Long-time CEO Jensen Huang said in an interview this year that he rarely conducts layoffs and instead prefers to “torture employees into greatness.” It turns out, he might not have been joking.
Being the AI chip brain behind ChatGPT and other popular forms of AI has led Nvidia — and its vested employees — to benefit financially from the AI boom. A June poll of over 3,000 Nvidia employees (out of around 30,000) showed that 76% were millionaires and one in three had a net worth of more than $20 million because of the company’s growth. Since October 2022, Nvidia’s stock has jumped over 1,000%.
However, a Monday Bloomberg report revealed that though Nvidia’s boom may have created millionaires, its work culture and expectations for those employees remain the same: It’s a “pressure cooker.”
Ten current and former Nvidia employees who spoke with Bloomberg detailed long working hours, yelling and fighting at meetings, and vying for the attention of a supervisor who could have more than 100 other direct reports.
A former enterprise tech support employee claimed he worked every day, including weekends, until 1 a.m. or 2 a.m., and that his engineer coworkers worked longer hours. Other employees claimed to have at least seven meetings a day.
Employees who worked less than the norm were called out at company-wide meetings. In December, Huang faced complaints from staff about their “semi-retired” peers. He responded by asking every employee to become the CEO of their time.
Nvidia founder and CEO Jensen Huang. Photo by Michael M. Santiago/Getty Images
Still, despite reports of a stressful work environment, Nvidia has had no trouble retaining employees. The company’s sustainability report for fiscal year 2024 details that overall turnover was 2.7% compared to the industry average of 17.7%.
Nvidia’s low turnover rate could be attributed to the way it gives employees access to stock grants. The stock vests over four years, so an employee gradually gains ownership of the award. So it’s in the employee’s best interest to stick with the company to maximize benefits.
Nvidia is also a famously “flat” organization, with minimal hierarchy, which could make the company an appealing choice. Huang has 60 direct reports.
PORTICELLO, Sicily — Rescuers searching the wreck of a superyacht that sank off Sicily brought ashore a fifth body on Thursday, leaving one person still unlocated, as investigators sought to learn why the vessel sank so quickly.
Rescue crews brought the body bag ashore at Porticello port while divers continued the search for the sixth missing person.
No signs of life have emerged over four days of searching the yacht’s hull on the seabed 50 meters (164 feet) underwater.
The Bayesian, a 56-meter (184-foot) British-flagged yacht, went down in a storm early Monday as it was moored about a kilometer (half mile) offshore. Civil protection officials said they believe the ship was struck by a tornado over the water, known as a waterspout, and sank quickly.
The six missing passengers included British tech magnate Mike Lynch, his 18-year-old daughter and associates who had successfully defended him in a recent U.S. federal fraud trial.
In a late-stage economy dominated by established players, opportunity for new economic entrants can be bleak. So we went our own way. In the fall of 2022, at 19 and 22, we dropped out of Vanderbilt to establish Movement Labs. A year later, in the fall of 2023, we secured $3.4 million in pre-seed funding to kickstart our vision. Fast forward to April 2024, and we’ve just closed a $38 Million Series A round. Our journey isn’t just about reshaping the future of technology and finance with a next-gen coding language, it’s about the realities of navigating life as Gen Z starting from scratch.
The Gen Z advantage in a fast-moving space
Being young and flexible has been our secret weapon in the rapidly evolving world of blockchain and Web3. Our ability to adapt quickly, think outside the box, and challenge conventional wisdom has allowed us to identify and solve problems that others might overlook.
As digital natives, we grew up in a world where technology evolves at breakneck speed. This has instilled in us a natural ability to navigate and innovate in fast-moving spaces like blockchain. We’re not weighed down by legacy thinking or outdated practices—instead, we’re driven by a vision of what the future could be.
Breaking free from traditional paths
College helped us mature and develop into capable new economic entrants and entrepreneurs. But benefits to being in college eventually diminished, and we found rare opportunities that existed in the moment. College has been shaped as a path to finding a job and starting a career. Once we found a more stable and streamlined path, it only made sense to go all in.
Our generation understands that paths we’re told to follow don’t lead where they used to. We’re not afraid to take calculated risks and go off the path. This mindset has allowed us to move decisively, pivoting our focus to the Move programming language when we recognized its potential to revolutionize the blockchain industry.
Solving real problems in the blockchain space
Our goal at Movement Labs is to create a unified blockchain ecosystem where developers can build secure applications that interact seamlessly across different networks, and users can confidently manage their digital assets without fear of hacks or incompatibility issues.
The Move programming language was originally created by Meta (formerly Facebook) with the goal of building a foundation for a world where digital information is smart and programmable. While many in the tech world moved on when Meta’s project changed direction, we saw hidden potential that others missed.
Move is like a super-secure and efficient language for the digital age. It’s designed to handle information and digital assets more safely and effectively than older systems, making it ideal for businesses and financial applications.
This potential inspired us to make a bold move—we quit our internships and dropped out of college to go all in on Move. We’re swimming against the current, but that’s where we see the biggest opportunity. In most industries, large corporations have already claimed the lion’s share of the market. They’ve become like well-oiled machines, making it hard for newcomers to break in.
By focusing on Move when others have overlooked it, we’re creating a new playing field. It’s our chance to build something groundbreaking and carve out our own space in the fast-moving world of technology and finance.
Building a community-driven future
One of the most exciting aspects of being Gen Z entrepreneurs in the Web3 space is the emphasis on community. We are fostering a vibrant ecosystem of innovative builders and community contributors who share our vision. We build our seats at the table together.
This community-driven approach is second nature to our generation. We’ve grown up in a world of social media, open-source software, and collaborative online spaces. We understand that the best innovations often come from diverse groups working together toward a common goal. And we understand that breaking the mold requires collaboration between a number of diverse skill sets.
Our vision for the Move language is to make it accessible and decentralized. We want to level the playing field, opening doors for a new wave of innovation. This approach gives Gen Z around the world the chance to freely create and collaborate, building their own futures without traditional gatekeepers. It’s about empowering our generation to shape the digital economy, together.
The future is now
To those who might doubt the ability of young entrepreneurs to lead in such a complex industry, we say: The future is already here, and we’re building it. Our $38 million funding round isn’t just a validation of our technology—it’s a testament to the power of fresh perspectives and bold ideas.
We believe that the next wave of technological revolution will be led by those who are willing to question everything and reimagine what’s possible. That’s what we’re doing at Movement Labs, and that’s what we believe our generation brings to the table.
So, to our fellow Zoomers, we say: Don’t be afraid to take risks and challenge the status quo. Your unique perspective and skills are needed in the tech industry and beyond. And to the generations prior, we say: Embrace the energy and innovation that young entrepreneurs bring to the table. We can build a better future together.
