The advice you get early in your career can disproportionately shape your future. I can recall two or three conversations from when I was a college kid who liked writing that melted away ambiguity and set my vague ambitions on a path into the fog like a compass.
For the latest release by The Steve Jobs Archive, the group is making the advice of some of the most uniquely impactful people in the world available to everyone.
Given that Jobs did not own many physical objects, the archive has served as more of a repository of ideas for the next generation to think different. Each year, the Archive takes on SJA Fellows. And each year, it gives these fellows a book of letters.
The concept is modeled after one of Jobss favorite books, Letters to a Young Poet, a collection of letters that German poet Maria Rilke wrote to his aspiring mentee Franz Xaver Kappus. The Archive, meanwhile, taps its friends to pen similar inspirational notesauthored by a global network of marquee creatives.
The Steve Jobs Archive has released its first two volumes of Letters to a Young Creator today on its website. Free to read and download to anyone who is curious, they contain advice from so many names you will knowincluding Tim Cook, Dieter Rams, Paola Antonelli, and Norman Foster.
To mark the launch, were featuring the letter from Steve Jobss closest collaborator, Jony Ive. Through the beautiful, short note, Ive shares many of his dearest philosophies, and some of the ideological structure behind the duos unparalleled success.
JONY IVE SAN FRANCISCO, CALIFORNIA, USA SEPTEMBER 11, 2024Hello! I thought it may be useful to reflect on my time working with Steve Jobs. His belief that our thinking, and ultimately our ideas, are of critical importance has helped inform my priorities and decision making. Since giving his eulogy I have not spoken publicly about our friendship, our adventures or our collaboration. I never read the flurry of cover stories, obituaries or the bizarre mischaracterizations that have slipped into folklore. We worked together for nearly 15 years. We had lunch together most days and spent our afternoons in the sanctuary of the design studio. Those were some of the happiest, most creative and joyful times of my life. I loved how he saw the world. The way he thought was profoundly beautiful. He was without doubt the most inquisitive human I have ever met. His insatiable curiosity was not limited or distracted by his knowledge or expertise, nor was it casual or passive. It was ferocious, energetic and restless. His curiosity was practiced with intention and rigor. Many of us have an innate predisposition to be curious. I believe that after a traditional education, or working in an environment with many people, curiosity is a decision requiring intent and discipline. In larger groups our conversations gravitate towards the tangible, the measurable. It is more comfortable, far easier and more socially acceptable talking about what is known. Being curious and exploring tentative ideas were far more important to Steve than being socially acceptable. Our curiosity begs that we learn. And for Steve, wanting to learn was far more important than wanting to be right. Our curiosity united us. It formed the basis of our joyful and productive collaboration. I think it also tempered our fear of doing something terrifyingly new. Steve was preoccupied with the nature and quality of his own thinking. He expected so much of himself and worked hard to think with a rare vitality, elegance and discipline. His rigor and tenacity set a dizzyingly high bar. When he could not think satisfactorily he would complain in the same way I would complain about my knees. As thoughts grew into ideas, however tentative, however fragile, he recognized that this was hallowed ground. He had such a deep understanding and reverence for the creative process. He understood creating should be afforded rare respectnot only when the ideas were good or the circumstances convenient. Ideas are fragile. If they were resolved, they would not be ideas, they would be products. It takes determined effort not to be consumed by the problems of a new idea. Problems are easy to articulate and understand, and they take the oxygen. Steve focused on the actual ideas, however partial and unlikely. I had thought that by now there would be reassuring comfort in the memory of my best friend and creative partner, and of his extraordinary vision. But of course not. More than ten years on, he manages to evade a simple place in my memory. My understanding of him refuses to remain cozy or still. It grows and evolves. Perhaps it is a comment on the daily roar of opinion and the ugly rush to judge, but now, above all else, I miss his singular and beautiful clarity. Beyond his ideas and vision, I miss his insight that brought order to chaos. It has nothing to do with his legendary ability to communicate but everything to do with his obsession with simplicity, truth and purity. Ultimately, I believe it speaks to the underlying motivation that drove him. He was not distracted by money or power, but driven to tangibly express his love and appreciation of our species. He truly believed that by making something useful, empowering and beautiful, we express our love for humanity. My sincere hope for you and for me is that we demonstrate our appreciation of our species by making something beautiful. Warmly, Jony Jony Ive Designer, LoveFrom
Read more from Letters to a Young Creator here.
