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[Targeted] Amazon: Add American Express Card & Get $15 Off
![[Targeted] Amazon: Add American Express Card & Get $15 Off](https://globalinvestmentstrategy.com/wp-content/uploads/2026/06/amazon-amex-deal-1024x907-768x680.png "[Targeted] Amazon: Add American Express Card & Get $15 Off")
Update 6/24/26: Deal is back until 12/31/26
The Offer
Direct Link to offer (our affiliate link)
- Amazon is offering $15 off when you add an American Express card to your Amazon account, at checkout to an order of at least $15.01, and pay with your American Express card.
If you are eligible for this offer you’ll see it appearing when clicking through the above link. If not the link will error out.
The Fine Print
- Customers will receive a discount of $10 off when they (1) add an eligible American Express Card to their Amazon wallet; (2) add a minimum of $10.01 in eligible products to their Amazon cart; (3) apply the promotional code at checkout; and (4) use their eligible American Express Card at checkout. The promotion will expire upon Customer’s use of the promotional code.
Our Verdict
Nice and easy savings. This deal is only available to some people, possibly to someone who does not have an Amex card in their Amazon account or someone who recently added an Amex card. Reader Jack was able to remove his Amex cards and get the deal when re-adding them a few months later.
See an update list of all similar deals on this dedicated post (constantly updated).
Post history:
- Update 8/11/25: New code AMEXQ3ABC15. Valid through 9/19/25. (ht reader San)
- Update 7/11/25: Code AMEXABC15OFF, valid through 7/31/2025
- Update 11/20/24: Deal is back with promo code 24AMEX15OFF
- Update 7/1/24: Deal is back and $15 off this time with promo code AMEXPD15OFF.
AI-Created Tech Layoffs are Shifting the Housing Market
AI-powered layoffs are shaking up the once-bulletproof tech job market, with more than 100,000 layoffs so far this year alone. For real estate investors, the burning question is where all the high-net-worth talent is going—assuming they are leaving established hubs such as Silicon Valley and Seattle—and whether following them makes financial sense.
“A New Way of Working”
Your plumber, electrician, and roofer may have the safest jobs in town. Artificial intelligence is devouring computer-based jobs like whales over plankton, and ironically, employment in tech is one of the first to go.
According to a recent report by global outplacement and executive coaching firm Challenger, Gray & Christmas, AI has become the leading reason companies cite for layoffs.
“In short: AI is bringing a profound shift in how companies operate, and we’re reshaping Coinbase to lead in this new era,” Brian Armstrong, Coinbase CEO—who recently laid off 700 staffers due to AI—said in a lengthy social media post on X. “This is a new way of working, and we need to leverage AI across every facet of our jobs.”
Other tech powerhouses, including Amazon, LinkedIn, Meta, Oracle, and Cloudflare, have announced layoffs, according to Forbes.
Where Laid-Off Tech Workers Are Looking for Their Next Opportunity
Realtor.com‘s cross-market search traffic shows that tech workers—from high-net-worth execs with lucrative exit packages to lower-level employees—are looking at other tech towns, with affordability a key factor driving their searches. However, staying put and looking in their current area are also options for those with deep roots and a higher chance of employment.
Ben Mizes, president of Clever Real Estate, told Realtor.com:
“Most displaced tech workers will likely remain in the same region for much longer. Employees will remain where they have the most equity, such as a professional and social network, a spouse, their children, schools, and industry resources. Regions such as Silicon Valley, Seattle, and New York offer the best opportunities to find another high-paying tech job.”
Those looking to ease their cost of living “will likely choose cities that offer tech-adjacent affordability—relatively less expensive housing, good schools, a good airport, and a good, not-too-large tech industry, which allows working in a tech-related area without feeling isolated,” Mizes adds.
Realtor.com’s data shows Salt Lake City, Denver, and Raleigh are popular for many well-paid tech workers.
“Salt Lake City appeared as the top destination for shoppers from Menlo Park in Q1 2026,” Realtor.com economist Jiayi Xu explained. Xu noted that the share of buyers from Menlo Park—one of the densest tech enclaves in Silicon Valley—looking at that specific tech-friendly Utah market jumped to nearly 3.6% in early 2026, up from 0.6% a year earlier.
Similarly, nearly 70% of online home searches from Seattle looked to other states, up from 65% a year earlier, with Portland, Oregon, Coeur d’Alene, Idaho, and Phoenix the most popular destinations.
Why Tier Two Tech Cities Won’t Work for Many Investors
For workers and investors alike seeking affordability and cash flow, many tier-two cities are not sensible relocation/investment options, especially if remote or hybrid work is possible.
While Utah’s “Silicon Slopes” is attracting tech talent to companies such as Adobe, Qualtrics, and Oracle, alongside growing offices for companies such as Workday and eBay, a recent report by local brokerage Red Sign notes that tech demand has kept home prices elevated.
Though considerably more affordable than Silicon Valley or San Francisco, Zillow shows that the average home price in Salt Lake City is $580,000, and the average rent is $1,600, which clearly is not an equitable relationship for real estate investors, though variables exist in the wider metro area.
The same is also true to a large extent in other secondary tech hot spots such as Denver and Raleigh/Durham, North Carolina.
For deep-pocketed investors who can buy with cash and avoid current mortgage rates, these are great buy-and-hold options for long-term appreciation. However, for leveraged investors relying on loans, the numbers won’t work.
Tech Cities Where Cash Flow Still Works
For tech workers and investors looking for more affordable landing spots, where rents are low and wages high, a cluster of cities in the South and Midwest is attracting qualified employees for prestigious jobs.
Huntsville, Alabama: Aerospace and defense, with starter home prices
Huntsville has become a central hub for aerospace and defense, anchored by NASA’s Marshall Flight Center, Redstone Arsenal, Boeing, Lockheed Martin, and numerous contractors and tech firms. Named a top city for tech talent by commercial real estate brokerage CBRE, plenty of jobs are available for the qualified, with mid- to senior-level engineering roles paying between $120,000 and $170,000.
Home prices average $290,000, and the average rent is about $1,400.