Read more:
The opinions expressed in Fortune.com commentary pieces are solely the views of their authors and do not necessarily reflect the opinions and beliefs of Fortune.
Recommended Newsletter: CEO Daily provides key context for the news leaders need to know from across the world of business. Every weekday morning, more than 125,000 readers trust CEO Daily for insights about–and from inside–the C-suite. Subscribe Now.
The problem with the AI bubble isn’t that it is bursting and bringing the market down—it’s that the hype will likely go on for a while and do much more damage in the process than experts are anticipating.
Economic analysts, consultants, and business leaders are desperate for anything that will lift productivity growth in the industrialized world. It has been disappointing in the information age, despite all of the glimmer and talk of revolutionary technologies. Total Factor Productivity (TFP)—economists’ favorite measure of macroeconomic productivity which estimates how much aggregate output is growing due to improvements in efficiency and technology—used to grow about 2% a year throughout the 1950s, 60s, and early 70s. Since the 1980s, its growth has been hovering around 0.5%. The promise of an AI-driven productivity boom is music to everyone’s ears.
It isn’t just wishful thinking on the part of businesses. The hype machine of the tech world is powerful. We are told every day in newspapers and social media about the transformative effects of new tools, sparkling with superhuman intelligence.
And of course, the prospect of artificial general intelligence (AGI) appeals to us after decades of Hollywood movies where machines become so capable that they battle it out with humans.
Alas, it seems unlikely that anything of the scale promised by the tech world—such as rapid advances towards singularity where machines can do everything humans can—is even remotely possible. Even more grounded predictions such as those from Goldman Sachs that generative AI will boost global GDP by 7% over the next decade and from the McKinsey Global Institute that the annual GDP growth rate could increase by 3-4 percentage points between now and 2040, may be far too optimistic.
What should we expect from AI?
My own research shows that the effect of the suite of AI technologies is more likely to be in the range of about 0.5%-0.6% increase in U.S. TFP and about 1% increase in US GDP within 10 years. This is nothing to sneer at. Given the state of the economy in the United States and other industrialized countries, we should welcome such a contribution with open arms and do our best so that this potential is realized. Yet, it isn’t transformative.
Where this number comes from is useful to understand, not just to increase our confidence in it but also to know why we could even squander that potential if we give in to the hype.
On its current trajectory and with current capabilities, AI’s biggest impact will come from automating some tasks and making workers a little more productive in some occupations. For now, this can only happen in occupations that do not involve much interaction with the real world (construction, custodial services, and all sorts of blue-collar and craft work are out) and in occupations that do not have a central social element (psychiatry, much of entertainment and academia are out). Even in occupations that fall outside of these categories, getting much productivity growth from AI will be difficult. Physicians could benefit from AI in diagnosis and calibrating their treatment and prescription decisions. But this requires much more reliable AI models—not gimmicks such as large language models that can write Shakespearean sonnets.
Based on the available evidence and these considerations, I estimate that only about 4.6% of tasks in the U.S. economy can be meaningfully impacted by AI within the next decade.
Combine this with existing estimates of how much of a productivity gain businesses can get from the use of generative AI tools, which is on average about 14%, and you come up with a TFP boost of only 0.66% over ten years, or by 0.06% annually.
I readily admit that there is a huge degree of uncertainty. It may well be that generative AI models will make tremendous progress within the next few years and suddenly they can do much more than the 4.6% I currently estimate. Or they could revolutionize the process of science, leading to myriad new materials and products that we could not dream of today and completely change the production process for the better.
But I, for one, don’t think this is the likely outcome. A very tiny percentage of U.S. companies are currently using AI, and it will be a slow process until AI is productively used throughout the economy.
Hype is the enemy
Worse, the hype may be the biggest enemy of getting productivity increases from AI, and the misallocation of resources that it causes could make us lose the modest gains that we can get from AI.
This is for at least three reasons. First, with the hype, there will be a lot of overinvestment in AI. Most business executives, at least until last week’s market correction and soul-searching, were under pressure to jump on the AI bandwagon. If you are not investing in AI massively, you are lagging behind your peers, they were told by journalists, consultants, and tech experts. This leads to efficiency losses not to efficiency gains. In a rush to automate everything, even the processes that shouldn’t be automated, businesses will waste time and energy and will not get any of the productivity benefits that are promised. The hard truth is that getting productivity gains from any technology requires organizational adjustment, a range of complementary investments, and improvements in worker skills, via training and on-the-job learning. The miraculous, revolutionary returns from AI are very likely to remain a chimera.
Second, there will be a lot of wasted resources, investment, and energy, as tech companies and their backers go after bigger and bigger generative AI models. The current market correction will not stop tech leaders from asking for trillions of dollars to buy even more GPU capacity and strive to build bigger models. They may pass on some of these costs by selling their services and technologies to businesses that are not ready to undertake this transition, but as a society, we surely bear the consequences of this overinvestment.
Third and most fundamentally, boosting productivity requires workers to become more productive, gain greater expertise, and use better information in their decision-making and problem-solving. This applies not just to journalists, academics, and office workers—most of what electricians, plumbers, blue-collar workers, educators, and healthcare workers do is tackle a series of problems. The better the information they use, the better they will be at their jobs and the more able they will become to take on more sophisticated tasks. The real promise of AI is as an informational tool: to collect, process, and present reliable, context-dependent, and easy-to-use information to human decision-makers.
But this is not the direction in which the tech industry, mesmerized by human-like chatbots and dreams of AGI and misled by self-appointed AI prophets, is heading.
More must-read commentary published by Fortune:
The opinions expressed in Fortune.com commentary pieces are solely the views of their authors and do not necessarily reflect the opinions and beliefs of Fortune.
Recommended Newsletter: CEO Daily provides key context for the news leaders need to know from across the world of business. Every weekday morning, more than 125,000 readers trust CEO Daily for insights about–and from inside–the C-suite. Subscribe Now.
SAN JOSE — An eye-catching San Jose office building has landed a big lease with a cutting-edge tech company in a deal that offers a hopeful counterpoint to the dismal swaths of empty spaces in the Bay Area.
A large new tenant has agreed to take some space at One Santana West, a new office building at 3155 Olsen Drive across the street from the Santana Row neighborhood in San Jose, according to executives with Federal Realty Investment Trust, the principal owner and developer of Santana West.
One Santana West office building (foreground left), located at 3155 Olsen Drive in San Jose across the street from Santana Row (background). (Federal Realty Investment Trust)
The disclosure of the rental agreement came during a conference call that Federal Realty’s top officials held with Wall Street analysts to discuss the real estate firm’s financial results for the April-through-June second quarter.
“Lease-up at Santana West continues with a newly signed deal with an AI-powered cloud database provider for 24,000 square feet on the first floor of the state-of-the-art building,” Donald Wood, Federal Realty chief executive officer, said during the conference call.
