If you’ve been noticing that cobalt-hued water bottles have started to pop up everywhere you’re not alone. The water has recently made an appearance on shelves at major retailers including Whole Foods and 7-Eleven, starred in viral social media videos created by fitness influencer Ashton Hall, adorned on tables at the Golden Globes, and beginning this week, will star in a fresh new advertising campaign featuring WNBA point guard Skylar Diggins.
All of these marketing efforts represent a more expansive pitch by Saratoga Spring Water that the brands premium-priced water isnt just for fine dining– which has been the brands core focus for the past several years — it’s for everyone.
From fine dining to cultural signal
We have an opportunity to speak to a lot more people than I think we thought we did, says Kheri Tillman, chief marketing officer of Saratogas parent company Primo Brands, in an interview with Fast Company. Consumers love the blue bottle and want to engage with it in many different places, as opposed to just fine dining. Its a bit of an affordable luxury.
Saratogas total points of distribution has swelled by 69% during the first 11 months of 2025 compared with the prior-year period, the brand told Fast Company, citing data from market researcher Circana.
While partnerships with Michelin-starred chefs like Buddha Lo are still important, Saratoga felt it had room to stretch to a wider audience and has done so through a pop-up speakeasy at a 7-Eleven in Los Angeles held in November, a brand partnership with BMX star Nigel Sylvester, and water-food pairings at fancy restaurants developed with water sommelier Martin Riese.
It creates, dare I use a water pun, fluidity between the partners, says Christi Lazar, head of The Lab, the in-house creative agency at Primo Brands that vets external partnerships. She says the throughline through each of these relationships is a connection to water that feels as authentic as possible.
A new face for a broader audience
The brands next big new moment is an ad campaign starring Diggins, which debuts on January 5 just days before the Golden Globes, an event that Saratoga sponsors as its official water. The ad spot will run across broadcast television; Instagram, TikTok and other paid social channels; and print titles including paid social channels including Instagram and TikTok, and print titles including Vogue and Travel + Leisure.
[Photo: Primo Brands]
Skylar was really interesting, because she was this great mashup of super high-end, with a great look that you would expect from Saratoga, but then also just this every day work, hard grit that you would need to be to be a professional athlete, as well as a mother, says Tillman.
Diggins tells Fast Company that the campaign is a good fit for her own brand because obviously, as an athlete, hydration is extremely important. But, she adds that the campaign, which ends with Diggins appearing in front of flashing paparazzi cameras on a bluenot redcarpet appearance, represented her life off the court thats more style, elegance, and how I like to dress.
Letting virality do the work
The viral moment with Hall skewed more male. Tillman says that Saratoga opted to allow that cultural moment to play out without any interference from the brand. You cant plan a viral moment, but what you can do is make your brand relevant enough, to certain people, to make them want to have it by their side, says Tillman. Primo Brands says it grew the companys audience on Instagram by 77% in 2025.
Primo Brands is a relatively new entity, formed late in 2024 through the combination of Primo Waters, whose brands included Mountain Valley and Crystal Springs, and BlueTriton, the water purveyor of Saratoga, Deer Park, and Poland Spring.
[Photo: Primo Brands]
The combined company now sells one out of every four plain water bottles in the U.S., according to beverage industry publication Beverage Digest, easily making Primo Brands the most dominant seller of branded plain bottled water. Private label plain bottle water accounts for 62% of the market, while soda giants Coca-Cola, PepsiCo, and Keurig Dr Pepper are all in the single-digits, Beverage Digests data shows.
Premium waters crowded next chapter
Duane Stanford, editor and publisher of Beverage Digest, tells Fast Company that premium-priced water brands like Saratoga and Smartwater have reported growth thats outpaced the total plain bottled water industry, which in total reported a volume increase of 27% over the past decade through 2024.
Saratoga, he says, elevated the brands positioning through a focus on distribution to fine dining restaurants, hotels, and other hospitality channels. They made a conscious effort to do a lot more with that brand and premiumize it and take advantage of that blue bottle, adds Stanford.
Primo Brands says that the companys premium portfolio, which includes Saratoga and The Mountain Valley Spring Water, posted a 126% increase in retail sales for the first 11 months of 2025 versus the same period a year ago, citing retail scan data from Circana.
But the category is competitive and rival brands have also rolled out major ad campaigns in 2025. Coca-Colas Smartwater reunited with pitchwoman Jennifer Aniston for a new campaign as macroeconomic pressures have dampened some demand for pricy water. Around the same time, ival Sanpellegrino, which is owned by Nestle, debuted an ad spot with The Sopranos stars Michael Imperioli and Steve Schirripa.
Primo Brands has also leaned on celebrities for its advertising, including the Saratoga-Diggins spot and an advertising campaign starring Perfect Pitch actresses Anna Kendrick and Rebel Wilson to promote the Splash Refresher brand.
Tillman says it is key for Primo Brands to differentiate the marketing strategy for the glass adorned Saratoga and Mountain Valley from the regional water brands like Poland Spring and Deer Park, a portfolio of six names that focus on more hyperlocalized marketing and particularly leverage a sponsorship with Major League Baseball. Some of those brands are big sellersPoland Springs is a billion dollar brand thats only sold in six statesbut, the intention is to keep them regional, says Tillman.
Saratogas fine dining efforts are also continuing through the work the brand does with Riese, a German-born water expert who created his first menu to explain regional variations and flavor in his home country in 2005. When it comes to water, our most important beverage on this planet, were treating it as a commodity, Riese tells Fast Company.
He works with restaurants like Gwen, the Los Angeles Michelin-starred restaurant by chef Curtis Stone, to cultivate a water menu with selections from nine different countries, including Fiji from the Fiji Islands and Frances Evian. Saratogas sparking water has enough fizz that it can be enjoyed with appetizers as a champagne replacement, says Riese, who works with Primo Brands as a paid partner.
I dont see water as hydration, says Riese. And I think, especially here in America, a lot of people don’t understand and don’t know it yet, that there’s an epicurean side to water.
