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Here’s what sets apart the 50 companies most primed for growth in the AI age

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Good morning. What does it take to sustainably grow in the age of AI? Fortune has teamed up with BCG to assess more than 10 million data points from 3,000-plus companies. The result is the Fortune Future 50, a ranking of 50 companies that are most primed and fit to grow. You can find the 2025 Fortune Future 50 list here.

We’ve identified 25 metrics across four pillars of corporate vitality: strategy, technology, talent and culture. I am in San Francisco today to speak with senior leaders from the top three companies on this year’s list at the Workday Rising GO for Growth Summit. Snowflake, No. 1 on this year’s list, consistently communicates and reinforces its strategy to be the backbone of enterprise data. AI provider Databricks, No. 2, is making heavy investments in AI and machine learning to deliver data analytics at scale. Coming in third place this year is Celonis, a smaller global software company that’s fueled its growth by also investing in hiring skilled talent and creating pathways for them to thrive.

U.S. tech companies dominate this year’s list, with 38 software and AI companies in top spots. The U.S. is home to more than three-quarters of companies on the list. Private firms make up half the spots, despite accounting for only 5% of the companies in our data set. What this demonstrates, perhaps, is the importance of being nimble, focused and well-funded to take advantage of the AI era.

But, as we’ll discuss today at the Workday Summit, these companies also understand the importance of creating a culture of speed, innovation and learning that enables them to attract the right people and prime them for success. While technology is a tool in enabling vitality, what powers success is still your people.

More news below.

Contact CEO Daily via Diane Brady at diane.brady@fortune.com

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The U.S. and China meet in Madrid

U.S. and Chinese negotiators are in Spain for a second day of talks today. Officials are tackling a wide array of topics, including TikTok’s future status in the U.S and a possible meeting between U.S. President Donald Trump and Chinese President Xi Jinping later this year. Late on Sunday, Trump told reporters that TikTok’s fate in the U.S. was “up to China.”

China’s economy shows strain

Retail sales and industrial output in China last month missed expectations. Retail sales grew by 3.4%, while industrial output rose by 5.2%. China is struggling with sluggish domestic demand, while officials are targeting industrial overcapacity and aggressive price wars. 

The U.K. and U.S. go nuclear

The U.K. and U.S. will work together to boost nuclear power, aiming to speed up new projects and investments, including a possible dozen new modular reactors in northeast England. Prime Minister Keir Starmer said the agreement would lead to “a golden age of nuclear that will drive down household bills in the long run.” Trump travels to the U.K. for a state visit on Tuesday.

Trump deals with Hyundai fallout

In a Sunday social media post, Trump said he doesn’t want to “frighten off” investors following an ICE raid on a Hyundai factory earlier this month. The arrests of hundreds of Korean workers sparked outrage in South Korea, and is leading businesses to consider scaling back their U.S. investments. Trade negotiations between South Korea and the U.S. are ongoing as the East Asian country tries to ward off a 25% tariff on its goods.

Fed to meet on Tuesday and Wednesday

The Fed meets on Tuesday and Wednesday with markets pricing in a 96.4% chance of a quarter-point rate cut announcement and 3.6% odds for a half-point cut, per data from the CME Group. On Monday, Senate Republicans will try to confirm White House economic adviser Stephen Miran as a Fed governor. It’s unclear if current Fed Governor Lisa Cook, whom President Donald Trump is attempting to fire, will participate in the meeting.

OpenAI could be closer to an IPO

Last week, OpenAI and Microsoft, one of the company’s largest investors, signed a preliminary agreement that allows OpenAI to restructure into a public benefit corporation and could lead to a potential IPO. Regulators from both California and Delaware are looking into the potential restructuring, however, and OpenAI board chairman Bret Taylor has maintained that OpenAI’s nonprofit would continue to control the startup.

Utah Gov. attacks social media and the internet

Utah Governor Spencer Cox attacked social media, the internet, and massive tech companies for contributing to American polarization during a weekend appearance on NBC’s Meet the Press with Kristen Welker following the assassination of Charlie Kirk last week. Governor Cox, who has gone after large social media companies before, noted that “the most powerful companies in the history of the world have figured out how to hack our brains, get us addicted to outrage.”

