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OpenAI was founded as a nonprofit with a mission to build safe artificial general intelligence for the benefit of humanity. For a while, that structure made sense. But in 2019, the company made a discovery that changed everything: Scaling up AI modelswith more data, compute, and parametersled to predictably stronger results. The insight was formalized in a 2020 paper titled “Scaling Laws for Neural Language Models,” and it reshaped OpenAIs trajectory. That same year, the company released GPT-3, a model 100 times larger than GPT-2. Microsoft invested. Venture capitalists piled in. Inside the company, employees began to see Sam Altman as the one who could turn a nonprofit breakthrough into a world-changingand highly profitablebusiness. And yet OpenAI remained a nonprofit company. Seen in that light, yesterdays announcement that OpenAIs for-profit arm will become a public benefit company (PBC) is no big surprise. Under the newly proposed structure, OpenAI will continue operating as a for-profit AI business housed within a nonprofit parent. (Altman said last year he wanted to free the for-profit from the nonprofit parent.) We made the decision for the nonprofit to retain control of OpenAI after hearing from civic leaders and engaging in constructive dialogue with the offices of the Attorney General of Delaware and the Attorney General of California, OpenAI board member Bret Taylor said in a blog post Monday. The change is that the for-profit part will now be a public benefit corporation and no longer a capped profit entity. Now theres no limit on how much OpenAI shareholdersincluding investors and employeescan earn. Dropping the capped-profit model was also a condition of OpenAIs last two funding rounds. In the most recent (and largest), lead investor SoftBank stipulated that OpenAI adopt a new corporate structure by the end of 2025. Investors are willing to bet big on OpenAI, but they want the potential for big returns. Altman and others at OpenAI have said that bringing in revenue has become more important with the realization that building progressively better models will require massive investments in infrastructure and computing power. The key worry about Sam Altman is that, under his leadership, the company might prioritize pushing toward superintelligent AI without adequately safety-testing its models or mitigating their risks. The new PBC structure likely wont do much to quiet those concerns. OpenAIs announcement is effectively a commitment to maintain the status quo, with some changes around the margins, Public Citizen co-president Robert Weissman said in a statement Monday night. Under the new arrangement, OpenAI nonprofit will continue to have a controlling interest in the for-profit, now accompanied by some shareholding. Since the nonprofit has done nothing discernible in the past to control or in any way restrain the for-profit, theres no reason to think it will do so in the future.” Elon Musk, an early founder of OpenAI, sued the company for violating its original nonprofit mission to develop human-level AI for the good of humanity. OpenAI says Musk, who owns a competing AI company, is simply trying to slow its progress. Both claims may be correct. OpenAI will continue releasing new models at a rapid clip, and it will keep the technical details of its best models tightly held as trade secrets. The nonprofits board of directors, which once challenged Altmans commitment to safety and even managed to briefly oust him for dishonesty in late 2023, is now filled with people more aligned with the CEOs goals. And the nonprofit board will receive a significant number of shares in the for-profit public benefit corporation. Microsoft will have to sign off on the new structure, but why wouldnt it? Even though OpenAIs relationship with Microsoft isnt as tight or aligned as it once was, Microsoft still stands to benefit from maximizing the financial payoff of the large stake it holds in the AI startup.
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E-Commerce
Target Corp. is pushing back on media reports this week that it has changed its policies around self-checkout technology in response to shoplifting or customer dissatisfaction. A number of news outlets reported over the weekend and yesterday that the retail giant has limited self-checkout registers to 10 items or fewer, but Target made that announcement more than a year ago. “Target is not removing self-checkout,” a spokesperson told Fast Company when reached for comment. “We offer it in the vast majority of our stores and have no plans to change this.” The company declined to share additional details about how theftor “shrink” in industry parlancehas shaped its self-checkout policies. At the time of its original announcement in March 2024, Target said its 10-items-or-fewer rule was based on “guest feedback.” In a fact sheet updated this week, Target said that its transaction times have improved at both human-run and automated checkout lanes since the policy was implemented and that customers typically like having both options. Does self-checkout actually impact inventory “shrink”? Some surveys have indicated that self-checkout options can and do contribute to shoplifting, as highlighted in a research roundup published by Capital One in February. Even as the technology has become commonplace over the last two decades, companies are still trying to strike the right balance between being technology forward and letting technology run roughshod over the customer experienceand sometimes they admittedly veer too far in the latter direction. At the same time, our perception of how bad the problem is might not always match reality: While 69% of respondents to a 2023 LendingTree survey said that they believed self-checkout lanes make it easier to steal, only 15% admitted to actually doing so. Is 15% bad enough to abandon self-checkout in favor of having more human cashiers? That’s up to retailers and their accountants to figure out. In the short term, don’t expect big changes at Target. The company only admits that it will “continue evolving to match guests with the right checkout options so they can get what they need.”