Columbus, Ohio: Meta, Path Robotics, and Intel
“Columbus is booming,” Dennis DeMeyere, a former technical director at Google Cloud, who plans to open an AI-powered manufacturing company, Autonomous Production, near Columbus, told the New York Times. “It’s wild. Everything is under construction. It feels like the Bay Area felt 13 or 14 years ago.”
Columbus and central Ohio, in general, have become a booming tech hot spot, with major Silicon Valley players and newer start-ups opening manufacturing plants and offices. In fact, manufacturing job growth is up 4.4% between 2021 and 2024. A new airport terminal is under construction to welcome business travelers, and new modular housing is being constructed at a fast pace, the Times reports.
The average Columbus house price is $251,000, according to Zillow, and rent averages around $1,500/month, making it very affordable for both renters and investors. While cash flow is flat at the moment, appreciation and positive cash flow show potential if interest rates drop.
San Antonio, Texas: Defense, tech, and cybersecurity, plus Toyota, Grupo Lala, and Siemens
The affordable alternative to Austin, San Antonio has seen a booming job market in defense tech and cybersecurity, driven by the University of Texas at San Antonio and Texas A&M. The average cost of a home in San Antonio is $251,000, and the average rent is $1,610.
Pittsburgh, Pennsylvania: Google, Amazon, Duolingo, and Aurora Innovation
The nationally recognized computer science program at Carnegie Mellon University (CMU) has been a big driver for tech innovation in the city. NVIDIA, the most valuable company in the world, recently partnered with CMU and the University of Pittsburgh to launch a specialized community focused on robotics, autonomy, and AI, further enhancing the Steel City’s tech credentials.
For real estate investors, Pittsburgh remains supremely affordable. The average home price here is around $240,000, and rent averages around $1,500/month.
Other affordable tech cities where investors could break even with current interest rates include:
Final Thoughts
The fact that the cost-of-living crisis and the AI revolution are happening at the same time has created a unique dynamic: mass layoffs in an industry where only the extremely well-paid can afford to live in its epicenters.
However, tech is not restricted to Silicon Valley, San Francisco, and Seattle. It touches almost every industry. It makes sense, then, that in an attempt to maximize profits, companies are setting up shop in some of the most affordable parts of America: the Midwest and South.
The positive news for investors is that these jobs come with good salaries. However, given the ephemeral nature of employment these days, under 1 in 5 tech workers—especially Gen Zs in software—are job hoppers, moving from one company to the next, according to a recent report. This means they are less likely to buy and more inclined to rent.
When choosing a tech-friendly city in which to invest, look for cities that not only have a strong tech base but are supported by other stable sources of employment, such as education, healthcare, and governmental jobs, which are likely to provide a strong tenant base, even if your tech worker moves to another city.
Robert Wright sees an AI earthquake: ‘cultural, political, personal, family, psychological’
Robert Wright’s Princeton library has seen many remote visitors. The veteran journalist and author — formerly at outlets including The New Republic, Time and The Atlantic, with five books published and a sixth out this June — has been holding court in front of his packed bookshelves for decades.
A writer liberated by the blogging revolution, he founded the video-interview platform Bloggingheads.tv years before podcasts became the new daytime television, and he has also gone his own way for decades. This editor was a devoted watcher, decades ago, when a young who’s who of literary types Skyped in to talk with Bob, from Ezra Klein to Ta-Nehisi Coates and Megan McArdle. So it was a touch surreal to see those familiar bookshelves and hear that familiar voice corresponding with Fortune. When I told him as much, he responded with his familiar self-deprecation: “Well, your ship has come in.”
For the last five years, Wright has made his home at the widely read NonZero newsletter and podcast, building on a 26-year-old book of the same name that argued human history is shaped largely by non-zero-sum dynamics—by encounters in which one side’s win isn’t necessarily the other side’s loss. The situation is usually nonzero, in other words. It’s informed by Wright’s writings on Buddhism throughout the years, which he sees less as a religion and more as a way of thinking.
That is exactly why, he told Fortune during a recent interview, the current situation is so alarming. That situation is not just artificial intelligence, according to Wright—but the lost concept of “enlightenment” in the 2020s.
“When you look at all the fronts — economic, cultural, political, personal, family, psychological and so on — it is going to be an earthquake,” Wright said. “That’s my prediction. And we better be ready for it.”
A belated ‘oh sh-t’ moment
In 1983, Wright was a young journalist on assignment, sitting down with Geoffrey Hinton, years before the computer scientist was dubbed the “godfather of AI” and years before Hinton resigned from Google DeepMind expressing regret at his creation. As Wright explains in his forthcoming book, The God Test: Artificial Intelligence and Our Coming Cosmic Reckoning, he completely missed the significance of what he was being told about this concept called “neural networks.”
“I just did not — I was not remotely close to getting the picture,” Wright said. He didn’t know at the time that this computer tinkering would lead to what he now considers an inflection point — not just economic but civilizational. The grand test ahead of us now, he told me, is whether we are qualified to play God, and he’s not sure that we’ve shown we’re capable.
Wright’s reckoning with AI’s true power came not in 1983 but in 2023, when he began experimenting with ChatGPT-4 while under contract for a different book entirely, one on cognitive empathy. One experience made him think of Hinton: he gave GPT-4 an elaborate, layered scenario about a student and a professor, asking what the student would feel at the end. The model’s one-word answer: schadenfreude.
“I thought, ‘oh sh-t,’” Wright recalled. “It really understands human nature and is capable of putting itself in the perspective of another human being.”
The experience sent Wright back to a 2018 lecture Hinton gave on how large language models actually work. The neural network that Hinton pioneered “will kind of reverse engineer the human mind,” Wright said, cautioning that he hasn’t heard many AI researchers put it in quite those words. That includes certain cognitive functions that natural selection engineered over millions of years, he added with astonishment.
“That was my big misunderstanding back in 1983,” he added. “I was assuming that if it was going to get good at handling language, we would have to implant in the machines the human understanding of the connection between the words and the meaning.” But we didn’t have to do any of that. “It just kind of quote ‘figured out’ that if it’s going to get good at predicting how sentences will end or predicting anything else … it is going to have to have a way of representing the meaning of words.” And he offered up a compelling example: it helped figure out an ambiguous MRI report on his own cancer.
