Of course, the potential of having to deal with an activist investor’s campaign goes with the territory of being a CEO, especially at a company that has been struggling. But Super’s saga is a reminder that women CEOs remain much likelier than their male counterparts to be targeted by activist investors.

This year, according to a report last week by the Conference Board, women have made up 8% of the CEOs in the Russell 3000 index but accounted for 15% of activist campaigns specifically targeting chief executives. Other women to have recently confronted activists: Cracker Barrel’s Julie Masino, who survived a campaign, and Vail Resorts’ Kirsten Lynch, who did not. 

What makes the Conference Board report especially frustrating is that it adds more proof points to an old, seemingly intractable trend.

In 2015, the New York Times’ DealBook pondered “Do Activist Investors Target Female CEOs?” while Fortune’s Pattie Sellers asked “Does Nelson Peltz have a problem with women?” In 2017, Harvard Law School found that women CEOs had almost a 50% higher probability than men of becoming the target of shareholder activism.

Why? One reason, the Conference Board theorized, is rooted in a stereotype that women are more cooperative. It’s also conceivable that the trend reflects the glass cliff phenomenon in which women often take the helm of companies in decline. But there is almost certainly some bias at play. The Conference Board research showed that women targeted by activists face the same odds of being canned whether they turn things around or not, while male CEOs are less likely to be ousted when results improve.

Some of the most prominent women chief executives ever have tangled with activists: PepsiCo’s ex-CEO Indra Nooyi, ex-Yahoo CEO Marissa Mayer, ex-DuPont CEO Ellen Kullman, ex-Mondelez CEO Irene Rosenfeld, ex-HP CEO Meg Whitman, and Mary Barra, still at GM. Michelle Gass, now thriving as CEO of Levi Strauss & Co, dealt with not one but three activist campaigns as she tried to fix Kohl’s.

Everyone should be held accountable when their company is failing or on a bad path. But it is worth wondering what this extra hurdle women CEOs face is costing us. Activist campaigns are bruising to the company but also to a CEO’s reputation. Does this mean boards might be more likely to avoid naming a woman to lower the odds of an activist campaign, or that fewer women will throw their hat in the ring?

Either way, it seems the phenomenon could needlessly be costing corporate America some much needed talent.—Phil Wahba

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

Top news

Fed watch

All eyes will be on the Fed meeting today even though an interest rate cut is all but certain. Instead, investors will focus on Chair Jerome Powell’s tone and whether he characterizes Fed policy as “in a good place;” doing so would imply that a January cut is unlikely. 

Fed chair watch 

Meanwhile, President Donald Trump has narrowed down the candidates to replace Powell as Fed chair. The frontrunner is National Economic Council Director Kevin Hassett, but to clinch the job he’ll reportedly have to outshine three other contenders in the final round of interviews, suggesting he’s not a shoo-in for the job. 

Trump’s affordability tour

In his first in a series of speeches about “affordability,” President Trump mocked the term and insisted that Americans are doing better than ever. In reality, U.S. inflation is close to 3%, about where it was when Trump’s predecessor Joe Biden left office. 

Miami’s mayoral race

As Trump railed against affordability, Eileen Higgins, a Democrat, defeated Trump’s favored candidate in Miami’s mayoral race with a campaign focused in part on affordable housing. She’s the first Democrat to occupy Miami’s City Hall in three decades (and the first-ever woman), giving Democrats another jolt of momentum ahead of the 2026 midterms. 

Taiwan’s chip action

Taiwan is invoking a national security law to protect the trade secrets of its homegrown chipmaker TSMC and has used it to indict a TSMC supplier for allegedly letting a former employee steal details about TSMC’s top chips. 

Layoffs hit 1.1 million

Recruitment firm Challenger, Gray & Christmas has calculated the number of layoffs so far this year at 1.1 million, the sixth time since 1993 that layoffs have been that high. Technology was the hardest hit sector with 150,000 layoffs.

Americans ‘living on the financial edge’

Moody’s Analytics Chief Economist Mark Zandi told Fortunethat many Americans are “already living on the financial edge,” and that a drop in their spending could lead to a recession. If layoffs increase, then Zandi estimates that a “jobs recession” is certain. 

