In the heart of Aceh province in northwestern Sumatra, the Ketiara Cooperative, led by the remarkable Ibu Rahmah, is facing a crisis unfolding as we speak. This community of women-led farmers was devastated by the rare Cyclone Senyar over the Thanksgiving weekend, which caused catastrophic mudslides. Farms have been decimated, homes destroyed, and two vital bridges have been washed away, isolating entire villages and cutting off access to essentials like food, clean water, and electricity. Hundreds of people have died and hundreds more are still missing in their worst natural disaster since the 2004 tsunami.
Grace Farms, a cultural and humanitarian center in New Canaan, Connecticut, is the home of Grace Farms Tea & Coffee, a nonprofit-owned Certified B-Corp dedicated to ethical sourcing and giving back 100% of profits to end forced and child labor.
Right now, were turning that mission into immediate action through the Sumatra Resilience and Rebuilding Fund. Our partnership with the Ketiara Cooperative goes beyond procurement; it is a promise of mutual support. For now, each bag of Ketiara coffee sold provides $5 for essential relief: generators to restore electricity, Starlink internet access to break the isolation, and essential food supplies to sustain the most affected.
COFFEE LINKS THE COMMUNITY
But as we look ahead, this is not just an investment in resilience; its an acknowledgment that the road to recovery will be long. Within that journey, there lies an opportunity. Its a chance for all of us to be part of rebuilding not just what was lost, but what can be stronger and more sustainable. This is where we can reimagine recovery as rebuilding the future, deeply connected to community values.
We often forget that a simple cup of coffee links us all. That cup is a bridge from our lives to the hands of farmers like these women in Sumatra, who cultivate the beans we enjoy every day. In moments of crisis, were reminded that were all connected by these global threads of community and care. Every contribution is not just about aidits about honoring the human connections that sustain us and using this moment to build a future that reflects our shared values.
We invite everyone to be part of this model of micro-philanthropy. With every cup of coffee, youre contributing not just to immediate relief, but to a vision of a world where rebuilding means innovating for a better future. This is the essence of Grace Farms Tea & Coffee: a commitment to support our partners and to help reimagine how we all come together to create lasting change.
Adam Thatcher is CEO and cofounder of Grace Farms Tea & Coffee.
President Donald Trumps handpicked board voted Thursday to rename Washingtons leading performing arts center as the Trump-Kennedy Center, the White House said.
Press secretary Karoline Leavitt announced the vote on social media, saying it was because of the unbelievable work President Trump has done over the last year in saving the building. Not only from the standpoint of its reconstruction, but also financially, and its reputation.
Trump, a Republican who’s chairman of the board, often refers to the John F. Kennedy Center for the Performing Arts, which is named for a Democratic predecessor, as the Trump Kennedy Center.
Asked on Dec. 7 as he walked the red carpet for the Kennedy Center Honors program whether he would rename the venue after himself, Trump said such a decision would be up to the board.
Earlier this month, Trump talked about a big event on Friday at the Trump Kennedy Center before saying, excuse me, at the Kennedy Center, as his audience laughed. He was referring to the FIFA World Cup soccer draw for 2026, in which he participated.
A name change wont sit well with some Kennedy family members.
Maria Shriver, a niece of John F. Kennedy, referred to the legislation introduced in Congress to rebrand the Kennedy Center as the Donald J. Trump Center for the Performing Arts as insane in a social media post in July.
It makes my blood boil. Its so ridiculous, so petty, so small minded, she wrote. Truly, what is this about? Its always about something. Lets get rid of the Rose Garden. Lets rename the Kennedy Center. Whats next?
Trump earlier this year turned the Kennedy-era Rose Garden at the White House into a patio by removing the lawn and laying down paving stones.
Another Kennedy family member, Robert F. Kennedy Jr., serves in Trumps Cabinet as secretary of the Department of Health and Human Services.
Darlene Superville, Associated Press
Americas small businesses are the backbone of our economy. They create two-thirds of new jobs, power innovation, and anchor communities across the country. But that backbone is under real strain. Rising healthcare costs dominate the headlines, but whats missing from the conversation is how deeply they impact the small businesses that keep our economy running.
At Gusto, we see this strain firsthand. Our latest Small Business Jobs Report showed hiring slowed in November as owners continue to navigate higher costs and uncertainty. Rising healthcare premiums arent the only challenge, but theyre making it that much harder to grow and hire with confidence.
Since 2022, small business health insurance costs have climbed 23% since 2022far faster than inflation or wage growth. For the smallest employers, those with just two to five employees, the increase is even steeper: up 18%, reaching nearly $8,500 per worker. Looking ahead to 2026, premiums are projected to rise another 9.5%, the sharpest jump in 15 years.