The doctor and the machine
Wright is currently cancer-free, he told me. His throat cancer had spread to his lymph nodes, but after successful treatment it hasn’t come back since a surgery in 2025.
At one point, he told Fortune, reiterating a story he related on NonZero in July 2025, he was trying to interpret a confusing doctor’s report, so he fed it into various chatbots. They said it looked like something was worth investigating.
He pressed further, flagging a strange sentence, and Anthropic’s Claude caught what his radiologist had missed. “Claude said, ‘Well, the radiologist meant to put the word ‘no’ at the beginning of that sentence: ‘no abnormalities found.’”
AI caught a crucial grammatical error—a human error—that could have scrambled his understanding of his recovery.
“They say AIs hallucinate, they make mistakes,” Wright said. “Humans make mistakes. This human made a mistake and he’s a doctor, okay, and about a pretty big thing.” The question isn’t whether AI will “take our jobs and become our lovers and do everything else,” as Wright put it: it’s more about whether AI is “in any sense better overall than the people that were filling these roles.” The answer to that is so obvious that Wright doesn’t even have to say it.
“The thing doesn’t have to be perfect by any means to replace a human,” Wright said, “especially given the fact that it’s going to be a lot cheaper and faster.”
Wright’s thinking on AI is similar to his stance on Buddhism: not religious, but a secular, Westernized variant based on journalistic investigation and first-principles thinking. His 2017 book Why Buddhism Is True describes his engagement with Buddhism as a long personal journey predating the book itself, rooted in his earlier work on evolutionary psychology. Wright’s explicit aim is not to bring readers into Buddhism as a religion, but to argue that its core psychological insights — particularly around suffering and perception — are validated by evolutionary biology and modern science.
The ‘suicidal ideology’
If Wright’s earthquake thesis puts him broadly in alignment with figures like Anthropic CEO Dario Amodei and Microsoft’s Mustafa Suleyman — both of whom have warned of dramatic near-term disruption — his sharpest departure from Silicon Valley’s AI establishment is on geopolitics.
Amodei, in particular, has framed AI as an existential race with China, arguing that American dominance is essential to ensuring the technology develops safely. Wright called this a “suicidal ideology.”
“Dario sees us as in this existential AI race with China, and I personally think that mentality will lead us to a very, very, very bad outcome,” Wright said.
He believes Amodei is “sincere, more than most of these people,” but argued the entire framing is dangerously wrong. For Wright, true to his Nonzero beliefs, the only path to managing AI safely runs through global coordination, not competition. An arms race logic, in his view, forecloses exactly the kind of cooperative governance that could prevent catastrophe.
It is, he acknowledged with a wry smile, a very un-Buddhist way to approach an existential problem: each nation clinging to its own perspective, certain of its own righteousness, blind to the view from anywhere else.
He said his frustration with Anthropic sharpened recently following the company’s public acknowledgment that recursive self-improvement — AI systems autonomously improving themselves — may be approaching. The company gestured toward the need for global coordination but offered no concrete plan.
“Wait a second, Dario: you above all have been predicting we get to exactly this moment for years and you guys don’t have a plan?” Wright asked, peppering in a rather colorful adjective. “You haven’t devoted like a hundred dollars to looking into what it would take?”
He noted that Anthropic is due to IPO soon at a nearly trillion-dollar valuation. “Isn’t that because the financial incentives point in the other direction?”
Anthropic declined to comment.
A God test, not a doom prediction
For all his alarm, Wright resists being categorized as a pure doomsayer, and his trademark self-deprecation and good humor are on display throughout our conversation.
The title The God Test is partly a biblical metaphor, he said: throughout the Old Testament, salvation is offered conditionally. Shape up, or face consequences. The choice is real.
“We face an interesting and climactic moment, in a certain sense, in the whole history of evolution,” Wright said. “We’re creating a whole new form of intelligence — hasn’t happened before — in a new substrate that’s not carbon-based. And if you wanted to bring good things and not overwhelmingly bad things, you better recognize immediately that you’re proceeding too fast and recklessly, and you’re gonna have to get together as a cohesive global community.”
He pointed to two recent developments as cautious grounds for hope: a renewed U.S.-China dialogue on AI safety, and the Trump administration’s reversal on reviewing powerful AI models — a position it had previously mocked under Biden. “Change can happen,” Wright said. “I just hope the progress continues to come from developments that don’t get tons of people killed.”
The only way to pass the God test, he added, is to model what he calls “enlightenment.” He doesn’t mean it in the 18th-century, Voltaire and salons and wigs sort of Western sense, he clarifies, but something closer to the Buddhist conception. “It really amounts to just clarity of perception and thought,” he said. “Transcending all of the kind of cognitive and perceptual biases that are built into us — that get in the way of a balanced view of the world. Like the world is viewed from some perspective other than yours.”
Wright brought up “the view from Mars” on the human condition and what that must look like, which he admitted is hard to hear without thinking of Elon Musk — whose SpaceX is the first company with the explicit mission of making David Bowie’s vision a reality: life on Mars.
“I mean, Elon Musk seems to me the opposite of enlightened,” Wright said. “It’s worrisome that the world’s richest man is so incapable of getting outside of his own perspective.”
The salvation for this unenlightened age that Wright sees the world living through, he added, will come from “lots of people, including influential people, getting better at viewing the world from outside of their own perspective.”
This editor asked Wright if he was arguing for something like a Star Trek future, a federation of planets under a one-government system, managing problems peaceably and resolving conflict. He pointed out that Star Trek can’t be seen outside of the context of its 1960s premiere occurring just 20 years after the catastrophe of World War II. “That’s the thing, catastrophes lead to dramatic and ambitious thinking about restructuring orders … I hope it doesn’t take a true catastrophe in this case to get us to take international coordination seriously.”
He said he reaches for another science-fiction classic on the AI discussion: The Day The Earth Stood Still. Like Star Trek, it was a nuclear deterrence drama but it involved aliens visiting with a message for Earth to “get your sh-t together and form a global community and get things under control.”
