Business

From Martha Stewart to Dockers: The $50 billion sector banking on your nostalgia for classic American brands

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2 months ago

November 30, 2025

A mystery has been roiling longtime wearers of Dockers’ ubiquitous khaki men’s pants: Why are things dropping out of people’s pockets when they sit down?

“My change and keys fall out sitting,” posted Robert C. about his Dockers Men’s Classic Fit khakis. “Excellent with major exception of front pocket depth,” wrote Disappointed Loyalist, who posted a one-star review of a pair of pebble-brown Signature Classic Fit trousers. “These are actually 4-star pants,” clarified IWearPants in an online review thread. “Unfortunately, they’ve committed the ultimate atrocity in fashion; they made the pockets too shallow.”

By IwearPants’ measurement, the pockets on his new Dockers are 1.5 inches less deep than his old pair. And he made a plea: “If Dockers (or parent Levi Strauss) needs to raise the price by a couple of bucks per pair, so be it. Just give me back deep pants pockets on my Dockers.”

Levi Strauss is actually no longer the parent company of Dockers; in May it sold the label to brand ownership giant Authentic Brands Group (ABG) for an initial value of $311 million, with the potential to reach $391 million based on performance under Authentic’s ownership. (ABG declined to comment on the Dockers brand or its pocket measurements.)

The Dockers pocket predicament—which some dismiss as an imagined problem—predates ABG’s ownership. But it shows the peril of a 1.5-inch difference—that razor’s edge between a loyal customer and one who abandons a product or company. Even the most beloved brands can become vulnerable following perceived changes or quality erosion that upset passionate consumers—and when heritage brands are purchased by holding companies like ABG, which seek to optimize and grow the brands globally, that passion can be a double-edged sword.

Some Dockers loyalists have complaints about the brand’s pockets.

Justin Sullivan/Getty Images

Dockers followed a well-trodden path, and one that many iconic brands have taken in recent years. Brand management companies including ABG, WHP Global, and Marquee Brands have assembled portfolios that include dozens of household-name brands. These companies have emerged as the new power brokers in fashion and retail, raking in some $50 billion in sales globally each year.

The cherished American retail names now owned by these companies make a long list: WHP owns Toys “R” Us and Babies “R” Us, Anne Klein, Express, Bonobos, and Rag & Bone. Marquee owns the revamped Martha Stewart brand, BCBG, Laura Ashley, and Isotoner. ABG, the largest player in this space, owns a vast empire of more than 50 brands, including Eddie Bauer, Champion, and Reebok.

Also under the ABG umbrella are investments in the name, image, and likeness rights of various boldface names, including soccer superstar David Beckham and basketball great Shaquille O’Neal. ABG also owns the names and likenesses of long-deceased icons including Elvis Presley, Marilyn Monroe, and Muhammad Ali.

A $1.4 billion deal for ABG to own a controlling interest in the Guess? brand is expected to close in 2026 after a bidding war. If that deal goes through, Guess? will be among the largest brands in the ABG portfolio, and is expected to bring its annual retail sales to $38 billion each year. WHP’s annual retail sales are $7 billion, and Marquee’s are $3 billion and climbing.

Globally, the broader brand licensing industry is growing rapidly—from $295 billion in 2024 to an expected almost $400 billion in 2029. That includes the brand-licensing arms within blockbuster companies such as Disney, which licenses its characters for toys and other merch, and the NFL, which licenses team jerseys. Rising consumer demand, star-powered celebrity endorsements, and the growth of virtual branding, in which a brand exists and sells to customers entirely online with no physical retail stores, have fueled this growth.

Each brand management company operates differently and there is no unified approach, but generally, these firms will purchase a brand’s intellectual property (IP), often during financial distress or bankruptcy. That generally means the brand management companies own trademarks, logos, copyrights, and creative content, and control the rights to license the brands to third parties. The brand managers then enter into lucrative licensing deals with a network of third-party partners that handle manufacturing, shipment to retailers, marketing and advertising, as well as store displays and sales, in various parts of the world.

The question at the heart of this thriving industry, which often includes private equity backers, is whether the second life these brands get after being rescued from the brink of oblivion can be profitable without sacrificing quality. In some cases the born-again versions of these once iconic brands are smashing successes. In others, they can turn into zombie brands, churning out inferior products that leave consumers feeling confused and even betrayed.

“Licensing can genuinely keep a brand alive when it’s losing momentum,” said Armando Zuccali, CEO at private financial services firm Gag London Equity Capital which partners with businesses and operating partners. “The risk is when it becomes the whole strategy and everyone starts chasing royalties and door count to hit numbers. That’s usually when the products being to slip, quietly at first.”

