Over the nearly three years since ChatGPT’s launch in November 2022, generative AI has created a frenzy that has radiated like the midday summer sun—hot and unrelenting.
And for the AI companies rocketing forth like heat-seeking missiles, including OpenAI, Anthropic, Google, Microsoft, Meta, and xAI, the sun is still shining: The research firm Gartner forecasts worldwide AI spending will reach nearly $1.5 trillion in 2025 and surpass $2 trillion in 2026, fueled by integration into smartphones, PCs, and enterprise infrastructure. Elon Musk and other AI leaders continue to insist that artificial general intelligence (AGI)—an AI that can think and learn like a human, across many tasks—is on the horizon.
But on the ground, the temperature is dropping, and it’s starting to feel like sweater weather. Among customers and in financial markets, skepticism is rising as some question whether the massive investment in AI will ever be justified by revenues. Startup funding is under sharper scrutiny for small and midsize firms; enterprise projects are stuck in “pilot purgatory”; corporate buyers are questioning return on investment for AI expenditures; and the rising cost of computing power has become a wall many would-be competitors can’t climb.
We don’t yet know whether this chill will eventually turn into an “AI winter,” the industry term for the stage in past AI hype cycles when enthusiasm waned and investment dried up. As my colleague Jeremy Kahn has noted, AI winters have often followed a familiar arc: promising advances that failed to deliver, leaving those footing the bill disillusioned. Sometimes the trigger was academic research exposing the limits of certain techniques. Sometimes it was the failure of real-world adoption. Most often, it was both.
Investment in AI data centers, like this one in Ohio, is soaring.
Eli Hiller—The Washington Post/Getty Images
“There are certainly a few autumnal signs, a falling leaf carried on the breeze here and there, if past AI winters are any guide,” Kahn recently wrote. Only time will tell whether this is “the prelude to another arctic bomb that will freeze AI investment for a generation, or merely a momentary cold snap before the sun appears again.”
The latter scenario may not be such a bad thing. Rowan Curran, a principal analyst at Forrester Research, told Fortune he sees a necessary reset underway. “Our thermometer was broken before,” he said. “Now we’re finally getting the correct temperature.”
Curran emphasized that enterprise clients are not pulling back from AI. Instead, they are recalibrating in the face of overhyped promises. Agentic AI, for example, has been marketed as if all organizations need to roll out universal AI agents to every employee overnight. “Now companies are saying, ‘We don’t necessarily need a generalized agent for everyone tomorrow,’” he explained. “‘We need to think more carefully about our data structures and the quality of our content, so we can take a more deliberate approach.’”
The high-flying dreams of fully realized AGI by 2027 are clearly being tamped down. But that doesn’t mean the commitment to AI is fading. What Curran sees instead is a gap between leadership expectations and practical outcomes. Too often, he said, executives set mandates disconnected from specific business goals, like, “Every employee must use generative AI twice a day.
“That’s when disappointment creeps in,” he said— not because AI is failing outright, but because the expectations were never tied to realistic applications in the first place.
Bill Briggs, chief technology officer of Deloitte, also acknowledges a vibe shift around AI, but he says we’re not facing a dire moment like the late 1990s in tech. “It’s certainly at an inflection point, but I don’t see this being a repeat of the dotcom bust,” he said. AI is still driving transformation, he explained, and new business models are just getting started.
Overall, he said, AI is becoming less of a rising star and more of an ambient operator that will quietly influence how organizations think about every process, product, and decision. “AI is poised to evolve much like electricity—invisible in our daily lives but powering everything,” he said.
Not everyone agrees that the temperature is falling. Steve Hall, partner and president of ISG EMEA and chief AI officer at the global technology research and advisory firm, insisted that an AI winter is a remote possibility.
“This is early spring,” he said. “Gen AI is less than three years old, and agentic AI is only 15 months old. The hype cycle is through the roof, but in many cases the bulbs and flowers are just beginning to appear.”
