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Nvidias Jensen Huang is one of the tech industrys longest-serving chief executives, leading the chipmaker since cofounding it in 1993. Now hes the recipient of a long-standing technology award: the IEEE Medal of Honor, established by a predecessor of the Institute of Electrical and Electronics Engineers in 1917. Huang was named the recipient of the medal (and an accompanying $2 million prize) at the Consumer Electronics Show on January 6 in recognition of his lifetime of work in accelerating computingthe technique of using specialized chips like Nvidias graphics processing units to speed specialized operations such as rendering images for video games, crunching numbers for scientific research, or, critically for the industry today, powering artificial intelligence. Nvidia reached an unprecedented $5 trillion market valuation in October, with its chips providing much of the computing power behind todays AI. It just is so important to have this kind of compute power at our fingertips, to be able to make advances so quickly, says Mary Ellen Randall, president and CEO of IEEE. Nvidia released what it calls the first GPU, the GeForce 256, in 1999. At the time, the chip was principally recognized for advancing computer gaming, letting developers and artists add unprecedented levels of graphical detail without compromising speed. Under Huangs leadership, the company soon began work on CUDA (Compute Unified Device Architecture), a system that enables developers to harness the parallel processing capabilities of its chips for a variety of computational tasks. That proved to be critical for recent advances in AI; Nvidias chips and development platforms today power AI technologies such as ChatGPT and other large language models, as well as autonomous vehicles and industrial robots. Nvidias market capitalization has fallen since its October high amid questions about a possible AI bubble, including concern about Nvidias investments in AI firms that in turn purchase its chips. But the company maintains a valuation of more than $4 trillion as huge swaths of the economy seek to harness artificial intelligence software that its chips are optimized to run. We’re in unprecedented times where AI is accelerating everything, says Randall. Advances by Huang and his Nvidia colleagues build on the work of previous winners of the Medal of Honor, first awarded by the Institute of Radio Engineers in 1917 to Edwin Howard Armstrong, who was pivotal in developing radio-related technologies including FM broadcasting. Other early recipients included Lee de Forest, whose work with vacuum tubes paved the way for todays transistor-powered electronics; Claude Shannon, known for his groundbreaking work tying mathematics to electronic circuitry and digital computation; and radio pioneer Guglielmo Marconi. The Institute of Radio Engineers merged with the American Institute of Electrical Engineers in 1963, forming IEEE, a nonprofit that in November announced its membership had grown to 500,000 across 190 countries. Today Medal of Honor recipients are selected by IEEEs board of directors based on consultation with a team that includes past IEEE presidents, previous award winners, and other esteemed members of the organization, Randall says. Several recent recipients of the IEEEs top award have been innovators in computer and internet technology, including Ethernet cocreator Robert Metcalfe, recognized in 1996, and Vinton Cerf and Robert Kahn, instrumental in developing the internets core TCP/IP data routing protocol, recognized in 2023 and 2024, respectively. Other Medal of Honor winners from the chipmaking industry include former Intel CEO Andrew Grove, recognized in 2000; Intel cofounder Gordon Moore, awarded in 2008; Morris Chang, founder of the Taiwan Semiconductor Manufacturing Co. (TSMC), recognized in 2011; and Broadcom cofounder Henry Samueli, last years award recipient. Randall says Huangs work builds upon the innovations of previous Medal of Honor recipients while helping to pave the way for tomorrows technologies. All those types of things are fundamental to how we got to today, she says. And this is certainly a very important step in the transition of technology for the future.