Those numbers have real consequences. They show up in delayed hires, scaled-back hours, or founders skipping their own coverage to keep their team insured.
SMALL BUSINESSES ARE HOLDING THE LINE
Despite the pressure, small businesses are doing everything they can to support their people. More than one in five small employers still offer health insurance. This is a clear reflection of how much they value their teams.
That investment pays off. Gustos data shows that employees with health coverage are 25% less likely to quit in their first year, and businesses that offer it are 13% more likely to report no difficulty hiring. Healthcare isnt just a benefitits a competitive advantage and retention tool for these small businesses.
That said, its also becoming unsustainable. Every year, more small business owners are forced into impossible choices. They can keep offering coverage and absorb higher costs, drop it and risk losing the people who make their business work, or pass more of the expense on to employees, who may already be feeling stretched.
A HIDDEN HEADWIND FOR ENTREPRENEURS
Entrepreneurship in America is thriving. More people are starting businesses now than at any point in recent history. But rising healthcare costs are creating a new kind of barrier: They make it harder to start, grow, or hire.
For many would-be founders, leaving a traditional job means losing access to affordable coverage. That doesnt always stop them, but it adds risk and limits what they can do once they start. Some stay solo longer than they want to. Others delay hiring. Some take on extra work to cover premiums.
In other words, healthcare isnt necessarily halting entrepreneurship, but its most certainly holding it back. Its keeping too many small business owners from growing to their full potential.
HOW SMALL BUSINESSES ARE ADAPTING
The good news is that small business owners are incredibly resourceful. Theyre rethinking what benefits look like and finding creative ways to offer support.
Many are experimenting with level-funded plans, high-deductible options paired with Health Savings Accounts (HSAs), and Health Reimbursement Arrangements that let employees choose coverage that fits their needs. Others are expanding voluntary benefits like dental, vision, or mental health programs that provide real value without breaking the bank.
At Gusto, we help small employers find the right mixbecause the best benefits strategy isnt one-size-fits-all. Flexibility and innovation are key.
THE SOLUTION: FLEXIBILITY, POLICY, AND INNOVATION
Small businesses cant solve this challenge on their own. The U.S. healthcare system was built around large employers, not the millions of small business owners and self-employed workers who drive todays economy. Its time to modernize that system so healthcare is portable, affordable, and built to support entrepreneurship.
Congress already has practical solutions within reach. Lawmakers can codify and strengthen Individual Coverage Health Reimbursement Arrangements, which give employers flexibility to help workers buy their own coverage. A temporary tax credit for small businesses offering these plans for the first time would make coverage more affordable and expand access quickly. Congress can also expand HSA eligibility to include Affordable Care Act Bronze and catastrophic plans, giving small employers and their teams the same tax advantages that large companies enjoy.
If we want small businesses to keep creating jobs, serving their communities, and fueling our economy, we need to make healthcare affordable for the people behind them.
Tomer London is cofounder and chief product officer of Gusto.
Experts have compressed their predictions for when artificial general intelligence (AGI)the type of AI that can equal or exceed human intelligencewill arrive. When predictions were first made in 2023, AGI was expected to arrive in 50 years. Newer estimates say five years.
When GPT-5 came out this summer, it demonstrated surprising leaps in reasoning and memory, further accelerating those timelines. Progress is moving faster than anyone anticipated, and what once felt speculative now feels inevitable. Meanwhile, small teams are shipping products that would have required 100-person companies two years ago.
The gap between the AGI debaters and the builders (those who are developing AGI systems) isn’t philosophicalit’s economic. While everyone waits for perfect AI, builders are dominating markets with today’s “broken” tools, those that are functioning, albeit with some quirks, that will be worked out as the technology evolves. They arent betting on future breakthroughs, theyre betting on momentum.
WHAT’S ACTUALLY HAPPENING
This wave of adoption isnt happening in research labs. Its happening inside companies solving boring, repetitive problems. The shift isnt about science fiction-level AI. Its about shipping fast and iterating now.
As has been covered in Fast Company: Cursor went from launch to 40,000 customers by letting developers code faster with AI. Glean hit $100 million in annual revenue helping companies search their own documents. These aren’t hypothetical AGI use cases. They’re real businesses built on today’s imperfect AI. And theyre growing because theyre solving problems that already existnot waiting on capabilities that might.