The tech company’s deal extends what appears to be brisk leasing activity at One Santana West, which totals roughly 376,000 square feet.
“Active negotiations with other prospective tenants for much of the remainder of the building should enable us to continue to report on new deals,” Wood said during the conference call.
Before the lease with the artificial intelligence tech company, One Santana West had enticed two other companies to sign rental agreements.
— PwC, a professional services titan, signed a lease during the spring to occupy 141,000 square feet.
— Acrisure, a fast-expanding financial technology and insurance company, leased 29,000 square feet in late 2023.
Newmark, a commercial real estate firm scouting for office tenants for Santana Row, has used the array of amenities at the destination neighborhood to entice tenants to sign up for spaces in One Santana West.
“The leasing at Santana West with this new AI-based tech company is going to bring us well above 50%,” said Dan Gee, Federal Realty’s chief financial officer, referring to the amount of the building that is rented.
Federal Realty didn’t disclose the name of the tenant that took the space.
The rental agreement materializes at a time when office vacancies throughout the Bay Area have reached or are near all-time highs.
“This is an important sign for the San Jose office market,” said Bob Staedler, principal executive with Silicon Valley Synergy, a commercial real estate firm. “Every lease matters to dig out of the huge number of vacant square feet of existing office space.”
One Santana West appears poised to land even more tenants that collectively could take big chunks of additional space in the office building.
“We’re working back and forth, actually pretty rapidly right now, with about another 70,000 square feet of demand there,” Federal Realty’s Gee said. “We may not be able to sign all of them. We’ll see.”
The activity and interest are strong enough, however, that Federal Realty envisions a time in the relatively near future when One Santana West could be filled up.
“We’ll start to get pretty well leased up by the end of the year, beginning of the first quarter of next year,” Gee said.
In 2023, Federal Realty began to seek multiple tenants for One Santana West. The focus on landing tenants that would take less than the entire building appears to be paying off.
“That’s where we’re seeing really, really strong demand,” Gee said, referring to the interest from smaller tenants.
The real estate firm’s original approach was to sign up a single big tenant to occupy the entire One Santana West building.
“Federal Realty is showing true leadership in being able to break apart their building into smaller spaces,” Staedler said.
What if you could turn all the bad emissions from fossil fuel-intensive industries into plastics, paints and more? That’s the dream behind Copenhagen-based climate tech startup Again, which has raised $43 million in Series A funding from Google Ventures (the venture arm of Google parent Alphabet) and HV Capital, Fortune exclusively reveals.
The company will use the funds to devote more resources to researching food and feed products that can be made of carbon dioxide.
Cofounder Max Kufner told Fortune that the company plans to roll out its first operations by the end of 2025 or early 2026 at the latest.
Again’s technology pumps carbon dioxide that would otherwise be released into the atmosphere into bioreactors. Bacteria then convert this carbon into valuable products used to make plastics, paints, and soaps.
Refining petroleum to extract different chemicals is responsible for 4% of the world’s direct greenhouse gas emissions, or about 1.8 gigatonnes of carbon dioxide, making the petrochemicals industry the third most polluting in the world.
COURTESY OF AGAIN
Again has raised about $100 million to date, partly from a European Union grant and partly from venture capital funding. The company received a $10 million injection from GV, ACME Capital and Atlantic Labs to set up a production site.
Founded in 2021, the company was born from a research project developed over 10 years at the Danish Technical University, Stanford, and MIT. That gave Again a leg up when it launched, as much of the learning curve of developing the technology had been crossed, making it easier to build the company and focus on scaling up.
Torbjørn Jensen and Alex Nielsen, academics involved in the research, later became cofounders at Again, along with early-stage investor Kufner.
Climate tech has expanded 45 times in the last decade, according to Dealroom. But as global temperatures and extreme weather events continue rising, there’s still a need for significantly more.
Again’s technology helps solve one of climate technology’s biggest barriers—the ability to scale it. One of the biggest challenges with modern climate tech companies is that they’re trying to capture carbon dioxide from the atmosphere, turn it into a very small form and pump it back into the earth, Kufner explains.
Jensen told Fortune that the process of capturing and converting carbon dioxide efficiently is what makes Again stand out.
“We are basically cleaning up the emissions and we just so happen to also produce a super valuable product at the same time,” he said. “But it needs to be cheap, it needs to be robust, it needs just to operate 24/7 all year round.”
Recommended Newsletter: CEO Daily provides key context for the news leaders need to know from across the world of business. Every weekday morning, more than 125,000 readers trust CEO Daily for insights about–and from inside–the C-suite. Subscribe Now.
Theranos is the telltale story of when VC funding goes awry. The company, which claimed it developed a revolutionary blood-testing technology, raised roughly $724 million from investors. It was valued at $9 billion before it imploded because of a fatal flaw in the company—its product didn’t work. It was all hype, no real value. Even when VC-backed founders aren’t fraudulent, there’s a tendency to prioritize funding and scaling to the detriment of the product.
I founded my company Jotform over 18 years ago. With no outside funding, it’s been a slow climb at times, but today, we have over 25 million users worldwide. I learned a lot about bootstrapping and how it creates the right mix of pressure, thrift, and creativity for developing great, profitable products. Here’s a closer look at why VC funding can cause startups to make bad products.
Where VC funding goes awry
People often assume “small business” and “startup” are interchangeable. But ask any founder and they’ll likely tell you their ambitions are huge. Bootstrappers are no different. In fact, according to a recent report from startup lender Capchase, bootstrapped software-as-a-service businesses are growing just as fast as their venture-backed counterparts—despite spending only a quarter of what VC-backed businesses do on acquiring each new customer.
What’s more, studies show that 64% of the top 100 unicorn startups—those valued at over $1 billion—aren’t profitable at all.
As the Capchase report explains, before investing in growth, top-performing startups focus their efforts on nailing the product-market fit. That means finding a match between your product and the people who need it. This, in turn, creates happy customers, high demand, and organic, sustainable growth. A staggering 34% of startups fail because they don’t find the right product-market fit. A brilliant idea doesn’t always cut it.
Let’s say you’re a VC-backed startup and you’re not seeing the growth you’d hoped for. Maybe you’ll ramp up spending on sales and marketing campaigns, leaving a shorter runway (the amount of time your business can keep afloat with cash reserves alone). And maybe you’ll achieve the desired effect (customer acquisition), but it’s risky and the long-term return is uncertain. If you’re a bootstrapper, you don’t have that option.
So, what do you do instead?
What bootstrappers do differently
Bootstrapping may sound scrappy, but in many respects, it’s a luxury. As a bootstrapper, you have the luxury of focusing obsessively on your product and answering to no one.
