European shares opened lower on Thursday after a broad advance in Asia spurred by a rebound on Wall Street.Upbeat economic updates and a steady flow of quarterly reports from U.S. companies have helped counter worries over surging share prices for Big Tech companies.But that optimism failed to carry over from Asia to Europe.Germany’s DAX lost 0.2% to 24,003.24, while the CAC 40 in Paris declined 0.5% to 8,033.11. Britain’s FTSE 100 slipped 0.2% to 9,761.18.The future for the S&P 500 was virtually unchanged while that for the Dow Jones Industrial Average lost 0.1%.In Asia, shares bounced back from a retreat the day before.Tokyo’s Nikkei 225 jumped 1.3% to 50,883.68.Shares in Nissan Motor Co. fell 1.7% after the company said it was selling its headquarters building in Yokohama to raise cash.After trading closed, Nissan reported a 221.9 billion yen ($1.4 billion) loss for April-September and said its revenue dropped 7% from a year earlier.In South Korea, the Kospi advanced 0.6% to 4,026.45. Taiwan’s Taiex was up 0.7%.Hong Kong’s Hang Seng jumped 2.1% to 26,485.90, while the Shanghai Composite index climbed 0.1% to 4,007.76.However, shares in autonomous driving companies Pony.ai and WeRide fell in their debut on the Hong Kong stock exchange.Pony.ai lost 9.3%, while WeRide’s shares fell 10%.Shares in Cathay Pacific Airways gained 4% after it announced that Qatar Airways was selling its 9.57% stake in the Hong Kong-based carrier in a buyback worth $896 million. The deal is subject to shareholder approval.On Wednesday, U.S. stocks gained ground with broad gains, reversing the prior day’s dip. Much of the market’s push and pull came from the technology sector, where several companies with huge values have an outsized influence over the market.Google’s parent, Alphabet, jumped 2.4%, Broadcom rose 2%, and Facebook parent Meta Platforms rose 1.4%. They helped lead the way higher for the broader market. Their gains also helped counter losses from a few technology behemoths, including Nvidia and Microsoft.Overall The S&P 500 rose 0.4% and the Dow industrials picked up 0.5% to 47,311. The Nasdaq composite added 0.6%.Company earnings and forecasts were once again a big focus for Wall Street, with results coming from a broad spectrum of industries.The latest round of earnings offers Wall Street a source of information on consumers, businesses and the economy that is otherwise lacking amid the government shutdown. Important monthly updates on inflation and employment have ceased, leaving investors, economists and the Federal Reserve without a fuller picture of the economy.There are still several informative private economic updates that Wall Street can review.A monthly report from ADP showed that private payrolls rose more than expected in October. The report offers a partial glimpse into the job market, which has been generally weakening and raising broader concerns about economic growth.A weaker job market remains a big concern for the Fed. The central bank cut its benchmark rate for the second time this year at its most recent meeting, in part to help bolster the economy amid a weakening job market. Lower interest rates can make a wide range of loans and credit less expensive, potentially promoting economic growth. But, lower rates can also add fuel to inflation, which could stunt economic growth.In other dealings early Thursday, U.S. benchmark crude gained 26 cents to $59.86 per barrel. Brent crude, the international standard, advanced 25 cents to $63.77 per barrel.The U.S. dollar fell to 153.85 Japanese yen from 154.11 yen. The euro rose to $1.1510 from $1.1494.
Elaine Kurtenbach, AP Business Writer
Until recently, some of the fastest-growing places in the U.S. were also among the most exposed to climate risk. But that’s starting to changemore Americans are now moving out of the areas that are most likely to flood.
In the Miami area, where nearly a third of homes face flood risk, nearly 70,000 more people moved away than moved in last year, according to a new report from Redfin. In Houston, the domestic outflow was more than 30,000 people; in Brooklyn, where around a quarter of homes face flood risk, around 28,000 more people left than moved in. In Floridas Pinellas County, where many homes were hit hard by Hurricane Helene, around 4,000 more people left for other parts of the state or country.
Florida has been a migration destination, but this year the Florida housing market changed a lot, says Daryl Fairweather, chief economist at Redfin. Weve seen a downward trend in home values there, so we wanted to explore what is going on.
The team looked at the highest-risk counties for flooding, where the biggest percentages of homes face flood risk, using climate risk scores from First Street, and then compared those to the lowest-risk counties. High-risk counties were losing more people, and low-risk counties were gaining them. (The caveat: because of international immigration, places like Houston and Miami didn’t see net population loss last yearRedfin’s data focuses only on domestic moves.)