Read more on the professor who shaped Jony Ive here.
As built-in AI pops up in more aspects of everyday life, laymen are counting on the experts to keep technology safe to use. But one Meta employees misadventure with AI has social media users fearful for the future of AI alignment.
Summer Yue is the director of alignment at Meta Superintelligence Labs, the companys AI research and development division. Her LinkedIn bio states that shes passionate about ensuring powerful AIs are aligned with human values and guided by a deep understanding of their risks.
If anyone would have a handle on keeping AI in check, its Yueand yet, on February 22, she posted about losing control of AI on her own computer.
In a post thats since garnered nearly nine million views on X, Yue shared screenshots from her messages with AI agent OpenClaw. After using it to organize a small mock inbox, she tried getting OpenClaw to sort through her real email, but things went awry when the agent started deleting every message that was more than a week old.
Yue wrote that she watched OpenClaw speedrun deleting [her] inbox, even as she sent it instructions, including: Do not do that, Stop dont do anything, and STOP OPENCLAW.
I couldnt stop it from my phone. I had to RUN to my Mac mini like I was defusing a bomb, Yue added.
After shed stopped it from fully nuking her inbox, Yue asked OpenClaw if it remembered her instruction to not perform any actions without her approval.
Yes, I remember, it replied. And I violated it. Youre right to be upset.
Nothing humbles you like telling your OpenClaw confirm before acting and watching it speedrun deleting your inbox. I couldnt stop it from my phone. I had to RUN to my Mac mini like I was defusing a bomb. pic.twitter.com/XAxyRwPJ5R— Summer Yue (@summeryue0) February 23, 2026
OpenClaw, an open-source AI agent, is controversial for the far-reaching permissions it requires to function as intended, including access to users email accounts, messaging platforms, and other private and potentially sensitive information.
Combine that with Yues example of it explicitly ignoring her instructions, and some online observers are concerned the tool is a bridge too far in terms of AIs power to override humans.
Yue responded to questions in the replies to her post, including whether she was intentionally pushing the limits of OpenClaw, or if she simply made a mistake.
Rookie mistake tbh, she replied. Turns out alignment researchers arent immune to misalignment. Got overconfident because this workflow had been working on my toy inbox for weeks. Real inboxes hit different.
Yues mistake went viral, with X users marveling at the fact that someone as well-versed in AI as Yue could find herself scrambling to stop an AI agent. Some posters said the incident called Metas judgment on AI safety into question.
Meanwhile, at least one poster considered the incident’s broader implications: A matter of time till these people are begging the AI not to launch nuclear weapons,” the user quipped, “and then the last thing it says is I’m sorry. You’re right to be upset.”
this should terrify you. the Director of Safety and Alignment at meta gave clawdbot full-access to her computer. what is meta doing??? https://t.co/lAZFR9f1PB pic.twitter.com/XnMyMHSn5H— ben (@benhylak) February 23, 2026
Somewhat concerning that a person whose job is AI alignment is surprised when an AI doesnt precisely follow verbal instructions https://t.co/VNl0oq3Ys4— Brooks Otterlake (@i_zzzzzz) February 23, 2026
Concerning to see one of the people in charge of building "safe superintelligence" panicking as AI deletes all her emails. A matter of time till these people are begging the AI not to launch nuclear weapons and then the last thing it says is "I'm sorry. You're right to be upset." https://t.co/2235MH3K76— Nathan J Robinson (@NathanJRobinson) February 23, 2026
Meta did not respond to Fast Companys request for comment.
The Epstein Files are dominating nightly news broadcasts and newspaper front pages. But in the media ecosystem theres another format thats proving a massive draw to news consumers: a podcast run by a non-journalist and entirely generated by AI.
The Epstein Files is an investigative documentary podcast that, at the time of writing, has published 97 episodesnew episodes get uploaded twice dailyand notched up more than 700,000 downloads in a matter of days. That puts it in the top 10 rankings of podcast series on Apple Podcasts, and in the top 30 on Spotify. But its created by Adam Levy, an entrepreneur with a background in building data products and content creation, who has no experience in journalism.
