Business

How Expedia’s CTO is using AI to transform work for 17,000 employees—and travel for millions

Published

2 hours ago

January 14, 2026

Ramana Thumu, the chief technology officer at Expedia Group, says there’s no “AI Center of Excellence” at the online travel agency that sits in an ivory tower and mandates how everyone should be using artificial intelligence.

“We are democratizing AI across the entire company,” says Thumu. “Every employee, every team, and every workflow.”

Some examples of how this plays out include the creation of Expedia’s “AI playground,” which gives employees access to more than 60 different large language models—including from OpenAI, Google’s Gemini, Meta’s Llama, and Anthropic’s Claude—to build their own AI agents. Since January 2025, employees have built more than 1,500 different AI agents and around 6,000 monthly sessions occur within the secure AI agent builder environment on a monthly basis.

Around two-thirds of Thumu’s software developer workforce have embraced AI coding assistant tools including Copilot, Claude Code, and Cursor, often resulting in an estimated 20% productivity lift. Thumu says he wants to bring more “joy” to coding by giving them a broad set of AI tools to infuse in their workflows. He vows that more efficiency won’t necessarily mean fewer jobs. “That’s not how I see it,” Thumu adds. “It’s an improvement which means you can get more work done, much faster, and higher quality work.”

And last year, Expedia began to embed AI “squads,” teams of around four to six AI engineers that work with various business divisions ranging from legal, procurement, human resources, and marketing, collaboratively working alongside AI “champions” for each of those segments to figure out where AI can possibly be implemented to handle some manual tasks.

Every one of these AI investments are being measured, ranging from velocity and cycle time for the AI coding assistant tools, and within customer service, tracking how AI is speeding up the time it takes to resolve a customer query. For the broader employee population, Expedia is measuring usage and the impact on workflows. If the company doesn’t see the right adoption or outcomes for these tools, Thumu says Expedia is quick to reassess and adjust its approach.

“We are absolutely testing a lot of experiences and placing a lot of bets to make sure which ones stick and where we scale, and when the test is not wildly successful, fail fast and take those learnings to do something different,” says Thumu.

He joined Expedia, which ranks No. 312 on the Fortune 500, in late 2024 after a decade in technology leadership roles at sports-merchandising company Fanatics. As Expedia’s CTO, Thumu says his core AI priorities include testing and deploying internal productivity use cases, customer-facing external applications that will lean more heavily on multi-step agentic AI, and a focus on data as well as partner support from large language model providers.

“The same transformation that is happening inside the company is going to show up to hundreds of millions of travelers,” says Thumu.

External applications of AI include Expedia Trip Matching, which debuted in June and allows travelers to share any publicly available travel reel that caught their attention on Instagram and then share that reel directly with Expedia. The travel company will then use AI to produce a customized itinerary and travel tips that are based on the content that was originally created by an influencer.

In October, Expedia also served as a pilot partner—along with Booking.com, Zillow, and Spotify—for what’s known as “Apps in ChatGPT,” a feature that aims to further integrate the chatbot with external brands. As an example, a ChatGPT user can type in: “Expedia, find me a hotel in Paris for under $600 per night in March” and it will pull up a list with prices and links that go to Expedia’s site.

The company also developed an AI customer service agent that’s built on Amazon Web Services, which can help travelers with simple tasks including cancelling a hotel booking, getting a refund status, or changing their books so they don’t need to call a human agent. Expedia says this AI agent handles 143 million conversations a year and resolves over 50% of traveler queries.

As Expedia moves forward with embracing more agentic AI capabilities, Thumu stresses that the company will prioritize stitching together the technology in a manner so one AI companion can help customers effortlessly through all touchpoints. He doesn’t want to build one AI companion that helps book hotels, another to handle discovery for excursions, and yet another to address customer service questions.

“We are trying to bring those together,” says Thumu. “To make sure that from a customer standpoint, it’s one agentic experience. There is a lot of work to be done, but we are in the initial stages.”

John Kell

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NEWS PACKETS

AI’s health care embrace continues to accelerate. Anthropic debuted a new offering within its Claude chatbot that can access medical information, an offering that’s intended for both large organizations and consumers. As Fortune reports, health-related questions are a leading consumer for AI chatbots and while Anthropic has historically been more focused on serving enterprises, this latest offering is an indication that Anthropic would like to make real inroads with consumers. Separately, OpenAI launched ChatGPT Health, which allows users to connect their medical records and wellness apps to the chatbot. But AI companies pushing into heath care need to be careful to closely guard consumer data and avoid inaccurate outputs. An investigation by the Guardian uncovered that some of Google’s AI Overviews provided false or inaccurate information when asked about blood tests.

