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Nick Lichtenberg

Nick Lichtenberg

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42% of America’s recent college grads are working jobs that don’t need a degree. From Kathmandu to Paris, young people are taking to the streets

The New York Fed data measures "underemployment." One historian calls this “elite overproduction” — a final stage before social upheaval.

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Fortune

Nick Lichtenberg

Reality Bites for Gen Xers doing retirement math: just 49% say they’re on track, the worst of any generation

Boomers and Gen Z get the generational fights. The middle child, the first 401(k) generation, has quietly become the least confident saver in America.

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Fortune

Nick Lichtenberg

How a close look at the American Dream turned a top happiness expert into a specialist in despair: ‘It’s harder to be poor in a very rich country’

Brookings’ Carol Graham has spent decades measuring outcomes. Here's how her study of happiness led to work on despair — and what hope has to do...

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Fortune

Nick Lichtenberg

Goldman Sachs CEO David Solomon on AI’s economic impact: ‘There’s very little that we do where we need frontier models’

"The important thing is to get it right, not to get it quicker," Solomon told small businesses of his $500 million AI push with OpenAI, Anthropic,...

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Fortune

Nick Lichtenberg

AI could displace one in 11 workers, Goldman says, but the layoffs are likely waiting for a recession

Goldman’s Joseph Briggs finds companies have historically saved automation layoffs for downturns, and he’s updating his projection of the AI jobs...

22.10.2026 20

Fortune

Nick Lichtenberg

Palmer Luckey teams with dire wolf billionaire Ben Lamm to launch $200 million Warhound, unleashing genetically engineered clone dogs of war

“A dog is the oldest autonomous system there is,” Ben Lamm, the executive who figured out how to clone dire wolves, told Fortune.

22.10.2026 10

Fortune

Nick Lichtenberg

GM simulated 300,000 EV battery designs—using 34,000 years of computer time—before building a single cell. Now comes the physical part

At GM Forward, the automaker showed how much of its next generation of vehicles is now designed and tested in simulation. The real cells come later.

21.10.2026 8

Fortune

Nick Lichtenberg

Millennials are ‘kidulting’ through their parenthood stage, spending their free time on blind boxes and claw machines

"It’s got the same kind of psychological draw as a slot machine," Harris Poll chief strategy officer Libby Rodney told Fortune of the "blind box"...

20.10.2026 8

Fortune

Nick Lichtenberg

‘I want to see red’: General Motors is teaching its engineers to fail fast and ‘speak fearlessly’ as they take the EV battery fight to China

Tesla veterans Sterling Anderson and Kurt Kelty are pushing a "no sacred cows" vibe. "If everything’s green, you obviously are not stretching hard...

20.10.2026 9

Fortune

Nick Lichtenberg

Two decades ago, he asked what’s the matter with Kansas? Now he’s back to look at the 70-year con of ‘creativity’ and ‘innovation’

"Nobody gives a damn about the creative class anymore": Thomas Frank talks about how AI could turn the innovation cult against its believers.

20.10.2026 10

Fortune

Nick Lichtenberg

Morgan Stanley’s favorite AI stock is 92% exposed to the $1.6 trillion build-out it’s bullish on

The bank calls Nvidia the best risk/reward in AI. Its own report lays out what happens to suppliers when a capital cycle turns.

19.10.2026 10

Fortune

Nick Lichtenberg

France is rioting over surging inflation, skyrocketing national debt, and crumbling schools. America is its sleeping twin

Growth is the main thing keeping the U.S. from looking like France. Underneath it, the debt math and the classrooms look a lot alike.

19.10.2026 10

Fortune

Nick Lichtenberg

The wealthy boomer problem is metastasizing—they got 38% richer over the last 3 years as Gen Z and millennials under 35 got wiped out

People 35 years old and younger actually suffered a 23% decline in net worth from 2022 through 2025, according to the Federal Reserve.

17.10.2026 70

Fortune

Nick Lichtenberg

‘Close to zero’: 4 AI chiefs say no companies have truly changed in response to AI — blame ‘politics projects’

At a Fortune event, executives from Accenture, AXA, Mastercard and Mistral AI said the technology isn't the main obstacle to AI payoffs.

15.10.2026 10

Fortune

Nick Lichtenberg

KPMG’s CEO on why AI safety isn’t another Y2K and why business leaders are thinking hard about talent right now

Some 53% of CEOs surveyed say they’re planning reductions in some areas — but 86% are redesigning roles, career paths and team structures.

15.10.2026 10

Fortune

Nick Lichtenberg

Exclusive: ‘I’ve seen this movie before’: A Michigan-raised ex-Tesla exec raises $45 million to break China’s grip on batteries

"We will not be able to out-China China,” Holyvolt COO Steven Prast told Fortune. “They’re the world champions at being China.”

15.10.2026 40

Fortune

Nick Lichtenberg

Exclusive: Stand raises $70 million at $1 billion valuation to price wildfire risk by treating homes like airplanes in flight

Only a few years old, Stand says its digital twins predicted wildfire outcomes about 85% of the time in a backtest, versus 50%–55% for conventional...