Climate risk obviously isn’t the only reason that people move. Cost is another major factor, as the price of housing has gone up in places like Miami. But in a Redfin survey, “concern for natural disasters or climate risks in my previous area” was the most common reason cited by Florida residents for a move. In some cases, people who moved may have lost their homes in a disaster. Others may be struggling with the rising cost of insurance premiums.
In some cases, people aren’t moving that far; people leaving Pinellas County often moved to non-flood zones in nearby Pasco County. But some people who left flood-prone areas may be “boomerang” movers who arrived in the pandemic and now are going back to other states where they lived before.
“One of the reasons that we hear from our agents that people are leaving these places that during the pandemic, people moved to migration destinations like Houston or Miami, got there, and realized that they are really hot,” Fairweather says. “And then it’s not as affordable so they thought.”
It’s not clear if the trend will stickHouston had an outflow of people moving after Hurricane Harvey, but then gained more residents during the pandemic, and now that’s reversing again. But people are increasingly becoming aware of climate risk. “As there have been more high-profile storms happening, flooding is something that’s more on the minds of home buyers,” says Fairweather. “It’s just an added cost when it comes to affordability.”
Travelers through some of the busiest U.S. airports can expect to learn Thursday whether they’ll see fewer flights as the government shutdown drags into a second month.The Federal Aviation Administration will announce the 40 “high-volume markets” where it is reducing flights by 10% before the cuts go into effect Friday, said agency administrator Bryan Bedford. The move is intended to keep the air space safe during the shutdown, the agency said.Experts predict hundreds if not thousands of flights could be canceled. The cuts could represent as many as 1,800 flights and upwards of 268,000 seats combined, according to an estimate by aviation analytics firm Cirium.“I’m not aware in my 35-year history in the aviation market where we’ve had a situation where we’re taking these kinds of measures,” Bedford said Wednesday. “We’re in new territory in terms of government shutdowns.”Air traffic controllers have been working unpaid since the shutdown began Oct. 1. Most work mandatory overtime six days a week, leaving little time for side jobs to help cover bills and other expenses unless they call out.Mounting staffing pressures are forcing the agency to act, Bedford said Wednesday at a news conference.“We can’t ignore it,” he said, adding that even if the shutdown ends before Friday, the FAA wouldn’t automatically resume normal operations until staffing improves and stabilizes.Bedford and Transportation Secretary Sean Duffy declined during the news conference to name the cities and airports where they will slow air traffic, saying they wanted to first meet with airline executives to figure out how to safely implement the reductions.Major airlines, aviation unions and the broader travel industry have been urging Congress to end the shutdown, which on Wednesday became the longest on record.The shutdown is putting unnecessary strain on the system and “forcing difficult operational decisions that disrupt travel and damage confidence in the U.S. air travel experience,” said U.S. Travel Association President and CEO Geoff Freeman in a statement.Duffy warned on Tuesday that there could be chaos in the skies if the shutdown drags on long enough for air traffic controllers to miss their second full paycheck next week.Duffy said some controllers can get by missing one paycheck, but not two or more. And he has said some controllers are even struggling to pay for transportation to work.Staffing can run short both in regional control centers that manage multiple airports and in individual airport towers, but they don’t always lead to flight disruptions. Throughout October, flight delays caused by staffing problems had been largely isolated and temporary.But the past weekend brought some of the worst staffing issues since the start of the shutdown.From Friday to Sunday evening, at least 39 air traffic control facilities reported potential staffing limits, according to an Associated Press analysis of operations plans shared through the Air Traffic Control System Command Center system. The figure, which is likely an undercount, is well above the average for weekends before the shutdown.During weekends from Jan. 1 to Sept. 30, the average number of airport towers, regional control centers and facilities monitoring traffic at higher altitudes that announced potential staffing issues was 8.3, according to the AP analysis. But during the five weekend periods since the shutdown began, the average more than tripled to 26.2 facilities.
Associated Press journalist Christopher L. Keller contributed from Albuquerque, New Mexico.
Rio Yamat, AP Airlines and Travel Writer
Ikea is ready to begin overhauling its smart home products.
The Swedish furniture manufacturer began dabbling in smart home products as early as 2012, but in July it announced plans to soon debut a revamped range. The goal, it says, is to make products that are more universally compatible and more intuitive to usein other words, bringing the connected smart home experience to the masses. Now, Ikea’s 21 new smart home products are here.
The collection includes new smart bulbs that come in more color and light intensity options than previous versions, an array of sensors and controls, and a smart plug that can make any “dumb” lamp or small appliance smart. Pricing and beginning availability date for the products will vary by market, according to the company.
[Photo: Ikea]
“Until now, smart home technology hasn’t been easy enough to use for most peopleor affordable enough for many to consider,” David Granath, Ikea of Sweden’s range manager, said in a statement. “This launch brings us closer to helping everyone feel ready and confident to get started.”
