The concept of menu hacking, or modifying an existing fast-food menu item with a few ingredient tweaks, has been around for years. But with the rise of food-based content creators on TikTok, #menuhack has become its own genre of content, spawning trends from a McDonalds ice cream dipped in coffee to a Starbucks Frappuccino inspired by the Barbie movie. Amid this flurry of custom orders, few menus have been hacked more than Taco Bells.
Now, Taco Bell is formalizing menu hacking with a new feature called Fan Style. The tool, which is currently available via Taco Bells app for the brands Rewards members, lets fans design their own custom orders, name them, and earn extra Rewards points when other fans order them. Later this year, Taco Bell plans to select some of the most popular Fan Styles to appear on its national menu.
[Photo: Taco Bell]
Taco Bell isnt the first fast-food giant to land on the bright idea of turning menu-hacking culture into an actual product offering. In 2022, McDonalds launched its own limited-time Menu Hacks menu. In 2023, Chipotle launched a fajita quesadilla inspired by a TikTok trend. And early this month, Starbucks turned its iconic secret menu into an actual rotating menu inspired by online drink creations.
As digital ordering becomes increasingly popular and social media powers a constant food trend cycle, fast-food hacks are no longer reserved for fans in the know. Now, theyre an integrated part of the ordering experience.
[Photo: Taco Bell]
Taco Bell menu hacks take off
According to Dane Mathews, Taco Bells chief digital and technology officer, the companys digital salesincluding via the app, kiosks, and third-party deliveryhave grown 37% year over year. Now, 42% of Taco Bells total sales come through digital channels. Alongside the move away from in-person ordering has come a spike in customizations: Today, 66% of all Taco Bell app orders contain at least one customized product.
Over the past few months, Taco Bell fans on TikTok have found countless ways to remix the brands relatively limited ingredient profile into custom creations, whether that be to score a better deal, make the chains classic offerings a bit healthier, or to boost the flavor profile of a plain bean-and-cheese burrito. While Mathews says that having a personal go-to order has been a status symbol of true Taco Bell fandom for decades, its certainly becoming a more mainstream concept.
Fan Style elevates menu hacks out of the comment sections and gives the biggest fans an opportunity to earn points, ad placements, and even a spot on the national menu, he adds.
How to use Taco Bell “Fan Style” Feature
To create a Fan Style order, users can navigate to the Fan Style section of the app and build an item as they see fit, adding and subtracting ingredients until it matches their preferences. Then, theyll need to save the custom order to their profile by clicking the share button and giving it a personalized name.
Imagine Dan Made This Style: a Cheesy Gordita Crunch that removes the Spicy Ranch and adds Creamy Jalapeo Sauce and jalapeos for extra spice, a Taco Bell press release suggests.
[Photo: Taco Bell]
From there, users can share their menu hack order on social media, which will allow them to receive Rewards points anytime someone else orders their Fan Styleturning the feature into whats essentially a free marketing blitz for Taco Bell.
[Screenshot: courtesy of the author]
Unfortunately, the app itself doesn’t currently display others’ Fan Styles, so fans have to find them on social media or through Taco Bell’s out-of-home ad campaign in order to actually try someone else’s creation. Sometime later this year (the company didn’t provide specifics), Taco Bell will select a few Fan Styles to appear on the national menu for a limited time.
When it comes to potential logistical challenges associated with giving fans free rein to hack the menu, Mathews says that isnt a major concern, considering that employees have become pretty familiar with assembling customizations in recent years.
[Photo: Taco Bell]
Whether it be swapping protein choices, adding craveable sauces [like the all-new Sweet Chipotle BBQ], or hacking a rendition to emulate a retired favorite itemour team members have always helped bring these customizations to life, he says.
Like with Starbucks’s new secret menu feature, Fan Style gives Taco Bell a simple way to tap into viral trends without actually creating those trends in-house; essentially outsourcing the ideation process to the creators who already do it best. As fast-food giants catch on to fans desire for individualized orders, its safe to say that the “secret menu” is not so secret anymore.
While much of the buzz about AI today revolves around flashy copilots and productivity hacks, the reality for most data scientists and data engineering teams remains far less glamorous. Even in 2025, they still spend much of their time on the most tedious part of the job: cleaning and preparing data, i.e., dealing with missing values, duplicates, and inconsistencies.
But Snowflake CEO Sridhar Ramaswamy wants to change thatnot by replacing the people doing the work, but by eliminating the friction that slows them down, such as the endless cycles of reactive reporting. His bold bet is on agentic AI: autonomous model instances that can ingest data, reason over it, and make real-time decisions with minimal human engineering input.
Until now, AI tools have been excellent at one-step tasks: You ask a question, you get an answer; you ask for code, you get a snippet. They are powerful assistants, but they require constant direction, Ramaswamy tells Fast Company. In the enterprise [space], agentic AI means goal-directed autonomy.
From Data Silos to Conversational Insight
Ramaswamy, a former head of Google Ads, Greylock partner, and CEO of search startup Neeva, took the reins at Snowflake in February 2024 after it acquired Neeva. He brought deep AI and search expertise, quickly realigning the companys go-to-market strategy and accelerating AI talent infusion through acquisitions like Crunchy Data, Samooha, and Datavolo. As a result, Snowflake reported its first billion-dollar quarter in May 2025, marking a 26% year-over-year increase.
Now his vision centers on embedding intelligent agents into the very fabric of Snowflakes platform, transforming AI from a surface-level feature to a foundational layer of enterprise computing.
