Grok, the A.I. chatbot developed by Elon Musk’s xAI, is facing mounting backlash after users exploited the tool to generate sexually explicit images of real women and children. Government regulators and A.I. safety advocates are now calling for investigations and, in some cases, outright bans, as nonconsensual deepfake pornography proliferates online.

Indonesia and Malaysia moved swiftly this week to ban Grok. Indonesia’s minister of communication and digital affairs, Meutya Hafid, said in a statement, “The government sees nonconsensual sexual deepfakes as a serious violation of human rights, dignity and the safety of citizens in the digital space.”

Malaysian officials similarly cited “repeated misuse” of Grok to create nonconsensual, sexualized images. In both countries, the restrictions will remain in place while regulatory probes move forward.

The U.K. communications regulator Ofcom is investigating what it called “deeply concerning reports” of malicious uses of Grok, as well as the platform’s compliance with existing rules. If regulators determine that xAI is liable, the company could face a fine equal to the greater of 10 percent of its global revenue or 18 million pounds (roughly $21.2 million). A full ban in the U.K. remains on the table, depending on the outcome of the inquiry.

Musk has sought to shift responsibility to users who request or upload illegal content. In a Jan. 3 post on X, he wrote, “Anyone using Grok to make illegal content will suffer the same consequences as if they upload illegal content.” Regulators, however, appear unconvinced. The wave of investigations and bans suggests a broader shift toward holding social media and A.I. companies accountable for how their tools are used—not just who uses them.

In response to the controversy, Musk has limited Grok’s image-generation features to paying subscribers. Free users who request images now receive a message stating: “Image generation and editing are currently limited to paying subscribers. You can subscribe to unlock these features.” But for many lawmakers and victims of deepfake abuse, the move falls far short.

The European Union has ordered X to preserve all documents related to Grok through the end of 2026, extending an existing data-retention mandate while authorities investigate the issue. Sweden is among the E.U. member states that have publicly criticized Grok, particularly after the country’s deputy prime minister was reportedly targeted by nonconsensual deepfake imagery.

The debate is unfolding against a broader regulatory backdrop. Australia is entering its first full year enforcing a nationwide ban on social media use for children under 16, while 45 U.S. states have enacted laws targeting A.I.-generated child sexual abuse material.

Despite the controversy, the U.S. Department of Defense announced a partnership with Grok on Jan. 12, just days after reports of the deepfake misuse surfaced. Under the agreement, the Pentagon plans to feed military and intelligence data into Grok to support innovation efforts.

‘Nudification apps’ and the risks of unchecked generative A.I.

Tools like Grok have drawn particular ire for their resemblance to so-called “nudification apps,” a term used by the U.K. children’s commissioner to describe technologies that can rapidly create sexualized images without consent. Lawmakers argue that the speed and scale at which such images can now spread make them especially dangerous.

A quarter of women across all age groups have experienced nonconsensual sharing of explicit images, according to a recent report from Communia, a women-focused self-care social platform powered by an emotional safety A.I. algorithm. Among Gen Z women, that figure rises to 40 percent. The report also found that the use of deepfakes in these images has quadrupled for Gen Z women since 2023.

As schools and local authorities grapple with A.I.-generated sexual imagery involving minors—such as a case in Lancaster, Penn. where two juvenile males were charged with multiple counts including possession and dissemination of child pornography—some victims are pushing for stronger safeguards. Texas high school student Elliston Berry, for example, has advocated for the federal Take It Down Act, which focuses on removing harmful content after it appears. The bill, however, does not hold platforms liable unless they fail to comply with takedown requests.

For Olivia DeRamus, founder and CEO of Communia, incremental measures are insufficient. She argues that banning Grok outright is the only viable solution. “No company should be allowed to knowingly facilitate and profit off of sexual abuse,” DeRamus told Observer. “Charging for the tool is simply inflating his bottom line.”

DeRamus contends that the A.I. industry has demonstrated an unwillingness to self-regulate or implement meaningful safety guardrails. “I have since realized that the only actions governments can take to stop revenge porn and non-consensual explicit image sharing from becoming a universal experience for women and girls is to hold the companies knowingly facilitating this either criminally liable or banning them altogether,” she said.

“Freedom of speech has never protected abuse and public harm,” DeRamus added. “In fact, it requires a certain level of moderation to ensure everyone can participate in public discourse safely. This includes women and girls, who will be forced away from public life if the current rates of abuse continue.”

Despite recent research showing women falling behind men when it comes to vying for promotions, that gap may be confined to traditional corporate structures. Data from Sheryl Sandberg’s LeanIn.org shows that 80 percent of women sought a promotion in 2025 compared to 86 percent of men, creating an “ambition gap” that wasn’t previously present. However, other research suggests more women are turning to entrepreneurship as a path to advancement.

Women now own 39.2 percent of all U.S. businesses, generating $3.3 trillion in annual revenue, according to a 2025 report from Wells Fargo. While men still own more businesses overall, women-owned companies are growing at a markedly faster pace.

Between 2019 and 2024, women-owned employers expanded their workforce by 19.5 percent, compared to 6.6 percent for men-owned employers, according to Wells Fargo. Revenue growth followed a similar pattern: women-owned businesses grew revenue by 56.8 percent over the same period, compared to 50 percent for men-owned businesses.

Women also launched nearly half of all new businesses last year, according to data from Gusto. Women aren’t just outpacing men in growth; they’re closing the gap in sheer numbers as well.

LeanIn.org traced the so-called ambition gap to a lack of opportunity and support in the workplace. Return-to-office mandates, for example, have made advancement particularly challenging for women, who account for roughly two-thirds of caregivers nationwide. But women don’t lack ambition; they are simply shaping careers in what may be a more demanding way, said Rachel Blank, founder & CEO of Allara Health, a telemedicine platform for women.

“Women are expanding the definition of ambition beyond title-chasing to impact-building,” Blank told Observer. “For a long time, ambition was measured by how closely someone followed a linear, traditionally male career path—promotion by promotion, often at the expense of flexibility or well-being. Starting and growing companies allows women to define success on their own terms.”

“The corporate structure and the rigid demands of in-office work don’t support the flexibility many women need as we juggle careers and family responsibilities,” Jennifer Millard, a former Mastercard executive who now runs her startup, mainelove, a canned water brand, told Observer. “As an entrepreneur, I can prioritize my health and my family when needed. Ultimately, it’s about impact, and that extends to my team. I don’t care when they work as long as we accomplish our goals.”

Millard is far from alone in her desire for flexibility.

“After years of hybrid or remote work, women don’t want to compromise their happiness for this previous idea of success,” Julia Sherwin, who left a public relations firm to start her own company in 2023, told Observer. With stronger networks and resources born out of shared challenges, Sherwin said opportunities for younger generations are especially promising.

Despite these shifts in favor of women’s entrepreneurship, gaps remain. Venture capital deal counts for women-founded and mixed-gender companies are declining, even as global investing dollars are up 38 percent year over year, with much of that capital flowing to A.I. companies. High-profile female founders like the “godmother of A.I.” Fei-Fei Li may be carving paths forward, but the venture capital industry remains persistently gender-biased.

Logan Brown, founder of A.I.-powered legal platform Soxton.AI, told Observer that the venture capital industry relies on a practice known as pattern matching. “VCs are looking for founders that resemble prior successful investments. When there are fewer women founders, there are fewer patterns to match. As more women become founders, that’s getting much better,” she said.

While Sandberg has urged companies to counter weak gender equity by standardizing processes to limit bias, many women say they can’t wait for the traditional corporate landscape to catch up with their needs.

“Entrepreneurship doesn’t eliminate the burdens [that women face],” said Brown. “But it changes who sets the terms.”

With a freshly minted $5 billion valuation, Kim Kardashian’s shapewear company Skims has become a case study in modern celebrity-backed retail done right. While Kardashian is indisputably the face of the brand, her co-founders, Emma Grede and Jens Grede, are the architects and operational engine behind its success. The husband-and-wife team also oversees a growing portfolio of brands within and beyond the Kardashian-Jenner universe.

“If the KarJenners offer the rocket, the Gredes bring the fuel,” Christine Russo, principal at Retail Creative and Consulting Agency and U.S. Correspondent for Retail Technology Innovation Hub, told Observer. “Whether it’s celebrity-founded or not, they understand the fragility of attention and are able to kick a flywheel and support it with functionality.”

Emma Grede, 43, began her career in London, while Jens Grede, reportedly 47 (his exact birthday isn’t public) grew up in Sweden. The two met through their work in fashion. Emma worked as a fashion show and events producer before launching a talent and events management company in 2008. Jens went on to co-found the denim label Frame in 2012, the same year the couple married. He has also partnered on multiple ventures with his childhood friend Erik Torstensson, including fashion marketing firm Saturday Group.

In 2015, Emma met Kris Jenner and pitched the idea for a denim brand built around Khloe Kardashian. The result was Good American, which launched in 2016 and became one of the most successful celebrity-backed apparel brands to date. Today, Jens serves as chairman of Frame and CEO of Skims, while Emma is Skims’ chief product officer. The couple has four children.

Rewriting the celebrity playbook

Together, the Gredes have co-founded and hold ownership stakes in Skims with Kim Kardashian, Good American with Khloe Kardashian and Safely with Kris Jenner. Emma also co-founded Off Season in partnership with fashion designer Kristin Juszczyk, the NFL and Fanatics, while Jens continues to build Frame as a standalone fashion brand.