The brand management playbook

The core of this business is a volume play: The brand management companies buy IP that they believe could be bringing in more revenue, with the right push. Buyers often pay lip service to their responsible guardianship of beloved brands, but there’s an inherent tension in the proposition: If the strategy is to re-popularize and optimize a brand, the pressure to produce quickly, cheaply, and at huge scale to maximize licensing revenue can lead to what critics call “enshittification”—the gradual decline of quality as brands chase volume over value.

Instead of manufacturing stuff itself, the industry relies upon a vast network of “operating partners”—companies that license the brand and do the heavy lifting of producing and selling products. The brand management companies typically inspect and approve the products for sale, but the design, craftsmanship, and manufacturing are all handled by the operating partners, explained Sonia Lapinksy, managing director in fashion retail at the consulting firm AlixPartners.

Critics claim some brand management companies offer little oversight while allowing operating partners to slap logos on a vast array of subpar products. Sometimes, the operating partners hire the same designers and suppliers that worked with a brand prior to its purchase to maintain continuity, said Lapinsky, but problems can creep in when operating partners’ practices are unscrupulous, or they cut corners.

Zuccali of Gag London Equity Capital, who has overseen retail facilities projects in Europe, the Middle East, and Africa, said brand DNA usually only survives a licensing sale if the original product teams maintain authority by approving fabrics, checking construction, visiting factories, and pushing back when someone suggests a shortcut. “If that stops happening, the brand becomes a logo anyone can rent,” he added.

The venerable menswear brand Brooks Brothers put out lower-priced clothing lines under its new ownership.

The step that often generates skepticism is when brand management companies remove creatives and founders who previously maintained strict control in all aspects of production—walking production lines around the world to check the stitches per inch on a pair of pants, for instance, or the inclusion of real buttonholes on a suit versus decorative buttons.

“In theory, there should be some standards with these arrangements that maintain a level of quality,” said Lapinsky. “Or else eventually the products won’t sell, and the brand managers won’t be able to collect the royalties.”

It’s a matter of balancing quality with quantity, explained Aaron Duncan, a former creative director for global licensing at Playboy Enterprises and an associate professor and chair of global fashion management at Fashion Institute of Technology. But when the operating partners have bet on the brand by guaranteeing a fee to the IP owners, they sometimes “go rogue” to ensure their return on investment, he said.

Duncan, who has led global strategy and business development for brands including Barbie and Hot Wheels, recalled one licensee who opened a shop-in-shop in Seoul for a different brand he can’t name due to a confidentiality agreement. He had not approved the shop, and it wasn’t the right aesthetic for the brand, said Duncan. While most partners are honest in their business dealings, he said, he also has had apparel manufacturers that secretly sub-licensed a brand to other manufacturers. By the time it was discovered, the unauthorized products were already for sale. “Most of the time, you’re not even finding out about it until someone goes shopping in a mall in the middle of nowhere and sees it,” said Duncan. “That’s the danger.”

Those revenue-generating measures can dilute the brand, Duncan added. And if a partner has damaged the brand, it can be difficult to recover its shine.

The nostalgia paradox

What’s driving consumers back to beloved brands of the past in the first place? According to brand strategist Jean-Pierre Lacroix, nostalgia plays a big role, and that nostalgia is rooted in three impulses, particularly in younger consumers: Anxiety, and need for mental escape; the search for non-mainstream brands; and the power of influencers.

“The undercurrent is there’s a lot of anxiety in the marketplace right now, and people are looking for a way of escaping this anxiety,” said Lacroix. “The wars, the tariffs, the instability of the marketplace, the lost jobs, AI—all these things are unsettling for people.”

Brands from the past can soothe, he said, allowing anxious consumers “to live in the past where it was a great life.” For Gen Z, who wasn’t even born when many of these brands were in their heyday, the appeal is complex: Influencers seeking to be unique are using unboxing videos on YouTube and TikTok to showcase products beloved by their parents’ generation.

Clay Routledge, a social psychologist who specializes in nostalgia, wrote in the New York Times that some 60% of Gen Z wish they could teleport to those pre-iPhone days—which could explain why they’re chasing tangible offline experiences like vinyl records, photo albums, and board games.

For instance, Champion-branded running shoes are back after they nearly disappeared. They’re popular because they tick some of those key boxes, said Lacroix—a brand without the ubiquity of Nike, a uniqueness that makes the wearer stand out, and the nostalgia factor that evokes better quality.