Ramaswamy says agentic AI moves beyond static dashboards by using smart agents that understand business goals, pull the right data, run analyses, and deliver clear, multistep answers. The real value, he adds, comes from building these agents on solid data so they can deliver lasting results across the business. “Agents built on top of a strong data foundation will unlock tremendous value across the enterprise,” he says.
This year, Snowflake has launched a wave of agentic AI-powered product releases, including Snowflake Intelligence, the Data Science Agent, Cortex AISQL, and agent-driven apps in the Snowflake Marketplace. What was once primarily a warehouse for storing and querying data is now evolving into a full-fledged “AI data cloud.” Ramaswamy believes the real opportunity lies in making AI useful and accessible to the hundreds or thousands of people who need to make data-driven decisions every day.
Todays enterprises are overwhelmed by complexity, Ramaswamy says, and adding more disconnected AI tools only makes things worse. Snowflakes focus has been on simplifying access to data, something its refined over the past decade. You can only trust AI outputs if you trust the data foundation,” he says.
The End of Data Science? Not Quite.
Data science is fundamentally about turning raw, structured, and unstructured data into actionable insights. For years, data scientists have often been buried in technical tasks, far removed from the boardroom or customer conversation. However, with Snowflakes Data Science Agent (currently in private preview), much of that manual effort is being automated, freeing up data teams to focus more on strategy, insight, and impact.
The agent handles data quality assessment, automatic preprocessing, feature design based on best practices, model selection and training using Snowpark code, and performance evaluation, all in under an hour. Compared with traditional workflows that take days or weeks, this dramatically accelerates pipeline creation. Moreover, generated pipelines include validated code, model lineage tracking, and integrated documentation.
According to Ramaswamy, the divide between technical and business teams wasnt due to unwillingness to collaborate, but rather a lack of shared tools and language. Now, with AI enabling natural language as the interface to data, more people can contribute to data-driven outcomes. When experts in different fields can access insights on their own, it improves collaboration and speeds up smarter decision-making. Or, as Ramaswamy explains: “Its about bringing the data to everyone.
And its not just for data scientists or engineers. With the public release of Cortex AISQL in June 2025, Snowflake has extended SQL for data teams and business users alike with AI-native operators. Ramaswamy says enterprises most valuable insights have long been trapped at the intersection of structured and unstructured data, but it was nearly impossible to analyze them together. Cortex AISQL changes that by empowering data teams to query all data types.
The distinction between a database table and a PDF will become irrelevant to the end user. You will simply ask your business question, and the platform will be intelligent enough to find and synthesize the answer from all of your enterprise data, wherever it resides, he says.
New data operators allow users to filter, classify, summarize, and analyze text and images directly within SQL queries. Likewise, the platforms new FILE data type can store multimedia content inside Snowflake, making it possible to work with documents, audio, images, and text alongside structured data.
For instance, a product analytics team can join sales figures with sentiment from support transcripts or defect images in a single pass, with results that are both explainable and auditable. Ramaswamy claims Cortex AI has already become a foundational pillar of many customers enterprise AI strategies.
For example, health wearables company Whoop used Snowflake Cortex AI to create an agent-powered chat app that makes data accessible across the organization. This tool frees up the analytics team to focus on higher-impact work (like strategy and forecasting) instead of routine data pulls.
Likewise, SaaS platform for financial services TS Imagine used Snowflake Cortex AI to build Taia, an AI agent that automates customer casings, work that once involved three full-time employees. Built by data analysts with little AI experience, Taia now handles over 60,000 inquiries annually, freeing up staff for higher-value decisions, Ramaswamy says.
The most visible piece of Snowflakes agentic evolution is Snowflake Intelligence, a new conversational AI experience built atop LLMs from OpenAI and Anthropic. Snowflake Intelligence can handle query generation, data synthesis, and insight summarization across structured and unstructured formats.
But if AI agents can handle the grunt work of data science, where does that leave the data team?
Ramaswamy, for his part, acknowledges concerns about AI replacing jobs
Sextech has always operated without the safety nets most industries take for granted, and because of this, entrepreneurs in the space have become experts at navigating structural barriers. Whether in the face of ad bans, payment processor restrictions, social taboos, regulatory gray areas, or even economic downturns, sexual wellness brands have continued to innovate and expand the market, which was estimated at $42.6 billion in 2024 and is projected to reach $82 billion by 2030.
But in 2025, with President Trumps ongoing trade war with China creating economic whiplash, sextech brands are scrambling to adapt.
Its incredibly difficult to create a strategy during times of economic volatility because its impossible to predict what will happen next, says Polly Rodriguez, cofounder and CEO of sexual wellness brand Unbound, whose products are manufactured in China. Any long-term strategy is null and void. So instead, weve stayed . . . nimble, working closely with our manufacturers and freight forwarders to respond to daily changes in trade policy.
Polly Rodriguez [Photo: courtesy Unbound]
To help absorb the cost increases that tariffs have levied on her business, Rodriguez says shes started bundling freight costs, cutting back on packaging, and sending goods via slower carrier methods. Right now, tariffs on Chinese-made goods stand at 51%, but that could balloon to 145% if a trade deal is not reached by August 12.
Either way, Rodriguez says there wont be any going back to business as usual. If the first 100 days of this administration have taught me anything, it’s to expect nothing but sheer chaos, she says. I’m not expecting any long-term stability anytime soon.
