At this years Web Summit in Lisbon, Hayden Brown, president and CEO of Upwork, was asked which leadership skills are most in demand today. Her answer was immediate: The demand for soft skills is rising. As AI algorithms increasingly take over routine tasks, the qualities that cant be automatedcommunication clarity, the ability to work effectively with people, and conflict-resolution skillsare becoming essential for career growth.
This trend extends far beyond the tech sector. According to LinkedIns Work Change Report, 70% of skills used across most professions will change by 2030; AI will be the main catalyst. Against this backdrop, Ive become convinced that soft skills have no expiration date. They are what determine whether a leader can keep their team productive even during periods of radical change or crisis.
Ive identified five soft skills that draw a clear line between an average leader and an exceptional onesomeone truly capable of leading through transformation.
1. EMOTIONAL INTELLIGENCE
Imagine that one of your team members productivity drops threefold: They used to complete at least 15 tasks weekly, but now barely finish five. When evaluating the situation only through metrics, the leader might say: I see you’re working slower. Can you fix this? The answer will be predictable: Yes, Ill try harder. And nothing will change.
Ive noticed that how a leader makes an employee feel during a difficult moment directly affects their engagement, trust, and performance. If instead of assigning blame the leader asks, How are you feeling? it reveals the real reason behind the performance decline. Often it is personal circumstances, stress, or overload.
A leader with strong emotional intelligence can notice even subtle signs of worsening psychological well-being within the team and use empathy to understand what is actually happening. By identifying the root causes, they can find solutions that truly improve performance.
2. CONFLICT MANAGEMENT
According to the Workplace Peace Institute, American employees spend two hours weekly resolving disputes. Im convinced that many conflicts can be avoided if we learn to recognize them early.
But when tension does escalate into an open confrontation, the leader must turn that conflict into a productive conversation. They should help both sides structure their thoughts, guide them toward a compromise, and clearly explain the reasoning behind their decisions.
This is what effective conflict management looks likechanneling that energy into finding the best possible solution. To do this, a leader must separate people from the problem and avoid mixing emotions with arguments.
3. COMMUNICATION CLARITY
Grammarly research shows that 64% of business leaders link higher team productivity directly to effective communication. In my view, clarity is the soft skill with the strongest impact on outcomes. When a leader fails to articulate goals, expectations, or the task contextsuch as constraints or why the business needs this decision right nowthe team operates blindly. They complete the task based on their own interpretation rather than the original intent; that gap costs time, quality, and effort.
When people dont understand the outcome expected of them, they fill in the blanks with assumptions rarely aligning with reality. This affects the final result, but also team dynamics. Conflicts emerge, with a shared feeling that no one listens to us.
Once I witnessed a situation where, due to urgency, a manager assigned a task to a developer who was less busy but had less experience. The more experienced colleague reacted indignantly: Why wasnt this ticket assigned to me? Is something wrong with my work? The problem was that the manager hadnt explained the criteria for choosing the assignee; the lack of clarity left room for incorrect assumptions.
Its important to communicate not just what were doing, but also why were doing it that particular way. Whether its task assignment, delegation, or shifting priorities, its worth giving the team the full picture.
4. COACHING MINDSET
According to an analysis of 34 million U.S. managerial job postings, since 2007 employers have been three times more likely to look for leaders with skills in collaboration, coaching, and influence. At the same time, job postings have decreased wording usage for traditional leadership.
Today, valued leaders not only manage processes but also create conditions for their teams growth. And in this context, the coaching mindset takes center stage. A leader who possesses it can pose questions to people that stimulate them to seek their own solutions, rather than relying on directives.
A coaching mindset fosters autonomy and strengthens peoples confidence in their abilities, ultimately enhancing the entire team. Leaders should not deprive their teams of the opportunity to arrive at solutions on their own.
5. RESILIENCE
The modern world is full of uncertainty; leaders need to adapt to unforeseen changes, and also support others during challenging times. This is easier to do if they possess resilience and can stay calm under pressure, manage their own emotions, and recover quickly.
I lead a team of 90 people, mostly Ukrainians. When Russia launched its full-scale invasion of Ukraine, my teamwhich suddenly found itself in dangerwas disoriented and scared. As a leader, I could not give in to panic, because I was responsible for my people. They came to me with many questions, and my actions, advice, and support helped the team get through those difficult times.
The good news is that resilience is not an innate trait, but it can be developed. A leader becomes more resilient by learning to pause, consciously choose their response to a situation, and avoid reacting to immediate triggers.
Teams that see a leaders resilience in challenging situations show six times higher engagement and innovation. This is no coincidence: People work more boldly and productively when they have an example of someone who doesn’t give in to anxiety and provides a sense of stability and security. Our team is proof of this.
Illia Smoliienko is the chief software officer for Waites.
Enhanced tax credits that have helped reduce the cost of health insurance for the vast majority of Affordable Care Act enrollees expired overnight, cementing higher health costs for millions of Americans at the start of the new year.Democrats forced a 43-day government shutdown over the issue. Moderate Republicans called for a solution to save their 2026 political aspirations. President Donald Trump floated a way out, only to back off after conservative backlash.In the end, no one’s efforts were enough to save the subsidies before their expiration date. A House vote expected in January could offer another chance, but success is far from guaranteed.The change affects a diverse cross-section of Americans who don’t get their health insurance from an employer and don’t qualify for Medicaid or Medicare a group that includes many self-employed workers, small business owners, farmers and ranchers.It comes at the start of a high-stakes midterm election year, with affordability including the cost of health care topping the list of voters’ concerns.“It really bothers me that the middle class has moved from a squeeze to a full suffocation, and they continue to just pile on and leave it up to us,” said 37-year-old single mom Katelin Provost, whose health care costs are set to jump. “I’m incredibly disappointed that there hasn’t been more action.”
Some families grapple with insurance costs that are doubling, tripling or more
The expired subsidies were first given to Affordable Care Act enrollees in 2021 as a temporary measure to help Americans get through the COVID-19 pandemic. Democrats in power at the time extended them, moving the expiration date to the start of 2026.With the expanded subsidies, some lower-income enrollees received health care with no premiums, and high earners paid no more than 8.5% of their income. Eligibility for middle-class earners was also expanded.On average, the more than 20 million subsidized enrollees in the Affordable Care Act program are seeing their premium costs rise by 114% in 2026, according to an analysis by the health care research nonprofit KFF.Those surging prices come alongside an overall increase in health costs in the U.S., which are further driving up out-of-pocket costs in many plans.Some enrollees, like Salt Lake City freelance filmmaker and adjunct professor Stan Clawson, have absorbed the extra expense. Clawson said he was paying just under $350 a month for his premiums last year, a number that will jump to nearly $500 a month this year. It’s a strain for the 49-year-old but one he’s willing to take on because he needs health insurance as someone who lives with paralysis from a spinal cord injury.Others, like Provost, are dealing with steeper hikes. The social worker’s monthly premium payment is increasing from $85 a month to nearly $750.
Effects on enrollment remain to be seen
Health analysts have predicted the expiration of the subsidies will drive many of the 24 million total Affordable Care Act enrollees especially younger and healthier Americans to forgo health insurance coverage altogether.Over time, that could make the program more expensive for the older, sicker population that remains.An analysis conducted last September by the Urban Institute and Commonwealth Fund projected the higher premiums from expiring subsidies would prompt some 4.8 million Americans to drop coverage in 2026.But with the window to select and change plans still ongoing until Jan. 15 in most states, the final effect on enrollment is yet to be determined.Provost, the single mother, said she is holding out hope that Congress finds a way to revive the subsidies early in the year but if not, she’ll drop herself off the insurance and keep it only for her four-year-old daughter. She can’t afford to pay for both of their coverage at the current price.
Months of discussion, but no relief yet
Last year, after Republicans cut more than $1 trillion in federal health care and food assistance with Trump’s big tax and spending cuts bill, Democrats repeatedly called for the subsidies to be extended. But while some Republicans in power acknowledged the issue needed to be addressed, they refused to put it to a vote until late in the year.In December, the Senate rejected two partisan health care bills a Democratic pitch to extend the subsidies for three more years and a Republican alternative that would instead provide Americans with health savings accounts.In the House, four centrist Republicans broke with GOP leadership and joined forces with Democrats to force a vote that could come as soon as January on a three-year extension of the tax credits. But with the Senate already having rejected such a plan, it’s unclear whether it could get enough momentum to pass.Meanwhile, Americans whose premiums are skyrocketing say lawmakers don’t understand what it’s really like to struggle to get by as health costs ratchet up with no relief.Many say they want the subsidies restored alongside broader reforms to make health care more affordable for all Americans.“Both Republicans and Democrats have been saying for years, oh, we need to fix it. Then do it,” said Chad Bruns, a 58-year-old Affordable Care Act enrollee in Wisconsin. “They need to get to the root cause, and no political party ever does that.”
