Business

Tim Wu knows where you got your ‘economic resentment’ and that ‘weird feeling of something you like getting worse’: It’s ‘the age of extraction’

Published

5 days ago

November 30, 2025

Tim Wu, the influential Columbia Law School professor who previously served in the Biden administration, is back with a message: Modern American capitalism has devolved into a system defined by the accumulation of market power and “extraction,” generating a profound sense of “economic resentment” across the nation.

Speaking to Fortune upon the release of his newest book, The Age of Extraction, Wu connected the current political volatility to a widespread feeling that “our system is not fair.” He suggests this pervasive anger stems from individuals feeling “out-powered, as opposed to out-competed,” which creates far more resentment than losing in a fair fight.

Wu defines the core problem as a shift in business goals: moving away from building “a good product that people want to buy because it’s good,” toward models seeking to “find power over someone and suck as much as you can out of them.” Wu agreed his take has many similarities to recent writings from his old friend, Cory Doctorow; even though Doctorow’s argument is mainly about tech, he acknowledged they share much of the same DNA. “I think that that is kind of an economy-wide problem. Everything kind of just creeps. It’s that weird feeling of something you like becoming worse.”

Chalking it up to a “lack of discipline,” Wu said too many companies let things drift in the modern age of extraction. Strong competitors, legal enforcement, and a company’s employees can all stress a sense of discipline, he said, “but none of those are very strong right now in so many markets …a lack of discipline lets firms get away with making their products and services worse.” Zooming out a bit further, this trend challenges the fundamental idea of American progress, especially in the tech industry, which is supposed to be the “invention industry” constantly driving improvement.

“My understanding of America is that it’s the place where things are supposed to get better,” Wu said. Living in an age when so many things are getting worse instead “cuts at the core of the idea of America, but also the tech industry [idea] of progress,” he argued—but he does see an unlikely solution.

As a sports fan, Wu said there’s a clear example of a market structure that has discipline, where things are not in fact getting worse, where things are not extracted. It’s a good product that people want to buy because it’s good: the National Football League. He said the NFL illustrates the importance of fair rules, with “aggressive rebalancing,” achieved through mechanisms such as the market cap, the draft, and adjusted schedules.

How the NFL could fix the economy

While the NFL is still competitive and meritocratic, it ensures that even the worst team “has some chance to get a great quarterback” and become competitive again, like the Kansas City Chiefs, who have enjoyed historic success with their franchise players Patrick Mahomes and Travis Kelce. Teams from smaller markets like Kansas City routinely dominating those from larger markets, like New York, would be unthinkable in “just an economic game,” Wu argued. In contrast, Wu points to Major League Baseball, which has been “distorted by out of control spending.” This results in an “absurd” mismatch of resources, where smaller teams are crippled by resource deficits, rather than poor play. (The big-market Los Angeles Dodgers, with the biggest payroll in baseball history, just celebrated their second-straight World Series win.)

The NFL’s success serves as a model for how the U.S. economy should function. “I’m not a socialist,” Wu told Fortune. “In some ways, I’m here to try to not destroy capitalism, but return it to what it can be.” In his new book, Wu writes about the “extractors” and the “extracted” in language that sounds similar to the K-shaped economy dominating headlines in 2025, a shorthand for an economy where the rich get richer and the poor get poorer. “I think it is closely linked,” Wu said, adding it wasn’t his intention to directly link them in his book.

“I think we have moved in the direction of an economy where the focus of business models is the accumulation of market power and then extraction, which, by definition, almost by basic microeconomics is going to result in a lot of [upward] wealth redistribution.” Wu added that he thinks many of the industries that used to provide a middle class or even upper middle class lifestyle “are being driven down in favor of a couple industries that have outsized returns,” including concentrated middlemen, certain parts of finance, and tech platforms.

If Americans love the NFL so much on their TV every Sunday, he argued, why not apply the same principles from the league to how we structure our society? After all, Wu points out, he’s been right about some things before, to society’s benefit.