The new line comes as Ikea faces falling sales for a second consecutive year. Ikea said last month that although the number of products sold was up, global revenue fell 1% to about $52 billion. The company is finding ways to reach new customers, like “shop-in-shop” locations inside select Best Buys in Texas and Florida that sells kitchen and laundry room items and extend the brand’s reach without having to build out new stores.
The company says its smart home products were developed over years, through a design process that included in-home testing. Ikea says it wants everything it puts out to be intentional, and the strategy going forward will be to release new products if they’re cheaper and easier to use than its existing product line.
“We believe technology should serve a purpose, not exist for its own sake,” Granath says.
[Photo: Ikea]
The company’s new Kajplats smart bulb range comes in 11 variations with options for color and white bulbs. The bulbs are also dimmable. The corresponding Bilresa remote controls come in two variations. One version has buttons that can switch the lights on and off, as well as adjust brightness and color, while a separate scroll wheel option gives an old-school iPod click wheel UI to home lighting.
[Photo: Ikea]
Ikea’s five new sensors include a motion sensor for indoor and outdoor lighting, as well as sensors for temperature and humidity, air quality, and water leakages. The water sensor, called Klippbok, was designed to be put under sinks and appliances.
[Photo: Ikea]
The Grillplats is an adaptable smart plug you can use to smarten up dumb lamps and appliances, so you can turn them on and off remotely. You can also pair it with remotes and motion sensors to track energy use.
[Photo: Ikea]
Ikea previously unveiled its smart home system hub Dirigera, a smart bluetooth speaker, and smart table lamp in a first look at its new smart home products earlier this summer. All of Ikea’s new products are compatible with Matter, a smart home technical standard.
The smart home market size was nearly $128 billion in 2024, and it’s expected to roughly quadruple by 2030, according to Grand View Research, a market research firm. By revamping its smart home line and designing products meant to be cheap, useful, and intuitive, Ikea is positioning itself to capitalize on the rise of smart, connected homes.
Have you ever wondered how the letter A got its shape? Or why some fonts instantly look psychedelic? Or where the word text even came from in the first place?
Kelli Anderson, a graphic artist, author, and master of all things paper, has asked all of those questionsand shes answering them with a massive new pop-up book called Alphabet in Motion.
The book takes readers through an interactive journey about the history of typography from A to Z, starting in ancient Egypt and moving all the way into the digital age. But it’s no ordinary history tome. Anderson hand-designed 17 different pop-ups, including light projections to colorful sliders and mind-bending illusions, that demonstrate how humans have painstakingly developed type technologies over time better than a stand-alone blurb ever could.
[Image: courtesy Kelli Anderson]
With that artful addition in mind, Alphabet in Motion is really a set of books, including the two-inch-thick pop-up book and an accompanying 120-page-long, coffee-table ready book of essays, each corresponding to one of the pop-ups chapters. (There’s one chapter for each letter of the alphabet.) The book retails for $85 and is currently available for preorder on bookshop.org and Amazon. It will also be available at local bookstores across the country upon its release on November 18.
[Image: courtesy Kelli Anderson]
How ‘Alphabet in Motion’ dives into the fascinating history of letters
Anderson released her last pop-up book, This Book is a Camera, back in 2015, and shed been dreaming up a new concept ever sincebut it wasn’t until she started researching the history of typography and the craft behind it, she says, that something clicked. She began work on Alphabet in Motion, with that catalyst, in 2019.
[Image: courtesy Kelli Anderson]
We inhabit this typographic reality where letters make us feel things, and providing some kind of satisfying explanation helps bring more meaning to why people are feeling those things, Anderson says. When you see psychedelic blobby letters, why does it remind you of the 1960s, Andy Warhol, and Development Underground? When you see different kinds of mod letters, why does that remind you of the space race era?
[Image: courtesy Kelli Anderson]
These questions, Anderson says, led her to some really unexpected places. After combing through historical type collections from sources like Londons St. Bride Foundation, books, and academic articles on the subject, she began to build a massive wall, held together by masking tape, full of all the examples shed discovered. At the same time, she spent thousands of hours experimenting with different cut paper pop-up mechanisms to demonstrate each concept.
[Image: courtesy Kelli Anderson]
I had certain pop-up mechanisms where I was like, Oh, this is so cool. I have to include this just for the razzmatazz element, Anderson says. And then it was a matter of figuring out where, with any integrity, I could place it to support a conceptbecause I didn’t want it to just be dancing bologna for dancing bologna’s sake. I wanted people to, once they read the text, understand, Oh, this is actually a demonstration of a concept that will help me understand this particular era of typographic technology.