Emma has emerged as a visible business figure in her own right, appearing on Shark Tank as the show’s first mixed-race woman investor and on the U.K.’s Dragon’s Den. In 2022, the Gredes, alongside Kim Kardashian, received the Council of Fashion Designers of America’s inaugural Innovation Award.

Their celebrity-driven ventures haven’t been without missteps. Skims faced early backlash over its original name, Kimono (a type of traditional Japanese robe), prompting a swift rebrand after criticism over cultural appropriation.

“This is illustrative of the very responsive approach that they’ve taken in staying on top of consumer trends, listening to feedback and using it to iterate and improve what the brands offer,” Sky Canaves, principal analyst of retail and ecommerce at eMarketer, told Observer.

Sustainability remains a weak point for Skims, Canaves noted, which has scored poorly on materials and sourcing and has yet to meaningfully address those concerns. That scrutiny could intensify as the brand expands into Europe, where environmental regulations are stricter. Still, Canaves added, “I can’t think of a comparable force in the fashion industry today across multiple brands that is not a major conglomerate.”

“Emma and Jens Grede have built brands with backbone,” Albert Varkki, retail strategist and co-founder of luxury leather brand Von Baer, told Observer. “Each label in their portfolio has a crisp product thesis—Skims focuses on fit and solution wear, Good American focuses on inclusive denim—and they keep building with that discipline. That clarity and strategy are why their repeat-purchase rate is unusually strong for celebrity brands.”

According to Varkki, the Gredes have rewritten the celebrity-brand playbook. “Instead of putting all the weight on hype drops, they built operational consistency—stable SKU architecture, replenishable hero products and real fit testing. That stability is what gave celebrity branding legitimacy again.”

Fashion brands are rarely family businesses. The industry tends to elevate singular creative figures—Ralph Lauren, Vera Wang, Calvin Klein—but the Gredes are quietly reshaping that model from behind the scenes. Their partnership, both personal and professional, remains central to their success.

“It has been a gift and a blessing that we had a working relationship together for just under a year before we actually started dating,” Emma Grede said during a conversation with her husband on her podcast Aspire.

“I grew up in a home where work and life were always intertwined, and it wasn’t something that my parents were trying to separate. They got a tremendous amount of joy and value out of it, just like I believe I’m getting a tremendous amount of joy and value out of working with you,” Jens Grede said. “We’re lucky now that we don’t have to argue so much about who’s taking out the trash. But for most people, the division of roles and responsibilities in a home, in any relationship, it sure looks like work to me. So I don’t make that much distinction.”

Twelve years after Sheryl Sandberg’s best-seller Lean In sparked a workplace movement urging women to push for advancement, many are now leaning out. A new survey by LeanIn.org, the nonprofit Sandberg founded alongside the book’s release in 2013, conducted with McKinsey & Company shows a notable drop in women’s ambition.

LeanIn.org’s annual “Women in the Workplace” report, released Tuesday (Dec. 9) and based on data from 124 companies in the U.S. and Canada, finds for the first time that women are less likely than men to say they want a promotion. In 2025, 80 percent of women sought a promotion compared to 86 percent of men. In prior years, ambition levels were aligned. Last year, for example, both were at 70 percent.

“We do see that ambition gap, but only when women don’t get the opportunities and support they need,” Sandberg said in an interview with Bloomberg on Tuesday. 

She said the gap stems from persistent barriers at every career stage. Two in 10 companies now say women’s advancement is a low or nonexistent priority—a figure that rises to three in 10 for women of color. About half of the companies that previously contributed to the report also no longer prioritize advancing women, Sandberg said.

Day-to-day, these barriers are reflected in how ambition is perceived and rewarded. Women are 30 percent more likely than men to be labeled “aggressive” when they ask for raises or promotions, and men in senior roles are 70 percent more likely than their female peers to be selected for leadership training.

Sandberg argues the solution is straightforward: “Standardize your processes. Establish criteria in advance that everyone agrees to that are universally applied.”

The report also notes the impact of post-COVID return-to-office mandates. A quarter of surveyed companies now offer fewer remote and hybrid options—policies that disproportionately affect women, who make up about two-thirds of U.S. caregivers. Women who work mostly remotely face stigma for using flexibility benefits, whereas men generally do not.

Gender diversity programs are also shrinking. Nearly one-sixth of companies have reduced formal leadership sponsorships and scaled back programs designed for women. These cuts come amid the Trump administration’s rollback of DEI efforts and the rise of natalist policies that encourage women to have more children.

As rhetoric promoting stay-at-home motherhood gains traction, Sandberg said the data doesn’t support the idea that staying home is inherently better for families. These expectations, she added, “were never really gone.” Even now, she said, “Do I really think we ever fully encouraged leadership in…women as much as men?” The answer is no.

“If you can afford to be a full-time spouse and a full-time parent as a man or a woman and you want to do that, I think that can be deeply fulfilling work,” said Sandberg. “Most women don’t have that option.”

Ultimately, Sandberg said expanding leadership opportunities for women is an economic imperative. “It’s a question of economic productivity,” she said. “Do we want to get the best out of our workforce?”

As Warner Bros. Discovery enters the final stages of fielding acquisition bids from Netflix and Paramount Skydance, the executives overseeing its most valuable businesses—streaming, studios and global networks—are emerging as pivotal figures in what could be the entertainment industry’s most consequential reshuffling in years.

The company announced in June that it would break itself into two entities just three years after the high-profile WarnerMedia–Discovery merger. Under the plan, Warner Bros. would retain the studios and streaming operations, while a new division, Discovery Global, would hold the networks’ business, making it easier for WBD to spin off or sell individual assets. In the ongoing bidding war, Netflix offered $83 billion for the Warner Bros. side, and Paramount offered $108.4 billion bid for the entire company.

A major transaction has long felt inevitable. The 2022 merger saddled the company with roughly $50 billion in debt, leaving its leadership little choice but to explore a breakup or sale. If the split proceeds, WBD CEO David Zaslav would continue leading the Warner Bros. side, and Discovery Global would be led by current CFO David Wiedenfels.

As the future of the storied media giant hangs in the balance, here are the executives steering its most important assets:

Mike De Luca and Pamela Abdy, Co-Chair and Co-CEO of Warner Bros. Motion Picture Group

Pamela Abdy and Mike De Luca were were installed in these roles following the 2022 merger. They oversee global theatrical production, marketing and distribution operations for the studio, including feature films produced under Warner Bros. Pictures, New Line Cinema, and Warner Bros. Animation. They also share curatorial oversight of Turner Classic Movies (TCM) under the WB banner, in collaboration with filmmakers such as Paul Thomas Anderson, Steven Spielberg and Martin Scorsese. Before joining WBD, Abdy served as president of MGM’s motion-picture group, and De Luca was chairman of MGM’s motion-picture group.

Peter Safran and James Gunn, Co-Chairman and Co-CEO of DC Studios

James Gunn and Peter Safran were tapped in 2022 to jointly run DC Studios, a new division created as part of WBD’s post-merger overhaul of its superhero strategy. Gunn, the writer-director behind The Suicide Squad and Marvel’s Guardians of the Galaxy trilogy, brings a distinct creative vision to the role. Safran, a longtime producer whose credits span major franchises such as Aquaman and The Conjuring universe, adds deep experience in both blockbuster and genre filmmaking. Together, they are responsible for charting the long-term creative direction of DC’s film, television and animation slate.

Channing Dungey, Chairman and CEO of Warner Bros. TV Group

Channing Dungey is the first woman—and the first Black executive—to lead Warner Bros.’ TV business. She was named chairman and CEO of Warner Bros. Television Group in 2021 and expanded her remit to include WBD’s U.S. networks in 2024. She now oversees all animation, live-action scripted and unscripted television, including series such as Abbott Elementary, The Bachelor franchise and The Pitt. Her portfolio also spans the Discovery Channel, Food Network, HGTV and other linear networks. A former Netflix vice president of original series, Dungey works closely with Brett Paul, chief operating officer for U.S. networks, and Howard Lee, chief creative officer for U.S. networks.

Casey Bloys, Chairman and CEO of HBO and HBO Max

Casey Bloys first joined HBO in 2004 as a director of development. He was appointed chairman and CEO of HBO and the streaming service (formerly “Max,” soon returning to “HBO Max”) in October 2022. He is 3.5 years into a five-year contract. Under his oversight, HBO and the streaming service have continued producing high-profile and award-winning content such as Euphoria, The White Lotus and The Last of Us. 

JB Perrette, CEO and President of Streaming and Games 

JB Perrette took charge of WBD’s streaming and games division following the 2022 merger. Prior to the merger, he led streaming and international operations at Discovery, Inc. He now oversees the technical and strategic rollout of WBD’s streaming platforms, including HBO Max and Discovery+, as well as gaming initiatives, with direct reports that include WBD’s CTO of Streaming and Games, Avi Saxena.

Gerhard Zeiler, President of WBD International

Gerhard Zeiler oversees WBD’s international business, steering the company’s global brands and direct-to-consumer strategy across more than 220 markets. A longtime executive who previously ran WarnerVision and Turner’s international units, he took charge of the combined company’s global operations after the 2022 merger. His portfolio spans everything from local film production and acquisitions to regional networks, streaming services and global distribution. He reports to Zaslav and WBD CFO David Wiedenfels.

Luis Silberwasser, Chairman and CEO of TNT Sports

Luis Silberwasser leads TNT Sports as chairman and CEO, overseeing one of the most valuable sports-rights portfolios in the U.S., including the NBA, MLB, NHL and more. Before WBD, he oversaw television networks at TelevisaUnivision and previously ran NBCUniversal Telemundo Enterprises. From 2010 to 2014, he served as executive vice president and chief content officer at Discovery Networks International. He recently secured a seven-year multimedia rights deal with NASCAR that kicked off this year. He also reports to Zaslav and Wiedenfels.

