Business

The younger consumer boom: Amex and luxury brands pursue Gen Z and millennials

Published

3 months ago

September 22, 2025

Good morning. Winning customers who stay with a brand for decades has become an important strategy for financial institutions and retailers.

For American Express, that means tailoring offerings to affluent, adventure-seeking customers in their mid-20s to mid-40s. In a new Fortune article, my colleague Shawn Tully spoke with American Express CEO Steve Squeri about enhancements to the company’s U.S. Consumer and Business Platinum Cards. Squeri also explains how he’s targeting Gen Z and millennials.

Dining was the fastest-growing travel and entertainment category in Q1 and Q2 this year for American Express. Subsequently, Amex recently introduced a new $400 annual credit for reservations made through Resy—a site acquired by the company in 2019, a year after Squeri became CEO. Amex customers can now get tables at top restaurants, which often reserve spots or prioritize cardholders over others who booked earlier.

Amex card members with Resy credit spend 25% more at U.S. Resy restaurants since the benefit launched. Resy CEO Pablo Rivero told Tully that Resy benefits were introduced to several other Amex cards in 2024.

Increasingly, that cohort includes Gen Z (up to age 27) and millennials (ages 28 to 44), a group Squeri has actively courted. Together, these generations account for 35% of all U.S. consumer spending for Amex, up from 19% in 2019. Gen Z and millennials also gravitate heavily toward acquiring fee-based cards like Gold and Platinum, Tully writes. (You can read the complete article here.)

I recently spoke with Scott Roe, CFO and COO of New York City-based Tapestry, parent of luxury brands Coach and Kate Spade New York. Millennials and Gen Z are increasingly choosing Coach, which drove a strong quarter ending June 28, fueled by these demographics. “By 2030, Gen Z and millennials will make up over 70% of the market,” Roe told me. Tapestry aims to capture their first luxury purchase.

“The long-term value of acquiring customers at this initial entry point is substantial,” he said. “While others speak to millions, we’re talking to billions of potential consumers.”

Gen Z’s spending power is expected to reach $12 trillion in the next five years, according to a global report by NielsenIQ and GfK in collaboration with World Data Lab. As a result, this generation will have a significant influence on the products manufacturers and retailers offer in the near future, according to the report.

Brands that connect with Gen Z and millennials now are positioning themselves for lasting customer loyalty and future growth.

Sheryl Estrada
sheryl.estrada@fortune.com

Leaderboard

Christy Schwartz was appointed interim CFO of Opendoor Technologies Inc. (Nasdaq: OPEN), effective as of Sept. 30, replacing Selim Freiha, the company’s CFO, according to an SEC filing. Schwartz served as the company’s interim CFO from December 2022 to November 2024, and its chief accounting officer from March 2021 to May 2025. Before that, she served as Opendoor’s VP, corporate controller from August 2016 to March 2021.

Justin Robinson was appointed CFO of The Dot Group, a student living company. Robinson has more than 24 years of finance experience. He previously held CFO and senior adviser roles at Apollo Global Management, where he spent nine years working across European hospitality and mixed-use real estate. Before Apollo, Robinson held senior finance roles at Hilton Group and Jumeirah Hotels, after beginning his career at Credit Suisse and Deloitte.

Big Deal

Udemy, an AI learning platform, released its annual 2026 Global Learning & Skills Trends Report, which explores the top themes and in-demand skills shaping the future of work. The analysis is based on learning data from over 17,000 Udemy enterprise customers.

A key finding is that AI fluency skills are in demand. Udemy has seen 11 million GenAI course enrollments to date. Microsoft Copilot content consumption increased 3,400% year-over-year across business use cases, and GitHub CoPilot content consumption soared 13,534% for technical applications, according to the report. AI agents and agentic AI emerged as the top-consumed net-new AI skill.

Another key finding is that critical thinking, communication, and creativity remain essential as professionals navigate AI-driven disruptions and other innovations. Adaptive or soft skills learning has grown 25% year-over-year on Udemy Business, with critical thinking consumption up 37% and decision-making skills increasing 38%.

Going deeper

A new Deloitte report, “Safeguarding Medicare: Proactive care could unlock $500B in annual program savings,” finds that shifting from reactive to preventive health care could save the U.S. up to $2.2 trillion a year by 2040—without higher taxes or benefit cuts. The analysis shows that aligning incentives toward prevention, early detection, and healthier lifestyles could lower employer premiums by $7,000 per person per year and help reduce chronic disease rates. Most notably, investing in proactive care could save Medicare over $500 billion annually on medical and prescription drug claims.

Overheard

“In your next AI strategy meeting, consider automated reasoning. It could be the key to deploying AI with confidence across your organization and for your customers.”

—Byron Cook, VP, distinguished scientist at Amazon Web Services, and a professor of computer science at University College London, writes in a Fortune opinion piece.

This is the web version of CFO Daily, a newsletter on the trends and individuals shaping corporate finance. Sign up for free.

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Business

Creative workers won’t be replaced by AI, they will become ‘directors’ managing AI agents

Published

2 hours ago

December 12, 2025

Jace Porter

AI won’t automate creative jobs—but the way workers do them is about to change fundamentally. That’s according to executives from some of the world’s largest enterprise companies who spoke at the Fortune Brainstorm AI conference in San Francisco earlier this week.

“Most of us are producers today,” Nancy Xu, vice president of AI and Agentforce at Salesforce, told the audience. “Most of what we do is we take some objective and we say, ‘Okay, my goal is now to spend the next eight hours today to figure out how to chase after this customer, or increase my CSAT score, or to close this amount of revenue.”