When I first founded my company, I loved our initial product, online forms, because I saw its potential to make people’s lives easier. That factor—ease of use—was my principal concern, hence our original tagline “The Easiest Form Builder.” I loved the product so much, and I got so much joy from seeing people using it, that I gave it away for free (while clocking 9-5 at my day job). From February 2006 to March 2007, we didn’t have a paid version of our product. Nonetheless, this was a pivotal period for the company.
Why? Because I listened to early users and received invaluable feedback on how they were using our product and how I could improve it. I refined and iterated before I ever released a paid version. Because people genuinely saw the value in our product, we grew our customer base before spending a dime on marketing.
If I had investors who required me to meet arbitrary KPIs, I would have been spending my early days mastering PR and sales. I wasn’t an expert in either of those fields, nor did I enjoy them. I’m certain the company wouldn’t have taken off if I’d been forced to focus exclusively on those aspects of the business.
Your most important stakeholders
Today, as a mentor to several founders, I always share my rule of 50-50: spend half your time on the product, and half your time on growth. I also encourage founders to release their most important features as soon as possible so they can get them into users’ hands. Then, they can elicit critical feedback on their product—before even asking people to pay for it.
That’s another takeaway: Never stop listening to users—your most important stakeholders. When people are too tied to their product, and ignore whether it meets their users’ needs, they’re bound to fail. Organically growing a business requires letting go of your ego and understanding that even smart products fall flat if they don’t meet a target audience’s specific needs.
Another thing that bootstrappers do differently is that they focus their efforts on making an impact. The Capchase report, for example, found that the healthiest businesses don’t spend the most on sales and marketing, but rather, have a “razor-sharp” understanding of which channels and campaigns have the biggest impact and show a quicker return. In the early startup stages, perfecting your product has more of an impact than flashy marketing campaigns. With tighter budgets and smaller teams, bootstrappers tend to apply this way of thinking to everything they do. That’s why I tell entrepreneurs and team membersto automate their busywork—to dedicate more time to “the big stuff,” or more meaningful work that moves the needle for your company or career.
Recent reports show that in 2024, VC-funding hit a six-year low. This may have sent shudders across the startup landscape, but it shouldn’t. Bootstrapping is a safer, more reliable route. And perhaps most importantly for your company, it creates the optimal environment for developing a better product for your customers.
More must-read commentary published by Fortune:
The opinions expressed in Fortune.com commentary pieces are solely the views of their authors and do not necessarily reflect the opinions and beliefs of Fortune.
Nvidia has seen soaring demand for its semiconductors, which are used to power artificial intelligence applications. Revenue more than tripled in the latest quarter from the same period a year earlier.
The company’s journey to be one of the most prominent players in AI has produced some eye-popping numbers. Here’s a look:
$3.334 Trillion
Nvidia’s total market value as of the close Tuesday. It edged past Microsoft ($3.317 trillion). Apple is the third most-valuable company ($3.286 trillion). One year ago, the company had just crossed the $1 trillion threshold.
$113 billion
The one-day increase in Nvidia’s market value on Tuesday.
$135.58
Nvidia’s closing stock price Tuesday. Two weeks ago the stock traded at more than $1,200, but the company completed a 10-for-1 stock split after trading closed on June 7. That gave each investor nine additional shares for every share they already owned. Companies with a high stock price often conduct stock splits to make the stock more affordable for investors.
$119.9 billion
Analysts’ estimate for Nvidia’s revenue for the fiscal year that ends in January 2025. That would be about double its revenue for fiscal 2024 and more than four times its receipts the year before that.
53.4%
Nvidia’s estimated net margin, or the percentage of revenue that gets turned into profit. Looked at another way, about 53 cents of every $1 in revenue Nvidia took in last year went to its bottom line. By comparison, Apple’s net margin was 26.3% in its most recent quarter and Microsoft’s was 36.4%. Both those companies have significantly higher revenue than Nvidia, however.
32%
How much of the S&P 500’s gain for the year through May came only from Nvidia.
Hoffmeister also highlighted the anticipated smaller benefit from pricing changes in the second quarter compared with the first three months of the year.
“We remain resolutely confident in the great products and go-to-market initiatives fuelling our continuous growth and our ability to further strengthen our position as a leader in unified commerce,” he said. “We expect Q2 to be a continuation of our strong momentum.”
The company said its merchants solutions revenue amounted to USD$1.35 billion in its latest quarter, up from USD$1.13 billion a year earlier, which it attributed primarily “to the benefit from the absence of logistics.”
Meanwhile, subscription solutions revenue totalled USD$511 million, up from USD$382 million in the same quarter last year.
On an adjusted basis, Shopify said it earned 20 cents USD per diluted share in its latest quarter, up from an adjusted profit of a penny USD per share in the first quarter of 2023. That compared with analysts’ expectations of 17 cents USD per diluted share, according to LSEG Data & Analytics.
Automation enables growth without hiring
Following last year’s job cuts, Shopify has kept its headcount flat for three consecutive quarters, said president Harley Finkelstein. He said he believes Shopify can limit headcount growth while “achieving a continued combination of consistent top-line growth and profitability” in part because of automation.
“Over the past 18 months, we’ve committed significant effort into building efficient infrastructure and systems, which are instrumental in streamlining our work and maintaining our high-velocity product releases,” Finkelstein said. “Essentially, these systems and this infrastructure act as catalysts, enabling us to operate with increased efficiency and speed.”
Hoffmeister pointed to increased use of artificial intelligence for merchant support. He said more than half of Shopify’s merchant support interactions in the first quarter were assisted by AI “and often fully resolved with the help of AI.”
AI has also enabled 24/7 live support in eight languages that previously were offered only certain hours of the day.
“We have significantly enhanced the merchant experience,” he said. “The average duration of support interactions has decreased, and the introduction of AI has helped reduce the reluctance that some merchants previously had towards asking questions that they might perceive as trivial or naïve.”
The Canadian Press is Canada’s trusted news source and leader in providing real-time stories. We give Canadians an authentic, unbiased source, driven by truth, accuracy and timeliness.
Tech stocks have a long reputation for providing consistent and significant gains over the long term, proven by the Nasdaq-100 Technology Sector’s 395% rise over the last 10 years.
The industry’s ever-expanding nature is driven by reliable demand for upgrades to various hardware and software products. So, it’s unsurprising that investing mogul Warren Buffett’s holdings company, Berkshire Hathaway, has dedicated more than 40% of its portfolio to tech stocks. Meanwhile, Berkshire’s holdings posted a compound annual gain of nearly 20% between 1965 and 2023.
As a result, it could be worth following suit and making a sizable long-term investment in the high-growth sector. So, here are three stocks to invest $30,000 in right now — $10,000 for each.
1. Advanced Micro Devices
Advanced Micro Devices(NASDAQ: AMD) business has exploded over the last decade, taking on a leading role in the chip market.
A decade ago, the company was on the brink of bankruptcy, bleeding money alongside mounting debt. Then, in 2014, Lisa Su became AMD’s CEO, triggering one of the most impressive turnarounds in the tech market’s history.