“It’s certainly at an inflection point, but I don’t see this being a repeat of the dotcom bust.”Bill Briggs, Chief Technology Officer, Deloitte
Hall argued that much of the investment so far has been concentrated in chips and at hyperscalers, the massive tech and cloud-computing companies that have spent the past three years building the infrastructure to support their AI projects. Software-as-a-service providers, meanwhile, used 2024 to “agentify” their applications and add intelligence to business processes.
What skeptics call evidence of stalled adoption, Hall frames as the natural experimentation phase. “We see these pilots not as failures to scale, but as the necessary testing and validation that happens before committing valuable resources. It’s exactly how companies should respond to such an exciting technology,” he said.
Overall, this AI chill may pass, or it may deepen. Either way, history shows that hype alone never keeps the heat on.
For executives trying to cut through the noise, the question isn’t what season we’re in—it’s how to steer AI investments wisely. Experts point to four strategies to weather the chill:
Anchor AI in a strategy
Rowan Curran of Forrester Research cautions that chasing quick wins—like shaving a few seconds off call-center times or blasting out more sales emails—rarely delivers lasting value. “If those efforts aren’t connected to real efficiency, effectiveness, or transformation goals, they’re likely to end in failure,” he said. The companies seeing success are the ones connecting AI pilots directly to measurable outcomes.
Speak the language of business
Bill Briggs of Deloitte said the leaders who secure funding for new AI capabilities aren’t just talking tech—they’re framing AI as a driver of growth. “Your CEO needs to see you as a business partner who happens to know technology, rather than a tech expert who occasionally talks business,” he told Fortune. That means connecting AI initiatives to outcomes that make executives lean forward in their chairs: new markets, happier customers, streamlined operations, and durable competitive advantage.
Build on the ecosystem
With hyperscalers, chipmakers, and software-as-a-service providers laying the foundation, Steve Hall of ISG EMEA argued that enterprises should plug into the broader AI ecosystem instead of trying to build everything in-house. “This is not something you want to go at alone,” he said.
Balance big ambition with practical ingenuity
“My advice to tech leaders is to lead with curiosity and optimism but keep one hand on the wheel of pragmatism,” said Briggs. “The landscape is shifting fast. The goal isn’t simply AI adoption but building AI into the very architecture of your operations.”
This article appears in the October/November 2025 issue of Fortune with the headline “We’re not in an ‘ai winter’—but here’s how to survive a cold snap”
Reed Hastings may soon pull off one of the biggest deals in entertainment history. On Thursday, Netflix announced plans to acquire Warner Bros.—home to franchises like Dune, Harry Potter, and DC Universe, along with streamer HBO Max—in a total enterprise value deal of $83 billion. The move is set to cement Netflix as a media juggernaut that now rivals the legacy Hollywood giants it once disrupted.
It’s a remarkable trajectory for Netflix’s cofounder, Hastings—a self-made billionaire who found a love for business starting as a teenage door-to-door salesperson.
“I took a year off between high school and college and sold Rainbow vacuum cleaners door to door,” Hastings recalled to The New York Timesin 2006. “I started it as a summer job and found I liked it. As a sales pitch, I cleaned the carpet with the vacuum the customer had and then cleaned it with the Rainbow.”
That scrappy sales job was the first exposure to how to properly read customers—an instinct that would later shape Netflix’s user-obsessed culture. After graduating from Bowdoin College in 1983, Hastings considered joining the Marine Corps but ultimately joined the Peace Corps, teaching math in Eswatini for two years. When he returned to the U.S., he obtained a master’s in computer science from Stanford and began his career in tech.
The idea for Netflix reportedly came a few years later in the late 1990s. After misplacing a VHS copy of Apollo 13 and getting hit with a $40 late fee at Blockbuster, Hastings began exploring a mail-order rental service. While it’s an origin story that has since been debated, it marked the start of a company that would reshape global entertainment.