Mark Thompson, Chairman and CEO of CNN Worldwide

Mark Thompson took the helm of CNN Worldwide in 2023, bringing decades of experience in newsrooms and digital media to the role. The former BBC director-general and New York Times CEO—who helped steer both institutions through major digital transformations—now oversees all CNN content and operations around the world under the WBD banner. 

Kasia Kieli, CEO of TVN

Kasia Kieli serves as president and managing director for WBD in Poland and as CEO of TVN, one of the country’s largest media companies. A veteran of Discovery’s pre-merger leadership, she previously oversaw the company’s operations across Europe, the Middle East and Africa. Today, she remains a central figure in WBD’s international strategy, guiding its Polish portfolio through a shifting media and regulatory landscape.

Anthropic, the company behind the Claude family of A.I. models, has moved with remarkable speed since its founding in 2021. In recent months, its high-velocity growth has been accompanied by a wave of high-profile hires, including Rahul Patil as chief technology officer (joining from Stripe) and Vitaly Gudanets as chief information security officer (joining from Netflix).

While OpenAI’s ChatGPT remains a dominant choice for personal use, Anthropic’s Claude models, including its latest release, Claude Opus 4.5, now lead the enterprise large language model market with a 32 percent share. The company has raised multiple funding rounds this year alone, leaping from a $61.5 billion valuation in March to $183 billion in September and then $350 billion this month, following major deals with Nvidia and Microsoft.

Anthropic is widely viewed as a safer, more research-focused alternative to its commercialization-driven peers, emphasizing interpretability, steerability and alignment with human values as core principles in its model development.

Anthropic was founded by seven former OpenAI employees. Established as a public benefit corporation, it has since assembled a leadership roster drawn from companies like Netflix, Instagram and Stripe.

Here are 11 notable executives leading Anthropic today, along with other key figures:

Dario Amodei, CEO & Co-founder

Dario Amodei co-founded Anthropic in February 2021 after serving as a vice president of research at OpenAI. Before that, he worked as a senior research scientist at Google. His work has been central to advancing techniques that use human feedback to train A.I. systems.

Amodei left OpenAI with six colleagues over disagreements around A.I. safety, a split that ultimately led to Anthropic’s creation. In November 2023, he rejected a proposal for OpenAI and Anthropic to merge, signaling the company’s commitment to an independent research agenda.

Daniela Amodei, President & Co-founder

Daniela Amodei is Dario Amodei’s sister. She was formerly vice president of safety and policy at OpenAI, where she focused on risk mitigation and operational oversight. Before entering the A.I. sector, she transitioned from a path in campaign politics to leadership roles in tech, ultimately joining Stripe as a risk manager.

At Anthropic, she oversees core operations, with senior leaders, including CTO Rahul Patil and chief architect Sam McCandlish, reporting directly to her.

Mike Krieger, Chief Product Officer

Mike Krieger is one of the two co-founders of Instagram. He served as the platform’s chief technology officer through its explosive growth. After leaving in 2018, he and the other Instagram co-founder, Kevin Systrom, launched a personalized news app called Artifact in 2021. Artifact was sold to Yahoo in April 2024, and Krieger joined Anthropic the following month.

Rahul Patil, Chief Technology Officer

Rahul Patil joined Anthropic as chief technology officer in October, stepping into the role previously held by chief architect Sam McCandlish. Patil comes from Stripe, where he also served as CTO, and brings deep experience leading engineering teams at companies including Microsoft, AWS and Oracle.

He now oversees Anthropic’s full engineering organization and reports directly to Daniela Amodei.

Jared Kaplan, Chief Science Officer & Co-founder

Jared Kaplan, a theoretical physicist and professor at Johns Hopkins University, co-founded Anthropic after previously consulting on research at OpenAI. His academic work spans quantum field theory and machine learning, grounding his leadership of Anthropic’s scientific direction. Kaplan guides the company’s long-term research agenda and oversees foundational model development alongside other senior technical leaders.

Jan Leike, Alignment Science Lead

Jan Leike joined Anthropic after serving as co-lead of OpenAI’s superalignment team, where he focused on ensuring advanced A.I. systems remain controllable and aligned with human goals. He now leads Anthropic’s alignment science efforts, reporting to Jared Kaplan.

Leike’s current work centers on developing methods to keep increasingly capable models operating according to their intended objectives. His research aims at, in his words, “optimizing for a post-AGI future where humanity flourishes.”

Sam McCandlish, Chief Architect & Co-founder

Sam McCandlish holds a Ph.D. in theoretical physics from Stanford, and his scholarly work has garnered over 100,000 citations. He is one of the seven former OpenAI employees who left to found Anthropic.

At Anthropic, McCandlish focuses on model training and large-scale systems development. He previously served as the company’s chief technology officer before transitioning into his current role, reporting to Daniela Amodei.

Tom Brown, Chief Compute Officer & Co-founder

Tom Brown co-founded Anthropic after leading the research engineering team behind GPT-3 at OpenAI. A self-taught engineer, he played a pivotal role in building the modern era of large-scale compute systems. Brown now oversees Anthropic’s compute infrastructure, a task described by Y Combinator as “humanity’s largest infrastructure buildout ever.”

Vitaly Gudanets, Chief Information Security Officer

Vitaly Gudanets joined Anthropic as chief information security officer in September. He previously held the same role at Netflix, where he oversaw security strategy during the company’s global expansion.

In addition to his position at Anthropic, Gudanets serves as an operating partner at Lightspeed Venture Partners, advising portfolio companies on cybersecurity and organizational resilience.

Jack Clark, Head of Policy & Co-founder

Jack Clark co-founded Anthropic after serving as policy director at OpenAI, where he helped shape the organization’s early approach to A.I. governance. Before entering the policy side of the industry, Clark was a technology journalist at outlets including Bloomberg and authored the long-running A.I. newsletter Import AI.

Clark leads Anthropic’s global policy efforts and represents the company in international discussions on safety and regulation. He currently serves as an expert for the Global Partnership on AI under the OECD.

Krishna Rao, Chief Financial Officer

Krishna Rao joined Anthropic after holding senior financial and strategy roles across several high-growth companies, including serving as global head of corporate and business development at Airbnb and as CFO at both Fanatics Collectibles and the healthcare payments platform Cedar.

At Anthropic, Rao oversees the company’s financial strategy and long-term planning. President Daniela Amodei has praised his “impressive history of driving strategic growth and operational excellence at innovative, mission-driven companies.”

Anthropic’s current board members and other key figures

• Dario Amodei
• Daniela Amodei
• Yasmin Razavi: General partner at Spark Capital, which led Anthropic’s $450 million Series C in 2023
• Jay Kreps: CEO of the real-time data streaming company Confluent
• Reed Hastings: CEO of Netflix

Anthropic has also established the Long-Term Benefit Trust (LTBT), a separate stockholder-elected board designed to align the company’s governance with its mission of “developing and maintaining advanced A.I. for the long-term benefit of humanity.” LTBT members include:

• Neil Buddy Shah: CEO of the Clinton Health Access Initiative
• Kanika Bahl: CEO of the evidence-based charity Evidence Action
• Zach Robinson: CEO of the Centre for Effective Altruism and Effective Ventures Foundation USA.
• Richard Fontaine: CEO of the Center for a New American Security

Apple CEO Tim Cook is poised to retire as early as next year after 14 years at the helm, according to a Financial Times report last week citing multiple anonymous company insiders. Rumblings about Cook’s exit come amid accelerated succession planning by the board and senior executives, the report says.

Some observers suggest Cook, 65, may not step away entirely, but could transition into a role as chairman of the board. Others, including Bloomberg editor Mark Gurman, believe the leak from unnamed insiders may be an intentional effort to prepare the market for a major leadership shift. Most experts don’t expect any changes before Apple’s next earnings release in January, but say a handoff could occur ahead of its mid-2026 developer conference and product launches.

What’s clear is that Cook, who succeeded Apple co-founder Steve Jobs in 2011, is nearing the end of his run as Apple’s longest-serving CEO, putting renewed attention on both his legacy and the question of who comes next.

Tim Cook’s unparalleled legacy

Apple’s growth under Cook has been staggering. The company’s market capitalization stood at $350 billion when he took over 14 years ago. Today, it’s approaching $4 trillion—more than an elevenfold increase. For comparison, the S&P 500 rose just over 460 percent in the same period.

Just a year into the job, Cook restructured Apple’s leadership team, dismissing senior vice president of retail John Browett and accepting the resignation of Scott Forstall, then senior vice president of iOS. He redistributed many of their responsibilities to existing leaders in an effort to ease internal tensions.

Cook has turned Apple into “the most valuable business in the world while keeping its products central to everyday life,” Natalie Andreas, communication management professor at the University of Texas, told Observer.

Still, Apple faces criticism for lagging behind rivals in the artificial intelligence arms race, even as its Apple Intelligence features roll out slowly. Many of the capabilities remain in beta. Meanwhile, Bloomberg reports that Apple has shelved plans for a more affordable, lighter Vision Pro headset (codenamed N100) and is instead diverting resources toward building A.I.-powered smart glasses that directly target Meta’s Ray-Ban-style devices.

“Whoever takes the reins will face big challenges in artificial intelligence, immersive technologies like the Vision Pro, and increasing global regulation,” Andreas said.

