. Make the impact of changes visible before they ship. These shifts do not require new software. They require decision clarity, discipline, and follow-through. Visibility is an organizational outcome SEO succeeds when an organization can make and enforce consistent decisions about how it presents itself. Technical work matters, but it can’t offset structures pulling in different directions. The strongest SEO results I’ve seen came from teams that focused less on isolated optimizations and more on creating conditions where good decisions could survive change. That’s visibility governance. When SEO performance falters, the most durable fixes usually start inside the organization. Dig deeper: What 15 years in enterprise SEO taught me about people, power, and progress View the full article

Google's John Mueller said that when it comes to AI Search and the changes that come with that, Google's core search algorithms, spam detection methods, spam policies, and other search systems do not fundamentally change.View the full article

SEO roadmaps age poorly. Search evolves faster than planning cycles, technical debt accumulates quietly, and AI shortens the distance between approval and obsolescence. The post Why SEO Roadmaps Break In January (And How To Build Ones That Survive The Year) appeared first on Search Engine Journal. View the full article

Bing Search has rolled out what it calls multi-turn search in Bing globally. This is something we saw Microsoft Bing test back in June, when we saw a floating Copilot follow up search box at the footer of the Bing search results page show up as you scroll. It is now globally live for all to use.View the full article

OpenAI seems to be jazzing up its ChatGPT responses by showing more visual responses, like Google's knowledge panels and top stories. This goes across people, places, products, and ideas, OpenAI said.View the full article

America must now ask itself if it can restore a culture of shameView the full article

US digital payments company appoints former board chair Enrique Lores to replace Alex ChrissView the full article

Gary Illyes, along with Martin Splitt, of Google posted a podcast explaining the top crawling challenges Google noticed amongst its 2025 year of crawling. The top challenges Google had with crawling included faceted navigation, action parameters, irrelevant parameters, calendar parameters and other "weird" parameters.View the full article

Google's John Mueller said he would "caution against assuming that you need to do this level of analysis for all URLs on a website in order to achieve optimal SEO" when it comes to reviewing bad redirects or CSP settings. Why, because bad redirects or CSP settings are often simply visible when doing normal browsing, and if you see it, then that is enough.View the full article

Billionaire folds rocket maker into a lossmaking AI start-up, betting scale and control can beat rivals to blockbuster IPOView the full article