Ali Swenson, Associated Press
Singles are drowning their Sunday blues with work, which experts warn isnt necessarily the healthiest coping strategy.
In a recent survey of 1,000 singles by Dating.com, 52% of those without a romantic partner said they spend most Sundays alone and 65% say its the loneliest day of their week. To cope, 74% say theyve turned to work to keep themselves busy, and 40% say they do so often.
Sunday is usually the quietest day of the week, and when you don’t have a family or anyone that you’re dating to spend time with, it’s a time that could feel very sad, explains licensed clinical social worker and resident therapist for Dating.com, Jaime Bronstein. A lot of people work to avoid being in their feelings, which is not necessarily recommended because it’s important to feel your feelings.
Bronstein adds that some employers may even put higher expectations on their single staff knowing they have fewer personal responsibilities occupying their time.
Sometimes people that are single feel like they don’t have a purpose, she adds. By working extra, they can feel like that’s their purpose.
Loneliness is on the rise, and bleeding into the workplace
Though dating in any generation has its challenges, Bronstein suggests its become more isolating in the digital age.
Its the rise of social media comparisons, seeing all the happy-looking couples, and then its all the dating apps, she says. Theres so much ghosting, people arent giving people enough of a chance because of the disposability factor and the ability to just find someone else, so theres a lot more rejection.
In 2023 loneliness and isolation was labeled a global health concern by the World Health Organization and an epidemic by the U.S. Surgeon General, but the challenge seems to have only gotten worse since. And its extended further, into individuals professional lives.
In a survey conducted in September by KPMG, 45% of respondents reported feelings of loneliness in the workplace, up from 25% just 10 months earlier. The data tells us theres been an increase in loneliness in the last year, says KPMGs vice chair of Talent & Culture Sandy Torchia.
Though its hard to pinpoint a precise cause, the research suggests that financial constraints have played a role, with 75% of respondents saying its becoming harder to afford social activities with colleagues outside of the workplace. Remote work may also be playing a role, as 67% of those who work entirely from home report feeling isolated at work, compared to 45% among all workers. Furthermore, while 84% of respondents said having close professional friends was very important for their mental health, that number rises to 93% among remote workers.
Lonely workers arent productive workers
It may be tempting to consider the loneliness-driven extra work hours on weekends a win for employers, but Torchia cautions that encouraging overwork isnt in anyones best interest in the long run.
Thats not an equation for success, because we want our employees to thrive. And for you to be able to thrive professionally, you need to be able to thrive personally, she says.
Even if theyre putting in more hours, those who use work as a crutch for managing loneliness are more susceptible to exhaustion, depression, and burnoutpotentially creating new challenges in their professional lives. Thats potentially exacerbated for singles, who already may be more prone to burnout due to money concerns: theyre often in a higher tax bracket, or spend more on housing or cost-of-living expenses when theres no one to split the bill with.
A happy, fulfilled, less stressed, less overwhelmed employee is going to be more productive and bring more value to your company, adds Bronstein.
Being lonely at work can make us more lonely at home
Whether in the digital or physical world, the workplace is where most people spend the largest share of their time, giving employers a unique opportunity to address isolation and loneliness among staff. Thats true for anyone, but potentially singles who may be loneliner in particular.
In the KPMG survey, for example, 29% of respondents said they were more productive when they had close friends at work. Torchia says organizations can promote workplace friendships by creating more opportunities for colleagues to connect over nonwork activities.
In the survey, 89% of respondents said company-facilitated interactions were very important, so there is an expectation for companies to play a role, she says. And then 91% said that their manager or another senior leader encouraged them to foster friendships.
The KPMG data is consistent with research from Gallup, which found loneliness affected 20% of Americans in mid-2024, up from 17% at the start of that year.
Younger people were also more likely to report feeling lonely, including 21% of millennials and 29% of Gen Z employees.
Employees have, progressively over the last several years, felt more detached from their organization, and it doesn’t have to be that way, says Gallups chief scientist for workplace management and wellbeing Dr. Jim Harter.
The emotion of loneliness isn’t just about having friends at work; it’s about having an opportunity to do your best, feeling like you’re making a contribution, having clear goals.
A weekly check-in with a manager is key to combatting employee loneliness
Employers likely wont step in to help staff with their dating lives, but Harter says managers can play an outsized role in helping them combat feelings of isolation.
Conversations with a manager and employeeeven just once a week and lasting for 30 minutescan establish the relationship between the individual and the organization and the contribution theyre making, he says. People feel a lot lonelier if they don’t feel like their work is making a contribution.
According to Gallups research, employees are less likely to feel isolated if they have clarity of expectations, feel recognized for their contributions, feel like someone cares about their development, feel connected to the organizations mission, and if they get the chance to do something theyre good at every day.
All of those things are really central to whether working people feel lonely or not, Harter says. When managers have a weekly meaningful conversation with employees, it solves for a lot of it.
Shares of Tesla Inc. are enjoying a premarket upswing on Friday as they head into their first trading day of 2026.
The rising stock price (Nasdaq: TSLA) comes despite low expectations for the EV maker’s fourth-quarter 2025 deliveries, which are expected to show a significant decline when compared to the previous quarter.
Here’s what you need to know:
Tesla stock is starting 2026 on a high note
In premarket trading on Friday, shares of Tesla were up around 2% as of this writing. The stock has been on an upswing for the last several months since CEO Elon Musk stepped back from his controversial job-slashing activities at the Department of Government Efficiency (DOGE) earlier in 2025.
Those activities were widely seen to have done damage to the Tesla brand, especially among progressive-minded customers.
But Tesla stock has risen more than 46% since last summer, a sign that investors are once again excited about the company’s push into AI and automation.
Q4 vehicle deliveries are expected to dip
Tesla is expected to soon share its most recent figures for vehicle deliveries, and they’re not likely to be pretty. The company’s recently updated consensus data shows 422,850 total vehicles, down roughly 15% compared to the previous quarter.
That’s even lower than a FactSet consensus of around 440,000 vehicles cited by Barron’s.
If the deliveries data is so bad, why is Tesla stock still rising?
There could be a few reasons for that. For one thing, the deliveries were already expected to decline from the previous quarter, when consumers rushed to buy electric vehicles before the expiration of tax credits in September.
So while Tesla’s consensus estimate is even lower than some had predicted, the dip in deliveries was not a surprise. At the same time, some investors seem to be more interested in looking forward than backward.
Excitement around robotaxis may trump traditional fundamentals
Tesla’s share price moves have always reflected a mix of traditional metrics like sales and revenue trends along with a belief in the company’s forward-looking ambitions. Today’s share price increase could indicate that investors are more excited about what the company has in store for 2026 in terms of AI, automation, and robotaxis.
As reported by Yahoo Finance, analyst Dan Ives of Wedbush Securities recently named Tesla as one of the top AI stocks for 2026. So while there is plenty of skepticism around whether Musk will ever deliver on his promises for self-driving vehicles, he and Tesla still have their share of believers.
Tech and AI stocks are generally up on Friday
Tesla’s premarket stock price rise on Friday may also simply be a reflection of broader investor optimism as we head into the first trading day of 2026.
A number of Big Tech and AI-adjacent stocks are enjoying a mild bump on Friday morning, including Nvidia Corp, Meta Platforms, Apple and others.
Whether or not it will last is anyone’s guess. But let’s not forget we still have 365 days to go.
Its been one full year of congestion pricing in New York City, and downtown Manhattan looks markedly different: 23.7 million fewer vehicles, traffic delays down 25%, and a 22% drop in air pollution, to start.
And thats just within the congestion relief zone. The program, which implements tolls on drivers who enter certain, once often-gridlocked areas of Manhattan, is even having positive effects outside of the streets that are subject to the toll.
Congestion pricing had a rocky start in New York City, and it continues to face lawsuits. But courts have consistently ruled in its favor.
One year in, its clear the program is overwhelmingly successful, says Kate Slevin, executive vice president of the Regional Planning Association, a nonprofit that pushed for congestion pricing. Heres a look at how congestion pricing has changed New York.
First, what is congestion pricing?
Congestion pricing is a way to mitigate traffic, and when it was implemented in New York City on January 5, 2025, it was the countrys first such program. Congestion pricing plans have been rolled out in cities around the world, though, including London, Stockholm, and Singapore.