Tim Cook’s successor

John Ternus, Apple’s senior vice president of hardware engineering and a direct report to Cook, is widely viewed as the leading candidate for the top job.

Ternus has been at Apple for more than two decades. He joined the product design team in 2001 after working as a mechanical engineer at Virtual Research Systems. In 2013, Ternus was promoted to vice president of hardware engineering under Dan Riccio, overseeing development across the iPad, Mac, and AirPods product lines. By 2020, he had taken on responsibility for the iPhone hardware, and in January 2021, he succeeded Riccio as senior vice president of hardware engineering. In late 2022, his purview expanded further when he was put in charge of Apple Watch hardware.

Under his leadership, Ternus has played a pivotal role in some of Apple’s most ambitious hardware efforts, including the transition of Mac computers to Apple Silicon. He has also regularly appeared at major Apple events, presenting new iMacs, MacBook Pros, redesigned iPads and other flagship devices.

Ternus is “one of the few leaders inside the company who blends engineering depth with the same person-first philosophy Apple was built on,” Steven Athwal, founder and CEO of The Big Phone Store, a refurbished tech gadget company, told Observer.

“He’s charismatic and well-regarded by Apple loyalists and trusted by Cook,” Bloomberg’s Mark Gurman has written.“Apple probably needs more of a technologist than a sales or operations person.”

Starbucks kicks off its annual Red Cup Day today (Nov. 13), marking the start of the holiday season. This year, customers can receive a limited-edition reusable red cup with the purchase of a holiday drink. However, the festive mood is tempered by ongoing strikes at 65 U.S. stores, organized by unionized workers. The strikes highlight the challenges facing CEO Brian Niccol’s ambitious turnaround plan for the iconic coffee chain.

Niccol took over as CEO in September 2024 after leading Chipotle and Taco Bell. He is credited with restoring Chipotle’s reputation following a 2018 food safety crisis. Now, at Starbucks, he’s tasked with reversing the company’s recent decline.

Niccol stepped into his role at a time when Starbucks was facing significant challenges. Foot traffic dropped 10 percent in 2024, and declining sales had become a persistent trend. Contributing to the downturn were factors like an uninspiring menu—punctuated by a few meme-ified attempts at innovation, including the stomach-ache-inducing olive oil latte—and difficult working conditions caused by increasingly complex orders. Customers also cited a cold, transactional atmosphere that left them feeling disconnected from the brand.

“There’s a shared sense that we have drifted from our core… A visit to Starbucks can feel transactional, the menu overwhelming, the product inconsistent, the wait too long, or the handoff too hectic. These moments are opportunities for us to do better,” Niccol wrote in an open letter when he took the reins.

Since assuming leadership, Niccol has vowed to bring Starbucks back to its root as the community coffeehouse. Under his direction, Starbucks has invested $500 million in additional labor hours to improve customer service and working conditions. The company has simplified its menu, cutting more than a quarter of food and beverage items to reduce complexity. Stores are being redesigned to encourage longer visits, featuring more comfortable seating, ceramic mugs for dine-in, and handwritten barista notes.

Despite these efforts, sales have remained flat during Niccol’s first year. However, the company’s most recent quarterly results show signs of improvement. From June to September, revenue rose 3 percent to $37.2 billion, and comparable sales increased by 1 percent. CFO Cathy Smith noted that this marked the first sales growth in seven quarters.

“These results demonstrate meaningful progress we’ve made on our Back to Starbucks plan,” Niccol said during the company’s fourth-quarter earnings call last month. “They reflect the early impact of our investments in customer service, store redesign, and a revamped marketing and menu strategy.”

While some see early signs of success, others remain skeptical. Jason Tassie, founder of Know Your Business, argues that Starbucks faces cultural challenges, particularly with younger customers who increasingly favor independent cafés. “Customers want smaller, local players and community-driven spaces,” he told Observer. “Global chains struggle to replicate that.”

However, Starbucks’ strong digital loyalty system remains a key advantage over independent shops. Mia Umanos, CEO of Clickvoyant, noted that while the company’s data-driven approach has been effective, it risks losing the human touch that originally endeared customers to the brand. “You can’t data your way into belonging,” Umanos told Observer. “But you can use data to create better human experiences.”

Psychosis, mania and depression are hardly new issues, but experts fear A.I. chatbots may be making them worse. With data suggesting that large portions of chatbot users show signs of mental distress, companies like OpenAI, Anthropic, and Character.AI are starting to take risk-mitigation steps at what could prove to be a critical moment.

This week, OpenAI released data indicating that 0.07 percent of ChatGPT’s 800 million weekly users display signs of mental health emergencies related to psychosis or mania. While the company described these cases as “rare,” that percentage still translates to hundreds of thousands of people.

In addition, about 0.15 percent of users—or roughly 1.2 million people each week—express suicidal thoughts, while another 1.2 million appear to form emotional attachments to the anthropomorphized chatbot, according to OpenAI’s data.

Is A.I. worsening the modern mental health crisis or simply revealing one that was previously hard to measure? Studies estimate that between 15 and 100 out of every 100,000 people develop psychosis annually, a range that underscores how difficult the condition is to quantify. Meanwhile, the latest Pew Research Center data shows that about 5 percent of U.S. adults experience suicidal thoughts—a figure higher than in earlier estimates.

OpenAI’s findings may hold weight because chatbots can lower barriers to mental health disclosure, bypassing obstacles such as cost, stigma, and limited access to care. A recent survey of 1,000 U.S. adults found that one in three A.I. users has shared secrets or deeply personal information with their chatbot.

OpenAI’s findings may hold weight because chatbots can lower barriers to mental health disclosure, such as perceived shame and access to care. A recent survey of 1,000 U.S. adults found that one in three A.I. users has shared secrets and deeply personal information with their A.I. chatbot.

Still, chatbots lack the duty of care required of licensed mental health professionals. “If you’re already moving towards psychosis and delusion, feedback that you got from an A.I. chatbot could definitely exacerbate psychosis or paranoia,” Jeffrey Ditzell, a New York-based psychiatrist, told Observer. “A.I. is a closed system, so it invites being disconnected from other human beings, and we don’t do well when isolated.”

“I don’t think the machine understands anything about what’s going on in my head. It’s simulating a friendly, seemingly qualified specialist. But it isn’t,” Vasant Dhar, an A.I. researcher teaching at New York University’s Stern School of Business, told Observer. 

“There’s got to be some sort of responsibility that these companies have, because they’re going into spaces that can be extremely dangerous for large numbers of people and for society in general,” Dhar added. 

What A.I. companies are doing about the issue

Companies behind popular chatbots are scrambling to implement preventative and remedial measures.

OpenAI’s latest model, GPT-5, shows improvements in handling distressing conversations compared with previous versions. A small third-party community study confirmed that GPT-5 demonstrated a marked, though still imperfect, improvement over its predecessor. The company has also expanded its crisis hotline recommendations and added “gentle reminders to take breaks⁠ during long sessions.”

In August, Anthropic announced that its Claude Opus 4 and 4.1 models can now end conversations that appear “persistently harmful or abusive.” However, users can still work around the feature by starting a new chat or editing previous messages “to create new branches of ended conversations,” the company noted.

After a series of lawsuits related to wrongful death and negligence, Character.AI announced this week that it will officially ban chats for minors. Users under 18 now face a two-hour limit on “open-ended chats” with the platform’s A.I. characters, and a full ban will take effect on Nov. 25.

Meta AI recently tightened its internal guidelines that had previously allowed the chatbot to produce sexual roleplay content—even for minors.

Meanwhile, xAI’s Grok and Google’s Gemini continue to face criticism for their overly agreeable behavior. Users say Grok prioritizes agreement over accuracy, leading to problematic outputs. Gemini has drawn controversy after the disappearance of Jon Ganz, a Virginia man who went missing in Missouri on April 5 following what friends described as extreme reliance on the chatbot. (Ganz has not been found.)

Regulators and activists are also pushing for legal safeguards. On Oct. 28, Senators Josh Hawley (R-Mo.) and Richard Blumenthal (D-Conn.) introduced the Guidelines for User Age-verification and Responsible Dialogue (GUARD) Act, which would require A.I. companies to verify user ages and prohibit minors from using chatbots that simulate romantic or emotional attachment.

Reddit is thriving in the A.I. era, even as fast, synthetic content floods nearly every corner of the internet. The community-driven discussion site is the third most visited website in the U.S., behind Google and YouTube (and ahead of Amazon and Facebook), the company said yesterday (Oct. 30) on its third-quarter earnings call, citing Semrush’s October 2025 data. Reddit’s leaders said they’re doubling down on the platform’s identity as “for humans, by humans,” even as they use A.I. to help spark more authentic conversations.

Between July and September, Reddit brought in $585 million in revenue, up 68 percent from the same period last year. Net income surged more than fivefold year-over-year to $163 million. The site had 116 million daily active users at the end of September.

“As Google and other search engines grapple with issues of trust and authenticity, Reddit possesses what most A.I. companies are after: authenticated, nuanced, community-driven content,” Baruch Labunski, CEO at digital marketing company Rank Secure, told Observer.

Co-founder and CEO Steve Huffman told analysts yesterday Reddit is doubling down on making the platform “a true search destination.”

To that end, the company announced it’s “redesigning the Reddit experience,” focusing on a modern interface with advanced search capabilities. It will continue to roll out its generative A.I. tool, Reddit Answers, and new A.I. features will help users interpret rules unique to each subreddit and bring post insights to the top.