Levy launched the Epstein Files podcast in early February after the trove of documents relating to the late financier and convicted sex offender Jeffrey Epstein was released to the public. After 48 hours of hackingworking 14- to 16-hour daysLevy built an automated pipeline that ingests the raw files, extracts text from emails and images, cross-references sources, and produces scripted podcast episodes narrated entirely by AI-generated voices.
People just want no bullshit, says Levy. Strip the emotion, strip the bullshit, strip everything awayjust tell me things for what they are and when you tell it to me, help me understand the facts.
The technical architecture behind the project stitches together multiple large language modelsfrom Anthropics Claude to Google and OpenAIs offeringsto connect names, places, themes, and timelines across the 3.5 million files that were released, with connections requiring a confidence score of veracity to be included in the podcast. Levy supplements the raw dump with material from the Internet Archive and Google Pinpoint, a tool that other investigators have used to index portions of the files, as well as other bottoms-up projects like Jmail, which turns the Epstein Files emails into a navigable inbox like any other.
Using and citing those sources was vital, Levy says, to counteract fears of hallucinations. Everybodys quite skeptical of AI, he says. It was really important to reference all the sources that were used to basically construct the episode.
Like Clawdbot or a lot of the current AI simulation exercises, it piques curiosity, then rapidly becomes tedious, says Emily Bell, founding director of the Tow Center for Digital Journalism at Columbia University, explaining why the podcast has had such popularity in its early days. I thought the first episode was pretty listenable but also very obviously AI to anyone who has fed data or a script to NotebookLM.
Yet Bell found that the more episodes she listened to, the harder it was to sustain interest and engagement. It provided a helpful forensic audit of data, but its not something I am going to sign up to and listen tounless I am doing other work on the files, she says. For that, its pretty useful, and an interesting use of the tools.
Those tools are something Levy has thought about. I’ve been able to out execute any other outlet that tried to document the episode, he explains. They just won’t be able to [produce episodes at such speed. That has additional benefitsincluding being able to ride podcast app algorithms. That also helps with discovery, and the people who like getting into rabbit holes, this gave them a really big hole to dive into. Levy tells Fast Company he is already building a second series on an undisclosed subject, applying the same AI pipeline to a different story.
Whether you appreciate the quality of the finished podcast or not, the fact that such an AI-heavy podcast could garner such a large audience is significant, and the consequences for journalistsparticularly those covering complex, document-heavy storiesare hard to ignore.
I could easily be in the camp of: these tools are going to replace me, Im screwed, says Levy. Or I can figure out how to embrace them and find a new pocket for myself. Maybe Im no longer the voice. Maybe I just become the curator.
Not everyone is convinced that speed and sourcing are sufficient substitutes for editorial judgment. Just because something like the Epstein Files can be produced doesnt mean that this will work with most audiences, says Nic Newman, a journalist and digital strategist who contributes to research at the Reuters Institute for the Study of Journalism at the University of Oxford. He has conducted recent research suggesting publishers are likely to produce more audio content as a defense against AI. The idea being that AI struggles with empathy and human connection compared with human hosts and it is harder to summarize things in audio in a way that feels authentic and intimate, he says.
As Bells experience shows, what was first seen as a novelty doesnt necessarily translate into a regular audience. If I didnt already know a significant amount about the files, the investigations, the backgroundI would have found many of the episodes very hard to follow, she says. And boring.
However, people seem to be sticking around and rating it relatively highly: The podcast currently has a 4.4 rating on Apple Podcasts. The goal was to just build something that I was personally curious about and I would enjoy listening to, says Levy, and maybe other people would reciprocate the same value.
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Just 10 days ago, on February 10, Japan-based Sumitomo Forestry announced that it had agreed to acquire Tri Pointe Homesa large U.S. homebuilder ranked No. 715 on the Fortune 1000for $4.5 billion, signaling that Japanese builders were further accelerating their buying spree of U.S. homebuilders.
Fast-forward to today, and Stanley Martin Homeswhich has been owned by Japan-based Daiwa House since 2017announced that it has agreed to buy United Homes Group, which has a strong presence in the Carolinas, for $221 millionfurther accelerating Japanese builders buying spree of U.S. homebuilders.
Japanese builders are quickly expanding their U.S. footprint through acquisitions.