President Donald Trump’s plan to take control of Venezuela’s oil industry and ask American companies to revitalize it after capturing President Nicolás Maduro in a raid isn’t likely to have a significant immediate impact on oil prices.Venezuela’s oil industry is in disrepair after years of neglect and international sanctions, so it could take years and major investments before production can increase dramatically. But some analysts are optimistic that Venezuela could double or triple its current output of about 1.1 million barrels of oil a day to return to historic levels fairly quickly.“While many are reporting Venezuela’s oil infrastructure was unharmed by U.S. military actions, it has been decaying for many many years and will take time to rebuild,” said Patrick De Haan, who is the lead petroleum analyst at gasoline price tracker GasBuddy.American oil companies will want a stable regime in the country before they are willing to invest heavily, and the political picture remained uncertain Saturday with Trump saying that the United States is in charge while the current Venezuelan vice president argued, before Venezuela’s high court ordered her to assume the role of interim president, that Maduro should be restored to power.“But if it seems like the U.S. is successful in running the country for the next 24 hours, I would say there would be a lot of optimism that U.S. energy companies could come in and revitalize the Venezuelan oil industry fairly quickly,” said Phil Flynn, a senior market analyst at the Price Futures Group.And if Venezuela can grow into an oil production powerhouse, Flynn said “that could cement lower prices for the longer term” and put more pressure on Russia.Speaking to reporters on Air Force One on Sunday, Trump said oil companies are “going to go in and rebuild this system.”A major shift in oil prices wasn’t expected because Venezuela is a member of OPEC, so its production is already accounted for there. And there is currently a surplus of oil on the global market.The price of U.S. crude oil lost 23 cents early Monday to $57.09 per barrel. Brent crude, the international standard, gave up 18 cents to $60.57 per barrel.
Proven reserves
Venezuela is known to have the world’s largest proven crude oil reserves of approximately 303 billion barrels, according to the U.S. Energy Information Administration. That accounts for roughly 17% of all global oil reserves.So international oil companies have reason to be interested in Venezuela. Exxon Mobil didn’t immediately respond to a request for comment Saturday.ConocoPhillips spokesperson Dennis Nuss said by email that the company “is monitoring developments in Venezuela and their potential implications for global energy supply and stability. It would be premature to speculate on any future business activities or investments.”Chevron is the only one with significant operations in Venezuela, where it produces about 250,000 barrels a day. Chevron, which first invested in Venezuela in the 1920s, does business in the country through joint ventures with the state-owned company Petróleos de Venezuela S.A., commonly known as PDVSA.“Chevron remains focused on the safety and wellbeing of our employees, as well as the integrity of our assets. We continue to operate in full compliance with all relevant laws and regulations,” Chevron spokesman Bill Turenne said.But even with those massive reserves, Venezuela has been producing less than 1% of the world’s crude oil supply. Corruption, mismanagement and U.S. economic sanctions saw production steadily decline from the 3.5 million barrels per day pumped in 1999 to today’s levels.The problem isn’t finding the oil. It’s a question of the political environment and whether companies can count on the government to live up to their contracts. Back in 2007, then President Hugo Chávez nationalized much of the oil production and forced major players like ExxonMobil and ConocoPhillips out.“The issue is not just that the infrastructure is in bad shape, but it’s mostly about how do you get foreign companies to start pouring money in before they have a clear perspective on the political stability, the contract situation and the like,” said Francisco Monaldi, who is the director of the Latin American energy program at Rice University.But the infrastructure does need significant investment.“The estimate is that in order for Venezuela to increase from one million barrels per day that is what it produces today to four million barrels, it will take about a decade and about a hundred billion dollars of investment,” Monaldi said.
Strong demand
Venezuela produces the kind of heavy crude oil that’s needed for diesel fuel, asphalt and other fuels for heavy equipment. Diesel is in short supply around the world because of the sanctions on oil from Venezuela and Russia and because America’s lighter crude oil can’t easily replace it.Years ago, American refineries on the Gulf Coast were optimized to handle that kind of heavy crude at a time when U.S. oil production was falling and Venezuelan and Mexican crude was plentiful. So refineries would love to have more access to Venezuela’s crude because it would help them operate more efficiently, and it tends to be a little cheaper.Boosting Venezuelan production could also make it easier to put pressure on Russia because Europe and the rest of the world could get more of the diesel and heavy oil they need from Venezuela and stop buying from Russia.“There’s been a big benefit for Russia to see Venezuela’s oil industry collapse. And the reason is because they were a competitor on the global stage for that oil market,” Flynn said.
Complicated legal picture
But Matthew Waxman, a Columbia University law professor who was a national security official in the George W. Bush administration, said seizing control of Venezuela’s resources opens up additional legal issues.“For example, a big issue will be who really owns Venezuela’s oil?” Waxman wrote in an email. “An occupying military power can’t enrich itself by taking another state’s resources, but the Trump administration will probably claim that the Venezuelan government never rightfully held them.”But Waxman, who served in the State and Defense departments and on the National Security Council under Bush, noted that “we’ve seen the administration talk very dismissively about international law when it comes to Venezuela.”
Associated Press writers Matt O’Brien, Ben Finley, Darlene Superville and Rio Yamat contributed to this report.
Josh Funk, AP Business Writer
Most people never change careers, which is remarkable when you consider how little evidence most of us had when we chose our first one.
For many professionals, early career decisions are shaped less by talent or long-term fit than by convenience and coincidence. We follow friends into certain degrees, accept the first decent offer, listen to family advice, or pursue interests that feel meaningful at 18 but prove less durable at 38. These choices are understandable, but they are weak predictors of where our strengths will compound over time, or of what will sustain both performance and satisfaction across decades of work. In essence, we follow our own or other peoples intuition rather than facts or data, which is rarely a recipe for success.
The problem is further compounded by how fast the ground has shifted, especially over the past decades.
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Even before the rise of generative AI, career predictability had been steadily eroding. Globalization, repeated economic shocks, declining job tenure, the collapse of clear promotion ladders, and the shift from stable organizational careers to project-based and boundary-less work all contributed to rising uncertainty. Longitudinal labor data shows that occupational half-lives were shrinking well before automation became a mainstream concern, with entire roles emerging and disappearing within a decade. In parallel, individuals were expected to manage their own employability, continuously update skills, and absorb risks once carried by employers or institutions.
AI has not created this uncertainty so much as amplified it, accelerating the obsolescence of skills, compressing career ladders, and blurring professional boundaries. Knowledge and technical expertise, once reliable sources of differentiation, are increasingly commoditized. At the same time, employers place growing value on judgment, learning agility, influence, and curiosity, capabilities that universities still struggle to measure or systematically develop. The result is a widening gap between what people trained for, what they are good at, and what the labor market actually rewards.
It is therefore no surprise that career anxiety is rising, even among people who appear successful on paper. Gallup data shows that roughly 60% of employees feel emotionally detached at work, while fewer than one in four strongly believe their job aligns with their strengths. LinkedIn data consistently finds that the average worker will change roles every three to four years, yet meaningful career pivots remain rare and often delayed until dissatisfaction becomes acute.
