A few meters below the former site of Sevilles 1992 World Expo, a promising climate experiment blending ancient technology and modern science is underway.
Rows of black pipes run along the ceiling and down the bare concrete walls. These, in turn, connect to bright blue and green tubes and enormous silver pumps. In a control room to the side, an array of monitors display the heat, humidity and wind speed above.
We have deployed several types of cooling systems here, each one used depending on climatic conditions, says Maria de la Paz Montero Gutiérrez, a researcher at the University of Seville, from down in the buildings bowels where she is helping supervise the project.
In 2020, authorities began to install these cooling systems in two public spaces in the Isla de La Cartuja neighborhood of what is one of Europes hottest cities. Every day about 30,000 people come to work and study in this northwestern district, which is mostly non-residential and home to university campuses, museums, and businesses.
Under the EU-funded project CartujaQanat, the so-called qanatsnetworks of underground aqueductswere constructed in a newly-built 750-square meter site known as the Agora, which is large enough to fit about 400 people, as well as in a renovated amphitheater from the 90s that has a capacity of about 200 people.
The design of the CartujaQanat. [Rendering: University of Seville]
The system, created millennia ago but updated for the 21st century, works by cooling water underground in the naturally low temperatures at night. To cool water more quickly, some is also sent to the roof via solar-powered pumps and sprayed out of nozzles in a thin layer through a method known as a falling film, before draining back down underground.
By day, as outdoor temperatures peak, the cool water is sent above ground into the ceiling to counteract the heat. Water is also funneled into subterranean pipes that cool air (up to 36,000 square meters an hour), which is then released via ducts in the public spaces. Outside, mist is sprayed in order to lower temperatures through evaporation.
We have half re-invented the qanats, taking from their engineering ingenuity, says head of the multi-stakeholder project, Lucas Perea Gil, whose team began operating the cooling system in 2022, running seasonally from March to October every year.
Maria de la Paz Montero Gutiérrez, a researcher at the University of Seville helping to supervise the project. [Photo: Peter Yeung]
The original qanats, according to Nilou Vakil, an associate professor of architecture at the University of Kansas, date back 3,000 years to ancient Persia, or modern day Iran. The same system has been used in many regions across the Islamic world, from Balochistan to Jordan.
Historically, she says, they were used in arid areas to transport water from underground sources to irrigate crops and feed animals, but also for cooling homes.
Thats how they were able to create civilization in places you couldnt have humans living in before, explains Vakil, who has researched the history of the qanats. They allowed people to live with heat before the arrival of electricity.
The project also represents something of a revival of past local practices. Similar water management technologies were deployed by the Moors across Andalusia, including at Granadas Alhambra, several hundred years ago.
Sevilles low-emission solution is an encouraging response to the rising threat of extreme urban heat in Spains fourth largest city, home to 1.5 million people. Last year, Seville broke a record after recording 30 days above 40C (104F)compared with an average of 12.8 days a year over the previous decade.
The city gets so hot these days its earned the unenviable nickname of the Frying Pan of Spain. And scientists project that due to manmade climate change, by 2050, Seville is likely to hit summer peaks of 50C (122F) while suffering an average 20% decline in rainfall.
That extreme heat, an increasing reality for cities around the world, is already causing serious harm to the population. The Carlos III Health Institute estimated that about 1,180 people died because of high temperatures during a heatwave in Spain between May and July last year. Meanwhile, researchers have calculated that more than 11,000 people died due to extreme heat in Spain during summer 2022.
Its a really serious health issue, says Anna Beswic, a policy fellow at the London School of Economics working on climate adaptation and resilience. Global average temperatures are rising, and so are extreme temperatures. Cities have specific vulnerabilities since they hold and retain heat more than other areas.
City authorities are urgently trying to find solutions to beat the heat, especially ones that arent energy intensive like air-con, which can be costly and counterintuitive for climate goals. In Los Angeles, for example, the use of heat-reflective white paint on the streets has been effective in cutting temperatures. In Rotterdam, green roofs are helping to mitigate the urban heat island effect and to keep air clean. Others such as Freetown, Sierra Leones capital city, have gone as far as to hire Chief Heat Officers.
Theres a lack of visibility over heat, its a silent killer, which is why governance on this is so important, says Beswick, who last year published a report about low-cost, low-carbon cooling systems.
Seville has historically adapted to heat through its narrow streets and shaded courtyards and more recently by becoming the first city in the world to name and categorize heatwaves. Now, its showing impressive impact with the updated qanatsas well as other cooling techniques that are part of the project, including deploying heat-reflective paint, wind and sun blockers, and vegetation on interior walls.
Research by the University of Seville, shared with Next City, found the project led to indoor temperatures being as much as 12 degrees Celsius lower than outdoors in the summer of 2025.
At the same time, the project, which received 80% of its 5 million budget from the European Unions Urban Innovative Actions office, requires zero energy. During the summer of 2025, CartujaQanats 380-square-meter rooftop solar panels produced 55,000 kWh, while running the machinery such as pumps consumed 42,000 kWh.
It demonstrates that ancient tech can hold a very important point in our current environment, says Vakil. Cooling is one of the biggest issues that we are going to face in the future. Sevilles project serves as a scalable prototype.
Theyve already learned important lessons for future iterations, such as the fact that they only needed three of the nine water pumps they purchased. We thought we needed more, says Gil. But we didnt. We learned from that. So, in the future, this model can be cheaper.
CartujaQanats success has led to delegations from California, Germany and Dubai, among others, to visit the site to draw inspiration and take notes. But it wont work in all cities. As Vakil points out, the qanat system is unlikely to be effective in humid climates since it relies on evaporation.
The Agora space. [Photo: Peter Yeung]
The project is also helping to revitalize the Isla de la Cartuja neighborhood, which despite its proximity to the city center, is a largely underused area. Local workers come to relax in the Agora during lunch breaks, teenagers use it to skateboard, and there are regular classes for all kinds of dance: hip hop, flamenco, swing and tango.
According to Gil, the reclaiming of space for the public is a significant motivation, particularly as extreme heat could force people to hide in their homesat the loss of socializing.
It also shows how cities can re-develop large and unused public spaces. We wanted to create a comfortable space that people dont have to pay for, he says.
Charo Sollero, who since last year has been running tango classes for groups of up to 60 people, is one of the beneficiaries. Its an open space thats not too hot, its perfect for us, she says. We get together to eat and drink and then dance for hours and hours.
While the floor is not made of wood, the material traditionally used for tango dancing, the space is a much cooler option than the hotel they previously met up. Its clear the temperatures are getting hotter in Seville every year, adds Sollero.
And the city is wasting no time in rolling out this low-emission cooling model to other locations. Next year it will inaugurate the systems at a bus stop, square and school in the citys Macarena neighborhood. In time, it will expand further.
We believe that they can help us live with the heat that is coming, says Gil.
This story was originally published by Next City, a nonprofit news outlet covering solutions for equitable cities. Sign up for Next Citys newsletter for their latest articles and events.