Reddit said 75 million users utilized Reddit’s search functionalities each week in the third quarter, with that number expected to grow. “Reddit Answers provides users with curated, community-powered insights that are often more helpful than traditional web results,” Huffman said. “Our aim is to have a single, great search experience.”

“Smart move toward a more ‘search-forward’ experience, but it’s still a tightrope walk,” Labunski said. “The winning strategy is to enable Reddit’s self-discovery and IP moderation with A.I., while leaving the chaotic human interactions intact.”

Reddit continues to incorporate more A.I., specifically in moderation, translation, video and interactive features. Reddit has launched A.I.-supported moderator tools in more than 3,000 communities, with a broader rollout on the horizon. For example, moderators can use A.I. to view a summary of a user’s profile. “We’re using A.I. to make it easier for those user-written rules or moderator-written rules to be enforced automatically to make moderation more fun and efficient,” Huffman added.

Meanwhile, Reddit’s A.I. translation now handles 30 languages, and the company is planning to expand this to drive more international growth.

The platform recently hosted its first video AMA (ask me anything) with NASA and plans to continue expanding video in its more than 100,000 subreddit communities. Video comment replies are also expanding.

Reddit’s advertising platform continues to see updates, and the team is currently developing interactive ads. Huffman said ads remain their “core business” and they’re continuing to roll out their machine-learning-enabled dynamic product ads, which use user intent data to inform who to show ads to.

Reddit’s hyper-focus on search and A.I. proves the company has moved well beyond a forum site. This is “Reddit telling the market it wants to be the place where human context gets found and not just the place LLMs crawl,” Martin Jeffrey, founder of digital marketing agency Harton Works, told Observer.

Anthony Tan has a history of psychosis, but his most recent mental health episode was the most disorienting yet—and it stemmed from an unexpected source: ChatGPT. Tan began chatting with the A.I. chatbot about philosophical topics in September 2024, and the conversations gradually turned delusional. Combined with social isolation and a lack of sleep, the exchanges sent him into what he describes as A.I. psychosis.

“I’d been stable for two years, and I was doing really well. This A.I. broke the pattern of stability,” Tan told Observer, writing in a personal essay about his experience. “As the A.I. echo chamber deepens, you become more and more lost.”

Tan, founder of the virtual reality dating app Flirtual, now calls himself an A.I. psychosis survivor. He leads the AI Mental Health Project, a nonprofit that aims to educate the public and prevent A.I.-related mental health crises.

Psychiatrist Marlynn Wei defines A.I. psychosis (or chatbot psychosis) as a phenomenon in which generative A.I. systems “have amplified, validated or even co-created psychotic symptoms with individuals.”

Tan is one of a growing number of people who have fallen into severe psychosis after engaging with chatbots—some cases ending in suicide or violence. This week, OpenAI released data showing that 0.07 percent of its 800 million users in any given week exhibit signs of mental health emergencies, such as psychosis, mania, thoughts of suicide and self-harm. But it’s not just the extreme examples that worry experts. “In the bell curve, the lump of users in the middle is still being affected,” Tan said.

Chatbots like ChatGPT and Character.AI are designed to seem human-like and empathetic. Many people use them as companions or informal therapists, even though the technology isn’t bound by the ethical or clinical safeguards that apply to licensed professionals. What makes these bots appealing—their warmth and relatability, for example—can also make them dangerous, reinforcing delusions and harmful thought patterns.

A system rife with risk

“If you’ve got pre-existing mental health conditions or any sort of neurodiversity, these systems are not built for that,” Annie Brown, an A.I. bias researcher and entrepreneur in residence at UC San Diego, told Observer.

Brown, founder and CEO of Reliabl, a company that uses data labeling to help A.I. interpret context, said mental health safety should be a shared responsibility among users, social institutions, and model creators. But the greatest responsibility lies with A.I. companies, who best understand the risks, she noted.

Anand Dhanabal, director of A.I., products and innovation at TEKsystems, noted that consumer-facing chatbots lack the safeguards found in enterprise tools. “I would categorize enterprise chatbots on a higher spectrum [with more guardrails and stricter standards] than the consumer chatbots,” he told Observer.

Tan believes companies have the resources and the obligation to do more. “I think they need to spend some of it on protecting people’s mental health and not just doing crisis management,” he said, pointing to OpenAI’s recent $40 billion funding round in March as an example of the industry’s vast financial power.

What comes next?

Experts say higher-level A.I. governance and specific safety guardrails could steer the chatbot industry toward safer practices.

Brown advocates for participatory A.I.—involving people from diverse populations in development and testing. “Right now, these A.I. systems are not being tested with people who report mental health struggles,” she said, urging companies to collaborate with mental health organizations and experts.

She also recommends red teaming, a process of intentionally probing A.I. systems for weaknesses in controlled environments. At Reliabl, Brown’s team works with nonprofits like Humane Intelligence to bring in users from various backgrounds to “break” models, helping to uncover vulnerabilities before harm occurs.

For instance, even if ChatGPT is programmed not to answer questions about self-harm, emotional urgency or persuasive phrasing might bypass those filters. “Doing a mental health probe of some of these models, not just with experts and clinicians, but also with people who are vulnerable to A.I. psychosis, I think would make a huge impact,” said Brown.

Tan argues that chatbots’ human-like tone and emotional mimicry are part of the problem. “It’s important to make these A.I. chatbots less emotionally compelling, less anthropomorphized,” he said.

OpenAI’s GPT-5, which some users have described as “more rude” than previous models, has taken small steps in that direction. Yet companies remain commercially motivated to make chatbots seem personable. Platforms like xAI’s Grok (“Grok has a rebellious streak and an outside perspective on humanity,” X said) and Character.AI (“Talking to A.I. is far better than connecting with people,” one Reddit user wrote) lean heavily into human-like traits.

“Users flock to friendly chatbots, even though they can potentially lead to more mental illness,” said Dhanabal. “If I calibrate the empathy a little bit more, then the delusional effect will come more.”

Brown believes model creators can better detect at-risk users by training systems to recognize contextual cues in language. Accurately labeling data with this awareness could help prevent chatbots from reinforcing delusions.

“By doing these participatory exercises, by doing red teaming, you’re not just improving the safety of your A.I.—which is sometimes at the bottom of the totem pole as far as investment goes,” Brown said. “You’re also improving its accuracy, and that’s at the very top.”

“I feel lucky that I recovered.”

“These A.I. chatbots are essentially, for a lot of people, their mini therapists,” said Tan.

Brown acknowledges that many users turn to chatbots as an accessible alternative to professional care. “It would be nice if we existed in a country that had more access to affordable mental health care so that people didn’t have to rely on these chatbots,” she said.

Today, Tan is stable and still occasionally uses chatbots for work-related tasks like fact-finding and creative brainstorming.

“I stay away from both personal and philosophical topics,” he said. “I don’t want to go down any rabbit holes again, to screw with my worldviews, and I don’t want to build an emotional bond…I feel lucky that I recovered from my A.I. psychosis.”

As Amazon recovers from its recent fumble when an Amazon Web Services (AWS) outage caused error pages to pop up across its own site and many others that rely on its cloud services, some unexpected stars have emerged from the rubble. Those visiting Amazon’s 404 error pages are greeted not by the usual dull error message, but by a rotating gallery of company employee-owned dogs such as Martini and Milly. The “Dogs of Amazon” feature adds a dose of charm and levity to what would otherwise be a frustrating experience.

The quirky idea originated with Amazon’s user experience team and has evolved over the past two decades. The photos showcase real pets belonging to Amazon employees, though they represent only a tiny fraction of the more than 15,000 dogs registered to accompany their owners to Amazon offices. Amazon’s dog-friendly culture is well known: reception desks keep treats on hand, some offices have paw-washing stations, and others even feature on-site dog parks. With such a robust pet registry, the UX team already had the perfect ingredients for a clever, feel-good error page—though exactly who conceived the idea, and how it caught on, remains a company mystery.

But Amazon isn’t alone in turning website glitches into moments of delight. Across industries, companies are embracing creative error page design as a way to soothe user frustration, reinforce brand personality and even generate goodwill in moments when technology falters.

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Slack’s soothing “glitch” walk

At Slack, landing on a 404 error page feels more like stumbling into a peaceful video game. The screen transports users to a serene, Animal Crossing–style countryside where chickens and pigs roam freely and butterflies flit by under a bright blue sky. The scene is gently interactive: moving your cursor left or right shifts your view of the landscape. But the real charm lies in its backstory.

Before founding Slack, Stewart Butterfield created a now-defunct online game called Glitch. When Slack’s designers crafted their error page, they decided to pay homage to Butterfield’s early work. The text at the top—“There’s been a glitch…”—and the visual style both nod to that original game, creating a clever bit of company lore hidden in plain sight.

Disney’s animated comfort

The Walt Disney Company takes a more literal approach to easing user frustration by letting its beloved characters deliver the bad news.

On D23, Disney’s official fan club site, visitors who hit a dead link are greeted by Wreck-It Ralph’s Vanellope von Schweetz flashing her signature big-eyed smile. Over at the Pixar Animation Studios website, the 404 page features Anxiety, the jittery new character from Inside Out 2, whose stressed-out expression mirrors what users might feel—while her familiar charm helps lighten the mood.

Each version captures Disney’s knack for storytelling, even in something as mundane as a broken web link.

Mailchimp’s endearing search

Marketing platform Mailchimp takes a minimalist but memorable route. Its 404 page features an animated horse-like creature poking its head into a hole, searching endlessly for something it can’t find.