At the same time, mobility has slowed. After the Great Resignation came what economists now call the Big Stay: people feel stuck rather than settled. They are rethinking their careers cognitively, but postponing action behaviorally. In other words, job hugging has replaced job hopping.
So how can you tell whether you are merely going through a rough patch or whether it is genuinely time for a career pivot? Decades of research on career development, identity, and motivation point to four reliable signals.
1. Your learning has stalled, not just your motivation
One of the most robust predictors of engagement and career satisfaction is perceived progress. When people feel they are learning, they tolerate stress and uncertainty better. When learning stops, even high performers disengage.
Professor Herminia Ibarras research on career transitions shows that people rarely pivot successfully through introspection alone. Clarity follows action, not the other way around. If your role no longer exposes you to new skills, perspectives, or problems, that is not a temporary slump but a structural constraint. Before quitting outright, experiment: Be ready to fail smart, in the sense of learning from your experience and becoming wiser as a consequence. As the saying goes, experience is what you get when you didnt get what you wanted to get. For example, take on side projects, advisory roles, or temporary assignments that test alternative identities. Stagnation becomes dangerous only when experimentation stops.
2. Your strengths no longer translate into value
Many careers falter not because people lose competence, but because the market stops rewarding what they are good at. Technological change makes this especially common. Skills that once differentiated professionals are automated, standardized, or absorbed into platforms. As I have illustrated in one of my previous books, AI is far more likely to automate tasks within jobschanging the skills constellation needed to perform themthan actual jobs.
Research on personjob fit shows that sustained misalignment between strengths and role predicts burnout and underperformance, even among conscientious high achievers. A useful diagnostic question is whether your best contributions still feel essential or merely adequate. Successful pivots rarely involve abandoning strengths. They involve redeploying them where they matter more.
3. Your career identity has become rigid
Ibarras work highlights that career change is as much an identity transition as a skills transition. People delay pivots not because they lack optios, but because they are overly attached to who they think they are supposed to be. This is also why authenticity is overrated: Why limit yourself to your past and present self when you can instead create or sculpt a broader, more diverse, and richer version of yourself?
This is where the squiggly careers concept, popularized by Helen Tupper and Sarah Ellis of Amazing If, is especially useful. Modern careers are no longer linear ladders but adaptive paths, shaped by lateral moves, pauses, reinventions, and redefinitions of success. If you feel compelled to defend your current title, industry, or trajectory rather than evolve it, you may be protecting a legacy identity rather than building a future one. Indeed, progress is not a straight line!
4. You are succeeding externally but disengaging internally
One of the most overlooked signals is sustained performance paired with declining well-being. Longitudinal studies show that people can maintain output for years after motivation erodes, but at a cost to health, creativity, and long-term employability.
If your reputation is strong but your curiosity, energy, or sense of meaning is steadily diminishing, that is not ingratitude. It is misalignment. Career satisfaction is not a soft outcome. It is a leading indicator of future performance and adaptability.
In short, we tend to romanticize career pivots as bold acts of reinvention. But the evidence suggests the opposite. Successful pivots usually happen through small, low-risk experiments that reshape identity over time, guided less by passion than by a disciplined willingness to revise assumptions in response to reality.
In an era where work will change repeatedly, the real risk is not changing direction too often, but staying in place long after the signals suggest you should move. The most resilient professionals are not those with fixed plans, but those who know when the cost of standing still has quietly begun to exceed the cost of change.
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The geopolitical implications of President Trumps controversial weekend attack on Venezuela and the capture and extradition of its president, Nicolás Maduro, are still being digested by legal and security experts in the two days following the shocking announcement.
What is more certain is the immediate market reaction from a select number of publicly traded stocks that have the potential to be impacted by the military action.
Heres how Americas top energy, defense, and tech stocks are moving on the first trading day after the U.S. intervened in the affairs of its South American neighbor.
Americas oil and energy stocks soar
Some of the most closely watched stocks today will be those of oil and energy giants traded on U.S. exchanges, particularly Chevron Corporation.
The Texas-based oil company is the American energy giant with the biggest footprint in the region, notes CNBC, and thus the one primed to benefit the most from Trumps stated desire to start making money for the country.
But Chevron isnt the only one that stands to benefit.
In a Saturday press conference addressing Americas military intervention, Trump said, Were going to have our very large United States oil companiesthe biggest anywhere in the worldgo in, spend billions of dollars, fix the badly broken infrastructure, the oil infrastructure.
While the president did not name any specific companies, based on premarket trading this morning, investors seem to think that the following oil and energy giants stand to benefit from the intervention:
Chevron (NYSE: CVX): up 7.3%
ExxonMobil (NYSE: XOM): up 4.5%
ConocoPhillips (NYSE: COP): up 7.3%
Halliburton Company (NYSE: HAL): up 10.3%
One interesting thing to note: Two prominent oil companies that trade on the New York Stock Exchange are currently down slightly in premarket trading. Those companies are Shell (NYSE: SHEL), down 0.7%, and BP (NYSE: BP), down 0.7%.
Shell is a British-Dutch company and BP is a British company. Investors may believe that Trump is unlikely to allow foreign oil companieseven those of its alliesto profit from Americas intervention in Venezuela.
But investors are cautious about defense stocks
Americas military intervention in Venezuela suggests that under Trumps second term, the U.S. may engage in a new expansionist hard power policy, directly using its military might to enforce changes around the globe.
Indeed, as noted by Reuters, Trump has already threatened another military operation against a southern neighborthis time in Colombia.
While the moral and legal aspects of such action are debatable, it’s undeniable that an expansion of Americas military action is good for the bottom lines of the countrys most prominent defense companies.
However, investors so far seem to be taking a cautious approach to U.S. companies operating in the defense space, with many companies up only slightly in premarket trading on Monday:
Lockheed Martin (NYSE: LMT): up 1%
RTX (NYSE: RTX): up 0.7%
Northrop Grumman (NYSE: NOC): up 1%
General Dynamics (NYSE: GD): up 1%
The Boeing Company (NYSE: BA): up 0.2%
Defense-adjacent tech stocks are also up
While many of Americas tech giants, including Google and Microsoft, have defense contracts, some smaller tech firms almost exclusively cater to the countrys military and security apparatus.