Net neutrality and attention

A distinguished professor at Columbia University who The New York Times described as “an architect of Biden’s antitrust policy,” Wu has not one but several big ideas to his credit. One is “net neutrality,” the concept authored by Wu over 20 years ago that internet service providers must be agnostic about what content flows through them. This was a clear victory, as the law is still on the books. Another is about “the attention economy,” a thesis and book (The Attention Merchants) that Wu released roughly 10 years ago, sounding the alarm on how attention was turning into a commodity in the internet age and was increasingly exploited.

Wu said he wants to be humble, but genuinely believes he was right about the attention economy a decade ago. “Maybe it was sort of obvious,” he said, but the resource of human attention becoming scarcer and more valuable and “companies are very sophisticated at essentially harvesting this resource from us at a very low price.”

As a parent (his kids are 9 and 12), Wu said he notices “people are much more sensitive” about their children using attention-economy products and believes there has been a counter-movement to reclaim attention. He notes large language models are becoming popular in a very similar way and there’s no advertising on them for now, so “it’s not like the problem has gone away and it’s not as if we are able to get away from our phones. I just think it’s better recognized.”

A dance with politics and the ‘beer wars’

In his conversation with Fortune, Wu reflected on his time in the Biden White House, saying it was “an important and great experience,” but he wishes they were able to do more on children’s privacy issues as he believes 99% of Americans would support legislation in this area. Yet, it was “impossible to get a vote on anything, any issue” when he worked in the White House. Congress “doesn’t want to let things get to a vote,” he said, attributing much of the gridlock to the fact that “influence of big tech over politics has just gotten so strong.”

When asked if he has any interest in working in government again, perhaps along his longtime friend Lina Khan in Zohran Mamdani’s mayoralty in New York, Wu only said he’s “very supportive of the new mayor.” He said he could get involved in politics in some fashion again, but is “much more in a family mode” these days. Wu has a perhaps surprisingly long history in public service, having worked in antitrust enforcement at the Federal Trade Commission as well as working on competition policy for the National Economic Council during the Obama administration. In 2014, Wu was a Democratic primary candidate for lieutenant governor of New York, where he first met Khan.

Wu did get involved in some intra-left economics squabbles recently, as he took Khan’s side of the debate on plans to reduce the price of hot dogs and beers at New York City sports stadiums. The “beer wars” erupted on Twitter, with Wu and Khan on the side in favor of cutting prices, and Matt Yglesias and Jason Furman on the more centrist side, arguing for letting the free market set prices. Wu said it was a “strange battle” and said there seems to be a tension on the left around economics that he doesn’t fully understand, adding that he has worked productively alongside Furman in the past. In general, he said he thinks “our politics is very angry, partially because of economic resentment … it gets expressed in strange ways and goes in all kinds of directions.” Tying it back to his new book, he believes that in general, “we let things go a little too far” and we “just kind of lost touch with the tradition of broad-based wealth that was the American way.”

When asked about the uproar among the New York business community about Mamdani and the term “democratic socialism,” Wu said it has become a bit of an “umbrella” term, because “a real socialist believes that all the means of production should be owned by the state” and Mamdani’s democratic socialists aren’t exactly advocating that. He said maybe some on the left would like more direct ownership of public things, but it’s more a mixture of that same “we’ve gone too far” feeling. Wu added that he personally feels most affiliated with Louis Brandeis, a judicial figure from the Progressive Movement who was influential in developing modern antitrust law and the “right to privacy” concept.

“If you want to talk about America drifting towards something more like Communism, it is more in this idea of real, very active state involvement” that you see in the Trump administration, which has, for instance, taken stakes in major U.S. companies such as Intel. “That’s actually more like socialism” and what you see in a “command economy,” Wu said. He compared it to Stalinism or fascism under Mussolini, “neither of which are the most flattering labels, I realize.” It’s also, of course, similar to Chinese Communism, Wu said.

Wu said he hopes this doesn’t come to pass. There could be an America where the idea of doing business is extraction—trying to find power over someone and sucking out as much as possible—and another, better way. “I think we can do better. I’m a big believer, frankly, in business. I think we need a return to like this idea you can reap what you sow, that your investments will get you somewhere.”