The program covers a congestion relief zone that spans almost all of Manhattan below 60th Street and includes major routes like the Lincoln, Holland, and Hugh L. Carey tunnels and bridges that go into both Brooklyn and Queens.
Passenger cars with an E-ZPass that travel through that zone face a $9 toll during peak hourswhich are 5 a.m. to 9 p.m. on weekdays and 9 a.m. to 9 p.m. on weekendsand a $2.25 toll overnight.
Tolls are more expensive for commercial traffic, and vehicles without E-ZPass are charged a 50% premium
Those tolls are meant to both reduce traffic congestion in the city and raise funds for the Metropolitan Transportation Authority (MTA), the citys public transit system.
Environmentalists also backed the plan for its ability to reduce pollution by cutting traffic and ushering more commuters.
How congestion pricing has impacted commuters
Since January 5, 2025, 23.7 million fewer vehicles have entered the citys congestion pricing zone, compared to 2024. The number of drivers entering the zone is down 12%, meaning about 71,000 fewer vehicles every day.
Those numbers came in in December, and so they may be even higher now. (At the programs one-month mark, it already meant one million fewer vehicles on those streets.)
Between January and April, traffic delays inside the congestion relief zone dropped 25%and region-wide, including parts of New Jersey, declined 9%compared to the same period the year prior.
This has translated to quicker commutes. Morning commutes are:
36% faster through the Holland Tunnel
10% faster through the Lincoln Tunnel
21% faster across the Queensboro Bridge
23% faster across the Williamsburg Bridge
Commuters are saving as much as 21 minutes on a one-way trip. Some bus routes in the congestion relief zone have gotten as much as 25% faster, and school buses are facing fewer delays: Theyre on time 72% of the time, up from 58%.
Some residents had concerns that congestion pricing could push traffic from lower Manhattan into other areas like the South Bronx, and parts of New Jersey and Staten Island, making congestion (and air pollution) worse for those residents.
But none of those traffic impacts come to effect, Slevin says. Traffic is actually lower regionally, even beyond the congestion relief zone . . . that means this is a policy that’s not only good for the five boroughs of New York. Its also a regional policy.
Slevin does warn that in other congestion pricing cases, the traffic reduction benefits dont necessarily last. In London, after an initial dip, traffic crept back up, mostly from ride-hailing drivers and delivery trucks.
If traffic bounces back, the program will still raise money for public transit. New York City does have a plan to escalate the tolls as well, raising them from $9 to $12 in 2028 and then to $15 in 2031.
How congestion pricing is benefiting public transit
Along with easing New Yorks infamous gridlock, a goal of congestion pricing was to raise $15 billion for the MTA, which would go to new subway cars, buses, station accessibility, and so on.
Already, the state has allocated $1.75 billion of congestion pricing revenue to transit projects, including modernizing subway signals. Outdated signals are a major cause of subway delays.
The MTA is also already working on getting more than 400 new subway cars and 300 commuter rail cars, among other projects.
Public transit throughout the region is already dealing with more commuters: Subway ridership is up 9% year-over-year, and bus ridership up 13%. Regional rail has benefited, too, with the Long Island Rail Road seeing a 10% increase in riders, and the Metro-North up 7%.
It was pretty obvious that congestion pricing would reduce traffic and raise money for transit. But its been a bit surprising, Slevin says, how close it has come to the projections that were laid out over the years of planning, in the environmental documents and in the MTA studies. Its validating.
Less traffic means safer streets, cleaner air
New Yorkers are even breathing easier thanks to congestion pricing. A Cornell University study released in December found that air pollution dropped 22% in the congestion relief zone.
Thats specifically concerning PM2.5, meaning particles that measure 2.5 micrometers or less. These tiny particles can enter our lungs and lead to an array of health issues, including cardiovascular, respiratory, and neurological impacts.
A 22% drop means PM2.5 concentrations declined by 3.05 micrograms per cubic meter. If congestion pricing had not been implemented, researchers projected those lower Manhattan streets would see an average of 13.8 micrograms per cubic meter. (The Environmental Protection Agency recommends an annual exposure limit of 9 micrograms per cubic meter.)
Air quality improved outside of that zone, too, with average declines of 1.07 micrograms per cubic meter across the citys five boroughs and 0.70 micrograms per cubic meter in the broader region.
This tells us that congestion pricing didnt simply relocate air pollution to the suburbs by rerouting traffic, Timothy Fraser, one of the study’s authors, said in a statement. Instead, folks are liely choosing cleaner transportation options altogether, like riding public transportation or scheduling deliveries at night.
Less traffic has also meant safer streets when it comes to injuries and fatalities. Within the congestion relief zone, traffic injuries are down 15%, and pedestrian fatalities have dropped at least 15%. Thats on par with levels last seen in 2018.
New York Citys streets are even a bit quieter: Honking and vehicle noise complaints to the city are down 45%.
Whats next for NYC congestion pricing?
Congestion pricing faced an array of hurdles to get to this point.
Small business owners rallied against it, at least eight lawsuits from plaintiffs including New Jersey Governor Phill Murphy and the Trucking Association of New York contested it, and New York Governor Kathy Hochul even delayed its start.
Things were still challenging once the tolls began; after Donald Trump took office for his second term as president, he rescinded its federal approval, and ordered the city to halt the program.
The city fought back, winning court orders to soldier on.
The legal battles arent completely over. Some cases against congestion prices are still pending, and in November, Trump said he’d once again ask Transportation Secretary Sean Duffy to consider killing the program.
Slevin remains positive, though.
For one, public approval is up. A March Siena College poll found that 42% of New York City residents want congestion pricing to stay, while 35% supported Trumps efforts to end it.
Compare that to December 2023, before the program started: Siena College had found then that just 32% New Yorkers supported the toll, and a whopping 52% were against it.
This is a pattern for congestion pricing programs around the world. People often resist them at the start, but once they see the benefits first hand, support grows.
Slevin even says anecdotally, she knows a few people who used to be against it in New York City, but are now congestion pricing fans.
Another reason to be optimistic is the fact that so far, all the courts have ruled in favor of congestion pricing.
I think at this point it will be hard to remove it, because it is delivering benefits for people. The money is going back into the public transit network. And our region absolutely needs the transit network to work for our economy to thrive, Slevin says. I dont think eliminating hundreds of millions of dollars for public transit spending is going to be very popular.
New York Citys streets could even see more improvements. With less traffic thanks to congestion pricing, that gives the city space to create more public plazas or improve bus service.
The city’s new mayor, Zohran Mamdani, already made fast, free buses and safer streets a key part of his platform, and so he may build on congestion pricings success.
The entire country has watched New York City implement congestion pricing and fend off Trumps attacks against it. Now, theyre seeing its success, and that could spur other cities to take similar action.
The Regional Planning Association has already fielded calls and interests from other cities, both in the U.S. and internationally.
It shows that cities can do big things to deal with their problems,” Slevin says. “And it gives inspiration to other cities across the country.”
If 2025 was the year purpose went quiet, 2026 is when the fork in the road will become impossible to ignore. Insights from the Purpose Collaborative, a 40-member network of impact-driven companies, predict what the year ahead will mean for responsible businesses.
On one path, companies move purpose from statements and discrete programs into the structure of the business: strategy, governance, KPIs, products, data, and even AI. On the other path, purpose gets quietly defunded, depoliticized, or pushed so far into the background that only a handful of insiders can see it. Both routes have real implications for long-term business success.
For companies that can integrate and connect purpose to actual business value, it will be a source of competitive advantage, helping them stand out from the AI workslop, says Caleb Gardner, managing partner of 18 Coffees. For others, it will fade into the background as they fight for survival.
Many of the experts we spoke with identified this bifurcation. Some organizations will double down on purpose as a discipline and driver of resilience. Others will keep doing the work with as little visibility as possible, hoping to avoid backlash in a polarized Trump era. The stakes are no longer about having a nice-to-have purpose platform” but about whether purpose becomes the backbone of the business or disappears completely.
Against that backdrop, we asked members what they see as the biggest trends, the hardest barriers, and the boldest steps leaders should take. Their answers point to a year defined by proof, participation, courage, and resilience.
A fork in the road: Structural purpose vs. quiet retreat
Members see a widening gap across sectors and regions. On one side are the companies treating purpose as a long-term operating system: one thats deeply integrated into strategy, measurement, and governance.
The dominant purpose-related trend will be the shift from Purpose as Story to Purpose as Proof, says Fabio Milnitzky, CEO of iN. Companies will move away from treating purpose as a slogan and toward treating it as a disciplined, measurable system that must demonstrate impact on people, planet, and profit.
Purpose will only be credible when it can withstand scrutiny from investors, regulators, employees, and communitiesand when it shapes what a company does and doesnt do.