In a way, he said, AI is sending a message “maybe not quite that dramatic but along the same lines.” He returned to the Bible metaphor, full of instances where salvation is possible, “but you have to get your act together, you have to become better people … you’re going to have to upgrade your game morally and in some sense spiritually or bad things, very bad things will happen. But very good things can happen, if you do the right thing.”
How Home Depot is rebuilding retailing with AI
Over the past few years, Home Depot has been rebuilding its business with more artificial intelligence intended to make shopping easier and workers more efficient. But the home-improvement retailer’s tech-focused C-suite team leading these efforts has also been recently refurbished.
Franziska “Fran” Bell became Home Depot’s chief technology officer in April, after most recently serving as chief data, AI, and analytics officer at automaker Ford Motor. Eleven months before her appointment, 27-year Home Depot veteran Angie Brown ascended to the role of chief information officer. And yet another key technology executive is Jordan Broggi, who became executive vice president of customer experience and the online channel in June 2024.
Some of the top AI applications these executives oversee include an AI assistant called Magic Apron and a customer service AI system built with Google Cloud, the latter recently tested in 50 stores and proving during the pilot program that the voice agents could understand what a customer was calling about in 10 seconds. Internally, Microsoft Copilot has been made available to office workers, Anthropic’s Claude coding system is helping speed up software development, and machine learning algorithms are guiding more efficient workflows for store associates.
Brown says that all the AI investments need to link to one of three core priorities: support merchandising within the physical stores, cultivate an interconnected retail ecosystem that involves digital channels, and grow business with contractors, builders, and other professionals who tend to spend a lot more at Home Depot than do-it-yourself (DIY) shoppers.
And while some technologists have recently aimed to focus their AI efforts on fewer, bigger use cases, Brown says she doesn’t approach her investments with such a restrictive mindset.
“Am I going to limit the number of use cases that can leverage AI to solve a problem?” Brown rhetorically asks. “I don’t want to. If AI can help solve those problems that we have already identified from a business perspective, I’m not going to hold them back.”
Home Depot, ranked No. 25 on the Fortune 500, is among the retailers that have shown resilient sales even amid a muted economy and inflation fears from the war in Iran that have dampened consumer sentiment. Last month, the company reported that net sales grew 4.8% in the fiscal first-quarter from year-ago levels, though it acknowledged that homeowners were delaying larger projects due to worries about higher gas prices, layoffs, and other economic uncertainties.
Home Depot and rival Lowe’s must also confront a weak housing market, which has been stung by stubbornly high interest rates and rising building material expenses. These headwinds are particularly inopportune for the spring market, traditionally the busiest for the housing sector.
The company’s top technologists divide up their work by giving Brown oversight of the company’s technology strategy, infrastructure, cybersecurity, and software development. Broggi oversees Home Depot’s $25 billion e-commerce business, merchandising, and the customer experience for digital channels, while Bell steers product management, data, and AI.
One of Broggi’s biggest projects has been Magic Apron, which can answer shopper questions and summarize product reviews and debuted in March 2025. Magic Apron’s generative AI capabilities are trained on Home Depot’s product data and contextualized, but Broggi said that when it launched, “the consumers loved it and the pros hated it.”
Home Depot learned that the web-based Magic Apron system was asking pros questions that were too simplistic. Home Depot pulled the pro version offline and is in the process of fine tuning the large language models for a better user experience for that group of shoppers.
Magic Apron can also field questions from the retailer’s employees. Brown is in the early stages of rolling out the functionality to their smartphones and another upgrade down the road will make the tool multilingual.
“Generative AI is becoming more and more a part of everybody’s life,” says Brown, explaining why these AI assistant tools are being adopted by employees.
Another AI use case is internally known as “order intelligence,” which looks backward at millions of data points from Home Depot’s past deliveries and assesses a risk score that takes into account problems such as whether the property may require a gate code, or perhaps sits on a winding, narrow path where a 22-foot delivery truck is better than a 36-foot truck. The system can proactively reach out to customers with any potential problems and provide more accurate delivery times.
Broggi says customers don’t know or even care much that generative AI is working in the background. “They just want their stuff delivered on time, complete, undamaged, and with clear communication,” he added.
Another area of focus is developing a generative engine optimization strategy, known as GEO, as consumers spend more time shopping on AI chatbots like Google’s Gemini, OpenAI’s ChatGPT, and Claude. Home Depot allows shoppers to buy its goods on ChatGPT, while also supporting Google’s Universal Commerce Protocol, which advocates for a common language to support agentic commerce.
Broggi says that thus far, the retail strategy for the AI shopping platforms hasn’t been clearly defined. The AI companies developing the platforms have changed priorities a couple of times, he said. “They’ve got to try to figure out how they want to go to market.”
John Kell
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NEWS PACKETS
Workers who don’t embrace AI are more likely to be laid off. Despite all the hoopla about the “AI jobs apocalypse”—heightened by many firms across tech and elsewhere linking workforce reductions to AI—a new study published by Gallup found that only 1% of laid-off workers say AI was a factor in their job loss. This factor was vastly dwarfed by organizational restructuring, budget cuts, and economic conditions, which are all far more standard explanations historically used by corporations to justify trimming jobs. But a look under the hood of these stats found that currently employed workers were more likely to be frequent AI users than their laid-off counterparts (28% versus 22%, which Gallup said is a “statistically significant difference.” The gap is even higher for employees in the technology industry, Bloomberg reports, a sector that’s been badly hit by layoffs in 2026, including at Meta Platforms, Salesforce, and Cisco Systems.
After Anthropic’s model shutdown, should AI companies be wary of further interventions? A crackdown at Anthropic has led to a flurry of news out of Washington, including a report from Politico that the Claude maker is working with the White House to develop a framework that would assess the security flaws of its Fable 5 and Mythos 5 models. The Fable 5 and Mythos 5 models were taken offline on June 13 after the U.S. government barred Anthropic from distributing the models to any foreign nationals, though President Donald Trump said relations between the government and Anthropic have gotten better. Some experts say model makers should be cognizant that the government could weigh in on AI again. “Now that the Commerce Department has done it, no company can rule out that they’re going to do it again,” Kate Koren, a deputy director at the Center for Strategic and International Studies, told Bloomberg.