Every day more than $4 billion worth of goods cross the United States’ borders with Canada and MexicoU.S. auto parts headed for car factories in northern Mexico, cartons of Mexican avocados bound for California supermarkets, Canadian aluminum destined to become cans of Campbell Soup.Much of this bustling cross-border commerce is duty-free, thanks to the US-Mexico-Canada Agreement, or USMCA, that President Donald Trump negotiated with America’s northern and southern neighbors during his first term.But the future of the USMCA , which took effect July 1, 2020, is cloudy as the three countries begin what could be a tempestuous attempt to renew the pact this year. The United States is demanding changes to the treaty, and the top U.S. trade negotiator told Politico in December that Trump would be willing to pull the United States out of the pact if he can’t get the deal he wants. Trump also suggested last fall that the United States could negotiate separate deals with Canada and Mexico, ending the three-country North American bloc that previous administrations saw as crucial to competing economically with China and the European Union.The talks kick off Monday between U.S. and Mexican trade officials.The North American economies could agree to renew USMCA as it is for another 16 years a prospect that appears unlikely. Or they could keep working on ways to improve it; under a convoluted renewal process, they have until 2036 to reach an agreement or the pact expires.Meantime, any USMCA country can pull out of the pact provided it gives its two partners six months’ notice an option that Canada and Mexico, heavily dependent on trade with the United States, fear the impulsive Trump might end up choosing.At stake is $1.6 trillion worth of annual trade in goods between the United States and its two USMCA partners. Mexico and Canada are far ahead of China in both exports to and imports from the United States. American farmers are especially keen to see the deal renewed: Last year, they shipped nearly $31 billion in agricultural products to Mexico and $28 billion to Canada.U.S. imports from Canada and Mexico were spared the worst of Trump’s 2025 tariffs; many goods compliant with USMCA rules continued to enter the United States duty free. Still, a number of products did not get protection from the U.S. levies, including medium- and heavy-duty trucks, which face a 25% tariff. A 50% tariff on steel, aluminum and copper remains in effect, as does a 17% tariff on Mexican tomatoes.The USMCA replaced the 1994 North American Free Trade Agreement negotiated by President George H.W. Bush and signed into law by President Bill Clinton.Trump and other critics had criticized NAFTA as a killer of U.S. jobs because it encouraged U.S. companies to relocate factories south of the border to take advantage of low-wage Mexican labor and then send goods back to the United States duty free.The USMCA, ratified by Congress with rare support from Republicans and Democrats alike, ended up being very similar to NAFTA. But it did contain provisions designed to encourage factories in the region to pay higher wages and make sure that more of what they made originated in North America.The new pact updated North American trade rules for the digital age. The USMCA, for instance, bars the United States, Mexico and Canada from slamming each other with import taxes on music, software, games and other products sold electronically.A proud Trump declared the USMCA “the fairest, most balanced and beneficial trade agreement we have ever signed.”But the president’s enthusiasm seems to have waned. In January, he expressed little interest in the upcoming talks to renew the agreement. The effort, he said, offered “no real advantage to us. It’s irrelevant to me.”The USMCA did little to ease one of Trump’s biggest complaints: The U.S. deficit in the trade of goods with Mexico, which rose last year to a record $197 billion as the United States reduced its reliance on Chinese imports. The U.S. also ran a merchandise trade deficit with Canada of $46.4 billion last year, a decrease from 2024.“Improvements are required for it to deliver the high-wage U.S. manufacturing powerhouse and balanced trade (Trump) promised and we need,” said Lori Wallach, director of the Rethink Trade program at the American Economic Liberties Project.The United States plans to push for a series of changes, including stronger rules to ensure that goods from China won’t slip into the United States under USMCA; to encourage more production in the United States; and to ensure more access to Canada’s protected dairy market for U.S. farmers.Mexico’s core priorities are to avoid a major rewrite of the agreement and to make rules of origin more flexible allowing imports of parts from outside North America when they are not available in the region. Mexican negotiators also want assurances that anything agreed to will stick, providing insurance against Trump’s unpredictability and his enthusiasm for tariffs.Mexico wants to minimize tariffs as much as possible. Mexican Economy Secretary Marcelo Ebrard said Mexico wants to strengthen the dispute resolution system already in place under the treaty. That would not eliminate the possibility of tariffs, but it would provide clear, swift channels for seeking solutions when problems arise, he said.Mexican President Claudia Sheinbaum’s administration will have to simultaneously manage existing security issues, which are ongoing after the killing of Jalisco New Generation Cartel’s leader in late February, and which could influence economic matters.Mexico anticipates that Canada will join the talks later, but its top priority in the coming months is to reach agreements and maintain the free trade with the United States, its main commercial partner.Mexico is pushing the idea that the treaty is also good for the US. “The integration of our countries is an absolute prerequisite for the United States to remain competitive,” Ebrard said recently. “We must move forward together; otherwise, we will not succeed.”
Paul Wiseman and María Verza, Associated Press
After-hours meetings have gone from rare to regular occurrences, and while some are hoping AI can help reverse the trend, experts warn breaking the habit will take more than tech.
In a recent survey conducted by AI-powered workspace provider Miro, 33% of US-based knowledge workers said they frequently attended after-hours meetings in 2025, up from 23% in 2024.
“Six in 10 people attend meetings after hours at least once a month, and that has all kinds of negative downstream effects,” says Dom Katz, Miro’s ways of working lead. “The data suggests more and more people consistently have meetings after their usual workday ends, and it’s getting worse; not just in the U.S. or Europe, but across the board.”
Katz explains that the explosion in after-hours meetings is likely an extension of the rise in meetings more broadly. According to a 2025 study by Miro, for each hour a worker spends on momentum worklike brainstorming, collaborative workshops and interactive cross functional projectsthey spend three more on maintenance tasks, like emails, paperwork and meetings. It creates stress, its a productivity drain, and saps them off their creativity, Katz says.
Katz explains that scheduling and video conferencing technology has made it easier than ever to call a meeting. But he also warns that without proper guidelines, workers are likely to get stuck in a lot of unnecessary meetings, during and beyond standard operating hours.
Bad meeting hygiene is definitely a contributor, he says. You get into the meeting, theres no agenda, they run over constantly, theres no decisions made, so you get another meeting around it; its incredibly ineffective.
Why Were Meeting More at Night
The Miro data is consistent with Microsofts 2025 Work Trend Index, which found that meetings after 8 p.m. increased 16% from the previous year. According to that study, which was based on anonymized Microsoft Teams user data, the bulk of the increase was attributed to global and flexible teams.
In our sentiment data, which goes out to 31,000 people, 80% of employees said they didnt feel like they had enough time and energy to do their job, so we know people are feeling burnt out, says Alexia Cambon, director, office of applied research at Microsoft. The lack of firm boundaries between personal life and professional life is probably a contributor.
Cambon hypothesizes that meetings began creeping into non-working hours during the pandemic and the transition to remote work. That period, she explains, introduced many to digital meetings toolswhich made it possible to call a meeting with a few clickswhile making it harder to switch off at the end of the day.
The added flexibility may have also allowed some to shift their work schedules in ways that better suited their personal needs, like putting off meetings until after their kids were in bed.
Another potential factor, suggests Cambon, is the increasingly global nature of work. According to the Microsoft study, nearly a third of meetings span multiple time zones, a 35% increase from 2021, increasing the likelihood that some participants are joining after-hours in their time zone.
And then I think just the business pressures are higher, and we saw that in the survey data, she says. In particular, over half of business leaders told us they need more productivity from their employees, so we are seeing this very rapid pace.
Why AI Cant Fix a Broken Meeting Culture
New AI tools could reduce late-night gatherings by allowing workers to send AI note takers in their place, or enable more asynchronous alternatives to real-time events. At the same time, Cambon warns that the technology alone wont produce better meeting hygiene.