[Image: courtesy Kelli Anderson]
And how psychedelic fonts got their shapes
One typographic era that most fascinated Anderson was the early 60s, which is explored in-depth through Alphabet in Motion‘s chapters on the letter “J.” Anderson was curious why this period produced so many whimsically blobby, puffy, and even flared-looking letters. During her research, she discovered that these iconic hallmarks of the era were all thanks to a new technology called phototypesetting.
[Image: courtesy Kelli Anderson]
Phototypesetting allowed type designers to set type by shooting light through pieces of film, then projecting it on a photo paper and arranging it like a magazine layout. This breakthrough made typesetting vastly easier, quicker, and cheaper, since the most common earlier method was to use molten lead.
[Image: courtesy Kelli Anderson]
You had all of this experimentation, which is in line with the psychedelic experimentation of the era, Anderson says. There was all of this interest in bending and projection of light. And so if you went to a concert at the Fillmore or with Andy Warhol’s Exploding Plastic Inevitable, you might see go-go dancers with light images projected on them warping space. People were actually doing that when they were setting type, too.
[Image: courtesy Kelli Anderson]
With Alphabet in Motion, readers can experience a taste of that process for themselves. On the books page dedicated to the letter J, a paper cut-out pops up to become a projector for your iPhone, allowing you to use your flashlight to create a 60s-style typographic light show.
[Image: courtesy Kelli Anderson]
Thats just one example of how Alphabet in Motion uses tactile experiences to place typographic innovations in context. Other pages in the book include a 3D model that explains the development of uppercase and lowercase letters in the Roman Empire and European Middle Ages, respectively; a mini pop-up that describes the creation of early video game bitmap fonts; and an interactive page that shows how the early practice of weaving actually shaped our modern lettersand served as the basis for the word text itself.
For Anderson, her biggest goal is that this six-year passion project will help introduce a new generation to the world of type design.
I hope some people buy it for their little kids thinking it’s just an A through Z pop-up book, and enjoy it on that level, Anderson says. Then stick it back on the shelf and have their kid in 12 years open it up and actually realize that design and typography are interesting and tie in with the larger world and culturethat they’re not a separate thing.
Nintendo’s hard-line approach to piracy has shut down a streamer who seemingly specialized in unauthorized content.
Jesse Keighin has been ordered to pay Nintendo $17,500 in damages after livestreaming gameplay footage of at least 10 different games on at least 50 occasions before the games were released to the public. Included among those were Super Mario Party Jamboree, Mario & Luigi: Brothership, The Legend of Zelda: Echoes of Wisdom, and Pikmin 4.
Keighin was served with takedown notices by Nintendo dozens of times for those streams. Yet he continued to air himself playing the games, encouraging viewers to support him on loco.gg, an Indian live-streaming and esports platform, if his other accounts were banned.
Platforms would take the account down following Nintendo’s complaints. But after that happened, Keighin sent emails to Nintendo saying I have a thousand burner channels and [w]e can do this all day, according to the recommendation of the U.S. magistrate judge who oversaw the case.
Nintendo also says Keighin had released links to repositories of ROMs (digital pirated games), including several that were Switch-specific. Those pirated copies are played via emulators, such as Yuzu.
Yuzu was a target of Nintendo’s anti-piracy campaign last year. The video game company shut down the emulator, saying the team behind it had enabled piracy at a colossal scale. The Yuzu team agreed to pay $2.4 million and ended all operations.
But in an email to Nintendo, Keighin vowed to actively help people find newer and updated copies of the software, which he said was still being developed underground, according to the judge’s recommendation.
That cavalier attitude also led Keighin to ignore Nintendo’s repeated attempts to serve him with the lawsuit. His refusal to engage resulted in the case proceeding without him, which led to the default judgment.
Nintendo has long taken an aggressive stance against piracy of its games, including emulator programs.
Dolphin, an open-source emulator for the Nintendo Wii and GameCube, was a target of the gaming giant in 2023 when Dolphin’s developers announced plans to put its emulator on the Steam game distribution platform. Nintendo sent a cease-and-desist order to Valve, which pulled the listing. Days later, Dolphins developers announced: It is with much disappointment that we have to announce that the Dolphin on Steam release has been indefinitely postponed.
A $17,500 judgment isnt pocket change, but it’s a drop in the bucket compared to the $4.5 million Nintendo is seeking against a now-former moderator on Reddit, after accusing him of facilitating a network of online websites that offered pirated Nintendo Switch games.
Nintendo says in the filing that it could easily have demanded more, alleging that the defendant, James C. Williams, “not only copied and distributed Nintendo game files without authorization; he actively promoted their distribution and copying to thousands of others across a variety of websites and online ‘communities,’ and knowingly trafficked in unlawful software products aimed at circumventing Nintendos technological measures protecting against unauthorized access.”