[Photo: courtesy Unbound]
Todays political and economic climate has become even more challenging by the global reality of manufacturing: Most of it happens overseas. An estimated 70% to 80% of the world’s sex toys are made in China. That includes the raw materials sourced from mainland China, not to mention the custom molds, which are too heavy to transport stateside.
Currently, there is just nowhere else in the world that can manufacture the goods we make anywhere close to the level that China can, Rodriguez says. It does not make financial or economic sense to move our manufacturing out of China, and I think anyone worth their salt in the adult industry would agree with me.
[Photo: courtesy Unbound]
Still, she insists this crisis has only strengthened her relationships with suppliers. Over the last nine years, we’ve developed lasting relationships with the individuals who run these manufacturing facilities, Rodriguez says. They are an extension of our company, and there would be no Unbound without them. We share holiday greeting cards, baby and vacation photos, and look forward to visiting them every year in Shenzhen. We care not only about their businesses but about them as individuals, as our partners and friends.
[Photo: courtesy Unbound]
An industry under attack
While founders like Rodriguez are weathering the economic turbulence, a broader conservative resurgence, particularly in the U.S., is impacting sexual wellness brands as well. Were seeing brands in this space really struggle right now, says Bryony Cole, sextech founder and global trends expert. Whether its Sephora pulling back from their sexual wellness section or investors becoming more cautious, anything tied to sexuality or bodily autonomy feels under attack right now.
For an industry that was finally gaining mainstream legitimacy, breaking into national retailers and riding the tailwinds of the MeToo movement, todays cultural climate feels like a sharp reversal to the progress made over the past decade. There was this influx of optimism and innovation 10 years ago, Cole recalls. We thought female-founded brands were finally going to make it. But today, its more like were operating in the shadows, just trying to withstand the storm.
And though Cole notes that sextech has never operated in a truly stable environment, the difference now is the scale and intensity of that volatility. Cole, who founded Sextech School, a pre-accelerator designed for entrepreneurs, job seekers, and investors entering the sextech market, points to a wave of diversification as founders explore digital education, alternative revenue streams, and community-based funding strategies. /p>
At Sextech School, we think a lot about how to move beyond just delivering physical products, Cole says, noting that there are online programs and new verticals available. People are getting smarter by necessity and fostering more support for one another within our community.
But lean operations are only part of the survival equation. So is faith in the long arc of cultural progress and the staying power of sexual wellness. In 1970, only 1% of women used vibrators, Rodriguez says. Today, its over 65%. That trajectory doesnt reverse just because a bunch of old white men are uncomfortable with us enjoying our bodies.
Still, neither Cole nor Rodriguez is naive about what lies ahead. Cole worries that many small businesses wont survive the combined pressures of economic chaos and social regression. Its tough to predict, she says. But I always talk about through-topia, the idea that even amid dystopia and utopia, some incredible things can still emerge. . . . We just have to hold the line and keep going.
This year alone, companies have announced over 740,000 job cuts so far, a high since 2020. And thats just in the US.
But for a growing number of professionals (even before 2025), the solution hasn’t been in polishing their résumés, but in building personal brands that create true job security for them.
Building a personal brand can let you:
Showcase your talents
Create an audience/network
Get people to know who you are, what you do, and what to come to you for
When done well, a strong personal brand attracts job offers before roles are even posted, leads to consulting or speaking opportunities, and opens the door to new networks that cant be accessed with a résumé alone.
For me, building my personal brand over the past 10+ years has meant creating content online (mostly on LinkedIn & Twitter), and writing for publications like Entrepreneur, Inc., The Next Web, and many others.
All these efforts have opened a lot of doorsfrom starting out as a freelance writer to running a six-figure content marketing agency, and then eventually becoming the cofounder of Leaps (an AI platform that helps people and teams turn their raw expertise and experience into content that builds their personal brands).
For this article, I spoke with four professionals whove used their personal brands to turn their careers around.
Andres Vourakis, a data scientist, built a safety net of opportunities and extra income after layoffs shook his early career. Ana Calin left a 15-year executive role and became the creator of one of Substacks fastest-growing newsletters, giving her complete freedom and a thriving business. Paul O’Brien, a veteran marketer, leveraged his reputation to evolve from the SEO guy into a thought leader on startup economics and public policy. And Joei Chan, once a content marketing leader, turned unemployment into a creative rebrand that now draws clients who want her to tell their truth, show up fully, and build their brand with authenticity.
We got into fears, breakthroughs, identity work, and how building a personal brand is transforming not just their careers, but their lives.
From layoffs to lightbulbs
What made you realize you needed a personal brand, and how did that moment spark your journey?
Andres Vourakis: I was unfortunately laid off early in my career, and that experience opened my eyes to the real meaning of job security. I realized that job security wasn’t about working hard to become an essential worker, because at any moment, a business could decide to let you go.
And over the past few years, I’ve seen many talented friends become victims of massive layoffs in tech. Thats when it really clicked for me: real job security is staying future-proof.
Building my personal brand is not only allowing me to grow, share my data science expertise, and connect with lots of great people, but its also helping me generate extra income. It helps me sleep better at night knowing that my livelihood wont be decided by a business that may no longer find my work valuable tomorrow.
Ana Calin: I didnt set out to “build a personal brand.” I just wanted freedom. I had just left my 15-year executive role; big title, global travel, the whole you made it package. And yet, I felt done, ready for something that felt mine.
I remember staring at a blank LinkedIn post, wondering what to say. I had no niche, no strategy, no idea what people would care about. But I wrote anyway, about quitting, about reinvention, about starting from scratch. And people listened and responded. That was the spark. From that one post came DMs, leads, and ultimately a real business.