The launch of its Ryzen line of central processing units (CPUs) in 2017 has been a major growth catalyst, with AMD’s CPU market share rising from 18% in the first quarter of 2017 to 33% in 2024. The company has gradually chipped away Intel‘s share, which fell from 82% to 64% in the same period.
AMD Chart
Shares in AMD have soared 3,500% over the last 10 years. As a result, an investment of $10,000 in AMD’s stock in 2014 would be worth more than $357 billion today.
Of course, past growth doesn’t always indicate what’s to come. However, the company has an exciting outlook that could deliver major gains over the next 10 years. AMD is investing heavily in artificial intelligence (AI), launching new AI graphics processing units (GPUs) this year and investing in AI personal computers.
The AI market hit nearly $200 billion last year and is projected to reach nearly $2 trillion by 2030. Alongside positions in other areas of tech, such as cloud computing, video games, and consumer PCs, AMD will likely continue benefiting from the tailwinds of tech for years.
Consequently, an investment of $10,000 in AMD’s stock over the next decade could deliver significant gains.
2. Amazon
It’s impossible to deny Amazon‘s (NASDAQ: AMZN) potent role in tech. Thanks to its popular e-commerce site, the company has built up immense brand loyalty worldwide. Amazon’s retail site is available in over 20 countries and ships to more than 100 nations.
The success of Amazon’s e-commerce business has seen annual revenue climb 546% since 2014, with operating income skyrocketing by more than 20,000%.
Amazon’s meteoric rise is primarily owed to its lucrative Prime membership. Its subscription-based model bundles multiple services, including free expedited shipping on its retail site, video streaming, music, gaming, and more. Including multiple services makes consumers less likely to unsubscribe, leading to a global subscriber count above 230 million.
AMZN Chart
Shares in Amazon have risen 926% since 2014, meaning an investment of $10,000 back then would be worth over $102,000 today. And the company could potentially beat that growth over the next 10 years.
In addition to consistent retail growth, Amazon is rapidly expanding in AI and cloud computing. On April 25, the company announced plans to invest $11 billion to build data centers in Indiana to grow Amazon Web Services (AWS).
The company is on a promising growth path, and if you have the means, it could be worth an investment of $10,000 this month. However, a smaller investment is still worth considering.
3. Apple
Apple(NASDAQ: AAPL) is easily one of the most successful companies in tech history. Its market cap of $2.6 billion makes it the world’s second-most-valuable company (only after Microsoft). Meanwhile, Apple’s vast and loyal user base has allowed it to achieve leading market shares in multiple product categories.
However, the company has stumbled over the last year. Macroeconomic headwinds led to repeated quarters of revenue declines in 2023. Apple’s Q1 2024 seemed to break the streak, with revenue rising 2% year over year.
Meanwhile, the tech giant’s free cash flow hit $107 billion, significantly more than Microsoft, Amazon, or Alphabet. The considerable difference could suggest Apple is best equipped to keep investing in its business and come back strong in the coming years.
AAPL Chart
Apple’s stock has increased by 738% over the last decade. Consequently, a $10,000 investment in its shares 10 years ago would be worth nearly $84,000 today.
Moreover, like AMD and Amazon, Apple is taking on AI head-on. Over the last year, the company has gradually added AI-driven features across its product range, with plans to overhaul its MacBook lineup to focus on AI. The company also recently acquired French AI company Datakalab, which specializes in on-device processing.
Apple’s dominating role in tech and exciting outlook could make it worth investing $10,000 in its stock, with plans to hold for at least a decade.
Should you invest $1,000 in Advanced Micro Devices right now?
Before you buy stock in Advanced Micro Devices, consider this:
The Motley Fool Stock Advisor analyst team just identified what they believe are the 10 best stocks for investors to buy now… and Advanced Micro Devices wasn’t one of them. The 10 stocks that made the cut could produce monster returns in the coming years.
Consider when Nvidia made this list on April 15, 2005… if you invested $1,000 at the time of our recommendation, you’d have $537,557!*
Stock Advisor provides investors with an easy-to-follow blueprint for success, including guidance on building a portfolio, regular updates from analysts, and two new stock picks each month. TheStock Advisorservice has more than quadrupled the return of S&P 500 since 2002*.
Suzanne Frey, an executive at Alphabet, is a member of The Motley Fool’s board of directors. John Mackey, former CEO of Whole Foods Market, an Amazon subsidiary, is a member of The Motley Fool’s board of directors. Dani Cook has no position in any of the stocks mentioned. The Motley Fool has positions in and recommends Advanced Micro Devices, Alphabet, Amazon, Apple, and Microsoft. The Motley Fool recommends Intel and recommends the following options: long January 2025 $45 calls on Intel, long January 2026 $395 calls on Microsoft, short January 2026 $405 calls on Microsoft, and short May 2024 $47 calls on Intel. The Motley Fool has a disclosure policy.
In a special live episode, Matt and Puck colleague Peter Hamby are joined by screenwriter, playwright, and film director Aaron Sorkin to discuss the current state of Hollywood, the impact of AI on writers, politics, why he fired his agents, and much more.
For a 20 percent discount on Matt’s Hollywood insider newsletter, What I’m Hearing …, click here.
You know how there have been many, many, MANY pieces of media and literature warning of a technological overthrowing of the human race? Like, more examples than I could even name. Even though these are mostly works of fiction, this is something that people have feared for years and are very anxious about. Well, they just gave a flamethrower to a robot dog.
This is a move in the right direction for companies seeking to integrate AI, but it’s not enough on its own. Yes, every company must become an AI company. But expecting a chief AI officer to get the job done alone is shortsighted.
When businesses are confronted with a major technological shift, often their knee-jerk reaction is to stick with what they know: Putting a new executive in charge and hoping they can solve everything. But for AI to truly take root in a company, people at all levels of the business need to get their hands on it and start innovating, not follow orders from a gatekeeper in the C-suite.
In fact, the fastest way to integrate AI into a company, in some instances, maybe to skip the chief AI officer role altogether.
Why having a chief AI officer might not make sense
Companies appointing a chief AI officer have good intentions as they seek to avoid getting disrupted by the technology. But they may not need this role, and any business adding it should assume that it’s temporary.
A useful comparison is the stampede in the middle of the last decade to appoint chief digital officers to oversee the digital transformation to internet and mobile technologies. In hindsight, that looks quaint.
Experts pronounced CDO the next big executive title, but it often turned out to be little more than window dressing — especially when digital skills became table stakes for most employees. In recent years, companies have been ditching the role or folding it into other jobs. In digitally native businesses, it doesn’t exist at all.
Google, for instance, never had a CDO directing how employees use web technology. Instead, they empowered employees to explore tools on their own through initiatives like 20% time, setting the stage for innovations such as Gmail.