15.10.2026 100

Fortune

Nick Lichtenberg

As Social Security races toward insolvency, retirees are getting their biggest COLA boost in 4 years

The AARP's Rich Johnson said family budgets "have been under increasing pressure because of rising prices."

15.10.2026 20

Fortune

Nick Lichtenberg

Exclusive: Koch’s venture arm backs a16z-backed Emanate’s push to bring AI to industrial sales

“Doing nothing isn’t neutral in this market,” says Emanate founder Kiara Nirghin.

14.10.2026 100

Fortune

Nick Lichtenberg

Exclusive: Honeywell Technologies launches a ‘brain behind the building’ with Nvidia and Dell. Its CTO says humans will run it for now

Forge Cognition, tested at Nvidia’s Voyager headquarters, is Honeywell Technologies' first big AI bet since its breakup.

14.10.2026 150

Fortune

Nick Lichtenberg

Delta knows the top 40% of Americans are $40 trillion richer than just a few years ago. Cue new burgers and bourbon on Delta One’s biggest revamp yet

Delta’s biggest Delta One overhaul in nearly 30 years follows a quarter in which premium ticket sales grew 18% and edged past coach.

14.10.2026 10

Fortune

Nick Lichtenberg

‘The amazement is kind of wearing off a little bit’: Wharton survey reveals managers are learning what Gen Z already figured out

In the future, Wharton's Sonny Tambe and Jeremy Korst told Fortune, it may be a manager's job to say "that's AI."

13.10.2026 10

Fortune

Nick Lichtenberg

This 39-year-old quit 80-hour consulting weeks to make underwear for his struggling family business. He credits ‘sweaty feet’ for record profits

"If my sock doesn't fit just right, then when I get back from my hike, I go to the sock department," Minus33 President Lawson Glidden told Fortune.

13.10.2026 100

Fortune

Nick Lichtenberg

Dario Strangelove, or: How I Learned to Stop Worrying and Love the AI Bomb

You don’t need a weatherman to know which way the AI doomsday wind blows.

12.10.2026 50

Fortune

Nick Lichtenberg

Fortune’s AIQ Summit: The conversation has moved from experimentation to execution

The strongest companies aren’t simply distributing AI tools but redesigning workflows, developing talent, strengthening governance, and building...

12.10.2026 10

Fortune

Nick Lichtenberg

The economist behind the ‘China shock’ says AI is a paradoxical ‘skill-disequalizer’ for Gen Z workers

“Young professionals need to beware of the illusion of competence,” MIT professor and Google Technology & Society visiting fellow David Autor told...

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Fortune

Nick Lichtenberg

CLEAR founder: fast AI can be safe AI when we fix the identity layer

Every AI agent borrows its authority from a person. Before agents act for us, let’s guarantee you are you.

09.10.2026 10

Fortune

Nick Lichtenberg

Wealthy Gen Zers’ quiet love of art collecting, revealed: They’re outspending boomers and millennials—but keeping their collections off Instagram

Gen Z is on track to be the "largest, wealthiest, and highest-spending generation to date," according to Art Basel and UBS.

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Fortune

Nick Lichtenberg

The great Boomer hoard: Americans 55 and over hold $140 trillion, roughly three-quarters of total net worth

Older households' net worth rose more than 20% in two years on the back of an AI-fueled stock rally, and boomers hold most of it.

07.10.2026 20

Fortune

Nick Lichtenberg

Exclusive: Meet the 38-year-old founder who left Wall Street for love and created an AI insurance unicorn a decade later

Gage Caligaris' Ledgebrook has raised $200 million, co-led by Allianz X and Rockefeller Capital Management. The valuation is $2.6 billion, a source...

07.10.2026 30

Fortune

Nick Lichtenberg

‘AI Snake Oil’ author sees chatbots evolving into a ‘truth oracle’—and journalism heading somewhere it hasn’t been in 200 years

Princeton's Arvind Narayanan asked the Computation Journalism conference to prepare for AI "not as it is today, but as it will be" in five to 10...

06.10.2026 10

Fortune

Nick Lichtenberg

Should we phase out Social Security? 2 economists debated it for an hour in front of me—then agreed the wealthy have to pay up

Teresa Ghilarducci said, “The way to get money for Social Security…is going to be at the top.” Romina Boccia agreed they’ll have to “bear the brunt.”

05.10.2026 10

Fortune

Nick Lichtenberg

Argentina’s golden passport will be so popular that ‘really wealthy Americans will be embarrassed’ not to have it, top advisor says

Nuri Katz helped create the citizenship-by-investment program, but he sees it as the first to combine a safe haven with a huge business opportunity.

03.10.2026 250

Fortune

Nick Lichtenberg

ServiceNow unpacks the Fortune AIQ list, where the widest gap between AI leaders and laggards is training for humans

“Pacesetters” are far likelier to hire and train people. “It’s not just technology,” says ServiceNow’s Diana David, a “forward-deployed futurist.”

