The days of Republicans hard stances against marijuana have seemingly gone up in smoke.
On Thursday, President Trump signed an executive order to reschedule marijuana as a Schedule III substancean effective downgrade from Schedule I, the most dangerous classification, which includes substances like heroin. The change could allow for marijuana to be used in more medical research, and the order also authorized the creation of a pilot program to reimburse Medicare patients for CBD products.
The reclassification does not legalize marijuana, and seemingly completes or finalizes a recommendation made by the Biden administration in 2022 that the drug be rescheduled.
The Attorney General shall take all necessary steps to complete the rulemaking process related to rescheduling marijuana to Schedule III of the CSA in the most expeditious manner in accordance with Federal law, the executive order reads.
Notably, Trumps reclassification order was signed days after Trump ramped up his administrations stance on another controlled substance, fentanyl. On Monday, he signed another executive order that called fentanyl closer to a chemical weapon than a narcotic, and designated it as a weapon of mass destruction.
Cannabis stocks actually ended Thursday in the red, despite the news. Tilray Brands, for example, was down 4.3% for the day, and Canopy Growth was down almost 12%.
Members of the cannabis industry are cautiously optimistic about what the executive order actually means, however.
The Administrations order calling to remove the cannabis plant from its Schedule I classification validates the experiences of tens of millions of Americans, as well as those of tens of thousands of physicians, who have long recognized that cannabis possesses legitimate medical utility, said Paul Armentano, the Deputy Director at NORML, an organization that advocates for cannabis reform laws, in a statement. This directive certainly marks a long overdue change in direction.
Others are much more skeptical of what it means for the legal market, but do think the changes mark a boon for medical cannabis. Cannabis is still federally illegal, said Ryan Hunter, the chief revenue officer at Spherex, which creates vapes and cannabis-infused gummies, in comments shared with Fast Company. The real win here is for medical cannabis, he added. At Schedule III, its much more practical for mainstream physicians to prescribe cannabis products.
Still others are simply happy to see reclassification come to fruition. We welcome the decision to reschedule cannabis. This long-overdue step aligns regulation with science and public opinion, providing a necessary foundation for patient relief and compliant business growth, said Socrates Rosenfeld, the CEO and co-founder of Jane Technologies, which creates software for cannabis businesses, in a statement shared with Fast Company.
We are hopeful this marks the beginning of real momentum toward the broader, systemic reform needed for a truly just and accessible industry.
Dont beat yourself up if you do some serious damage on a cheese plate during holiday festivities this year: You just may do your future self a favor.
A new study has found that eating nearly 2 ounces or more of high-fat cheese each day has been associated with a 16% lower risk of dementia, according to the study published this week in Neurology. Lest you think this is some sort of propaganda by Big Cheese, the study followed nearly 28,000 adults in Malmö, Sweden for roughly 25 years.
The studys findings indicate that Swedes who ate more cheese with a fat content exceeding 20%which includes many varieties of cheddar, gouda, and blue cheese, among othershad a lower risk of all-cause dementia. The researchers didnt find a similar link with other high-fat dairy products and noted that further confirmation of these findings in diverse populations is warranted.
While the amount of cheese in questionequivalent to less than a handful of diced cubesmay not seem significant, scientists are keen to identify even something small that could raise or lower the risk of dementia. More than 6 million Americans are currently living with dementia, and 42% of Americans over the age of 55 could eventually develop such declines in mental abilities, according to figures from the National Institutes of Health.
QUESTIONING THE FINDINGS
It might be tempting to give yourself permission to go wild on full-fat cheese for your brain, though your waistline could pay the price. The studys authors said their findings require caution in interpretation, something that other experts were quick to do.
The researchers only captured the dietary habits of participants at one point in 1991 and didnt follow up with the majority of them over the course of the next 25 years. This sort of approach raises questions about the robustness of the studys conclusions, Dr. Tian-Shin Yeh, a physician and nutritional epidemiologist at Taipei Medical University in Taiwan, wrote in an editorial published alongside the study.
Whats more, the benefits of eating high-fat cheeses were most evident when participants swapped cheese for other foods, like processed or high-fat red meat, which might just reveal the difference of better options, according to Yeh. It is not so much that high-fat cheese is inherently neuroprotective, but rather that it is a less harmful choice than red and processed meats, she wrote.
BENEFITS OF CHEESE
The findings may not apply to somewhere like the U.S., where much of our cheese is processed, according to Emily Sonestedt, who led the new study and is a senior lecturer and associate professor of nutrition at Lund University in Sweden, Still, its possible that there are benefits from certain healthful components of cheese, like vitamins K or B12, or minerals like calcium, she told The New York Times.
As with any of these sorts of studies, its also important for people to remember that correlation doesnt imply causationsomething Sonestedt reinforced. This does not prove that cheese prevents dementia, but it does challenge the idea that all high-fat dairy is bad for the brain, Sonestedt said in an email to CNN.
HIGH-FAT FOODS IN FOCUS
Some people dont need purported brain benefits to convince them to eat foods high in saturated fats. These foods have been embraced in the keto diet, among others, in recent years, despite long-standing nutrition guidelines that recommend people limit their consumption of foods high in saturated fats because of the evidence that they raise LDL cholesterol levels, along with the risk of heart attack or stroke.
