Good morning. It’s Jeremy here, filling in for Andrew, who is now on paternity leave for a bit. So you’ll see a rotating cast of Fortune tech journalists writing this newsletter for a few weeks.
Fortune Brainstorm Tech wrapped yesterday. Here were a few highlights from the final day of the conference:
- Tom Hale, the CEO of Oura, told the audience that while overall wearable sales are flat or even declining, sales of his company’s smart ring have more than doubled in the past year. Particularly popular is an AI-powered health coach that analyzes data from the ring and provides bespoke wellness suggestions.
- Neil Vogel, the CEO of publisher People Inc.—whose titles include People and Food & Wine—said Google is the worst when it comes to compensating publishers for using their content to train and improve AI models. The search giant has refused to license content from news organizations and publishers, while other AI labs have done licensing deals. “Some AI shops are good actors. OpenAI is a good guy,” said Vogel. “The worst guy is Google.”
- Hayden Brown, the CEO of Upwork, said that starting this summer the hiring site saw a distinct shift in the most important qualifications employers were seeking in job candidates. Whereas once they favored deep technical know-how, they are increasingly looking for soft skills and people skills as AI automates some technical work and makes it easier for less technical employees to accomplish technical tasks.
Meanwhile, the tech world is talking about Oracle’s massive market gains, which have boosted Oracle founder, chairman, and chief technology officer Larry Ellison’s net worth, allowing him to surpass Elon Musk to claim the title of world’s richest man. Helping to drive Oracle’s stock was the announcement of a massive $300 billion deal with OpenAI to supply the AI company with data center capacity. (Now we know why OpenAI is telling investors it’s going to burn through $115 billion in cash by 2029.) Of course, the only reason Oracle is in this position is down to Ellison’s courting of Nvidia CEO Jensen Huang, which has allowed his company, previously a distinct back-of-the-pack cloud company, to secure a massive stockpile of top-of-the-line Nvidia GPUs. More on Ellison’s soaring fortunes below.
Buy-now, pay-later fintech Klarna’s IPO went off, with the company’s shares gaining 15% on opening day. (Whether that “opening day pop” is a good thing is a debate for another day. It seems like the finance profs have mostly lost the argument, with bankers convincing companies that the money lost from underpricing the shares is worth its weight in marketing and investor buzz from the opening day jump.)
Beatrice Nolan has more too on Sam Altman’s sit down with conservative broadcaster Tucker Carlson. While Altman said a number of interesting things—most of which he has said before—the real news was the fact that Atlman felt the need to do Carlson’s podcast in the first place. Clearly OpenAI has seen reports that the MAGA crowd is unhappy with President Donald Trump’s cozy relationship with Silicon Valley’s biggest players and is hoping to win them over.
The MAGA wing of the Republican Party views AI companies with at best skepticism and at worst, downright disdain, seeing them as woke bastions of left wing coastal elitism, exemplars of Silicon Valley’s inordinate, insidious, and arbitrary power, and, in their quest to build AGI and “superintelligence,” guilty of a kind of idolatry (essentially trying to build God in a machine). You can watch Carlson press Altman on these points throughout the podcast, while Altman tries, often awkwardly, to parry the premise of Carlson’s questions, or assure Carlson that there’s really not as much ideological distance between them as Carlson seems to assume. It’s all slightly cringey (especially Carlson’s over-the-top facial expressions). But, despite the cringe factor, it is probably worth watching, if only to get a deeper sense of the reasons MAGA distrusts Silicon Valley in general and AI in particular.
Ok, now here’s more tech news.
—Jeremy Kahn
Want to send thoughts or suggestions to Fortune Tech? Drop a line here.
Larry Ellison’s brief stint as world’s richest man
Oracle’s revenue projections sent the stock, and Ellison’s net worth, soaring on Wednesday. It was bad news for old friend Elon Musk, though, whose nearly year-long reign as the world’s richest man came to a brief end. (Oracle stock pulled back a bit before the close, allowing Musk to regain the title.)
Oracle’s strong quarterly results added a whopping $101 billion to Ellison’s wealth at one point, boosting his fortune to $393 billion and leapfrogging above Musk’s $385 billion, according to Bloomberg’s Billionaires Index. The staggering increase was the largest one-day increase ever recorded by the index.
Oracle stock surged 36% on Wednesday—the company’s biggest one-day increase ever—after executives reported blowout bookings and gave a bullish cloud outlook. The rally adds to the 45% gain the company already notched up this year.
The Wall Street Journal reported that the majority of the new revenue will come from OpenAI, which signed a staggering $300B cloud agreement with Oracle. The AI firm will tap Oracle’s computing infrastructure under the billion dollar deal, which is one of the largest cloud contracts ever signed. The commitment far exceeds OpenAI’s current revenue.
Oracle’s revenue projections shocked analysts, who told CNBC they were “blown away” and “all kind of in shock.” Some, however, are urging caution, warning the unprecedented success has made the stock overvalued.
—Beatrice Nolan
Frost-Nixon meet Carlson-Altman
The pair also discussed OpenAI cofounder Elon Musk, with Altman saying he now “feels differently” about the man he once saw as an “incredible hero.” Perhaps it's because of the lawsuits, or the X spats.
In one tense moment, when the pair discussed OpenAI whistleblower Suchir Balaji’s death, Altman asked if Carlson was accusing him of murder after the podcast host declared the death, which authorities have ruled as a suicide, “definitely murder.”
"I haven't done too many interviews where I have been accused of murder,” Altman said.
—Beatrice Nolan
What, you mean Teams isn't as good as being there?
Microsoft is cracking down on its hybrid work policy.
The tech giant is mandating a minimum of three in-office days a week for employees beginning February 2026, according to a Business Insider report.
The policy will first apply to Seattle-area staff, later expanding nationwide and globally. Workers have until Sept. 19 to request exceptions. Microsoft rolled out a flexible work policy after offices reopened from pandemic closures where employees were permitted to work from home up to half the time without official approval.
This move follows similar steps from Big Tech rivals including Meta and Google, which already enforce similar RTO rules. The stricter approach comes as the company increases pressure on employees, reshaping performance expectations in an effort to prepare for the next phase of AI-driven growth.
Staff in Microsoft’s AI division, led by DeepMind cofounder Mustafa Suleyman, will face an even stricter requirement: four days a week on site starting January 2026, with exceptions only granted at the highest levels.
—Beatrice Nolan
Pop goes the Swedish fintech
Klarna climbed 15% in its Wednesday trading debut.
The Swedish-born fintech shares closed at $45.82, 15% above the $40 offer price. CEO Sebastian Siemiatkowski framed the listing as proof Klarna is moving beyond buy-now, pay-later into broader banking products, even if the company’s value has dropped well below its 2021 peak.
The closing price values the company at over $17 billion based on its outstanding shares, with stock options and warrants adding slightly to that figure. The company’s debut also made dozens of staffers millionaires, and its cofounders billionaires.
The listing arrives amid a resurgence in the IPO market, which has been under pressure, with companies including Figma debuting with strong performances. Klarna’s debut didn’t quite make the same splash as Figma’s in July, which saw the stock more than triple from its offer price.
—Beatrice Nolan
More tech
—Meta and TikTok score a win against EU tech fees. But won’t receive any money back while officials reformulate the levy.
—Apple’s new AI guidelines are Trump-friendly. The company marked DEI as a “controversial” topic.
—Reddit removes subscriber counts from subreddits. The platform will switch to displaying weekly active visitors.
—Amazon-owned Zoox launches public service in Las Vegas. It’s limited to pick-ups and drop-offs at a select number of pre-approved locations.