Daiwa House: Japan-based Daiwa House has quietly built one of the most geographically diversified U.S. homebuilding footprints among Japanese builders. It entered the U.S. market in 2017 with its acquisition of Stanley Martin Homes, followed by the purchase of Trumark Homes (No. 67 largest U.S. homebuilder) in 2020. In September 2021, Daiwa House completed its acquisition of CastleRock Communities (No. 49 largest U.S. homebuilder), giving it a strong presence in Sun Belt markets in Arizona, Texas, and Tennessee. Together, Stanley Martin, Trumark, and CastleRock span Sun Belt and mid-Atlantic regions, and with Stanley Martins newly announced $221 million acquisition of United Homes Group, Daiwa House is further accelerating its U.S. expansion.
Sumitomo Forestry: For Sumitomo Forestrya Japan-based forestry, timber, and homebuilding companyits Tri Pointe Homes acquisition this month meaningfully accelerates its U.S. expansion goals, including its stated target of delivering 23,000 homes annually in the U.S. by 2030. In 2016, Sumitomo Forestry became the majority owner of DRB Group (Americas No. 20 largest homebuilder). In April 2025, Brightland Homes (Americas No. 24 largest homebuilderwhich Sumitomo Forestry acquired a majority stake of in 2016) consolidated into DRB Group.
Sekisui House: Japan-based homebuilder Sekisui House, operating in the U.S. under SH Residential Holdings (Americas No. 6 largest homebuilder), has also been on a multiyear U.S. homebuilder buying spree. Since 2017, Sekisui House has acquired homebuilders Woodside Homes, Chesmar Homes, Holt Homes, and Hubble Homes. In April 2024, Sekisui House really shook up the industry when it acquired M.D.C. Holdings (Richmond American Homes) for a staggering $4.9 billion. Sekisui Househas also expanded into the U.S. with its homegrown Japanese builder brand, Shawood.
According to ResiClubs analysis, once the Tri Pointe Homes and United Homes Group acquisitions are completed, Daiwa House, Sekisui House, and Sumitomo Forestry will have a combined market share of at least 5.5% of U.S. single-family home construction.
Why are Japanese firms making such a large bet on U.S. housing?
At a high level, the answer is demographic and structural. Japans domestic population is shrinking and aging (fast!), limiting long-term housing growth and risking a sharp contraction for Japanese homebuilding firms like Daiwa House, Sekisui House, and Sumitomo Forestry.
The United States, by contrast, continues to experience population growth and household formationparticularly in the Sun Belt markets where many big U.S. homebuilders operate. For Japanese firms seeking stable, long-duration growth, U.S. homebuilding offers scale and better demographic tailwinds.
Theres also a strategic element. The U.S. homebuilding industry remains fragmented beyond the top few public builders, creating opportunities for well-capitalized global players to roll up regional operators while preserving local brands and management teams. Both Sumitomo Forestry and Sekisui House say they prioritize locally led operations, supported by centralized capital and global expertisea structure designed to preserve builder culture while providing financial and operational backing.
Dark Sky was a rarity in the app world. Universally beloved, the weather app had an uncanny ability to tell you when to expect rain, down to the minute. So when Apple announced plans to buy it six years ago, there was a collective sigh of frustration.
The Android version, of course, disappeared almost immediately, while the iOS version was folded into Apples native Weather app. (The stand-alone iPhone app was discontinued.) The integration was never quite the same, though, and it seemed as if the magic of Dark Sky was lost. Now, however, the team behind the app is hoping lightning strikes twice.
The developers of Dark Sky have announced a new iPhone app called Acme Weather, a tool meant to address the uncertainty inherent in meteorological forecasts. (An Android version is forthcoming.)
“It is a simple fact that no weather forecast will ever be 100% reliable: the weather is moody, fickle, and chaotic. Forecasts are often wrong,” the team writes in its announcement blog post. “Rather than pretending we will always be right, Acme Weather embraces the idea that our forecast will sometimes be wrong.”
In practical terms, that means Acme Weather, which comes with a two-week free trial and then costs $25 per year, offers its best estimate for a range of weather data points, including temperature throughout the day (as well as the feels-like temperature), dew point, humidity, and more. Those predictions appear as a dark line. Alternate possibilities appear as lighter shaded lines layered on top.
The closer those lines are to each other, the more confident the forecast. A wider gap signals more uncertainty, suggesting you may want to monitor conditions more closely and check the app more frequently to see how things are trending.