At Fireflies, we process billions of conversations across sales, recruiting, and customer success. Our AI doesn’t just transcribe. It identifies deal risks, surfaces customer objections, and tracks competitive mentions across entire organizations. Its not flawless, but there isnt an AI yet that is, but an AI tool that can provide actionable insights today beats a perfect AI that never ships.
Were seeing the same pattern across the board: AI thats just good enough is already creating leverage. Take “vibe coding” platformsthey let non-programmers create apps simply by describing what they want in natural language without a single line of code. Are these apps perfect? No. Do they work well enough to solve real problems? Absolutely.
That means were entering a phase where anyone with a problem and a prompt can build a product.
THE COMPOUND EFFECT
The hardest part of adopting AI? Knowing where to start.
Begin with the boring stuff. Find the repetitive task in your workflow that nobody wants to do.
Apply todays AI, and ship when the product or service is 80% good. Then, fix as you go.
Most companies think they need a moonshot AI strategy. What they need is a simple use case. The advantage isnt having the smartest model, its in learning the fastest. AI rewards iteration, so the teams that adopt early build intuition, infrastructure, and momentum that compound. Early adoption gives you more than toolsit gives you an internal muscle for how to think with AI.
This is what builders do while large companies form AI committees. And every day the builders ship, they get stronger. Every interaction improves their product. Every customer teaches them something new. Every iteration makes switching to their solution more inevitable.
By the time AGI arrives (whether that’s 2027 or 2047), these builders will own entire markets. Not because they had better AI, but because they started using what was available.
BUILD OR LOSE
The world will keep running, but ownership of entire industries will have already changed hands. From companies waiting for perfect AI to builders who shipped with what they had.
OpenAI itself proved this path works: They’ve improved their models not through some breakthrough to AGI, but by shipping o1 models that spend more computing power on reasoning at inference time, the moment a model is generating answers in response to a prompt.
Messy iteration beats elegant planning. Stop waiting for the perfect model. Stop debating timelines. The builders aren’t waiting for history. They’re making it.
Krish Ramineni is CEO and cofounder of Fireflies.ai.
British oil giant BP just announced a new CEO, marking its fourth chief executive shake-up in the last six years alone.
The company named Meg ONeill, who previously led Australias top oil and gas company Woodside Energy, to the role. ONeill will become the first woman to hold the top executive spot at one of the worlds biggest oil companies. She said that she looks forward to working to accelerate performance at BP and plans to prioritize shareholder growth and reestablish BPnow a possible takeover targetas a market leader in the oil and gas industry.
ONeill will take over from Murray Auchincloss, a longtime BP employee who was appointed as interim CEO in 2023 before being named to the role permanently in January 2024. While Auchincloss will leave the oil giant immediately, ONeill wont take the helm until April of next year.
After more than three decades with BP, now is the right time to hand the reins to a new leader, Auchincloss said in the announcement, adding that he told BPs chairman that he would be open to stepping down if a different leader could hasten the companys growth trajectory. I am confident that BP is now well positioned for significant growth, and I look forward to watching the companys future progress and success under Megs leadership, he said.
BP named Albert Manifold as the new chairman of its board over the summer, tapping the oil and gas outsider who spent the previous 10 years as CEO of the building materials company CRH. That shake-up to the board was one of many recent moves designed to put the company back on track and make BP competitive again with its rivals in the oil and gas industry. Earlier this year, Elliott Investment Management, an activist investor known for dramatically remaking companies in its image, disclosed that it owns a 5% stake in the troubled British energy company.
BPs checkered past
While oil and gas peers like Shell and ExxonMobil continue to notch market wins, BPs share price has floundered. BP remains haunted by its past and still pays around a billion dollars a year in damages for the 2010 Deepwater Horizon explosion, which killed 11 people and triggered a long-term environmental and health catastrophe at the company’s semi-submersible offshore drilling rig in the Gulf of Mexico.
BP has changed directions a few times in recent years, but the companys leadership and timing have yet to impress investors. The company took a significant near 20% stake of Russian oil company Rosneft in 2013, but paid a political price and eventually ate a $25 billion loss when Russia invaded Ukraine in 2022.
Under previous CEO Bernard Looney, who stepped into the role in 2020, BP pivoted toward an aggressive plan to reduce emissions and reorient the company toward renewable energy. Less than four years later, Looney was ousted from BP after failing to disclose intimate relationships with employees, and an internal investigation determined that he provided “inaccurate and incomplete assurances about his conduct.
This year, BP slashed its green energy promises and announced a move back toward fossil fuels like gasoline, liquefied natural gas (LNG), and petroleum to please its unhappy shareholders. Then-CEO Auchincloss said that the company went too far, too fast” in its pivot toward clean energya claim that climate experts alarmed about the closing window for a planet-wide emissions intervention would certainly take issue with.