Purpose will stop being a department and start being a discipline, says Joe Waters, founder of Selfish Giving. When companies embrace purpose in this way, every partnership, product, and story flows from a coherent set of values. Purpose will show up in hiring, investment decisions, access to capital, reputation, and resilience if (or when) a crisis hits.
There will be a bifurcation of companies that quietly remain focused on purpose and embed it deeper into the enterprise, and those who retrench in favor of prioritizing to focus on short-term business pressures, says Karimah Huddah, founder of illumine.earth.
On the other side are organizations scaling back external purpose work in response to political pressure, ESG and DEI backlash, and economic uncertainty. Purpose will move from public declarations to quiet, behind-the-scenes stewardship, says Jessica Marati Radparvar, sustainability communications strategies and founder of Reconsidered. With political, cultural, and regulatory uncertainty rising, companies will shift their energy inward.
For these companies, the work may continue, but it will be far from the spotlight. That may protect them from some political blowback, but it also risks eroding trust if employees and communities cant clearly understand what the organization stands for. Corporations may decide that they can cancel or reduce their purpose-based work based on the current political climate, says Marcus Peterzell, CEO of Passion Point Collective. In this environment, whether purpose is structural or superficial will matter more than ever.
From story to proof: Purpose balances performance and risk
If theres one global through line for the year ahead, its that purpose must prove itself.
Over the last decade, most large companies have adopted purpose statements, but relatively few have embedded them deeply into strategy, culture and governance, says Milnitzky. Pressure from investors, regulators, employees, and society will increasingly be: Show the proof. This means linking purpose to hard indicators such as retention, safety, inclusion, decarbonization, product portfolio, reputation, and total shareholder return.
Purpose has moved out of the brand book and into the boardroom. The organizations that lead will treat it as a performance system with clear inputs, outputs, and accountability, not as a set of inspirational words on a wall. That proof is not just about upside: Members see purpose moving squarely into the language of risk and resilience.
We’ll spend less time touting the business case for sustainability and move more proactively toward a steely, laser-focus emphasizing the financial and reputation risks inherent in ESG-related decision-making or inaction, says Sarah Riley, sustainable brand advisor at R&G.
As Riley notes, the challenge isnt convincing stakeholders that ESG issues existits cutting through fatigue, denial, and politicized narratives with honest assessments of whats at stake.
Resilience will be a dominant theme, says Neill Duffy, chief executive and Founder of 17 Sport. Around the world, people are living through instability that feels both relentless and unpredictable. Climate volatility, political polarization, economic pressure, and the erosion of institutional trust are no longer background noise, theyve become part of daily life.
Purpose, Duffy says, becomes a stabilizing forcesomething that keeps organizations principled when incentives reward caution and short-termism. It can also support communities not by shielding them from disruption but by helping them navigate with greater clarity and confidence.
The metric that matters most may not be return on investment, but something more human: Return on involvement. Brands that help people act on their valuesnot just advertise themwill win the decade, Waters says. Taken together, these perspectives suggest a new equation: purpose equals proof, resilience, and participation.
Beyond campaigns: Participation, community governance, and creator ecosystems
What does purpose-led participation mean in the year ahead?
Were entering a Participation Era, where purpose is defined by what brands help people do rather than what they say, said Fred Haberman, CEO of Haberman. With loneliness at an all-time high and trust in brand messaging at an all-time low, people are seeking real connection and meaningful experiences. The organizations that lead will use technology with intention to create more space for humanity: building micro-communities, inspiring acts of service, and helping people come together around shared impact.
Here, purpose is measured less by impressions and more by involvement: who shows up, what they do together, and how those experiences change behavior and community outcomes.
Participation is also about power. Instead of treating communities as audiences toconsult, leading brands will share in governance, says Melissa Orozco, CEO and chief impact officer of Yulu Impact Communications. Indigenous-led councils, youth panels, and lived-experience advisers will shape how purpose programs are designed and evaluated, marking the end of performative engagement and the rise of shared power.
That shift from feedback to co-ownership raises the bar on authenticity. It asks brands not just to listen, but to structurally redistribute influence over how purpose programs are conceived, funded, and evaluated.
Members also point to creators and influencers as catalysts in this ecosystem. Purpose will become far more collaborativeand more creative, too, says Carrie Fox, founder and CEO of Mission Partners. As nonprofits continue to face headwinds from shrinking government and corporate funding, we can expect to see a surge in cross-sector innovation, including deeper corporate-nonprofit partnerships, the formation of creative coalitions, and the development of new revenue-generating models designed to sustain mission-critical work.
Brands will move beyond hiring influencers to building purpose-centered ecosystems alongside them: codesigning programs, educational content, resources, and community-driven activations, and ideally doing this all with creators with specific lived experiences and a clear alignment to the brand’s products and purpose, says Stephanie Belsky, cofounder and CEO of Love of Good, Inc.
But this dynamic of influencers as collaborators only works if companies are as clear and committed as the creators they partner with. Influencers are increasingly choosing partnerships based on shared values, not just rates, Belsky says. Many brands still lack the internal clarity to meet that standard. This can erode trust. Audiences can instantly detect when a creator is asked to carry a message a brand hasnt embodied internally. Purpose work thrives when brand story, operational behavior, and creator messaging are aligned.
The message is clear: in the Participation Era, you cant outsource purpose to your partners. They will simply reveal whether its real or not.
Purpose under pressure: Polarization, caution and the courage gap
The political context for 2026 is impossible to ignore. Purpose Collaborative members point to Trump-era politics, ESG suppression, and culture wars as defining pressures. We’re entering a new era thanks to the rise of Trump-style politics and it’s one that seems outwardly to be stymieing sustainability efforts through green-hushing and straight-up ESG suppression, Riley says.
Political volatility, economic pressure, ESG and DEI pushback, and climate anxiety are creating an environment where many organizations instinctively pull back, speaking less, committing less, and protecting themselves from scrutiny rather than advancing their principles, Duffy says.
The continued polarization of social issues will remain one of the most significant barriers, Fox says. As issues become increasingly politicized during a midterm election year in the U.S., corporate leaders, celebrities, and public figures may hesitate to take clear stands, instead opting for softer, middle-of-the-road positions.
Taken together, these perspectives describe a caution culture in which organizations say less, do less, and hope to ride out the storm. But as several members warn, that instinct can undermine purpose at its core. The biggest challenge is courage, says Bianca Bello, strategy director at HelpGood. With Trump in office, the priorities of this country have shifted dramatically away from marginalized communities. Committing to purpose in 2026 will feel increasingly risky, and businesses are risk-averse.
Some argue that the riskiest move is trying to appease everyone. When we talk about bold steps leaders must take to protect purpose in polarized environments, the first thing I say is this: neutrality is no longer a strategyit is a form of erosion, Milnitzky says. In politically and culturally divided climates, purpose becomes fragile when leaders attempt to appease everyone.
Others frame it as a test of long-term consistency and a willingness to speak when others are staying silent. Think long-term about your purpose and be boldly consistent, and you’ll be rewarded for it no matter the political climate, Gardner says.
And in some cases, silence will no longer be neutral; it will be a risk, Orozco says. The brands that choose courage, and back it with transparency, consistency, and community investment, will win long-term trust and loyalty.
In a moment when the cultural and political ground feels increasingly unstable, the boldest leadership move is also the simplest: stay rooted in your purpose, Fox says. Set a clear strategy aligned with your values, and dont back away from it when the climate gets tough.
Filling the gap: When business becomes the backstop
Members anticipate that shrinking public funding and evolving regulation will widen gaps in the social safety net.
I hope that the biggest trend will be an aggressive search for ways to fill the services and funding gap of the federal dollars that have been taken away from public assistance programs, Bello says. Companies that value purpose should fund and lift up nonprofits and grassroots organizations working in local communities to fill this gap.
Here, purpose becomes less about nice to have programs and more about filling structural holes in healthcare, housing, education, climate adaptation, and community resilience. Corporate resources, relationships, and platforms can help sustain work that would otherwise fall through the cracks.
Against this backdrop, members expect more experimentation: new revenue models, cross-sector coalitions, and influencers mobilizing audiences at scale. We can expect to see a surge in cross-sector innovation, including deeper corporate-nonprofit partnerships, the formation of creative coalitions, and the development of new revenue-generating models designed to sustain mission-critical work, Fox says.
National politics doesn’t play out the same way at the local level, says Laura Ferry, president of Good Company. Invest in regional partnerships, local suppliers, community health, and small business ecosystems to make purpose tangible. Local impact builds broad, cross-partisan support.