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Business

Stocks: Facing a vast wave of incoming liquidity, the S&P 500 prepares to surf to a new record high

Published

19 minutes ago

December 5, 2025

Jace Porter

The S&P 500 index ticked up 0.3% yesterday, its eighth straight upward trading session. It is now less than half a percentage point away from its record high, and futures were pointing marginally up again this morning. Nasdaq 100 futures were even more optimistic, up 0.39% before the open in New York. The VIX “fear” index (which measures volatility) has sunk 12.6% this month, indicating that investors seem to have settled in for a calm, quiet, risk-on holiday season.

They have reason to be happy. Washington is preparing a wave of incoming liquidity that is likely to generate fresh demand for equities.

For instance, the CME FedWatch index shows an 87% chance that the U.S. Federal Reserve will deliver an interest rate cut next week, delivering a new round of cheaper money. Further cuts are expected in 2026.

Furthermore, Wall Street largely expects President Trump to announce that Kevin Hassett will replace Fed chairman Jerome Powell in May—and Hassett is widely regarded as a dove who will lean in favor of further rate cuts.

Elsewhere, the Fed has begun a series of “reserve management purchases,” a program in which the central bank will buy short-term T-bills—a move that will add more liquidity to markets generally.

Banks, brokers and trading platforms are also lining up to handle ‘Trump Accounts,’ into which the U.S. government will deposit $1,000 for every child. The trust fund can be invested in low-cost stock index trackers—a new source of investment demand coming online in the back half of 2026.

So it’s no surprise that nine major investment banks polled by the Financial Times expect stocks to rise in 2026; the average of their estimates is by 10%.

The Congressional Budget Office also estimates that the One Big Beautiful Bill Act will add 0.9% to U.S. GDP next year largely because it allows companies to immediately deduct capital expenditures from their taxes—spurring a huge round of corporate spending.

With all that fresh money on the horizon, it’s clear why markets have shrugged off their worries about AI and Bitcoin. The only shock will be if the S&P fails to hit a new all-time high by the end of the year.

Here’s a snapshot of the markets ahead of the opening bell in New York this morning:

S&P 500 futures were up 0.2% this morning. The last session closed up 0.3%.
STOXX Europe 600 was up 0.3% in early trading.
The U.K.’s FTSE 100 was up 0.14% in early trading.
Japan’s Nikkei 225 was up 2.33%.
China’s CSI 300 was up 0.34%.
The South Korea KOSPI was down 0.19%.
India’s NIFTY 50 is up 0.18%.
Bitcoin was flat at $93K.

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Business

Gen Z fears AI will upend careers. Can leaders change the narrative?

Published

50 minutes ago

December 5, 2025

Jace Porter

Good morning. Are you communicating the purpose of AI with your younger employees? According to new data from Harvard, most fear AI is going to take their jobs.

The Institute of Politics at Harvard Kennedy School released the fall 2025 Harvard Youth Poll on Thursday, which finds a generation under profound strain. The nationwide survey of 2,040 Americans between 18 and 29 years old was conducted from Nov. 3–7. For these respondents, instability—financial, political, and interpersonal—has become a defining feature of daily life.

Young Americans see AI as more likely to take something away than to create something new. A majority (59%) see AI as a threat to their job prospects, more than immigration (31%) or outsourcing of jobs to other countries (48%).

Nearly 45% say AI will reduce opportunities, while only 14% expect gains. Another 17% foresee no change and 23% are unsure—and this holds across education levels and gender.

In addition, young people fear AI will undermine the meaning of work. About 41% say AI will make work less meaningful, compared to 14% who say it will make work more meaningful and 19% who think it will make no difference; a quarter (25%) say they are unsure.

In my conversations this year with CFOs and industry experts, many have said that the goal of using AI is to remove the mundane and manual aspects of work in order to create more meaningful, thought‑provoking opportunities. However, that message does not yet seem to be resonating with younger employees.

