Ekta Chopra, the chief digital information officer of e.l.f. Beauty, says the fast-growing beauty brand is piloting 85 different agentic artificial intelligence use cases. But giving employees more access to generative AI tools doesn’t come with a mandate from IT.
“We want to give the tools in the hands of the people,” said Chopra. “This is not an IT project.”
Chopra set up a cross-functional AI steering committee earlier this summer with leaders from a variety of departments including legal, marketing, research and development. This group is responsible for propelling the agentic AI pilots forward, with the goal of getting most of these agents into full production within six months. “Power users,” employees across the business who are the most eager to use AI in their workflows, are serving as testers during the early pilot phase.
As CDIO, Chopra of course acts as a champion of generative AI and helps make it pervasive across the company with AI tools that can assist employees with research inquiries, IT requests, and data analytics.
Chopra also spearheaded implementing all of the guardrails so that e.l.f. Beauty’s employees can embrace agentic AI, which can complete more complex tasks with little human intervention, but do so securely. The necessary “pipes,” as Chopra calls them, include training the company’s proprietary data on a large language model that’s built on Amazon Web Services and selecting two vendors, Microsoft Copilot and Writer, to help create the AI agents.
The big bet on agentic AI comes as e.l.f. Beauty, which was ranked No. 3 on Fortune’s list of fastest growing companies in 2024, expands internationally and has posted 26 consecutive quarters of net sales growth. Generative AI tools are a key foundation to e.l.f. Beauty’s future growth aspirations, according to Chopra, with all investments centered around three buckets.
The first, “operative,” is focused on agentic AI, while “creative” involves the exploration of image generation and design tools like Adobe Firefly and Midjourney to speed up asset generation. Chopra says that these technologies will be especially beneficial as e.l.f. Beauty continues to expand into new foreign markets with unique languages. The last of the three buckets, “collaborative,” is for the biggest and boldest ideas that could upend how e.l.f. Beauty develops new products or operates its supply chain.
Some internal applications of generative AI that Chopra has already deployed include “B.F.e.l.f,” the company’s internal version of ChatGPT, which is used by 80% of employees.
Another generative AI tool, called “e.l.f.uencer,” whips up responses to consumer comments on social media platforms like TikTok and Instagram. The AI-written copy is a blend of the e.l.f. Beauty’s style book and the last five years of human crafted social responses. All of the tool’s drafts are always approved by an employee before being made public. Previously, around half of all social comments from the brand’s followers were answered by e.l.f. Beauty’s team. Today, with generative AI, that figure is closer to 90%.
Chopra also launched a new IT sidekick known as “e.l.f.line,” which can already produce the work equivalent to one human help desk employee, answering common tech questions related to onboarding or software troubleshooting. “e.l.f.phabet” is an internal research tool, while “e.l.f.alytics,” which is still in beta testing, acts as a data analyst. “e.l.f.alytics” answers inquiries like “show me our sales from yesterday,” but also has user-based guardrails, only sharing data that’s relevant to the role of the person that’s writing the prompt.
A learning and development portal called “e.l.f. you!” offers the broader employee base explainers about topics ranging from agentic AI to large language models, while also teaching them how to develop better prompts to engage with LLMs.
“Everyone is going to be on a different learning curve,” says Chopra, who asserts that the average search on Google is just three to four words, while it is 23 for ChatGPT. “If you don’t give AI the context, you’re not going to get the answer that you’re looking for.”
While generative AI will be a big, ongoing undertaking, Chopra says she’s relieved to have completed a big IT project to transition the company’s enterprise resource planning system from NetSuite to SAP. The ERP change allows e.l.f. Beauty to integrate key business processes like finance, manufacturing, and supply chain in a cloud version of the German company’s software.
Chopra says the switch was needed to support international growth, while also giving e.l.f. Beauty the proper technology base to leverage new AI advancements that can further automate repetitive tasks.
“It’s not all about savings; it’s about productivity,” says Chopra. “It is also about creating a culture that’s AI first, so people are not scared of AI.”
John Kell
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NEWS PACKETS
IT employment data appears choppy for August.The Wall Street Journalreported that the IT industry’s unemployment rate fell to 4.5% in August from 5.5% the prior month, citing data from consulting firm Janco Associates. CIO Dive, meanwhile, reported that IT unemployment grew for a second consecutive month in August, citing CompTIA’s review of Bureau of Labor Statistics data. CompTIA’s data found that tech unemployment reached 3%, up from 2.9% in July. Even with the increase in joblessness, American employers added 247,000 net new tech jobs last month.