While the Switch remains important to Nintendo, the Switch 2 is driving more and more of the company’s revenue. On November 1, the company reported its fiscal Q2 earnings, noting it had sold 10.36 million Switch 2 units between June 5 and September 30 and was raising its sales estimate for the year. Thats twice the rate the Switch sold in the same time period.
Nintendo now expects to sell 19 million Switch 2s before the end of March 2026. The original Switch has thus far sold 154.01 million units.
During an annual condominium meeting, at the end, the leader asked if anyone had any suggestions or questions. I spoke up: How about we convert a portion of our common storage into a small gym? My idea was met with uncomfortable silence, and eventually the leader responded hesitantly: I honestly dont know how to address that, before promptly closing the meeting.
In that moment, I began doubting myself, wondering, Was my idea really that bad? Was it stupid?
Years later, small gyms in condominiums became a popular trend, adding real value to properties. My idea wasnt rejected because it lacked merit. It was dismissed because the environment wasnt open to new suggestions.
The silence in that room wasnt personal. It was systemic. And that same silence echoes through boardrooms, project teams, and innovation labs worldwide.
History is filled with organizations that silenced ideas before the market did: Kodak dismissing digital photography, Nokia resisting smartphones, Volkswagens culture muting concerns about CO emissions. Their failure wasnt a lack of intelligence or resources; it was a lack of psychological safety.
Every innovation process, from idea generation to prototyping and implementation, depends on people talking to each other, challenging assumptions, and learning together. When psychological safety is low, people hold back, stay silent, or play it safe. When its high, they question, debate, and experiment. Thats why psychological safety is the oxygen of innovation.
Innovations invisible condition
In innovation, fear works like carbon monoxideodorless, invisible, but deadly. It seeps into meetings, decisions, and projects, making people stop breathing out ideas.
Lets look at high-risk industries or R&D projects. They are filled with uncertainty, time pressure, and costly mistakes. In such environments, psychological safety becomes even more critical. High autonomy combined with high uncertainty often leads to psychological isolation, where people hesitate to share concerns or collaborate openly.
Pressure to deliver results discourages experimentation, unclear authority structures create confusion about decision-making, and fear of criticism drives risk-averse behavior. These are all symptoms of low psychological safety and they quietly suffocate innovation.
Organizations like Pixar or Toyota show that when leaders build environments where errors are seen as learning opportunities rather than liabilities, innovation flourishes even under intense pressure. Its not about removing accountability but about balancing it with openness and trust.
The leader sets the tone
Its tempting to think psychological safety is a company-wide culture that HR can build. But in reality, psychological safety is a property of a leader, not of an organization. Every teams climate is a reflection of its leaders behavior.
People will only speak up if they believe theyll be heard and that their voice will lead to change. If, in the past, speaking up led nowhere, silence becomes the safer option. I often remind leaders: silence is not laziness, its learned futility.
I once ran a workshop for a company whose CEO proudly announced, We have strong psychological safety here. At the end, I asked a quiet participant, one of the sales directors, what he thought about the issues we had discussed. He sighed and said, What does it matter? They never listen anyway. That single sentence said more about the company culture than any engagement survey ever could.
Building psychological safety means walking the talk. Its not what you declare in values statements, but what you do consistently: how you listen, how you respond, how you follow through. Consistency builds trust, and trust keeps dialogue alive.
Trust builds performance
At Sparebanken Norge, a 200-year-old Norwegian bank, leaders decided to make psychological safety measurable. Employees were encouraged to lift each other up, even across departments, and mistakes were treated as learning opportunities. Directors were evaluated on how they spoke about peers, both publicly and privately. That shift helped the bank become one of Norways top performers.
Their lesson: innovation isnt about tools or technology, its about trust.
Many companies celebrate diversity, but few realize that diversity without psychological safety leads to fragmentation. Having different perspectives in the room doesnt help if people dont feel safe enough to share them. Diversity brings sunlight and rain, but psychological safety is the fertile soil where ideas grow.
What leaders can do
To create that fertile ground, leaders must replace fear with curiosity and control with clarity.
Model vulnerability. Admit when you dont know. When leaders say I might be wrong, others start contributing.
Encourage open dialogue. Ask for dissenting opinions. Silence in a meeting is never a sign of alignment. Its a sign of fear.
Empower and clarify. Give people autonomy but clear expectations: freedom with direction builds confidence.
Celebrate learning, not perfection. Reward smart risks and small experiments, not just flawless results.
Remember: psychological safety isnt about comfort. Its about courage. The best teams pair high trust with high accountability: they debate, disagree, and still leave meetings energized rather than exhausted.
If I could go back to that condominium meeting, Id still suggest the gym.