The average rate on a 30-year U.S. mortgage edged higher this week, though it remains relatively near its low point so far this year.
The uptick brings the average long-term mortgage rate to 6.22% from 6.19% last week, mortgage buyer Freddie Mac said Thursday. A year ago, the rate averaged 6.6%.
Borrowing costs on 15-year fixed-rate mortgages, popular with homeowners refinancing their home loans, also rose this week. The rate averaged 5.54%, up from 5.44% last week. A year ago, it averaged 5.84%, Freddie Mac said.
Mortgage rates are influenced by several factors, from the Federal Reserves interest rate policy decisions to bond market investors expectations for the economy and inflation. They generally follow the trajectory of the 10-year Treasury yield, which lenders use as a guide to pricing home loans.
The 10-year yield was at 4.12% at midday Thursday, slightly higher than it was a week ago.
The rise in mortgage rates comes a week after the Federal Reserve cut its main interest rate for the third time this year and indicated another cut may be ahead in 2026.
The Fed doesnt set mortgage rates, so even when it cuts its short-term rates that doesnt necessarily mean rates on home loans will necessarily decline.
That’s what happened last fall after the central bank cut its main rate for the first time in more than four years. Instead of falling, mortgage rates marched higher, eventually cresting above 7% in January this year. At that time, the 10-year Treasury yield was climbing toward 5%.
Mortgage rates began declining this summer ahead of the central banks September rate cut, its first in a year. The average rate on a 30-year mortgage got as low as 6.17%, the lowest level in more than a year, on Oct. 30.
That pullback in rates helped lift sales of previously occupied U.S. homes in October on an annual basis for the fourth straight month.
Still, affordability remains a challenge for many aspiring homeowners, especially first-time buyers who dont have equity from an existing home to put toward a new home purchase. Uncertainty over the economy and job market are also keeping many would-be buyers on the sidelines.
The overall decline in mortgage rates this fall has been a boon for homeowners eager to refinance their home loan to a lower rate.
Applications for mortgage refinancing loans jumped 14% last week from the previous week, and accounted for about 58% of all home loan applications, according to the Mortgage Bankers Association. Applications for loans to buy a home climbed nearly 5%.
Economists generally forecast that the average rate on a 30-year mortgage will remain slightly above 6% next year.
While this is unlikely to deliver the sharp relief some buyers are hoping for, rates are expected to be low enough to help counterbalance continued, but modest, home price growth, said Anthony Smith, senior economist at Realtor.com.
Alex Veiga, AP business writer
At a time when Americans are frustrated and angry over the high cost of living, the government released a report Thursday showing that inflation had cooled unexpectedly in November.
But economists quickly warned that last month’s numbers were suspect because theyd been delayed and likely distorted by the 43-day federal shutdown. And most Americans have not felt any let up in the high prices they are paying for food, insurance, utilities, and other basic necessities.
The Labor Department reported Thursday that its consumer price index rose 2.7% in November from a year earlier. Yet, year-over-year inflation remains well above the Federal Reserve’s 2% target. Americans, dismayed by high prices, handed big victories to Democrats in local and state elections last month.
The inflation report was delayed eight days by the shutdown, which also prevented the Labor Department from compiling overall numbers for consumer prices and core inflation in October and disrupted the usual data-collecting process. Thursdays report gave investors, businesses, and policymakers their first look at CPI since the September numbers were released on Oct. 24.
Consumer prices had risen 3% in September from a year earlier, and forecasters had expected the November CPI to match that year-over-year increase.
Its likely a bit distorted, said Diane Swonk, chief economist at the tax and consulting firm KPMG. The good news is that its cooling. Well take a win when we can get it.
Still, Swonk added: The data is truncated, and we just dont know how much of it to trust. By disrupting the economy especially government contracting the shutdown may have contributed to a cooling in prices, she said.
Kay Haigh, global co-head of fixed income and liquidity solutions at Goldman Sachs Asset Management, warned that the November numbers were noisy … The canceling of the October report makes month-on-month comparisons impossible, for example, while the truncated information-gathering process given the shutdown could have caused systematic biases in the data.”
Many economists don’t expect to get a reliable read on inflation until next month when the Labor Department releases CPI numbers for December.
Energy prices, driven up by sharply higher fuel oil prices, rose 4.2% in November. Excluding volatile food and energy prices, so-called core inflation rose 2.6%, compared with a 3% year-over-year gain in September and the lowest since March 2021.