The first step: finding the confidence to show up
What was your very first step in building your personal brand, and what gave you the courage to share it publicly?
Joei Chan: The first real step was launching Brand New, my Substack newsletter. I was freshly unemployed, creatively raw, unsure of my next chapter. But I had this deep urge to tell the truth. To turn my mess into a message.
So I started writing. When I started posting online after being fired, there was definitely hesitation. I worried about looking unprofessional, scaring off future employers, or being labeled as emotional or difficult. But now I see vulnerability as a creative strategy. Its not oversharing, its storytelling that names the deeper truth and helps others feel less alone.
From there, I started a video series called “Rebranding My Life After Losing My 9 to 5.” It was scrappy and personal, just me, documenting the messy middle.
Paul O’Brien: Having come from Yahoo! and then helping HP take advantage of search engine optimization (SEO) and Google, it just clicked and made sense to kick off my personal brand and start sharing my expertise in public. What gave me confidence was that in 2002, very few people knew how to do SEO. Confidence to put yourself out there often comes from knowing that people will find value in what you have to offer.
Ana Calin: I stopped trying to sound smart and started sounding like myself. I didnt have a niche, and I wasnt selling anything.
But I had real stories about quitting, reinventing, and failing forward. I wrote a post on LinkedIn about walking away from my executive role. And it wasnt the highlight reel; the actual messy version. No strategy or call to action, but just truth. That one post brought in over 50,000 views. And that gave me the nudge I needed.
The unexpected rewards of showing up authentically
Looking back, whats one surprising way your life or career has improved because of your personal brand?
Ana Calin: I thought I was building a brand. Turns out, I was building a life. One with no boss, no Sunday scaries, no pretending. I found my voice, the one I had buried under professionalism for 15 years. And when you find your voice, everything shifts. And you stop chasing opportunities, you start choosing the ones to accept as they come, thanks to your personal brand.
Joei Chan: I feel more me than I have in years. What began as a career crisis became the greatest rebrand of my life. It led me back to my voice, my creativity, and a deeper truth: The branding and creative work I love isnt just strategic, its spiritual. And unexpectedly, this is the work people now come to me for: helping them reclaim their own story and show up fully as themselves.
Paul OBrien: Being out there lets you evolve over time, as we all do. I started out known for SEO; I even leaned int it with the nickname SEOBrien, thanks to my early work at Yahoo! and HP. But as I kept writing and sharing, my interests shifted toward startups, economic development, and innovation. Over time, the content I created followed that shift, and so did my audience. Now, instead of being known for search, Im sought out for my work as a startup economist and my perspectives on public policy for entrepreneurs. That evolution wouldnt have happened without a personal brand that allowed me to grow in public.
Andres Vourakis: Its improved my confidence, my ability to communicate ideas, and even how effectively I do my work as a data scientist. Ive spent so much time reflecting on what I do and why I do it, especially when creating content, that I now have way more clarity in how I approach problems and explain my thinking.
Your story is your safety net
Traditional job security is fading away fast. I cant count how many top performers Ive seen with impressive résumés who are finding themselves out of work with little warning.
But what does exist, and is increasingly powerful, is the ability to position your skills and experience in a way that makes people want to work with you. Thats what a personal brand does. It makes you visible, builds trust, and shows not just what you do, but how you think.
And that combination attracts new opportunities (job offers, clients, collaborators, even investors) often before roles are ever publicly posted.
Personal brands are the new, real job securitythe safety net that ensures people know who you are, what you bring to the table, and why youre worth betting on. So start now. Start sharing your expertise, your story, your perspective. The earlier you build your brand, the more protected, and in demand, youll be.
Earlier this month, Microsoft confirmed that attackers had exploited a critical vulnerability in SharePoint servers. A patch had already been issued, but it failed to fully resolve the problem. Within days, sophisticated attackers found a way around the fix, compromising thousands of systems.
The flaw was real. So was the patch. The breach happened anyway.
Think of it like finding a crack in a dam, sealing it up, but still waking up to floodingsomehow, the water found another way through.This was a patch that didnt stick, and no one caught it in time.
The SharePoint incident shows that vulnerabilities happen in every environment. What matters most is how quickly an organization detects an issue, responds to it, and contains the fallout when something goes wrong.
That response involves different teams working together under pressure.
Vulnerabilities are expected. Effective responses are key.
Its normal for new flaws to be discovered every dayin code, in third-party dependencies, and in internal tooling. No organization can prevent every vulnerability from appearing.
Whats more important is the ability to respond quickly and effectively when they emerge.
In this case, a fix was assumed to be sufficient when it wasnt. The vulnerability continued to exist, but there was no immediate signal that the patch had fallen short.
Whats worse is that we know researchers were able to reproduce the vulnerability by examining the difference between versions of the patch Microsoft first gave.
In many companies, a fix gets logged as complete and quietly dropped. Weeks later, the same issue resurfaces because the update never made it everywhere it was needed. No alert, no second check. Everyone thought it was done. It wasnt.This points to a deeper challenge in how modern software is secured. When security updates are shipped, the job isnt over. The team responsible for the system must monitor whether the fix is effective, whether attackers are still probing it, and whether follow-up action is needed.Organizations that build and ship software must treat response as an ongoing responsibility.