Innovation doesnt die from bad ideas. It dies from silence.
Many entrepreneurs launch beauty startups because they see a glaring gap in the market. It’s only after they’ve formulated their products and launched them that they learn how incredibly difficult it is to turn a profit as a beauty business.
That wasn’t the case for Tisha Thompson, founder of LYS (short for Love Yourself), a clean cosmetics brand that is inclusive to all skin tones. Since launching the line in 2021, Thompson has grown LYS’s sales to upward of $10 million. And she did so in a counterintuitive way: by building a bootstrapped brand that launched immediately into Sephora with just $500,000 in startup capital.
Thompson’s success is remarkable, particularly because many other Black founders in the beauty industry are struggling. This summer, the popular makeup brand Ami Colé shuttered after three years in business. Founder Diarrha NDiaye-Mbaye says she wasn’t able to find enough capital to stay afloat. Many other Black-owned beauty brands, including Beauty Bakerie, Ceylon, and Koils by Nature, have also been forced to close.
For Thompson, it’s important to offer a counterpoint to these stories, and to show retailers and investors that it is possible to succeed as a Black-owned brand that targets Black consumers.
“There’s this narrative that Black-owned businesses are failing, and that’s really unfair because there are many white-owned businesses that are also failing,” she says. “Every brand has its own story, and I just want to show that a Black-owned business can be profitable. I want to tell the industry: Don’t give up on us.”
[Photo: LYS Beauty]
Identifying A Gap In The Market
Thompson has always loved makeup. As a teenager, she would spend gym class doing makeovers for her friends instead of running laps. But when she started her career in the beauty industry, she began to see that many companies did not seem to value her as a consumer. “For so long, makeup has left people who look like meplus-size black womenout of the conversation,” she says. “They were not marketing to us at all.”
As she was coming up in her career, the clean beauty industry was taking off, and she got a job at Pür, a brand that formulates products without toxic ingredients. Brands like Beautycounter and retailers like Credo highlighted how unregulated the beauty industry is, and how many questionable ingredients are in our products. But it always struck her that the clean beauty industry was not targeting Black women.
[Photo: LYS Beauty]
“They didn’t prioritize women of color in their strategy,” Thompson says. “They were predominantly marketing around an older white woman and selling products at a higher price point.”
Thompson realized there was a gap in the market for a more inclusive clean makeup brand. But knowing how expensive it is to launch a beauty company, she didn’t think she was in a position to start one. “I don’t come from money, and I don’t have access to money,” she says. “It seemed like an impossible dream.”
Then in 2019, Thompson’s father died, and this changed her calculation. She decided to take the plunge and began writing up a business plan. “Sometimes when something traumatic happens, you lose your rational thinking,” she says. “I realized life is short and I might not be here tomorrow. So I decided I would try to be the change I wanted to see in the world.”
Getting to 8-Figure Revenue
Before launching LYS, Thompson had spent 15 years in the trenches of the beauty industry. She was a makeup artist at MAC, ran marketing for Pür Cosmetics, and handled finances at the beauty conglomerate Astral Brands, which owns Butter London.
“My superpower today is understanding the finances of the beauty industry,” she says. “Beauty is a very expensive business, and to run a company you need to understand all the detailsfrom the cost of goods to sales to operations.”
Launching a beauty brand requires spending money on formulation, packaging, and inventory, as well as on marketing to get the word out. Many beauty founders start to raise money as soon as they have an idea. But Thompson was a lot more conservative about taking money because she knew that investors tended to prioritize growth and scale, which could make it hard to become profitable.
Thompson poured the small inheritance her father left her into this startup. She also found an angel investor who was willing to put some money into the business. But this amounted to less than half a million dollars, far less than many other beauty brands.
[Photo: LYS Beauty]
Then she did something a little crazy. To get the brand out into the world, Thompson realized she needed the help of a retailer like Sephora. Since she didn’t know anybody at the company, she decided to reach out cold.
“I basically drunk-texted ephora,” she says. “I had a glass of wine one night, went on LinkedIn to find a merchant, and sent them my deck of slides about the brand. I thought it would go into a deep dark hole, but 10 days later, I got an email back from Sephora saying they’d love to talk.”
Like Thompson, Sephora’s merchants identified that most clean brands weren’t targeting the Black consumer, and they thought her business idea was smart. So they signed her up to sell her products on the Sephora website as a test to see if it had the potential to do well in-store. Thompson used her startup capital strategically, mostly to meet Sephora’s inventory needs. She poured money into formulating products, designing packaging, and manufacturing.
[Photo: LYS Beauty]
What she didn’t do was spend money on hiring staff or on marketing, which are often major expenses for beauty startups. Instead of spending money on social media marketing, Thompson reached out to 300 influencers who might be willing to promote her brand for free because they believed in her mission.