U.S. inflation remains stubbornly high, partly because of President Donald Trumps decision to impose double-digit taxes on imports from almost every country on earth along with targeted tariffs on specific products like steel, aluminum and autos.
The presidents tariffs have so far proved less inflationary than economists feared. But they do put upward pressure on prices and complicate matters at the Fed, which is trying to decide whether to keep cutting its benchmark interest rate to support a sputtering job market or whether to hold off until inflationary pressures ease. The central bank last week decided to reduce the rate for the third time this year, but Fed officials signaled that they expect just one cut in 2026.
“The Fed will instead focus on the December CPI released in mid-January, just two weeks before its next meeting, as a more accurate bellwether for inflation,” said Haigh at Goldman Sachs.
Trump delivered a politically charged speech Wednesday that aired live during prime time on network television, seeking to pin the blame for economic challenges on Democrats.
The speech was a rehash of his recent messaging that has so far been unable to calm public anxiety about the rising cost of groceries, housing, utilities and other basic goods.
As the holiday season approaches, Americans are dipping into savings, scouring for bargains and feeling like the overall economy is sputtering, a new AP-NORC poll finds.
The vast majority of U.S. adults say theyve noticed higher than usual prices for groceries, electricity and holiday gifts in recent months, according to the survey from The Associated Press-NORC Center for Public Affairs Research.
Roughly half of Americans say its harder than usual to afford the things they want to give as holiday gifts, and similar numbers are delaying big purchases or cutting back on nonessential purchases more than they would normally.
Trump has promised an economic boom, yet inflation has stayed elevated and the job market has weakened in the wake of his import taxes.
Trumps tariffs are taking a toll on companies like Wolverine Worldwide, which makes footwear brands like Merrell and Saucony. Facing extra tariff costs of $10 million this year and $55 million in 2026, the Rockford, Michigan, company had to increase prices between 5% and 8% on some products in June, and will have to raise prices again next year. Its put a freeze on hiring and capital investments.
The company is getting squeezed even as it diversifies its sourcing network away from China, which now makes less than 10% of its products. During Trumps first term, Wolverine shifted production to Vietnam. Now its moving to Bangladesh, Cambodia and Indonesia.
The problem isnt just the cost of the tariffs. Its the uncertainty caused by the unpredictable way that Trump rolls them out. From a business leaders perspective, its one thing if theres bad news, said Wolverine CEO Christopher Hufnagel. Just tell me what the bad news is, and Ill go work to try to solve for it. Its the uncertainty of how it actually plays out that causes so much trouble because then were modeling all these different scenarios and it seems like things can change in the middle of the night.
Paul Wiseman and Anne D’Innocenzio, AP business writers
Christmas is coming, and our bank accounts are getting, well, obliterated. But luckily, it’s no longer just your quirky aunt who appreciates a good secondhand store: Shopping for gently used items, especially during the holidays, is now on trend. And if you get on board, you might be able to save a bundle by swapping your mall run for a day of thrifting.
In recent years, “Thriftmas”or shopping for Christmas gifts at stores like Good Will, The Salvation Army, Savers, and online platforms that sell used itemshas been creeping into the mainstream. And this year is no different. According to global data from online store ThredUp, in 2025, shoppers plan to dedicate nearly 40% of their holiday budgets to secondhand giftsa pretty significant jump, even from last year alone. And in 2025, the U.S. secondhand market is worth an estimated $56 billion, up 14.3% from in 2024.
Why the trend? For starters, Gen Z loves all things vintage, whether it’s Polaroid cameras, a pair of flares, or iPods. So it makes sense that thrifting is gaining traction, especially among younger generations. A new survey from Affirm found that 24% of Gen Zers chose to thrift or DIY their home decor, while 40% blend new with secondhand; and 23% shopped for secondhand clothes while 35% mixed thrifted with new clothing.
Of course, it’s not just vintage-loving young people, but escalating financial worries that are driving the trend, too: 85% of shoppers say they expect gifts and other holiday-related items to cost more this year due to Trump’s tariffs, per the National Retail Federation. Likewise, 84% of consumers expect to cut back on overall spending due to rising prices and economic pressure, per PwC Holiday Outlook.
However, Americans are hooked on gifts. While nearly two-thirds (63%) say they wish their family traditions were less focused on gifts, only one in five are considering giving less.
The art of Thriftmas
Enter: Thriftmas, which looks a bit different from hitting up Target, Hollister, and Home Goods. And it might take some warming up to, if you’ve never been big on shopping secondhand.