There is a lot of public discussion and widespread fear that AI will mostly take away jobs, but research by McKinsey Global Institute released last week offers a different perspective. According to the report, AI could, in theory, automate about 57% of U.S. work hours, but that figure measures the technical potential in tasks, not the inevitable loss of jobs, as Fortune reported.

Instead of mass replacement, McKinsey researchers argue the future of work will be defined by partnerships among people, agents, and robots—all powered by AI, but dependent on human guidance and organizational redesign. The primary reason AI will not result in half the workforce being immediately sidelined is the enduring relevance of human skills.

The Harvard poll also found young people have greater trust in AI for school and work tasks (52% overall, 63% among college students) and for learning or tutoring (48% overall, 63% among college students). But trust drops sharply for personal matters.

Young employees are considered AI natives. However, it is important to recognize that they have not experienced as many major technology shifts as more seasoned employees—like the dawn of the internet. It’s not to say that AI won’t change the workforce, but there’s still room and need for humans. It’s up to leaders to clearly communicate how AI will change roles, which tasks it will automate, and also provide ongoing training and guidance on how employees can still grow their careers in an AI-powered workplace.

Have a good weekend. See you on Monday.

SherylEstrada
sheryl.estrada@fortune.com

Leaderboard

Fortune 500 Power Moves

Amanda Brimmer was appointed CFO of leasing advisory and head of corporatedevelopment at JLL (No. 188), a global commercial real estate and investment management company. Reporting to JLL CFO Kelly Howe, Brimmer will partner with business leaders globally to drive financial growth and performance. Brimmer brings more than two decades of experience from Boston Consulting Group, where she most recently served as managing director and senior partner.

Galagher Jeff was appointed EVP and CFO of ARKO Corp. (No. 488), one of the largest convenience store operators and fuel wholesalers in the U.S., effective Dec. 1. Jeff most recently served as EVP and CFO for Murphy USA, Inc. Before that, he spent nearly 15 years in senior and executive finance roles with retailers, including Dollar Tree Stores, Inc., Advance Auto Parts, Inc. and Walmart Stores, Inc., in addition to a decade-long career in finance and strategy consulting at organizations including KPMG and Ernst & Young.

Every Friday morning, the weekly Fortune 500 Power Moves column tracks Fortune 500 company C-suite shifts—see the most recent edition.

More notable moves this week:

Barbara Larson, CFO of SentinelOne, a cybersecurity company, will transition from her role to pursue an opportunity outside of the cybersecurity industry. Larson will continue to serve in her role through mid-January 2026. Upon her departure, Barry Padgett, chief growth officer, will serve as interim CFO. Barry has more than 25 years of experience in operational leadership at enterprise software companies, including SAP and Stripe. SentinelOne has initiated a search for its next CFO.

Jessica Ross was appointed CFO of GitLab Inc. (Nasdaq: GTLB), a DevSecOps platform, effective Jan. 15. Ross joins the company from Frontdoor, where she served as CFO. She has more than 25 years of experience in finance, accounting, and operational leadership at companies like Salesforce and Stitch Fix, and spent 12 years in public accounting at Arthur Andersen and Deloitte.

Michele Allen was appointed CFO of Jersey Mike’s Subs, a franchisor of fast-casual sandwich shops, effective Dec. 1. Allen succeeds Walter Tombs, who is retiring from Jersey Mike’s in January after 26 years with the company. Allen brings more than 25 years of financial leadership experience. Most recently, she served as CFO and head of strategy at Wyndham Hotels & Resorts. Allen began her career with Deloitte as an auditor.

Nick Tressler was appointed CFO of Vistagen (Nasdaq: VTGN), a late clinical-stage biopharmaceutical company, effective Dec. 1. Tressler brings over 20 years of financial leadership experience. Most recently, he served as CFO of DYNEX Technologies, and before that, he was the CFO at American Gene Technologies, International, and Senseonics Holdings, Inc. Tressler has also held senior finance roles at several biopharmaceutical companies.