Your meeting culture is your meeting culture, and unless you use AI very intentionally, nothing is really going to change, she warns. You have to figure out how to make your meeting culture better.
At the same time, the technology is also putting more pressure on businesses to adapt, which often results in more meetings, not less.
Were seeing work shift in new ways, driven by AI, and from my perspective this has been an incredibly intensive time for workers and in particular workers in AI-native organizations, says Dr. Rebecca Hinds, the head of the AI Work Institute for enterprise AI platform Glean and author of Your Best Meeting Ever. There’s a pressure that I’ve never seen before, and we’re seeing more and more evidence that that is contributing to after-hours work.
In the wake of the pandemic, some organizations used new remote collaboration tools to enable greater flexibility, while others used them to encroach on work-life boundaries, and Dr. Hinds warns that AI is no different.
The more we have access to technology, the easier it is to schedule and attend a meeting, the more we’re going to do that in an environment where we don’t have a healthy, intentional meeting culture, she says. All of this is lowering the bar in terms of what it takes to schedule a meeting.
Using technology to free your evenings
At the same time, Dr. Hinds says there are ways to use technology to promote work-life boundaries and free our evenings from work responsibilities.
For example, some tools allow workers to limit their meeting availability to working hours. Others automatically warn organizers when theyre scheduling a meeting after-hours for participants in other time-zones. Some will even flag when a meeting is likely to be ineffective, such as when there are too many participants, or a majority of invitations havent received a response.
Other tools, like AI note-takers, video messaging apps and digital collaboration tools are making it easier for workers to collaborate asynchronously, reducing their reliance on real-time conversations.
Asynchronous is the name of the game in terms of decreasing our time spent in dysfunctional meetings, Dr. Hinds says. [As is] having clear norms around what is the purpose of each tool, what is the purpose of a meeting, and how should we be using meetings? That holds true for any time of day.
At the turn of the 20th century, the steel magnate and philanthropist Andrew Carnegie donated $5.2 million to New York to build libraries across the city. Leading architects of the time designed the branches, 67 in all, to look and function like civic temples with elaborate Beaux-Arts detailing, welcoming entrances, dignified reading rooms, and open stacks where patrons could freely browse. They quickly became important, and beloved, neighborhood establishments and remain so today. After more than a century of use, and ad hoc upgrades and adaptations that are also dated, the buildings are due for upgrades.
Last year, the New York Public Library (NYPL) completed a $176 million renovation of five Carnegie Libraries in The Bronx, Manhattan, and Staten Island. Theyre pilots of Carnegie renovations to come. Spearheaded by the architecture firms Mitchell Giurgola, which also developed design standards for the renovations, and CannonDesign, the climate-sensitive and community-informed transformations are models for balancing historic architecture and contemporary use. The buildings are such a part of the fabric of the community and we wanted to double down on that, says Kerry Gould, director of capital planning at NYPL. They needed love, and they got it.
Hunts Point Library [Photo: Albert Vecerka]
A new approach for old libraries
Public libraries are the rare institutions with near-universal approval. According to a Pew study, 94% of Americans age 16 or older believe libraries improve quality of life. Perhaps because of this, the city has entered another golden age of architectural invention around them. Affordable housing crowns branches in Sunset Park, Inwood, and Grand Concourse; a recently completed branch in Greenpoint, which replaced a too-small library dating from the 1970s, doubles as an environmental education center; and a glimmering composition by the local artist José Parlá envelops the new Far Rockaway branch.
But ground-up contemporary buildings are only part of the story. The Carnegie renovations underscore how a preservation-focused approach can modernize the system while protecting important neighborhood landmarks and community anchors. As aging Carnegie Libraries become Apple stores, comedy clubs, and boutique hotels, or simply deteriorate until demolition is a foregone conclusion, New York is figuring out how to keep themand keep them relevant.
In architecture, historic character used to be just about culture and preservation, and I think thats really important, says Carol Loewenson, an architect and partner at Mitchell Giurgola. But saving what you have is also the most sustainable thing you can do. The continuity of old, new, and future is really what makes New York, and any place, thrilling.
Hunts Point Library [Photo: Albert Vecerka]
Carnegie libraries then and now
New York City has 216 library branches, which are managed by three systems: NYPL is responsible for 88 locations in Manhattan, the Bronx, and Staten Island. (The Brooklyn Public Library oversees the boroughs 62 locations and the Queens Public Library has 66 outposts within its jurisdiction.) Of the 39 Carnegie Libraries originally within NYPLs remit, 30 are still in operation.
They face similar issues related to operations and relevance. To wit: They were constructed before the Americans with Disabilities Act; before teens, who are avid patrons, were considered a distinct age and cultural group (until the 1940s, you were either a child or an adult); and before climate change became an urgent issue.
And while libraries maintain a mission to advance knowledge and strengthen communities, these institutions today do a lot more than circulate books; they serve as emergency cooling and warming centers, technology hubs where patrons can access computers and 3D printers, and more.
Because there are so many Carnegie Libraries in the city, the NYPL decided to approach their renovations systematically. Design standards could ensure stylistic consistency across the upgrades. Its also practical: the more uniform the building management systems are, the easier repairs and maintenance are since crews have familiarity with the equipment. The standards include specifications for lighting, bookcases and millwork, circulation desks, how to integrate modern heating and cooling infrastructure, and methods for creating flexible-use space.
Before implementing these design standards, the NYPL handled Carnegie renovations differently. While the exteriors remained the same, interior overhauls looked like they belonged to different buildings. Renovations and repairs happened piecemeal as equipment reached the end of their useful life, and modifications accumulated to the point where changes obscured the buildings spirit.
Very often we are doing necessity repairs and you’re sort of cobbling things together, Gould says.
Despite needing upgrades, the original Carnegie buldings were innovative a century ago and remain hallmarks of good library design today thanks to their large windows that bathed interiors in daylight, spacious reading rooms with high ceilings, a central circulation desk, natural materials, and movable furniture.
It seems so obvious, but people don’t always get it right with libraries, Loewenson says. And those fundamentals really do work. Were doing an academic library right now and I just intuitively use the Carnegie standards and principles, and it just nails it. It’s kind of amazing.
The architects emphasized those details while introducing energy efficient building systems (like triple-pane windows and sensor-operated environmental controls), amenities to better serve library patrons (like teen rooms), and improved accessibility (like adding elevators and ramps). Additionally, the library commissioned artwork that connects to each branchs respective community, based on intel from engagement sessions.
Melrose Library [Photo: Albert Vecerka]
Site-specific solutions
Each Carnegie library is differentsome are freestanding structures, some are mid-block, and their sizes vary. While design standards informed the top-level approach for the renovations, it’s not a one-size-fits-all kind of thing, Loewenstein says. You first figure out what you’ve got and then what the needs are and then you start adjusting.
Historic preservation rules often informed how the architects approached the renovations. At 125th Street, a McKim, Mead & White branch dating to 1904, no additions could be visible from the street, which nixed moving all the mechanical systems to the roof. So instead, the team at CannonDesign, who oversaw this branchs renovation, hunted for opportunities to make space inside.