However, your wallet will thank you. And popular influencers, who are pretty skilled at breathing new life into old things, are driving the movement with content about how to do Thriftmas right. They make choosing items at the thrift store to givesometimes along with something homemade like butter or baked goods, or with something newlook like an absolute art.
Rebecca Miller, an expert secondhand shopper based in Northeast Ohio, runs the popular Instagram account My Thrifted Abode. Miller tells Fast Company that even though thrifting is majorly on trend in modern times, it’s not new to her.
“Thrifting has always been a part of my life,” says Miller. “I grew up in a family where money was tight at times. I remember going to auctions and thrift stores with my mom as a little girl. Its been a way of life for me for as long as I can remember.”
Miller has only been sharing her thrift store finds for two years, but her Instagram already has over 114,000 followers, and there’s a reason why: She’s a talented thrifter who is skilled at teaching her audience how to thrift and gift. And according to her, people are more interested in thrifting because they are fed up with the holiday gift-giving craze and are seeking more sustainable options.
“Theres been more of a light shed on the massive overconsumption issue we have,” she says, adding that the sheer amount of items that are bought new, then quickly disposed of is “truly concerning.”
She’s not wrong: 11.3 million tons of textile waste end up in landfills yearly in the U.S., accounting for 7.7% of all landfill waste. During the holidays, the waste multiplies exponentially. Retailers say that 25% of returns end up being tossed out, leading to an extra 5.8 billion pounds of landfill wastemerely from returned items, not to mention all of the other holiday trash.
A more personal (and very vintage) touch
Miller says thrifting can contribute to a holiday season that’s more environmentally friendly, sustainable, and cheaper. But it’s not just about affordability. It’s about a more personal touch that puts genuine thought back into the holidays.
“I love giving old things a new life and being a part of that items history,” she explains, noting that reimagining how to use old items scratches her “creative itch.”
Taking a look at some of the fun and eclectic ways that Miller has styled items, it’s clear that it requires a bit more effort than clicking the “Buy Now” button on Amazon and slapping a bow on it the next day. In a recent video, Miller showed off adorable baskets for kids, with secondhand puzzles, books, and more.
“I always thrift gifts for my kids for their birthday and Christmas, and let me tell you, it does not make a difference to them whether they are new items or not!” she wrote in the caption.
But it’s likely not just kids who wouldn’t mind a thrifted giftespecially because the items don’t look like the things everyone else has. They’re vintage, unique, and require searching.
“Its such a thrill to walk into a thrift store, full of junk, and never knowing what treasures youll find,” says Miller. “Theres nothing like the thrill of the hunt.”
While many Americans will still flock to shop the big brands this season, it’s tough to miss that Thriftmas is about to show up in more homes than ever. And with influencers and Gen Z driving the trend, it feels about as welcomed as Santa sliding down the chimney with his bag of tricks. This year, it’s all about Thriftmasand it’s just as merry.
One hot new phone of 2025 has no screen, cant send a text, and needs to be plugged into the wall. But to buyers of the Tin Can, thats a definite plus.
The Tin Can, from a Seattle startup of the same name, grew out of conversations cofounder and CEO Chet Kittleson had with fellow parents about the challenges of enabling kids to connect with friends and relatives without giving them full-fledged cellphones. While children of the 20th century could pick up the house landline to call a grandparent or schedule a sleepover, todays kids are often left dependent on parents for scheduling playdates and connecting with family until theyre old enough to carry their own smartphones.
Our first social network was a landline, and our kids don’t have that, Kittleson says. We’re trying hard to keep them away from cellphones for as long as we can, but were not giving them anything in return, and so they’re sort of left in the lurch.
Starting in 2024, Kittleson and his Tin Can cofounders started working on a prototype that would deliver some of the same features of the old-school house phone without actually requiring landline service from the local phone or cable company. The result, which quickly proved a viral hit among Kittlesons network of parents and kids, is a phone complete with handheld receiver and curly cord that lets kids call, and receive calls and voicemails from, parent-approved numbers.
Chet Kittleson (center) with cofounders Graeme Davies (left) and Max Blumen (right) [Photo: Tin Can]
It gives them the opportunity to be social and work out play dates without having to come to us and use our phone, says Chelsea Miller, a Seattle parent of two whose family was quick to adopt the device.
Her two childrena 10-year-old daughter and a son about to turn 8also use the phone to connect with their grandparents, she says.