Apple taps Google’s Gemini for AI-enabled Siri. The iPhone maker has inked a multiyear pact with Google to lean on the latter company’s Gemini to power its AI features, including a big upgrade for Siri that’s expected later in 2026. While the companies didn’t share details about the financials behind the deal, Bloomberg has previously reported that Apple was planning to pay about $1 billion a year to utilize Google AI. The deal is the latest sign that Google is continuing to make serious gains in the AI race against top rival OpenAI.

Nvidia to invest $1 billion in a new AI lab with Eli Lilly. The AI chip maker and pharmaceutical giant behind blockbuster drugs including Type 2 diabetes treatment Mounjaro and antidepressant Prozac are joining forces to build a facility in Silicon Valley that will aim to speed up the use of AI in drug discovery, a costly and time-intensive process. On top of that, the companies say that they see opportunities to apply AI across clinical development, manufacturing, and commercial operations, leveraging multimodal models, agentic AI, robotics, and digital twins.

Moody’s says data centers will need $3 trillion through 2030. The credit ratings company forecasts that at least $3 trillion of data-center investments will be needed to support building facilities, computer equipment, and new capacity to support the rising demand in AI and cloud computing. A big chunk of that spending will come directly from some of the world’s most valuable companies, as Moody’s says six players—Microsoft, Amazon, Alphabet, Oracle, Meta Platforms, and CoreWeave—are forecasted to spend $500 billion on data center investments in 2026, Bloomberg reports.

Walmart expands drone delivery program. Walmart and drone operator Wing, a unit of Google parent Alphabet, have announced that they plan to make package deliveries by sky available to tens of millions of shoppers by expanding the service to more than 270 Walmart locations by the end of 2027. The Wall Street Journal reports that Wing estimates that more than 40 million Walmart shoppers would have access to the service, up sharply from roughly 2 million mostly limited to the Dallas-Fort Worth and Atlanta regions today. Drone deliveries have been an enticing technology application intended to make it even easier to deliver online orders, but most actual applications have been restricted to just a few markets.

ADOPTION CURVE

Data professionals are using unauthorized AI tools way more than they should be. Four out of every ten data professionals admitted that they use unauthorized AI at work, and 17% say they are primarily relying on free, publicly available AI tools, according to a recent survey conducted by tech training provider General Assembly. Devanshu Mehrotra, lead instructor of data science and data analytics at General Assembly, tells Fortune that these figures represent an expectation gap between employers and their workforce.

“Employees are expected to be more productive,” says Mehrotra. But, “they are not being given enough instructions and training to understand how to do it properly, or they are not given the tools that are required, and so they end up going the shadow AI route.”

He added that enterprises should more clearly communicate when and where AI should be used and also delineate the difference between a high risk use case that could expose sensitive data externally and lower-risk activities, like asking a chatbot general queries. AI policies, Mehrotra adds, “needs to be more focused on how you can use AI, what education you need to use or have before you can use AI, and what are approved versus unapproved use cases of AI.”

Courtesy of General Assembly

JOBS RADAR

Hiring:

– Fortrea is seeking a chief data officer, based in Durham, North Carolina. Posted salary range: $200K-$250K/year.

– Redesign Health is seeking a VP of technology, AI ventures, based in New York City. Posted salary: $198K/year.

– Armada is seeking a head of engineering for the federal program, based in Seattle. Posted salary range: $187.4K-$235K/year.

– AppFolio is seeking a SVP of engineering, based in San Diego. Posted salary range: $324K-$405K/year.

Hired:

– Airbnb has appointed Ahmad Al-Dahle to the role of CTO, joining the home-sharing technology company from Meta, where he led the Facebook parent company’s generative AI efforts and the team behind the Llama family of open source models. Prior to Meta, Al-Dahle spent over 16 years at Apple, where he was one of the technologists behind the iPhone’s display and multitouch systems and also worked on the first Apple Watch.

– Nationwide has promoted Misty Kuamoo to serve as CTO and SVP of Nationwide Financial, following the appointment of Michael Carrel, who was appointed CTO for the overall enterprise in December 2025. Kuamoo will be responsible for all technology solutions that support the insurer’s financial services businesses. She has served as a technology leader within Nationwide for more than five years.

– The Timken Company promoted John Szarka to the new position of CTO after he most recently served as a vice president for the manufacturer of engineered bearings and industrial motion products. Szarka has worked at Timken for more than two decades, beginning as a sales engineer and earning steady promotions throughout his career, becoming a division president beginning in 2017.