Likewise, AI-native companies don’t have an executive overseeing AI. That would be redundant. At companies like mine, the technology is embedded from day one across the organization rather than siloed in a single role.
By default, we all leverage AI. Our marketing team uses it to better understand our customer base, our engineers deploy it to help write code, and our customer support leans heavily on AI agents. AI is written into every role, much like digital literacy now is at nearly all companies. Of course, there are areas of our business where we could use AI more and better, but making that happen doesn’t call for a specific job title. It’s everyone’s responsibility.
A better way to usher in an AI transformation
But I realize that not every company is built from the ground up on AI. So, how can legacy companies make real strides in integrating the technology?
In place of the top-down response to organizational change, consider a bottom-up approach. For a company that wants to usher in an AI transformation, the first step is to look across the roles you’re already hiring for and pick a few where AI agents can do the job today.
Customer service is an obvious place to start — today’s AI agents can now address most issues at least as well as humans. AI sales development representatives (SDRs) are also making an immediate impact, automating much of the toil involved in pursuing prospects. Another promising area — junior data analyst roles, which often consist of pulling information from reports. Then there’s coding. Autonomous software engineering agent Devin and OpenDevin, its open-source rival, can step in here.
Choosing the right technology partner to provide AI tools is equally important. When it comes to customer service, for example, companies should look for a vendor whose AI agents have a track record of resolving most issues without human intervention. Rather than following a script, they should have some ability to reason, drawing on past interactions and the conversation at hand to determine the best solution for each customer’s unique problem.
Then, it’s important to treat your agents more like employees than like a piece of software that will work straight out of the box. Onboarding, measuring and coaching — the same steps you’d take to develop any new hire — are essential to get the most out of AI tools.
The upside here is having team members experiment with AI begins to build AI expertise inside the company. For example, my company works with a financial services firm where AI employee manager has become a key position. Former customer support specialists there now teach AI agents new skills that add value throughout the business — thus making themselves an indispensable member of the team.
Companies can even make driving productivity gains via AI a criterion for career advancement. To get promoted, an employee must show their manager how they’re applying AI to deliver results for the business.
The next stage: Those departments grow into mini centers of excellence that spread AI knowledge and best practices throughout the organization. Team members educate the rest of the business on how to hire and coordinate AI labor. AI becomes integrated into day-to-day business operations in a way that’s hard to achieve with an exclusively top-down approach.
Of course, there’s no one best way to take a company through an AI transformation. For legacy industries and large enterprises, a tandem approach — combining top-down and bottom-up — may prove a better fit.
At the very least, organizations that want to get the transformation right should think about how they can help AI bubble up through the ranks, rather than just rush to hire a chief AI officer simply because others have taken that step. As AI permanently changes companies from top to bottom, it’s just a temporary solution.
Tata Consultancy Services, the main arm of Indian industrial giant Tata, is reportedly clamping down on office-shy workers by cutting their bonuses and hovering the threat of being passed up for promotions.
The $168 billion Indian consultancy is using a carrot-and-stick approach to lure its consultants back into the office full-time after scrapping hybrid working for most employees last October.
The consultancy plans to narrow its bonus payouts to exclude those shunning office work five days a week, and will also begin factoring in attendance to annual performance reviews, which are vital for promotion opportunities, Indian publications Mintand The Times of India reported.
“The last quarter has seen most of you return to the workplace, creating shared experiences, nurturing greater learning, collaboration, and camaraderie,” TCS’s CEO K Krithivasan reportedly wrote to employees in March.
Employees working less than three days in the office will not be paid any bonus, the publications reported.
From there, bonuses will be tiered, with staff working between 60% and 75% of their time in the office receiving half of their potential bonus, and those working between 75% and 85% of their time in the office receiving three-quarters of their “variable pay.”
Only staffers working more than 85% of their time in the office can expect to receive full pay.
In effect, that means only those coming into the office five days a week are entitled to receive 100% of their prescribed bonus.
A representative for TCS didn’t respond to Fortune’s request for comment.
TCS clamps down on remote workers
TCS is a major arm of the Tata group, hiring more than 600,000 people from 152 nationalities. The company hires 20,000 people in the U.K. across 30 locations, according to a 2022 press release. The company is the main sponsor of the London Marathon.
It has been hailed as a progressive employer and has the accolades to prove it.
TCS was one of 16 companies recognized as a “Global Top Employer” for 2024 by the Top Employers Institute, a certification handed out based on employee surveys. The consultancy also made Fortune’s Most Admired Companies list for 2024.
But TCS now risks flaring tensions among staffers as it goes beyond rules and rhetoric to actively punish workers who don’t make it into the office.
In October last year, TCS scrapped its hybrid work policy, ordering most employees back to the office five days a week.
The group’s CEO Krithivasan pointed out that in February nearly 40% of his workers joined the company during the COVID, and the company had no hope of assimilating them if they stayed at home.
TCS’s chief operating officer NG Subramaniam said: “Around 40,000 employees joined us online and quit online without any offline interaction during the pandemic and that kind of situation cannot be helpful for any organization.
“We are very clear that we have to get our original culture back.”
The recent memo distributed to workers shows just how serious TCS’s C-suite is taking its own rhetoric.
In addition to capping bonuses based on appearance, office attendance will also reportedly be factored into performance-related reviews.
“Employees’ compliance to work from home will be reviewed every quarter. In the event an employee is found to be in violation of the laid down policies, there will be implications on the annual performance review, compensation, and career progression of the employee,” the policy reportedly reads.
Tying company bonuses to attendance is a novel approach to getting staffers back to the office, but follows a familiar tactic from tech companies that involves using financial incentives to convince workers to come in.
In 2021, several tech giants including Meta and Google said they would cut the pay of staff who had moved to remote areas with a cheaper cost of living than in their hubs in Silicon Valley.
These companies have now introduced stricter hybrid policies that ask workers to come in at least four days a week.