The phones now come in two models. A white model called the Flashback is described by the company as the phone of 80s childhood, though it plugs via ethernet cable into a router instead of a wall-mounted phone jack. A second model, simply called the Tin Can, has an appropriately playful cylindrical design, and it only needs Wi-Fi to connect. But as a deliberate design choice backed by early user input, the phone lacks a battery and must be plugged into a power socket, meaning kids can only roam as far as the cord can reach.
A majority of people felt strongly that it should not have a battery, Kittleson says. That it needed to be a stationary, plug-in-the-wall phone where a kid was actually focused on their conversation and not running around the house while they were talking.
[Photo: Tin Can]
Kittleson declined to disclose how many phones the company has sold, though he says theyve shipped the devices to all 50 states and all across Canada. The Flashback model is available for $75, and the Tin Can unit is available for preorder at the same price after a $25 discount, though the next batch wont ship until around early February. Previous batches of the Tin Can phones quickly sold out.
The company this week announced a $12-million round of seed funding led by Greylock Partners and including participation from Lateralus Holdings, as well as existing backers. A previous pre-seed round raised another $3.5 million.
In an age defined by digital noise, theyve created a joyful alternative that redefines how we view modern connection, says Mike Duboe, general partner at Greylock, in a statement. Were excited to support the team during this phase of incredible growth.
Kittleson says the new funds will help the company scale up distribution of the phone and the VoIP network that enables the devices to connect. Currently, calls between Tin Can-powered phones are freeand other Tin Cans can be reached by dialing a special short code in lieu of a full phone numberwhile calls to other numbers in the U.S. and Canada are included in an optional $9.99 per month plan.
The phones have proven hits with kids as well as parents, with new users often making dozens of calls in their first weeks with the devices before tapering off to a more typical calling cadence.
Typically, over the course of a month or so, it starts to level out, Kittleson says. And then it becomes a utility where they use it a couple times a day or even a few times a week, and that’s kind of the behavior we want.
Of course, while the phones evoke the landline phones of the late 20th century, todays kids are still growing up in a world of digital technology, so its likely many Tin Can kids will still want access to internet-enabled devices, video games, and social media as they get older. But Tin Can enables parents to limit screen time and internet access without leaving their children entirely unable to speak to friends and family.
[Photo: Tin Can]
I don’t want them to have internet or social media, Miller says. But I do want them to be socially connected.”
Even some adults have started using the Tin Can, enamored with the devices simplicity and the fact that it doesnt receive spam calls, since callers from nonapproved numbers simply get a recorded message saying theyre not authorized to connect. And parents like Kittleson say they also appreciate being able to call a house phone to reach the family when theyre away from the house.
While other companies offer kid-friendly cellphones, Kittleson says his company is essentially unique so far in offering a modern take on the house phone. And general-purpose VoIP phones are often more expensive and dont have kid-friendly features built-in and easy to set up, he says.
Of course, most adults cant ditch their smartphones entirely. Even for getting the Tin Can connected to Wi-Fi and updating the list of permitted numbers and hours where the phone enters do-not-disturb mode, parents use a smartphone app to access their accounts, much like with other connected home electronics. It beats an early system, Kittleson says, where users of the first prototypes texted him personally to add authorized numbers to the companys database.
The devices and features may continue to evolve a bit in the future, but since Tin Can exists to encourage real-world communications and childhood hangouts unmediated by screens or digital games, Kittleson says customers shouldnt expect a burst of new functionality.
We don’t think this is going to be a feature factory where we’re launching new things all the time, he says. That’s sort of by design not what we’re trying to do.
Welcome to AI Decoded, Fast Companys weekly newsletter that breaks down the most important news in the world of AI. Im Mark Sullivan, a senior writer at Fast Company, covering emerging tech, AI, and tech policy.
This week, Im focusing on Big AIs biggest sales pitchthe quest for AGIand the idea that the industry should focus on more modest and achievable tasks for AI. I also look at Databrickss new $4 billion-plus funding raise, and at Googles new Gemini 3 Flash model.
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.
Yann LeCun calls BS on artificial general intelligence
Big AI companies like OpenAI and Anthropic like to talk about their bold quest for AGI, or artificial general intelligence. The definition of that grail has proved to be somewhat flexible, but in general it refers to AI systems that are as smart as human beings at a wide array of tasks. AI companies have used this quest narrative to win investment, fascinate the tech press, and charm policymakers.
Now one of AIs most important pioneers, Turing Award winner Yann LeCun, is calling the whole concept into question. LeCun, outgoing Metas chief AI scientist, argues that even human beings arent really generalists. Theyre good at some physical tasks, and very good at social interactions, but can easily be defeated at chess by a computer and cant perform math as fast and accurately as a calculator can. There are tasks where many other animals are better than we are, LeCun said on a recent Information Bottleneck webcast.