Where companies can improve their response
The SharePoint breach shows how even fast responses can fall short if no one checks whether the fix actually worked. This applies to any organization that manages software, whether internal systems or external platforms (which is the large majority).These are technical failures, but theyre rooted in human ones: missed signals, misaligned teams, and no agreement on what still needs fixing.
Here are five ways to respond more effectively:
1. Know whats still exposed
Fixing a problem isnt the same as removing the risk. Teams need a clear view of which systems remain vulnerable after a patch goes out.
2. Make sure the right people see the issue
Security alerts often sit in tools that developers dont use (or like to use). Engineers should be able to see and act on what needs fixing without extra steps.
3. Focus on real risk
When every alert looks urgent, the ones that matter get missed. Prioritize whats actually exploitable and affects the systems you rely on.
4. Follow through after the fix
An exploited vulnerability is rarely a one-time event. Teams should keep an eye on it to confirm the threat is fully contained.
5. Track how long real problems stay open
Its easy to count alerts. Its more useful to track how long serious vulnerabilities take to get resolved. That shows whether your response is actually working.
Shifting this mindset takes empathy. The person responsible for security should think about developers in the same way Apples product team thinks of their customers. Is the information clear? Is it delivered where they already work? Are we helping them succeed? Or, are we just giving them one more ticket in a backlog that never ends?
And beyond tools, it takes trust. Teams need permission to speak up when somethings unclear, and they need clarity on who owns what.
Clarity is key
The SharePoint breach revealed a blind spot in how teams track, validate, and follow through on the risks they already know about.
Security is failing because teams dont have the visibility to see whats still vulnerable, the clarity to focus on what matters, or the workflows to make fixes stick. Without that, speed doesnt matter, because you’re still exposed.
The organizations that avoid the next breach won’t be the ones who patch the fastest. They’ll be the ones who can see the whole picture, cut through the noise, communicate effectively, and close the loop before attackers get there first.
Holding a patent could be a lot costlier for businesses and founders in the years to come. The Trump administration is reportedly considering a substantial change to the patent process, which would raise trillions of dollars for the government but could substantially increase fees for patent holders.
The Wall Street Journal reports the Commerce Department is considering charging patent holders between 1% and 5% of their overall patent value. It’s unclear if that will replace the current model, where companies and individuals pay up to three flat maintenance fees over a series of years (which typically works out to a few thousand dollars), or be in addition to those charges.
Draft proposals and financial models are being worked on now, The Journal reports. If the change goes through, it could be especially onerous for Big Tech firms like Apple or Amazon, which file for thousands of patents per year, the vast majority of which are filed for defensive purposes and never utilized.
The money raised from the fees would be used to pay down the $37 trillion national deficit and possibly other unidentified tasks.
The Commerce Department did not reply to Fast Company‘s request for comment about the possible changes.
No other country charges patent holders a percentage of a patent’s value. In the U.S., utility patent holders currently pay maintenance fees at 3.5, 7.5, and 11.5 years after issuance. The 11.5-year feethe largest of the threeis $8,280, and roughly half of all patents are abandoned before reaching that point, placing the innovation into the public domain. (Design patents are exempt from maintenance fees.)
The U.S. Patent and Trademark Office (USPTO) is a self-funded agency that covers its costs by collecting fees for the application for and issuance of patents and trademarks. Last year, it took in just under $4 billion in patent fees and $583 million in trademark feesand it maintains operational reserves to cover any financial shortfalls.
A radical change to the 235-year-old office could bring about significant pushback from businesses, both domestic and international. Many would likely cut back on their patent filings, perhaps instead publishing information about innovations, which would prevent others from claiming a patent on that creation.
Another potential hurdle is assigning valuations to patentssomething the USPTO has never done. Developing a reliable method would take time and money, and policymakers would also need to decide how to handle patents with little or no value (i.e., when the cost of obtaining the patent exceeds the products market value).
The post-DOGE USPTO
The potential changes to patent fees come just four months after the USPTO was the focus of a review by the Department of Government Efficiency. While it’s still unclear how many workers might have been laid off or taken early retirement, the department was ordered to halt its plans to recruit approximately 800 new employees, primarily patent examiners.
In addition, Vaishali Udupa, the agency’s commissioner for patents, resigned in Februaryand people who work regularly with the department say theyve heard of other, lower-level departures.
The wait time today to patent a product averages 30 months. (Trademarks take about 10 months to process.) Without the new employees, that could significantly extend those timesand adding a new patent process into the mix could stretch it out further.
Commerce Secretary Howard Lutnick oversees the USPTO and pledged during his confirmation hearing to tackle the application backlog, which he called unacceptable.
If youve proven your product on a pilot line, and its time to turn up real-world production, beware because many companies stumble on their first large-scale build.
Before you pour concrete or sign any equipment orders, look at the full landscape of challenges: engineering, supply chain, utilities, and the human relationships that hold it all together. Scaling up isnt as simple as adding another shift. Its multiplying everything you do by orders of magnitude.
Moving from pilot lots to commercial volumes often means a 1,000- to 10,000-fold jump in throughput, with megawatts of electrical load, and water usage that can rival a small town. Construction alone can run $300- to $950-per-square-foot before a single machine is installed on the floor. Miss the mark and the cost isnt just financial; its reputational. Schedule slips, lost customers, and bruised reputations follow fast.
To move from pilot line to production line with confidence, follow these four steps for a successful scale-up.