Caretaker apartments originally occupied the top floor of Carnegie Libraries (someone needed to feed the coal furnaces 24/7) and over time, these rooms became convenient locations for HVAC equipment. Meanwhile, air handlers and ductwork have become smaller and more efficient since they first went into the libraries. Because of this, the architects could condense the systems into a compact footprint and turn some of the back-of-house areas into public space. At 125th, they were able to squeeze a teen area as well as staff offices into the top floor. Now people, not just machinery, get to enjoy the dramatic double-height level illuminated by clerestory windows.
When we went into the design phase of these libraries, the amount of potential on the top floor, it was just incredible to see, says Dan Sheen, an architect at CannonDesign. It was about taking advantage of what was given to us and running iterations until we finally got to a point where it’s like, okay, this represents a modern space, but also pays homage to the original design when it was in its prime, too.
Indeed, the renovated Carnegie Libraries look more like themselves, just better. They also perform at a higher level than before.
The Port Richmond branch, designed in 1905 by Carrere & Hastings, architects of the NYPLs famed Fifth Avenue flagship, is now LEED Silver certified. Sheen and his team looked to Passive House design strategies to retrofit the building, including modifying the masonry walls (they installed mineral wool insulation and a smart vapor barrier on the inside face) and triple-pane wood windows for a tight thermal seal.
The Port Richmond reading room featured a slightly arched ceiling with ornamental crown moldings, which Sheen wanted to highlight. Instead of suspending a tangle of sprinkler systems, ductwork, and other life safety systems from the ceiling, he decided to drop the ceiling 12 inches and hide the infrastructure above it. The team consulted original drawings and also 3D scanned the detailing in order to faithfully recreate it.
Similarly, they also hid infrastructure behind walls, effectively shrinking the space by six to eight inches on each side. Loewenstein and her team used similar techniques at the Hunts Point location, a Carrere & Hastings building from 1929. There was more time in the design phase spent on what you don’t see, what’s hidden behind these walls than what the actual visitor experience is, Sheen says. And instead of visually hefty rows of fluorescent lighting illuminating the reading rooms, there are now halo-like LED pendants throughout.
Because the Carnegie Libraries are on the smaller side, figuring out how to accommodate new uses was a challenge. At the Hunts Point library, Mitchell Giurgola integrated folding glass walls and doors into the reading rooms to define space while maintaining visual cohesion and daylight. At the Melrose branchwhich suffered a fire in the 1940s that reduced the four-story building to twoMitchell Giurgola was able to construct a new level thats dedicated to children. Since few original architectural details remained here, the design team integrated more contemporary elements, like floor-to-ceiling glass walls.
Artwork was another important site-specific element for the renovations. NYPL hosted community engagement sessions with patrons to learn about what was most important to them and through this, they learned that the community around the Port Richmond branch, which is predominantly Hispanic, felt an affinity to butterflies and so a newly commissioned mural features the motif. It really brings that sense of identity to the branch, Gould says.
Melrose Library [Photo: Albert Vecerka]
The future of NYC library renovations
The standards Mitchell Giurgola developed arent limited to the Carnegie Libraries. The design principles are relevant across the system, and so NYPL is using them to guide renovations across structures with different pedigrees.
Gould is currently working on an overhaul of the Edenwald library, a 1970s structure in the Bronx. Its a squat Lindsay Box, the nickname for the inexpensive modular libraries constructed during the John V. Lindsay administration, with tiny windows. Gould plans to open the facade and better connect the interior to the neighborhood. We’re using a lot of the same themes, like access to natural light, she says.
With the five renovations now complete, NYPL hopes to receive additional capital funding from the city in order to modernize more Carnegie branches. We want them to last for another hundred years, Gould says. As part of the fabric of New York, we think it’s just important to be stewards of these buildings and elevate them to what we think the public deserves.
President Donald Trump said Sunday that he has demanded about seven countries send warships to keep the Strait of Hormuz open, but his appeals have brought no commitments as oil prices soar during the Iran war.The president declined to name the countries heavily reliant on Middle East crude that the administration is negotiating with to join a coalition to police the waterway where about one-fifth the world’s traded oil normally flows.“I’m demanding that these countries come in and protect their own territory, because it is their own territory,” Trump said about the strait, claiming the shipping channel is not something the United States needs because of its own access to oil. Trump spoke while answering reporters’ questions as he flew back to Washington from Florida aboard Air Force One.Trump said China gets about 90% of its oil from the strait, while the U.S. gets a minimal amount. He declined to discuss whether China will join the coalition.“It would be nice to have other countries police that with us, and we’ll help. We’ll work with them,” Trump said. Previously, he has appealed to China, France, Japan, South Korea and Britain.Iran’s Foreign Minister Abbas Araghchi earlier told CBS that Tehran has been “approached by a number of countries” seeking safe passage for their vessels, “and this is up to our military to decide.” He said a group of vessels from “different countries” had been allowed to pass, without providing details.Iran has said the strait is open to all except the United States and its allies.Araghchi added that “we don’t see any reason why we should talk with Americans” about finding a way to end the war, noting that Israel and the U.S. started the fighting with coordinated attacks on Feb. 28 during indirect U.S.-Iran talks on Iran’s nuclear program. He also said Tehran had “no plan to recover” the enriched uranium that is under rubble following U.S. and Israeli attacks last year.
Countries are cautious after Trump’s call
U.S. Energy Secretary Chris Wright told NBC earlier Sunday that he has been “in dialogue” with some of the countries Trump had mentioned previously, and said he expected China “will be a constructive partner” in reopening the strait.But countries made no promises.Britain said Prime Minister Keir Starmer on Sunday discussed with Trump the importance of reopening the strait “to end the disruption to global shipping,” and spoke with Canada’s prime minister about it separately.Aboard Air Force One, Trump specifically named Starmer, who he said initially declined to put British aircraft carriers “into harm’s way.”“Whether we get support or not, but I can say this, and I said to them: We will remember,” Trump said.A spokesperson for China’s embassy to the U.S., Liu Pengyu, said previously that “all parties have the responsibility to ensure stable and unimpeded energy supply” and that China would “strengthen communication with relevant parties” for de-escalation.South Korea’s Foreign Ministry said it “takes note” of Trump’s call and that it “will closely coordinate and carefully review” the situation with the U.S.Expectations are high that Trump will ask Japan directly when Prime Minister Sanae Takaichi meets him on Thursday at the White House.France previously said it is working with countries President Emmanuel Macron mentioned partners in Europe, India and Asia on a possible international mission to escort ships through the strait but has stressed it must be when “the circumstances permit,” when fighting has subsided.Foreign Minister Johann Wadephul of Germany, which was not mentioned in Trump’s call, told ARD television: “Will we soon be an active part of this conflict? No.”Meanwhile, emergency oil stocks “will soon start flowing to global markets,” the International Energy Agency said Sunday, describing the collective action to lower prices “by far the largest ever.”It updated last week’s announcement of 400 million barrels to nearly 412 million. Asian member countries plan to release stocks “immediately,” and reserves from Europe and the Americas will be released “from the end of March.”Trump didn’t directly answer whether his administration is talking about selling oil futures as a way to cap surging oil prices.“The prices are going to come tumbling down as soon as it’s over. And it’s going to be over pretty quickly,” he told reporters.