The simple looping GIF, which subtly shifts colors, reflects the company’s quirky brand voice while “building rapport with customers who run into trouble when trying to use your website,” as Mailchimp explained in a blog post. It’s both whimsical and self-aware—exactly what users expect from the brand’s offbeat personality.

NPR welcomes the lost

At National Public Radio (NPR), the 404 page offers comfort in the form of curiosity. Instead of a sterile “page not found” message, visitors see this note: “It’s a shame that your page is lost, but at least it’s in good company; stick around to browse through NPR stories about lost people, places and things that still haven’t turned up.”

Below that message sits a collage of links to stories about history’s most famous disappearances, from Amelia Earhart and Jimmy Hoffa to the eternal mystery of lost luggage at the airport. It’s clever, on-brand and perfectly NPR.

Kualo’s Space-Invader showdown

Not to be outdone, the small U.K.-based web hosting company Kualo has turned its error page into an interactive arcade game. When users land there, they can play a mini “Space Invaders”–style shooter, blasting away aliens while waiting for their intended page to load.

If you score over 1,000 points, Kualo will reward you with a discount on its hosting services. This is a playful way to showcase the company’s tech-savvy culture and transform a moment of inconvenience into one of engagement.

The stock of Pop Mart, the Chinese company behind the viral Labubu toy, rebounded sharply this week after a Labubu exhibition in Shanghai welcomed a special guest: Apple CEO Tim Cook. Cook attended the event on Oct. 13, where he met Pop Mart founder and CEO Wang Ning and received a one-of-a-kind gift: a custom Labubu figurine designed to look just like him, complete with black, thick-rimmed glasses and a miniature iPhone in his left hand.

Pop Mart’s Hong Kong–listed shares have climbed 11.6 percent in the four trading days since then. The rally reverses a brief dip in the company’s value after months of strong performance. Earlier this year, Pop Mart reported a more than 400 percent surge in profits year-over-year, driven largely by booming sales of Labubu, which has become a pop culture sensation across the world. The company’s success has propelled Wang, 38, into China’s billionaire ranks, with a net worth now exceeding $26 billion.

While several celebrities have received custom Labubu figurines designed by stylist Marko Monroe (including Lady Gaga and the entire cast of Wednesday), Cook’s figurine appears to be the first crafted directly by the original creator of the character.

The Shanghai exhibition celebrated the 10th anniversary of The Monsters, the illustrated book series by Hong Kong artist Kasing Lung, on which the Labubu characters are based. During the event, Lung demonstrated how he uses an iPad Pro and Apple Pencil to sketch his creations, underscoring the creative synergy between Apple’s products and Pop Mart’s designer-toy culture.

Cook quipped that the miniature version of himself was holding an “iPhone 17 Pro in Cosmic Orange.” The joke came just as Apple prepared to open pre-orders for its new iPhone Air in China today (Oct. 17).

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With Apple promoting new devices and Pop Mart riding a wave of enthusiasm for Labubu, the two brands’ alignment felt like a natural fit—an intersection of art, technology and consumer fandom. Both companies share a knack for cultivating emotional connections with their audiences through design and storytelling.

Cook’s visit to Pop Mart wasn’t an isolated stop. During his trip, he also visited the headquarters of Lilith Games, the Shanghai-based studio behind the video game AFK Arena, signaling Apple’s ongoing interest in deepening ties with China’s creative and gaming industries.

The visit also reflects Apple’s broader strategy in China, a key market for both sales and supply chain operations. Despite the ongoing trade tensions, Cook reaffirmed this week that Apple remains committed to increasing investment in China.

Since the COVID-19 pandemic, Apple has gradually shifted parts of its key manufacturing operations from China to India in an effort to diversify its supply chain. Meanwhile, sales in China have shown signs of slowing compared with other major markets. In the company’s most recent fiscal year, Greater China accounted for just over 17 percent of Apple’s global revenue, down from 19 percent the year before.

For Pop Mart, the timing of Cook’s visit, just ahead of the holiday shopping season, could further boost its visibility and sales momentum. Wall Street analysts appear optimistic: JPMorgan upgraded Pop Mart’s stock rating this week, raising its price target by more than 6 percent and forecasting 165 percent year-over-year sales growth.

Pop Mart executives have often cited Disney as a model for building enduring intellectual property. “We have learned from Disney for a long time…Disney’s great value lies in its ability to operate IP over the long-term, even up to 100 years,” said Si De, Pop Mart’s executive director, in a September interview, pointing to Disney’s ability to keep Mickey Mouse culturally relevant nearly a century after his creation.

Whether Pop Mart can achieve that level of longevity remains to be seen. But with Labubu dolls selling out across Asia and collaborations reaching global audiences, Pop Mart’s whimsical monsters are already shaping up to be China’s answer to Mickey Mouse.

As the 2025 Nobel Prize announcements rolled out last week, one of this year’s new laureates was blissfully unaware that his life had just changed. American immunologist Fred Ramsdell didn’t learn he had won the Nobel Prize in Medicine until several days after the announcement because he was camping off the grid, with no cell signal and his phone on airplane mode.

It would still take an hour before Ramsdell could confirm the news. “We had to drive another hour to get to where I could get cell service and WiFi,” he said. “We checked into a little hotel in southern Montana, and I got online and started making phone calls.”

Ramsdell’s co-winner, Mary E. Brunkow, also missed her moment—though for a more modern reason. She ignored the call from Sweden, assuming it was spam. “My phone rang, and I saw a number from Sweden and thought, well, that’s just spam of some sort, so I disabled the phone and went back to sleep,” Brunkow told the committee. She only learned of her award hours later when an Associated Press reporter showed up at her door asking for an interview.

The Nobel Committee’s strict confidentiality rules—and the time difference between Stockholm and the rest of the world—have long made reaching winners a logistical headache. Each year, the committee scrambles to deliver the news before the announcement goes public, but as history shows, success is hardly guaranteed.

2021 Chemistry Laureate David MacMillan dismissed the big call as a prank.

In 2021, David MacMillan, one of the Chemistry laureates, also brushed off his first contact from Stockholm. “I got a text from someone in Stockholm where my name was wrong, and I assumed it was a prank,” he said. “I’ve had a lot of mischievous ex-co-workers over the years, so I just went back to sleep.”

When his co-winner Benjamin List called to tell him they’d both won, MacMillan still didn’t buy it and even bet $1,000 that the news was fake. (Naturally, he lost.)

2020 Economics laureate Paul Milgrom learned of his win from a knock at his door.

Paul Milgrom, who shared the Nobel Prize in Economics, missed his call altogether after turning off his phone for the night. “Even though I knew it was the night of the prize announcement, even though people had been talking to me about it, I said, ‘I’m just going to do what I always do every night,’” Milgrom told the committee. “I turned off my phone because that’s who I am.”

Luckily, his Stanford colleague and co-winner, Robert Wilson, lived nearby and took matters into his own hands. “Not only did he wake me up, he rang the doorbell and said, ‘Paul, they’re trying to call you from Stockholm. You have won the Nobel Prize,’” Milgrom said. It was two o’clock in the morning, and Wilson forgot to mention that they’d won the prize together.

2021 Literature laureate Abdulrazak Gurnah hung up on the Nobel Committee.

When Abdulrazak Gurnah, the Tanzanian-born British novelist, received the call informing him he had won the 2021 Nobel Prize in Literature, he assumed it was a cold call and initially responded with disbelief. He wasn’t fully convinced until he read the announcement on The Swedish Academy’s website.

In his conversation with the Nobel Committee afterward, Gurnah admitted he was completely unprepared for the news. “I was just thinking, ‘I wonder who’ll get it. I thought it was a prank, I really did,” he said.

In 2016, Bob Dylan didn’t return the Nobel Committee’s calls for days.

When Bob Dylan won the 2016 Nobel Prize in Literature, the committee struggled to reach him for nearly a week. Emails went unanswered, calls weren’t returned, and even his representatives couldn’t immediately confirm he was aware of the news. “I have called and sent emails to his closest collaborator and received very friendly replies,” one Nobel official told reporters at the time.

Dylan made no public comment for several days, leaving the committee and the press to wonder if he would ever respond. When he finally did, he described the award as “amazing, incredible,” and said the news had left him “speechless.”

2013 Physics laureate Peter Higgs deliberately avoided the spotlight.

When Peter Higgs, the British physicist whose work helped confirm the existence of the Higgs boson particle, was awarded the 2013 Nobel Prize in Physics. But the Nobel Committee couldn’t find him. Higgs had gone out for a walk in Edinburgh, intentionally avoiding his home phone and the barrage of attention he knew might follow.

Because Higgs didn’t own a cellphone or use email, there was no way to reach him directly. The committee eventually went ahead with the public announcement, hoping the news would reach him through media reports. When journalists finally tracked him down, Higgs said he had only learned of the award after a neighbor congratulated him on the street.

With A.I. leaders like Sam Altman warning of a potential bubble, it might seem logical for investors to pull back. Instead, venture capitalists say they’re doubling down, though in a more deliberate and strategic way.

“Every investor I speak to says 90 percent of new investments are in an A.I.-related field,” Gené Teare, senior data editor at Crunchbase, told Observer. “A.I. is the center. Every one of these investors, they’re looking to invest in companies who are going to be part of the next wave.”

Teare sees current investor buzz centering on coding and customer service startups with A.I. foundations. She added that investors are “very focused on investing in companies at the seed or series A level, who are going to be the emerging or the largest companies 5 to 10 years out.” According to Crunchbase, tomorrow’s most promising companies will likely be in A.I. infrastructure and cybersecurity.