Mike Lenihan was appointed CFO of Texas Roadhouse, Inc. (NasdaqGS: TXRH), a restaurant company, effective Dec. 3. Keith Humpich, who served as interim CFO, was appointed chief accounting and financial services officer of the company. Lenihan has nearly 30 years of finance experience, including the past 22 years in the restaurant industry. Most recently, he served as the CFO at CKE Restaurants, Inc.

Big Deal

The ADP National Employment Report, released on Dec. 3, indicated that private-sector employment declined by 32,000 jobs in November. ADP found that job creation has been flat during the second half of 2025, while pay growth has continued its downward trend. In November, hiring was particularly weak in manufacturing, professional and business services, information, and construction.

“Hiring has been choppy of late as employers weather cautious consumers and an uncertain macroeconomic environment,” said Nela Richardson, chief economist at ADP, in a statement. “And while November’s slowdown was broad-based, it was led by a pullback among small businesses.”

ADP’s report is an independent measure of labor market conditions based on anonymized weekly payroll data from more than 26 million private-sector employees in the U.S. The next major U.S. Jobs Report (Employment Situation) for November is scheduled for release on Dec. 16 by the Bureau of Labor Statistics.

Going deeper

Here are four Fortune weekend reads:

Overheard

“The Fed no more ‘determines’ interest rates than a meteorologist determines the weather.”

—Alexander William Salter states in a Fortune opinion piece. Salter is a senior fellow with the Independent Institute and an economics professor in the Rawls College of Business at Texas Tech University. He writes: “The Fed doesn’t set interest rates. As powerful as America’s central bank is, it’s still just one player in a globe-spanning ocean of financial markets. Instead, the Fed sets targets for short-term interest rates. Those target rates indicate the Fed’s general monetary policy stance, but they are not the substance of monetary policy.”

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Business

Four key questions about OpenAI vs Google—the high-stakes tech matchup of 2026

Published

1 hour ago

December 5, 2025

Jace Porter

Hello, Tech Editor Alexei Oreskovic, pitching in for Allie. We’ve been enjoying some crisp blue-sky days here in San Francisco in true December fashion. For the folks at OpenAI however, the days have been red — Code Red.

In case you haven’t been following, OpenAI CEO Sam Altman on Monday declared a “Code Red” alert in a memo to employees, according to the Information and the Wall Street Journal. The alert, the highest level on OpenAI’s three-point scale, is essentially an all-hands-on-deck call to mobilize and defend against an imminent threat. That threat is Google and its latest version of the Gemini AI model, which competes with OpenAI’s GPT family of models, particularly its flagship ChatGPT product.

It’s a remarkable turn of events, almost exactly three years to the day that OpenAI released ChatGPT and put Google and the rest of the tech industry on the back foot. Now Google is on the ascent, hoping to turn OpenAI into MySpace. Of course, with its $500 billion valuation, OpenAI and its investors are not about to surrender.

So, as the two AI superpowers roll up their sleeves for what’s sure to be a 2026 slugfest, we thought it would be interesting to tap into the wisdom of Term Sheet readers and ask for your perspectives on some of the key questions of this critical moment in tech history. Send your thoughts directly to me or to Allie G.

How can a company like OpenAI turn a first-mover advantage into a sustainable and long-lasting business that doesn’t get bulldozed by giants with more resources and capital?

Is there a lesson—good or bad—from a first mover of the past (e.g. Netscape vs Microsoft; Blackberry vs iPhone) that OpenAI should heed?

What is the Google Achilles heel that OpenAI should exploit?

What is the single most important thing that OpenAI needs to execute on right now – and what is the best metric to measure its success?

And of course, what other important parts of this story should we be thinking about?

Fire away!

Alexei Oreskovic
X:@lexnfx
Email:alexei.oreskovic@fortune.com
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Joey Abrams curated the deals section of today’s newsletter.Subscribe here.

Venture Deals

– 7AI, a Boston-based agentic cybersecurity platform, raised $130 million in Series A funding. Index Ventures led the round and was joined by Blackstone Innovations Investments, as well as existing seed investors Greylock, CRV, and Spark.