At a factory in Austin, a startup recently finished its first prototype: a row house it plans to replicate in cities nationwide to help with the housing shortage. Row houses—narrow, multistory homes that share walls with neighbors on each side—are ubiquitous in older neighborhoods from Brooklyn to San Francisco, but aren’t commonly built now. The American Housing Corp., wants to bring them back. “Row homes are an underbuilt category in the United States,” says Riley Meik, cofounder and CEO of the American Housing Corp. The company has developed a kit of parts that can be quickly manufactured, shipped to building sites in dense urban neighborhoods, and assembled, helping shrink construction costs. While the price of an American Housing Corp. row house will vary, some of the first row houses in Austin will sell for around $750,000. Riley MeikBobby FijanHarris RothaermelWilliam Davis “The U.S. is actually good at building single family homes on the outskirts of town—you look at the numbers that Lennar or D.R. Horton does, they are building over 150,000 homes a year,” Meik says. “But they are never going to build in the cities where people already live and want to live.” The challenge of the missing middle Meik, an engineer who previously cofounded a rocket company, started thinking about housing during a stint at SpaceX’s former headquarters near Los Angeles. On his way to work, passing through single-family neighborhoods, he looked at the houses and wondered why more of them weren’t starting to be replaced with duplexes or fourplexes. Like many cities, large swaths of the greater Los Angeles area had zoning laws for years that restricted construction to single-family homes. Then a 2021 state law that changed that, allowing lots to be split for duplexes. Still, few developers were building the projects. Meik knew that building more “missing middle” housing—buildings like row houses that are bigger than apartments but smaller than single-family houses—could help begin to fill the enormous housing shortage in cities like L.A. “I started tweeting about it, and saying, ‘It’s legal. Why aren’t we doing it?’” he says. He connected with his eventual cofounders online. “We met just kind of screaming into the void—this is a problem that needs to get solved in this country, and we want to work on it,” he says. “That brought us all together. It’s something we’ve all been obsessed with for a very long time. So it wasn’t hard to convince each other that we should jump off into the deep end together and build this thing.” They saw that a challenge for missing middle housing was the cost of construction. “There were probably hundreds of projects that I was seeing where someone had the approvals in hand, they were fully cleared, but the construction costs were too high and they couldn’t start the project,” Meik says. Shrinking construction costs To help reduce costs, the startup turned to prefab construction. The concept isn’t new—builders have been making housing parts in factories since Sears houses were shipped on trains in the early 20th century. Basic manufactured homes, formerly known as mobile homes, now often look more like conventional houses but cost significantly less. Other startups have tried to scale up prefab construction for apartment buildings, backyard guest houses, or higher-end homes. Some have failed spectacularly, like Katerra, which raised more than $2 billion before going out of business. To avoid one of the pitfalls that some other builders have faced, the American Housing Corp. designed all of its components to fit inside standard shipping containers so that they can be moved cost-effectively. The shipping containers can travel affordably by rail, rather than on a truck, from the factory to a city. “I think one of the things that has held back prefab to date, specifically volumetric modular, is it is incredibly expensive to ship those modules,” Meik says. “They’re oversized loads, and you get into the tens of thousands of dollars per module to ship them. We can be at less than $5,000, all-in, to ship a unit from Texas to California.” Factories can be expensive—Katerra spent $150 million on one before it closed—and if they need to be built near each market, it makes the product uneconomical. (Cosmic, another startup that has been rebuilding homes in the L.A. area after the 2025 wildfires, takes a different approach to this problem, building low-cost microfactories at each site.) The American Housing Corp. designed a new kit of parts—from floor and wall panels to fully assembled kitchens and bathrooms—that can be built in an automated factory and then shipped to a site for quick assembly. The core materials, like steel and fiberglass reinforced cement panels, “are more common in automotive or aerospace than housing,” he says. Designing a system for multistory homes was a challenge. “I think most people thought we were crazy for choosing to build a three-story home as our first,” says Meik. “The structural engineering, assembly process, and equipment required are completely different than building something as simple as a backyard home. But we believe that the only way to solve the housing crisis is by building missing-middle housing at scale. And we felt that row homes were the obvious choice.” A new manufacturing model The company started building a “minimum viable” factory last summer to begin testing its manufacturing process, and then started building a prototype house. They deliberately took it slowly—designing and building one floor, learning from it before building the second floor, and then refining the process again before building the third floor. As the team experimented with the first house, the total manufacturing time took weeks, but as it begins operations, it will move much more quickly. The company is now planning a new factory that aims to build one home per day. Right now, the early factory is churning out building parts that are being sent to Intertek, a certification company, for testing. After certification, the company plans to begin building homes in its first factory this year, while the new, larger factory is under construction. When the parts are delivered to a building site, they’re designed to be assembled with a crane in days. All of this shrinks costs enough that projects can pencil out, Meik says. The company also plans to act as a developer, working with partners to buy land on empty lots in dense neighborhoods, so that it can handle the entire process. “Our biggest learning from other [prefab] companies is that in order to have full control of what you build and how you build it (and truly be able to innovate in the way homes are built), you need to be both the prefab company and the real estate development firm,” Meik says. “Vertical integration has given us the freedom on the engineering side to redesign the home from the ground up in order to make it mass-producible in a factory setting. We don’t use two-by-fours, drywall, or hammers and nails. Our homes are designed to be built with machines.” Using density to lower housing costs For consumers, the biggest reason that the homes can be more affordable is density. “Land is the most expensive thing in the areas that we want to build in,” Meik says. “So the only way that we can really decrease cost for the end customer is by fitting as many homes on a certain piece of land as we can.” In Austin, one of the cities where they’re building first, they plan to sell row houses for less than $750,000 in neighborhoods where single-family homes sell for $1 million to $2 million, offering an option for buyers who otherwise might not be able to stay in a compact, walkable neighborhood. The first house is three stories tall, with four bedrooms and two and a half bathrooms. The company will sell houses directly to consumers; later, it may also rent them out in some cases. It plans to work nationally. While the floor plans and interior finishes will be similar from city to city, the homes are designed to use different facades that are designed to fit the local context. Historically, row houses have come in many forms: In a city like Philadelphia or New York, they range from simple working-class homes to taller, more ornate buildings for wealthy families. The design is meant to fit into existing urban neighborhoods. “We wanted to find a way to build something that would fit in between two New York City brownstones,” Meik says “We want to build in Brooklyn Heights and someone to walk by and say, ‘That’s nice.’ I think prefab historically has either leaned very ugly or hyper-modern, and unfortunately, neither of those really fit in in the neighborhoods that we want to build in.” As they scale up, they want to recruit more engineers to work on the housing crisis. “Housing has often been thought of not as an engineering discipline, but something that’s left to the trades,” he says. “I think that’s completely wrong. One of our primary goals at the American Housing Corporation is to show great engineers that hey, you can bring those phenomenal skills that you developed building cars or rockets or iPhones and apply those skills to solving the most important problem of our generation—figuring out how to build more homes in this country.” View the full article