The homegrown forecasts, the team says, will be even more accurate than those in Dark Sky, thanks to a wide range of data sources, including numerical weather prediction models, satellite data, ground station observations, and radar.
The app will also incorporate community reports, letting people share conditions in their area. That could be especially helpful during severe weather, as radar is not 100% reliable. It has trouble, for instance, recognizing the difference between freezing rain and snow sometimes.
Reporting the weather is simple: Choose the icon that reflects current conditions. And, if youd like, you can add commentary by selecting an emoji to reflect how the weather feels. (Yes, the poop emoji is an option for particularly rough days.)
Just note that by using the community reporting feature, you will disclose your location to other users. While the app doesnt reveal an exact address or identifying information, it does display your location on the map at the time of reporting with a fairly high degree of accuracy. (Community reporting is completely optional, but cannot be withdrawn once submitted.) The company, in its announcement, pledged not to collect unnecessary data, use third-party trackers, or sell user information to advertisers.
The app also features the maps you would expect, including radar and lightning. It will offer rain and snow totals, hurricane tracks, and cloud cover. And, like Dark Sky, it will alert you when weather is approaching. This time, though, you can customize alerts based on what you care about, from rain to nearby lightning to the possibility of a rainbow or especially striking sunset.
“Weve been making weather apps for 15 years, from Dark Sky to Apple, and this is the culmination (the acme?) of everything weve learned along the way,” the blog post reads. “Its the weather app weve always wanted, and always wanted to build.”
I want a space odyssey. I wanted Star Wars. I got close to that once.
Thats production designer Hannah Beachler, talking about the grand filmic world she wants to build next.
For our February episode of By Design, we spoke to Beachler (Creed, Black Panther) about her latest work with director Ryan Coogler on Sinnersthe most Oscar-nominated film of all time. We caught up with her last time before she bagged an Oscar on Black Panther and then designed the sequel.
https://statics.teams.cdn.office.net/evergreen-assets/safelinks/2/atp-safelinks.html
Shes up for her second Academy Award for production design on Sinners next month, and she shared the painstaking process she takes to build historically authentic and thematically rich sets, even when that means investing in details that the audience will never see.
Oh, and for the first time, we put that entire interview up on YouTube, if you prefer to watch the interview rather than just listen.
We also got into a lot of hot topics: saying farewell to the best and worst designs of the Olympics, breaking down what it means now that ads are on ChatGPT, and exploring the ins and outs of LoveFroms new collaboration on Ferraris Luce EV.
And to cap things off? We pick a long-overdue fight with Microsoft Teams in a segment called Fix Your Shit. Have you ever met a single other human who liked that software? Neither have we.
Listen to our latest episode on Apple Music or Spotify, and catch the video interview on YouTube.
Meatball fans beware: A nationwide recall is underway for a popular brand of frozen meatballs sold at Aldi. The recall is due to the possibility that the product may contain metal fragments, which could cause serious injury if consumed. Heres what you need to know.
Whats happened?
On Sunday, the U.S. Food Safety and Inspection Service (FSIS) posted a safety alert about a Class 1 recallthe highest possible designation the agency assigns to recalled products.
A Class 1 recall means that there is a health hazard situation where there is a reasonable probability that use of the product will cause serious, adverse health consequences or death, according to the agency.
The Class 1 recall covers a Bremer-branded ready-to-eat frozen meatball product sold at Aldi stores. The recalled meatballs were produced by Rosina Food Products, Inc., a West Seneca, N.Y., company, which initiated the recall.
Approximately 9,462 pounds of the frozen meatball product are being recalled. The issue at hand is that the recalled meatballs may contain metal fragments, which could harm individuals who consume them.
What meatball product is being recalled?
The recall covers only one meatball product sold under the Bremer brand. That product is:
32-oz. printed poly film bag packages of fully cooked frozen Bremer FAMILY SIZE ITALIAN STYLE MEATBALLS containing about 64 meatballs per package with BEST BY date of 10/30/26 with timestamps between 17:08 through 18:20 printed on the back of the label.
According to the recall notice, the recalled product has an establishment number of EST. 4286B inside the USDA mark of inspection. The products were produced on July 30, 2025.
Images of the recalled products packaging can be found here.
Where were the recalled meatballs sold?
According to the FSIS notice, the recalled product was shipped to Aldi supermarket locations nationwide.
Has anyone been harmed from eating the recalled meatballs?