In an era of national polarization, the local dimension of purpose may be where the broadest and most durable coalitions form.
Inside-out: Employees as the engine of purpose
When purpose is stress-tested, employees feel it first. Many members highlight internal culture, communication, and middle management as make-or-break factors.
Well see a renewed focus on internal communicationsnot just to defend new initiatives with solid business cases, but to reassure employees that the company hasnt abandoned its values, Radparvar says. Leaders will need to protect morale and culture at a time when being too loud puts a target on your back, but being too quiet risks letting purpose wither from within.
With the policy landscape shifting, companies are rediscovering that their most powerful driver is their own people, Ferry says. Expect a stronger push toward purpose-driven partnerships that energize employees, strengthen culture, and demonstrate values in action.
Middle managers are key to this effort, yet they are not always empowered to be champions of purpose. That middle-management bottleneck is wheremany purpose strategies stall. Without the tools, time, and incentives to act on purpose, even the strongest commitments can remain theoretical. And directives must come from the top. You must have leadership buy-in, says Phillip Haid, founder and CEO of Public Inc. If the CEO is not bought in, don’t bother as it won’t gain traction. Tangibly map out how the company’s purpose drives internal and external business results as it’s the only way to ensure the purpose is truly lived and sustained.”
Purpose is real only when it is lived inside the organization well before what’s declared outside of it, says Nicole Rennie, CEO and executive producer of FORWARD storystudio. Make space for employees to share their stories, their why, and the impact they feel they’re having. Invite them into the purpose dialogue early and often.
Purpose, AI, and the future of human work
AI runs through many of our members predictions as a force reshaping the logic and value of work.
The shift wont just be about more AI or smarter tools, says Sophia Story, chief revenue officer of 3 Sided Cube. It will be about how responsibly we use them. Ethical, transparent, measurable AI will become the new baseline, with teams doubling down on clear policies, real guardrails, and continuous improvement to make sure their tech is doing good, not just sounding good.
Over the last year, AI-enabled jobless growth forced companies to answer an existential question: What are humans actually for? Gardner says. Companies have justified centering purpose at least partly because they needed humans (who deeply care about their impact on the world) to be productive. If the narrative becomes about how AI can do the work better, purpose advocates may lose their most powerful business case.
Story points to data, regulation, and skills as three pressure points: Purpose-led data models only work when theres real clarity around governance, stewardship, rights, and what happens when things go wrong. Right now, thats still pretty messy. Regulation is another pressure point. New rules are landing fast. If organizations dont design in data ethics and responsible AI from day one, theyll end up scrambling to retrofit compliance later.
For some, purpose may become the lens through which AI is deployed. With purpose and AI working together, companies can accelerate advances that strengthen communities, address major social challenges, and expand human potential at a pace not seen since the rise of the modern web, says Kristian Merenda, partner at Carol Cone ON PURPOSE. But that will only happen if organizations slow down long enough to redesign systems, workflows, and habits. The biggest challenges will center on building responsible AI use policies, realigning systems, and redesigning workflows so organizations can use AI effectively and ethically to create both business and social good, Merenda says.
Importantly, make sure work isn’t muddled by the mire of AI-gloss, says Elliot Kotek, founder and CEO of The Nation of Artists. Ensure that real people and real stories feel represented and honored at the deep-gut, big feels level. There’s a strength that comes from those stories that realistically represent their communities that can’t be manufactured en masse, and audiences respond to that sincerityit’s that old adage that you always remember how someone, or something, made you feel.
AI will either hollow out the human business case for purposeor, if guided well, become one of the most powerful tools for scaling it.
Leading organizations will navigate barriers and emerge stronger
Across all these predictions runs a common idea: pressure is not just a threat to purpose but a test of whether its real. Let pressure clarify your purpose, not cloud it, Fox says. Leaders often describe this moment as heavy, dizzying, and uncertain. And it is. But as one nonprofit leader reminded me recently: diamonds are formed under pressure. The same is true for purpose. Under intense conditions, your purpose can either crack or sharpen.
In 2026, the purpose that survives will be the kind that is disciplined, measurable, participatory and brave. It will be embedded into structures and systems, not just stories. And it will be carried not only by enterprises, but by employees, communities, and creators who see themselves as part of something biggerand are willing to take on the mantle of participation.
2026 will be a good year for people who love to walk where cars once drove.
As climate change acceleratesand cities continue to grapple with congestion and air pollutionurban priorities have been shifting. In May this year, Parisians voted to close 500 streets to traffic across all 20 arrondissements. London is moving forward with plans to pedestrianize sections of the world-famous Oxford Street, as well as Regent Street, and Piccadilly Circus. Meanwhile, Barcelonas centuries-old promenade, La Rambla, is in the last stretches of a long-term redesign that will be completed in 2027, widening the pedestrian promenade and limiting access to residents vehicles and public transport.
The U.S. isnt exempt from the trend. Next year alone, half a dozen cities, from Bentonville, AR, to Houston, TX, will reduce or remove car traffic on some of their streetsnot for a weekend pilot or a seasonal experiment, but for good.
These projects matter in a country that still funnels tens of billions of federal dollars every year into new roads and highways. And they are particularly notable after the Trump administration recently withdrew previously awarded grants for some bike, trail, and pedestrian projects.
Ever since cars became dominant in the 1950s, urban thinkers like Jane Jacobs and Jan Gehl have argued for cities designed around people, not vehicles. The conversation is still timely. According to several experts interviewed for this story, the tides are shifting. I think we are certainly seeing momentum in the car-free or car-lite movement, says Ben Crowther, policy director for the nonprofit America Walks.
Here are six streets pedestrians can reclaim next yearno cars, or fewer cars, allowed.
[Image: courtesy Downtown Houston+]
1. Main Street in Houston, TX
Houstons Main Street, long a transit corridor, is being reinvented as a seven-block pedestrian promenade through the heart of downtown. The Main Street Promenade will feature shaded walkways, plazas, outdoor dining, and a series of flexible public spaces designed for lingering, not just passing through.
Led by Downtown Houston+ in partnership with the City of Houston, and designed by Workshop, the project builds on the success of the More Space: Main Street initiative, a temporary program launched in 2021 to test reduced vehicle access. Its permanent transformation is timed to welcome visitors for the 2026 FIFA Mens World Cup, but the redesign is meant to serve residents long after the crowds leave.
The streets physical makeover is substantial. Pedestrian space will be expanded across seven blocks, creating a continuous, safer corridor through downtown. Tree canopy will increase by more than 150%, with new trees added alongside shade structures and storefront awningscritical infrastructure in a city defined by heat. A series of outdoor rooms will support activities like casual dining and small events, while murals and public art installations will reinforce Main Streets identity. A raised street design and improved crossings aim to make the promenade accessible to people of all ages and abilities.
The new promenade is a fitting evolution for a street that has carried Houston through multiple transportation eras, from horse-drawn carriages to trolleys, cars, light railand now, pedestrians.
[Image: courtesy KC PWD]
2. 18th Street in Kansas City, MO
Kansas Citys 18th Street, the cultural backbone of the historic Jazz District, isnt becoming fully car-freebut its redesign marks a significant shift toward people-first planning. Like Houstons Main Street, the 18th Street Pedestrian Mall project has been years in the making before accelerating toward completion ahead of the 2026 World Cup.
Rather than banning vehicles outright, the project will remove curbs, gutters, and on-street parking to create a seamless corridor that is more akin to a shared street. Vehicular traffic will still be allowed at the center, but its dominance will be dramatically reduced. Replacement parking is being relocated to a new garage just south of the street, freeing up space for wider sidewalks, traffic calming measures, and safer, more accessible crossings.
The redesign also lays the groundwork for expanded programming like farmers markets and live concerts. A City spokesperson said it will also make it easier for the Jazz District to close three blocks of 18th Street for major events like Juneteenth, First Fridays, and Halloween celebrationssomething that was logistically difficult under the old street design.
The nuance matters here. Patricia Brownwho helped lead the pedestrianization of Trafalgar Square in London in the early 2000sargues that framing projects as car-free versus car-lite can be counterproductive. Were never going to have a car-free city, and we shouldnt, she told me. The real question is how you put people front and center and reduce vehicle dominance.
Kansas Citys 18th Street offers a case study in exactly that approach.
[Photo: courtesy Design Workshop]
3. A Street Promenade, in Bentonville, AR
In Bentonville, Arkansas, pedestrianization is less about reclaiming a single block and more about stitching an entire downtown together. At the center of that effort is “A Street Promenade“a linear, pedestrian-only plaza that is part of the citys broader “Quilt of Parks” initiative.