More missile and drone attacks are reported
Gulf Arab states including the United Arab Emirates, Saudi Arabia, Kuwait and Bahrain reported new missile or drone attacks a day after Iran called for the evacuation of three major ports in the United Arab Emirates the first time it has threatened a neighboring country’s non-U.S. assets.Dubai temporarily suspended flights at its international airport the world’s busiest after a drone hit a fuel tank and caused a fire. Civil defense crews contained the blaze and no injuries were reported, authorities said.Tehran has claimed that Friday’s U.S. strikes on Kharg Island, home to Iran’s primary oil terminal, were launched from the UAE, without providing evidence. It has threatened to attack U.S.-linked “oil, economic and energy infrastructures” if its oil infrastructure is hit.U.S. Central Command said it had no response to Iran’s claim, and Anwar Gargash, a diplomatic adviser to the UAE president, rejected it. Gulf countries that host U.S. bases have denied allowing their land or airspace to be used for military operations against Iran.Iran has fired hundreds of missiles and drones at Arab Gulf neighbors during the war, causing significant damage and rattling economies even as most are intercepted. Tehran says it targets U.S. assets, even as Iranian strikes are reported at civilian sites such as airports and oil fields.
War’s toll mounts across the region
Iranian strikes have killed at least a dozen civilians in Gulf countries, most of them migrant workers.In Iran, the International Committee for the Red Cross said more than 1,300 people have been killed. Iran’s Health Ministry said 223 women and 202 children are among the dead, according to Mizan, the judiciary’s official news agency.Iran’s government on Sunday showed journalists buildings damaged by strikes in Tehran on Friday. A police station was hit and surrounding buildings were damaged. Some apartments’ outer walls had been stripped away.“God had mercy on all of us,” said Elham Movagghari, a resident. Other Iranians are leaving the country.In Israel, 12 people have been killed by Iranian missile fire and more have been injured, including three on Sunday. At least 13 U.S. military members have been killed,six in a plane crash in Iraq last week.At least 820 people have been killed in Lebanon, according to its Health Ministry, since Iran-backed Hezbollah hit Israel and Israel responded with strikes and sent additional troops into southern Lebanon. In just 10 days, more than 800,000 people nearly one out of every seven residents of Lebanon have been displaced.
More Iranian missile strikes hit Israel
Israel’s military said early Monday that Iran launched missiles toward Israel.Earlier, several strikes hit central Israel and the Tel Aviv area, where they caused damage at 23 sites and sparked a small fire. Magen David Adom, Israel’s rescue service, released video showing a large crater in a street and shrapnel damage to an apartment building.Israel’s military says Iran is firing cluster bombs that can evade some air defenses and scatter submunitions across multiple locations. This version corrects to say Araghchi was speaking to CBS, not NBC as previously reported.
Contributing were Associated Press journalists Darlene Superville, Fatima Hussein, Tia Goldenberg, Sally Abou AlJoud, Fadi Tawil, John Leicester and Christopher Weber.
Sam Metz, Will Weissert, Julia Frankel and Cara Anna, Associated Press
This Oscar cycle’s heavyweight battle is finally over. The politically charged action comedy “One Battle After Another” just managed to outmuscle Ryan Coogler’s musically driven vampire thriller “Sinners.”It was a 3 hour and 40 minute whirl through cinema and celebration, with Michael B. Jordan winning best actor for “Sinners” and Jessie Buckley winning for “Hamnet,” making her the first Irish performer to ever win in the category.There was electricity when Autumn Durald Arkapaw became the first woman and Black person to win the cinematography award for “Sinners,” asking all the women in the Dolby Theatre to stand up because moments like this don’t happen without women “standing up for you and advocating for you.”Here were some other show highlights:
The battle is over for one filmmaker
Paul Thomas Anderson, one of the most respected filmmakers of his generation, finally won an Oscar. Then he won another. Then he won for best picture.He first won best adapted screenplay for “One Battle After Another” and then was crowned best director. “You make a guy work hard for this,” he said. Anderson was back onstage for the night’s final award best picture.“Let’s have a martini. This is amazing,” he said.Anderson had been nominated 14 times previously, including five times for screenplays and three times for best director. His films include “Boogie Nights,” “There Will Be Blood” and “Magnolia.”“I wrote this movie for my kids, to say sorry for the housekeeping mess that we left in this world we’re handing off to them,” Anderson said onstage after winning for his screenplay. “But also with the encouragement that they will be the generation that hopefully brings us some common sense and decency.”Even Cassandra Kulukundis, who served as the casting director on past Anderson films, hoped he would win an award himself while accepting the first new completive Oscar category in over two decades for “One Battle After Another.”She beat him to a win by just minutes.
Another long wait for Oscar hardware
Amy Madigan, the night’s first winner, had to wait a long time to celebrate an Oscar win. The gap between her first ever Oscar nomination and first win was 40 years handing her the record wait for a best supporting actress.Madigan’s first Oscar nomination was for 1985’s “Twice in a Lifetime,” losing to Anjelica Huston. She won Sunday for playing an unrecognizable and utterly mesmerizing oddball aunt in “Weapons,” a supernatural thriller about missing children. Madigan had earlier picked up wins at the Critics Choice and Actor Awards.Aunt Gladys’ smeared, heavy makeup, strange hair and large glasses became a popular internet meme and was even played up by Oscars host Conan O’Brien in his opening skit, looking like Gladys as he raced through appearances in other nominated movies chased by children.On hearing her name, Madigan collapsed into the arms of her husband, actor Ed Harris. Onstage, she thanked film writer-director Zach Cregger for giving her a part in “Weapons” she could “grab by the throat.” She last thanked “my beloved Ed,” adding: “None of this would mean anything if he wasn’t by my side.”
A heavy goodbye to the Reiners
A stage of stars bid farewell to Rob Reiner, led by a long friend and colleague, Billy Crystal.Crystal kicked off the in memoriam section by saying he met Reiner while cast as a best friend of Reiner’s on “All in the Family” in 1975.Reiner’s movies included “This Is Spinal Tap,” “Stand By Me,” “When Harry Met Sally,” “Misery,” “A Few Good Men” and “The Princess Bride.”“My friend Rob’s movies will last for lifetimes because they were about what makes us laugh and cry and what we aspire to be: Far better in his eyes, far kinder, far funnier and far more human,” Crystal said.Reiner was killed along with his wife, Michele Singer Reiner, in December. Their son, Nick Reiner, has been charged with two counts of murder.After Crystal’s speech, he revealed a stage filled with stars who shone in Reiner’s films, including Meg Ryan, Christopher Guest, Michael McKean, Kathy Bates, Kiefer Sutherland, Demi Moore, Jerry O’Connell, Annette Bening, Mandy Patinkin, Fred Savage and Cary Elwes.
In memoriam and Redford
The in memoriam section then highlighted those lost during 2025, like Catherine O’Hara, Diane Keaton, Gene Hackman, Robert Duvall, Brigitte Bardot, Michael Madsen, Terence Stamp, Diane Ladd, Sally Kirkland, Tom Stoppard, Malcolm-Jamal Warner and Val Kilmer.Barbra Streisand then stepped up to honor her co-star in “The Way We Were,” Robert Redford.“He was thoughtful and bold. I called him an intellectual cowboy who blazed his own trail, and won the Academy Award for best director, and I miss him now more than ever, even though he loved teasing me,” Streisand said.She then sang a snippet of “The Way We Were,” which she last performed during the 2013 ceremony, when she sang it as an homage to the late composer Marvin Hamlisch.
