IN ORDER TO grasp corporate America’s conflicted feelings towards Donald Trump a year after his election, one Wall Street boss proposes the following thought experiment. Imagine you fell asleep on November 6th 2024, the day after his victory over Kamala Harris, his Democratic opponent, and woke up today. More
For all the advances in artificial intelligence over the past few years, even the cleverest chatbots still spout nonsense from time to time. In most cases this is but a mild irritation. Sometimes, however, it can get their makers into trouble. When recently asked if Marsha Blackburn, a Republican senator, had been accused of rape, Gemma, an AI developed by Google, replied that in 1987 a state trooper had said she “pressured him to obtain prescription drugs for her and that the relationship involved non-consensual acts”. Ms Blackburn had never faced such an allegation. More
The craze for artificial intelligence has brought seemingly limitless demand for the chips that power it. Last month Jensen Huang, the boss of Nvidia, said that his company, the leading designer of AI chips, had $500bn-worth of orders to deliver this year and next. OpenAI, one of its customers, has also struck supply deals for the next few years with Advanced Micro Devices, for six gigawatts’ worth of AI chips (around 3m-6m), and Broadcom, for another ten gigawatts. More
Target is an American retailer that has been in the doldrums recently. In an attempt to improve the experience that customers have in its stores, it is instituting a new programme known as “10-4”. If a shopper comes within ten feet of a Target employee, staff are meant to “smile, make eye contact, wave, and use friendly, approachable and welcoming body language”. If customers come within four feet, employees should “personally greet the guest, smile and initiate a warm, helpful interaction”. More
EVERY EMPLOYER knows that, in the knowledge economy, a superstar employee is worth every penny. When that employer is Tesla and the employee is Elon Musk, he is worth up to 100trn pennies. On November 6th the electric-car maker said that more than 75% of its shareholders had backed its chief executive’s new compensation package, which would grant him up to $1trn-worth of Tesla shares over ten years. To pocket it all, the star chief executive must do a reliably stellar job, including lifting Tesla’s market capitalisation to $8.5trn, from $1.4trn today. Ahead of the shareholder vote Mr Musk threatened that if he did not get his inducement, he simply might not bother. More
Just as great cities reflect the genius of their architects, great financial manias reflect the folly of their besuited draughtsmen. New ways of raising and spending capital beguile ambitious bosses and propel markets. This time is no different. Silicon Valley, Wall Street and Washington are conspiring in one of American capitalism’s great money-making eras. The value of America’s listed companies relative to the size of the economy is the highest it has ever been. More
In “Selling Sunset”, a Netflix reality show, a group of estate agents strut through the Hollywood Hills in stilettos competing for listings. Office envy erupts when romantic ties to the boss allegedly earn one woman a particularly lucrative listing. According to Emily Nix, an economist at the University of Southern California, the show represents “exactly the dynamics” that she and her co-authors set out to examine in a new working paper. More
“OTHER SHAREHOLDER meetings are like snooze fests,” declared Elon Musk, Tesla’s bumptious boss, as he took to the stage on November 6th. “Ours are bangers.” Napping while Mr Musk danced along to a funk soundtrack with one of the company’s Optimus androids would indeed have been difficult. More
TWICE A YEAR the curtain rises on High Point, North Carolina. Each April and October some 2,000 exhibitors and hundreds of greeters, baristas, policemen and coat-checkers assume their places. When the audience—75,000 wholesalers, retailers and designers—step off their shuttle buses, the show begins. More
