SPACE

🌁 Good morning, from Dolores Park Cafe in SF. As one of those New Yorkers who take great pride in telling other people they’re from New York, I’ve struggled to like this city. This trip has been different.

I’ve spent two weeks here — my longest stretch ever — long enough to actually settle in. I’m also no longer just a reporter; I’m a founder, which is a cliche around these parts, but one that lets me tap into a specific flavor of optimism that fuels the region.

And after moderating at Norwest Venture Partners CEO Summit on Tuesday in Half Moon Bay, I stared at the Pacific Ocean for what seemed like hours. No wonder people think differently here, I mused. There is space — to think, wander, breathe.

Possibility hangs over San Francisco. I see that now.

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AI’s influence on the economy and the future of work is undeniable, and my approach will always be to put AI in context of everything else business leaders have to weigh.

That said, AI’s growth is also a macro story on its own. But its trajectory may be thrown off course if public sentiment hardens.

This tension has occupied my mind and the question of how to ease it has dominated my conversations these past few weeks. Here’s a snippet of my HumanX conversation with the CEOs of Zoom and Glean, an AI work platform, on possible remedies. Watch our full session here and subscribe to our YouTube. Paid subscribers can read the full transcript here.

What’s going on right now with the societal perception of AI? How are you thinking about it as you’re building?

Eric Yuan, CEO of Zoom, replied that the pushback is a natural reaction to any new technology.

Arvind Jain, CEO of Glean, replied that the industry has to do a “better job making AI a tool that is not so much about job loss [but] more about up-leveling.”

What are the solutions that you can implement to change the narrative, or to help get that message across more clearly?

Yuan: Every high-tech company — in particular in Silicon Valley — will be part of that. Together, not only do we build the technology, but all the high-tech companies together, if we can create brand-new job opportunities and help everyone's productivity and drive GDP growth.

Is Sam Altman ruining AI for everybody? It just seems like every time he's in the news, the perception is so linked to what he does. So I'm curious how you are looking at his particular presence and his personality in the industry.

Yuan: My perspective: we all should give Sam and OpenAI great credit. Remember the ChatGPT moment? When we downloaded ChatGPT, we all benefited from that. Afterwards, the ChatGPT moment gave us a lot of imagination about what AI can do for us. Look at afterwards — so many new startup companies, a lot of innovations. We all need to thank OpenAI and Sam.

So what I'm hearing is it doesn't really impact what you're doing day-to-day — all of this noise from other companies and CEOs. Is that right?

Yuan: Absolutely. We are working harder to make AI really benefit society.

Reality check: The three of us had under 20 minutes on stage to talk across a wide range of topics, so I know there's more to be said. Also, the perception problem has largely been the product of frontier model companies, whose narratives carry enormous blast radius — so I don't blame CEOs like Yuan or Jain for not being able to change much from where they sit.

Ultimately, Macro Talk is a platform where business leaders can talk about both their corporate ambitions and human goals. My goal in posing these questions is to discover who's really thinking about AI's societal impact, who's actually doing something about it, and what those actions are.

But given the pace of AI development, I’m not confident in my search. So many companies feel pressured to have a pro-AI productivity answer — and when AI is simultaneously a potential existential threat to their business, honesty becomes a luxury most CEOs can't afford.

Fun fact: Both Yuan and Jain are widely liked and respected by their peers. This was something of a recurring theme in many of the podcasts I listened to. “Humble” was also a word that was frequently used to describe both leaders. I would agree and add “intentional” after studying them on and off stage.

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ALLEGIANCES

The Philippines becomes the latest country to join Pax Silica, a recently announced coalition of countries working to secure critical minerals, energy, and AI resources — countering Beijing’s influence.

GM doubles down on South Korea manufacturing.

Amazon will buy satellite operator (and Starlink rival) Globalstar to boost its ambitions for a satellite-to-smartphone service, which is targeted for a 2028 launch.

Uber invested an additional $200 million into Lucid and will also buy at least 35,000 more EVs for its future global robotaxi service. An SF-area launch is slated for later this year.

France’s Bouygues Telecom, Orange, and Free-iliad Group bid around $24 billion for Altice Group’s French telecommunications operations amid an active dealmaking environment across the European telecom sector.

More than 110 financial advisors and staff quit Merrill Lynch to start their own firm as part of a growing trend of wealth managers going independent.

AI VS. PEOPLE

Pro-AI campaign groups’ $300 million war chest is having a “chilling effect” on Democratic midterm election candidates.

Nvidia CEO Jensen Huang’s interview with podcaster Dwarkesh Patel “has been something of a Rorschach test in the tech industry since its release.”

Canva releases “AI 2.0” for real-world users with CEO Melanie Perkins sitting in an enviable position as a private company leader amid a heated AI race.

Anthropic CEO Dario Amodei met with Trump officials to discuss responsible deployment of the company’s latest model Mythos and to ease tensions with the administration. Meanwhile, OpenAI released a model, GPT-5.4-Cyber, focused on cybersecurity to a limited group of customers, mirroring Anthropic’s move with Mythos.

K-SHAPED EVERYTHING

U.S. hotels drop summer room rates in World Cup host cities (e.g., Atlanta, Dallas, Miami, Philadelphia, SF) amid weaker than expected demand from fans who are worried about high ticket prices, traveling to the U.S. as the war in Iran drags on, border crossings, and immigration policies.

Companies receiving tariff refunds are unlikely to pass them through to consumers in a significant way absent litigation pressure.

JPMorgan, Bank of America, Citi, Goldman Sachs, and Morgan Stanley beat expectations for Q1 thanks to strong trading revenue and dealmaking.

PepsiCo says lowering prices is paying off.

FUTURE OF WORK

Meet Mercor — a gig-work platform that pays knowledge workers to train AI models on their expertise (creative writing, journalism, investment banking, law, social work). Run by three early-20s college dropouts, the company is valued at $10 billion and has reportedly been profitable since inception. (Would you get paid today to be replaced tomorrow?)

McKinsey and Bain are asking some summer internship candidates to use their internal AI tools during the interview process to evaluate their AI capabilities.

Deloitte is cutting back on PTO, parental leave, and other benefits for some of its U.S. employees in support roles, including admin, IT, and finance. (Are these most exposed to AI?)

The Trump administration is hiring again, launching campaigns to attract younger tech workers, attorneys, and project managers.

PIVOTS

Allbirds, the once-buzzy sneakers company, is pivoting hard to become an AI compute infrastructure business and “anticipates” rebranding as NewBird AI. 

American Airlines is “not engaged with or interested” in merger discussions with United.

UPS will eliminate millions of manual package scans (which should reduce labor costs) by using RFID technology.

Netflix board chair Reed Hastings is stepping down from the company he co-founded as he seeks to “focus on new things.” He’s already started to transform a Utah ski resort.

The tech-heavy Nasdaq closed out a 13-day winning streak — its longest since 1992 — as retail traders pile back into stocks. Some are concerned about the extreme swing back. But “in the big picture, the mega trend is the AI boom. And in the small picture, the economy remains more resilient than people expect. Add in the easing Iran tensions (clearly the situation looks less fraught than it did in the middle of March) and maybe the straight line up makes sense,” Bloomberg’s Joe Weisenthal noted.

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Macro Talk’s mission is to help business leaders and early- to mid-career professionals understand the big picture and make decisions about the future. Through this newsletter, the podcast, and live events, Macro Talk uncovers the forces shaping the economy and world of work — and how to play them.