Hastings stepped back as CEO in 2023 and now serves as Netflix’s chairman of the board. He has amassed a net worth of about $5.6 billion. He’d be even richer if he didn’t keep offloading his shares in the company and making record-breaking charitable donations.
Netflix’s secret for success: finding the right people
Hastings has long said that one of the biggest drivers of Netflix’s success is its focus on hiring and keeping exceptional talent.
“If you’re going to win the championship, you got to have incredible talent in every position. And that’s how we think about it,” he told CNBC in 2020. “We encourage people to focus on who of your employees would you fight hard to keep if they were going to another company? And those are the ones we want to hold onto.”
To secure top performers, Hastings said he was more than willing to pay for above-market rates.
“With a fixed amount of money for salaries and a project I needed to complete, I had a choice: Hire 10 to 25 average engineers, or hire one ‘rock-star’ and pay significantly more than what I’d pay the others, if necessary,” Hastings wrote. “Over the years, I’ve come to see that the best programmer doesn’t add 10 times the value. He or she adds more like a 100 times.”
That mindset also guided Netflix’s leadership transition. When Hastings stepped back from the C-suite, the company didn’t pick a single successor—it picked two. Greg Peters joined Ted Sarandos as co-CEO in 2023.
“It’s a high-performance technique,” Hastings said, speaking about the co-CEO model. “It’s not for most situations and most companies. But if you’ve got two people that work really well together and complement and extend and trust each other, then it’s worth doing.”
Netflix’s stock has soared more than 80,000% since its IPO in 2002, adjusting for stock splits.
Netflix brought unlimited PTO into the mainstream
Netflix’s flexible workplace culture has also played a key role in its success, with Hastings often known for prioritizing time off to recharge.
“I take a lot of vacation, and I’m hoping that certainly sets an example,” the former CEO said in 2015. “It is helpful. You often do your best thinking when you’re off hiking in some mountain or something. You get a different perspective on things.”
The company was one of the first to introduce unlimited PTO, a policy that many firms have since adopted. About 57% of retail investors have said it could improve overall company performance, according to a survey by Bloomberg. Critics have argued that such policies can backfire when employees feel guilty taking time off, but Hastings has maintained that freedom is core to Netflix’s identity.
“We are fundamentally dedicated to employee freedom because that makes us more flexible, and we’ve had to adapt so much back from DVD by mail to leading streaming today,” Hastings said. “If you give employees freedom you’ve got a better chance at that success.”
“For over thirty years, I had a hard cut-off on Tuesdays. Rain or shine, I left at exactly 5 p.m. and spent the evening with my best friend. We would go to a movie, have dinner, or just go window-shopping downtown together,” Randolph wrote in a LinkedIn post.
“Those Tuesday nights kept me sane. And they put the rest of my work in perspective.”
The spots gave it away. Just like a human fingerprint, the rosette pattern on each jaguar is unique so researchers knew they had a new animal on their hands after reviewing images captured by a remote camera in southern Arizona.
The University of Arizona Wild Cat Research and Conservation Center says it’s the fifth big cat over the last 15 years to be spotted in the area after crossing the U.S.-Mexico border. The animal was captured by the camera as it visited a watering hole in November, its distinctive spots setting it apart from previous sightings.
“We’re very excited. It signifies this edge population of jaguars continues to come here because they’re finding what they need,” Susan Malusa, director of the center’s jaguar and ocelot project, said during an interview Thursday.
The team is now working to collect scat samples to conduct genetic analysis and determine the sex and other details about the new jaguar, including what it likes to eat. The menu can include everything from skunks and javelina to small deer.
As an indicator species, Malusa said the continued presence of big cats in the region suggests a healthy landscape but that climate change and border barriers can threaten migratory corridors. She explained that warming temperatures and significant drought increase the urgency to ensure connectivity for jaguars with their historic range in Arizona.