But those guidelines are likely to see a shake-up in 2026 as Robert F. Kennedy Jr., the U.S. secretary for health and human services, has said that the next edition of the federal dietary guidelines will instead stress the need to eat saturated fats, dairy, fresh meat, and vegetables.
And even if the results of this study are appealing to cheese lovers, the quirks of how the research was conducted mean that some experts arent exactly buying the results.
NOT BUYING IT
In fact, because the link between cheese consumption and dementia risk was at the margin of statistical significance, it could be due to just chance, notes Dr. Walter Willett, professor of epidemiology and nutrition at Harvard T.H. Chan School of Public Health and professor of medicine at Harvard Medical School in Boston.
Im not running out to buy a block of cheese, Willett said in an email to CNN.
Bitcoin investors are bracing for Witching Friday tomorrow, December 18, when billions of options are due to expiremaking for what could be a highly volatile, roller-coaster ride at the end of the week for the markets.
Some $23 billion in contracts are set to expire just on Deribit, the largest Bitcoin exchange, according to Bloomberg.
Here’s what to know.
What is ‘Witching Friday’?
“Witching Friday,” also known as “triple witching” or “the triple witching hour,” refers to the last hour of the stock market trading session on the third Friday of March, June, September, and December, when three kinds of securities expire simultaneously, often leading to increased volatility.
Those securities are: stock index futures, stock index options, and stock options, (plus single-stock futures), according to Decrypt.
These “triple witching” days often generate more trading activity, thus more volatility, or larger swings, since the expiration of the contracts trigger buying or selling of the underlying security, per Investopedia.
“These witching days simply indicate higher volume and the ability to inflict maximum pain if certain thresholds are hit,” Michael Terpin, author of Bitcoin Supercycle and CEO of Transform Ventures, told Fast Company. “It’s by no means a guarantee of falling prices, but with the steady drumbeat of fear in the market, including the Japan rate hike decision, the odds of a lower low grow higher.”
Where does Bitcoin stand now?
In the lead-up to Friday’s event, Bitcoin continues to fall, as it has in recent weeks, triggered in part by the Federal Reserves recent interest rate cut by 25 basis points on December 10, and compounded by uncertainty over the long-term, macroeconomic environment ahead, the Bank of Japan’s potential rate hike, and fear of growing U.S. inflation in 2026.
On Thursday afternoon, at the time of this writing, the digital cryptocurrency (BTC) was trading down nearly 1%, dipping well below $90,000, to $85,184.
Its part of an overall decline in the crypto market that also saw closely watched digital asset XRP fall nearly 2%, hovering around $1.82 per token on Thursday, while Ethereum (ETH) held steady and was trading at $2,802 at the time of this writing.
President Donald Trump’s plans to add a ballroom to the White House would be bad for the design of the White House complex and grounds, according to a National Park Service (NPS) report. The report said the annex would “disrupt the historical continuity of the White House grounds and alter the architectural integrity of the easts side of the property.” Still, Trump is clear for now to move ahead with his plans.
The NPS report is just the latest speed bump facing Trump’s plan to build a new annex since he had the White House East Wing demolished in October without seeking outside approval. It’s a saga of inflated expectations and a ballooning budget that’s blowing past calls for preservation and restraint.
The NPS’s environmental assessment was released because the agency manages the White House, its grounds, and surrounding areas including Lafayette Square and sites in and around the Ellipse. The National Environmental Policy Act and Department of Interior regulations also compel the agency to.
Their assessment found no significant environmental impact from building a ballroom and noted successive administrations have wanted a permanent, secure event space on White House grounds. But it also highlighted aesthetic and cultural concerns about Trump’s plans. That might not matter.
Here’s where Trump’s plans to build a new building on the White House grounds stands:
Trump replaces the original architect
Trump confirmed on Dec. 4 to the Washington Post that he replaced the ballroom’s original architect McCrery Architects with a new firm called Shalom Baranes Associates.
The switch up came following reports that Trump and McCrery Architects CEO Jim McCrery II disagreed over the planned size of the new building. McCrery reportedly believed Trump’s plans for a 90,000-square-foot ballroom would dwarf the 55,000-square-foot building of the main White House mansion.
Trump has inflated the estimated cost and size of the planned ballroom over time, and initially said it wouldn’t interfere with the East Wing.
In July the White House announced a building that would seat 650 people for an estimated $200 million. That grew to plans for complex with space to seat around 1,000 people that Trump said Wednesday would cost $400 million. The White House says private donors are paying for construction costs.
Demolition of the East Wing of the White House, during construction on the new ballroom extension of the White House in Washington, DC, US, on Tuesday, Dec. 9, 2025. [Photo: Aaron Schwartz/Bloomberg/Getty Images]
Preservationists file lawsuit to pause construction
The National Trust for Historic Preservation filed a lawsuit on Dec. 12 accusing Trump of breaking the law by moving ahead with the East Wing teardown and plans for a new ballroom without public input or any sort of independent review.
