Raphael Stevens

Xiaodi Hou co-founded autonomous-driving startup TuSimple a few years ago, but he just took over as CEO and chairman of the board March 3.
Hou’s elevation to CEO stunned investors, who sent shares down more than 20% on the news earlier this month, even though the company called it part of a “planned executive succession.”
“Who is the best person to lead this company? It’s me! Because I am a relentless decision-making machine who is backed by the technical background,” Hou told CNBC.

Xiaodi Hou co-founded autonomous-driving startup TuSimple a few years ago, but he just took over as CEO and chairman of the board March 3.
Why? Here’s what Hou – who wants to be an “evangelist” for the possibilities of autonomous freight – had to say about it.

“Who is the best person to lead this company? It’s me!  Because I am a relentless decision-making machine who is backed by the technical background,” Hou told CNBC. “There has to be tighter integration of all different parts of the company” if it wants to achieve the next big milestone.
Hou’s elevation to CEO stunned investors, who sent shares down more than 20% on the news earlier this month, even though the company called it part of a “planned executive succession.” According to Reuters, the company had not brought up potential succession plans during its previous four earnings calls. Hou replaced Cheng Lu, who had led TuSimple since 2018.

Xiaodi Hou, Co-founder & CTO, TuSimple, on Centre Stage during day two of Web Summit 2019 at the Altice Arena in Lisbon, Portugal.
Vaughn Ridley | Sportsfile | Getty Images

Hou co-founded the company in 2015 with board member Mo Chen and Chief Operating Officer Jianan Hao. The company reported that it achieved fully autonomous freight delivery late last year. TuSimple calls the autonomous operation of a semi-truck without a person on board or controlling it remotely “Driver Out.”
“We have conquered some major problems and we’ve reached this milestone. This is a new chapter. People don’t really understand the technology,” said Hou, who previously served as chief technology officer.
“The other role of me being the CEO is really being the evangelist and telling the truth to the world about the hard problems of autonomy and also the realities that we’re facing.”

He added: “Many people, even the people who are in the industry, they’re trying to oversimplify some of the very complicated challenges.”
Autonomous vehicle stocks have fallen hard due to macro pressures on the market, according to Bernstein senior analyst David Vernon. TuSimple shares have fallen more than 60% year to date; Aurora Innovation more than 45%;  Embark more than 25%.  
In a January note, Vernon said autonomous trucking is coming, but the path to profitability and full commercialization is unclear: “How long will it take? Long. Meaningful revenue is five to six years away if all goes well: the technology remains in validation stage; business models are a work in process; the regulatory framework is a vacuum; it will take time to prove reliability.”
TuSimple moves freight autonomously for some of the biggest names in freight including UPS, which has a minority stake in the startup, and rail operator Union Pacific. The company is also developing fully autonomous semi-trucks with Navistar that are scheduled to come off the assembly line by the end of 2024, but that timeline could change.
The company launched an IPO in April 2021. Since then, TuSimple has been focused on three goals: prove the safety, prove the efficiency and prove the scalability of autonomous driving. With “Driver Out” achieved, Hou says it’s time to unlock the cost savings of autonomous technology.
“We basically have presented to the world a complete system with a lot of safety and redundancy on it.” Hou said, “So we are focusing on reducing the operating cost per mile so that in the end, we can compete with a human driver on the per mile basis. That’s the second phase.” 
Xiaodi Hou will appear on Power Lunch at 2 p.m. ET Wednesday.

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In his first interview as Johnson & Johnson CEO, Joaquin Duato says at CNBC’s Healthy Returns that there will be more innovation in health care over the next ten years than in the past century.
Johnson & Johnson is spinning off its consumer health business from its biotech and medical technology and forming two companies.
The medtech business grew 16% in 2021 even as Covid limited procedures, and advancements in surgery using AI are among the breakthroughs that the new CEO is betting on.

Andrew Harrer | Bloomberg | Getty Images

Joaquin Duato, the new CEO of Johnson & Johnson, is comfortable enough in his new position at the 135-year-old company to issue a bold claim just a few months into the job and during his first interview: he predicts the next decade will see more health-care transformation than occurred during the past century.
Duato, the first non-U.S. born CEO for the company, and first to hold dual citizenship (Spain and U.S.), has been with J&J for three decades and was at one point the chief information officer of its pharmaceuticals business, giving him key insights into the role of technology in health care.