More than 99% of the jaguar’s range is found in Central and South America, and the few male jaguars that have been spotted in the U.S. are believed to have dispersed from core populations in Mexico, according to the U.S. Fish and Wildlife Service. Officials have said that jaguar breeding in the U.S. has not been documented in more than 100 years.
Federal biologists have listed primary threats to the endangered species as habitat loss and fragmentation along with the animals being targeted for trophies and illegal trade.
The Fish and Wildlife Service issued a final rule in 2024, revising the habitat set aside for jaguars in response to a legal challenge. The area was reduced to about 1,000 square miles (2,590 square kilometers) in Arizona’s Pima, Santa Cruz and Cochise counties.
Recent detection data supports findings that a jaguar appears every few years, Malusa said, with movement often tied to the availability of water. When food and water are plentiful, there’s less movement.
In the case of Jaguar #5, she said it was remarkable that the cat kept returning to the area over a 10-day period. Otherwise, she described the animals as quite elusive.
“That’s the message — that this species is recovering,” Malusa said. “We want people to know that and that we still do have a chance to get it right and keep these corridors open.”
MacKenzie Scott has arguably been the biggest name in philanthropy this year—and has nonstop been making major gifts to organizations focused on education, DEI, disaster recovery, and many other causes.
This week alone, several higher education institutions announced major gifts from the billionaire philanthropist and ex-wife of Amazon founder Jeff Bezos—donations totaling well over $100 million. In true Scott fashion, many of these donations are the largest single donations these schools have ever received.
The donations announced this week include:
$50 million to California State University-East Bay
$50 million to Lehman College (part of the City University of New York system)
$38 million to Texas A&M University-Kingsville
$17 million to Seminole State College
All four institutions are public, access-oriented colleges that enroll large shares of low‑income, first‑generation, and racially diverse students and function as minority‑serving institutions or similar engines of social mobility. They fit MacKenzie Scott’s broader pattern of directing large, unrestricted gifts to colleges that serve “chronically underserved” communities rather than already wealthy, highly selective universities.
Scott, who is worth about $40 billion and has donated over $20 billion in the past five years, has doubled down this year on causes that the Trump administration has cut deeply, such as education, DEI, and disaster recovery.
“As higher education, in general, works to find its way in an uncertain environment, this gift is a major source of encouragement that we are on the right path,” Lehman College President Fernando Delgado said in a statement.
Scott also made one of the largest donations in HBCU Howard University’s 158-year history with an $80 million gift earlier this fall, and a $60 million donation to the Center for Disaster Philanthropy after Trump administration’s cuts to the Federal Emergency Management Agency (FEMA)—an organization Americans rely on for help during and after hurricanes, wildfires, tornadoes, and floods.
“All sectors of society—public, private, and social—share responsibility for helping communities thrive after a disaster,” CDP president and CEO Patricia McIlreavy previously told Fortune. “Philanthropy plays a critical role in providing communities with resources to rebuild stronger, but it cannot—and should not—replace government and its essential responsibilities.”
Trust-based philanthropy
Scott accumulated the vast majority of her wealth from her 2019 divorce from Bezos, but is dedicated to giving away most of her fortune. She’s considered a unique philanthropist in today’s environment because her gifts are typically unrestricted, meaning the organizations can use the funding however they choose.
“She practices trust-based philanthropy,” Anne Marie Dougherty, CEO of the Bob Woodruff Foundation previously told Fortune. Scott has donated $15 million to the veteran-focused nonprofit organization in 2022, and made a subsequent $20 million donation this fall.
Scott is also considered one of the most generous philanthropists, and credits acts of kindness for inspiring her to give back.
“It was the local dentist who offered me free dental work when he saw me securing a broken tooth with denture glue in college,” Scott wrote of her inspiration for philanthropy in an Oct. 15 essay published to her Yield Giving site. “It was the college roommate who found me crying, and acted on her urge to loan me a thousand dollars to keep me from having to drop out in my sophomore year.”
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