Such companies likewise stand to benefit from increased U.S. military operations. Yet as of the time of this writing, investors also seem to be taking a more cautious approach to these stocks, which include:
Palantir Technologies (NASDAQ:PLTR): up 3.8%
Honeywell International (NASDAQ:HON): up 0.2%
L3Harris Technologies (NYSE:LHX): up 0.7%
2026 will be a year of architectural showstoppers. Major projects, from corporate headquarters to sports stadiums and museums, will wrap construction and open to the public in 2026, bringing bold, sometimes audacious buildings to cities around the world. Here are nine buildings opening in 2026 to watch for.
[Photo: Vincenzo Lombardo/Getty Images]
Arena Milanoopening in FebruaryMilanDavid Chipperfield Architects
Built partly to host ice hockey games during the 2026 Winter Olympics, Arena Milano is a 16,000-seat multipurpose arena that’s expected to become a new center for sports and concerts in Milan. Pritzker Prize-winning David Chipperfield Architects’ design, done in conjunction with Arup, is the standout venue for this edition of the Olympics. An inverted triple-decker layer cake that calls to mind Frank Lloyd Wright’s Guggenheim Museum in New York, the building is intended to evoke the elliptical form of the city’s former Roman amphitheater.
Guests attend the LACMA First Look Reception on June 26, 2025 in Los Angeles. [Photo: Stefanie Keenan/Getty Images for LACMA]
Los Angeles County Museum of Art’s David Geffen Galleriesopening in AprilLos AngelesPeter Zumthor
Inherently controversial, architect Peter Zumthor’s Wilshire Boulevard-spanning blob-like replacement of Los Angeles County Museum of Art’s (LACMA’s) main gallery buildings has been more than a decade in the making, with no shortage of hand-wringing about its shape, cost, and necessity. The concrete building’s ink blot form spreads across a single elevated floor, marking a hard departure from the museum’s mid-century campus design. One early reviewahead of a slightly odd three-day preview in June 2025 of what was essentially an empty buildingfound the execution of Zumthor’s vision flawed, but also calls the building a refreshingly risk-taking piece of architecture.
View this post on Instagram A post shared by Studio Gang (@studiogang)
Hudson Valley Shakespeare Theateropening in JuneGarrison, New YorkStudio Gang
The Samuel H. Scripps Theater Center is the first permanent, purpose-built stage for Hudson Valley Shakespeare, an open air theater company that has been performing under a glorified tent since 1987. Tucked under a swoopy timber tortoise shell of a canopy, the new theater was designed by Studio Gang to shield performers and audience members from the elements and the sun’s glare during dusk performances. It’s also a picture frame for the site’s epic view, opening fully behind the stage to provide audiences a panorama of the ridgelines of the Hudson Valley.
[Photo: Edward C. Robison III/courtesy of Crystal Bridges Museum of Art]
Crystal Bridges Museum of American Art Expansionopening in JuneBentonville, ArkansasSafdie Architects
The 2011 opening of the Crystal Bridges Museum of American Art in Northwest Arkansas was a bold investment by Walmart heir Alice L. Walton in broadening access to world class art beyond the typical metropolitan centers of the U.S. Now, 15 years later, Safdie Architects has returned to broaden the museum’s reach even further. The project expands the museum’s space by 50% while extending the aesthetics of the original design. Future visitors may be unable to tell where the expansion begins, or that there ever even was one.
[Image: Snhetta/Theodore Roosevelt Library]
Theodore Roosevelt Presidential Libraryopening in JulyMedora, North DakotaSnhetta
Set in the wide openness of North Dakota where Theodore Roosevelt ranched for years before becoming the 26th president of the United States, the new Theodore Roosevelt Presidential Library is a stunning earthship of rammed earth, mass timber, and a nearly camouflaged roofline. Designed by Snhetta to physically blend into the landscape, the building is meant to reflect Roosevelt’s environmental stewardship and deep connection to the landscape of the North Dakota Badlands.
[Photo: Al Bello/Getty Images]
Buffalo Bills’ Highmark Stadiumopening in summer 2026Orchard Park, New YorkPopulous
The Buffalo Bills NFL team is moving on from its previous home of more than 50 years into a brand new 60,000-seat stadium. Despiteor possibly because ofBuffalo’s snowy winters, the stadium was designed to be an open bowl, welcoming the elements onto the field and all but the uppermost stadium seats. The stadium’s designer, sports architecture specialists Populous, calls it “one of the most intimidating home field environments in the league.”
[Photo: Mario Tama/Getty Images]
Lucas Museum of Narrative Artopening in SeptemberLos AngelesMAD
One of the most anticipated new cultural institutions in recent years, George Lucas’s $1 billion museum is hotly awaited both for its extensive art collection and its far-out architecture. Designed by MAD Architects with an integrated landscape by Studio-MLA, the spaceship-shaped building is a curvaceous modern behemoth in Los Angeles history-laden Exposition Park. Though his firm has built dozens of shapely museums and opera houses across China, this will be lead architect Ma Yansong’s first major cultural institution in the U.S.
View this post on Instagram
Atlassian Centralopening in NovemberSydneySHoP Architects
When software giant Atlassian’s new headquarters building opens in 2026, this 39-story skyscraper will be the world’s tallest hybrid timber building. Made up primarily of six mass timber four-level buildings-within-the-building, the tower encases everything in a criss-crossing steel exoskeleton wrapped in operable glass windows. Designed by SHoP Architects, the tower is also a hybrid at ground level, preserving a historic train shed and converting part of it into the tower’s new lobby.
[Photo: Sadak Souici/ZUMA Press Wire/Shutterstock]
Guggenheim Abu Dhabiopening TBDAbu Dhabi, United Arab Emirates Gehry Partners
Possibly the last major project to be designed by architect Frank Gehry before his death in December 2025, the long-awaited Guggenheim Abu Dhabi is expected to open to the public sometime in 2026, 20 years after it was first announced. Appearing to be a jumble of funnels, tubes, and cubes, the museum fully embodies Gehry’s signature style. Its government backers hope the museum also taps into the energy of previous Gehry projects, like its counterpart museum in Bilbao, Spain. One official recently told a local newspaper the museum aspired to be “a civic space.”
Hello and welcome to Modern CEO! I’m Stephanie Mehta, CEO and chief content officer of Mansueto Ventures. Each week this newsletter explores inclusive approaches to leadership drawn from conversations with executives and entrepreneurs, and from the pages of Inc. and Fast Company. If you received this newsletter from a friend, you can sign up to get it yourself every Monday morning.
Twenty twenty-six will be a year of financial corrections, AI-driven biological breakthroughs, and new thinking about cybersecurity and executive protectionat least according to the CEOs I recently asked to provide bold prognostications. Heres how 12 of them responded.