Priority No. 1, Duato told CNBC’s Meg Tirrell at Healthy Returns on Wednesday, is the opportunity “to create more progress in health in this decade than we have seen in the last 100 years.”
As J&J prepares to split into two companies, Duato said that separating the consumer brands like Band-Aid, Tylenol, Neutrogena and Listerine from medical technology and pharmaceuticals will help the company be at the forefront of surgical techniques that transform health care.
“For the consumer health company, it’s going to be an opportunity to deepen the relationships with consumers to attract new investors, to inspire employees, and to be able to have a fit-for-purpose model with their own capital location priorities … and then for the new Johnson & Johnson it is going to be an opportunity to be more focused, more competitive and to deliver increased growth,” Duato said.
Johnson & Johnson, which is a bellwether in the health-care sector for hospital surgeries and procedures, has seen Covid pressure the overall business, but the CEO noted ahead of the upcoming earnings season that it did see good performance in its medical device business in 2021, with close to 16% growth, even as Covid weighed on activity and in particular, elective procedures.
Duato said the company is gaining share in its priority medtech platforms and expects “good” performance this year.

In 2021, the company invested more than $2 billion in innovation, an increase of 23% in the middle of the pandemic. “That’s a sign of how much we believe in the opportunity that I was describing … of combining science and technology to deliver improvements in patient care,” Duato said.
Research and development on the drug side is accelerating as well, he said, with a pipeline of 14 new medicines to be filed before 2025. “All of them are providing significant improvements in the standard of care, and at the same time, all of them with more than a billion-dollar potential,” he said.
Duato cited the recent approval of CARVYKTI, an antigen receptor T-cell therapy for the treatment of multiple myeloma, which helped 98% of patients who were otherwise likely to be headed for hospice care. “We are very optimistic about the treatment modalities that we are bringing, like cell therapy that are going to enable us have an aspiration to be able to cure some diseases that were thought to be incurable,” he said.

AI and real-time surgical data

Duato, who served as interim CIO at Johnson and Johnson for almost a year in 2019, said that role gave him insights into how artificial intelligence and automation can make surgery smarter. “I see a future in which all medical devices would be smarter, connected to the cloud, being able to provide data to the surgeons for them to be able to in real time deliver better surgical outcomes,” he said.
Machine learning, when combined with genetics, is also accelerating the discovery and development of new medicines.
“We can do genomic sequencing, and at the same time with large data sets, utilize AI and machine learning to create patterns in which we can correlate diseases with genomic profiling, to identify what are going to be the underpinnings of diseases that are going to be the triggers, the targets that we are going to be able to utilize in our discovery,” Duato said.
New compounds can be measured against a single cell to more rapidly identify pharmacological activity, such as expected toxicities, and accelerate the development of new medicines. “We can plan much better our clinical trials, we are able to create synthetic control groups instead of having placebo groups and we are also able to stratify and identify patients that are difficult to find in rare diseases utilizing algorithms that enable us to identify them,” he said. “I’m very bullish about the potential of technology in accelerating discovery and developing new medicines.”

Inflation and consumer demand 

The current economic situation is “volatile,” Duato said, with inflationary headwinds in the supply chain and availability of important raw materials and components, though he said the company’s scale as the largest health-care firm helps and the guidance it already provided to the market earlier in the year showed a healthy growth rate in revenue and in earnings per share.
Inflation will remain a factor, as some pressures alleviate this year but others remain longer, Duato said. The consumer business is more affected by inflationary pressures and there is more concern throughout the market and economy that consumers will begin to buy “off brand” products when they have the option.
“Overall, we’ve seen volatility in the consumer demand,” Duato said, “but we continue to see very solid consumer business coming through and we continue to try to deliver what is best for consumers and we continue to try to mitigate our cost increases by improving our own efficiency, and in some cases also having price increases but overall, we are bullish about the potential of our consumer health business and about our ability to navigate the inflationary pressures in a way that is optimal for consumers,” he said.
Johnson & Johnson has faced multiple lawsuits over products and medical devices, from talc to hip replacement and opioids, which have resulted in significant financial settlements, without any admission of wrongdoing, as well as ongoing litigation.
Duato declined to go into legal specifics. “We understand that we have a reputation. We understand that we have a high bar and a high expectation from society overall….Yes, we have some challenges when you refer to the litigation. … Ultimately, we want to always reach a fair and equitable resolution in order to be able to focus on what we do best. And what we do best is to continue to develop medicines, medical devices, consumer products that improve consumer lives and also are able to address patients’ needs.” More