Salesforce trims 4,000 customer service jobs due to AI. As economists increasingly express concern that the soft overall jobs market (not just for IT) could be partly due to the rapid adoption of AI, Salesforce CEO Marc Benioff said that his company was able to cut 4,000 customer service jobs because AI is able to handle workloads that were previously handled exclusively by staff. AI is evolving into a messaging conundrum for CEOs and technologists, who want to tout the savings they can unlock from their AI investments but run the risk of being blamed if the jobs market suffers. Separately, FastCo and other outlets report that software giant Oracle has been laying off employees across several states, even as the company’s stock hit a fresh high in August.
Anthropic blocks services from Chinese-owned companies. Anthropic has expanded the AI startup’s ongoing restrictions on “authoritarian” regimes to now cover any company that’s majority-owned by entities from countries including China. “We continue to advocate for policies like strong export controls to prevent authoritarian nations from developing frontier AI capabilities that could threaten national security,” Anthropic said in a statement last week. Separately, the AI startup also generated some headlines for agreeing to pay $1.5 billion to a group of authors and publishers, after a judge ruled that the company had illegally downloaded copyrighted books. The settlement was later lamented by a judge who signaled he may not approve it, which would result in the case going to trial.
Databricks raises $1 billion in latest funding round. Data analytics startup Databricks has raised $1 billion from investors including Thrive Capital and Andreessen Horowitz, reports the WSJ, and said its annual revenue run rate beginning in July now tops $4 billion. Driving that figure, which represents a 50% increase year over year, is robust demand for the company’s AI products. In an interview with the WSJ, CEO and co-founder Ali Ghodsi said roughly 650 customers were each paying Databricks $1 million a year for its products and services. Ghodsi also disclosed that the company had positive free cash flow in the past 12 months, though he didn’t share operating costs.
ADOPTION CURVE
Mainframe’s AI halo may be held back by a skills gap.Generative AI will deliver big benefits in mainframe environments according to a survey of 500 senior leaders, who anticipated a collective $12.7 billion in cost savings and $19.5 billion in higher revenue over the next three years.
But a lack of skilled talent may hold back these lofty aspirations. Seven out of ten respondents reported difficulty in finding the skilled talent that they need to modernize their mainframes computers. The top three areas where skills shortages remain a problem are AI (42%), cloud (37%), and systems integration (33%).
Hassan Zamet, a global practice leader at Kyndryl, tells Fortune that as technologies like AI, cloud, and the mainframe blend together, workers can’t corner themselves as specialists. “It’s no longer, ‘I’m going to take a narrow sliver on the mainframe and try to become the best at it,’” says Zamet.
The findings were commissioned by IT services provider Kyndryl, which spun off from IBM in 2021, and responses were only from enterprises that make use of mainframes from IBM, Fujitsu, and other leading brands.
The 2025 State of Mainframe Modernization Survey Report by Kyndryl offers research insights into the current rationale, strategies and approaches that enterprise leaders are adopting for mainframe modernization.
– Stored Energy Systems is seeking a CIO, based in Longmont, Colorado. Posted salary range: $200K-$250K/year.
– GenScript is seeking a head of U.S. IT, based in Piscataway, New Jersey. Posted salary range: $140K-$180K/year.
– Uare.ai is seeking a CTO, based in Los Altos, California. Posted salary range: $200K-$350K/year.
Hired:
– Etsy has expanded the role of Rafe Colburn, the e-commerce website’s CTO, to now serve as chief product and technology officer, effective September 8. In his new role, Colburn will oversee the product and engineering organizations. The appointment follows the departure of Nick Daniel, who had served as chief product officer, and departed Etsy on September 5 to pursue other opportunities.
– Southern Glazer’s Wine & SpiritsannouncedSteve Bronson to the role of CIO, joining the alcohol beverage distributor after most recently serving as senior vice president of global technology infrastructure and operations at fast-food giant McDonald’s. Prior to McDonald’s, Bronson held senior technology leadership roles at CDK Global, Nike, and Anheuser-Busch InBev.
– Rush Street Interactive announced the appointment of Shubham Tyagi as CTO, joining the online casino and sports betting company after most recently serving as CTO for sports programmer Warner Bros Discovery Sports. Earlier in his career, Tyagi held senior engineering roles at Macy’s, Turner Broadcasting, and XO Communications.