The National Trust said that Trump should have submitted his plans to Congress and the National Capital Planning Commission and the group asked the court to put a pause on construction.
No president is legally allowed to tear down portions of the White House without any review whatsoevernot President Trump, not President Biden, and not anyone else, the lawsuit reads. And no president is legally allowed to construct a ballroom on public property without giving the public the opportunity to weigh in.
In a court filing on Dec. 15, the Trump administration claimed construction must continue for unnamed national security reasons. Attorneys for the administration said the National Capital Planning Commission and the congressional Commission of Fine Arts will review Trump’s plans “without this Courts involvement.”
A judge on Dec. 16 ruled that construction could move ahead after it rejected the National Trust’s request to temporarily halt the project.
NPS weighs in
An NPS environmental assessment published Dec. 15 estimated Trump’s plans for a 90,000-square-foot building with seating for more than 1,000 people would be completed by Trump’s final summer in office, in 2028. It also said the building would adversely effect the cultural landscape of the White House grounds.
The report notes the imbalance of a ballroom that’s bigger than the rest of the White House and in adding a two-story East Colonnade. “The new building’s larger footprint and height will dominate the eastern portion of the site, creating a visual imbalance with the more modestly scaled West Wing and Executive Mansion,” it says. “These changes will adversely alter the design, setting, and feeling of the White House and the grounds over the long-term.”
The assessment also notes that construction introduce temporary risks to the rest of the White House due to things like noise and vibration.
Regardless of the report’s findings, it concludes that the planned building would meet the needs of providing a permanent, secure event space on the White House grounds, and that it doesn’t rise to the level of needing an environmental impact statement to be prepared.
The rapid growth of data centers during the AI boom has been a dominating narrative of 2025and, in many instances, not a popular one.
Across the country, communities have pushed back against data centers planned for their cities and states. Some have even turned to online petition sites to raise awareness and voice collective opposition to such projects. One site, the popular platform Change.org, says it has seen a significant spike in data center-related petitions in recent months.
Change.org saw at least 113 petitions that mentioned data centers in 2025, totaling around 50,000 signatures, the platform shared with Fast Company.
It’s not clear if that figure includes multiple petitions about the same data center project. These petitions also simply mention data centersboth for or against. But a cursory search shows that the vast majority were opposed to them.
Volume increased as the year progressed
For Change.org, the topic is new: In all of 2024, there was just one petition regarding a data center, in April.
No other petitions mentioned data centers until a year later, in April 2025, according to Change.org. Then, they began to tick up: Fewer than five petitions appeared each month until August, and then 12 were started in September, 37 in October, and 24 in November.
And December looks to be even higher. As of Monday, users have created 28 data center-related petitions this month.
One petition, titled Stop Data Center at Former Landover Mall Site, was created in June, concerning a data center in Landover, Maryland, a suburb of Washington, D.C. It has more than 20,000 signatures, with many supporters calling out how data centers use immense energy and water, which often means higher utility costs for residents.
“Say ‘NO’ to the construction of ‘Project Tango’ AI data center in Palm Beach County, begins another petition, which has more than 7,000 signatures and was started earlier in December. That petition was just one form of opposition against Project Tango, a proposed 200-acre AI data center complex in Florida.
At zoning hearings, residents have raised concerns about the projects water consumption, environmental impacts, utility rate hikes, and potential noise.
Another petition, titled Stop Data Centers in Hobart, Indiana Protect Our Community, has nearly 2,500 signatures. There have been multiple proposals to build data centers in Hobart throughout 2025; recently, at the end of November, the city reached a deal with Amazon to develop a data center there.
That Change.org petition was created by a group called No Data Centers Hobart Indiana, which has a presence on Facebook and comprises more than 4,000 members. Angelita Soriano, a leader of that group, has recently filed a lawsuit, along with three other Hobart homeowners looking to overturn the citys actions to green-light the Amazon project.
This lawsuit is our effort to keep our government accountable and to defend Hobart families, homes, water, and our environment, Soriano said in a statement. Residents shouldnt be ignored or deprived of their rights just to fast-track a massive industrial data center development in the heart of our community, right next to our schools, hospitals, and homes.
“We need to slow it down”
In some cases, community opposition is having a real impact.
Between late March and June, 20 data center projects, representing about $98 billion in investments, were blocked or delayed in the United States, according to a November study from Data Center Watch, a project from the AI security and intelligence firm 10a Labs.
These were instances in which local opposition was specifically reported to have played some role.
To Miquel Vila, an analyst at the Data Center Watch project, community backlash to data centers has become an expected part of the development process. Before, local opposition was more of an anecdotal possibility, he says. Now, its becoming a core feature of development . . . in the same way issues like land, energy, and water are taken into account.
Sen. Bernie Sanders of Vermont recently said that he will push for a moratorium on AI data center construction to “give democracy a chance to catch up” to the surge that has largely been unregulated.
“There is a whole lot about AI and robotics that needs to be discussed, needs to be analyzed, Sanders said in a video posted to X. But one thing is for sure. This process is moving very, very quickly, and we need to slow it down. We need all of our people involved in determining the future of AI, and not just a handful of multibillionaires.
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.
