- In today’s CEO Daily: Diane Brady talks to BJ Schaknowski, CEO of the software company symplr.
- The big story: Tomorrow is Tariff Day.
- The markets: Terrible quarter, but upbeat this morning.
- Analyst notes from JPMorgan on recession, Convera on the dollar, Wedbush on autos, and HSBC on the beauty business.
- Plus: All the news and watercooler chat from Fortune.
Good morning. My mother was a nurse who treated everyone with dignity and inspired me to do the same as a journalist. Amid all the debate about healthcare priorities and policies in this country, we can agree that there aren’t enough nurses. That can mean longer wait times, more medical errors, and lower-quality care—as well as higher costs and wages for nurses in hospitals already struggling. While states like Florida are looking to expand nursing education, there’s no question that this is an area where technology has a role to play.
During his confirmation hearing, Health and Human Services Secretary Robert F. Kennedy Jr. spoke glowingly of an “AI nurse that you cannot distinguish from a human being” in terms of diagnostics. Okay. But I suspect that the greatest value in AI is in freeing front-line healthcare workers from the paperwork and data clutter that keeps them from delivering care.
I recently spoke with BJ Schaknowski, CEO of the software company symplr, which serves 90% of U.S. hospitals and more than 400 health plans, about what he’s seeing and doing. “When I listen to these healthcare CEOs and their technology leaders, the one thing I’ve seen is they’ve all woken up and realized that we’re not going to create 3 to 5 million new nurses or a few hundred thousand more doctors. We have to make the ones we have more productive. This is the primary focus of a lot of these healthcare systems right now.”
It’s not hard to understand the business case for AI-enabled surgery or AI agents to handle administrative tasks. The challenge is implementing it. “The average system is using somewhere in 200 to 300 different software tools, so a nurse has to log into 15 to 20 different systems over the course of a single shift and then input the same information 10 to 15 times. We work with hospitals that use 3,700 different systems to run products, to run their health care system.”
Many hospitals are already dealing with reimbursement rates going down as care needs go up. But Schaknowski is hopeful that investments in technology can boost health and patient care. “With technology comes data, with data comes visibility and with visibility comes better decision making,” says Schaknowski. “If you can give a nurse an hour back in his or her day, and you multiply that by hundreds of thousands of nurses and thousands of systems, you’re making a meaningful difference to the amount and quality of care we can deliver.”
More news below.
Contact CEO Daily via Diane Brady at diane.brady@fortune.com
Top news
“Liberation Day” is tomorrow but there’s still no clarity on tariffs. President Trump will unveil his new tariff schedule at a Rose Garden event on Wednesday. But it’s not clear what the details will be.
Goldman Sachs increased its odds for a recession from 20% to 35%.
Fink’s circle is worried. BlackRock CEO Larry Fink said that “nearly every client, nearly every leader—nearly every person—I talk to” is “more anxious about the economy than any time in recent memory,” in his annual letter on Monday, though he didn’t point to any specific causes.
Flights from Canada to the U.S. declined 70%, according to aviation data firm OAG.
OpenAI hits $300 billion valuation. Sam Altman’s AI company took in new investment that nearly doubled the company’s valuation from its previous funding round.
A look at agentic AI. Tech companies touting advances in agentic AI say the new technology will finally bring the productivity gains that CEOs want. But how far along is the tech, and how much does it threaten the traditional workforce?
Trump v Harvard: The White House may freeze $9 billion in funding to Harvard over its failure to stop antisemitic demonstrations on campus.
The markets
- The S&P 500 index surprised everyone by closing up 0.55% yesterday after markets in Japan and Europe plunged in anticipation of President Trump’s April 2 tariff plan. It was still the worst quarter for U.S. equities since 2022, and the S&P ended down 4.59% YTD. Conversely, the VIX fear index is now up 28.41%, YTD. Tech stocks were largely down, with the Nasdaq Composite falling 0.14% after hedge funds began unloading semiconductor stocks. Reddit was among the worst hit, tumbling 2.61%. Trump Media & Technology Group—which comprises the bulk of the president’s personal net worth—is down 42.70% YTD. Europe, Japan, and China all traded up this morning.
From the analysts
- JPMorgan on recession: “On the heels of our recent shift in view to anticipate a roughly 11% US effective tariff rate this year, we are adjusting 2025 forecasts for growth lower and inflation higher. This week’s changes are concentrated in North America where we now project a recession in Mexico and a contraction in Canada next quarter,” per Bruce Kasman et al.
- Convera on the dollar: “Tariffs remain a source of inflationary pressure concerns, raising critical questions for the Federal Reserve: Will these tariff-driven price increases prove temporary, or will they spark more persistent inflationary effects?” per Kevin Ford.
- Wedbush on autos: “The more people we speak with from the auto industry around the world it is becoming crystal clear this tariff/US policy will cause pure chaos to the global auto industry and will raise the prices of a typical car to a US consumer by $5k to $10k out of the gates. We reiterate that the concept of a US car maker with parts all from the US is a fictional tale that does not exist and would take years to make this concept a reality,” per Daniel Ives et al.
- Wedbush on Gamestop’s Bitcoin-buying strategy: “GameStop is following the MicroStrategy playbook, but MicroStrategy currently trades at less then 2x the value of its Bitcoin holdings. We find it hard to understand why any investor would be paying more than 2x cash value for the potential for GameStop to convert that cash into Bitcoin, particularly since the same investors can invest in Bitcoin or a Bitcoin ETF themselves,” per Michael Pachter et al.
- HSBC on the beauty business: “Korea has surpassed France to become the largest source of US beauty product imports,” per Herald van der Linde et al.
Around the watercooler
A top forecaster sees the market bottoming as Wall Street raises recession forecasts over Trump tariffs by Alena Botros
Elon Musk calls for the arrest of those he claims are ‘funding’ anti-Tesla protests by Christiaan Hetzner
Opinion: Trump is knowingly steering the economy off the cliff with tariffs, by Jeffrey Sonnenfeld, Steven Tian and Stephen Henriques
Opinion: Meet the 20th-century media tycoon who would have parried Trump’s isolationist thrust—and not cowered in fear of retaliation, by Norman Pearlstine
This edition of CEO Daily was curated by Joey Abrams and Jim Edwards.