As of the recall notices posting date, no one is known to have been injured due to the consumption of the recalled product.
However, the issue was discovered after a consumer reported to the FSIS that they found metal fragments in the meatballs.
What should I do if I have the recalled meatballs?
Given that the recalled product has a 15-month shelf life, the FSIS is concerned that consumers may have purchased the meatballs a while ago, yet might still have them in their freezers or refrigerators.
If you think you may have purchased the recalled meatballs, you should check your freezers and refrigerators for them. If you have the recalled products, the FSIS says you should not consume them. Instead, you should throw the product away or return it to its place of purchase.
Full details about the meatball recall can be found on the FSISs website here.
Last October, 35 major donor families, calling their collaborative The Audacious Project, gathered in California and committed $1.03 billion to more than a dozen nonprofits whose proposed projects span multiple years and take on major challenges.The collaborative, housed at TED, announced the winning nonprofits Tuesday, after spending more than a year selecting the groups and helping them sharpen pitches for larger projects than philanthropic funders typically support. It’s not until the donors meet in person that they decide how much to give to each group.Jennifer Loving, the CEO of the San Jose-based nonprofit Destination: Home, said it was “shock and awe,” when they learned the donors had met their funding request to help expand homeless prevention services to multiple U.S. cities.“It’s not for the faint of heart to work on this issue in America,” Loving said, referencing the stigma around poverty. “And so you kind of brace yourself. You never know if people are going to see what you see and it was beautiful. It was really beautiful.”Connie Ballmer, cofounder of Ballmer Group along with her husband Steve Ballmer, the former CEO of Microsoft and owner of the Los Angeles Clippers, has been a donor since 2021, when she went with one of their sons to learn more about funding around climate change.“Nowhere that I know of can you raise a billion dollars in two days,” she said. “For an organization to raise an amount whether it’s $40, $60, $80 million, I mean, do you know how long that takes them to do that kind of fundraising?”This year, the grantees also include the Arc Institute, a relatively new research group in California, to support its development of a virtual model of a cell that it hopes will help scientists identify treatments for complex diseases like Alzheimer’s.The South Africa-based group, Tiko, also received funding to expand its services for teenage girls, including contraception, HIV treatment and responses to sexual violence. It was the third time Tiko had applied for funding from Audacious, said CEO Serah Joy Malaba, with the hope of scaling their work to reach more girls.In total, 55 major donor families have participated in at least one round of The Audacious Project’s work. The group expands by invitation and the formal criteria that donors be willing to commit at least $10 million to the funding round. Many end up donating more, in part inspired by the commitments that others make in the room.Another donor, Tegan Acton, who cofounded Wildcard Giving along with her husband, Brian Acton, a cofounder of WhatsApp, said she participates because she believes in collective action and values the focus on funding solutions developed by people close to the problems. Acton also said she’s enjoyed seeing how different donors approach their funding decisions.“Some people come and they have a binder printed and they have a thousand tabs with little notes about every project and they’ve marked up the appendices” she said, whereas others, “show up and watch the videos and see what sparks interest.”As part of the application process, finalists record something like a TED Talk that introduces themselves and their project.Loving, from Destination: Home, said the guidance from Audacious and The Bridgespan Group, a nonprofit consulting firm, helped sharpen their plan for scaling their approach to homelessness prevention. The initiative, Right at Home, identifies people and families most at risk of losing their housing and gives them money and support so they don’t. The approach now has won significant public funding in San Jose.“Going through this process was probably one of the most rigorous things we’ve ever done,” Loving said. “I can say with total confidence that it made us smarter.”Loving’s project is a good example of the kind of big change that The Audacious Project seeks to identify. Her group had not aspired to work nationally but identified a solution they think may help other places. Rather than opening new offices or expanding, they will partner with local groups, bring them funding and ask them to participate in research to assess the impact.For the first time this year, some organizations received a second commitment from Audacious donors, including Last Mile Health. Their initial grant in 2018 helped to train many more community health workers in multiple African countries, going from 2,000 to 23,000. This time, they received $20 million to again train more of these front line health workers but also to support an ongoing project to coordinate and mobilize more domestic funding from the countries where they work.“It’s not just a philanthropic investment and then a cliff,” said Lisha McCormick, CEO of Last Mile Health. Instead, the funds will support a reworking of how governments fund their public health systems following major cuts to U.S. foreign aid, which made up a significant portion of some countries’ health budgets.Anna Verghese, executive director of The Audacious Project, said they’d considered making second round grants for a while.“The honest question that we and our donor community had to wrestle with is, what kinds of partners are we if we walk away right when that momentum is building?” she said.