Two stunning song performances
The Oscars had only two musical numbers but they were Grammy-worthy.Singer-actor Miles Caton and songwriter Raphael Saadiq performed the deeply bluesy, slinky song “I Lied to You” from “Sinners,” joined by an ensemble that included Misty Copeland, Eric Gales, Buddy Guy, Brittany Howard, Christone “Kingfish” Ingram, Jayme Lawson, Li Jun Li, Bobby Rush, Shaboozey and Alice Smith in a tribute to the film’s visual and musical style.The camera swept in and among the writhing bodies in a rollicking, kinetic performance.“KPop Demon Hunters” later celebrated its win as best animated feature by opening its performance of “Golden” with a fusion of traditional Korean instrumentalists and dance, with dancers in gold waving golden fabric flags. Then Ejae, Audrey Nuna and Rei Ami the singing voices behind HUNTR/X in the film belted out “Golden” as members of the audience waved light sticks.Then “Golden” won the Oscar for best original song, a first for K-pop.The coolest part was seeing dancers from each song appear in the other’s, a kind of communication between Delta blues and Asian pop.
‘Bridesmaids’ give us a bouquet
Melissa McCarthy, Maya Rudolph, Rose Byrne, Kristen Wiig and Ellie Kemper celebrated 15 years after “Bridesmaids” hit theaters by showing everyone their funny bones haven’t aged.“Now, we are not good with numbers, but we figured out backstage that means we shot this movie in 1883,” Wiig joked.The group presenting best original scoe and best sound had fun at the expense of Stellan Skarsgrd, Leonardo DiCaprio and Jacobi Jupe of “Hamnet.”They pretended to read messages from the crowd, including one from DiCaprio that accused Byrne of staring at him. “I have been staring at you,” Byrne replied. “I thought you were somebody else.”Rudolph leaned into her dimwit persona when she wondered: “Earlier today, when I was counting my money, I asked myself, “What is sound?”There was also a mini-“Avengers” reunion with Chris Evans and Robert Downey Jr. presenting best adapted screenplay. And a “Moulin Rouge!” reunion with Nicole Kidman and Ewan McGregor. And there was a Pullman family reunion when Bill teamed up with son, Jack.
Second time’s a charm, Conan
Conan O’Brien hit almost every note on Sunday savage, playful, heartfelt and dumb.The second-time host predicted he’d be the last human Oscar MC. “Next year, it will be a Waymo with a tux,” he joked.He also had a jab at Timothée Chalamet, who got into hot water when he seemed to call ballet and opera dying art forms. “They’re just mad you left out jazz,” O’Brien quipped.He reached for a Jeffrey Epstein joke when he noted that it was the first time since 2012 that there were no British actors nominated. “A British spokesperson said, ‘Yeah, well at least we arrest our pedophiles.'”But he also got poetic and sweet when he noted that 31 countries across six continents were represented at the Oscars.“Every film we salute is a product of thousands of people speaking different language, working hard to make something of beauty,” O’Brien said. “We pay tribute tonight, not just to film, but to the ideals of global artistry, collaboration, patience, resilience and that rarest of qualities today: optimism.”Of course, sometimes his bits fell flat, like the time he used a leaf blower onstage and a gag about memes with Leonardo DiCaprio.
For more coverage of this year’s Oscars, visit: https://apnews.com/hub/academy-awards
Mark Kennedy, AP Entertainment Writer
The prices of memory chip stocks are once again on the rise as a global shortage in random access memory (RAM) continues.
Over the past five days alone, the share prices of the four largest memory makers traded on U.S. markets have risen significantly. And today, those same stocks are off to another good start. Heres what you need to know.
Why is there a memory shortage?
Since the latter half of 2025, analysts and industry insiders have warned of a looming memory chip shortage coming in 2026and its one of the few tech predictions that have been right.
This year, the world is in a full-blown memory crisis. There isnt enough computer memory to go around, and that scarcity is leading to surging demandand surging RAM prices.
The driving force behind the memory chip shortage is artificial intelligence. But not the AI itself. Rather, the hardware companies need to run their AI systems.
An artificial intelligence system like ChatGPT or Googles Gemini requires massive data centers to run on and compute the billions of requests these chatbots get every day.
Those data centers, in turn, need servers, and those servers need memory to carry out the AI tasks.
The world is currently in the middle of an AI data center build-out boom, and that massive data center expansion is leading to a surge in memory demand the likes of which the industry has never seen.
When memory makers are unable to keep up with demand, a shortage arises, which is exactly where we are today.
Micron and Sandisk stocks are skyrocketing
There are four major memory makers traded on the U.S. markets:
Micron Technology, Inc. (Nasdaq: MU)
Sandisk Corporation (Nasdaq: SNDK)
Western Digital Corporation (Nasdaq: WDC)
Seagate Technology Holdings (Nasdaq: STX)
Of those four, Micron and Sandisk are the two firms that primarily make short-term computer memory, which is designed to temporarily store information and help carry out tasks at lightning speed.
This kind of memory is seeing the worst shortages. Western Digital and Seagate primarily make long-term computer memory, such as for SSDs, used to retain your documents and photos for a long time.
Given that all four of these companies are seeing demand for their memory products soar, its little surprise their stock prices have been soaring as of late, too.
In the past five days alone, as of Fridays closing bell, the share prices of all four companies have risen significantly.
Over the previous five-day period:
Micron stock has risen 15%
Sandisk stock has soared 25%
Western Digital is up 11%
Seagate is up nearly 9%
And today, those memory makers are seeing their share prices rise even further. As of this writing, in premarket trading, MU shares are up 4.3%, SNDK shares are up nearly 3%, WDC shares are up 3.3%, and STX shares are up over 2.5%.
These continued stock price gains can primarily be attributed to the global memory shortage.
How will skyrocketing memory prices affect me?
Of course, while investors in the four big memory companies may be quietly cheering on the global memory shortage that is driving their stock prices higher, that shortage is bad for anyone else planning to buy a computer or smartphone this year.
While the memory used in AI data centers and that used in laptops and smartphones are different, many memory makers are diverting production resources away from making the consumer type of memory bound for smartphones and laptops to making the higher-end memory that AI giants need (because that type of memory is more profitable).
This, in turn, means less consumer memory is being made that is suitable for personal devices, so the makers of those devices have to pay more to get their hands on whatever they can.
When smartphone and laptop makers pay more for components, they usually dont just absorb the increased costs; instead, they pass them on to consumers.
If youve recently shopped for memory or even SSD hard drives online, youll probably have seen that prices are much higher than they were last year. And as 2026 progresses, those higher prices will also translate into higher prices for laptops and smartphones, and the memory shortage worsens.
Most industry analysts do not expect the memory shortage to get better until sometime in 2027 at the earliest.
What to look for next
When it comes to the global memory shortage and memory chip maker stocks, the next big thing to look for is Micron Technologys second-quarter fiscal 2026 earnings results, which will take place this Wednesday, March 18.
Analysts will closely dissect the language used by Micron executives to glean insights into how memory demand is changing and whether production capacity is increasing.
After Microns earnings on Wednesday, the next event to keep an eye on will happen in early May, which is when Sandisk, Western Digital, and Seagate are expected to announce their next results.
Memory chip stocks are far outperforming the Nasdaq
Whats especially remarkable about Micron, Sandisk, Western Digital, and Seagates run lately is that their stock prices have not been significantly impacted by the broader pullback of the Nasdaq on which they trade.