Getty’s low share price gets a lift from OpenAI. Following a disclosure over the weekend that the stock photography agency would license its images in the search and discovery features of ChatGPT, investors more than doubled the value of Getty’s shares, though not such a mighty feat given the stock closed at 61 cents on Thursday. Still, Getty’s business model was viewed as particularly threatened by AI due to the rapid rise of image generators, but by monetizing a licensing pact with OpenAI, Getty may be showing Wall Street there’s a path forward to generate revenue from AI. Separately, OpenAI has announced some product news updates in recent days, including an updated version of its cybersecurity model and continues to move forward with plans to turn ChatGPT into an all-purpose “super app” that can handle both simple tasks and more complex requests.
Top AI talent shuffles among hyperscalers. There’s been a flurry of AI executive and researcher changes among the leading AI companies, including news from Business Insider that Noam Shazeer, the founder of Character.AI and VP of engineering and co-lead of Google’s Gemini, would depart to join OpenAI. Axios, meanwhile, reported that an AI policy advisor for the Trump administration, Dean Ball, was also heading to OpenAI. And John Jumper, vice president of Google DeepMind and winner of the 2024 Nobel Prize in chemistry for his work on AI, is departing after nearly nine years for rival Anthropic, according to Bloomberg. Fortune, reporting on the departures at Google, says the loss of top talent is raising questions about the tech giant’s position within the AI race.
ADOPTION CURVE
More than most C-suite leaders, CMOs control their own destiny on AI. As advertisers and marketers are mingling in Cannes for the industry’s most prestigious ad festival, a new survey finds that roughly half of chief marketing officers say they control their AI investment decisions. This group also feels greater pressure to deliver results, with 94% saying CEO expectations have “increased significantly over the past two years,” according to a survey of 300 global CMOs conducted by consulting giant BCG.
“With that great power comes great responsibility,” Mark Abraham, a managing director and senior partner at BCG, tells Fortune. “It’s not just around productivity gains anymore, it’s also about driving growth.” He adds that only a third of CMOs are actually doing the difficult work that’s needed to propel an AI transformation: investing in the tech stack, upskilling workers, and deploying AI agents.
Roughly four in ten CMOs say they are using generative AI only to assist human workers with discrete tasks, with just under a third reporting they’ve moved to agent-led workflows. Only 8% report that they run campaigns in which multiple agents operate autonomously.
CMOs are focusing a lot more on responsible AI usage and ethics training and Abraham says this is an acknowledgement that marketers cannot just hire externally to fill talent gaps. So-called “AI champions”—employees that are enthusiastic about experimentation with the technology—are becoming stars within the department. “They’re often not the most senior people; they’re in the weeds, they’re trying new tools,” says Abraham. “They’re also identifying what the weaknesses and issues with them are, so that the marketing function can work with the tech team to say, ‘Okay, these are the three new tools that are going to help us leapfrog in content creation.’”
Courtesy of BCG
JOBS RADAR
Hiring:
– C3 AI is seeking a CIO and VP, based in Redwood City, California. Posted salary range: $285K-$325K/year.
– Oregon Tool is seeking a VP of global technology, based in Portland, Oregon. Posted salary range: $240K-$260K/year.
– REI is seeking a VP of technology, digital commerce, and customer, based in Seattle. Posted salary range: $275K-$360K/year.
– Spectrum is seeking a head of technology for the intelligence ventures unit, based in New York. Posted salary range: $263.2K-$393.8K/year.
Hired:
– Dollar General announced nine new executive appointments, including the promotion of Tom Hutchins to the role of CTO and Travis Nixon to serve as chief data and AI officer. Prior to joining the discount retailer in September 2024 as SVP of technology, Hutchins worked in retail technology for 25 years, including at Tractor Supply and Office Depot. Nixon, who joined Dollar General in 2025, previously worked at tech firms such as Dropbox, Meta, and Microsoft.
– NASA promoted Sean Gallagher to serve as CIO, responsible for the space agency’s entire portfolio of IT products and services. Gallagher had most recently served as deputy CIO for operations at NASA’s headquarters in Washington. He also previously served as the CIO of the agency’s Glenn Research Center in Cleveland. Prior to joining NASA in 2022, Gallagher worked at Booz Allen Hamilton as a senior associate.
– Crowell & Moring named Andrea Markstrom as CIO. He joined the international law firm after most recently serving as CIO at another firm, Cadwalader, Wickersham & Taft. He has held executive technology and information roles at several firms, including Taft Stettinius & Hollister and Blank Rome.
– FirstEnergy appointed Daniel Puscas to the role of CIO, joining the electric utility after most recently serving as a partner at Fortium Partners, which fills technology C-suite gaps with interim or project-based executive talent. Puscas also previously served as a director at consulting firm AlixPartners, where he served in multiple CIO and chief operating officer roles.
– Cincinnati Financial promoted Ryan M. Osborn to the role of CIO, as John S. Kellington will retire from the position on August 7. Osborn initially joined the insurer in 2000 and most recently served as the director of shared services and the company’s architecture program.
– El Car Wash announced several executive appointments, including naming Ganesh Matha to the role of CTO. Matha joined the express car wash chain from hospitality chain MGM Resorts, where he most recently served as a vice president. Previously, Matha served as a senior manager for Walt Disney.
– Elauwit announced the appointment of Nick Jones as CIO and chief operating officer. He joins WiFi service provider after most recently serving as VP and COO at television systems provider World Cinema. He also previously served as CEO at outsourced managed services provider NJT.
– InnerActiv appointed Johnny Collins to the role of CTO, joining the cybersecurity firm from its peer Halcyon, where he most recently served as director of intelligence operations for its ransomware research center. Previously, Collins served as a managing director at KPMG and a director at Mandiant.