Associated Press coverage of philanthropy and nonprofits receives support through the AP’s collaboration with The Conversation US, with funding from Lilly Endowment Inc. The AP is solely responsible for this content. For all of AP’s philanthropy coverage, visit https://apnews.com/hub/philanthropy.
Thalia Beaty, Associated Press
As President Trump has cracked down on all kinds of immigration, tech workers and students have been caught in the crosshairs. In a bid to curb use of the H-1B visaa program that allows employers to hire skilled talent from abroad and is widely used across the tech industryTrump imposed a whopping $100,000 fee on new applications last year.
The steep cost of hiring H-1B workers has already had an impact on tech companies and other employers that have come to rely on the visa, leaving many students and aspiring H-1B workers with few options to remain in the country. Some employers have been forced to reevaluate their hiring strategy and have opted to sit out the H-1B lottery this year. For small companies, the fee has made an already challenging, expensive process virtually impossible to navigate.
Amid this political climate, the immigration law firm Ellis wants to simplify work visa applications for companiesand workersthrough a tech-enabled platform that uses AI to automate parts of the process, which remains complex and largely paper-based. With a new subscription service, Ellis is now offering employers a tiered option that starts at $2,000 a month, which allows smaller startups with under 50 employees to file unlimited visa applications. That includes most of the common work visa types, from the H-1B to the J-1 student visa or TN visa for workers from Mexico and Canada.
Most immigration lawyers still bill by the hour or by case, which means companies can spend thousands of dollars per application just on legal fees. (On an individual basis, Ellis charges anywhere from $2,500 to $12,000 to prepare applications; the H-1B visa, for example, costs $3,000 in legal fees.) By bundling its services, Ellis hopes to encourage employers to sponsor more immigrant workers. If you have a fixed platform fee, like you would with Ellis, your marginal cost of sponsoring a visa actually goes down, which is an incentive we’d like to encourage, says Sampei Omichi, the founder and CEO of Ellis.
[Screenshot: Ellis]
There are other immigration law firms like Manifest Law that also have a flat fee option, which is more cost-effective for employers, as well as tech platforms like Boundless that provide on-demand legal support for visa applications. Some products are fully automating the visa application process, which means there is limited input from actual immigration attorneys. Ellis is pitching its platform as a more comprehensive solution for companiesand especially tech employersthat are looking for tech-forward legal support and the full services of an immigration law firm.
Ellis has managed to bring down the legal costs associated with visa applications in part by employing AI agents where appropriateand only with the oversight of full-time staff attorneys. By automating a lot of the rote and manual work that comes with a more operational type of law, you actually open up the attorneys to do what they do best, which is case strategy, Omichi says. Frankly, most of their job now is acting as a therapist for the folks that are going through the immigration process.
[Screenshot: Ellis]
For workers seeking visas, Ellis not only offers a smoother, more streamlined application process but also holds the promise that employers might be more inclined to sponsor their visa, even in a hostile environment for immigration. Omichi says the platform aims to provide more transparency into the process, allowing workers to keep tabs on their application through a dashboard and additional elements like shipment tracking. (Applications for the H-1B visa, for example, typically involve hundreds of pages and need to be assembled by hand and shipped out.) In advance of the H-1B lottery opening up next month, the firm also introduced an H-1B lottery odds calculator, to give applicants a sense of how likely they are to get approved for a visa based on their title and location.
Perhaps most importantly, Ellis claims to have a 99.4% approval rate on its visa applications; when a visa is denied, the applicant gets a full refund of their legal fees or can file again free of charge. Over the last year, Ellis has filed over 400 applications on behalf of employees at AI startups like Adaptive and Wordware; by the end of 2026, Omichi says the firm is aiming to help 1,000 people secure visas.
At a particularly volatile moment, Ellis also hopes to help workers wade through the morass of immigration policy, which can change on a dime under the current administration. We really try to be like an extension of their people team, Omichi says. The use of automation allows Ellis to be more responsive to its clients than other lawyers might be. In addition, the firm invests in education and resources to help both employers and workers who are scrambling to keep up with policy changes, along with giving companies a direct line to Ellis via a dedicated Slack channel.