Champion invented the hoodie in the 1930s, and engineered it for pro-athletes to stand up to repeated wear and tear, weather, and travel. Under ABG’s stewardship, Champion is on its front foot again, with a new partnership to sell at Target and a fashion-forward focus. Its products are being marketed as high-quality and substantial—with a trademarked reverse weave to resist shrinking.

The Martha Stewart moment

Martha Stewart—a brand that encompasses home and garden products, content, and its eponymous founder’s likeness—is now part of the Marquee Brands portfolio, and it exemplifies the nostalgia phenomenon. It also demonstrates how a brand management company can leverage and optimize a cherished brand by bringing it new fans and customers. The company relaunched Stewart’s seminal 1982 book Entertaining in November after noticing that it was selling for hundreds of dollars on eBay, said Marquee CEO Heath Golden.

In a marketing blitz, Stewart—America’s first self-made female billionaire and a pop culture figure whose appeal has endured for decades—has made the media rounds this fall, appearing on the Today show to discuss her book while cooking mushroom and Tuscan tomato soups for sweater-weather season. There are also collaborations: Fans can buy seven of the desserts from Stewart’s book at Crumbl Cookies stores.

“Martha Stewart is having a moment,” said Mark Weber, a podcaster and former CEO of Calvin Klein, The Donna Karan Company, PVH Corp, and LVMH. “She looks great, and she’s out there in front of the public and creating demand.”

But the guru of domesticity’s brand also offers an illustration of what can go wrong when a brand is sold to new owners bent on rapid optimization. Martha Stewart Living Omnimedia went public in 1999, valued at $2 billion, and raked in nearly $1 billion in annual retail sales in the late 1990s and early 2000—then changed hands multiple times following that peak. In 2004, following Stewart’s five-month prison sentence related to insider trading charges, the stock cratered, eventually losing 70% of its value. In 2015, brand management company Sequential Brands Group acquired Martha Stewart Living Omnimedia for $353 million—a bargain at less than a fifth of its peak valuation.

Under Sequential’s stewardship, the brand failed recover its previous cachet. Sequential went out of business after bankruptcy proceedings ended in 2022, but a former executive who spoke anonymously because they still work in the industry said the company made the mistake of attempting to saturating the retail market with Stewart’s brand. “The company wanted Martha Stewart’s name on every single product category from picture frames to sneakers to face cream,” the executive said. With a lifestyle brand meant to evoke aspirational entertaining, that indiscriminate strategy undermined the narrative of curated or special products, the veteran exec added.

In 2019, Marquee Brands acquired Martha Stewart from Sequential at an even lower price, $215 million. But under Marquee, Stewart’s brand appears to have thrived. By 2021, Stewart’s products were raking in roughly $900 million in combined retail sales annually, and were in 70 million households. Forbesestimated Martha Stewart Kitchen, a cabinetry, countertops, and shelving line, could hit $1 billion in retail sales this year.

Golden told Fortune that the company mines nostalgia, but it also invests heavily in consumer data and updates products and marketing for more modern tastes. “We love our 19 brands like we love our children,” said Golden. Along with nostalgia, consumers crave authenticity, and Martha Stewart has it in spades, he said.

Plus, Stewart has a strong social game, including almost 3 million followers on Instagram, where Stewart posts what followers affectionately call “thirst trap” pics of herself, décor, and images from around her estate, including of garden-grown garlic and chrysanthemums.

Social media has completely changed the way companies create interest and demand. “We’re in the want business,” said Weber. “We’re in the business of creating a craziness in you to go out and buy something new.”

The quality risk

Neil Saunders, a retail analyst and consultant, said it’s not just in the immediate aftermath of an acquisition that matters, but how the brand value grows over its lifetime. Saunders pointed to Brooks Brothers, which was owned by ABG and is now under an ABG-backed joint venture with J.C. Penney called Catalyst Brands, as a brand that has dealt with some early stumbles it is working to overcome. Catalyst is the brand licensee for Brooks Brothers in the U.S. and operates design, sourcing, e-commerce, and stores domestically.

Under ABG, Brooks Brothers launched some secondary, lower-priced clothing ranges called “diffusion” lines, Saunders said, but the clothes were “a little bit shabby.” For the nostalgia play to work, the products still have to be good and the price has to be right, said Saunders. “No one will buy into a brand or buy products from a brand just because there’s an element of nostalgia,” he said. (Catalyst has not responded on the record to a request for comment.)

The mechanisms of decline are subtle but cumulative, and customers usually feel it before anyone inside a company will admit it, said Zuccali. “The leather seems thinner; a zipper catches; buttons look fine in photos but feel cheap in the hand,” he said. “Once trust breaks there, it’s really hard to get back.”