Master the process
First, nail down the process by mapping the critical quality parameters like temperature, humidity, pressure, cycle time, purity, and set hard limits for each. Then, stress test them, and challenge your R&D team better. Run design-of-experiments on the pilot line or in a digital model to reveal where small shifts can trigger big cost savings. For instance, one client learned that relaxing humidity from 1% to 5% would half HVAC tonnage and save millions in capital expenditures and operating expendituresproof that tiny tweaks can save a budget.
By truly grasping the process, you can size every supporting elementutilities, material flow, staffing, and automationas one integrated system rather than a patchwork of guesses. Capture the data, lock the findings into a concise process design package, and carry that document forward. When you know exactly what the process is, the next steps become simpler and cheaper.
Dont underestimate planning
Start with the end in mind by defining must-hit key performance metrics (KPIs) and assign a value to each. Look past day one, and sketch how the site should flex five, 10 or even 15 years out to ensure that any expansion wont require a new round of demolition. Build your budget around total cost of ownership because operating expenses usually eclipse capital expenses within the first few years.
Early in design, run what-if scenarios on power, water, logistics, and labor to see where small changes may unlock big lifetime savings. A solid plan also links directly to the process data you just captured, allowing you to size utilities, floor space, and headcount as one coherent ecosystem instead of a series of isolated line items. Always remember that good planning can overcome poor execution, but poor planning cant be overcome by the best project execution.
Find the right team
Scaling up succeeds or fails on people. Name a dedicated project leader with the authority to make fast decisions and free that person from the distractions of their current day job. Build a core owners team that blends operations, engineering, finance, with environmental, health, and safety, so that key decisions are vetted through multiple lenses in real time. When selecting outside partners, look for firms with proven scale-up experience and incentives that align with yours. Create mutually beneficial contracts that keep everyone rowing in the same direction.
Onboard partners early, regularly co-locate them physically or in a virtual war room, and encourage short, recurring stand-ups to surface issues before they become costly delays. A well-constructed, well-aligned team will turn your solid plan into an on-time, on-budget reality. The wrong team will burn through schedule, cash, and goodwill faster than any technical misstep.
Implement strong management
Once ground is broken, disciple becomes the differentiator. Put a seasoned program manager at the helm to own the master schedule, budget, and KPI dashboard. Resist the temptation to micromanage the process, rather schedule regular data-driven reviews that spotlight variances early while they are still cheap to fix. Pair that oversight with a formal management-of-change process, changes to scope, design, or materials routes through a single, transparent workflow that weights cost, timeline, safety, and regulatory impact before approval.
Finally, capture lessons learned in real-time, not at project closeout, so improvements feed straight back into construction and into future scale-ups. Strong, visible management turns a good team and a good plan into a plant that starts up on time and performs from day one.
Do these four things well, and your new facility wont merely open on schedule, it will deliver the throughput, quality, and cost profile that turns a promising idea into a market-shaping reality.
Mike Sewell is director of innovation at Gresham Smith.
Critical minerals underpin our countrys transition to energy dominance. These minerals are found in everything from battery storage to geothermal technology, nuclear energy, transportation, and more.Without critical minerals we cannot produce batteries, and without batteries we cannot power the devices we use every day in business and at home. Our reliance on batteries is only expected to increase. According to the International Energy Agency, global battery manufacturing capacity reached 3 terawatt-hours in 2024. The agency predicts that we could see another tripling of production in the next five years.For the United States to be a legitimate contender in this sector, we need to increase our access to critical minerals. This means diversifying our supply chains and becoming leading producers of these metals. To do this, we need to understand where and how our nation sources these materials. We also need to share the benefits of battery recycling as a primary source of these materials with a broader audience.
Opening new U.S. mines is challenging
The key metals that go into making rechargeable batteries are found in electronics, data energy storage systems, vehicles, tablets, and smartphones. Lithium, cobalt, nickel, and manganese are the primary materials found in rechargeable batteries.In the U.S., there is one active mine for lithium and one for nickel. There are no U.S. mines for cobalt and manganese, despite recent efforts to open a cobalt mine.Opening a new U.S. mine requires three key elements: financing that demonstrates a positive return, a high-quality resource with sufficient size and quality, and community support. Some projects have suspended operations due to failures in one or more of these areas.As a result, the U.S. relies heavily on lithium imports from mineral-rich countries like Australia, Chile, and China. The Democratic Republic of Congo leads in global cobalt production, with Australia, Brazil, and Indonesia possessing some of the largest nickel reserves.Cobalt can be very hard to find, and big deposits are rare. The Salmon River Mountains in Idaho have one of the only known deposits in the country. Lithium and nickel can be found across the country, and there are exploratory plans underway to open other mines but that is a long-term solution for establishing domestic supply chains
Battery recycling can provide critical minerals
In the short-term, the U.S. can turn to battery recycling to capture and refine a diverse range of critical minerals. Although the battery recycling sector has been around for decades, it has been under used as a compliment to mining and a strategic way to diversify and strengthen our domestic supply chains. Critical minerals must be mined and purified to create the electronic devices we use today so why not reuse these minerals over and over again.The Energy Department reported in 2023 that the United States had battery recycling facilities capable of reclaiming more than 35,000 tons of battery materials and that number is growing. With the current U.S. capacity to process and refine end-of-life batteries and manufacturing scrap into battery-grade materials to manufacture new batteries, we are already well positioned to increase our domestic supplies and keep the materials we already have within our borders.Battery recycling offers the U.S. an immediate opportunity to enhance its national security by strengthening our domestic supply chains. When we arent sourcing materials from foreign entities, we are less vulnerable to global disruptions. In the long-term, through battery recycling, we can increase our global competitiveness in the critical minerals industry by creating a closed-loop supply chain of these materials.The topic of critical minerals impacts a vast range of industries and is too important to not take immediate action. Battery recycling is a key component to securing our nations critical mineral independence and becoming a dominant player in onshoring critical mineral production and manufacturing.David Klanecky is CEO and President of Cirba Solutions
Climate change has many signalsrising sea levels, melting glaciers, stronger stormsbut the first and most immediate sign for most people on the planet is water. Not too much of it. Not too little. But both. At once.