“A Street Promenade,” which just opened in November, has been remade from a vehicle corridor into a pedestrian promenade that links the town square with parks, local businesses, and civic spaces through a sequence of garden rooms and parklets. The promenade is designed for everyday use, but flexible enough to support markets, parades, and citywide events.
The project emerged from a Design Excellence partnership launched in 2018 between the citys Parks and Recreation Department, the Walton Family Foundation, and Design Workshop (the same studio behind Houstons Main Street transformation.)
The goal was never just to remove cars, says Conners Ladner, a principal at Design Workshop. It was about strengthening how people move through and gather within the city center.
[Photo: courtesy Qmunity District]
4. Post Street in San Jose, CA
In downtown San Jose, Post Street has become a template for how temporary street experiments can turn into permanent change. Once a conventional downtown roadway, the street was permanently closed to cars this spring following years of pandemic-era pilots. It now functions as a pedestrian-only corridor at the heart of the citys LGBTQ+ district, known as Qmunity. (Its the citys second major pedestrianization effortfollowing San Pedro Square, which closed in 2024.)
Earlier this year, the city unveiled a permanent street mural by local artist Danny Feliz Hanson and community volunteers. Next year, the city is planning further upgrades, including an artist-led initiative to transform the safety barricades at each end of the street into reflective, neighborhood-branded design features.
When the World Cup rolls around, Post Street will be a designated Entertainment Zone, but a spokesperson from the San Jose Downtown Association emphasized that the decision to pedestrianize Post Street wasnt driven by FIFA. San Jose began experimenting with temporary closures during the pandemic, and after tracking their impacts, the City Council voted unanimously in February 2025 to make the change permanent. Recent data shows consistent increases in foot traffic and visitor dwell time in the area since the closure.
[Image: Greektown Neighborhood Partnership/SmithGroup]
5. Monroe Street in Detroit, MI
In Detroits Greektown, Monroe Street is being reimagined as a civic space. The Monroe Streetscape Improvement Project, led by the Greektown Neighborhood Partnership and designed by SmithGroup, is transforming a four-block stretch into a safer, more walkable corridor that can flex between everyday use and large-scale events.
Backed by $20 million in funding from the state of Michigan, the project is branded as A New Greektown, and prioritizes pedestrians without eliminating access altogether. Wider sidewalks, curbless lanes, and designated pick-up and drop-off zones reduce barriers between street and sidewalk, while still accommodating transit and essential vehicles. More than 50 new trees, enhanced lighting, and signature district signage aim to improve both comfort and safety, especially during evening hours.
The redesign also leans into Greektowns role as one of Detroits most active entertainment districts. Eighty thousand square feet of granite paversmaking it the largest granite-paved street in Michiganwill create a unified surface for outdoor dining, festivals, and markets.
Integrated art and heritage installations will celebrate the neighborhoods history, while removable bollards will allow Monroe Street to become fully pedestrianized during programmed events. A spokesperson from the Greektown Neighborhood Partnership said that current plans envision pedestrian-only weekends, with flexibility to adjust based on what works.
Construction is unfolding in phases: the first segment is already complete, while the second phase is scheduled to wrap up in late 2026.
[Photo: courtesy Sunset Dunes]
6. Sunset Dunes in San Francisco, CA
San Franciscos Sunset Dunes marks a different scale of ambition altogether. Stretching across two miles, the 50-acre coastal park is billed as the largest pedestrianization project in Califonias historytransforming a former highway into a public park.
The shift began with a ballot measure passed by voters, asking whether a long-debated stretch of the Great Highway should stop functioning as a road and start functioning as a park. The answer was yes. The city officially opened Sunset Dunes as a park in April 2025, rolling out initial activations like bike infrastructure, public art, and wayfinding. Since then, the space has continued to evolve, with picnic tables overlooking the ocean, a rotating outdoor art gallery, and free weekly programming.
Whats notable is how explicitly the city is treating Sunset Dunes as a living experiment. A first round of community engagement wrapped up this year, focused on understanding how residents want to use the space and whats currently missing. The results will be published by the end of 2025, with a second phase of engagement launching in 2026 to shape a long-term vision plan, supported by landscape architecture firm CMG Landscape Architecture. The goal: to move from a repurposed roadway to a purpose-built coastal park, much like Crissy Field, a former military airfield that was transformed into a coastal park two decades ago.
A spokesperson from local nonprofit, Friends of Sunset Dunes, told me design priorities will center on access and restoration. Since the park runs alongside a sensitive dune system, planned improvements will aim to restore dune ecology, improve beach access for people with mobility challenges, and create a continuous promenade that feels like one park.
In the meantime, the programming will keep testing what works. In January next year, the nonprofit will launch weekly traditional Chinese dance classes designed for the neighborhoods large senior population. More temporary installations and pilot uses will follow as an intentional strategy to learn from the public before locking in permanent design decisions.
Imagine this: One day, you won’t have to waste hours of your life doing your most arduous, least favorite forms of shopping. You know what I’m talking aboutbuying Christmas presents for distant aunts, getting supplies for your kid’s birthday, ordering groceries for dinner.
In the near future, you’ll empower your AI agent to tackle the task, then off it will go, identifying the right items, comparing prices andmost impressivelymaking the purchase for you. Within hours, a tin of your aunt’s favorite biscuits, the correct number of Peppa Pig plates, and a bag of groceries will arrive at your doorstep.
We’re not quite there yet, but experts say that this future is much closer than you think. Consumers are incorporating AI into their shopping at a meteoric pace, tapping agents to discover products and making purchases bases on their suggestions. Shopify, which runs online stores for more than 5 million brands, has found that AI-driven traffic had grown sevenfold this year compare to last, and AI-driven purchases have increased by 11 times.
In November, Adobe determined that three quarters of all purchases made on a computer were referred by AI, as were a quarter of those made on a phone. The likelihood to purchase if you come from an AI source platform is higher than a non-AI source right now,” says Vivek Pandya, director of digital insights at Adobe. “Thats happened in a very short period of time.
This spike in AI adoption suggests that 2026 is going to be a transformational year for shopping. We’re shifting away from searching for products on Google and discovering them on social media, and instead we’re going to start our shopping journeys from within an AI system. Now, retailers and brands are scrambling to adapt to this reality, beefing up their technological capabilities for this new era. Fully autonomous buying will be here before you know it.
How we’re shopping now
Since the late 1990s, shopping on the internet has followed the same script. We opened Google, typed in what we wanted to buy, then scrolled through endless rows of links before making a purchase. Finding a black cashmere sweater means scanning through rows of thumbnailsthe digital equivalent of digging through an enormous bin of inventory in a backroom. “The cognitive load that the consumer has to deal with day in and day out is profound,” says Pandya. “They had to go from online store to online store, opening multiple windows.”
But this year, we realized we could offload this mental burden to AI. This was particularly true for products that require a lot of research, like an expensive gift, or a lot of planning, like supplies for a party. We describe our criteria to an agent listing our budget, style, and constrains, then let it generate ideas and compare products. In other words, it’s much more like the experience of visiting a department store and having a well-trained retail associate advise us on what to buy.
According to Adobe’s analyticswhich tracks more than a trillion visits across sitesit’s not that AI is referring us to products and retailers. It’s also that AI-driven traffic leads to higher levels of conversion and more time on a brand’s website than traffic coming from a Google search or social media. In other words, AI isn’t just sending clicks; it’s sending shoppers who already know what they want and are ready to shop. “People are bouncing off less once they hit the retailer’s websites when they came from an AI source, and their spending more time exploring pages,” Pandya says.
How Brands Are Adapting
Both Pandya and Lee agree that this sudden shift in consumer behavior is going to reshape the retail landscape very quickly. And the faster retailers and brands are able to adapt to AI are more likely to thrive in the years to come. But retailers are taking very different approaches to AI. Walmart, for instance, partnered with OpenAI in October to make it possible for people to shop directly from ChatGPT.
Amazon, conversely, has decided to block AI agents from crawling its website so that links don’t appear in searches because it believes that these platforms degrade the shopping experience. In a cease and desist letter from October demanding that Perplexity stop using its data, Amazon pointed out that agents may not provide the best price, delivery method, and recommendations that Amazon itself would provide.
Shopify, one of the biggest e-commerce players on the market, has made the decision to go all in on AI on behalf of its five million merchants. This will be transformative, because it serves a wide range of companies, from tiny local shops to digitally native startups like Allbirds and Glossier, to big names like Mattel and Nestle. Earlier this year, Shopify CEO Tobi Lütke said that the company was mandating an AI-first strategy, explaining that using AI is now a “fundamental expectation of everyone at Shopify.”