Any kind of quality degradation can alienate a brand’s most valuable customers, said Gabriella Santaniello, founder of brand consultancy A Line Partners. And some—especially the wealthier older customers who have personal allegiance to particular brands—are difficult to win back. “Gen X is the most likely to be disappointed in you if you’re a brand,” said Santaniello. “And they’ll hold a grudge—it’s harder for them to move on.”

Whispers have already begun about the fate of former Hollywood darling Badgley Mischka. The evening wear label was acquired for an undisclosed price in April by a joint venture between global brand licensing company Established Inc. and ACI Licensing, in a deal that saw the namesake cofounders Mark Badgley and James Mischka exit the company after more than two decades.

Andy Cohan, co-CEO and co-founder of ACI, said Badgley and Mischka’s departure won’t change the brand all that much. ”We’ve adopted and maintained their point of view and their brand positioning on a go-forward basis, with a goal of taking the brand and really extending it.”

Designers James Mischka and Mark Badgley of Badgley Mischka, with models wearing the brand.

But founder transitions like the one at Badgley Mischka are always uncertain, said Zuccali. “Their brand has such a specific sense of proportion and movement that it’s hard to put into guidelines,” he said. “But in a year, maybe 18 months, we’ll know whether the collections still have that recognizable handwriting, or if they start shifting toward something more generic. I’m hoping for the former.”

Positioned for growth

Brand management companies are adamant that they are evolving these brands and setting them up for long-term success. Golden, CEO of Marquee, said the growth in licensing businesses has occurred during the past decade and collective volume “will only grow from here.” The model is acquisitive and competitive enough for bidding wars over prized names, and Marquee will likely buy at least two to three brands each year, he said.

The reality, said Golden, is that the fragmented, geopolitically complex world today makes it challenging for traditional brand companies and standalone brands to scale globally. He added that even the strongest companies are “looking to offload brands to us in an effort to extend their runway.”

Andy Dunn, co-founder of the menswear brand Bonobos, said he’s happy to see the brand he created thriving under the brand management model. Dunn and his partners first sold Bonobos to Walmart in 2017, then it was sold to WHP Global in 2021. Dunn no longer has an ownership stake in the company, but serves as an advisor. He bought multiple pairs of shorts while on a trip in the Midwest this month, he told Fortune, and said he was pleased to see standards have been maintained, and even improved. “I’m blown away by how much better the product has gotten,” said Dunn. “The quality has only improved over the last five years.”

The difference boils down to continuity, Dunn said, noting that WHP kept on some technical design employees who have been with Bonobos for more than a decade. “Those factors around talent and heritage and investment, that can vary widely,” said Dunn.

Dunn said it has a certain irony—if you care about the product, money will follow but the problem comes when you only care about the money. “Money has faces,” said Dunn, quoting one of his mentors. “All money looks the same, but it’s different depending on who you take it from. In this brand management world, that’s true as well.”

Glenn McMahon, former CEO of the luxury fashion brand St. John Knits and AG Jeans who also held senior executive roles at Giorgio Armani, Dolce & Gabbana, and other brands, has watched the tension among brands and brand management companies play out for decades, and he says he thinks the industry is poised for new life. “People used to say brand management companies are where brands go to die,” he said. “That’s changed.”

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Goldman investment banking co-head Kim Posnett on the year ahead, from an IPO ‘mega-cycle’ to another big year for M&A to AI’s ‘horizontal disruption’

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1 hour ago

January 19, 2026

Jace Porter

Ahead of the World Economic Forum‘s Annual Meeting in Davos, Switzerland, Fortune connected with Goldman Sachs’ global co-head of investment banking, Kim Posnett, for her outlook on the most urgent issues in business as 2026 gathers steam.

A Fortune Most Powerful Woman, Posnett is one of the bank’s top dealmakers, also serving as vice chair of the Firmwide Client Franchise Committee and is a member of the Management Committee. She was previously the global head of the Technology, Media and Telecommunications, among several other executive roles, including Head of Investment Banking Services and OneGS. She talked to Fortune about how she sees the current business environment and the most significant developments in 2026, in terms of AI, the IPO market and M&A activity. Goldman has been the No. 1 M&A advisory globally for the last 20 years, including in 2025 — and Posnett has been one of the star contributors, advising companies including Amazon, Uber, eBay, Etsy, and X.

Heading into Davos, how would you describe the current environment?