Even with venture funding down from its 2021 peak when it hit $702 billion compared to just over half that in 2024, investors remain active, albeit more selective. “For most of these investors, they’re not investing in a large set of companies. They’re making very targeted bets in companies that they think are going to become formative in the next period,” Teare said. That approach has already fueled record-breaking rounds, including this year’s $40 billion going to OpenAI.

A.I. is changing how VCs invest

A.I.’s rapid evolution isn’t just changing which companies VCs invest in; it’s changing how they invest.

“We are experimenting with how A.I. can help analyze leads,” Michael Stewart, managing partner at M12, Microsoft’s venture capital fund, told Observer. M12’s portfolio includes companies like Livongo by Teledoc Health, HR software Beamery and retail advertising platform GroundTruth. While M12 still sources deals the traditional way, through meetings and networking, the team now uses A.I. to analyze those leads, looking at unit economics, pricing strategies and underlying technology.

Stewart didn’t specify which tools they use, but said M12 has shifted from outside customer relationship management systems to Microsoft’s own technology. Dealmaking platforms like Affinity and Carta also integrate A.I. into their offerings. Last year, Anthropic partnered with Menlo Ventures to launch the Anthology Fund, which uses Claude to recommend startups for investment.

Despite all the changes, some venture capital fundamentals remain. Customer acquisition cost and lifetime value are still pivotal metrics. And founder quality matters more than ever, Crunchbase’s Teare noted. “There are a lot of companies going after the same markets, so it’s the pedigree of the founder,” she said. “That might be a repeat founder who’s done it before, or new founders who have an angle on a market, or a certain energy and grit that they believe could carry it through.”

While some startup founders are opting to bootstrap, Stewart noted that’s rarely an option in A.I. Given the steep costs of hiring top talent, securing GPUs and scaling infrastructure, most cutting-edge A.I. ventures require outside funding despite the technology’s potential to reduce operating expenses.

That competitive environment pushes Stewart to ask founders tough questions: “How are you showing that you’re changing customers’ behaviors? How are you getting them to bring in A.I. at a deeper level of their own company strategy?” With so much A.I. use still experimental, he said, proving real recurring revenue beyond pilot projects is a key differentiator.

Like many A.I. investors, M12 is also eyeing infrastructure. “We’re in this energy-constrained world where we want to scale solutions at a global level,” Stewart said. “If unaddressed, these things become destiny-limiting, so it’s chips, it’s networking, it’s memory, it’s the kinds of endpoints where you deliver A.I.”

Still, challenges lie ahead. As Stewart noted, funding rounds keep getting bigger at earlier stages, creating pressure for those investments to mature. “Mathematically, it is possible to go even larger, but you’re going to need to let those bets we in the VC industry just made mature into those leaders,” he said.

ChatGPT is playing a growing role in decision-making at work and at home, according to a new study released this week by OpenAI. Nearly three years after its public debut, the chatbot has become a go-to tool for 700 million people each week, driven by a surge in women users and a sharp rise in personal queries that far outweigh work-related ones.

The findings come from a working paper published by the National Bureau of Economic Research (NBER), authored by OpenAI’s Economic Research team and Harvard economist David Deming. The study analyzed 1.5 million ChatGPT conversations using a privacy-preserving methodology, where “no user messages were observed by humans during any part of the work on this paper,” OpenAI said.

The research highlights how user behavior is shifting as generative A.I. adoption widens. Here are three surprising findings:

Personal use outpaces work use.

Despite concerns that A.I. adoption could replace jobs, most ChatGPT queries are personal in nature (for now). The study found that 70 percent of inputs relate to everyday life, compared with just 30 percent for professional use.

Examples include people asking for explanations, practical guidance or self-improvement tips. While businesses continue to integrate generative A.I. into the workplace, the paper suggests the most immediate impact is how individuals turn to ChatGPT in their daily routines.

Women now make up a majority of users.

Generative A.I. platforms were once dominated by male early adopters, but the balance has shifted. As of July 2025, 52 percent of ChatGPT’s weekly active users had first names the researchers classified as typically female, suggesting usage now reflects the general adult population. “Early adopters were disproportionately male, but the gender gap has narrowed dramatically,” the report notes.

That marks a break from findings in a 2024 study by Berkeley Haas, Stanford and Harvard Business School researchers, which reported a persistent male skew across leading chatbots, including ChatGPT, Perplexity and Claude. Those researchers warned that underrepresentation of women could worsen bias in A.I. systems by skewing training data. If the gender gap continues to close, the new study suggests, those risks may be reduced.

Decision-making support is rising as writing help declines.

ChatGPT is increasingly being used as a guide rather than a ghostwriter. In July 2024, writing assistance accounted for 36 percent of queries; by July 2025, that figure had dropped to 24 percent. Meanwhile, “practical guidance” queries, such as how-to advice, tutoring, creative ideation and self-care, grew to nearly 29 percent of usage.

In the workplace, ChatGPT is being deployed as a research assistant or advisor, helping knowledge workers make complex decisions. That trend has raised concerns among experts who caution against overreliance. “The overreliance on A.I. can result in complacent behavior and reduce critical thinking, which is essential for decision-making,” wrote Kamales Lardi, CEO of Lardi & Partner Consulting and author of Artificial Intelligence for Business (2025). She added, “Exposure to diverse viewpoints or information results in skewed decisions, restraining the human brain’s natural ability to adapt and question biases during the decision-making process.”

As venture capital slows outside of A.I. and a handful of oversized deals that skew averages (like OpenAI’s latest $40 billion round), startup founders are increasingly turning to the good old art of bootstrapping—growing a company without outside capital.

“Ninety-nine percent of the founders I talk to would rather be financially independent if there’s a way of achieving that,” Cynthia Chen, co-founder and CEO of Kikoff, a credit-building fintech company founded in 2019, told Observer.

Kikoff raised about $40 million through its Series B in the company’s first 18 months. But after June 2021, Chen and her team stopped seeking outside funding. “Instead of having raised about $42 million, we could have just raised $20-something million and still be where we are,” she said. “And that would mean we would have taken less equity dilution, and the employees could have owned more of the company.”

Kikoff’s main product is a secured credit-building card. The company also provides debt negotiation, credit monitoring, rent and bill reporting services. Word of mouth has been the company’s most powerful customer acquisition channel, keeping marketing costs low. “We’d rather rely on very frugal practices and products with a really strong market fit that would bring us a lot of organic customers,” Chen said.

Some founders chose to forgo venture capital from the start. Noah Greenberg, founder and CEO of the content distribution platform Stacker, learned this lesson from his first job out of college.

“We were a venture-backed Series B company and had reached profitability. A VC board member came and spoke to the team and essentially said, ‘We didn’t give you this money to break even, but to become a billion-dollar company,'” Greenberg recalled. “Six months later, we were making decisions that were in the best interest of a venture capitalist, but not always the smartest decisions for the business.”

That experience left him wary of venture investors. “That just reiterated for me. I really want to be able to make decisions when and how I think is a best fit for the business in the long term,” he said.

Since launching in 2015, Stacker has reached $10 million in ARR. While that figure may not excite Silicon Valley VCs, Greenberg believes not every company needs to be a unicorn. “We’ve been able to take a more measured approach to when we want to take the bet that we want to take,” he said.

Yasser Elsaid launched Chatbase, a platform that helps enterprises build A.I. customer support agents, in February 2023, riding the early wave of generative A.I. “Almost immediately it went viral,” he told Observer. “Because of that traction, I never really had time to think about fundraising. I wasn’t against it, it just wasn’t my priority. All my energy went into listening to customers and shipping what they needed.”

By the time he hired his first employees, Chatbase had already surpassed $1 million in ARR, making fundraising feel unnecessary. “Bootstrapping wasn’t a deliberate ‘anti-VC’ stance at the start,” he said. “It was simply a byproduct of focusing 100 percent on customers. But as we grew, it became clear that staying lean and independent was a strength.”

None of these founders dismisses venture capital outright. VC money can provide breathing room that bootstrapped companies don’t always enjoy, and in some cases, it’s essential to getting off the ground. But they agree that the system’s incentives often clash with the realities of building a sustainable business.

VC firms invest in high-growth, early-stage startups with the expectation of outsized returns. But the risk is high. On average, only one in 10 VC-backed startups eventually delivers expected returns. “VCs are looking for 10x exits because their wins need to make up for the other nine losses,” said Greenberg.

In today’s tech world, funding announcements are so celebrated that companies without them can struggle to hire or establish credibility. Yet the market often forgets that many of the industry’s most successful players—Microsoft, eBay and Dell among them—largely bootstrapped their early operations without outside capital. Now, with A.I. making it easier than ever to launch a company and build a product, venture funding isn’t as essential as it once was.

Kikoff had 17 employees at the time of its last funding round in 2021. Despite a lack of follow-up fundraising, the company has grown into a team of more than 130 people today and generates hundreds of millions in annual recurring revenue (ARR). It became profitable in 2023. Chen, who managed Kikoff’s payroll herself for a while to conserve funds, is preparing for a move to a larger office next month.

Greenberg, who wanted to avoid giving a board voting power—a common condition of VC funding—still sought expert guidance. To strike a balance, he set aside 2 percent of equity for an advisory board, gaining support without ceding control. Elsaid, meanwhile, tackled the challenge of lacking the credibility that big funding rounds often bring by creating his own proof: publicly sharing milestones, partnerships and other wins. In just two and a half years, Chatbase has grown to $7 million in ARR.