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E-Commerce
Ive had more caviar since starting work on the Celestiq than I have during the entirety of my career at General Motors, Erin Crossley, Cadillacs design director for color and trim, says before tucking into a ramekin at Gucci Osteria on Rodeo Drive. The uptick in caviar consumption is a leading indicator that Cadillac is going upscale. As design director for the Cadillac Celestiq, the American luxury brands new, bespoke electric vehicle, Crossley sits with customers from all over the world and mines more than 350,000 permutations to deliver their perfect personalization. [Photo: GM] The low-slung EV with a 303 mile range starts at $340,000, pushing the American automaker into the realm of German, Italian and English luxury sports cars. But the price can tick much, much higher, with options from leather floors to eucalyptus fiber mats. We know that these clients have the means to do anything, she says. Its like building a house: How detailed do you want to get? [Photo: GM] Return to glory days Cadillac owned the luxury market for most of the twentieth century before ceding share to more exciting foreign rivals. GM hopes the arrival of the Celestiq heralds the brands comeback and represents a return to its glory days. With its exaggerated proportions and brash demeanor, the Celestiqs design evokes the American style and optimism of Cadillacs midcentury heyday, according to Michael Simcoe, VP of Global Design. Simcoe, the handlebar-mustachioed designer who is set to retire this year, considers the Celestiq his swan song. [Photo: GM] For Cadillac to come back as a brand, it needed to do what Cadillac had always done, and that’s create vehicles that exaggerated proportion and were very American in their style, he tells Fast Company. Its a very optimistic, very strident view of the world, which was very big in the 50s through 60s and 70s in America. In particular, the Celestiq drew inspiration from the 1957 Eldorado Brougham, a limited-edition sedan filled with luxury features; it was Cadillacs last hand-built car for nearly 70 years. With its low stance, large wheels and wheelbase longer than the full-size Cadillac Escalade SUVs, the Celestiq defies category, Simcoe says. At this level of luxury, everything is much bigger, he says. Think about the other premium brands around, and they’re traditionally executed as a three box sedan with a big trunk. But the Celestiq has a low, fastback profile that makes it stand out on the road. [Photo: GM] Built by hand GM builds two Celestiqs a day on average, a far cry from the automakers higher volume vehicles churned out on a production line. The car is built by hand in Warren, Michigan, at GMs Tech Centera midcentury marvel itself commissioned by legendary designer and automotive executive Harley Earl and created by renowned architect Eero Saarinen. [Photo: GM] But the car also uses 3D-printed parts made from aluminum, stainless steel, and titanium. And like the Brougham, which introduced air suspension to the market, the Celestiq showcases a couple of other firsts: a smart glass roof featuring four quadrants for passengers to control opacity, as well as electronic shutters that obscure screen content while driving and can be controlled remotely via a QR code on the phone. It’s very rare in an engineer’s career where you get to go completely off script and make up a bespoke car, says Tony Roma, executive chief engineer. The idea was, when you’re making a statement to hang your whole brand on, you don’t want somebody to walk up and find that piece of pastic and go, Oh, really, like, this is the best you could do, right? For the interior, it became an obsession of the team that all of the little metal parts were either printed or made from finely detailed casting. [Photo: GM] Who wants to buy a $340,000 Cadillac? Cadillac has declined to reveal the number of Celestiqs it plans to build, but it will need to find a viable customer base ready to spend somewhere in the mid-six figures for a Detroit-made car. The value proposition lies in the customization process, which usually takes place in a screening room at Cadillac House in New York or at a mobile popup like the Pendry West Hollywood, where Crossley and her team walked me through a process so extensive I forgot I wasnt a paying customer. [Photo: GM] When we design a vehicle with a customer, we won’t share that same specification with anyone else, so you’ll know that there’s no one else who has a car with exactly the same specification as yours, Simcoe says. Do you need to do that? No, but it’s important to the people who are buying this car to go through the process and own it. [Photo: GM] To herald its return to luxury, Cadillacs new playbook has the brand meeting customers where they are, feverishly expanding its presence in the luxury market over the past three years. In 2022, the carmaker signed a multi-year deal to become the automotive sponsor of the U.S. Open Tennis Championships. The following year, the brand returned to the prestigious 24 Hours of Le Mans race in France after a decades-long hiatus. On Saturday, it unveiled a logo for its inaugural Formula 1 team ahead of its plans to join the grid in 2026. [Photo: GM] Ultimately, GM hopes that some of this glamour trickles down into its more quotidian EV lineup, as it aspires to make Cadillac the best-selling luxury EV brand in the U.S. this year. [Photo: GM] Yo, VIP, lets kick it I took the Celestiq for a test drive in Los Angeles. As the morning rush faded away on the 101, Vanilla Ice came on the 38-speaker Dolby Atmos sound system, and I was transported into the rappers ode to the open road. Luxury, I realized, is what you dont notice. No noise, no bumps, no trafficalthough, to be fair, the Celestiqs extravagant proportions drew a share of the rubberneckers. Instead, I felt as though I was gliding through air as I ascended the Angeles Crest Highwaya career-first out of the thousands of cars Ive tested. [Photo: GM] The wide open space between my vantage point and the cars front pillara mark of distinction in the premium segmentcaptures cloudless blue skies on a 76-degree day. A sedan thats longer than an Escalade and takes four months minimum to build isnt exactly practical, but at this moment, this drive is in a class of its own.
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E-Commerce
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