– Confluent announced the appointment of Stephen Deasy as CTO, joining the data analytics company after most recently serving as CTO of Benchling, a cloud-based software company for biotechnology research and development. Deasy also previously served as VP of engineering at software company Atlassian and held past leadership roles at Groupon, VMware, and EMC Computer Systems.
– Thumbtack namedChris Patalano as CTO, where he will oversee the engineering team, AI and ML, and the infrastructure and technology strategy. Patalano joins Thumbtack, which connects homeowners with local businesses that perform services on their homes, after most recently serving as EVP of product engineering at accounting software provider Xero. He also held leadership roles at Pandora, Apple Music, and Beats Music.
– SCWorx appointedAnders Ohlsson as CTO, joining the healthcare data management company after holding senior leadership roles at software provider WideOrbit. As CTO, Ohlsson will oversee product development and innovation initiatives.
– Butterfly NetworknamedVictor Ku as SVP and CTO of the ultrasound developer. He joins after most recently serving as VP of R&D, engineering, and the project management office at imaging systems and optical components maker Headwall Photonics.
For years, Binance has dodged questions about where it plans to establish a corporate headquarters. On Monday, the world’s largest crypto exchange made an announcement that indicates it has chosen a location: Abu Dhabi, the capital of the United Arab Emirates.
In its announcement, Binance reported that it has secured three global financial licenses within Abu Dhabi Global Market, a special economic zone inside the Emirati city. The licenses regulate three different prongs of the exchange’s business: its exchange, clearinghouse, and broker dealer services. The three regulated entities are named Nest Exchange Limited, Nest Clearing and Custody Limited, and Nest Trading Limited, respectively.
Richard Teng, the co-CEO of Binance, declined to say whether Abu Dhabi is now Binance’s global headquarters. “But for all intents and purposes, if you look at the regulatory sphere, I think the global regulators are more concerned of where we are regulated on a global basis,” he said, adding that Abu Dhabi Global Market is where his crypto exchange’s “global platform” will be governed.
A company spokesperson declined to add more to Teng’s comments, but did not deny Fortune’s assertion that Binance appears to have chosen Abu Dhabai as its headquarters.
Corporate governance
The Abu Dhabi announcement suggests that Binance, which has for years taken pride in branding itself as a company with no fixed location, is bowing to the practical considerations that go with being a major financial firm—and the corporate governance obligations that entails.
When Changpeng Zhao, the cofounder and former CEO of Binance, launched the company in 2017, he initially established the exchange in Hong Kong. But, weeks after he registered Binance in the city, China banned cryptocurrency trading, and Zhao moved his nascent trading platform. Binance has since been itinerant. “Wherever I sit is going to be the Binance office,” Zhao said in 2020.
The location of a company’s headquarters impacts its tax obligations and what regulations it needs to follow. In 2023, after Binance reached a landmark $4.3 billion settlement with the U.S. Department of Justice, Zhao stepped down as CEO and pleaded guilty to failing to implement an effective anti-money laundering program.
Teng took over and promised to implement the corporate structures—like a board of directors—that are the norm for companies of Binance’s size. Teng, who now shares the CEO role with the newly appointed Yi He, oversaw the appointment of Binance’s first board in April 2024. And he’s repeatedly telegraphed that his crypto exchange is focused on regulatory compliance.
Binance already has a strong footprint in the Emirates. It has a crypto license in Dubai, received a $2 billion investment from an Emirati venture fund in March, and, that same month, said it employed 1,000 employees in the country.
Stocks held by members of Congress have been beating the S&P 500 lately, but there’s a subset of lawmakers who crush their peers: leadership.
According to a recent working paper for the National Bureau of Economic Research, congressional leaders outperform back benchers by up to 47% a year.
Shang-Jin Wei from Columbia University and Columbia Business School along with Yifan Zhou from Xi’an Jiaotong-Liverpool University looked at lawmakers who ascended to leadership posts, such as Speaker of the House as well as House and Senate floor leaders, whips, and conference/caucus chairs.
Between 1995 and 2021, there were 20 such leaders who made stock trades before and after rising to their posts. Wei and Zhou observed that lawmakers underperformed benchmarks before becoming leaders, then everything suddenly changed.