Our job is to kind of simplify a traditionally very, very, very complex process into something a layman can understand, Omichi says. For employers, it means retaining their best talent. And for employees, it’s their livelihood. It’s often the most important thing in their life.If they don’t have stable immigration status, nothing else really matters.
In medicine, rare is often used to describe conditions that affect relatively few people. But when you work in healthcare long enoughespecially at the very beginning of lifeyou realize rare diseases are not rare at all.
As a neonatologist, I cared for newborns whose symptoms didnt follow a familiar script. An infant struggling to breathe. A baby who couldnt feed. A child whose development stalled without a clear explanation. In the NICU, there is no luxury of time. Families are desperate for answers, and clinicians are making high-stakes decisions with incomplete information.
Too often, we treated what we could see while suspecting there was something deeper we could not yet name. We ordered a multitude of tests and brought in specialists to consult, but days often turned into weeks. Sometimes answers came, but often they came too late to change the course of care.
Those moments stay with you, and those are the moments that brought me here to GeneDx.
THE HIGH COST OF UNCERTAINTY
The phrase diagnostic odyssey is frequently used in healthcare, but it understates the reality for families. For patients with rare disease, the path to a diagnosis often stretches across yearsmarked by repeated hospitalizations, unnecessary procedures, and conflicting opinions. All the while, disease progresses and the emotional and financial burden on families quietly compounds.
For clinicians, that uncertainty is more than frustrating; it limits our ability to act decisively. Without a precise diagnosis, treatments are often generalized rather than targeted, care coordination remains fragmented, and families are left carrying the burden of unanswered questions. From a system perspective, the consequences are significant: longer lengths of stay, higher costs, avoidable interventions, and missed opportunities for earlier, more effective care.
What makes this particularly challenging is that, increasingly, we have the tools to do better.
Genomic medicine has transformed our ability to identify the underlying causes of diseaseespecially in pediatrics and rare conditions where traditional diagnostic approaches fall short. When used early, genomic testing can shorten the path to answers from years to weeks, days, or even hours. It can inform clinical decisions, guide care planning, and help families understand what lies ahead. Over the past couple of years, genomic technology has evolved. Costs and turnaround time have declined significantly, shifting genomics from a theoretical solution to a viable tool in everyday clinical practice.
Now, its a matter of increasing awareness and broadening access to all patients who could benefit.
OPEN TESTING ACCESS
As Rare Disease Month continues, the question is no longer whether we can diagnose rare disease more effectively, but whether we are willing to make those tools part of routine care.
In other areas of medicine, advances that improve accuracy and outcomes eventually become standard practice. Standard newborn screening, imaging technologies, and clinical protocols did not remain optional once their value was clear. They became embedded in care.
Genomics is at a similar inflection point.
The opportunity before us is not simply technologicalit is systemic. Integrating genomics earlier into care pathways requires thoughtful implementation, clinician support, payer alignment, and real-world evidence. It requires collaboration across health systems, medical societies, advocacy groups, and policymakers. And it requires a shared understanding that earlier, more precise diagnoses are not an added extrathey are foundational to good medicine.
A RARE OPPORTUNITY
Rare disease challenges healthcare to be bettermore precise, more compassionate, and more proactive. It forces us to confront the limits of traditional diagnostic models and to rethink when and how we deploy the tools now at our disposal.
For me, this work is deeply personal. It is shaped by years at the bedside, by conversations with families searching for answers, and by a belief that uncertainty should not be the default starting point of care. Over the course of my career, I have worked across nearly every layer of the healthcare systemas a practicing physician, a health system partner, and a clinical leader within payer and innovation organizations.
Im bringing that experience with me as I help usher in the future of genomic medicine at GeneDx. Here I see a rare opportunity to help move genomics from the margins of medicine to its foundation, to shorten diagnostic journeys that have gone on far too long, and to build a healthcare system that delivers clarity when it matters most.
Ending the diagnostic odyssey is not about technology alone. It is about trust. It is about giving clinicians the confidence to act and families the answers they deserve. And it is about recognizing that rare disease is not a niche problem, but something that impacts 1 in 10 Americans and thus, touches all of us.
Linda Genen, MD, MPH, is chief medical officer of GeneDx.