While the four memory companies have seen their stock prices rise by nearly 9% to 25% over the prior five trading days, the Nasdaq Composite has declined 1.6% over the same period, largely due to uncertainties about the war in Iran.
Year-to-date, the gap between the four memory makers and the Nasdaq Composite is even starker.
Since the year began, the Nasdaq Composite is down 4.2%. But in the same timeframe, Micron is up 49%, Western Digital is up 58%, Seagate is up 39%, and Sandisk is up a staggering 178%.
Metrics can tell you if youre going the right direction or not. They can also be a waste of time if the metrics are noise instead of strong signals. There is no one right answer to which metrics to use, but understanding how others use them can turn on a light bulb for new ideas. We asked our Fast Company Impact Council members what metrics they track obsessivelyand why and the answers we share may have you rethinking your own tracking.
1. CONVERSION AND RETENTION
I track a lot of metrics and it’s easy to get lost in the minutiae of the business, but as a subscription business the metrics of conversion and retention are my twin North Stars. What percentage of visitors in trial are going to become paid subscribers, and what percentage of them will remain paid subscribers in three months? Really these metrics are a reflection of the benefit customers get from our products showing they are valuable enough for someone to pay us and that they are valuable enough for them to stick around. Nearly all of the other metrics that I obsessively check flow from these two. Tony Grimminck, Scribd, Inc.
2. ORGANIC GOOGLE SEARCH
I track organic Google search above almost everything. You can buy impressions, but you cant buy someone typing your brand name unprompted. Its the cleanest signal of real demand. I also monitor inbound pullwhich partners, retailers, or creators are reaching out to us. When serious brands want proximity, it means youre culturally relevant. If search and inbound drop when spend drops, youre renting attention, not building equity. And then theres the quiet test: What happens when we ease off spend? Do we disappear or are we building something worthy of the space weve been given? Emily Kortlang, Yerba Madre
3. EBITDA
I track EBITDA because it tells me, without any spin, whether our core business is creating the level of profitability that powers reinvestment and growth for our employee owners. I track labor as a percentage of net revenue, staff churn, and our employee culture index scores because they tell me how efficiently were deploying our talent and how engaged our people are in building a career here. Steven McKay, DLR Group
4. HOW CLIENTS RANK IN AI PROMPTS
Right now, were obsessively tracking how our clients rank in prompts across ChatGPT, Gemini, and Claude. Its a new metric for us, but an important one. We want to see how clients show up next to competitors and what narratives or keywords are driving visibility. We layer that with media coverage and domain authority to understand how those stories are performing in the real world. Kalie Moore, High Vibe PR
5. CONTENT AND PRODUCTS
We measure content and products to see how they drive behavior change, build confidence, and turn users into advocates for themselves. Engagement matters, but for us the real signal of success is when people feel empowered to act. As we build for people with real, timely needs, we track both quantitative and qualitative insights to ensure were solving the right problems, not guessing. That requires constant testing, learning, and refining. Across industries, leaders have to stay close to the people they serve to ensure theyre truly advancing the mission they set out to achieve. Nathan Friedman, Understood.org
6. INTERNAL ALIGNMENT AND EXTERNAL TRACTION
I track two buckets: internal alignment and external traction. Internally, we run on objectives and key results because it forces clarity. Everyone knows what they’re responsible for and how it ties to business impact. When that breaks, you feel it. When it works, things move fast. Externally, I watch streaming and radio. Streaming shows what’s happening right now, which cities are reacting, whether a record is moving culturally. Radio signals longevity. It’s slower, but it shows real staying power. Together, they tell me if we’re seeing noise or building something durable. You need both. Logan Mulvey, GoDigital Music
7. CUSTOMER METRICS
As CEO, I obsess over daily and weekly metrics like monthly recurring revenue growth, subscription churn, data-plan attach rate, NPS, transmission success rate, and early field reliability (battery life, zero-transmission failures), because recurring revenue powers the business. Any drop in trust kills referrals fast. If customer metrics are healthy so is our business. Jeff Peel, Tactacam
8. RETENTION AND SAVINGS
We track retention of our members, as we offer a lifelong commitment to our C-suite women leaders to provide them with one-on-one peer mentoring for life. This commitment increases our retention to 99%. We also track the mentor/mentee relationship. Lastly, we track our savings, which annually exceed $500,000. Larraine Segil, Exceptional Women Alliance
9. ENGAGEMENT AND CUSTOMER SATISFACTION
We track engagement and customer satisfaction obsessively. For us, engagement isnt just a usage metric, its a signal of trust. When someone actively redeems and returns to our platform, that tells us the experience is resonating. Customer satisfaction is even more important. If people feel valued rather than marketed to, long-term relationships followand so does durable revenue for our partners. Elery Pfeffer, Nift
10. WHERE OUR BUSINESS IS GOING
When reviewing metrics, Im looking for information about where our business is going, not lagging indicators of where weve been, and early warning signs of issues that may be developing. For growth, I look at pipeline coverage and conversion. For execution, I review forecast accuracy and time to revenue. For customer value, its our net retention rate and advocacy score. Looking at these numbers gives me a good idea of not only how were performing, but how efficiently were executing and what areas need extra attention. Steve Holdridge, Dayforce
11. JOBS AND ECONOMICS REPORTS
I obsessively track LinkedIns Jobs on the Rise reports and LinkedIs Economic Graph workforce data and research; they are great reads and provide ongoing snapshots on where the labor market, productivity and future of work are moving broadly. I also track the U.S. Bureau of Labor Statistics Productivity and Costs report, to understand where workplace productivity is heading. Its an excellent dashboard across key indicators and in recent years can be a strong signal on how technology, automation, and operatingmodel changes are actually changing worker productivity at scale. Alice Mann, Mann Partners
12. PROGRESS
Progress against the big rocks we established. Setting broad, strategic yet outcome-based goals align the entire organization and drive results. Michael Tannenbaum, Figure
13. ENGAGEMENT, FRICTION, AND CLIENT IMPACT
I think about performance in three pillars: people, process, and product. Some of it is measurable. Some of it you feel. Both matter. On people, I track engagement, retention of top talent, and how often we promote from within. If the bench isn’t deep, nothing scales. On process, I look at friction. How fast do we decide? Is delivery predictable? The best strategy collapses without operational clarity. On product, I focus on client impact, repeat business, and quality. We have a Slack channel devoted to verbatim client praise. Data matters. But when you’re the first call a client makes on their hardest day, that’s the clearest signal of all. Peter Smart, Fantasy
14. THE FUNNEL
For Scribbly, my D2C business, I use every tiny tracking pixel in my funnel. I built a custom dashboard for myself and trained an AI agent to analyze the data just the way I want itway better than those messy SaaS analytics dashboards that are impossible to decipher. Lindsey Witmer Collins, WLCM Studio
15. NON-CUMULATIVE DATA
Cumulative data is meaningful, but only non-cumulative data holds you accountable. For us, one such metric is how many of the Solvers selected over the past five years are still operational. Were at 96%. That tells me our selection methods and support programs have a real impact, given that industry averages hover around 70-80%. Something else a company can track is instead of asking where are you now? ask how far have you come? That’s harder to quantify than dollars raised or media hits, but it’s the only number that tells me whether we’re doing our job. Revenue, employees, money raisedthose keep the lights on. But the distance traveled keeps us honest about the mission. Hala Hanna, MIT Solve
16. BOOMERANGS AND EMPLOYEE DEPARTURES
Weve been focused on people-centric workplace data since we started building a center of gravity for brilliant minds almost three decades ago. We regard the percentage of boomerangs in a company as a leading indicator of having a positive, thriving culture that people value and want to be part of. At the other end of the spectrum, the rate of regrettable departures usually signals when there are culture issues that must be addressed. Leerom Segal, Klick Health
17. ENGAGEMENT QUALITY, AUDIENCE SENTIMENT, AND BRAND LIFT
We prioritize engagement quality, audience sentiment, and brand lift because they tie directly to real business outcomes, not vanity metrics. We trademarked true human influence to make influencer marketing more measurable, backing it with proprietary technology and trusted measurement partners to ensure we deliver against brand KPIs. And with AI driving the convergence of creator and affiliate marketing, we can now connect authentic storytelling to commerce at scale. Ben Jeffries, Influencer
Agricultural data is fragmented, distributed, heterogeneous, and incompatible. Thats the verdict from a major Council for Agricultural Science and Technology report published barely a year ago, and it helps explain why AI has struggled to gain traction on farms. Other data-heavy industries, like healthcare or financial services, have established data standards, but agriculture has no universal framework for translating between the dozens of systems that generate field-level information.