– Fact Base, a Tokyo-based manufacturing SaaS startup and maker of drawing management system ZUMEN, raised $28.5 million in Series C funding from Insight Partners.

– imper.ai, a New York City-based startup that prevents AI and cyber impersonation, emerged from stealth after raising $28 million in funding. Redpoint Ventures and Battery Ventures led the investment round and were joined by Maple VC, Vessy VC, and Cerca Partners.

– pH7 Technologies, a Vancouver, British Columbia-based metal extraction company, raised $25.6 million in initial Series B funding. Fine Structure Ventures led the round with strategic investment from BHP Ventures and was joined Energy & Environment Investment, Siteground, Gaingels Fund, and Calm Ventures, along with existing investors including TDK Ventures, Pangaea Ventures, Rhapsody Venture Partners, and BASF Venture Capital.

– Pine AI, a Palo Alto, Calif.-based startup that specializes in agentic AI for customer service applications, raised $25 million in Series A funding. Investors included Fortwest Capital.

– Lumia, an agentic AI security and governance platform, raised $18 million in seed funding. Team8 led the round and was joined by New Era.

– Multifactor, a San Francisco-based agentic AI security platform, raised $15 million in seed funding. Nexus Venture Partners led the round and was joined by Y Combinator, Taurus Ventures, Honeystone Ventures, Flex Capital, Pioneer Fund, Ritual Capital, and Liquid2 Ventures.

– Laigo Bio, a Utrecht, Netherlands-based biotech company specializing in novel membrane protein degradation, raised €11.5 million ($13.4 million) in seed funding. Kurma Partners and Curie Capital co-led the round and were joined by Argobio Studio, Angelini Ventures, Eurazeo, the Oncode Bridge Fund, ROM Utrecht Region, and Cancer Research Horizons.

– Helmet Security, a Washington, D.C.-based agentic AI communication security startup, emerged from stealth after raising $9 million from SYN Ventures and WhiteRabbit Ventures.

– Addis Energy, a Somerville, Mass.-based ammonia production technology developer, raised $8.3 million in seed funding. At One Ventures led the round and was joined by existing investors Engine Ventures and Pillar VC.

– Alinia AI, a Barcelona, Spain- and New York City-based startup that builds compliance tools for AI systems, raised $7.5 million in seed funding. Mouro Capital led the round and was joined by Speedinvest, Raise Ventures, and Precursor.

– BuiltAI, a London, U.K.-based financial modeling platform for commercial real estate investment, raised $6 million in seed funding. Work-Bench led the round and was joined by Lerer Hippeau, Timber Grove Ventures, Emerald Pine, and angel investors.

– Curvestone AI, a London, U.K.-based platform that reduces compound errors in automated workflows, raised $4 million seed funding. MTech Capital led the round and was joined by Boost Capital Partners, D2 Fund, and Portfolio Ventures.

– Govstream.ai, a Seattle-based startup building AI-native permitting tools for local governments, raised $3.6 million in seed funding. 47th Street Partners led the round and was joined by Nellore Capital, Ascend, Kevin Merritt, and Andreas Huber.

Private Equity

– Ares Management Corporation recapitalized MGT, a Tampa-based national technology and advisory solutions company serving state and local education institutions and governments, with a $350 million investment that values MGT at $1.25 billion. Existing investors include the Vistria Group, JPMorgan, and WhiteHorse Capital.

– TRP Infrastructure Services, an Arlington Capital Partners portfolio company, completed its acquisition of Corpus Christi, Texas-based Highway Barricades & Services, a provider of pavement marking and traffic control services. Financial terms were not disclosed.

– The Care Team, a Revelstoke Capital Partners portfolio company, acquired select hospice and palliative care operations from Traditions Health, a Tennessee-based hospice, palliative, and home health provider with operations in 16 states. Financial terms were not disclosed.

– Inovara Group, an Ambienta portfolio company, acquired Guildford, U.K.-based IBL Lighting Limited, an LED engine design and architectural lighting provider. Financial terms were not disclosed.