APM Elevate: June 2026
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Fintech Insiders Comment On Bank Of England Stablecoin Rules Proposal
The Bank of England has published proposed rules for privately issued stablecoins. This sector of Fintech may become the new, improved payment rails that provide instant transfers and payments at a lower cost than legacy providers. The rules have encouraged some participants in the stablecoin business. Below is a series of comments CI received from Fintech insiders on the banks’ approach to stablecoin issuance and usage.
The Chief Partnership Officer at Equals, Matthijs Boon, says that until recently, regulation has inhibited the institutional adoption of stablecoins. The Bank of England’s sterling-denominated stablecoin policy is welcome because it recognizes stablecoins as a means of payment rather than as an investment or a store of value.
“Enabling systemic stablecoins to directly access payment systems is an important step towards enabling near-instant settlement with pound sterling-denominated stablecoins,” says Boon. “However, these are initial steps, and regulation is only part of the story. To support mainstream adoption, businesses need regulated payment partners that can manage the operational complexity of introducing a new payment method. As with any payment innovation, success depends on balancing trust and security with simplicity – stablecoin payments will, in time, be commonplace alongside existing treasury, compliance, and payment workflows, and regulated payment partners have an important role in making that transition happen.”
Shantnoo Saxsena, CEO and founder of Encryptus, a regulated cross-border payments infrastructure provider, says the decision to remove individual ownership caps and lower reserve requirements is a welcome step forward. At the same time, the £40 billion issuance limit suggests that policymakers are still focused on the wrong risk.
“The framework assumes stablecoins primarily compete with domestic bank deposits, when much of the demand is driven by cross-border payments. Migrant workers in the UK send more than £9 billion abroad each year, often losing 6-8% of every transfer to correspondent banking fees and delays. A £40 billion cap on sterling stablecoins may sound generous, but it effectively keeps the infrastructure at pilot scale while dollar stablecoins issued elsewhere are already supporting real remittance flows,” states Saxsena. “We operate under US state licensing through Anzens [issuer of USDA, a dollar stablecoin], where regulators focus on reserve quality, redemption rights, and consumer protections rather than imposing artificial limits on growth. The UK now stands alone among major jurisdictions in capping stablecoin issuance in its own currency. That distinction will matter when payment networks and infrastructure providers decide where to invest and build.”
A £40 billion cap on sterling stablecoins may sound generous, but it effectively keeps the infrastructure at pilot scale while dollar stablecoins issued elsewhere are already supporting real remittance flows
The CEO of RS2, Radi El Haj, describes the Bank of England’s proposed framework as an important step for the UK and indicates how quickly the stablecoin market has developed. He notes that Europe has already enacted MiCA, the US has approved stablecoin legislation, and other regions are moving forward.
“Dollar-backed stablecoins already dominate global trading and settlement, while GBP stablecoin volumes remain relatively small,” El Haj says. “The UK has not missed its opportunity; the opportunity has changed. Success will not come from launching the highest number of stablecoins, but from making stablecoins work as part of the wider payments ecosystem by integrating with the infrastructure that supports issuing, acquiring, settlement, reconciliation, and reporting at scale.”
Dollar-backed stablecoins already dominate global trading and settlement, while GBP stablecoin volumes remain relatively small
He sees the Bank of England’s focus on reserve quality, redemption, and operational resilience as reflecting a broader shift in the market. The discussion has moved from whether stablecoins work, and now the priority is whether users can trust stablecoins at scale. The trust arrives from transparency and operational resilience across payment flows and risk.
“Payments have followed this pattern before. Cards, digital wallets and real-time payments achieved widespread adoption because infrastructure, regulation and trust developed together. Stablecoins are following the same path. The challenge now is not creating digital money. The challenge is operating it safely, reliably and consistently across markets, institutions and regulatory environments. That will decide whether stablecoins become a meaningful part of global payments or remain a niche technology,” states El Haj.
Payments have followed this pattern before. Cards, digital wallets and real-time payments achieved widespread adoption because infrastructure, regulation and trust developed together. Stablecoins are following the same path
Torab Torabi, CEO of Movement, a settlement and yield layer for stablecoins that reports access to licensed payment rails across the European Union, believes the Bank of England has realized that in order to compete with the US, it must completely rethink its stablecoin strategy. This is great news for the UK and the pound
“The Bank of England has capped each systemic sterling stablecoin at £40 billion, but that’s not enough to compete on the global stage. USDT is already past $180 billion in stablecoin minting. Yield is the other half of the equation, and the coins that earn for the people holding them are the ones that win distribution. The networks that solve payments and yield in the same place are the ones that will define this category,” adds Torabi.
The Bank of England has capped each systemic sterling stablecoin at £40 billion, but that’s not enough to compete on the global stage. USDT is already past $180 billion in stablecoin minting
Theo Golden, Head of Digital Assets at Baillie Gifford, calls the Bank of England’s proposal on stablecoins exactly what the UK needs. He says this is pro-growth regulation and stablecoins are a key piece of the tokenization puzzle. Onchain infrastructure will make financial markets more resilient, efficient, efficent and useful, says Golden
“Stablecoins will only become trusted money if they are built on familiar regulation, proper oversight, and clear accountability. This approach by the BoE comprises each of these elements,” Gifford says. “There is a good balance between giving innovators a credible route to scale in the UK, while protecting consumers, financial stability and the integrity of sterling. This is how Britain should lead in digital finance: not by racing to the bottom, but by setting world-class rules that attract world-class firms.”
There is a good balance between giving innovators a credible route to scale in the UK, while protecting consumers, financial stability and the integrity of sterling
Gifford says they are excited to see the progress while wondering if this will include settlement for wholesale markets.
“The foundations for tokenization regulation already exist in many areas; what matters now is bringing the remaining pieces of market infrastructure into line with the standards expected across established financial markets. The opportunity for the UK is not to create a lower-standard version of finance onchain, but to apply its existing strengths to new infrastructure and help tokenization become a serious part of how markets operate.”
Zumo founder and CEO Nick Jones adds to the laudatory comments on the bank’s proposal, stating that this shows policymakers can back up their rhetoric and are finally working with industry to ensure the framework will work.