New threats, new protections
Rick Caccia, CEO of AI security platform WitnessAI, believes 2026 will bring the first major AI-driven cyberattack that causes significant financial damage. After that happens, he predicts corporations will augment their existing security budgets, and those deals will close three times faster than current cycles as companies move fast to secure their systems.
Currently, enterprise AI spending remains largely compliance-focused as companies prepare for regulatory requirements in the absence of active threats, Caccia says. An AI-powered attack will highlight the need for additional security investment, he says, adding, This will create a new market dynamic where AI security moves from nice to have to business critical overnight.
Ted Bailey, founder and CEO of Dataminr, and Balaji Yelamanchili, CEO of ThreatConnect, see business leaders demanding threat intelligence thats tailored to their specific organizations in 2026. Amid tight budgets and staffing shortagesnot to mention AI threatscompanies need real-time intelligence about threats, communicated in the context of their businesses and investments.
They say information that cant answer the question How does this affect my organization? is unhelpful, and that 2026 will see organizations matching data about external threats with the effectiveness of their internal controls to understand their true vulnerabilities.
Filip Kaliszan, CEO and cofounder of software-driven building security company Verkada, predicts that attacks on politicians and executives will drive a new era of investment and standardization in executive protection. Rising threats, ranging from harassment and doxxing to high-profile physical attacks such as the killing of UnitedHealthcares Brian Thompsonwill prompt boards of directors to think differently about C-suite security.
Just as cybersecurity teams measure dwell times, breach costs, and vulnerability exposure, executive protection teams will increasingly quantify risk reduction and operational impacthow many threats were identified, potential losses avoided, or disruptions mitigated, he says.
AI infrastructure evolves
KR Sridhar, founder, chairman, and CEO of Bloom Energy, maker of fuel-cell energy systems, predicts that AI data centers and large-scale manufacturing facilities that need massive, reliable energy will move to onsite power rather than relying solely on the central grid. As AIs explosive growth collides with grid limitations, businesses and regulators will accelerate adoption of next-generation energy models that deliver clean, affordable, and abundant power, Sridhar says. This is essential for building a future where innovation and sustainability go hand in hand.
And Sami Issa, director and CEO of Global AI, believes the world will treat sovereign AIa nations ability to use its own infrastructure and data to produce AIthe same way it treats national energy grids. This shift may look sudden from the outside, but from my vantage point, the demand signals are already impossible to ignore, Issa says. Nations will compete to secure gigawatt-scale, single-tenant capacity, and the organizations that move early will define the next decade of AI capability and security.
Evan Beard, CEO and cofounder of Standard Bots, predicts the United States will hit 45,000 new industrial robot installations as AI-powered robots prove they can handle sustained production. He believes that first-time automation buyers, especially small to midsize manufacturers, will embrace the technology as industrial robots become more accessible and affordable. By year-end, those new deployments will empirically confirm what American manufacturers already tell us: When companies adopt advanced robotics, they become more cost-competitive, improve productivity, and retain or grow their workforce in more technical and higher-wage roles, he says.
AI: big and small
Bam Azizi, CEO and cofounder at Mesh, a global payment network, predicts the true engine of growth for agentic commerceAI agents handling digital transactionswont be fueled by consumer shopping but by business-to-business applications, especially micropayment processing. “Agents are set to perform thousands of high-velocity, fractional transactions for API (application programming interface) calls and cross-border services that traditional card rails cant handle, Azizi says.
Micha Breakstone, cofounder and CEO of biotech company Somite AI, predicts venture capitalists this year will prioritize investing in biotech companies that essentially transform cellular biology into a predictive engineering science that can transform medicine and drug development. He asserts that these companies will be valued less like traditional biotech and more like Tesla. The value proposition to investors is not just the individual car (the drug), but the autonomous driving software (the platform) that powers it.
A coming correction
A few CEOs expressed concerns about overheated financial markets. Ive been in private equity for 31 years, and Ive never seen anything like the current level of froth in the credit markets, says Graham Weaver, founder and CEO of Alpine Investors. Indeed, corporate bond issuance and growth in the $1.1 trillion private credit market showed little sign of slowing last fall.
“I cant predict when this endsmaybe its 2026, maybe notbut as night follows day, it will end, Weaver says. When it does, and when debt becomes less available and the froth begins to fade, [over-leveraged] companies could face a very painful reckoning. My advice is to prepare now so the de-leveraging becomes a soft landing rather than a crash landing.
Sam Miller, CEO and cofounder of payments app Kasheesh, offers an even starker warning: In 2026, America could face the largest financialcorrection in modern history, and AI will not be the safety net for everyday Americans. As AI scales, he says, corporations will gain efficiency and speed, but small businesses and consumers will struggle. We need AI built for inclusion, designed for those being left behind, to create a financial system that helps everyone rise, not just those already ahead.
Then again . . .
If these projections feel unsettling, you can always take solace in the words of Kunal Kapoor, CEO of Morningstar, who takes a refreshingly contrarian stance: I predict that most predictions will not come true! (Disclosure: Morningstars executive chairman, Joe Mansueto, owns Inc. and Fast Companys parent company.) Kapoor adds: Put me in the optimist camp when it comes to thinking about the impact changing technology will have on our industry, the economy, or business landscape.
Indeed, being a Modern CEO requires a good measure of enthusiasm and sanguinity in the face of change and uncertainty, which were sure to experience throughout 2026.
Your predictions
What big changes are you anticipating in 2026? Send your bold predictions to me at stephaniemehta@mansueto.com, and Ill compile the most compelling prognostications in a future newsletter.
Read more: unpredictable predictions
Axios Pro Ratas Dan Primack collected one-line predictions on AI, life sciences, and more
Three futurists weigh in on how AI will change the world in 2026
AI predictions from a ChatGPT pioneer
A few months ago, I was scrolling through TikTok when I came across a video that stopped me in my tracks. It starred an animated frog, dressed in a wizard hat, robe, and pink nail polish, superimposed over a psychedelic background and speaking in a hypnotizing, ethereal voice. Its time to stop doing nothing, and start doing something,” he crooned. “I cast . . . motivation!
Id stumbled across the Pine Wizard Froga recurring character on the official TikTok account of household cleaning fluid Pine-Sol. Pine-Sols page, with its surrealist visuals and hypnotizing songs, is an example of what I call brain-rot-brand TikTok: Its a subgenre of digital marketing that rejects traditional advertising in favor of the kind of content that actually performs well on TikTok and Instagram Reels. Rather than selling products directly, brain-rot-brand TikTok embraces head-turning, often nonsensical choices, like fried visuals, abrasive design, and unsettling storylines, to spread brand awareness andpresumablyboost sales.