– GitLab has appointed Siva Padisetty as CTO to lead software engineering, operations, and the customer support teams for the software development platform. Padisetty succeeds Sabrina Farmer, who stepped down from her role and will remain in an advisory capacity through January 31. Previously, Padisetty served as CTO at web tracking software company New Relic.

– 1Password appointed Nancy Wang as CTO, where she will lead the global engineering team and steer the AI strategy for the password-management service provider. Wang previously served as general manager and director of engineering and product for AWS’ data protection business. She was also previously a founding product manager at data security company Rubrik.

– Curated For You appointed Brad Klingenberg as CTO, where he will lead the engineering and data science teams for the e-commerce technology company. Klingenberg previously served as a c-founder for three years at the software startup Naro and worked as chief algorithms officer for smoothie company Daily Harvest and online personal styling service Stitch Fix.

– Amerisure has expanded Amjed Al-Zoubi’s role to now serve as chief information and data officer, broadening his scope to lead the commercial property and casualty insurance company’s analytics and AI efforts. Al-Zoubi initially joined Amerisure in 2018 as a VP of applications systems and had served as CIO since 2020. He also previously served as an IT director for USAA and CUNA Mutual Group.

– Validity promoted Matt Gore to serve as CTO from SVP of engineering for the software provider. Gore joined Validity through the company’s acquisition of email marketing software company Litmus last year, where he served as chief product and technology officer.

– Benchmark Electronics announced the appointment of Josh Hollin as SVP and CTO, succeeding Jan Janick, who will retire on January 16. Most recently, Hollin served as VP of engineering and technical program management at camera company GoPro. Prior to GoPro, Hollin held senior leadership roles at recycling infrastructure startup AMP Robotics and electronics manufacturer Flex.

– Darktrace has appointed Terry Doyle as CIO and is also joining the cybersecurity company’s executive committee. As CIO, Doyle will establish and steer a newly consolidated enterprise IT and data team. Most recently, he served as group CIO at internet solutions provider Team Internet Group. He also previously held senior CIO roles at RWS, a provider of translation services.

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Business

Whole Foods cofounder John Mackey’s hardest ever decision was firing his dad from his company board

Published

22 minutes ago

January 14, 2026

Jace Porter

Whole Foods cofounder John Mackey knew the exact moment he came of age in the business world.

In a recent podcast interview with David Senra, Mackey recalled one of his most challenging moments: firing his father from the Whole Foods board in 1994 after nearly 15 years of advising Mackey on the direction of the company.

“That was the most difficult thing I ever did was firing my dad from that board,” Mackey said. “It took all the courage I had. I love my dad so much, and it hurt him so badly. It was so hard to do, but it was also a pivotal event in my own evolution.”

Mackey, who served as co-CEO of Whole Foods from its 1980 founding until his 2022 retirement, described his younger self as a “shirtless hitchhiking hippie” who dropped out of college. A man of contradictions, Mackey has called for marriage equality and claimed that taking psychedelics helps him find business inspiration, and in the same breath, has touted capitalism as humankind’s greatest invention while ripped labor unions, once comparing them to herpes (“It won’t kill you,” Mackey told the New Yorker in 2010, “but it’s very unpleasant, and will make a lot of people not want to be your lover.”)

In 2022, the business leader claimed “socialists are taking over,” and that young people weren’t willing to work anymore because they want to find meaningful work, something that eludes most people in the early stages of their careers.

His relationship with his father, as it relates to business, is no less complicated. As a younger man, the free-market vegan was looking to take risks to grow his wealth, even if it meant breaking from the guidance of his father, an original investor in Whole Foods. Mackey described his father as always being a man who preferred to conserve his cash, even if it meant sacrificing the growth of his wealth. As he aged, Mackey’s father became more rigid in his beliefs, which Mackey attributed in part to an Alzheimer’s diagnosis, made a couple years after his father’s departure from the board.

These diverging philosophies were most salient during the grocery chain’s 1992 IPO, when Mackey’s father encouraged the cofounder to sell company stock. Mackey, trusting his father, obliged, but later regretted it. He said the growing differences in doctrines around money fractured their relationship, leading Mackey to seek out independence from his father.

“That was when my mentorship was over,” he said. “He still advised me but from that point onward, really I was on my own. I was not going to follow him any longer. Before then, I pretty much did whatever my dad suggested.”