“I had a lot of relationships with creators from my former life,” she says. “I reached out to the most impactful creators who could help me get this brand off the ground, and almost all of them posted a video at launch. YouTube filled up with people promoting the launch of the first Black-owned clean makeup brand at Sephora.”
On launch day, LYS blew through four months’ worth of inventory in 24 hours. Sephora quickly decided to launch the brand in its stores.
Saying No To Black Lives Matter Money
Thompson’s approach was different from many other Black-owned beauty brands that launched during this period. After the murder of George Floyd in 2020 and the growth of the Black Lives Matter movement, many investors began to realize that they had failed to support Black founders and set aside funds to invest in Black-owned businesses. Retailers like Target and Sephora made commitments to devoting more shelf space to Black-owned brands.
Many Black founders benefited from this sudden support. Ami Colé’s founder received $1 million in investment very quickly, allowing her to launch in Sephora. Ceylon Beauty, a skincare brand for men of color, received a $50,000 grant from Glossier as part of a program for Black founders. Koils by Nature, a haircare brand, was picked up by Target.
But when Donald Trump entered office at the start of this year, waging an assault on companies that were committed to diversity, equity, and inclusion, many investors and retailers changed their tune. All of these brands relied on continued funding for working capital, but investors were unwilling to keep supporting them. They’ve all since shut down.
During the Black Lives Matter movement, Thompson started receiving calls from investors wanting to fund her business. But she decided to turn them down. She could not possibly have predicted that money would later dry up for Black foundersher reason for rejecting this capital was more practical. She wanted to maintain more equity in her company.
“Without scale as a Black-owned business, I knew that you would have to give up more equity than the average brand,” Thompson says. “I looked around and saw these brands giving up a lot more of their company for small chunks of money.”
And besides, she didn’t need the money because she had found a way to remain cash positive, without any investment, by keeping her expenses low and pouring all profits back into the business. “I was the only employee for the first two years of the business,” she says. “This was an extremely lean operation.”
This year, Thompson realized she couldn’t continue to scale without investment. The brand was already generating upward of $10 million in annual revenue, thanks to its partnership with Sephora. The next frontier was to go international. In March, LYS announced it had received eight figures of funding led by Encore Consumer Capital. While this is a lot of capital, Thompson says the point of raising this money was to find a strategic investor who had connections in international markets.
[Photo: LYS Beauty]
“This investor has backed Tarte and Supergoop, which are brands that have reached a scale beyond what I am capable of,” she says. “The international market is uncharted territory for LYS, but these investors are able to just pick up the phone and make an introduction to a retailer in Europe or Asia.”
Thompson is excited for LYS’s next chapter, as it begins to announce partnerships with department stores and retailers overseas. But just as important, she wants to inspire other Black entrepreneurs to not give up, even though it seems like a bleak time to be a founder of color.
“When I was coming up in the industry, I didn’t see a lot of founders like me, and that made me doubt whether I could really do this,” she says. “I want other Black founders to realize that running a successful company is attainable.”
If the three years since the release of ChatGPT have signaled OpenAIs dominance of generative artificial intelligence, its worth recalling that the company’s rapid rise would have been impossible without another Big Tech backer.
In 2019, Microsoft agreed to supply OpenAI all the compute it needed, with near exclusivity. In exchange, Microsoft retained the right to use OpenAIs tech until the arrival of artificial general intelligence, or AGI: the point at which AI systems are able to act like humans and respond to whatever task theyre given, regardless of whether theyve been trained to solve it.
As generative AIs capabilities blew past initial expectations, the question of when AGI will arrive became a major point of contention in OpenAI and Microsofts agreement. In addition, Microsoft feared that OpenAI’s plans to restructure toward a public benefit corporation and open its platform could dilute its influence.
Then, in late October, the companies announced a new arrangement, one that looks like a win for Microsoft. Microsofts IP rights for both models and products are extended through 2032 and now include models post-AGI, with appropriate safety guardrails, according to a company blog post announcing the renegotiation.
The AGI clause, then, is no more. So what does it tell us about both companies beliefs about the path to AGIand how long it could take?
In many ways, the announcement felt inevitable. Microsoft had reportedly spent months trying to remove the AGI clause, for fear that AGIs arrivalor OpenAIs claim of its arrivalcould threaten its access to the most advanced generative AI models on the planet, just as such technologies become commercially invaluable. After investing more than $13 billion, Microsoft wanted to ensure it could maintain access.
Michael Veale, a researcher at University College London, wonders whether the world is reading too much into the change in agreement. He reckons that the firms have planned to scrap it because its too gameableor too easy for OpenAI to declare when it has been reached, at its own convenienceto provide the commercial certainty they want from a contract, he says.