The U.S. has continually extended the requirement that masks be worn on planes and in airports, as well as on buses, trains, and other forms of transportation, amid the pandemic, but it is currently set to expire on April 18.
Delta Air Lines Chief Health Officer Henry Ting said at CNBC’s Healthy Returns event that he believes that the federal mask mandate for airports and airplanes will be lifted on that date or “shortly thereafter.”
Several airline CEOs, including Delta’s Ed Bastian, recently sent a letter to President Joe Biden asking for Covid-era transportation policies to be eliminated.

Passengers wearing protective masks wait to board a Delta Air Lines Inc. flight at Hartsfield-Jackson Atlanta International Airport in Atlanta, Georgia, U.S., on Wednesday, April 7, 2021.
Elijah Nouvelage | Bloomberg | Getty Images

Delta Air Lines Chief Health Officer Henry Ting said that he believes that the federal mask mandate for airports and airplanes will be lifted on “April 18th or shortly thereafter.”
Speaking at CNBC’s Healthy Returns event on Wednesday, Ting said that while he does not know if the mandate will come down on April 18, the CDC, TSA, and the White House are all “looking closely at this” and will “certainly provide a roadmap.”

“We’ve always known from the beginning of the pandemic that all restrictions should be lifted as soon as it’s safe to do so,” Ting said, adding that there is a transition occurring right now from “a global pandemic to a seasonal respiratory virus.”
Ting, a renowned cardiologist who was named Delta’s first chief health officer in January 2021, said that amid the pandemic, the airline’s efforts around air ventilation, cleaning, and masking have resulted in “few if any outbreaks that could be attributed to a flight.”
The U.S. extended the requirement that masks are to be worn on planes and in airports, as well as on buses, trains, and other forms of transportation, through April 18 before it was set to expire on March 19. The Biden administration initially issued the mask mandate order shortly after the president took office in January 2021 and has repeatedly extended it since then. Under President Trump, there was no government mandate around masking, but airlines, including Delta, issued their own mask requirements dating back to the start of the pandemic in spring 2020.
The airline industry has been pushing back against further extensions of the mandate in recent months. On March 23, Delta CEO Ed Bastian, along with the CEOs of American Airlines, Alaska Air Group, Hawaiian Airlines, JetBlue Airways, Southwest Airlines, United Airlines, and others, sent a joint letter to Biden that said it is “past time to eliminate COVID-era transportation policies,” which includes the mask mandate on airplanes and in airports.
“Given that we have entered a different phase of dealing with this virus, we strongly support your view that COVID-19 need no longer control our lives,” the letter says. The CEOs also called for the removal of international pre-departure testing requirements for U.S. inbound passengers.

Ting said that the CDC is aware that airports and airplanes are “really the last place where masks are still required,” and he added that in “the rest of America you can go to restaurants, churches, sports venues, where masking is optional.”
He also noted the impact that both abiding by and enforcing those rules for the last two years has had on Delta’s workers, flight attendants, and crew. More than 71% of the record 5,981 reports of unruly airline passenger behavior in 2021 were tied to disputes over mask mandates, according to the Federal Aviation Administration.
“This has been two years that’s been hard on our people,” he said. “This is the last area where I think the CDC is looking at when it’s safe to have an exit ramp and lift the mask mandate.” More

[The stream has ended.]
President Joe Biden gave a speech Wednesday about the fight against Covid-19 in the U.S.