A few years ago, most companies wouldnt have touched brain-rot TikTok with a 10-foot pole. But as brands like Duolingo have built entire communities around bucking digital brand norms, others have gradually jumped on the bandwagon. Nutter Butter might be the first brand that went full brain rot, with hits like a Nutter Butter taking a trip to the playground on what appeared to be way too much acid. More recently, Brita, Amtrak, Sour Patch Kids, Brisk Canada, Mug Root Beer, and Dr Pepper have adopted some flavor of brain-rot branding.
[Images: Amtrak]
The strategy appears to be working. According to Clorox, which owns Brita and Pine-Sol, in the past year Pine-Sol was the only brand to crack the top 15 in TikToks #cleaning category (the other14 were creators with followings). In June, Britas TikTok content raked in more than 44 million views. In July, Amtrak scored its most-viewed Instagram post of all time by trying out a weirder brand voice. And multiple years into its brain-rot experiment, Nutter Butter still regularly amasses millions of views with its TikToks.
But as someone whos now likely watched hundreds of these videos (for research, obviously), Ive been wondering: Is brain-rot-brand TikTok cringe yet? As more and more brands try to break through the crowded attention economy with wackier social concepts, at what point does it stop feeling like theyre in on the joke and more like a desperate plea for attention?
To get to the bottom of this query, I rang up Ryan Benson. Hes the self-described social media menace who led Nutter Butters original brain-rot strategy, helped build Sour Patch Kidss uniquely threatening brand voice, and has since gone on to found his own creative agency, Loudmouth. We discussed Nutter Butter’s creepy 60s commercial, a tea brand that’s weirdly into cheese, and Dunkin’s horny spider donut.
This interview has been edited for length and clarity.
Can you give a bit of background on the brand story you were telling with Nutter Butter? Why did it make sense to go so weirdeven weirder than Duolingo, which many people cite as the OG unhinged brand?
With Nutter Butter, our agency contract was for I think 23 Mondelz brands. Nutter Butter was a tier threethere were three tiers, so they were on the bottom.
Like a C-list snack?
Yes, exactly. And that meant the resources that were available to each brand were fully dependent on what tier they were. So tier one is Oreo, and as you can imagine Oreo has six agencies working for it and endless resources. There are ads on TV, billboards, all sorts of agencies. Nutter Butter had $2,000 in an expense account and me.
The narrative we were working with was, this is an old cookie, there’s not a lot of story here. What can we do to get people talking about Nutter Butter? And as we experimented with different formatsbrain rot being one of thosewhat we learned is people were left asking, Is Nutter Butter okay? And we were like, Hey, it’s not, How do I buy a Nutter Butter off the shelf, but they’re talking about this.
[Images: Nutter Butter]
So then we learned how to feed the conversations that they wanted to see. We picked up from the comments like, Oh, they’re talking about this aspect of the photolet’s make sure that we edit that into the next one. Or, They’re noticing that we put Morse code in the bottom of the image. Let’s make sure we put a message in a different coded language in the next one. It actually became a conversation.
Through that, we developed Aidan and brought back the Nutter Butter man from the 60s commercial, and we really started to reintroduce all these creepy analog horror themes. [Editors note: Aidan is an original recurring character in Nutter Butters videos, based on one of the brands biggest online fans.]
I think what some people miss when they’re like, Let’s copy and paste the Nutter Butter approach, is that we didn’t have to make things up. We were just pulling from the old commercial that exists already.
If you were consulting for another brand, how would you advise them on whether they should get in on this strategy?
The first question I would be asking is, Why? And if their reason is anything at all about Nutter Butter, I would tell them no.
What made Nutter Butter so successful is that we already had the audience that was receptive to the weirdness. We were playing off of things that we sawthey were posting, they were reposting, they were interacting onso we knew that our audience had a shared interest. We understood that some of the outrage that we saw was actually fanship. They were following, they wanted to find out, they were up for the antics. And somehow, at the end of the day, we actually influenced people to go buy more off the shelves. Once the client saw that it was actually somehow affecting sales numbers, they were like, Okay, go for it.
I encourage everyone to try out-of-the-box things and do new things for brands that haven’t had attention on them. But if the only reason you want to do it is because it worked for Nutter Butter, go back to the drawing board, because I don’t want you to waste your time. Sure, weird people might see it, but are you going to alienate all of your actual followers?
Are you also noticing more of this brain-rot-brand strategy online? If so, Im curious if there are any examples that come to mind.
Yeah, absolutely. One of my new favorite things that I’ve just developed as a personality trait is I attract people sending me things from brands that are going rogue or going brain rot, and they’re like, This is your legacy. You did this.
Off the top of my head, some brands that I love that are doing the brain-rot approach right now: Mug Root Beer is insane; Brisk Canada is insane; Dr Pepper is doing a big one right nownot necessarily analog horror vibes, but they are deep-frying images, they’re purposefully low quality. Its stupid, irreverent humor. These are promising to me because they all seem like they’re playing off the same energy of like, Oh, it worked in the comments last time. Brisk Canada’s thing is cheese. They make tea in a can, but they love shredding cheese onto the can. They love just copious amounts of cheese. It makes no sense. They don’t sell cheese.
[Image: courtesy Duolingo]
What kinds of mistakes do you see companies making when they try this out?
The thing that I see being a problem is that some of these brands have adopted this brain-rot strategy not understanding that it’s a means of communication that transcends traditional marketing. It does that for a reason, because we’ve developed this ability to communicate without selling. But then if a brand comes and co-ops this ability to communicate without selling in order to sell, theyre just kind of shitting on it.
I think that we will continue to see brands try to adopt this, but I dont know how many will be successful, because they have to understand that at the end of the day, they’re selling to people who experience real things and experience a real world outside. There are two different worlds operating, and the mastery is understanding how to join these communities and have conversations that are two-sided, instead of just showing up and being like, Hello, you dumb kidsyou like cheese on your tea? Well, I have a six-pack and it’s $29.99. You lose people. And for some brands, all of this is just a ploy to sell, so it will have issues.
[Image: Dunkin’ Donuts]
I don’t want to make you burn any bridges with brands, but I am curious if you’ve seen anyone try the more unhinged strategy in a way that wasn’t really working for you.