Sam Altman worries about ‘rate of change’

During an appearance on The Tonight Show with Jimmy Fallon, OpenAI CEO Sam Altman admitted that he’s worried about “the rate of change that’s happening in the world right now.” He added that the “rate at which jobs will change over may be pretty fast,” with hopes that “much better jobs” will follow. 

The markets

S&P 500 futures were up 0.05% this morning. The last session closed down 0.09%. STOXX Europe 600 was down 0.19% in early trading. The U.K.’s FTSE 100 was up 0.14% in early trading. Japan’s Nikkei 225 was down 0.1%. China’s CSI 300 was down 0.14%. The South Korea KOSPI was down 0.21%. India’s NIFTY 50 is down 0.32%. Bitcoin is up at $93K.

Around the watercooler

New contract shows Palantir is working on a tech platform for another federal agency that works with ICE by Jessica Mathews

Jamie Dimon taps Jeff Bezos, Michael Dell, and Ford CEO Jim Farley to advise JPMorgan’s $1.5 trillion national security initiative by Nino Paoli

Trump’s $12 billion farmer bailout is a ‘Band-Aid on a bigger wound’ the American agriculture industry is still reeling from by Sasha Rogelberg

Exelon CEO: The ‘warning lights are on’ for U.S. electric grid resilience and utility prices amid AI demand surge by Jordan Blum

CEO Daily is compiled and edited by Joey Abrams, Claire Zillman and Lee Clifford.

The views seem to range from bubble-wary to bubble-dismissive. We hashed it all out over eggs and sausages at Fortune’s IRL Term Sheet Breakfast at Brainstorm AI in San Francisco yesterday. This is Amanda Gerut, Fortune’s West Coast news editor, pinch-hitting for my colleague Allie Garfinkle.

Allie hosted five VCs with funds ranging in size from $5 million to $25 billion and views varied across the panel. This group alone is collectively going to deploy anywhere from tens to hundreds of millions over the next decade into companies with AI as a backdrop and these investments will either prove spectacularly right or wrong.

Here’s a roll call:

Jenny Xiao, partner at Leonsis Capital and former researcher at OpenAI, came in with a nuanced take. There’s something of a bubble, but it’s “relatively contained” in the infrastructure layer with overinvestment primarily in data centers, GPUs and in large language model companies. But right now, there’s actually underinvestment in the application layer because there are so many ways AI can make an impact in various enterprises, Xiao said. 

Vanessa Larco, former partner at New Enterprise Associates (NEA) and co-founder of new venture firm Premise, has a contrarian view. “Everyone thinks enterprise is safer,” Larco said. “But I actually think the consumer might, this time around in the current environment, be what survives.” Larco’s reasoning is that if a consumer adopts your AI product, it’s because you’re giving them something faster, “radically cheaper, or much easier to use.” Once you’ve done that and built a brand, it’s very hard for people to quit you. 

Rob Biederman, managing partner at Asymmetric Capital Partners and chairman of Catalant Technologies, had a sobering view. “In every boom, 99% or 99.9% of companies fail, and one or two of them become Amazon or Google,” said Biederman, who had to dash off to catch a flight. Only companies that can systematically create value for customers, which most of them aren’t doing right now, will survive. 

Aaron Jacobson, partner at NEA, said the history of technological innovation “is always overhyped in the near term and underhyped in the long term, and that will be true of AI.” So at some point there will be a correction and there will be cycles of pain around valuation and funding, “but ultimately, in 10 years, we’re going to have a lot of really big, impactful companies.”

Daniel Dart, founder and general partner of Rock Yard Ventures, had the boldest counter to fears about a bubble. He sees a total addressable market we can’t yet imagine. People think self-driving Waymos will replace Ubers, but Dart sees elementary schools and elderly care centers with Waymos waiting out front and that proves to him we’re still in the early innings. 

“You’re really going to tell me there aren’t going to be any trillion-dollar companies in 2030 or 2034? No one here is going to take that bet,” said Dart. “There is going to be so much value creation that it’s like the birth of fire.”