The president’s remarks come a day after the Centers for Disease Control and Prevention recommended a fourth Covid vaccine shot of Pfizer or Moderna for people ages 50 or older. The CDC also recommended that certain younger people with compromised immune systems should receive a fifth of dose.
Biden received his fourth dose after his speech.
Congress is also fumbling billions of dollars in Covid funding as a more contagious subvariant of omicron, BA.2, takes hold across the country. BA.2 has caused new outbreaks in Europe and China, though White House chief medical advisor Dr. Anthony Fauci has said he does not expect another surge here.
However, the Biden administration has warned Congress that failing to pass $22.5 billion in new Covid money will result in drastic cuts to the nation’s pandemic response plan, leaving the nation unprepared if another surge takes places.

CNBC Health & Science

Read CNBC’s latest global coverage of the Covid pandemic:

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The Biden administration on Wednesday announced new plans to spend $3.16 billion to retrofit hundreds of thousands of homes in low-income areas by making them more energy efficient.
The investment comes from President Biden’s $1.2 trillion bipartisan infrastructure bill that was signed into law last year.
It will bolster the federal government’s Weatherization Assistance Program, which is designed to upgrade homes by installing insulation, updating heating and cooling systems and switching to new electrical appliances.

Energy Secretary Jennifer Granholm speaks during a meeting with Secretary of State Antony Blinken, European Union High Representative for Foreign Affairs and Security Policy Josep Borrell Fontelles, and European Commissioner for Energy Kadri Simson at the State Department in Washington, February 7, 2022.
Andrew Harnik | Pool | Reuters

The Biden administration on Wednesday announced new plans to spend $3.16 billion to retrofit hundreds of thousands of homes in low incomes areas, with the goal of making them more energy-efficient while also lowering utility bills for Americans.
The investment comes from President Biden’s $1.2 trillion bipartisan infrastructure bill that was signed into law last year. It will bolster the federal government’s Weatherization Assistance Program, which is designed to upgrade homes by installing insulation, updating heating and cooling systems and switching to new electrical appliances, among other things.

White House officials, during a press briefing on Wednesday, said the new funding will allow the program to retrofit about 450,000 homes, a major increase from the roughly 38,000 homes it currently serves each year.
“Home energy retrofits and upgrades – like electrification, heat pumps, LED lighting, insulation, and sealing up leaks – can slash monthly energy bills for families and improve the air we breathe,” Secretary of Energy Jennifer Granholm said in a statement.

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“We will be able to help households in disadvantaged communities, reduce carbon emissions, and generate good-paying local jobs in every corner of America,” Granholm said.
Electricity production from businesses and homes represents about 13% of the country’s climate-changing greenhouse gas emissions, according to estimates from the Environmental Protection Agency.
The funding will move forward Biden’s pledge to slash emissions in half by 2030 and reach net-zero emissions by mid-century. The program also implements the administration’s Justice40 commitment, which requires federal agencies to deliver at least 40% of benefits from specific funding to disadvantaged communities. 
The weatherization program began in the 1970s as an effort to slash utility bills and has delivered an average of $372 in annual energy savings for families, according to the Energy Department.

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Next month, Lizzo will launch her own shapewear line called Yitty through a partnership with the athletic apparel maker Fabletics.
Lizzo tells CNBC she wanted to disrupt the category following her experiences as a young girl wearing body girdles and other skin-tight suits to contort her shape.
The shapewear will debut in neon colors and bold prints. Sizes will range from XS to 6X, and prices from $14.95 to $69.95.

Source: Fabletics/Yitty

As a young girl, Lizzo tried intensely to, literally, fit in.
The now-superstar would wear body girdles and skin-tight corsets to school, contorting the shape of her body — an experience she said was incredibly uncomfortable for a preteen.

“It was a really painful, shameful experience … because I grew up in a society where as soon as I was aware of it, I was made to feel ashamed of how I looked,” said the 33-year-old singer and Detroit native, in a recent Zoom interview.
Eventually, Lizzo says, she abandoned the girdles and embraced her plus-size body: “I got to a point where I was like, ‘F–k that,'” she laughed. “I stopped wearing bras even. I went all the way to the other side, to liberate myself and find my self-love and body positivity.”
That’s when Lizzo started experimenting with her own version of shapewear.
“I started to have fun with creating different shapes and silhouettes and looks and realized, ‘Oh, this is actually not a bad thing if I’m not doing something bad to my body,'” she recalled.
Next month, Lizzo will launch her own shapewear line — called Yitty, after a childhood nickname for the singer, whose actual name is Melissa — through a partnership with the athletic apparel maker Fabletics.