Veale believes that AGI is too woolly a concept on which to base a long-term agreement with such high financial stakes. Its hard to say what the decision means on the basis of the reporting around the terms changes, he adds.
Alessandra Russo, a professor in applied computational logic at Imperial College London, is also uncertain about what to make of the changed terms of the agreement and how it interacts with both companies timeline for AGI. One thing she is confident about is her belief that AGI isn’t on the horizon. People are always moving the posts a little bit further back, because of the realization that this technology is not as was initially expected, she explains.
Catherine Flick, professor of AI ethics at the University of Staffordshire, shares this take, noting that the shift is more an indication of both companies trying to sustain the hype around AGI to justify their investments in the tech, rather than a deep-seated belief that AGI truly is around the corner.
The practical snag with an AGI trigger is verification. Theres no agreed test or arbiter, which makes any clause gameable for the commercial certainty both sides want. As Flick puts it: How do you even verify AGI?
One way the two companies have tried to solve this is by agreeing to remove the unilateral declaration of AGI that has previously given Microsoft pause. The companies say that once AGI is declared by OpenAI, that declaration will now be verified by an independent expert panelbroadening the number of people who can or would declare it to be so.
Even if that point arrives, Flick argues declaring AGI is a mutually sustaining confidence boost designed to steady nerves across the wider AI supply chain and to keep capital flowing while capabilities progress slowly, rather than leaping. Its also part of the perpetuation of this hype cycle, she says, at a moment when definitions blur and milestones remain mobile.
That said, at least publicly, those in charge of the companies are accelerating their timeframes for when AGI might arrive.
In January, Sam Altman published a blog post declaring that the world is getting closer to AGI, and that his company was making preparations for how to deal with its imminent arrival. Mustafa Suleyman, CEO of Microsofts AI division, isnt as bullish about the timescale. In a December 2024 interview, he pegged the arrival of AGI within the next five to seven years.
Not everyone agrees. The fact that theyre still talking about AGI, says Flick, its cloud cuckoo land.
In President Donald Trump’s ongoing second-term White House remodel, even the typography is getting the Mar-a-Lago treatment.
New signage has begun rolling out at the White House this fall. First, the words “The Presidential Walk of Fame” appeared in September in the gold Shelley Script on the West Colonnade. The signage appears above the presidential portraits Trump installed to troll former President Joe Biden.
Now new images show lettering that reads “The Oval Office” written in the same font, and which appears to be going up on its exterior wall.
The White House press office did not immediately respond to a request for comment about whether more signage will be going up. An auto-reply to Fast Companys inquiry included text that blamed Democrats for staff shortages due to the ongoing government shutdown.
President Donald Trump departs the White House on November 5, 2025. [Photo: Celal Gunes/Anadolu/Getty Images]
Shelley script goes off-script
Trump’s new, gold White House signs are aesthetically aligned with other recent redecoration efforts, including his planned ballroom. To critics who find it tacky, though, it’s not necessarily the type choice that’s off.
“Shelley is one of a handful of long-standing, go-to formal script fonts,” Charles Nix, senior executive creative director at Monotype, tells Fast Company in an email. “Its testimony to the quality of the design (and the skill of the designer) that it perseveres as visual shorthand for formal or fancy.
Famed type designer Matthew Carter designed Shelley Script for Linotype in 1972. It’s been used for everything from winery websites to book covers, according to Fonts in Use, and it’s a go-to choice for wedding invitations.
“The typeface is perfectly fine, and it does seem in keeping with the dignity of the White House,” type historian Paul Shaw says. “The problem is not the fit, but the idea of even slathering the phrase The Oval Office on the exterior. It looks like part of a theme park.”
Further, Shaw says, “The Walk of Fameis this Hollywood or Las Vegas?cements that tacky association. Fortunately, this is one of the least egregious things that this short-fingered vulgarian has done in the past 10 months.”
[Photo: Andrew Harnik/Getty Images]
Mar-a-Lago North
Script fonts also seem less the domain of the West Wing than the East (RIP), before Trump had it torn down to make room for a 90,000-square-foot ballroom.
The fonts of the West Wing are the fonts of the state, like Courier New, which is used in executive orders. While the West Wing is for government functions of the executive branch, the East Wing, where the offices of the First Lady were once located, was for soft power. Before it was destroyed, the East Wing housed the White House Calligraphy Office, which produces the White House’s most famous script lettering on social documents like invitations and state dinner menus.
Trump has already added gilded embellishments to the Oval Office and turned the Rose Garden into a concrete patio that resembles the one at his Florida home and club. Now it seems he’s cribbed its typography as well, with each detail making the people’s house appear much more like Mar-a-Lago North.