For two years, Shopify has deployed AI to help merchants on the backend to build and run their stores. In 2023, it launched Shopify Magic, AI-powered tools that would generate product descriptions and marketing content. Last year, it launched Sidekick, an AI assistant that helps merchants with complex tasks like creating discount codes and analyzing sales trends. And this year, it deployed AI Store Builder, which lets merchants generate fully formed online stores from keyword prompts. It also acquired Vantage Discover, an AI search company that provides more personalized, context-aware results when a customers searches for a product on the merchant’s website.
Shopify is betting that consumers will increasingly begin their shopping journey on an AI agent, so it’s important for their brands to be easily searchable by AI. How do they do this? According to Pandya, the quality of data on a merchant’s site influences whether the agent will recommend a product. “Deep, rich, authoritative information helps the agent feel comfortable recommending one result over another,” he says.
This is why Shopify has been working with merchants to ensure that the data on their sites will show up in AI queries. This year, the company introduced Agentic Storefronts, which makes merchants product catalogs discoverable inside AI chats like ChatGPT and Perplexity. Depending on the query and how much detal the consumer is searching for, the response will simply surface a product link, in others, the response will surface ‘cards’ that provides a thumbnail image, a brief description, and a link.
Lee points out that shoppers also want to know that the results that the AI is providing is trustworthy. So Shopify has worked with all the major agents to ensure that products come with a citation from the brand’s website, much like the AI might cite a book or a magazine. “Citations matter,” she says. “Consumers want to know where a fact came from.
But perhaps Shopify’s most powerful new tool, says Lee, is OpenAI Instant Checkout, which launched in September. It allows customers to shop directly from ChatGPT without leaving the conversation. Right now you can only buy a single item at a time through this system (like say, paper plates), but soon, you’ll be able to put several items in a cart over the course of a conversation (like balloons and table cloth) then buy them all at once. Merchants need to opt in to this technology, and already more than a million of them are using it. “We want merchants to be in the control seat,” Lee says.
What’s Coming Around the Corner
Shopify’s checkout tool offers a glimpse into the futureto a time when fully autonomous shopping may become the norm.
For now, Lee says there are two obstacles to this. There’s the technical challenge of creating the infrastructure and safety precautions to allow an agent to shop on a user’s behalf. This will mean everything from partnering with payment companies to establishing the legal basis whereby a consumer empowers an agent to make purchases they did not approve beforehand.
There’s also the fact that consumers are’t quite ready to trust an agent to make the right decisions, especially when it comes to matters of individual taste, and especially if it has access to your credit card. “Consumers still want to stay in control,” says Lee.
All of this is changing, and quickly, Lee says. Shopify is already working on many tools that will make buying easier from within an agent. The company has a lot of experience making shopping more seamless. In 2017, it launched Shop Pay, which allows consumers to save their payment and shipping information so they can use it across Shopify merchants. To keep these transactions secure, it has leaned heavily into Apple Pay and Google Pay, which consumers trust to store their credit card information. Shopify is already working to incorporate a similar system into AI agents.
Lee says that Shopify and other online platforms like Apple and Google took a long time to build trust with consumers, so that they feel comfortable sharing their payment information. But the next frontier is feeling comfortable enough to let a third party actually make purchases on your behalf. Right now, consumers expect to confirm their purchase. “We still think the verification screen is important for both consumers and merchants,” she says.
But change is happening quickly. People already trust AI to help them do many things in their life, from making parenting decisions to doing aspects of their job. And there are many forms of shopping that consumers wish they could hand off to an assistant. So it may not be long before we let our AI agent handle these pesky tasks.
In 2026 (and beyond) the best benchmark for large language models wont be MMLU or AgentBench or GAIA. It will be trustsomething AI will have to rebuild before it can be broadly useful and valuable to both consumers and businesses.
Researchers identify several different kinds of AI trust. In people who use chatbots as companions or confidants, they measure a feeling that the AI is benevolent or has integrity. In people who use AI for productivity or business, they measure something called competence trust, or the belief that the AI is accurate and doesnt hallucinate facts. Ill focus on that second kind.
Competence trust can grow or shrink. An AI tool user, quite rationally, begins by giving the AI simple tasksperhaps looking up facts or summarizing long documents. If the AI does a good job of these things, the user naturally thinks what else can I do with this? They may give the AI a slightly harder task. If the AI continues to get things right, trust grows. If the AI fails or provides a low-quality answer, the user will think twice about trying to automate the task next time.
Steps forward, steps back
Todays AI chatbots, which are powered by large generative AI models, are far better than the ones we had in 2023 and 2024. But AI tools are just beginning to build trust with most users, and most C-suite executives who hope the tools will streamline business functions. My own trust of chatbots grew in 2025. But it has also diminished.
Example: I entered a long conversation with one of the popular chatbots about the contents of a long document. The AI made some interesting observations about the work, and suggested some sensible ways of filling in gaps. Then it made an observation that seemed to contradict something I knew was in the document.
When I pointed out the missing data, it immediately admitted its mistake. When I asked it (again) if it had digested the full document, it again insisted it had. Another AI chatbot returned a research report that it said was based on 20 sources. But there were no citations in the text connecting specific statements to specific sources. After it added the citations within the text, I noted that in two places the AI had relied on a single, not-very-trustworthy source for a key fact.
I learned that AI models still struggle with long chats involving large amounts of information, and that theyre not good at telling the user when they’re in over their heads. The experience adjusted my trust in the tools.
Grappling with ambiguity
As we enter 2026, generative AIs story is still in its early chapters. The story started with AI labs developing models that could converse, write, and summarize. Now the big AI labs seem confident that AI agents can autonomously work through complex tasks, calling on tools and checking their work against expert data. They seem convinced that the agents will soon manage ambiguity with humanlike judgment.
If large companies begin to trust that these agents can reliably do such jobs, it would mean enormous revenues for the AI company that developed them. Based on their current investments of hundreds of billions into AI infrastructure, the AI companies and their backers seem to believe this outcome is close at hand.
Even if the AI could bring human-level intellect to business scenarios tomorrow, it may still take time to build trust among decision-makers and workers. Today, trust in AI isnt high. The consulting firm KPMG surveyed 48,000 people in 47 countries (two-thirds of which use AI regularly) and found that while 83% believe AI will be beneficial, only 46% actually trust the output of AI tools. Some may have a false trust in the technology: two-thirds of the respondents say they sometimes rely on AI output without evaluating its accuracy.
But I doubt that AI agents are ready to complete complex tasks and manage ambiguity like human experts might. As the AI is used by more people and businesses, they will encounter a universe of unique problems within various contexts that theyve never seen before. I doubt that current AI agents understand the ways of humans and the world well enough to improvise their way through such situations. Not yet anyway.
The limitations of the models
The fact is that AI companies are using the same kind of (transformer-based) AI models to underpin reasoning agents that they used for early chatbots that were essentially word generators. The core function of such models, and the objective of all their training, is predicting the next word (or pixel or audio bit) in a sequence, Microsoft AI CEO (and Google DeepMind cofounder) Mustafa Suleyman explained in a recent podcast. It is using that very simple likelihood-of-word prediction function to simulate what it’s like to have a great conversation or to answer complex questions, he said.
Suleyman and others doubt it. Suleyman believes that current models dont account for some of the key drivers of the things humans say and do. Naturally, we would expect that something that has the hallmarks of intelligence also has the underlying synthetic physiology that we do, but it doesnt, Suleyman said. There is no pain network. There is no emotional system. There is no inner will or drive or desire.
AI pioneer (and Turing Prize winner) Yann LeCun says the LLMs of today are useful enough to be applied in some valuable ways, but thinks theyll never achieve the general or human-level intelligence needed to do the really high-value work the AI companies hope they will. In order to learn to intuit paths through real-world complexity the AI would need a much higher-bandwidth training regimen than just words, images, and computer code, LeCun says. They may need to learn the world via something more like the multisensory experience babies have, and possess the uncanny ability to process and store all that information quickly, as babies can, he says.
Suleyman and LeCun may be wrong. Companies like OpenAI and Anthropic may achieve human-level intelligence using models whose origin is in language.
AI governance matters
Meanwhile, competence is just one factor in AI trust among business users. Enterprises use governance platforms to monitor whether and how AI systems might be creating regulatory compliance issues or exposing the company to risk of cyberattack, for example. When it comes to AI, large enterprise companies . . . want to be trusted by customers, investors, and regulators, says Navrina Singh, founder and CEO of the governance platform Credo AI. AI governance isnt slowing us down, its the only thing that allows measurable trust and lets intelligence scale without breaking the world.