The line marks Lizzo’s first business venture, beyond her work in music and entertainment (she also stars in a reality dance competition series streaming on Amazon Prime Video), and her personal investments.

Bright colors, bold prints

The launch follows three years of work and many meetings with Fabletics co-founder, Don Ressler, Lizzo said.
She decided to team up with Fabletics to capitalize on what she saw as limitless potential with the brand. Other potential partners saw Yitty as just a small capsule collection or a limited-time offering.
Fabletics also knows a thing or two about working with superstars. The retailer launched with actress Kate Hudson in 2013 and has since collaborated with other celebrities including singer Demi Lovato and comedian Kevin Hart.
With its selection of workout gear and lounge wear, the retailer aims to fill a space in the apparel market between more high-end brands, such as Lululemon, and cheaper labels, such as what you can find at Target.
Fabletics’ VIP members pay a monthly fee toward their clothing purchases, similar to a subscription model, and can opt to skip a month so credits don’t pile up.
“We’re known for prints, for different colorways … we’re known for taking risks in the space,” Ressler said. “And that’s what we’re going to do with the Yitty brand and Lizzo.”
Shapewear pieces are most often worn under a woman’s clothing, but that doesn’t mean they have to stick to neutral colors, Ressler said. That’s where Yitty is going to stand out from other brands already on the market — by offering options in bold neon colors and patterned fabrics.
“Others that have come into the category — and have made a big difference, no doubt about it — it’s still a lot of the same old,” he said. “We’re taking risks.”
When asked how large Yitty could scale over time, Ressler said the company is thinking in billions, not millions.

Source: Fabletics/Yitty

The shapewear category is already celebrity-studded.
Kim Kardashian’s Skims underwear label saw a successful debut shortly before the Covid pandemic and is now valued at $3.2 billion, double what it was a year ago. Since launching with only a selection of shapewear in 2019, Skims has expanded into categories including pajamas, lounge wear and swimsuits.
Singer Rihanna has also had a successful run with her lingerie line Savage X Fenty, which is known for embracing and catering to all body types. The company is reportedly mulling an initial public offering at a valuation of over $3 billion. A representative from Savage X Fenty declined to comment on the IPO talks.
Last year, Fabletics was reportedly eyeing its own IPO, a process the company declined to comment on. Its prior holding company, TechStyle Fashion Group, spun off Savage X Fenty in 2019 and JF Brands, which included JustFab and ShoeDazzle, in 2020. The company’s name then changed to Fabletics Inc., now the parent company of Fabletics and Yitty.
Fabletics declined to comment on the business structure between the retailer and Lizzo.

Source: Fabletics/Yitty

‘This is come as you are’

Yitty will debut on April 12, online and in Fabletics stores, with three collections of items: Nearly Naked, a selection of everyday shapewear; Mesh Me, which is designed to wear as underwear or outerwear; and Major Label, which includes pieces that are more fashion-forward but also super soft, says Lizzo.
Sizes will range from XS to 6X, and prices from $14.95 to $69.95.
The team added that although some of the current pieces can be worn during workouts, Yitty is already working on a more athletic-focused collection, too.
During the Zoom interview, Lizzo stood up and turned around to model her own bright-neon yellow bra with matching biker shorts from the first Yitty drop — an outfit she said would withstand a sweat-heavy workout.
“More than a product this is about the mentality of having liberation,” the singer said. “The way that we feel about ourselves and the way that we dress ourselves, every day, it doesn’t have to be painful and it doesn’t have to be shameful. It can be fun and exciting and sexy.”
“I want anyone who hears about Yitty — who’s a fan of me — to know that this is not an invitation to change something about yourself in a negative way,” Lizzo added. “This is come as you are. And if something doesn’t feel comfortable, don’t wear it. Don’t do it”

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