As the global business community converges at Davos, we are seeing powerful catalysts driving M&A and capital markets activity. The foundational drivers that accelerated business activity in the second half of 2025 have continued to improve and remain strong heading into 2026. A constructive macro backdrop — including AI serving as a growth catalyst across sectors and geographies — is fueling CEO and board confidence, and our clients are looking to drive strategic and financing activity focused on scale, growth and innovation. As AI moves from theoretical catalyst to an industrial driver, it is creating a new set of priorities for the boardroom that are top of mind for every client we serve heading into 2026.

What were the most significant AI developments in 2025, and what should we expect in 2026?

2025 was a breakout year for AI where we exited the era of AI experimentation and entered the era of AI industrialization. We witnessed major technical and structural breakthroughs across models, agents, infrastructure and governance. It was only a year ago, in January 2025, when DeepSeek launched its DeepSeek-R1 reasoning model challenging the “moats” of closed-source models by proving that world-class reasoning could be achieved with fully open-source models and radical cost efficiency. That same month, Stargate – a historic $500 billion public-private joint venture including OpenAI, SoftBank and Oracle – signaled the start of the “gigawatt era” of AI infrastructure. Just two months later in March 2025, xAI’s acquisition of X signaled a new strategy where social platforms could function as massive real-time data engines for model training. By year end, we saw massive, near-simultaneous escalation in model capabilities with the launches of OpenAI’s GPT-5.1 Pro, Google’s Gemini 3, and Anthropic’s Claude 4.5, all improving deep thinking and reasoning, pushing the boundaries of multimodality, and setting the standard for autonomous agentic workflows.

In the enterprise, the conversation has matured from “What is AI?” just a few years ago to “How fast can we deploy?” We have moved past the pilot phase into a period of deep structural transformation. For companies around the world, AI is fundamentally reshaping how work gets done. AI is no longer just a feature; it is the foundation of a new kind of productivity and operating leverage. Forward-leaning companies are no longer just using AI for automation; they are building agentic workflows that act as a force multiplier for their most valuable asset: human capital. We are starting to see the first real, measurable returns on investment as firms move from ‘AI-assisted’ tasks to ‘AI-led’ processes, fundamentally shifting the cost and speed of execution across organizations.

Of course, all this progress is not without regulatory and policy complexities. As AI reaches consumer, enterprise and sovereign scale, we are seeing a divergence in global policy that boards must navigate with care. In the United States, recent Executive Orders — such as the January 2025 ‘Removing Barriers’ order and the subsequent ‘Genesis Mission’ — have signaled a decisive shift toward prioritizing American AI dominance by rolling back prior reporting requirements and accelerating infrastructure buildouts. Contrast this with the European Union, where the EU AI Act is now in full effect, imposing strict guardrails on ‘high-risk’ systems and general-purpose models. Meanwhile, the UK has adopted a “pro-innovation” hybrid model: on the one hand, promoting “safety as a service”, while also investing billions into national compute and ‘AI Growth Zones’ to bridge the gap between innovation and public trust. For our clients, the challenge is no longer just regulatory compliance; it is strategic planning and arbitrage – deciding where to build, where to deploy, who to partner with, what to buy and how to maintain a global edge across a fragmented regulatory landscape.

As we enter 2026, the pace of innovation isn’t just accelerating; it is forcing a total rethink of business processes and capital allocation for every global enterprise.

Given the expectation and anticipation for IPOs this year, what is your outlook for the market and how will it be characterized?

We are entering an IPO “mega-cycle” that we expect will be defined by unprecedented deal volume and IPO sizes. Unlike the dot-com wave of the late 1990s, which saw hundreds of small-cap listings, or even the 2020-2021 surge driven by a significant number of billion-dollar IPOs, this next IPO cycle will have greater volume and the largest deals the market has ever seen. It will be characterized by the public debut of institutionally mature titans, as well as totally disruptive, fast moving and capital consumptive innovators. Over the last decade, some companies have stayed private longer and raised unprecedented amounts of private capital, allowing a cohort of businesses to reach valuations and operational scale previously unseen in the private markets. We are no longer talking about “unicorns” — we are talking about global companies with the gravity and scale of Fortune 500 incumbents at the time they go public. For investors, the reopening of the IPO window will enable an opportunity to invest in the most transformative and fastest growing companies in the world and a generational re-weighting of the public indices.

In 2018, the five largest public tech companies were collectively valued at $3.3 trillion, led by Apple at ~$1 trillion. Today, the five largest public tech companies are valued at $18.3 trillion, more than five and half times larger. Even more significant, the 10 largest private tech companies in 2018 were valued at $300 billion. Today, the 10 largest private tech companies are valued at $3 trillion, more than 10 times larger. These are iconic, generational companies with unprecedented private market caps some of which have unprecedented capital needs which should lead to an unprecedented IPO market.