I don’t have any bridges here, so it may burn, but I’m not on the other side. Dunkin Donuts and their spider donut thing. They did a first post with an apology graphic, where they bolded certain letters and it spelled out spidey or something. That was actually duplicative of my work two or three years ago, where I posted an apology from NutterButter and bolded letters to spell Aidan. It was the exact same formatwith their logo and their colorsalmost down to the font. And then they did it again the next year.
This last year, they put a lot of budget into an experiential drive-through where they decorated the store, but I did see some commentary of fans being like, Hey, we’re kind of done with the horny spider donut thing. They’re milking it.
On that note, do you see a point at which we reach a critical mass of this kind of thing? Whats going to happen that makes people say, like, Ugh, this is stupidIm over it?
Honestly, sometimes I question if we’re there. I think back to the evolution of the Nutter Butter account. When I started, we were not immediately posting these deep-fried, demon-in-a-closet-covered-in-peanut-butter-type vibes. We were posting memes and text posts on Twitter and doing brand things. So it’s not like we’re a full anomaly and we’ve never done the things that other brand accounts have done. We tried everything. So I question how many brands right now are in the early stages of what we did and are about to hit a wall of responses of people being like, Meh, because there’s already comments on my old stuff being like, Okay, guys, you’ve played this out too long.
I also questioned the apology trend that hit a couple months ago. For me that was a turning point, because when we did it, we fully understood like, Hey, it’s not normal for brands to post an apology, it could go south. We understood this itself is a little bit risky, absurd, extreme. And then it devolved. I question how many brands are about to be shamed, because going back to what I was saying earlier, this method of communication is supposed to be human-based. I don’t know how many brands are pursuing it with that in mind. If you’re just deploying 15 assets in a campaign that are scheduled, you’re not doing any community management, so there’s no user insights in whatever you’re building. They won’t necessarily feel like they’re along for the ride. It will just be like, Oh, they’re doing an absurdist thing.
If you add in another degree of people doing it just because it worked for Nutter Butter, there’s no natural tie-in. Now you’re just throwing a pizza party for the marketing team. It’s hard to make a prediction, but I just feel like we’re going to see a brand like Palantir get in on it, or were going to see something dystopian, and then everyones going to be like, Weve had enough. I don’t think we’re there yet, but I feel like we’ve been bordering on it.
In a world where trust in institutions is at an all-time low and the pace of change is relentless, the most effective leaders are not those who hide behind polished press releases or corporate jargon. They are the ones who step forward with authentic storiesstories that reveal not just their vision, but their humility, values, and the messy realities of leading in uncertain times. Welcome to the era of the storytelling CEO, where transparency isnt just a buzzword, its the new leadership currency.
Why Stories Matter More Than Ever
For millennia, stories have been the glue that binds communities, shapes cultures, and helps us make sense of the world. Today, as organizations grapple with complex challenges, from digital transformation to climate change, data and strategy alone are not enough. Humans are narrative animals, and stories help us make sense of the world in ways that data and rational arguments often cant. Stories help to build trust, foster empathy, and catalyze action in ways that spreadsheets never will.
Transparency: The Foundation of Innovation Culture
Culture is critical to innovation. The storytelling CEO understands that transparency, sharing not just successes but also failures, doubts, and lessons learned, creates the conditions for new ideas and psychological safety. When leaders model openness through the stories they tell, they give permission for others to do the same, unlocking creativity and risk-taking across the organization.
For example, Satya Nadella at Microsoft championed a learn-it-all culture over a know-it-all one. By sharing stories of his own learning journey, Nadella made it safe for others to experiment, fail, and grow. This shift didnt just improve morale, it drove innovation and business results.
The Five Phases of Story-Centred Leadership
Based on my research and work with thousands of leaders globally, Ive developed a five-phase circular model for story-centred leadership:
Story Listening: Deep listening is the antidote to echo chambers and ego chambers. Walk in the shoes of others to gain empathy and perspective.
Story Building: Craft narratives that are clear, compelling, rooted in purpose and full of sticky details. The best stories answer, why does this matter? for every stakeholder.
Story Shaping: Practice and refine stories with feedback. Authenticity beats perfection, and people connect with whats real, not whats rehearsed.
Story Sharing: Stories are the connective tissue of change. Seed stories throughout the organization to grow a fearless, purpose-led culture.
Story Living: Embody the story through actions and decisions. The most powerful stories are those we live, not just tell.
Stories are not soft, they are our essential software
Many leaders struggle with the idea of storytelling, dismissing it as superficial or soft. As digital transformation efforts repeatedly fail due to lack of buy-in and cultural resistance, the need for narrative becomes clear. If we want our strategies to succeed, we must shift that mindset: stories are our essential software. As a previous Fast Company article notes, The six most common reasons digital transformations fail often boil down to poor communication and lack of shared visiongaps that stories can bridge.
Storytelling is not about spinning fairy tales or sugarcoating reality. Its about making meaning from complexity, surfacing the why behind the what, and inviting others into a shared journey. As one leader, Ian Ellison, told me, Ive learnt the hard way that they (stories) are essential in engaging people in sustainable change.
The Risks of Storytelling and How to Avoid Them
Stories can always be misused, something that were currently seeing on a global scale. In the wrong hands, they can become tools for manipulation or exclusion. The shadow side of storytelling is spin, distraction, and even outright deception. Thats why transparency is so vital. The storytelling CEO must be vigilant about grounding stories in truth, inviting diverse voices and challenge, and acknowledging complexity rather than oversimplifying.
Cross-Cultural Communication: Stories as Bridges
In our globalized world, leaders must navigate cultural differences with sensitivity and skill. Stories are universal, but the way theyre told and received can vary widely. The best leaders are those who listen deeply to the stories of others, adapt their narratives for different audiences, and use storytelling to bridge divides.
The Neuroscience of Storytelling
Understanding how our brains are wired for stories can make us better leaders. Stories activate multiple regions of the brain, making messages more memorable and emotionally resonant. As Fast Company has reported, understanding how your brain works can make you a better leader and storytelling is a key part of that tool kit.
The New Leadership Currency
In a world awash with information but starved for meaning, the storytelling CEO stands out. Transparency, rooted in authentic, purpose-driven stories, is the currency that builds trust, inspires action, and accelerates change. As leaders, our challenge is not just to tell better stories, but to listen, shape, share, and live them every day.
If you want to lead, start by asking: Whats the story youre telling? And is it true, transparent and worth following?
Five Ways to Become a Storytelling CEO
Listen first. Seek out stories from every corner of your organization.
Be humble. Share your failures and lessons learned, not just your wins.
Connect the dots. Use stories to shine a light on your North Star, linking strategy to purpose and values.