Mackey was largely responsible for transforming a single boutique health food store into a grocery giant. Founded in Austin in 1980, Whole Foods soon expanded across Texas and grew nationally, with 12 locations coast-to-coast at the time of its IPO, when the company was valued at $100 million. In 2017, Mackey sold the grocery giant to Amazon for a cool $13.7 billion. Whole Foods now has more than 500 locations across the U.S. and UK.

Mackey’s evolving business philosophy

At the core of Mackey’s businessperson identity is his doctrine of “conscious capitalism,” the flavor of free enterprise he said should operate with strong ethical foundations with the goal to create more than just profit in service of all business stakeholders, from customers to employees. Mackey first identified this value in 1981, when only a year after opening the first Whole Foods, the store flooded, severely damaging nearly everything inside. He recounted getting help from friends, customers, and suppliers, and was able to operate the business again 28 days after the flood.

Mackey said he internalized some value in making conservative financial decisions from his father, whom he said was a child of the Great Depression. Mackey’s father reached adulthood in the midst of World War II and operated under fear of another financial disaster for most of his life.

“He was always thinking there was going to be another Great Depression,” Mackey said. “So he was always trying to protect himself from that because it was such a traumatic experience for him.”

Mackey himself has admitted that making money isn’t everything. In 2007, the CEO said he felt financially secure and slashed his own salary to $1. (According to Forbes, he has a net worth of more than $75 million.)

However, the cofounder’s “expansive” philosophy of business increasingly diverged from his father, particularly in the way he kept shares of the business. When Mackey asked his father to step away from the board, he encouraged him to sell half his company shares and watch what happens to the other half. Whole Foods doubled in stock price over the next year.

While Mackey and his father were able to reconcile their differences, he recalled 1994 as the moment in which he prioritized his own business tactics over his mentor’s.

“I’m not going to do what you tell me to do any longer, particularly when it comes to growth,” Mackey recalled telling his father. “We’re going to grow this business.”

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Business

McKinsey challenges graduates to master AI tools as it shifts hiring hunt toward liberal arts majors

Published

53 minutes ago

January 14, 2026

Jace Porter

A year-and-a-half ago, management consulting firm McKinsey had just 3,000 AI agents in its possession, with its 40,000 employees far outnumbering its agentic fleet. But in just 18 months, that number has grown more than 500% to about 20,000 AI agents supporting the company’s work, CEO Bob Sternfels said on Harvard Business Review’s Ideacast. Now, the company is evaluating how well job candidates can work with its AI tool as part of the interview process.

The consulting firm is asking candidates to use its internal AI tool Lilli in a test during its hiring process, according to consulting interview preparation company CaseBasix, which helps candidates solve McKinsey, BCG, and Bain cases. In a blog post, CaseBasix says it gathered information from internal sources who say some candidates would be asked to work with the company’s AI tool as part of a final round AI interview. The Financial Times also reported on McKinsey’s focus on business school students using Lilli, citing people familiar with the matter.

The move comes as the blue-chip company seeks to further implement AI into its operations, pursuing skills that extend beyond the interpersonal and problem-solving traits usually required of a consultant. Companies like McKinsey are looking for candidates who can be AI-ready on day one as the technology becomes essential to job functions.

In his interview with HBR, Sternfels said AI models have developed an expertise in problem-solving, and that the company would be “looking more at liberal arts majors, whom we had deprioritized,” for potential sources of creativity as the firm moves to find creative solutions beyond “logical next steps.” It’s not just McKinsey, other leaders are looking to hire liberal arts graduates like CEO of IT firm Cognizant Technology Solutions Ravi Kumar S, who says he’s recruiting candidates with liberal arts degrees.

Putting AI skills to the test

McKinsey hasn’t shied away from AI in the hiring process. The company encourages AI use in the application process on its career page, saying that candidates can use the technology to refine résumés and practice interview questions. Though it cautions candidates to use the technology responsibly, saying use of the technology during assessments and for generating interview responses, as well as embellishment, is not permitted.

“We welcome those who share our curiosity about AI and its potential,” the company’s career page says.

But the pilot program goes a step further. According to Casebasix, the AI interview may be an additional step in the application process, alongside the case interview and a personal experience interview for candidates in the U.S. and North America.

“In the McKinsey AI Interview, you are expected to prompt the AI, review its output, and apply judgment to produce a clear and structured response,” the Casebasix post said. The post says that McKinsey is looking to test soft skills essential to working at the consulting firm—and for working with the company’s AI—including collaboration and reasoning.

A McKinsey spokesperson did not immediately respond to Fortune’s request for comment.