Each of these companies will have their own objectives on IPO timing, size and structure which will influence if, how and when they come to the market, but the potential across the board is significant. During the last IPO wave, Goldman Sachs was at the center of IPO innovation by leading the first direct listings and auction IPOs, and we expect more innovation with this upcoming wave. The current confluence of a constructive macro backdrop and groundbreaking technological advancements is doing more than just reopening the window; it is creating a generational opportunity for investors to participate in the companies that will define the next century of global business.

M&A activity exploded in 2025, are the markers there for another boom year?

As we enter 2026, the global M&A market has transitioned from a year of recovery ($5.1 trillion of M&A volume in 2025, up 44% YoY) to one that is bold and strategic. While the second half of 2025 was defined by a “thawing” — driven by a constructive regulatory environment, fed easing cycle and normalizing valuations — the year ahead will be defined by ambition.

We have entered an era of broad, bold and ambitious strategic dealmaking: transformative, high-conviction transactions where industry leaders are no longer just consolidating for scale, but also moving aggressively to acquire the strategic assets, AI capabilities and digital infrastructure that will define the next decade. CEO and board confidence have reached a multi-year high, underpinned by the realization that in an AI-industrialized economy, standing still is the greatest risk of all. The quality and pace of strategic discussions that we are having with our clients signals that the world’s most influential companies — across sectors and regions — are ready to deploy their balance sheets and public currencies to redraw the competitive map.

AI is no longer an isolated tech trend; it is a horizontal disrupter, broadening the appetite for strategic M&A across every sector of the economy. While the dialogue in boardrooms has moved from theoretical ‘AI pilots’ to large-scale capital deployment, the speed of technology is currently outpacing traditional governance frameworks. Boards and management teams are being asked to make multi-billion dollar, high-stakes decisions in a landscape where historical benchmarks often no longer apply. In this environment, M&A has become a tool for strategic leapfrogging — allowing companies to move both defensively to protect their core and offensively to secure the critical infrastructure and talent needed for non-linear growth. Success in 2026 will be defined by strategic conviction: the ability to turn this unprecedented complexity into a clear, actionable strategy and competitive advantage.

As AI continues to reshape corporate M&A strategy, we are also seeing financial sponsors return to the center of the M&A stage. Sponsor M&A activity accelerated sharply in 2025 — with M&A volumes surging over 50% as the bid-ask spread between buyers and sellers started to narrow, financing markets became more constructive and innovative deal structures enabled private equity firms to pursue larger, more complex transactions. With $1 trillion of global sponsor dry powder and over $4 trillion of unmonetized sponsor portfolio companies, the pressure for capital return to LPs has continued to escalate. Financial sponsors are entering 2026 with a dual-focus: executing take-privates and strategic carveouts to deploy fresh capital, while simultaneously utilizing reopened monetization paths – from IPOs to secondary sales to strategic sales — to satisfy demand for liquidity. With monetization paths reopening and valuation gaps narrowing, sponsors are entering 2026 with greater flexibility, reinforced by a healthier macroeconomic backdrop and improving liquidity conditions.

This Q&A is based on an email conversation with Kim Posnett. This piece has been edited for length and clarity.

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Half of veterans leave their first post-military jobs in less than a year—This CEO aims to fix that

Published

2 hours ago

January 19, 2026

Jace Porter

Taking a career leap can be daunting, but all professionals inevitably have to face the music; most will change jobs or industries at some point, whether they want to or not. But for U.S. veterans exiting service and heading into civilian life, the transition has been especially difficult—and it’s an issue that’s intensifying their unemployment. That’s why financial services titan USAA is putting its money where its mouth is with a $500 million initiative to get members back on their feet.

“What we created here since I took over as CEO is a completely revamped way of hiring our veterans and military spouses,” the company’s CEO, Juan C. Andrade, tells Fortune. “This is not just for the benefit of USAA—this is for the benefit of the military community.”

USAA launched its “Honor Through Action” program in 2025, committing half a billion dollars over the next five years to improve the careers, financial security, and well-being of its customers—many of whom are active military, veterans, or related to them. It’s the brainchild of Andrade, who stepped into the company’s top role in April last year. As someone who also left a longstanding career in the federal government, he understands the growing pains that come with an intimidating career pivot. And for thousands of USAA members, the situation is dire.

Around half of veterans ditch their initial post-military jobs within the first year, according to the Department of Defense’s Transition Assistance Program, and USAA’s CEO believes a lack of thoughtful transition services is largely to blame. When colonels, generals, and sergeants leave behind their high-powered jobs, Andrade says some struggle to adapt both emotionally and skills-wise.