“This is great news for the sector to wake up to this week. It shows policymakers are backing their rhetoric and are committed to really working with the industry to arrive at a framework that suits all stakeholders. Perhaps most importantly, it will encourage the serious stablecoin players, such as Tether and Circle, to engage more meaningfully with the UK market, having understandably previously been put off by the initial draft rules.”
This is great news for the sector to wake up to this week. It shows policymakers are backing their rhetoric and are committed to really working with the industry to arrive at a framework that suits all stakeholders
Like others, Jones sees ownership limits as stifling innovation and putting the UK at a competitive disadvantage.
“It would have also been at odds with the driving idea of providing genuine choice in our future financial system. By shelving these restrictive plans in favor of a more operationally viable issuance limit, the Bank of England can achieve the same policy outcomes without hampering business models. It’s also important that the Bank has recognized valid industry concerns and lowered the proportion of assets backing stablecoins that must be held in zero-interest central bank deposits. Increasing the maximum share held in interest-bearing assets to 70% will help to significantly boost issuers’ profitability, enabling them to generate higher yields on their reserve funds while ensuring the remaining 30% held in central bank deposits maintains adequate liquidity for prompt redemptions.”
Jones predicts the updated rules will make it more attractive to launch pound sterling stablecoins, describing the bank’s proposal as a “timely injection of confidence” the UK needs.
Mark Fairless, CEO of ClearBank, believes there is more work to be done. While welcoming the proposal, he believes the UK cannot win this global race if sterling stablecoins are less commercially viable or less useful than dollar stablecoins or euro-based options.
While the “direction of travel is encouraging” and the bank is listening to industry insiders, further progress is needed to ensure the framework does not constrain sustainable business models.
“Beyond these new rules today, there is a bigger problem, which is that it is near impossible for banks to issue stablecoins in a commercially viable way, meaning the UK is playing catch-up with its global counterparts,” Fairless states. “The endgame should be a truly risk-based framework rather than a one-size-fits-all approach, otherwise the UK is in danger of leaving sterling stablecoins at the starting line while other markets move ahead.”
Beyond these new rules today, there is a bigger problem, which is that it is near impossible for banks to issue stablecoins in a commercially viable way, meaning the UK is playing catch-up with its global counterparts
Xapo Bank Executive Director and Regulatory Affairs Officer Joey Garcia sees the proposal as indicative of the bank’s willingness to take feedback into account, which is good for the UK Fintech sector and a “vital course correction.”
“By shifting away from an overly severe risk lens, UK regulators are setting the UK on a course to maintain pace with the progress already seen in the US, EU, and other major jurisdictions. Critically, a more flexible regime paves the way for a robust sterling stablecoin ecosystem, mitigating the very real risk of the UK market being completely dominated by US Dollar-denominated digital assets. This pragmatic approach will help safeguard the UK’s ambition to remain a leading global hub for financial innovation,” shares Garcia. “Imposing preemptive holding limits of £20,000 and forcing issuers to hold 40% of backing assets in unremunerated deposits would have strangled the UK stablecoin market at birth. By reconsidering these heavy-handed proposals, the Bank of England is choosing to foster digital asset utility rather than restrict it. Regulation must allow for innovation while managing risk, and this decision demonstrates a willingness to engage in a proportionate, constructive dialogue with the industry. It signals that the UK is open for digital finance.”
Critically, a more flexible regime paves the way for a robust sterling stablecoin ecosystem, mitigating the very real risk of the UK market being completely dominated by US Dollar-denominated digital assets
Garcia says the progress is welcome, but questions remain regarding the feasibility and workings of issuance caps, along with concerns about competitiveness and issuer business models “that are constrained to having only 70% of their backing assets capable of remuneration.”
“We look forward to engaging with the Bank of England on further refining these proposals, in line with the House of Lords Financial Services Regulatory Committee’s recommendations, to ensure a truly world-leading outcome.”
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ESG Investing Pros And Cons: What Changed After The SEC Pullback
n today’s market, a company’s bottom line isn’t the only number investors watch. Many also want to know how a company treats the planet, its workers, and its shareholders. If you want to do well while doing good, you may be considering ESG investing — short for environmental, social, and governance investing, also called socially responsible investing (SRI) or sustainable investing.
But the landscape looks very different than it did a few years ago. After explosive growth through 2021, sustainable investing has hit real headwinds: years of fund outflows, a political backlash, and a federal retreat from climate disclosure rules. At the same time, trillions of dollars still sit in ESG-screened strategies, and surveys show steady interest among younger investors.
Here’s an honest look at the pros and cons before you decide whether ESG investing belongs in your portfolio.
Table of Contents
Where ESG Investing Stands In 2026
Pros of ESG Investing
Invest for the Future You Want
Cons of ESG Investing
You May Pay a ‘Greenium’
Does ESG Investing Make Sense for You?
Where ESG Investing Stands In 2026
It helps to separate two very different numbers you’ll see quoted.
The broad figure — counting any assets that incorporate ESG factors in some way — is large but has actually shrunk. After a methodology change by the Global Sustainable Investment Alliance, global ESG assets fell from roughly $35 trillion in 2020 to about $30 trillion in 2022, and Bloomberg Intelligence now projects around $40 trillion by 2030 — well below the $50-trillion-by-2025 estimates that circulated in 2021.
The narrower (and arguably more meaningful) figure counts dedicated sustainable funds and ETFs. By Morningstar’s count, that universe held a little over $3.9 trillion globally at the end of 2025, with the US accounting for only about 9% of it. US sustainable funds have now seen net outflows for three straight years.
That split matters: ESG is still a major force in Europe, but it’s a much smaller, and currently shrinking, slice of the US market.
Pros of ESG Investing
Invest for the Future You Want
ESG investing isn’t only about avoiding harm. Large, publicly traded companies have the scale and resources to push for change — whether by reducing emissions, improving labor practices, or producing products that serve people well. If those outcomes matter to you, aligning your dollars with your values is a legitimate reason to invest this way, regardless of where the broader market sentiment sits.