In the meantime the pace at which humans delegate tasks to AI will be moderated by trust. AI tools should be used for tasks theyre good at, so that confidence in the results grows. Thatll take time, and its a moving target because the AI is continually improving. Discovering and delegating new tasks for AI, monitoring the results, and adjusting expectations will very likely become a routine part of work in the 21st century.&nsp;
No, AI won’t suddenly reinvent business all at once next year. 2026 wont be the year of the agent. It’ll take a decade for AI tools to prove out and become battle-hardened. Trust is the hardening agent.
Work consumes around a third of our waking hours during the weekday. Yet, according to Gallup, nearly a third of employees are disengaged.
80,000 Hours, a London-based nonprofit that helps people find the best career fit for themselves, reviewed 60 studies on dream jobs and found that a dream job meets six criteria: its engaging, it helps others, youre good at it, you work with supportive colleagues, it doesnt have major negatives, and it fits with the rest of your life.
Dream jobs seem difficult to landone 2024 survey of 3,000 employees across the U.S. finds only 14% of American adults are working their dream job. The same study found that 38% of adults hate their job, and 66% would be willing to switch careers to chase their dream job. And at a time when the labor market is shedding jobs of all sorts, a dream job may seem like a chimera.
And yet? There are people who pull it off.
Fast Company talked with four workers who have the gig of their dreams. While some of them knew exactly what they wanted and went to school for it . . . others had no idea their dream job even existed, or navigated countless twists and turns. One interviewee spent a period of time homeless; another is busy building up other paths just in case it turns out her dream job, well, stops being the dream.
How do you fashion the job of your dreams? We first asked this question back in 2007and while industries and culture have changed, workers desire to do something meaningful to them has not.
Nathalie Pereira: pilot
What she does: Pereira is a first officer for United Airlines, where she flies a Boeing 777. Shes based out of New Jersey and makes long-haul international flights.
Her career path: I fell in love with flying when I was five and visiting Brazil, says Pereira, who has Brazilian heritage. Ever since, I wanted to be in the skies. After high school, she attended flight school and worked as a pilot at a regional airport for five years, three as a captain. In 2021, she joined Uniteds Aviate program, a career development initiative started by United Airlines to find and develop pilots. Aviate offers candidates mentorship and guarantees them a job at United after completing the program and meeting hiring requirements. Pereira became a first officer for United in 2022.
A day in the life: Pereira says she thrives on spontaneity. On a regular day, shell go through her morning routine of gym and coffee, and then look over her flight plan on the company iPad, which has information on everything from the weather on her route to plane maintenance status. Then shell go to the airport where she does a briefing with the other pilots on her crew. After the briefing, theyll do a walkthrough of the plane to ensure everything works. Once Pereira touches down, shell meet up with her crew, grab a bite to eat, and explore the city. Some of her favorite stops include Tokyo, Brussels, and Barcelona.
Her advice: Being a pilot is highly feasiblethere are a lot of resources, she says. If the cost of flight school is holding you back, just do it. Youll make it back. She points out there are also tons of scholarships available through organizations such as the Latino Pilots Association and Women in Aviation International. In addition, Uniteds Aviate Academy is designed to take candidates from their first flight to a job at United.
While women only account for 11% of the pilots in America, Pereira wants other women to know that shouldnt be a barrier. Aviation has traditionally had fewer women in pilot roles, but access to the profession is based on meeting the same training, performance, and regulatory standards for all. Success comes from skill development, discipline, and experience. I never let gender deter me from pursuing what I love, she says.
Elizabeth Casper: personal stylist
What she does: Casper works with clients at Stitch Fix to offer tips on styling. Shes also on Stitch Fixs content creation team and helps make merchandise videos with fashion advice.
Her career path: Casper comes from a family with fashion roots. Her family owns a bridal shop and her grandfather had a degree in pattern design. Casper ended up pursuing a degree in musical theatre and was at an audition when she saw a friend working remotely for Stitch Fix. It blew my mind that you can be a stylist. That became the dream, she says. I didnt know being a stylist was a thing. I assumed Id need to learn to sew and become a designer, but what I really loved was the curation of outfits. Casper monitored the Stitch Fix website for jobs and landed one in 2021.
A day in the life: Casper starts the day by checking if she has any messages from clients, answering questions and helping them put together outfits. In the middle of the day, shell take a break to work on filming some content, and then shell wrap the day by styling more clients. Im always trying to delve into personal experiencewhats something that youve worn recently that made you feel good? Whats a color that makes you feel like you glow? Is there anything coming up on your calendar? How can I help make that easier?
Her advice: Pursue the things that you love and allow all of the avenues that are open to you to teach you something to take forward, Casper says, pointing out that her own career has been full of zigs and zags. Style your friends, style yourself. Learn what fabrics feel like so you can take all of that knowledge into the next phase. Put your creativity and your art out there.
Melissa Lewis Gentry (MLG): video game designer
What they do: MLG is a game designer for Demiurge Studios, which does code development for larger studios like Blizzard and Epic. A game designer is analogous to a product designer, MLG says. Im often the person who solves whatever problem comes up, whether its technical design, or gameplay programming.
Their career path: I loved games as a kid and was definitely a Dungeons & Dragons nerd when I went to college. My dad was a programmer, so I grew up building my own computers. But when I got to college, I flunked that class, MLG said. A lot of it had to do with ADHD and not being diagnosed as a young woman in the early 2000s. Instead, I put down the idea of working in video games until the pandemic.
MLGs path to video game design is long and winding and includes a stint working in a call center, taking a 50% pay cut to manage a comic and board game store which folded, working in sales and marketing at a board game company which also folded, and then trying torun a board game café that opened during the first month of the pandemic. When the board game cafe shut down, MLG became homeless.
While MLG was crashing on a friends couch applying for jobs, they were invited to join a game jam (the equivalent of a hackathon). At the game jam, MLG started programming again and fell in love. They took online courses in programming and started searching for jobs in the video game industry.
Ultimately they landed an internship at Demiurge Studios in 2021 for candidates with nontraditional experience who would otherwise be overlooked. Shortly after, they were promoted to full-time and still work there today.
A day in the life: As a video game designer, you have in your heart the perfect experience you want to give a player, but then you have to marry it to time and budget. On a given day, MLG might be brainstorming ideas for a game with themes and characters and then narrowing these down. MLG also spends a lot of time problem-solving: Every morning I look in [project management tool] Jira to see what tickets I have. For example, if the designers want players to click a button to get a reward and the engineers say we cant do that, “‘its my job to say what if we do this instead?
Their advice: No amount of education will give you the résumé experience of having shipped a game, and the best way to do this is make a game on your own and ship it. The video game industry has been seriously hit during the past two years and its brutally hard to find a job, but nothing is preventing you from making a game.
Zinia Lee Fengel: influencer
What she does: Lee Fengel, who goes by Zinia Lee, has been a fashion influencer on Instagram for the past five years and has over 115,000 followers on Instagram. For many members of Gen Z, Lees path is the dream. However, given that, Lee is still in her early twenties and unsure of what shell want in the future. So shes carving out other career options: Shes also a full-time student at the Fashion Institute of Technology in New York, and a public relations intern at Retrofte, a New York fashion label; influencers commonly have day jobs or additional side hustles, especially Gen Z.
Her career path: Lee posted her first video during the pandemic when she was 16. I love putting together cool outfits and wanted to share them, she said. Within the first year, she started getting invites from brands. At first, they offered her free merchandise in return for a post. However, gradually this turned into paid deals. This summer, Lee got a manager and started landing four-figure brand deals. While influencing could be a full-time job for her, she chooses to work with brands that represent her valuesfor example, she only works with cruelty-free makeup brands, and only wears leather if its secondhand.
A day in the life: Since Lee is juggling classes and an internship, she fits content creation where she can. I have certain times of the day blocked off and I multitask, she said, I like going to the gym and being active, so Ill set the treadmill to an incline walk and edit. I have CapCut Pro on my iPhone so Ill also edit during my commute. Lee keeps a Notion, an AI workspace, full of video ideas, as well as a timeline for whats publishing when, and batches filming. If I do my hair and have my makeup on, Im gonna film five videos, she said. Going forward, Lee doesnt know if shell keep influencing, despite it already being a dream income stream for much of her age group. I want to go wherever it takes me, she said. But I know its very easy to resent something you love.
Her advice: Lee notes that success is not linear. Sometimes a video you put two seconds into goes viral. Other times a video that you agonized over tanks. Instead, she said, the key is consistency. A lot of people think, if I have one really good video idea itll go viral and then Im set . . . I try to post every other day, so Im constantly filming, editing, and producing. However, she said the first step is easy: Post a video. It really is that simple.