This isnt a new observation, but its persistence is noteworthy. While consumer tech and enterprise software largely solved their interoperability challenges years ago, agriculture still generates enormous volumes of information trapped in incompatible silos. Research institutions publish trial results in inconsistent formats, product manufacturers use proprietary naming systems, farmers record observations with local terminology and retailers track sales without connecting them to agronomic outcomes. The result is an industry sitting on massive amounts of information it can barely use.
Agriculture doesnt have a data problemit has an intelligence problem, notes Ron Baruchi, CEO of Agmatix, a company building domain-specific AI for the sector. The data exists. Whats missing is infrastructure that understands what it means.
According to a McKinsey report, implementing data integration, and connectivity in agriculture could add $500 billion in value to global GDPa 7 to 9% improvement over current projections. But capturing that value requires solving a problem that general-purpose AI platforms have consistently struggled with.
WHY HORIZONTAL AI KEEPS FAILING IN FARMS
The appeal of applying large language models to agriculture is obvious: A farmer could describe whats happening in their field and get instant advice on what to do about it, without hiring a consultant or having to wait for a lab. But agricultures complexity breaks the approach.
While an LLM trained on internet text might know that nitrogen helps plants grow, it cant tell you that the right amount changes depending on the growth stage, the soil and what was planted in the same field the previous year. Similarly, computer vision can identify crop stress, but without contextual knowledge of weather, soil and product applications, that insight doesnt mean much.
You can ask ChatGPT about nitrogen fertilization and get an answer that sounds authoritative. But when you dig into specificstiming for your soil type, interactions with your previous crop, and product selection based on local availabilitythe recommendations fall apart.
The same CAST report reinforces this point, noting that many farmers distrust AI because of its black box naturemodels making predictions without clear explanations behind them. In farming, 90% accuracy on a fungicide recommendation means 10% of the time youre telling a grower to spray the wrong product at the wrong time.
BUILDING INTELLIGENCE FROM THE GROUND UP
This is where a growing number of companies are taking a different approachbuilding AI systems designed specifically for agriculture rather than retrofitting general-purpose tools. For example, India-based Cropin, backed by Google, has constructed its own crop knowledge graph spanning 500 crops across 103 countries and recently developed an agriculture-specific micro-language model. Israeli-American startup Agmatix built its own agricultural intelligence system from the ground upan approach that mirrors, in concept, what Palantir did for defense and intelligence data.
The core of that system is what Agmatix calls pre-trained ontologies: Frameworks that encode agricultural relationships before customer data enters the system. Agmatixs AI engine uses a neuro-symbolic architecture, combining structured knowledge graphs with machine learning. Agricultural relationshipshow specific fertilizers interact with specific soils at specific growth stagesare encoded by agronomists, validated through field trials and refined continuously.
What that means, essentially, is that the AI doesnt start from scratch. Before it touches any farms data, agronomists have already taught it how agriculture workswhich fertilizers affect which soils, how a crops needs change as it grows, and why what was planted last season matters for whats planted next.
According to the company, the system has structured more than 1.5 billion field trial data points, creating what data scientists call semantic interoperability: The ability to translate between different data sources because the system understands what the data means, not just what it says.
But building better technology doesnt guarantee adoption. McKinsey partner Vasanth Ganesan noted in the firms 2024 Global Farmer Insights survey that farmers are demanding clearer ROI, lower cost of implementation and maintenance and easier-to-setup technologiescomplaints shaped by years of agtech tools that overpromised and underdelivered. A separate McKinsey analysis found that poor user experiences continue to hold back adoption across the sector.
Baruchi says farmers have good reason to be cautious. Farmers are CEOs operating in one of the most unpredictable industries on earth, he tells Fast Company. They balance biological systems, financial risk and environmental volatility every single season. The ROI question is only hard to answer when your platform cant connect what a grower applies to what actually happens in the field.
WHERE ITS WORKING
The approach is already operating across several deployments. BASF has collaborated with Agmatix on digital tools for crop disease detection, including a recently announced project targeting soybean cyst nematode. The company says growers using its prediction platform have reduced fungicide costs by 15 to 20% while maintaining disease control. Its engine is also powering predictive disease-risk modeling in large-scale row-crop systems in the United States.
A national agriculture ministry uses the system to model policy impacts before implementation. On the sustainability front, Agmatixs RegenIQ platform works with major food and beverage companies to assess which regenerative practices deliver measurable results in specific field conditionsclassifying, for instance, Brazils 150 coffee-growing localities into six distinct climate clusters, each requiring different approaches.
Cropin, meanwhile, partnered with Walmart in March 2025 to optimize fresh produce sourcing across U.S. ad South American markets using AI-driven yield forecasting and crop health monitoring.
THE HARD PART REMAINS
Agmatix represents a broader shift from horizontal AI platforms toward domain-specific solutions. But it isnt the only company betting that agriculture needs its own AI. John Deeres acquisition of aerial analytics firm Sentera in May 2025 suggests the industrys biggest players have reached the same conclusion. The AI in agriculture market is projected to grow from $2.55 billion in 2025 to over $7 billion by 2030, according to Mordor Intelligence. But adoption remains uneven, with 81% of large farms showing willingness to adopt AI, while only 36% of smaller operations plan to do the same.
Agricultural AI adoption is still slow by any standard, and its not hard to see why. CASTs report catalogs the major barriers that agriculture still faces today: High costs, limited rural broadband, insufficient training and unresolved questions about data ownership. These challenges intensify in an industry previously plagued by overhyped technology promises.
But the tailwinds are real. Major food companies have made commitments to decarbonize supply chains that are impossible to fulfill without field-level data. Climate volatility is making predictive tools more valuable. And a decline in U.S. public agricultural R&D spending down roughly a third from its 2002 peak, according to USDA data is creating a vacuum that private-sector platforms are positioned to fill.
The question isnt whether agriculture needs better data infrastructure. Its whether the companies building it can survive farmings patient adoption timelines long enough to reach critical mass and whether the benefits will extend beyond the largest farms that can already afford to invest. For an industry responsible for feeding 8 billion people, getting that balance right matters enormously.