With AI agents handling more tasks, Xu said that workers will shift “from producers to more directors.” Instead of asking, “How do I accomplish the goal?” they’ll instead focus on, “What are the goals that I want to accomplish, and then how do I delegate those goals to AI?” she said.

Creative and sales professionals are increasingly anxious about AI automation as tools like chatbots and AI image generators have proved to be good at doing many creative tasks in sectors like marketing, customer service, and graphic design. Companies are already deploying AI agents to take on tasks like handling customer questions, generating marketing content, and assisting with sales outreach.

Pointing to a recent project with electric-vehicle maker Rivian, Elisabeth Zornes, chief customer officer at Autodesk, said that the company’s AI-powered tools enabled Rivian to test designs through digital wind tunnels rather than clay models. “It shaved off about two years of their development cycle,” Zornes said.

As AI takes on some of these lower-level tasks, Zornes said, workers can focus on more creative projects.

“With AI, the floor has been raised, but so has the ceiling,” she added. “We have an opportunity to create more, to be more imaginative.”

The uneven impact of AI

The shift to AI-augmented work may not benefit all workers equally, however.

Salesforce’s Xu said AI’s impact won’t be evenly distributed between high and low performers. “The near-term impact of AI will largely be that we’re going to take the bottom 50 percentile performers inside a role and bring them into the top 50 percentile,” she said. “If you’re in the top 10 percentile, the superstar salespeople, creatives, the impact of AI is actually much less.”

While leaders were keen to emphasize that AI will augment, rather than replace, creative workers, the shift could reshape some traditional career ladders and impact workforce development. If AI agents handle entry-level execution work, companies may need to hire fewer people, and some learning opportunities may disappear for younger workers.

Ami Palan, senior managing director at Accenture Song, said that to successfully implement AI agents, companies may need to change the way they think about their corporate structure and workforce.

“We can build the most robust technology solution and consider it the Ferrari,” she said. “But if the culture and the organization of people are not enabled in terms of how to use that, that Ferrari is essentially stuck in traffic.”

Read more from Brainstorm AI:

Cursor developed an internal AI help desk that handles 80% of its employees’ support tickets, says the $29 billion startup’s CEO

OpenAI COO Brad Lightcap says ‘code red’ will force the company to focus, as the ChatGPT maker ramps up enterprise push

Amazon robotaxi service Zoox to start charging for rides in 2026, with ‘laser focus’ on transporting people, not deliveries, says cofounder

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Business

Trump says ‘starting’ land strikes over drugs in latest warning

Published

3 hours ago

December 12, 2025

Jace Porter

President Donald Trump said the US would be “starting” land strikes on drug operations in Latin America, though again declined to provide details on when and where the escalation of his military campaign would actually begin, or if countries could still do anything to avert the threatened action.

“We knocked out 96% of the drugs coming in by water, and now we’re starting by land, and by land is a lot easier, and that’s going to start happening,” Trump told reporters Friday in the Oval Office.

The US president for days has been pledging to broaden the effort, which comes after the Pentagon has launched a series of attacks on what it has called drug-smuggling boats in international waters off the coast of South America.

While Trump’s posturing has largely been seen as a pressure campaign against Venezuelan President Nicolás Maduro, he on Friday insisted the land targeting may not only impact Venezuela.

“It doesn’t necessarily have to be in Venezuela,” he said, adding that “people that are bringing in drugs to our country are targets.”

Trump has justified the actions in part by framing the fight against drug smuggling as akin to combat operations. He told reporters that if overdose deaths were counted like combat deaths, it would be “like a war that would be unparalleled.”

Striking targets on land would represent a major escalation, and Maduro earlier this week said that if his nation came under foreign attack, the working class should mount a “general insurrectionary strike” and push for “an even more radical revolution.”

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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Business

Trump names Warsh, Hassett as top Fed contenders, WSJ says

Published

3 hours ago

December 12, 2025

Jace Porter

President Donald Trump said that Kevin Hassett and Kevin Warsh are his top choices to lead the US Federal Reserve and that he expects the next chair of the central bank to consult with him on interest rates.

Trump, in an interview with the Wall Street Journal on Friday, indicated that Warsh, a former Fed governor, has climbed up the short list of contenders to challenge Hassett, the White House National Economic Council head whom many had seen as the frontrunner for the job.

“I think the two Kevins are great,” he said. “I think there are a couple of other people that are great.”

Trump previously signaled that he already made up his mind, saying Monday he had a “a pretty good idea” of who to nominate. The president last month also said he knew who he would pick for the job. The latest comments suggest that the selection process remains in flux.

Trump met with Warsh on Wednesday. It’s not clear if Trump plans to interview other candidates for the job.

Earlier: Trump Says He’ll Meet Warsh as Fed Chair Search Nears End

The president said Warsh told him that borrowing costs should be lower.

Later in the Oval Office, Trump said the next Fed chair should consult with him on interest rates, a move that would upend a tradition of the Fed’s independence.

“I’ve been very successful, and I think my role should be at least that of recommending — they don’t have to follow what I say,” Trump told reporters, adding he expected to make a choice “over the next few weeks.”

“I think my voice should be heard, but I’m not going to make the decision based on that,” he continued.

Trump has moved to assert control over the central bank in his second term, regularly expressing frustration that the Fed has not more aggressively reduced borrowing costs under Chair Jerome Powell.

Trump, in the Journal interview, called for aggressively lowering rates, saying they should be “1% and maybe lower than that.”

The Fed on Wednesday lowered its benchmark rate to between 3.5% and 3.75%, its third cut in as many meetings. Three central bank officials dissented from the decision and the Federal Open Market Committee remains undecided about further reductions.

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