Apple has removed WhatsApp and Threads from its app store in China, following an order from the country’s internet watchdog, which cited national security concerns.Related video above: French government watchdog agency ordered Apple to withdraw the iPhone 12 from the market (9/12/23)“We are obligated to follow the laws in the countries where we operate, even when we disagree,” an Apple spokesperson told CNN on Friday. “The Cyberspace Administration of China ordered the removal of these apps from the China storefront based on their national security concerns. These apps remain available for download on all other storefronts where they appear.”The apps, both owned by Meta, were already blocked in China and not widely used. They could be accessed in the country only by using virtual private networks (VPNs) that can encrypt internet traffic and disguise the user’s online identity.The removal of the apps by Apple represents a “further distancing between already separated tech universes” in the country and beyond, said Duncan Clark, the chairman of Beijing-based investment advisory BDA China.“It will cause inconvenience to consumers and businesses (in China) who deal with family, friends or customers overseas. Even if they use VPNs to access their existing WhatsApp apps, these over time will become obsolete and require updating,” he said.Other popular Western social media apps, including X (formerly Twitter), Facebook, Instagram and Messenger, are still available on Apple’s China app store, according to a check by CNN.The tech giant’s announcement comes against a backdrop of plunging iPhone sales in the world’s second-largest economy. Its smartphone sales tumbled a stunning 10% in the first quarter of this year, according to market research firm IDC.The company has lost momentum in China as nationalism, a rough economy and increased competition have hurt Apple over the past several months.The resurgence of Huawei and other Chinese brands, including Xiaomi and OPPO/OnePlus, will likely continue, according to IDC. Chinese consumers who once would have considered Apple are now turning to the country’s national brands.Besides being a key production center, China remains an important market for Apple as it is the largest market behind the United States. The company continues to offer discounts in the country to help boost sales.Its CEO, Tim Cook, visited Shanghai just last month to open the second-biggest Apple store in the world.Hassan Tayir contributed reporting.
Hong Kong (CNN) —
Apple has removed WhatsApp and Threads from its app store in China, following an order from the country’s internet watchdog, which cited national security concerns.
Related video above: French government watchdog agency ordered Apple to withdraw the iPhone 12 from the market (9/12/23)
“We are obligated to follow the laws in the countries where we operate, even when we disagree,” an Apple spokesperson told CNN on Friday. “The Cyberspace Administration of China ordered the removal of these apps from the China storefront based on their national security concerns. These apps remain available for download on all other storefronts where they appear.”
The apps, both owned by Meta, were already blocked in China and not widely used. They could be accessed in the country only by using virtual private networks (VPNs) that can encrypt internet traffic and disguise the user’s online identity.
The removal of the apps by Apple represents a “further distancing between already separated tech universes” in the country and beyond, said Duncan Clark, the chairman of Beijing-based investment advisory BDA China.
“It will cause inconvenience to consumers and businesses (in China) who deal with family, friends or customers overseas. Even if they use VPNs to access their existing WhatsApp apps, these over time will become obsolete and require updating,” he said.
Other popular Western social media apps, including X (formerly Twitter), Facebook, Instagram and Messenger, are still available on Apple’s China app store, according to a check by CNN.
The tech giant’s announcement comes against a backdrop of plunging iPhone sales in the world’s second-largest economy. Its smartphone sales tumbled a stunning 10% in the first quarter of this year, according to market research firm IDC.
The company has lost momentum in China as nationalism, a rough economy and increased competition have hurt Apple over the past several months.
The resurgence of Huawei and other Chinese brands, including Xiaomi and OPPO/OnePlus, will likely continue, according to IDC. Chinese consumers who once would have considered Apple are now turning to the country’s national brands.
Besides being a key production center, China remains an important market for Apple as it is the largest market behind the United States. The company continues to offer discounts in the country to help boost sales.
Its CEO, Tim Cook, visited Shanghai just last month to open the second-biggest Apple store in the world.
In response to the criticism, Freeland’s office said it pursued capital gains changes to create fairness for younger Canadians who are struggling with the cost of living.
Small business owners to see tax changes
The budget also included a new program that lowers how much tax some small business owners pay when selling their companies. Those who qualify will be taxed on only one-third of their capital gains up to $2 million.
Several Shopify Inc. executives, including president Harley Finkelstein, posted about the capital gains changes Freeland proposed on X. Hours after the budget’s release, he wrote, “What. Are. We. Doing?!?”
We need to be doing everything we can to turn Canada into the best place for entrepreneurs to build 🇨🇦
What’s proposed in the federal budget will do the complete opposite. Innovators and entrepreneurs will suffer and their success will be penalized — this is not a wealth tax,…
“This is not a wealth tax, it’s a tax on innovation and risk taking” he added on Wednesday. “Our policy failures are America’s gains.”
The Ottawa-based e-commerce giant’s chief executive Tobi Lütke also chimed in, saying a friend had messaged him to say, “Canada has heard rumours about innovation and is determined to leave no stone unturned in deterring it.”
Forbes estimates Lütke’s net worth is valued at USD$6.4 billion. While he’s been more vocal in his criticism of the federal government’s policy decisions in recent months, he previously chaired a digital strategy table that convened in 2018 and hosted Trudeau at his company’s conference.
Meanwhile, the head of the Canadian Venture Capital and Private Equity Association said on LinkedIn the capital gains changes left her feeling “baffled.”
“This measure, which effectively taxes innovation and risk-taking, will significantly dampen Canada’s entrepreneurial spirit, stifle economic growth in critical sectors of our economy, and impact job creation,” Kim Furlong said. “Such (a) policy change undermines Canada’s position to attract the talent needed to grow and scale companies here.”
Furlong promised to “work tirelessly to reverse the decision.”
AI technology in Canada
Alison Nankivell, chief executive of the MaRS innovation hub in Toronto, took such reaction to the budget to be a reflection of the tug of war that can pit fairness against economic opportunity. “In some ways, what you’re hearing from the entrepreneur community is a feeling that that balance is maybe not where they want it to be in terms of the ability to build a business,” she said.
The tension masked some of the benefits for the sector she saw in the budget. For example, the government set aside $2.4 billion to boost artificial intelligence (AI) capacity with the bulk dedicated to a fund that would increase access to computing and technical infrastructure.
SAN JOSE — The decision by two tenants to exit downtown San Jose might worsen the maladies that already afflict the urban core’s economy in the wake of the coronavirus.
PwC, a professional services titan, and its recently purchased tech company, Surfaceink, are poised to leave downtown after PwC signed a lease for a big chunk of space in a new office building at Santana Row in west San Jose.
The prospect of tenant departures comes at a time when downtown San Jose already struggles with office vacancy levels that have soared to worrisome heights.
“This is going to raise the vacancy rate in downtown San Jose,” said David Taxin, partner with Meacham Oppenheimer, a commercial real estate firm. “With the amount of vacancy downtown, this won’t help the cause.”
At the end of 2023, downtown San Jose’s office availability rate was at an all-time high of 35.7%, according to a report from Savills, a commercial real estate firm. Office availability measures the combination of empty office space offered directly by building owners and space that tenants are offering through sublease.
As further evidence of a feeble real estate market in downtown San Jose, within the last four months, two large office properties were sold at a big loss compared with their prior sales.
In December 2023, an office tower at 303 Almaden Boulevard was bought for slightly under $23.8 million — which was 70% below the price paid for the highrise at the time of its prior sale in 2017 for $80.2 million.
In February 2024, a two-tower office complex at North Market Street and West St, John Street was bought for $34.2 million — a nosedive of 77% compared with the $141.4 million paid in 2019 for the highrises.
While the price declines are jaw-dropping, experts such as David Sandlin, an executive vice president with Colliers, a commercial real estate firm, point out that the newly established prices at least set a current value for office buildings for office buildings in downtown San Jose.
