In the first quarter of 2026, investors deployed $300 billion into 6,000 startups, up 150% from previous years. Only a single-digit sliver of that capital is directed toward AI applications focused on solving social and environmental challenges. That gap is not an accident. It reinforces who AI is being built for, and who it’s leaving out. And that failure is costing us some of the best and most-needed solutions being built outside of Menlo Park. Here is what I mean. When Temie Giwa-Tubosun started LifeBank in Nigeria, hospitals were running out of blood. She couldn’t build for ideal conditions because…
Author: Staff Writer
In honor of the country’s 250th anniversary, the Trump administration has set out to throw America’s biggest birthday bash yet—but it might be short on music. Earlier this week, Freedom 250—the nonpartisan group tasked with organizing events in honor of 250 years of independence—announced a concert series lineup for its flagship event, the Great American State Fair. But less than 48 hours after the announcement, most of the announced artists have backed out. The 16-day festival is to be hosted on the National Mall, featuring exhibits from 56 states and territories, similar to a World’s Fair, running from June 25…
I once consulted with a company whose senior leadership was genuinely perplexed about the organization’s overwhelming levels of employee disengagement. Their company’s remuneration packages were well above industry standards, and the company offered several perks that simply weren’t offered by competitors. But, despite all of the material benefits it offered employees, quarter after quarter, year after year, the company’s employee engagement scores were embarrassingly low. Why? Because the company’s leadership didn’t understand that employee engagement is something that must be earned by the organization—not something that can be bought with salaries, bonuses, or perks. The impact of financial rewards on…
It’s hard to think of Google as a comeback story, because it never went away, but in the world of AI, it’s a fitting narrative. The company was broadly mocked for its early moves in the generative era, which were mostly stumbles. Upstarts like Perplexity and ChatGPT were nipping at its market share with arguably more innovative experiences. It had to navigate choppy antitrust waters. Today, Google is in a much stronger position. Not because it’s just coming off its I/O developer conference, or because it has the best model or because it commands a major AI ecosystem. Those titles…
Hello again, and welcome back to Fast Company’s Plugged In. Journalism might not be the world’s single most important job, but it does have one unique distinction: 100% of journalists are interested in it. So it’s no surprise that the profession is the subject of an outsize percentage of articles about the myriad ways AI is changing our world. I do admit, however, to be taken aback by how much of that coverage involves tales of journalists being embarrassed by entirely avoidable AI-fueled gaffes. On May 19, for example, Benjamin Mullin of The New York Times reported that The Future…
In the late 1960s, the U.S. Army made a distinction between the skills necessary for machinery operations and those used in service of people management. Hard skills, as the Army framed it, were the competencies that involved working with hardware—operating tanks, repairing radios, or what the lead researchers Paul G. Whitmore and John P. Fry called “weapons of aluminum and steel.” Soft skills, on the other hand, were the ones that involved working with people, such as inspecting troops, supervising office personnel, and other social matters. The army wasn’t making an evaluation between the two skillsets, per se, but rather,…
When Babylist’s founder and CEO, Natalie Gordon, was growing up, she wasn’t always excited about opening her Christmas and birthday presents. Every year, members of her family—especially her grandmother—would contribute money to her college fund. Today, she’s grateful they did. “On a personal level, it was really meaningful. The experience shaped how I view long-term gifting,” Gordon says. Now, her baby registry company—which has built a $750-million-a-year business helping parents create and distribute registries, order items from retailers, and receive them when they want—is trying to get customers to adopt her family’s behavior at scale. The first step? Helping parents…
“I wish I had slowed down to reflect more deeply on this opportunity before saying yes.” That’s what Tanya told me in a coaching session. Even though she had just been promoted, she was close to burnout. Tanya was only a few months into her director of client management role at the technology-focused consulting firm where she’d spent 15 years. She was overwhelmed and exhausted at a time when she expected to feel accomplished. While she said yes to that promotion, she wished she had slowed down to ask a few questions first. Tanya was an early employee, and she’d…
Many proponents of American manufacturing talk about making cars domestically and helping the U.S. auto industry soar. In the case of Detroit-based drone startup Birdstop, that is literally the plan. In its search for ways to better manufacture drones amid a surge of demand for domestically produced unmanned aerial vehicles, Birdstop decided to make use of one of the country’s most expansive industrial sectors. By strategically utilizing items from auto parts makers—80% of the parts for the company’s new Fealty drone come from companies that supply carmakers—Birdstop can build faster and cheaper. “The appetite for domestically produced drones is very…
Paid time off is precious. The average private-sector worker in the U.S. who has been at their job for at least a year is given 11 days of paid leave annually, according to the Bureau of Labor Statistics. Many experience difficulty unplugging from work when they use the time they do have. But a new report might help employees make the most of their PTO, even if it’s not a whole lot. The report comes from Blink, a mobile-first employee experience platform, which analyzed the U.S. federal holiday calendar to show employees how they can “hack” their PTO allowance to…