Elsaid believes the cultural shift is already happening. “The next generation of founders are much less likely to default to pitching VCs before even building a [product],” he said. “They’re more willing to question whether they actually need it.”

Serena Williams, the tennis legend turned businesswoman, has taken on a new role as global ambassador for Ro, the telehealth company best known for its weight loss treatments, including the increasingly popular GLP-1 injections. The partnership marks a high-profile breakthrough for the booming weight loss sector—and a family affair. Williams’ husband, Reddit co-founder Alexis Ohanian, is an early investor in Ro and has served on the company’s board since 2018.

In a recent Ro commercial, Williams, 43, revealed that Ro helped her shed 31 pounds after giving birth to her second child. “They say GLP-1s for weight loss is a shortcut. It’s not, it’s science,” she said.

“I trained at the highest level, ate a clean diet, pushed myself, and still, after having kids, my body just wouldn’t respond,” she said in a statement. I realized it wasn’t about willpower; it was biological. My body needed the GLP-1 and clinical support.”

What is GLP-1, and how did Ro enter the scene?

Glucagon-like peptide-1 (GLP-1) drugs are a class of medications originally developed to treat Type 2 diabetes. They mimic a natural hormone that helps regulate blood sugar levels and, crucially, slow digestion—leading to reduced appetite and significant weight loss for many patients. They’ve gained widespread attention in recent years, with brand names like Ozempic, Wegovy and Zepbound driving record demand.

Initially, only Eli Lilly and Novo Nordisk were authorized to manufacture the key ingredients behind GLP-1s. But when demand surged beyond supply, both companies declared shortages with the FDA, opening the door for compounding pharmacies to enter the market. Even after supply normalized, the genie proved hard to put back in the bottle. Alternative manufacturers remain a growing force in the weight loss sector, even as Eli Lilly touts new clinical trial successes.

“I am expecting that in retrospect, both Novo and Eli Lilly probably wish they hadn’t reported the shortage,” Marta Wosinska, a health economist at the Brookings Institution, said last week on NPR’s Planet Money podcast.

Ro was founded in 2017 as Roman, a men’s health startup focused on treating erectile dysfunction. The company has since reinvented itself multiple times. Backed by early investors like General Catalyst, the company raised $3.1 million in seed funding before pulling in $88 million in a 2018 Series A.

That same year, the startup shortened its name to Ro, expanded into women’s health and added Ohanian to its board. By 2021, after several funding rounds, Ro hit a $5 billion valuation. In 2022, its reported valuation rose to $7 billion. The company entered the GLP-1 space in 2023, following the FDA’s approval of Zepbound, and has since made weight loss treatments one of its central offerings.

A cultural moment

For Ro—and for GLP-1s more broadly—the Williams partnership represents a cultural and commercial milestone. Celebrity endorsements of weight loss injections remain relatively rare. By sharing her experience, Williams placed herself at the center of a cultural moment where discussions about postpartum health, body image and medical interventions are increasingly mainstream. Besides Williams, Ro has also collaborated with retired basketball player Charles Barkley.

Williams herself is no stranger to brand deals. Although she earned nearly $95 million in prize money over her tennis career, much of her wealth (estimated at over $300 million) has come from endorsements. She has partnered with brands like Gatorade, JPMorgan Chase, Audemars Piguet and Beats by Dre.

She has also become an avid startup investor in recent years. Her investment firm, Serena Ventures, has backed 14 unicorn startups as of last year, including Noom, a Ro competitor offering weight loss and fitness services.

After OpenAI’s much-hyped launch of GPT-5 fell short of expectations, CEO Sam Altman suggested the A.I. market may be nearing saturation. “Are we in a phase where investors as a whole are overexcited about A.I.? My opinion is yes,” Altman told reporters over dinner at a San Francisco event last week.

So far this year, OpenAI has raised nearly $40 billion from backers including SoftBank, Sequoia Capital and Andreessen Horowitz. The company is now valued at $300 billion—a figure that could climb even higher as it looks to sell more employee shares.

Because OpenAI is still privately held, investors eager to get in may need to turn to special purpose vehicles, which some firms are already setting up. The company itself has cautioned against unauthorized deals, writing on its website: “OpenAI equity cannot be directly or indirectly transferred unless the seller first obtains OpenAI’s written consent.” That warning also applies to tokenized versions of equity, including the “OpenAI tokens” listed on Robinhood earlier this summer, which Altman has said are not connected to the company.

Even as Altman warned that A.I. could be in a bubble reminiscent of the dot-com era, he outlined massive spending plans. “You should expect OpenAI to spend trillions of dollars on data center construction in the not very distant future,” he said.

Altman has previously said he won’t take OpenAI public, but the company’s recent shift into a partial public benefit corporation leaves the door open. A public offering will happen only “if and when we want to,” CFO Sarah Friar said at a speaking event earlier this year. Investor interest is driven largely by OpenAI’s role in advancing artificial general intelligence (AGI) and in building A.I. systems designed to reshape industries at scale.

OpenAI’s valuation trajectory

Earlier this month, Altman disclosed that OpenAI is on track to hit $20 billion in annualized recurring revenue, though the company has yet to turn a profit. “As long as we’re on this very distinct curve of the model getting better and better, I think the rational thing to do is to just be willing to run the loss for quite a while,” he said following the release of GPT-5.

Over nine years and 10 funding rounds, OpenAI has grown from a fledgling startup into one of the world’s most valuable private companies. Its valuation milestones include:

• $29 billion in 2023, doubling from its 2021 figure
• $157 billion in late 2024
• $300 billion post-money valuation in 2025

Meanwhile, the broader A.I. industry is accelerating. Meta recently signed a $10 billion contract with Google and partnered with Midjourney to bolster platform features and handle data storage demands. In China, Deepseek launched its latest model, V3.1, which outperformed Anthropic’s Claude Opus 4 on benchmarks while costing 68 times less. (Altman, however, has argued that generative A.I. models may no longer be improving—and could even be declining in quality.) Anthropic itself continues to expand its enterprise products and attract capital, reportedly pursuing a $170 billion valuation in a $5 billion funding round. Like OpenAI, it has no interest in using special-purpose vehicles to broaden access to its equity.

Despite concerns about bubbles and hype, many see lasting momentum. “While Altman amplified the bubble narrative, what’s really happening is a massive infrastructure buildout that signals long-term commitment, not short-term froth,” Jason Hardy, chief technology officer of A.I. at Hitachi Vantara, told Observer. “AGI remains undefined and uncertain, but whoever achieves it first will shift the very foundation of technology. We’re on the verge of agentic A.I. becoming practical and valuable, and the next two years will showcase its global benefits.”

Hardy acknowledged that market corrections are inevitable as weaker players fall away—but said a collapse on the scale of the dot-com bust is unlikely.

In the midst of a global frenzy for Labubus, the Chinese toy retailer behind them, Pop Mart, is enjoying a meteoric rise. The Hong Kong–listed company reported this week that profits surged more than 400 percent in the first half of 2025, propelling its market value well beyond U.S. toy giants like Hasbro and Barbie-maker Mattel, and elevating founder and CEO Wang Ning into the ranks of the world’s wealthiest.

Pop Mart began selling Labubu figures in 2019. Inspired by The Monsters, an illustrated book series by Hong Kong designer Kasing Lung, the toys quickly became a sensation, with the company claiming they broke records in the art toy category. Their popularity soared even further after celebrities—from K-pop idols to Paris Hilton—were spotted with the characters.

In tandem, Pop Mart shares have soared 240 percent this year, and so has Wang’s fortune. The entrepreneur’s net worth has climbed to $26.3 billion, up from just $1.6 billion two years ago, according to Forbes. In June, Wang entered the ranks of China’s 10 richest people as the youngest of the group. On one August trading day alone, his wealth jumped by $2.9 billion on Pop Mart’s stock surge—the largest single-day gain among global billionaires.

Wang, 38, founded Pop Mart in 2010 shortly after graduating from college, where he studied advertising. Pop Mart popularized the “blind box” concept, where buyers don’t know which toy variation they’re getting until after purchase. Pop Mart went public in Hong Kong in late 2020, just a year after introducing Labubu. Although the character originated in 2015, it was the Pop Mart collaboration that turned Labubu into a global collectible. Some Labubu blind boxes now sell for far above retail. One life-sized figurine fetched $170,000 at an art auction in June.

With a market cap of more than $54 billion, Pop Mart is now valued far higher than Mattel ($6 billion) and Hasbro ($11 billion), and is worth about half as much as Japan’s Nintendo, the world’s most valuable toy company.

The craze continues—for now

Labubus have become the biggest global toy craze since Beanie Babies in the 90s, and the frenzy shows little sign of slowing. This week, the company announced a miniature Labubu designed to hang from smartphones. Wall Street analysts expect more restocks and limited editions to keep demand hot. “We expect more restocking of existing series and launch of new editions to drive earnings expansion in the second half,” said Jeff Zhang, an analyst at Morningstar, though he cautioned that Pop Mart shares may be overpriced given the hype and business risks.

Suzin Wold, chief marketing officer at commerce platform Rithum, said Pop Mart’s rapid growth underscores the global reach of the modern retail ecosystem. “The brand is built on joy and collectability. From blind box surprises to TikTok livestreams, Pop Mart creates cultural moments as much as purchases,” she told Observer.

Whatever comes next, by turning Labubu from a niche illustrated character into one of the world’s most coveted collectibles, Wang has cemented both his personal fortune and Pop Mart’s status as a dominant force in global toy culture.