02.10.2026 20

Fortune

Nick Lichtenberg

Top futurist Amy Webb sees Fortune 500 firms suffering from ‘learned helplessness’ with AI, like taxi drivers who need Google Maps

"Let's be fair, Fortune 500 companies are pretty late to the party on this," said Webb, founder and CEO of the Future Today Strategy Group.

02.10.2026 20

Fortune

Nick Lichtenberg

‘Sometimes it’s more expensive than having humans’: Honeywell and Ecolab get real about AI’s limits in the physical world

Honeywell CTO Suresh Venkatarayalu said customers “really demand 99.9999%” accuracy, while frontier models “could be at 85%.”

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Nick Lichtenberg

Booking Holdings CFO says even AI hyperscalers don’t know their ROI — but he’s learning from his ‘AI coach’

At Fortune's AIQ Summit, Ewout Steenbergen said AI is cutting costs but LLMs still only send it less than 1% of its room nights.

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Nick Lichtenberg

Larry Fink on the lost ‘bedrock of America’ and ‘a big divide’ between wages and investment wealth

The BlackRock CEO's father "essentially had one job in his career," he said at Ford Accelerate. "I think we lost that."

02.10.2026 200

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Nick Lichtenberg

‘We don’t want to be a policeman of the Internet’: How a John McPhee student turned GPTZero into a $30 million AI-detection business

Edward Tian and Alex Cui are happy to be "the Splash Brothers of anti-AI slop," but they aren't really against using AI to write things.

02.10.2026 150

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Nick Lichtenberg

‘You need to clean up the mess your generation has left’: Volkswagen’s guilty boomer gets real about sustainability, China—and his spam folder

Volkswagen’s sustainability chief told Fortune that Europe’s industrial champions cannot protect their way out of China’s electric-vehicle challenge.

02.10.2026 40

Fortune

Nick Lichtenberg

AI in regulated industries: BofA and S&P on the huge gains to be had, and the risks of rushing in

At Fortune's AIQ Summit, BofA's Hari Gopalkrishnan said companies reach for AI too soon. S&P Global's Sally Moore said the real question is...

01.10.2026 200

Fortune

Nick Lichtenberg

The real story behind Red Lobster’s $20 Ultimate Endless Shrimp fiasco: How an American seafood icon lost its way

The disastrous promotional offer, which played a role in the chain's bankruptcy, wasn't a blunder but a conspiracy, a lawsuit alleges.

01.10.2026 30

Fortune

Nick Lichtenberg

The unicorn CEO betting her industry’s AI crisis isn’t the one you think

"This is a profession that is actually in crisis mode," Datasnipper CEO Vidya Peters told Fortune — and AI is the salvation.

01.10.2026 100

Fortune

Nick Lichtenberg

Mike Rowe on America’s great tradesperson shortage: ‘I don’t care what your politics are. Math doesn’t care, either’

At Ford Pro Accelerate, Rowe spoke alongside Education Secretary Linda McMahon and the Defense Department’s Mike Duffey about the divide between...

30.09.2026 20

Fortune

Nick Lichtenberg

‘It’s crazy they invented it’: Nate Bargatze on the bright future of skilled trades, the urgency of live experience, and the coming of AI

“Before, when you had to Google something, it was like, it’s just article after article. And you’re like, ‘I’m not going to read these...

30.09.2026 20

Fortune

Nick Lichtenberg

Ford CEO sees blue-collar workers using AI as a ‘companion’—but other jobs ‘are definitely going to be changed and eliminated’

"If you work in finance doing spreadsheets, or you’re in a call center, or you’re an entry-level programmer—those jobs are definitely going to...

30.09.2026 20

Fortune

Nick Lichtenberg

‘This revolution is happening in years, not decades’: Verizon CEO Dan Schulman sees AGI within 18 months—and a century of progress in a decade

“I think you’ll see the collapse of the 21st century in the next five to 10 years,” Dan Schulman said at Ford Pro Accelerate.

30.09.2026 20

Fortune

Nick Lichtenberg

‘We value the skill, but maybe not for my child’: The stigma against blue-collar jobs, laid bare

Matt Panella told Pro Accelerate he hears from high schoolers: "I want to get into the trades, but my parents don’t feel like it’s a viable career...

30.09.2026 10

Fortune

Nick Lichtenberg

Ford’s Jim Farley says Gen Z needs its own ‘Smokey Bear’ moment for the forest fire of AI paranoia, the jobs apocalypse and the skilled trades

"They get a little bit paranoid that AI might replace the job they might go to school for," Ford executive Mark Truby told Fortune about his Gen Z...

30.09.2026 10

Fortune

Nick Lichtenberg

Ford CEO Jim Farley teams with Jamie Dimon on $2 billion initiative as he fears the ‘backbone of the American dream’ is crumbling

The State of America’s Skilled Trades report finds that employers will need to fill about 1.7 million skilled-trades openings each year through 2035.

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Fortune

Nick Lichtenberg