Musk’s fantasy for a future where work is optional just got more real

Tesla CEO Elon Musk has made no secret of his robot-powered fantasies for the future. Within the next couple of decades, work will be optional due to the widespread proliferation of AI and automation, he has predicted. Gone will be the need for retirement savings, as money will be irrelevant. Instead, Musk sees a world of robots outnumbering humans, providing healthcare and other services for their organic counterparts. READ MORE

Elon Musk is betting Tesla’s future isn’t about cars at all

Tesla dominated the electric vehicle industry by the mid-2010s with sleek, fast cars that helped combat the public perception that EVs were severely limited by short ranges.

Now the company – and its controversial CEO, Elon Musk – face stiffer competition and political headwinds. Its EV sales fell by a record 9% in 2025, amid increasing rivalry from China and the expiration of the US EV sales tax credit. READ MORE

Forget the four-day workweek: CEO of the world’s largest workspace provider says it’s not coming, despite what Bill Gates and Elon Musk predict

Billionaire Microsoft cofounder Bill Gates, JPMorgan CEO Jamie Dimon, Nvidia’s boss Jensen Huang and Elon Musk have all made the same prediction in recent years: The workweek is about to shrink. Automation will take over routine tasks, they argue, freeing workers’ time and pushing a four-day week toward becoming standard. Gates has even floated the idea of a two-day workweek.

But Mark Dixon, CEO and founder of International Workplace Group (IWG) CEO isn’t buying it. From his vantage point, running the world’s largest flexible office provider—with more than 8 million users across 122 countries and 85% of the Fortune 500 among its customers—the math doesn’t add up. READ MORE

Boomers are staying in the job market as Gen Z struggles to break through

Since graduating from Barnard College of Columbia University in 2024, Menasha Thomas has learned to navigate the swirl of networking and referrals, online job-search groups and interview processes. But after 14 months of soldiering through scores of applications, the 23-year-old has yet to put her urban planning degree to use in a full-time job.

In the meantime, she took professional certification and real estate courses to make herself more hireable while working as a nanny and at New York City cafes. It has been challenging but not “entirely isolating,” she said, because she knows many other recent grads also are struggling to get started professionally. She recently landed a paid internship with a real estate company, for which she feels “extremely grateful.” READ MORE

This Is What Convinced Me OpenAI Will Run Out of Money

Wall Street fears it has an artificial intelligence problem. A.I.-related stocks are up so much that a fall feels inevitable, particularly if A.I. appears unlikely to live up to its hype. This is the wrong worry; A.I.’s promise is real. The big question in 2026 is whether capital markets can adequately finance A.I.’s development. Companies such as OpenAI are likely to run out of cash before their tantalizing new technology produces big profits. READ MORE

Netflix Preparing to Make Warner Bid All-Cash

Netflix is preparing to make its bid for Warner Bros. Discovery’s WBD 1.62%increase; green up pointing triangle studios and HBO Max streaming business all-cash, according to people familiar with the matter.

Netflix struck a $72 billion cash-and-stock deal with Warner in December. Making it all cash would simplify Netflix’s deal and could sway some shareholders who have been weighing the two offers. READ MORE

Job cuts fall 50%, signaling ‘cautious optimism’ for 2026

U.S. employers announced 35,553 job cuts in December, the lowest monthly total in 17 months and a 50% decline from November’s 71,321 cuts, according to outplacement advisory firm Challenger, Gray & Christmas.

The more positive December figure marks a shift after a turbulent 2025 which saw 1.2 million job cuts, with big names like Amazon, Verizon and other key employers enacting layoffs. READ MORE

Google’s Sergey Brin admits he’s hiring ‘tons’ of workers without degrees: ‘They just figure things out on their own in some weird corner’

Whether it’s Nike’s Phil Knight, LinkedIn’s Reid Hoffman, or Google’s Sergey Brin, many of the world’s most influential business founders can trace part of their success back to Stanford University. Nestled in the foothills of Silicon Valley, the school has long functioned as a launchpad for tech’s elite.

But the rise of artificial intelligence is challenging long-held assumptions about the value of higher education. As tech reshapes entry-level work and companies rethink traditional hiring pipelines, the payoff of a four-year degree—especially from elite institutions—is increasingly up for debate. READ MORE

Shape-shifter executives: Proof that sideways is the new up

We’re operating in a world where change is no longer a curveball. Over the last five years, we’ve all lived through a global pandemic, supply chain meltdowns, trade wars and tariffs, and now the profound wave of AI reshaping how we work. In this kind of environment, leadership can’t be static. Roles can’t stay rigid. They have to flex, evolve and shape shift to meet what the market demands—not just today, but tomorrow and beyond.

The traditional ladder to the C-suite—one steady rung after another—doesn’t fit this era of constant disruption. What companies need now are what I call Shape-Shifter Executives: leaders who can pivot seamlessly between roles, adjust strategy in real time and guide distributed teams through transformation again and again. And then do it again the following week. READ MORE

This CEO laid off nearly 80% of his staff because they refused to adopt AI fast enough. 2 years later, he says he’d do it again

Eric Vaughan, CEO of enterprise-software powerhouse IgniteTech, was unwavering as he reflected on the most radical decision of his decades-long career. In early 2023, convinced generative AI was an “existential” transformation, Vaughan looked at his team and saw a workforce not fully on board. His ultimate response: He ripped the company down to the studs, replacing nearly 80% of staff within a year, according to headcount figures reviewed by Fortune. READ MORE

Why tariffs have hit Americans’ jobs harder than their shopping carts

As President Donald Trump piled on new tariffs last year, many economists quickly warned that prices and unemployment would spike. With most of the 2025 economic results in, it’s looking like those forecasters get partial credit.

While prices for certain imports like beef, coffee and tomatoes increased significantly last year, price hikes overall were little changed. The same can’t be said of the job market. READ MORE

China AI Leaders Warn of Widening Gap With US After $1B IPO Week

Some of China’s most prominent figures in generative artificial intelligence warned that the Asian nation is unlikely to eclipse the US in the global AI race anytime soon.

Justin Lin, head of Alibaba Group Holding Ltd.’s Qwen series of open-source models, put at less than 20% the chances of any Chinese company leapfrogging the likes of OpenAI and Anthropic with fundamental breakthroughs over the next three to five years. His caution was shared by peers at Tencent Holdings Ltd., and at Zhipu AI, which this week helped lead Chinese large-language model makers in tapping the public market. READ MORE

CEOs on Guard as Trump Rattles Companies With Series of Edicts

For American CEOs, reaping the rewards of a Donald Trump presidency is a little more complicated the second time around, in an administration that increasingly pairs conventional conservative deregulation with populist state intervention in big business.

In the last week, the president has fired off a series of demands and edicts aimed at C-suites, all in service of shoring up his political fortunes as midterm elections approach. READ MORE