See you tomorrow,

Amanda Gerut
Email:Amanda.gerut@fortune.com
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Joey Abrams curated the deals section of today’s newsletter.Subscribe here.

Venture Deals

– Saviynt, an El Segundo, Calif.-based identity security platform, raised $700 million in series B funding. KKR led the round and was joined by SixthStreetGrowth, TenEleven and existing investor CarrickCapitalPartners.

– fal, a San Francisco-based AI-generated media platform, raised $140 million in Series D funding. Sequoia led the round and was joined by KleinerPerkins, NVentures, and AlkeonCapital.

– Radial, a New York City-based network designed to help patients access advanced mental health treatments, raised $50 million in Series A funding. GeneralCatalyst led the round and was joined by SolariCapital, SLHealthCapital, FounderCollective, BoxGroup, ScrubCapital, and DiedevanLamoen.

– Relation, a London, U.K.-based developer of medicines for immunology, metabolic, and bone diseases, raised $26 million in funding from NVentures, DCVC, and MagneticVentures.

– Aradigm, a New York City-based benefits platform for cell and gene therapies, raised $20 million in Series A funding. FristCresseyVentures led the round and was joined by AndreessenHorowitz and MorganHealth. 

– PrimeSecurity, a Tel Aviv, Israel and New York City-based AI-powered platform designed to detect and mitigate risks during software design, raised $20 million in Series A funding. ScaleVenturePartners led the round and was joined by FoundationCapital, FlybridgeVentures, and others.

– Algori, a Madrid, Spain-based AI-powered shopper insights platform for the fast-moving consumer goods industry, raised €3.6 million ($4.2 million) in funding from RedBullVentures, Co-invest Capital, AttaPoll, and others.

– EmpromptuAI, a San Francisco-based platform designed to help transition SaaS products into AI-native systems, raised $2 million in pre-seed funding. PrecursorVentures led the round and was joined by AlumniVentures, FoundersEdge, RogueWomenVC, and others.

Private Equity

– AppDirect, backed by CDPQ, acquired vComSolutions, a San Ramon, Calif.-based IT management platform, at an enterprise valuation of more than $100 million.

– JensenHughes, backed by GryphonInvestors, acquired SafetyManagementServices, a West Jordan, Utah-based fire and life safety company. Financial terms were not disclosed.

– NewStateCapitalPartners acquired a majority stake in Harrell-Fish, a Bloomington, Ind.-based mechanical installation and maintenance services provider. Financial terms were not disclosed.

– PestCoHoldings, a portfolio company of ThompsonStreetCapital, acquired SouthwestExterminating, a Houston, Texas-based pest control provider. Financial terms were not disclosed.

– ProsperityPartners, backed by UnityPartners, acquired a majority stake in Farkouh, Furman & Faccio, a New York City-based provider of tax, attest, accounting and business consulting services. Financial terms were not disclosed.

– SEVA acquired a minority stake in Pronto, a Lehi, Utah-based team communications platform designed for front–line employers and higher education institutions. Financial terms were not disclosed.

Exits

– ArclineInvestmentManagement acquired Altronic, a Girard, Ohio-based supplier of ignition, control, and instrumentation systems for critical infrastructure power systems, from HOERBIGERGroup. Financial terms were not disclosed.

– BerkshirePartners agreed to acquire UnitedFlowTechnologies, an Irving, Texas-based process and equipment solutions company for water and wastewater systems, from H.I.G.Capital. Financial terms were not disclosed.

– BessemerInvestors acquired Xanitos, a Newtown Square, Penn.-based provider of environmental services, patient transport, patient observation, and linen services, from AngelesEquityPartners. Financial terms were not disclosed.

– ShareRockPartners acquired a majority stake in AMAGTechnology, a Hawthorne, Calif.-based physical security solutions provider, from AlliedUniversal.

Coupang chief executive officer Park Dae-jun resigned over his failure to prevent South Korea’s largest-ever data breach, which set off a regulatory and political backlash against the country’s dominant online retailer.