While businesses are required to re-employ former employees who return from military duty per U.S. federal law, those stepping into civilian roles for the first time often need a helping hand. And even before they exit the military, the careers of their partners tend to suffer.

The jobless rate of military spouses has hovered around 22% over the past decade, according to Hiring Our Heroes. That’s more than four times higher than the 4.6% nationwide unemployment rate. When their partners need to relocate for a new duty assignment, spouses are 136% more likely to be unemployed within six months, according to a 2024 Defense Department survey.

This trend of low job retention among veterans and spouse joblessness can be detrimental to the financial and professional livelihoods of American military families. So Andrade is leading the charge to get them on payroll. Corporations like JPMorgan have ramped up ex-military resources, and services like Armed Forces YMCA have long been assisting veterans; But USAA’s CEO says the issue needs a more targeted approach.

“While there’s a lot of organizations that are very well-meaning and do some very good work, the approach has been fragmented,” Andrade explains. “The problem with private sector companies is [if they] have not had that experience of service, or if they don’t have a large population of employees that serve, it’s very difficult to understand the fact that they’ve lost their tribe. The fact that, in a lot of ways, they’ve lost their sense of belonging to something greater than self.”

USAA’s $500 million plan and new fellowship pathways

USAA already has several veteran employment initiatives on the docket this year. This March, the company tells Fortune it will host a nationwide U.S. Chamber of Commerce Foundation program, Hiring our Heroes, in San Antonio to connect on the issue. And in the coming months, USAA will host events with nonprofit and HR association SHRM to brainstorm the best ways to improve military hiring in the U.S.

In stride with Honor Through Action, USAA also launched two 18-month fellowship programs designed to transition military personnel into full-time company positions: Summit and Signal. In three six-month rotations, participants cycle through different parts of the financial services giant to find the best fit. The future leadership track, Summit, rotates fellows through departments including business strategy, operational planning, and product ownership. Starting anew can be isolating, so USAA is ensuring that military personnel are not walking these career paths alone—veterans are connected to mentors every step of the way.

“Those 18 months are incredibly important, because it goes to show you: What is it that you can do? How does a private company actually work? What is it that you do on a daily basis?” Andrade says. “They get one-on-one mentorship and support every step of the way with people that have already walked in their shoes and been successful, so all of that helps.”

And just like what other companies are looking for in white-collar talent, USAA places a special emphasis on AI-savvy workers. That’s where the Signal fellowship comes into play: the pathway targets applicants with tech know-how, cycling them between assignments including technical solutions and data processing. The CEO notes that the military community is teeming with tech skills, and some already come with prior training from U.S. Cyber Command roles. Aside from getting ex-military members back into work, Signal is also proving to be extremely beneficial for the business itself.

“We’re always looking for people who have the expertise and skill sets in data science or data engineering,” Andrade continues. “As they retire from the Air Force, the Army, the Navy, we bring them into a specialized program focused on their skills and how they can help us from technology experience.”

Serving an overlooked population: veteran spouses struggling with joblessness

Even when they’re not deployed, U.S. military personnel are battling wars at home—depression, financial insecurity, and homelessness. But one group is often ignored in the fight: their spouses. The husbands and wives of military personnel face sky-high unemployment rates and long-term instability due to the nature of their partners’ jobs. But Andrade recognizes them as an overlooked and underutilized pool of professionals.

“Military spouses are an incredible source of talent—they’re literally the CFO and the CEO of their home,” USAA’s CEO says. “When their spouses are deployed, when there’s a permanent change of station for their spouse, they have to leave their job. And if they don’t have that flexibility, then you know that’s why the unemployment rate is so high.”

USAA is funneling its resources to get to the root of the issue; as part of the Honor Through Action initiative, the company tells Fortune it will host Military Spouse Advisory Councils in San Antonio this March. The mission is to help shape policy, programs, and resources to better serve the unique needs of military families. That same month, the business also plans to work with other organizations in funding Blue Star Families’ release of Military Spouse Employment Research with the aim of pinpointing actionable solutions to their raging unemployment. And reflecting internally, Andrade reports that USAA will continue to lead by example.

“We can offer a lot of flexibility… Having that level of empathy and understanding becomes very critical,” he says. “This is where we hope—with Honor Through Action—to be able to help companies understand the value that [military spouses] have, but also why you need to treat them a little bit differently given their personal situation.”

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Business

Pinterest CEO: the Napster phase of AI needs to end

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2 hours ago

January 19, 2026

Jace Porter

In a few short years, artificial intelligence has transformed from what many viewed as a moonshot to the source of countless real-world benefits.