I’ve read a lot of books on building a culture at work. A lot of the advice is well intentioned but to me overly complex. A 20-step framework is a lot harder to live by than a simple operating principle. Culture is something people feel and live more than implement. Venture capitalist Ben Horowitz wrote in his book What You Do Is Who You Are: How to Create Your Business Culture, “It’s not the values you list on the wall. It’s not what you say in company-wide meetings. It’s not your marketing campaign. It’s not even what you believe. Who you are is what you do.” For me, culture is created through actions. It’s the choices leaders make every day that shape how people experience their work. Words can motivate, but actions are what transform. I feel strongly that culture lives in daily behavior, in the decisions that happen behind closed doors, and in the examples leaders set. When those actions don’t match the message, culture starts to crumble. “At its core, culture is the outcome of how people treat one another. You can read an organization’s culture in the everyday interactions between team members, customers, partners, and other stakeholders,” notes Dan Pontefract, a leadership strategist and award-winning author of six workplace culture books. “Good or bad, culture is contagious. When people observe respect and generosity, that behavior spreads. But when they see apathy, ego, or petty power plays rewarded, the culture will inevitably corrode. Wherever you look, culture is an outcome, and it becomes the core of how that organization operates.” When Leaders Don’t Live Their Values You probably remember when Uber experienced its explosive growth in the early 2010s. CEO Travis Kalanick was known for being bold and disruptive, in more ways than one. The company’s “innovation at all costs” mantra fueled success, but behind the scenes the culture was the opposite. Despite all the values-based talking points emphasizing “customer obsession” and “empowerment,” employees defined the culture as toxic, with high levels of burnout, ruthless competition, and ethics issues. People complained about long hours, fear-based leadership, and a lack of trust and accountability. In 2017, former engineer Susan Fowler went public with her experience, describing a workplace filled with harassment, fear, and silence. Uber’s culture didn’t fail because it lacked values. In fact, it listed many of them on its website that sounded like ones you read about as “best practices” in Harvard Business Review. Actually, it failed because those values weren’t real because they weren’t practiced. What leaders said and did were two totally different things. Eventually Kalanick was fired and the company had to rebuild its culture from scratch. When Leaders Do Live Their Values Microsoft is a different story. When Satya Nadella took over as CEO in 2014, the company’s culture was competitive and closed off. It was struggling to innovate and it was losing touch with its people, trying to operate in an industry that required constant change. Nadella knew that the strategy wasn’t the big issue, the culture was. Instead of rolling out a new list of corporate values, as CEOs tend to do in grand fashion, he focused on improving behavior. Uncharacteristic for a tech exec, he talked about empathy, curiosity, and growth, and then he modeled them. Nadella openly shared his own learning journey and encouraged people to learn from mistakes. He talked about taking the company from a “know it all” culture to a “learn it all” culture. He created space for collaboration and growth instead of competition and fear. The shift is attributed to Microsoft’s dramatic increase in revenue and success in cloud computing and AI. Employee engagement improved, innovation returned, and Microsoft regained its energy and purpose. The company became known for its empathy-driven leadership and ability to adapt. Nadella didn’t just talk about culture, he lived it—and people followed. Actions Speak Louder Than Words Culture isn’t what you say in meetings; it’s what people see you do that matters. If I tell people to say no to meetings but I attend every meeting, people will live in fear of my words. If I tell people to challenge the status quo and they see me actively questioning assumptions, they’re much more likely to do it themselves. When your actions reflect your words, trust grows. When they don’t, it fades fast. Kevin Bishop, director of talent development at LinkedIn, believes culture is one of the most important things an organization can focus on. “Culture isn’t static,” he says. “It’s a living, evolving force shaped by our daily choices and actions. If we’re not intentional, it can drift away from our values and become a liability rather than a strength.” Are your actions aligned with your words? Do you practice what you preach when it comes to team culture? Ask yourself these questions: What words would I use to describe my team’s culture? How am I demonstrating those words every day? What word would my team use to describe our culture? How am I empowering my team to succeed? How am I removing barriers instead of creating them? If you’re brave enough, this is a great exercise to do with your team to shape the culture you want, together. Leading by Example Culture isn’t a set of beliefs. It’s a set of choices. Every day, your team watches what you do and learns from it. That’s what defines your culture. If your actions reflect your values, people will trust you. If they don’t, they’ll stop listening. The best leaders understand this simple truth: Culture is not what you say, it’s what you do. View the full article