Build a Portfolio That Will Keep You Invested in Tough Times
Overtrading can be hazardous to wealth. Many investing thought leaders have cited a study that Fidelity’s best investors are dead because they can’t overtrade. The study appears to be debatable, but its point remains. Common investors do best when they buy and hold over the long run.
But sticking with a portfolio allocation can be tough. Investors use all kinds of heuristics to avoid eroding their wealth through common mistakes. Some never look at their portfolio. Others dedicate a small portion of their money to “Vegas money.”
If ESG investors believe that their portfolio is bringing positive social effects, they may be more likely to stay invested in the long run. They won’t have as much incentive to chase the hot new stock because it needs to fit into their socially curated portfolio.
ESG Investing May Produce Returns on Par with Traditional Investing
A common worry is that screening for ESG means sacrificing returns. The long-run evidence is mixed-to-reassuring: multiple studies, including a widely cited Morgan Stanley Institute for Sustainable Investing analysis of thousands of funds, have found that diversified ESG funds performed roughly in line with comparable conventional funds, net of fees.
The key word is roughly. Performance swings with the economic cycle. In 2024, for example, the median US large-blend sustainable fund returned about 20.7%, trailing the 21.5% median for conventional funds, as energy and defense stocks — sectors many ESG funds underweight — rallied. Over a full cycle the gap may close, but you should expect stretches of underperformance, especially during energy booms.
Cons of ESG Investing
You May Pay a ‘Greenium’
ESG and SRI funds have historically carried higher expense ratios than plain index funds, and that’s still true — though the gap has narrowed dramatically as competition and asset flows have driven fees down. At a robo-advisor like Betterment, for instance, the SRI portfolio ETFs run modestly higher than the standard portfolio, a difference now measured in a handful of basis points rather than a full percentage point.
That premium may be worth it to you. But over decades, even small fee differences compound, so it’s worth knowing what you’re paying.
You Have to Pick Your Issues
No company can lead across every ESG dimension. Some promote women in leadership positions, others reduce pollution and carbon emissions. Others avoid cronyism and other misbehaviors that threaten democratic ideals at home and abroad. Few companies do everything well. And most companies choose to report their most impressive records.
Even if clear metrics for ESG efforts existed (which they don’t), investors would still have to choose the issues they care about. For example, oil companies extract and burn fossil fuels, but they are also heavily invested in renewable energy research and development. Even more dubiously, agricultural companies produce food that feeds the planet and lifts millions of farmers out of poverty, but they may be polluters or engaging in unsustainable environmental practices.
One company may have a strong record of women in leadership positions, but over index on polluting and carbon emission activities. Another may have a strong environmental record but have poor employee-management relationships.
When vetting an ESG fund or platform, make sure that you understand which issues are most important to the fund manager. If those values align with yours, then the fund or the platform may make sense for you.
No Clear Environmental, Social, or Governance Standards
The Securities and Exchange Commission (SEC) regulates reporting for publicly traded companies. While the SEC requires companies to report certain metrics, its governance of ESG metrics is loose. As a result, every company manages its own ESG reporting.
An external agency, International Sustainability Standards Board (ISSB) is slowly working towards setting international environmental standards, but this work is slow. Today, investors must depend on company-defined and reported metrics. In some cases, these may be credible sources of information, but they may gloss over some poor business practices.
You either need to trust your fund manager to dig into these metrics for you, or you’ll need to spend a lot of time researching individual companies to add to your portfolio.
US Standards Are In Flux
This has shifted in both directions since 2023.
On one hand, real standards now exist. The International Sustainability Standards Board (ISSB) published global disclosure standards (IFRS S1 and S2) in 2023, and more than 35 jurisdictions worldwide have adopted or are aligning with them.
On the other hand, the US has pulled back. The SEC adopted climate disclosure rules in March 2024, stayed them weeks later amid legal challenges, and in March 2025 voted to end its defense of the rules before moving to rescind them entirely. The SEC also stepped back from the ISSB. For now, federal ESG disclosure for US companies is effectively on hold. What fills the gap is a patchwork: state laws such as California’s SB 253 and SB 261, plus the EU’s Corporate Sustainability Reporting Directive for companies with European operations.
The practical takeaway: US company ESG reporting is still largely self-defined and inconsistent. You’ll need to trust your fund manager’s research or do significant homework yourself.
You May Become Underdiversified
As an ESG investor, you aren’t precluded from investing in any sector of the economy, but you run the risk of becoming under diversified due to your ESG standards. For example, a person who requires a strong track record of women and minorities in leadership positions would find very few large U.S. stocks in their portfolio.
If you don’t actively seek out energy alternatives, you’re likely to miss out on this important sector. Figuring out an appropriate asset allocation becomes very important if you’re an ESG. Using a portfolio analysis tool may be critical to keeping your portfolio on track.
Political And Flow Risk Is Real
ESG investing has become politically polarized in the US, and that has consequences for investors. Several states have passed laws restricting ESG considerations in public-fund investing. Asset managers have responded by quietly dropping “ESG” from fund names, scaling back commitments, and in some cases closing funds. In 2024, for the first time, more US sustainable funds were liquidated or dropped their ESG mandates than were launched.
This doesn’t necessarily affect a diversified fund’s day-to-day returns, but it does mean more fund closures, mergers, and rebranding — which can be disruptive if a fund you own changes course or shuts down.
Does ESG Investing Make Sense for You?
There are hundreds of ESG mutual funds available. Robo-advisors like Betterment and Wealthfront offer ESG options for investors seeking passive options. Take a look at the table below for a quick comparison.
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Header
|
 |
 |
 |
|---|---|---|---|
|
Rating |
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|
Annual Fee |
0.25% to 0.40% |
0.25% |
0.30% |
|
Min Investment |
$0 |
$500 |
$50,000 |
|
Advice Options |
Auto and Human |
Auto |
Auto and Human |
|
Banking? |
|||
|
Cell
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Only you can decide whether to include environmental, social, and governance factors in your portfolio. If you decide to use those factors in your portfolio, you need to choose which issues are most important to you and select your portfolio based on those criteria (and profitability).
Editor: Claire Tak
The post ESG Investing Pros And Cons: What Changed After The SEC Pullback appeared first on The College Investor.