At Pinterest, for instance, we’re deploying AI to flip the script on social media, using it to more aggressively promote user well being rather than the alternative formula of triggering engagement by enragement. I believe AI can benefit our 600 million users for years to come and at a fraction the cost that many associate with the technology.

You don’t need to be a company with the size and scale of a Silicon Valley juggernaut to unlock the enormous economic benefits and innovation that AI could deliver. In fact, I have long argued that AI can be far more democratized than it currently is, leading to an entirely new generation of entrepreneurial success stories.

To realize AI’s real potential, however, commonly held assumptions need to be challenged. This is the only way to address a widespread public trust problem that AI currently faces and create an AI ecosystem that leaves no one behind.

For starters, our fundamental view of access to essential tools must change. Although often viewed as a battle between the largest (and often costly) proprietary models, a community of accessible open-source models is thriving in 2026, leveling the playing field for entrepreneurs eager to usher in the next generation of innovation..

Additionally, creators and publishers are no longer powerless when it comes to protecting the value of their work from companies that attempt to use their information to train generative AI models. The Napster phase of AI needs to end – now is the time for a clear exchange of value that benefits content creators.

Finally, regulation can no longer be viewed as the enemy. Oversight protects users and provides an incentive for private companies to compete on safe and positive user experiences.

Open Source: Blueprint for Next Batch of Big Companies

To date, too much of the focus of AI is who is building the largest proprietary models. The race to build powerful models is profound, but the discussion needs to include far more emphasis on open source and its ability to spur innovation across the broad business community.

Pinterest recently announced an important milestone that demonstrates the potential. In our quest to harness the power of AI, we were able to tap into available large-scale open-source models and achieve performance similar to proprietary models but at 90% less cost. This addresses the return-on-AI-investment headache that many CEOs are facing as they spend a fortune on off-the-shelf proprietary solutions that don’t yet offer commensurate savings.

This is not a new phenomenon. For decades, open-source software has been an important accelerant to nascent industries. Many of today’s largest companies, including trillion-dollar market cap enterprises, wouldn’t exist if they had to rely on proprietary databases or operating systems.

The next batch of world-changing companies should follow a similar blueprint. Otherwise, we risk seeing the proprietary software companies collect all the value and, as a result, stifle innovation and ultimately block AI’s long-term potential.

Ownership Matters – Ditching AI’s Napster Era

Social media platforms like Pinterest live and die by users’ willingness to share creative and original ideas.

Thankfully, humans feed the internet with a trove of new information every day. That information is inspired and validated by a level of creativity, reasoning, and work ethic that even the most advanced generative AI models do not possess.

This presents large language models with a daunting learning curve that cannot be addressed without real-time access to this torrent of fresh ideas. That access should not be unfettered.

When AI disregards ownership, content creators are less inclined to share their work and the public discourse suffers. When AI respects ownership, these originators can thrive, and the public gets better information.

Currently, AI’s approach has resembled the old Napster pirating model – where music could be downloaded by tens of millions of internet users at no cost – than the iTunes or Spotify model – where publishers get compensated every time their work is accessed.

The good news is there are several frameworks emerging that solve this problem. One is Cloudflare’s new model that allows content creators to choose whether and how GenAI companies use their content. Cloudflare’s tool works as a pay-per-crawl service, distinguishing GenAI crawlers that take information without sending much traffic back to creators, from search crawlers, which actually drive traffic back to the original source.

Supporting Regulation that Protects and Promotes

As hard as it is to believe, standard installation of seatbelts were once considered “bad for business” by carmakers. That changed when crash test ratings created an incentive to do the right thing. The same can happen with standards in tech that protect users and promote responsible innovation.

If you spend much time playing with AI, you’ll understand the need for regulations to stop a race to the bottom currently influencing the industry. No company should allow chatbots to have sexually explicit conversations with children, for instance. People, meanwhile, should be protected from bad actors attempting to use AI to manipulate their images or other information.

The question is what does meaningful regulation look like?

The App Store Accountability Act is one example of where immediate progress could be made. By making the app store a one-stop shop for age verification and parental consent, we can create consistent protections from the very moment a device is first turned on.

Additionally, Pinterest envisions a world where social media companies and AI companies are competing on their safety records. To do this, the industry will need baseline regulations that focus on outcomes and leave space for companies to innovate in how to exceed those basic expectations.

The opinions expressed in Fortune.com commentary pieces are solely the views of their authors and do not necessarily reflect the opinions and beliefs of Fortune.

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