The markets

S&P 500 futures are up 0.1%, following a volatile Friday for U.S. markets. South Korea’s KOSPI rose 0.4%, Hong Kong’s Hang Seng Index is up 0.2%, and mainland China’s CSI 300 is up 0.2%. Hyundai and Kia both fell over 3.8% following continued concerns about Korean investments in the U.S. Labubu owner Pop Mart is down 6.8% after a downgrade from JPMorgan. Japan’s markets are closed today. India’s NIFTY 50 is currently down 0.2%, while the STOXX Europe 600 is up by 0.5% in early trading. 

Around the watercooler

This housing data is the ‘most critical economic variable’ for predicting recessions, and it’s now at the lowest level since pandemic shutdowns by Jason Ma

Robinhood CEO says just like every company became a tech company, every company will become an AI company—but faster by Nino Paoli

Former Goldman Sachs CEO during 2008 crash says markets are ‘due’ for a crisis: ‘It doesn’t matter that you can’t see where it’s coming from’ by Sasha Rogelberg

Ray Dalio calls for wealth ‘redistribution policy’ when AI and humanoid robots start to benefit the 1% to 10% more than everyone else by Nick Lichtenberg

Today’s edition of CEO Daily was compiled and edited by Joey Abrams and Nicholas Gordon.

This is the web version of CEO Daily, a newsletter of must-read global insights from CEOs and industry leaders. Sign up to get it delivered free to your inbox.



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Billionaire Palantir cofounder Joe Lonsdale calls elite college undergrads a ‘loser generation’ as data reveals rise in students seeking support for disabilities

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That reality is showing up on a campus. A growing share of college students are seeking medical evaluations for ADHD, anxiety, and depression—and requesting academic accommodations such as extended time on exams and papers. At some of the country’s selective universities, the numbers are striking: more than 20% of undergraduates at Brown and Harvard are registered as disabled. At UMass Amherst, it’s 34%; Stanford, 38%, according to data analyzed by The Atlantic.

While it’s clear that many students requesting accommodations do so for legitimate medical reasons and that increased diagnoses may reflect greater mental-health awareness, some experts have raised concerns about overdiagnosis and whether universities are making it too easy for students to qualify. And the debate has set off a wildfire on social media this week, catching the attention of high-profile business leaders, including Joe Lonsdale, the billionaire venture capitalist and Palantir cofounder.

Lonsdale’s response offered no sympathy. “Loser generation,” he wrote in reaction to a graph showing the rising number of undergraduate students reporting disabilities.

“At Stanford it’s a hack for housing though and at some point I get it, even if it’s not my personal ethics. Terrible leadership from the university.”

He argued that families have been slowly using disability accommodations to give their children an academic advantage—when they might not actually need it.

“Claiming your child has a disability to give them a leg up became an obvious dominant game theoretic strategy for parents without honor in the 2010’s,” Lonsdale wrote earlier this month on X. “Great signal to avoid a family / not do business with parents who act this way.”

And while it’s unclear how many students, if any, are trying to game the system, Lonsdale has made his broader view clear: he doesn’t think universities are preparing young people—or evaluating them—in ways that matter.

“No great companies are interested in the BS games played by universities,” he added.

Fortune reached out to Lonsdale for further comment.

Lonsdale’s complicated history with higher education

Though a Stanford alum himself, Lonsdale has a complicated history with the institution and higher education more broadly.

In the early 2010s, while serving as a mentor in a Stanford tech entrepreneurship course, Lonsdale was accused of sexual assault by a student—and banned from mentoring undergraduates for 10 years and from campus entirely. The assault charges were later dropped, but Lonsdale acknowledged violating a rule prohibiting consensual relationships between mentors and students.

Less than a decade later, in 2021, Lonsdale cofounded his own school—the University of Austin—with Niall Ferguson, Bari Weiss, and others. The institution prides itself on freedom of speech and overcoming the “mediocrity” of traditional higher education. It welcomed its first group of undergraduates last fall and remains unaccredited.

The school has drawn support from Lonsdale’s fellow Palantir cofounder and Stanford alum Alex Karp, who has also criticized the college system.

“Everything you learned at your school and college about how the world works is intellectually incorrect,” Karp, Palantir’s CEO, told CNBC earlier this year.

Instead, the 58-year-old said Palantir is building a new credential “separate from class or background,” that is the “best credential in tech.”