We think of ourselves as being general, but its simply an illusion because all of the problems that we can apprehend are the ones that we can think ofand vice versa, LeCun said. So were general in all of the problems that we can imagine, but theres a lot of problems that we cannot imagine. And there are lots of mathematical arguments for this. So this concept of general intelligence is complete BS.
Lots of people in AI and neuroscience disagree with LeCun. Just because humans arent the best at all tasks, or tasks we cant imagine, it doesnt mean were not generalistsespecially in comparison to machine savants like calculators, they argue. I dont know whos right, but LeCun is making a broader point. He believes that AI labs should focus on specific real-world things that AI can dothings that create value or reduce suffering, perhapsand bring those solutions to market.
LeCun says the transformer-based large language models of today are useful enough to be applied in some valuable ways, but also believes they arent likely to achieve the general or human-level intelligence needed to do high-value work tasks now reserved for human brains. In order to navigate real-world complexity like humans do, the AI would need a much-higher-bandwidth training regimen than just words, images, and computer code, LeCun argues, and a different architecture to structure all the data. Notably, The Financial Times reports that LeCun is raising $585 million at a $3-billion valuation for a new AI startup that will look to build world modelsAI systems capable of learning from images, video, and spatial data, rather than only from text and large language models.
Databricks pulls in another $4B+, evaluation rises to $134 billion
Data and AI company Databricks raised more than $4 billion in a new Series L funding round led by Insight Partners, Fidelity, and J.P. Morgan Asset Management, with Andreessen Horowitz, BlackRock, and Blackstone kicking in. The companys valuation rose to $134 billion with the new round.
The valuation reflects Databrickss positioning within the booming market for AI cloud services. For years the companys primary offering was secure cloud storage for sensitive enterprise data, including data owned by companies in regulated industries such as healthcare and finance. Over the past five years, Databricks has gone deep on developing the AI side of its business. Its value proposition is allowing customers to run their data through powerful AI models hosted within the same secure cloud. More recently, the company has set up a secure platform for developing and deploying autonomous agents that can, for example, assemble complex business intelligence reports based on diverse datasets stored in the Databricks cloud.
The company also enables customers to run their data through third-party models from OpenAI and Anthropic, among others, hosting those models natively within the secure cloud. Now Databricks says both its data-warehousing business and its AI business each have revenue run rates of more than $1 billion. The company reported a revenue run rate of $4.8 billion during the third quarter of 2025, representing growth of about 55% from the same period in 2024.
Almost exactly a year ago, Databricks raised a massive $10 billion funding round, one of the largest ever for an AI company, and achieved a $62 billion valuation. (The valuation moved up to $100 billion when the company raised a $1 billion round in August.)
The San Francisco-based company says itll use the new capital to develop new AI-driven applications, fund future acquisitions, support R&D, and pay employees (most likely including expensive AI research talent). With hundreds of customers each contributing more than $1 million in annual revenue, and a high customer retention rate, Databricks is considered a strong IPO candidate. The company may be waiting for the optimal market conditions in which to file.
Google releases a Gemini 3 model, Flash, for the rest of us
Now even people who cant afford a monthly subscription can enjoy the magic of Google DeepMinds new Gemini 3 model. Google released the first Gemini 3 model, Pro, in November, but it was available only to paid subscribers. Its new Gemini 3 Flash variant is now the default in the Gemini app, and is available globally in Google Searchs AI Mode.
Flash is said to be three times faster at responding than Gemini 2.5 Pro, and almost as good at reasoning as the Gemini 3 Pro model. Flash is designed to be cost-effective, making it a great option for developers and businesses, according to Google.
The new model shows some impressive marks on PhD-level reasoning and knowledge benchmarks such as GPQA Diamond (90.4%) and Humanitys Last Exam (33.7% without tools). Those scores come close to those of larger models including Gemini 3 Pro and OpenAIs GPT-5.2. Flash also achieved the highest score of any model81.2%on the MMMU Pro benchmark, which measures the ability to understand and reason over a mx of text and visual data.
When processing at the highest thinking level, Gemini 3 Flash can modulate how much it thinks, Google says. For more complex questions itll spend more time processing the data it collects in its memory to get to an answer. But it also uses 30% fewer tokens (on average) than Gemini 2.5 Pro to complete simpler, everyday tasks. Researchers at Big AI labs have been working hard to make AI models store the (often voluminous) contextual data they collect in memory more efficiently, and use it more effectively.
More AI coverage from Fast Company:
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