An agentic workforce reshaping the nature of consulting work

Sternfels predicted the company will adopt AI aggressively within the following months. “In another 18 months I think every employee will be enabled by one or more agents,” Sternfels said on HBR’s Ideacast. “We’ll have a workforce that is human and agentic, and we’re going to have to navigate that.”

That change could dramatically shift the work that McKinsey performs. With AI agents making the company’s employees more productive, Sternfels says that the AI adoption could fundamentally change McKinsey’s model.

“We’re migrating away from pure advisory work, away from the fee-for-service model,” Sternfels said. “We’re moving to more of an outcomes-based model, where we identify a joint business case with our clients, and we underwrite the outcome by tying our fees to the impact our work delivers for them”

But the human skills that Sternfels says AI can’t replace: creativity, aspiration, and judgment. “There isn’t truth in AI models; there isn’t judgment,” Sternfel said. “Humans need to impose those parameters.”

This story was originally featured on Fortune.com

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Citigroup CEO Jane Fraser warns of job cuts and says it’s time to raise the bar in memo to staff

Published

1 hour ago

January 14, 2026

Jace Porter

Citigroup CEO Jane Fraser, one of Fortune‘s Most Powerful Women—and the top female executive on Wall Street—is pushing ahead with about 1,000 job cuts and has warned staff that “we are not graded on effort” in a fiery internal memo setting a tougher tone for 2026. The cuts are part of a multiyear overhaul that could ultimately eliminate up to 20,000 roles as Fraser demands hard results and an end to what she calls the bank’s “old, bad habits.”

In the memo, previously reported by Bloomberg, Fraser told Citi’s roughly 200,000‑plus employees “the bar is raised” and stressed performance will be judged on outcomes rather than intentions or long hours.

“We are not graded on effort. We are judged on our results,” she wrote, adding she expects “the last vestiges of old, bad habits” to disappear as the bank pursues a leaner, more commercially aggressive culture in 2026. The language marks one of her sharpest internal messages since she took over in 2021, underscoring a shift from transformation planning to execution.

Fraser’s approach also demonstrates why Fortune contributor Jeffrey Sonnenfeld, the Lester Crown professor of leadership practice at the Yale School of Management, chose the Citi CEO as one of his top performers of 2025. Fraser’s “Project Bora Bora” restructuring resulted in full-year revenues tracking toward $84 billion in 2025, the highest since 2010, with records for all five business segments in the last quarter. The latest earnings quarter saw all five business segments hit quarterly records. The stock’s performance ranking, up 67% in 2025, made it the best among major U.S. banks, in a year when Fraser was elected Chair of the Citigroup Board of Directors and was named Euromoney “Banker of the Year 2025.”

1,000 jobs now, 20,000 over time

Citigroup is poised to eliminate about 1,000 positions this week, as previously reported by Bloomberg, a move that follows earlier rounds of layoffs and brings the bank closer to a broader plan to cut roughly 20,000 jobs by 2026, or about 8% of its global workforce, according to people familiar with the matter. The reductions are tied to a sweeping restructuring unveiled in early 2024 that aims to simplify management layers, streamline businesses, and deliver up to $2.5 billion in cost savings. Citi has already shed more than 10,000 roles under Fraser’s overhaul.

Culture reset on Wall Street

Fraser’s memo signals a cultural reset at a bank long criticized for lagging behind rivals on profitability and efficiency, and she explicitly called time on what she describes as legacy behaviors that dulled Citi’s competitive edge. She urged bankers to adopt a more “commercial mindset,” telling staff to “ask for the business,” fight for a “full wallet” with clients, and stop settling for secondary roles or missed opportunities.

Automation, AI, and ‘roles no longer required’

The job cuts are being accelerated by investments in automation and artificial intelligence that are changing how work is done across the bank. Fraser told employees and investors as Citi completes more than 80% of its massive “Transformation” program, technology and process simplification will mean some roles evolve, new positions appear and “others will no longer be required.” Outgoing CFO Mark Mason said he expects headcount to keep falling this year as AI tools and streamlined processes take hold, even as Citi continues to hire top talent in key areas like investment banking.

High stakes for 2026

Fraser has framed 2026 as the year a “more disciplined, more confident, winning Citi” must fully emerge, arguing the transformation and painful cuts are laying the foundation for stronger, more consistent returns. But the strategy carries high stakes: Citi must prove to investors the layoffs, technology spending, and cultural shake‑up can close its long‑standing performance gap with Wall Street rivals while maintaining morale among the staff she is now bluntly reminding that effort alone will not be enough.

For this story, Fortune journalists used generative AI as a research tool. An editor verified the accuracy of the information before publishing.

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