“Importantly, whilst we observe a huge improvement in leaders’ trading performance as they ascend to leadership roles, the matched ‘regular’ members’ stock trading performance does not improve much,” they wrote.
Leadership’s stock market edge stems in part from their ability to set the regulatory or legislation agenda, such as deciding if and when a particular bill will be put to a vote. Setting the agenda also gives leaders advanced knowledge of when certain actions will take place.
In fact, Wei and Zhou found that leaders demonstrate much better returns on stock trades that are made when their party controls their chamber.
In addition, being a leader also increases access to non-public information. The researchers said that while companies are reluctant to share such insider knowledge, they may prioritize revealing it to leaders over rank-and-file lawmakers.
Leaders earn higher returns on companies that contribute to their campaigns or are headquartered in their states, which Wei and Zhou said could be attributable to “privileged access to firm-specific information.”
The upper echelon also influences how other members of Congress vote, and the paper found that a leader’s party is much more likely to vote for bills that help firms whose stocks the leader held, or vote against bills that harmed them. And stocks owned by leadership tend to see increases in federal contract awards, especially sole-source contracts, over the following one to two years.
“These results suggest that congressional leaders may not only trade on privileged knowledge, but also shape policy outcomes to enrich themselves,” Wei and Zhou wrote.
Stock trades by congressional leaders are even predictive, forecasting higher occurrences of positive or negative corporate news over the following year, they added. In particular, stock sales predict the number of hearings and regulatory actions over the coming year, though purchases don’t.
Investors have long suspected that Washington has a special advantage on Wall Street. That’s given rise to more ETFs with political themes, including funds that track portfolios belonging to Democrats and Republicans in Congress.
And Paul Pelosi, former House Speaker Nancy Pelosi’s husband, even has a cult following among some investors who mimic his stock moves.
Congress has tried to crack down on members’ stock holdings. The STOCK Act of 2012 requires more timely disclosures, but some lawmakers want to ban trading completely.
A bipartisan group of House members is pushing legislation that would prohibit members of Congress, their spouses, dependent children, and trustees from trading individual stocks, commodities, or futures.
And this past week, a discharge petition was put forth that would force a vote in the House if it gets enough signatures.
“If leadership wants to put forward a bill that would actually do that and end the corruption, we’re all for it,” said Rep. Anna Paulina Luna, R-Fla., on social media on Tuesday. “But we’re tired of the partisan games. This is the most bipartisan bipartisan thing in U.S. history, and it’s time that the House of Representatives listens to the American people.”
French President Emmanuel Macron warned that the European Union may be forced to take “strong measures” against China, including potential tariffs, if Beijing fails to address its widening trade imbalance with the bloc.
“I’m trying to explain to the Chinese that their trade surplus isn’t sustainable because they’re killing their own clients, notably by importing hardly anything from us any more,” Macron told Les Echos newspaper in an interview published on Sunday.
“If they don’t react, in the coming months we Europeans will be obliged to take strong measures and decouple, like the US, like for example tariffs on Chinese products,” he said, adding that he had discussed the matter with European Commission President Ursula von der Leyen.
Macron has just returned from a three-day state visit in China, where he pressed for more investment as Paris seeks to recalibrate its relationship with the world’s second-largest economy. France’s goods trade deficit with China reached around €47 billion ($54.7 billion) last year, according to the French Treasury. Meanwhile, China’s goods trade surplus with the EU swelled to almost $143 billion in the first half of 2025, a record for any six-month period, according to data released by China earlier this year.
Tensions between France and China escalated last year after Paris backed the EU’s decision to impose tariffs on Chinese electric vehicles. Beijing retaliated by imposing minimum price requirements on French cognac, sparking fears among pork and dairy producers that they could be targeted next.
‘Life or Death’
Macron said the US approach to China was “inappropriate” and had worsened Europe’s position by diverting Chinese goods toward the EU market.
“Today, we’re stuck between the two, and it’s a question of life or death for European industry,” Macron said, while noting that Germany — Europe’s biggest economy — doesn’t entirely share France’s stance.
In addition to Europe needing to become more competitive, the European Central Bank too has a role to play in strengthening the EU’s single market, Macron said, arguing that monetary policy should take growth and jobs into account, not just inflation, he said.
He also said the ECB’s decision to continue selling the government bonds it holds risks pushing up long-term interest rates and weighing on economic activity.
“Europe must — and wants to — remain a zone of monetary stability and credible investment,” Macron said.
Politics8 years ago