Almost 10 years ago, physician and data scientist Dr. Ruben Amarasingham founded Pieces Technologies in Dallas with a clear goal: use artificial intelligence to make clinical work lighter, not heavier. At a time when much of healthcare AI focused on prediction and automation, Pieces concentrated on something harder to quantify but more consequential—how clinicians actually think, document, and make decisions inside busy hospital workflows. That focus helped Pieces gain traction with health systems looking for AI that could assist with documentation, coordination, and decision-making without disrupting care. But as hospitals began relying more heavily on AI for diagnosis, triage, and daily operations, the expectations placed on these tools changed. It was no longer enough for AI to sound impressive or move fast. It had to be trustworthy under real clinical pressure. Pieces did not set out to become a case study in healthcare AI accountability. But over the past two years, that is effectively what it became. In 2024, a regulatory investigation by the Texas Attorney General’s office into the accuracy and safety of its systems forced the company to examine how its models behaved in real-world settings, how clearly their reasoning could be explained, and how quickly problems could be identified and corrected. Rather than retreat, the company reexamined its models, documentation practices, and safeguards. Those efforts later became central to its acquisition by Smarter Technologies, a private equity-backed healthcare automation platform formed earlier this year through the combination of SmarterDx, Thoughtful.ai, and Access Healthcare, in September 2025. The purchase price was not disclosed. Pieces’ journey captures a defining truth about healthcare AI today: the technology is no longer judged by ambition alone, but also by whether it can withstand scrutiny, explain itself under pressure, earn clinician trust, and operate safely in environments where the cost of error is measured in human outcomes. FROM PROMISE TO PROOF AI arrived in healthcare with big promises. It would ease physician workloads, speed decisions in emergencies, and cut through the complexity of modern care. Some of those promises materialized early. But as adoption spread, hospitals began to see the limits of systems that were impressive in theory but fragile in practice. In early 2025, the U.S. Food and Drug Administration published updated guidance on AI and machine learning-enabled medical devices, calling for stronger post-market monitoring, clearer audit trails, and safeguards against model drift in high-stakes settings. The Federal Trade Commission reinforced that message through enforcement actions targeting exaggerated AI claims and misuse of sensitive health data. Those signals changed the conversation, forcing many hospitals to ask vendors harder questions: How does your system reach its conclusions? Can clinicians understand and override its recommendations? And does the model behave consistently as conditions change? For many AI companies, the excitement of the last decade no longer buys time. Proof does. A REAL-LIFE TEST Pieces encountered those expectations earlier than most. The regulatory scrutiny forced the company to confront how its models reasoned through patient data and how clearly that reasoning could be explained to clinicians and regulators alike. But Amarasingham says the company’s mission never shifted. “Our team is focused on building the tools to make life easier for physicians, nurses, and case managers who are carrying the weight of the health system every day,” he tells Fast Company. That focus meant publishing method papers, sharing documentation with health systems, and creating processes that exposed when models struggled, drifted, or required recalibration. Those practices became foundational to the company’s next chapter. Shekhar Natarajan, founder and CEO of Orchestro.ai and a longtime observer of healthcare regulation, sees this as part of a larger reckoning. Many AI companies, he says, relied on what he calls “emergent safety,” assuming ethical outcomes would arise naturally from good intentions and culture. “That approach no longer holds,” Natarajan explains. Regulators now expect safety and accountability to be engineered into systems themselves, with reproducible reasoning, documented controls, and safeguards that hold up even when teams are stretched thin. BUILDING TRUST Trust in healthcare does not come from branding or inspiration. It comes from repeated proof that technology understands clinical work and behaves consistently under changing conditions. Clinicians want AI that