Invite others in. Make space for diverse voices and perspectives.
Live your story. Let your actions reinforce your words. And remember: you are speaking volumes before you even open your mouth!
When someone takes a shower at a new apartment complex in Washington, D.C., the water is heated in part by a brewery downstairs.
The mixed-use developmentpart of a larger new neighborhood called the Bridge Districtis designed to be as sustainable as possible. That includes using waste heat from commercial tenants like the brewery to save energy in the apartments.
[Image: courtesy Redbrick LMD]
Atlas Brew Works, a solar-powered brewery that serves craft beers, moved into the building in November. At most breweries, the heat thats generated from the brewing process would be vented outside. But in the new building, any hot water that the brewery doesnt reuse is sent into a heat exchanger, which transfers heat to the hot water loop for the apartments. (The water itself never mixes; tenants are not showering in brewery water.)
[Photo: Atlas Brew Works/Redbrick LMD]
Theyre still ramping up, but theyre starting to make a lot of beer, says William Passmore, managing partner at Redbrick LMD, the developer behind the project. So were using as much of that heat as possible. Were literally transferring the heat to support domestic hot water for all of the units throughout the building.
When the brewery is operating at full capacity and the complexs 757 apartments are fully occupied, around 60% to 70% of the heat for the apartments hot water can come from the brewery. The complex is also designed to be able to harvest heat from other businesses. A small grocery store that will soon open can share waste heat from its refrigerators, for example.
[Image: courtesy Redbrick LMD]
All of this means that residents can save money on energy bills, and the buildings have a lower carbon footprint. The heat exchange system is one piece of a larger sustainability strategy for the development, which is on track to become the largest net-zero carbon residential project in the U.S.
[Photo: Atlas Brew Works/Redbrick LMD]
The development is next to a metro station and a riverside bike trail, so residents can drive less. The all-electric buildings feature a solar array on each rooftopexpected to generate 228 megawatt-hours of electricity each yearwith renewable power purchased to cover additional energy needs. The developers carefully tracked the carbon footprint of construction, measuring the embodied carbon of every piece of material and even how individual construction workers commuted to the site.
They used materials like low-carbon steel and produced 40 different concrete mixes, carefully tailoring the amount of cement for each part of the building, which cut the overall carbon footprint of that material by 35%. In the next phase of the development, another new building will use mass timber construction.
[Image: courtesy Redbrick LMD]
Even though some parts of the process didnt necessarily cost much more from an engineering perspective, it took a commitment to make it happen. You need to have the mindset and the staff and the willingness to invest in it as an organization, Passmore says. Developers typically wouldnt go this far. It’s one of those things that doesn’t sound that difficult. [But as] you start to go and try and do it, [they’re thinking], ‘Oh, you know what? Let’s put this off for the next project, he says.
[Image: courtesy Redbrick LMD]
The developers theory: The work is worth itnot just for the environmental benefit, but because tenants are looking for more sustainable options. In surveys, the companies found that the renters they were targeting in their 20s and 30s wanted options like this.
It differentiates our product, so it helps us with lease-up, Passmore says. We hope it will help down the roadresidents will appreciate it and enjoy the lower utility bills. And perhaps theyll stay a little longer, so that will help us again.
Artificial intelligence certainly didn’t debut in 2025, but it was the year it really started to hit the mainstream. ChatGPT, at the start of the year, had between 300 million and 400 million average weekly users. By October, that number had doubled. Meanwhile, usage of other AI systems, including Perplexity and Google’s Gemini, saw similar leaps in usage.
Now, with 2026 on the horizon, people are wondering what’s next. Fast Company spoke to several analysts and industry experts to get their projections on what we can expect as AI’s influence continues to spread in 2026.
The bubble won’t pop
While the bears on Wall Street continue to talk loudly about an AI bubble, Wedbush’s Dan Ives says those fears are overblown and the AI trade will actually get bigger in 2026. Ives says the consumer AI revolution has not truly begun, and the expected rise of robotics in the years to come, as well as the long runway for corporate use and global expansion, will drive an ongoing tech bull market.
“This AI revolution is just beginning today, and we believe tech stocks and the AI winners should be bought, given our view that this is Year 3 of what will be a 10-year cycle of this AI revolution build-out,” he writes. “We expect tech stocks to be up another 20% in 2026 as this next stage of the AI revolution hits its stride.”
A leap in “lazy thinking”
Not all of the predictions around AI in 2026 are quite so bullish. Gartner sends up a red flag about people’s growing dependence on chatbots and their automatic acceptance of whatever those devices spew out. Through 2026, the analytics firm predicts, there will be an “atrophy of critical-thinking skills due to Gen AI use.” That, it says, will push half of global organizations to require AI-free skills assessments.
“As automation accelerates, the ability to think independently and creatively will become both increasingly rareand increasingly valuable,” Gartner writes.
Gen AI will move from stand-alone sites to search engines
Generative AI chatbots are how many people interact with AI. They don’t require any tech knowledge (although the more you know about how to phrase prompts, the more efficient they are), and they’re free. For tools like ChatGPT and Perplexity, you generally have to visit a stand-alone website to access them. In 2026 and beyond, however, Deloitte says that more people will begin to use generative AI that’s embedded within existing applications, like search engines. “In terms of daily use, accessing Gen AI within a search engine [when a search yields a synthesis of results] will be 300% more common than using any stand-alone Gen AI tool,” the consulting firm writes.
Rise of the robots
While humanoid robots in 2026 may not reach the levels Elon Musk predicts, we are likely to see a substantial increase in AI-driven robotics, Deloitte says. The number of industrial robots is expected to reach 5.5 million. That’s the beginning of a wavewhich could see annual shipments begin to increase until they reach 1 million per year by 2030. That increase, the firm says, will be driven by labor shortages and “exponential advancements in computing power.”
A legal tsunami
AI firms are already facing a number of lawsuits, most prominently involving cases in which plaintiffs argue that AI drove people to take their own lives. That has put a spotlight on the lack of guardrails around the industry. But to date, Washington has shown little interest in setting firm parameters for AI companies. (Some states are attempting to do so, however.)
Gartner predicts that by the end of 2026, there will be more than 2,000 “death by AI” legal claims. The upside of this tragedy, it continues, is that it could finally push regulators to focus on safety issues.
“Black box systemsAI models whose decision-making processes are opaque or difficult to interpretcan misfire, especially in high-stakes sectors like healthcare, finance, and public safety,” the analytics firm writes. “Explainability, ethical design, and clean data will become nonnegotiable.”