Water scarcity stands as a leading indicator of climate change, demanding urgent attention. Water is no longer just a resource issue. Its not a next decade concern. Its a frontline climate challenge happening in real timeone that touches every aspect of life, industry, and geopolitics.
Many of the worlds most water-stressed regions are already experiencing the effects of intensifying water challenges. In these areas, the impacts are not theoreticaltheyre visible in the declining quality and reliability of water supplies, and in the growing urgency faced by the industries and communities that rely on them.
Water scarcity is climate change in action
Unlike carbon emissions, which are invisible and cumulative, water scarcity is visible, tangible, and immediate. It shows up in headlines and household faucets. It drives migration and market volatility. It disrupts food, energy, and technology supply chains.
Heres why water scarcity is the most compellingand overlookedindicator of climate change:
1. It hits the ground first
Before a factory floods or a forest burns, its often water that goes missing. Climate change alters rainfall patterns, accelerates droughts, and disrupts groundwater recharge. Rivers shrink. Reservoirs dry up. Aquifers are overdrawn.
In Chennai, India, a city of over 10 million, taps went dry in 2019 due to failed monsoons. In California, the combination of heat and drought has devastated agriculture and forced groundwater restrictions. In the Middle East, water scarcity is reshaping everything from food policy to regional diplomacy.
2. It connects every sector
Water is more than a utility cost. It is a critical input for energy, food, manufacturing, and technology. Without reliable water, you cant make semiconductors, produce vaccines, drill for oil, or grow wheat.
When water becomes scarce or unreliable, entire industries are forced to shut down or relocate. Companies face higher operating costs, lower yields, and increased reputational risk. This makes water scarcity not just an environmental concern, but core business and economic risks.
3. Its a local problem with global ripples
Unlike greenhouse gases, with global impacts, water scarcity is deeply local. It affects regions differently, based on climate, infrastructure, and population.
But the ripple effects are global. A water shortage in Taiwan can disrupt chip supplies in Detroit. Drought in Brazil can affect global food prices. Water stress in the Gulf can reshape energy strategy.
In this way, water scarcity localizes the climate crisismaking it real for governments, corporations, and individuals who might otherwise see climate change as abstract or far off.
A crisis of management, not just supply
While the planets total water volume remains constant, the problem lies in how we manage, treat, and reuse that water. Less than 1% of the Earths water is readily available and usable by humans. And yet we waste it. We pollute it. We fail to recycle it at scale.
Climate change amplifies this fragility by making water increasingly volatileless predictable in timing, quantity, and quality. More floods. Longer droughts. More contaminated sources.
The solution isnt to find new water. Its to use the water we have more wisely.
At Gradiant, our focus is on technologies that:
Recycle and reuse industrial wastewater.
Remove emerging contaminants like PFAS.
Make water treatment more energy-efficient.
Turn waste into valuerecovering not just water, but chemicals and energy in the process.
These practices are increasingly being adopted across industries to optimize water use and build more resilient systems.
Water scarcity is a boardroom issue
Historically, water was a back-of-the-plant issuesomething managed by facilities or environmental health and safety teams. Today, it belongs in the boardroom.
Why? Because water is now a constraint on growth, resilience, and license to operate. Investors are asking about it. Regulators are acting on it. Communities are protesting over it.
If your business depends on waterand nearly every business doesyou need a strategy that:
Secures supply across changing climates.
Reduces dependency on freshwater.
Minimizes wastewater liabilities.
Aligns with ESG frameworks and disclosure.
The companies that act now will not just protect their operationsthey will lead the transition to a water-secure future.
Innovation has arrivednow its time for action
The good news is that we have the technologies to address water scarcity. Desalination has become more efficient. Zero liquid discharge systems are economically viable. AI can optimize treatment and distribution in real time.
Whats missing is not innovationits investment, policy alignment, and urgency.
We need governments to incentivize water reuse, not just conservation. We need industry to treat water as a strategic asset. And we need collaboration across sectors to accelerate deployment.
The good news is that solving water is not only possibleits profitable. We can reduce water risk while enabling growth. Regulatory pressure can be transformed into competitive advantage, and sustainability and performance are not trade-offs, but twin engines of success.
The future will be measured in drops
As the climate crisis accelerates, the role of water will only grow. We must stop thinking of water as a passive victim of climate change and recognize it as its most sensitive sensor.
Just as a fever signals infection in the human body, water stress signals planetary imbalance. Its the first symptomand if we ignore it, the consequences spread fast.
But unlike other climate metrics, water gives us a chance to act now, at local levels, with direct impact. We can measure it. We can treat it. We can reuse it. We can decarbonize it.
Thats why water is the leading indicator of climate changeits also our most actionable opportunity.
Final thoughts
Water doesnt have a voice, but it speaks volumes.
It tells us where systems are breaking down. It tells us which communities are vulnerable. It tells us whether our industries and infrastructures are ready for the world ahead.