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E-Commerce
Stocks rose on Wall Street Tuesday afternoon and approached more all-time highs. The S&P 500 added 0.6% and is hovering around the record it set in late December. The Dow Jones Industrial Average rose 482 points, or 1%, after setting a record on Monday. The Nasdaq composite rose 0.6% as of 3:01 p.m. Eastern. Big tech companies were making some of the most notable moves. Amazon, which has reached into both retail and technology, surged 3.7%. It is one of the most valuable companies in the world and its outsized stock valuation helped counter losses elsewhere in the market, including a 1.7% loss from Apple. Micron Technology rose 8.8%, also helping to lift the market. Nvidia, which is often the biggest force behind the market’s direction, wavered throughout the day and was down most recently by 0.2%. Sandisk surged 25.8% for the market’s biggest gain. The stock’s value has jumped more than 800% since spinning off from Western Digital last February. The gains have been driven by artificial intelligence and the resulting demand for data-storage hardware. Western Digital rose 17.2%. Technology companies, especially those focused on artificial intelligence, are being closely watched this week during the industry’s annual CES trade show in Las Vegas. AI advances helped propel the broader market to a series of records in 2025. Investors will be watching companies for any updates that could shed more light on the big corporate investments in AI technology. The price of benchmark U.S. crude oil fell 2% to $57.13 per barrel, pulling back from sharp gains a day prior when the market reacted to U.S. forces capturing Venezuelan President Nicolás Maduro in a weekend raid. The price of Brent crude, the international standard, fell 1.7% to $60.70 per barrel. Treasury yields rose in the bond market. The yield on the 10-year Treasury climbed to 4.18% from 4.15% late Monday. The yield on the two-year Treasury, which moves more closely with expectations for what the Federal Reserve will do, rose to 3.48% from 3.45% late Monday. Gold prices rose 1% and silver prices rose 5.7%. Such assets are often considered safe havens in times of geopolitical turmoil. The metals have notched record prices over the last year amid lingering economic concerns brought on by conflicts and trade wars. Markets in Europe and Asia gained ground. Outside of company announcements, Wall Street is preparing for several updates on the U.S. labor market this week, along with reports on the services sector and consumer sentiment. They will help paint a clearer picture of how vital parts of the economy closed out 2025 and the direction they could take in 2026. On Wednesday, the U.S. government will release its report on job openings for November. The October report showed that U.S. job openings had barely budged. Weekly unemployment data will be released on Thursday and the broader monthly employment report, for December, will be released on Friday. Outside of the employment reports, the Institute for Supply Management will release its latest services sector update on Wednesday, while the University of Michigan will release its latest consumer sentiment survey Friday. They are both widely monitored because the services sector makes up the bulk of the U.S. economy, and consumer sentiment has been shaky under the weight of higher prices and economic uncertainty. The Fed will be analyzing all of that data and more ahead of its next meeting in late January. The central bank cut its benchmark interest rate three times late in 2025 to try and counter the economic impact of a softer jobs market. Lower interest rates on loans can help bolster economic activity. Cutting rates also risks fueling inflation at a time when it remains stubbornly above the Fed’s 2% target and could potentially reheat. Rising inflation could counter any benefit from lower interest rates and weigh more heavily on the economy. Wall Street expects the Fed to hold interest rates steady at its January meeting. Damian J. Troise, AP business writer AP business writers Elaine Kurtenbach and Matt Ott contributed to this report.
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E-Commerce
Weve grown strangely comfortable separating things that were never meant to be separated: leadership from management, vision from execution, and perhaps most damaging, culture from strategy. Inside companies, this split shows up everywhere. A CEO announces a bold future about democratizing access or building a place where people take smart risks. Then culture gets handed to HR as if it belongs on a separate track, while the business strategy unfolds on its own timeline. The result is predictable. Employees are asked to navigate the distance between what leaders say and how the organization actually works. That distance is not neutral. It creates avoidable friction, the kind of drag that occurs when people try to act on values the organization has not built around. Built Ins 2024 Culture Report shows that 74% of employees feel demotivated in a poor cultural fit, and 61% would leave for a stronger cultural fit even without a major raise. The message is clear: Misalignment is expensive. NEEDED: CLARITY AND STRUCTURE But the deeper cost is structural. Avoidable friction emerges when leaders declare a value but never define it or embed it into the operating model. You say you value accountability, but there is no shared understanding of what it looks like. You say family first, but still expect employees to respond while out of office. You say being a good partner matters, but your incentives penalize anyone who extends the sales cycle to build trust. This is not about leaders being disingenuous. It is about the reality that business is messy, and unspoken values tend to override the ones printed in the handbook. When leaders are not honest about what truly matters, employees spend more energy decoding the hidden rules than doing the work they were hired to do. The fix is clarity, not charisma. The organizations gaining ground today are not the ones with inspirational posters or expansive value lists. They are the ones willing to make their values operational. That is why the B Corp movement has more than doubled since 2020, with 10,394 certified companies currently, across 103 countries. Leaders are discovering something simple and powerful: When culture is strategy, performance compounds. According to Deloittes 2025 Global Human Capital Trends, companies with positive cultures deliver 30% higher innovation and 40% better retention. Analysis from McKinsey has shown that companies with a healthy culture are three times more likely to outperform companies with unhealthy cultures. What these companies share is not moral perfection. It is precision. They name fewer values. They define them. They make them actionable. They hold themselves accountable in the same ways they expect from their teams. Because here is the truth most leaders overlook: Every organization already has a culture. The question is whether it reflects the strategy or contradicts it. CULTURE MUST BE VISIBLE If you want to reduce avoidable frictionand the burnout, confusion, and turnover that followculture cannot remain a sentiment in an employee handbook. It has to be visible in hiring criteria, promotion decisions, meeting norms, resource allocation, and the daily choices that signal what actually matters. This often feels intimidating, which is why culture gets handed to HR like an extracurricular. But culture is not extra work. Culture is the work. And you do not need more values to fix it. You need fewer values with deeper integrity. When your words match your systems, the organization exhales. People stop guessing. Teams regain momentum. Alignment is not just a leadership obligation. It is a relief. For leaders, for employees, and for the business. When culture becomes strategy, you no longer have to push the organization forward. You create the conditions, and the culture pulls the strategy with it. Natasha Nuytten is CEO of CLARA.
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E-Commerce
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