Financial Mindset

Ramp ended its red-hot summer with one more coup. The six-year-old fintech startup hit $1 billion in annualized revenue as of the end of August, according to a person familiar with the company’s finances—a figure that looks less shocking next to the whopping $22.5 billion valuation it notched in July in an Iconiq-led funding round.  Ramp has been on the kind of tear usually reserved for AI startups, which the company is starting to resemble. Eric Glyman and Karim Atiyeh founded the company in 2019 to upend the corporate credit card market, which challengers like Brex were already trying to wrest away from American Express and Chase.  While Brex and Ramp spent the frothy days of the pandemic in close competition—the Lyft and Uber of corporate cards—Ramp has pulled away in recent years due to its push into other CFO-suite products, including expense management and travel, as well as its near-omnipresent branding. (That has included a Super Bowl spot featuring All-Pro Philade...

Being in the C-suite is a high-pressure job with long hours, responsibilities to the board, and intense scrutiny. But what is it like to be a top executive when you’re off the clock? Fortune ’s series, The Good Life, shows how up-and-coming leaders spend their time and money outside of work. Today we meet the two-time Grand Slam tennis champion, Coco Gauff . Whether you’ve watched her recently shred the courts in the U.S. Open , or you’ve been following her string of career achievements for years, Gauff is one of the biggest names in tennis. The world tuned into her talent when she was only 15 years old—one year into her professional career—as Gauff made history as the youngest to qualify for Wimbledon’s main draw.  Now at the age of 21, the professional athlete hasn’t quit breaking records and taking names. In 2023, she became the youngest American to win the U.S. Open singles title since Serena Williams in 1999; she’d go on to claim the 2025 French Open singles title, her ...

Five weeks after going public with a stunning 250% first-day pop , Figma is coming back down to Earth.  Shares of design software company Figma plunged 14% in extended trading, as investors took a dim view of Figma’s first quarter earnings report.  Figma CEO Dylan Field, who cofounded the company in 2012 and watched its $20 billion acquisition by Adobe fall apart in 2023, isn’t one to get caught up in the negative . “We’re at the very start of what I hope is a long term relationship together,” a confident Field told listeners as he kicked off the earnings call, taking advantage of the opportunity to demonstrate Figma’s presentation technology. Prior to the call, Field spoke to Fortune and shared his thoughts on one of the most important trends affecting his business: AI. “No one knows whether we’re going to look back in five years at everything that’s happening right now in AI and say, ‘Oh my God, those were the bubbliest of times,” Field said. “Or: ‘Wow, we totally und...

What do you want to be when you grow up? It’s a question we all heard as kids, and our answers were frequently telling. A child’s answer— whether firefighter, astronaut, or, in my case, paleontologist—said something about their instincts and their imagined future.  Lots of kids dream of space and fire trucks, but Philip Clark had a distinct set of ambitions: he wanted to be a physicist and the CEO of Lockheed Martin .  “Oh, I loved the [now-retired Lockheed recon aircraft] SR-71 when I was a kid,” said Clark. “I remember my parents put me in a preschool interview, and I was telling people about the aerodynamics of F-16s. I don’t know how much I really understood at the time, but I was definitely talking about it in building-block interviews with preschool and kindergarten principals. They were like: ‘So, you really want to talk about the air resistance on the angular momentum of this particular wing?’”  Today, Clark may not be the CEO of Lockheed Martin (though he’s o...

The U.S. has revoked Taiwan Semiconductor Manufacturing Co.’s authorization to freely ship essential gear to its main Chinese chipmaking base, potentially curtailing its production capabilities at that older-generation facility. American officials recently informed TSMC of their decision to end the Taiwanese chipmaker’s so-called validated end user, or VEU, status for its Nanjing site. The action mirrors steps the U.S. took to revoke VEU designations for China facilities owned by Samsung Electronics Co. and SK Hynix Inc. The waivers are set to expire in about four months.  Washington’s move means that TSMC, Samsung and SK Hynix’s suppliers will have to apply for individual approvals when they want to ship semiconductor equipment and other gear covered by U.S. export controls to the affected China facilities, instead of the blanket authorization those suppliers currently have because of the plants’ VEU status.  TSMC’s shares slid as much as 1.3% in Taipei, while suppliers in...

A new St. Louis Fed study suggests the U.S. may be seeing early signs of AI-driven job displacement, with sectors like computing and math showing the highest overlap between AI adoption and rising unemployment. While entry-level workers appear most vulnerable, research also shows experienced employees in AI-heavy fields are benefiting, as companies slow hiring in traditional roles while doubling down on AI-focused talent. The industries which raced toward artificial intelligence may already be reaping the rewards of their gamble, but it seems at last their staffers might also be paying the price. According to a St. Louis Fed study released last week the U.S. “may be witnessing the early stages of AI-driven job displacement,” with a weighting toward the sectors which adopted the emerging technology most heavily. The research. released on August 26, sought to establish whether AI is contributing to rising unemployment. This comes after an unwelcome surprise in the labor market ear...

When Nestlé abruptly ousted its chief executive Laurent Freixe over Labor Day weekend after revelations of a romantic relationship with a direct subordinate, one detail stood out: He was shown the door without a severance package. That, according to corporate-governance veteran Nell Minow, is almost unheard of in the C-suite. “ That is really unusual,” she told Fortune . “I think that’s actually a badge of success for corporate governance, because that’s something investors have been concerned about for a long time: CEOs being dismissed and somehow getting to stay on.” Nestlé confirmed to Fortune that Freixe will not receive a severance package.  For years, high-profile executives who crossed ethical lines have left with multimillion-dollar parachutes. Famously, Steve Easterbook, the former executive of McDonald’s, walked away from the role with a hefty sum of $40 million after getting caught having a consensual sexual relationship with a subordinate. McDonald’s later clawed...

Takeshi Niinami, a corporate maverick who seldom missed a chance to poke at Japan’s business establishment, has resigned as Suntory Holdings Inc.’s chief executive officer after his home was searched for illegal drugs.  “The entire company will work together to regain trust,” Suntory president Nobuhiro Torii said at a hastily arranged news conference to announce the resignation. Torii declined to comment on the legality of what he described as supplements found in the former CEO’s home, citing the ongoing investigation. Niinami didn’t attend the briefing.  Police were investigating Niinami, 66, on suspected violation of the country’s strict cannabis laws, the Tokyo Shimbun reported earlier Tuesday. Niinami denied the allegations, it said. He’s not yet made any public statements on the matter.  Niinami, who championed reforms and spoke for corporate leaders seeking a more international and competitive corporate sector in Japan, decided to resign after deciding that his ...

CEOs are freezing “first-timer” hires as AI reshapes workflows and automates entry-level tasks, a career coach to the Fortune 500 warns. Gen Z grads who position themselves as problem-solvers and AI-literate innovators will stand out—and land the roles that remain. From OpenAI’s Sam Altman to Anthropic’s Dario Amodei, tech leaders keep sounding the alarm that entire professions could be wiped out by AI in the next 5 years —and entry-level workers are first in line.  Unfortunately, it’s not exclusive to the tech industry, where 82,000 employees have already been laid off .  Looming disruption really is playing out in boardrooms, where Bill Hoogterp is often a fly on the wall: He has spent decades advising thousands of executives, many of whom appear on Fortune ’s lists of the most powerful people in business —and he confirmed what workers are already suspecting. “There’s definitely pausing on a lot of jobs,” Hoogterp told Fortune , adding that while it’s not quite jobs...