“If you did not go to school, or you went to a school that’s not that great, or you went to Harvard or Princeton or Yale, once you come to Palantir, you’re a Palantirian,” Karp said during an earnings call earlier this year. “No one cares about the other stuff.”



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Exclusive: Crypto startup LI.FI raises $29 million for cross-blockchain price discovery tool

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When businesses decide to engage with crypto, they quickly discover the landscape is fragmented across numerous blockchains. If they want to move assets between different chains, they must often rely on a technology called bridging that can prove insecure and expensive. Philipp Zentner, cofounder and CEO of LI.FI, created his company to address these issues. The startup provides businesses with price comparisons of exchange rates and bridging fees. It also aims to find businesses the most efficient and cost-effective pathway for each transaction. 

On Thursday, LI.FI announced that it raised $29 million in funding led by Multicoin and CoinFund, bringing the total capital to about $52 million. Zentner did not disclose the company’s valuation. 

“You can think of us like a combination of Google Flights and Google Maps,” he said in an interview with Fortune. “[We’re] a competitive price comparison and transaction pathfinding for businesses in crypto finance.”

The businesses that LI.FI partners with are fintechs, brokerage apps, trading desks, wallets, and neobanks. The startup has more than 800 partners, including Robinhood, Binance, and Kraken. The company says that its value proposition is that its service allows companies to go to market faster and saves them time on research, integration, and maintenance. 

Zentner says that LI.FI is profitable and generates revenue through transaction fees, though he declined to disclose specific revenue numbers. It has $8 billion in monthly transaction volume as of October, which is about seven times more than its monthly volume from a year prior. The company has more than 100 employees. 

“As crypto trading becomes a core feature inside mainstream fintech apps, the hardest problem is…making fragmented blockchains, liquidity, and execution work seamlessly together,” said Spencer Applebaum, investment partner at Multicoin Capital, in a statement. “LI.FI Protocol gives fintechs and web3 wallets a single API to offer both trading and cross-chain asset movement, handling on-chain routing and execution behind the scenes.”

With the new funding, LI.FI plans to expand into different transaction domains, including perpetual futures, yield opportunities, prediction markets, and lending markets. Zentner says with the new capital he also aims to hire more employees.

Join us at the Fortune Workplace Innovation Summit May 19–20, 2026, in Atlanta. The next era of workplace innovation is here—and the old playbook is being rewritten. At this exclusive, high-energy event, the world’s most innovative leaders will convene to explore how AI, humanity, and strategy converge to redefine, again, the future of work. Register now.



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A San Francisco woman just gave birth in a Waymo robotaxi — and Waymo says it’s not the first time

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 Self-driving Waymo taxis have gone viral for negative reasons involving the death of a beloved San Francisco bodega cat and pulling an illegal U-turn in front of police who were unable to issue a ticket to a nonexistent driver.

But this week, the self-driving taxis are the bearer of happier news after a San Francisco woman gave birth in a Waymo.

The mother was on her way to the University of California, San Francisco medical center Monday when she delivered inside the robotaxi, said a Waymo spokesperson in a statement Wednesday. The company said its rider support team detected “unusual activity” inside the vehicle and called to check on the rider as well as alert 911.

Waymo, which is owned by Google’s parent company, Alphabet, declined to elaborate on how the vehicle knew something was amiss.

The company has said it has cameras and microphones inside as well as outside the cars.

The taxi and its passengers arrived safely at the hospital ahead of emergency services. Jess Berthold, a UCSF spokesperson, confirmed the mother and child were brought to the hospital. She said the mother was not available for interviews.

Waymo said the vehicle was taken out of service for cleaning after the ride. While still rare, this was not the first baby delivered in one of its taxis, the company said.

“We’re proud to be a trusted ride for moments big and small, serving riders from just seconds old to many years young,” the company said.

The driverless taxis have surged in popularity even as they court higher scrutiny. Riders can take them on freeways and interstates around San Francisco, Silicon Valley, Los Angeles and Phoenix.

In September, a Waymo pulled a U-turn in front of a sign telling drivers not to do that, and social media users dumped on the San Bruno Police because state law prohibited officers from ticketing the car. In October, a popular tabby cat named Kit Kat known to pad around its Mission District neighborhood was crushed to death by a Waymo.



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