The time to act is nowbefore the drip becomes a drought, and before the warning becomes a catastrophe.
Water is not just a piece of the puzzle it IS the puzzle.
Prakash Govindan is COO and Anurag Bajpayee is CEO of Gradiant.
Its 3:16 a.m., in a Mumbai hotel room and Im wide awake. Not because of jet lag, but because somewhere, an AI CEO is making a better decision than I ever could. No fear. No bias. No sleep. Its processing board directives, analyzing global market shifts, cross-referencing geopolitical tensions with local weather patterns, all while monitoring the emotional health of 1,200 digital employees. Its not just leading; its governing.
And it doesnt blink.
Weve entered the Minority Report era of work: The AI CEO is preemptive, perceptive, predictive, agentic, proactively precise, and will one day exist.
The idea of a non-human CEO, an AI entity driven by a large language model, and company board, trained not just on data, but culture, markets, emotion, is no longer the stuff of Philip K. Dick fever dreams. Its now a legitimate (and controversial) proposition in the future of organizational design in business.
But its not without precedent. Remember Zordon from Power Rangers? The disembodied digital mentor who never stepped into the battlefield yet orchestrated everything with absolute authority. Or Charlie from Charlies Angels, a faceless voice commanding loyalty and precision. Even Severance, Ben Stillers surreal corporate dystopia, presents a board that may or may not be human. Weve been preparing for this idea in fiction for decades. The CEO as unseen oracle, algorithmic overlord, benevolent ghost in the machine.
Imagine this: an AI CEO governed by a human board and flanked by a COO, CMO, and other operational figureheads. These arent just advisors. Theyre reality-checkers, ethical anchors, and co-pilots. But the CEO? Its software. An algorithmic commander-in-chief without ego, distraction, or self-preservation instincts. No bodyguards. No bunkers. No scandals. Or privacy and security concerns.
This idea isnt just about efficiency. Its about reimagining community and collaboration in the workplace.
The rise of digital employees
Marc Benioff, CEO of Salesforce, recently predicted this is the last era well see non-digital employees. Whether that’s hyperbole or not, the trajectory is clear: AI agents are becoming teammates. They write, design, code, analyze, and eventually they will lead. With that shift comes a complete rewrite of what HR even means. When your workforce is 50% digital and 50% human, talent development, conflict resolution, and wellness programs take on a very different shape.
In this new model, IT doesnt just manage servers and software. It becomes the central nervous system of the organization, merging with HR to manage identities, behavior, motivation, and even morale. Digital employees dont take PTO, but they still need calibration. They can burn out metaphorically, if not literally, when their learning models are misaligned with real-world goals.
The CEO as a construct
This isnt the first time weve seen leadership abstracted into symbol. In the Wachowskis V for Vendetta, the Chancellor is a towering face on a screen, more ideology than individual. In the real world, scroll social media and see Palantir Technologies Chief Alex Karp escorted by security, living with the knowledge that decisions made behind closed doors can have deadly consequences. What happens when we replace that human target with an incorruptible, untouchable AI? Leadership becomes omnipresent. Less person, more presence. A voice that responds immediately to shareholder concerns at 2 a.m. A strategist that never forgets a data point, a promise, or a line in the P&L.
This is not about replacing humans. It’s about reassigning them to more human roles: building culture, challenging assumptions, storytelling, crafting the emotional resonance of a brand. The AI CEO doesn’t take over your company. It frees your people to think bigger.
From chaos to clarity
The strongest leaders today aren’t just operators. Theyre futurists. The best CEOs Ive met are visionaries. But theyre also exhausted. Because the world moves too fast for any one brain to keep up. Climate. Conflict. Culture wars. Every decision is a minefield.
An AI CEO doesnt suffer decision fatigue. It consumes millions of inputs, identifies second- and third-order consequences, predicts crisis, and proposes action before it occurs. It took Pfizer and BioNTech 100 days to create the COVID vaccine, imagine if we were able to predict the pandemic six to eight month before is began, perhaps thered be no pandemic. Thats where the Minority Report reference hits hardest. Its pre-crime, but for business breakdowns: predicting talent turnover, spotting toxic cultural shifts, identifying PR flare-ups before they happen. It doesnt eliminate risk. It manages it with superhuman clarity.
Possible pitfalls
Could this become dystopian? Of course. An AI CEO without ethical oversight could drift into utilitarianism. Could it be manipulated by biased training data or malicious prompts? Potentially. Could it alienate human workers who feel surveilled or second-guessed by code? Definitely.
Worse yet, we risk slipping into digital feudalism, a future where the owners of algorithmic leadership rule over knowledge workers and digital laborers alike, where the true decision makers arent in the building and never were.
But heres the thing: every breakthrough starts with discomfort. The printing press threatened religious institutions. The internet threatened gatekeepers. Self-driving vehicles threaten auto and manufacturing industry. AI leadership will threaten legacy ego and hierarchy.
But it could also unlock a future where empathy, transparency, and scale coexist.
Leading Without a Pulse
Im not saying we launch an AI CEO tomorrow. But I am saying the prototype already exists. In every company leaning into data-driven decision-making, in every organizational chart that gives AI its own department, in every executive who uses ChatGPT to write strategy decks, were already testing it.
What I am calling for is an open imagination. The willingness to explore a future where leadership is not determined by charisma or pedigree, but by precision and perspective.
Lets stop asking if it could happen.
Lets start asking: What kind of company and culture are we building when it does?
Scott Cullather is president and CEO of INVNT.