respects the pace of the workday, adapts to the unpredictable rhythm of patient care, and reduces cognitive burden rather than adds to it. Above all, they want systems that behave predictably. Pieces shaped its approach around these realities, focusing on building tools to work alongside clinicians rather than ahead of them and creating ways for teams to question the system’s conclusions. It also designed its internal processes to document when the model was correct, struggled, drifted, or needed recalibration. ​For Amarasingham, that kind of thinking was essential for the progress of the company. “Innovation, to us, had to serve the care team first. The goal was to reduce cognitive load rather than to add to it,” he says, a view that aligns with a growing consensus in healthcare AI research. That emphasis aligns with what independent clinicians say is holding healthcare AI back. Dr. Ruth Kagwima, an internist at Catalyst Physician Group in Texas, says AI adoption stalls when tools disrupt already overloaded clinical workflows or fail to earn trust through clarity and validation. “AI systems that succeed in hospitals are easy to understand, fit naturally into daily work, and show clear proof of safety and accuracy,” she says. “They have to protect patient data, respect clinical judgment, and improve care without adding friction.” Another independent healthcare analyst, Dr. Patience Onuoha, who is an internist affiliated with multiple hospitals in Indiana, points to the practical constraints that still slow adoption at the bedside. “Data is often messy and siloed, and new tools can disrupt already busy clinical workflows,” she says. “There are also real concerns around safety, bias, legal risk, and trusting algorithms that are not easy to understand.” Natarajan believes this will be the defining standard of the next decade. In his view, companies survive regulatory pressure when they transform their internal principles into systems that can be inspected. They build clear chains of accountability, create evidence trails that reveal where bias may appear, and show clinicians not only how a model works but also why it does. IMPACT ON THE FUTURE Healthcare AI is moving toward a world where oversight is a design requirement rather than an afterthought, especially with regulators demanding documentation that spans the full lifecycle of a system. They want performance data segmented across race, age, and medical conditions, assurances that the system cannot infer sensitive traits that patients never disclosed, and they want companies to demonstrate how quickly they can detect and correct model drift. Some of this momentum comes from damage that has surfaced over time. For example, recent research reported by the Financial Times found some AI medical tools tended to understate the symptoms of women and ethnic minority patients, potentially worsening disparities in care because models weren’t trained or evaluated for fairness and transparency. Companies that adapt to this new reality will shape the next generation of clinical AI. Pieces now operates within this landscape. As part of Smarter Technologies, it is working to bring its governance practices to a wider network of hospitals. That means integrating safety frameworks across larger datasets, more diverse populations, and broader distribution environments. It is difficult work, but also the kind of work that defines leadership in a field where the cost of failure is measured in human outcomes. A NEW CHAPTER Healthcare AI is entering a consequential phase of growth, where the safety of AI systems is far more important than headline-grabbing breakthroughs. As hospitals sharpen their expectations for AI, Amarasingham believes the industry will need to adopt a different mindset. “In healthcare and AI, you’re not playing to win once and for all; you’re playing to keep playing, keep learning, and keep improving outcomes for patients,” he says. The work, he adds, will never be finished, because the rules shift and the needs evolve. What matters is whether companies choose to design for that reality. In other words, AI in healthcare will advance only as fast as it earns trust. And that means healthcare AI vendors and buyers must now, more than ever, be committed to steady, transparent work that stands up under pressure. View the full article

President Donald The President's support of legislation that would cap credit card interest rates at 10% has flagged in recent weeks, but experts say that the debate has highlighted significant gaps in regulators' understanding of the credit card market and how its risks are priced. View the full article