“We now know the price that a Class A building in San Jose will trade for,” Sandlin said in a prior interview with this news organization on the topic.
The price for the 303 Almaden tower worked out to $151 a square foot while the price for the 111 Market Square tower was $105 a square foot. Some experts note that the 303 Almaden highrise is deemed to be of greater quality than the two-tower office complex.
Also of interest with these deals is that the buyers of each of the office properties are separate groups that both are headed up by George Mersho, chief executive officer of Morgan Hill-based retailer Shoe Palace.
PwC, as a result of its decision to move to Santana Row, a destination mixed-use neighborhood in San Jose, will also shift its new subsidiary, Surfaceink, into the same One Santana West office building near the corner of South Winchester Boulevard and Stevens Creek Boulevard.
“The great thing about the PwC deal is that they stayed in San Jose,” said Bob Staedler, principal executive with Silicon Valley Synergy, a land-use consultancy. “With the amenities at Santana Row, it’s understandable why PwC would go there.”
About 1,200 PwC employees will be located at the One Santana West office building. That move is slated to occur in 2026.
Still, downtown San Jose appears more than capable of being a vibrant host for office tenants and conventions.
The recent Nvidia artificial intelligence convention, in addition to compelling keynotes and packed events, was also the catalyst for lively crowds that poured into the downtown in search of meals, drinks, or entertainment.
“The activation of downtown San Jose and the energy downtown is what is going to appeal to companies with younger employees,” Staedler said. “Having a constant stream of events and activities such as jazz festivals, live performances and other exciting events is the way to attract companies to downtown San Jose.”
PwC is expected to vacate 80,000 square feet at an office tower in downtown San Jose, property experts say. Surfaceink leased 7,000 square feet on Stockton Avenue on the western edges of the downtown.
“You could get a new AI company or software company that wants to be in an urban environment in the PwC spaces,” Staedler said.
Political and city leaders will need to adjust their thinking regarding the downtown in order for the city’s urban core to truly rebound.
“Antiquated dreams of a Trader Joe’s or a Safeway in the heart of downtown are days gone by. They are over,” Staedler said. “Downtown needs to focus on vibrancy.”
Fidelity’sBlue Chip Growth Fund cut the value of its position in X by 5.7% in February, implying a 73% decline in the former Twitter Inc. since Elon Musk bought the social-media company.
Fidelity, which gained a stake in X by helping Musk complete his $44 billion purchase in October 2022, valued the position at $5.28 million as of Feb. 29, according to a report posted Saturday listing the fund’s holdings. A month earlier, the value was $5.6 million.
The overall value of the Blue Chip Growth Fund’s X stake has fallen 73% since Musk’s purchase, suggesting a similar drop in the value of the company because the fund hasn’t disclosed any change in its position in X.
X has been trying to lure back advertisers since Musk’s chaotic takeover. Last year, ad sales were estimated to be roughly $2.5 billion, falling short of the company’s $3 billion target, Bloomberg reported.
Fidelity and X didn’t immediately return emails seeking comment sent outside regular business hours.
Subscribe to the Eye on AI newsletter to stay abreast of how AI is shaping the future of business. Sign up for free.
The second season of the rebooted Fraggle Rock franchise premiers March 29 on AppleTV+.
Fraggle Rock: Back to the Rock season 2 was filmed inside the Calgary Film Centre.
During Global News Calgary’s exclusive tour on set, we got to see the world of fraggles, gorgs and doozers come to life in real time.
John Tartaglia is a writer and executive producer on the show. He’s also the puppet captain and plays a number of characters, including Gobo fraggle and Sprocket the dog.
Fraggle Rock: Back to the Rock season 2 was filmed in Calgary. It premieres March 29, 2024.
Global News
He felt the pressure to deliver on season 2, after a very successful season one that got a 100 per cent rating on Rotten Tomatoes, and awards from the Directors Guild of Canada, Canadian Cinema Editors Awards, PGA Awards and Children’s Family and Emmy Awards.
Story continues below advertisement
“It’s still the beautiful show that we love and the fans love, but we’ve just kind of upped the stakes a little bit,” Tartaglia says.
The original Jim Hensen Fraggle Rock series debuted in 1983 and was filmed in Toronto.
Both seasons of the rebooted franchise were filmed in Calgary.
Fraggle Rock: Back to the Rock season 2 was filmed in Calgary. It premieres March 29, 2024.
Global News
Tartaglia says it was so important to come back to Canada.
Story continues below advertisement
“There’s something about the heart of the show that’s always had a Canadian feel to it, and I think that’s really important to capture here.”
Calgary crews were used throughout production, too, including prop master Kesar Lacroix, who got to create all the vehicles and tech for the doozer characters in season 2.
“Everybody in our department has grown up with Fraggle Rock, period. It’s part of our childhood, and we all became prop makers and prop builders and prop on-set technologists in order to get the shot of hopefully doing a show like this, and we’ve had the best time doing it.”
Calgary puppeteers push for second season of Fraggle Rock reboot
This latest series is another notch in the belt for Calgary’s film and TV industry, which continues to grow and grab the attention of Hollywood.
The Calgary Film Commission says between 2021 and 2023, $1.2 billion was spent on production, nearly 15,000 jobs were created and more than 750,000 square feet of studio and production space was built. It’s got big plans for 2024, including building a website to recruit, train and retain talent.
Story continues below advertisement
Fraggle Rock: Back to the Rock season 2 was filmed in Calgary. It premieres March 29, 2024.
Global News
Jordan Lockhart, the puppeteer and voice for Wembley Fraggle, grew up in Ottawa. He believes Canada is gaining a foothold on the market.
“Things have come a long way from when I was in high school, dreaming of being in film and television.
“There’s amazing talent here in Canada.
“Toronto and Vancouver are touted as being the hubs, but having been here now for two seasons in Calgary, I’m so impressed by the crews out here.”
Karen Prell has been the puppeteer and voice for Red fraggle since the original Fraggle Rock series more than four decades ago. She’s thrilled to see star power like Ariana DeBose, Brett Goldstein, Adam Lambert and Catherine O’Hara join for guest appearances in Fraggle Rock: Back to the Rock season 2.
Story continues below advertisement
She also says outside of the cold and snow, Calgary is a magical place.
“I love Calgary. It’s just beautiful. I love the people here, I love the scenery. I love running along the river. I’ve made several trips to Banff.”
Your favourite Muppets return in ‘Fraggle Rock: Back to the Rock’
As for what to expect in the latest Fraggle Rock series, executive producer and writer Alex Cuthbertson says they keep Hensen, the original creator, in their minds.
“We knew we wanted to stay with the elements of the Earth because that feels so connected to Fraggle Rock. So, we decided that wind was a really cool way to explore the season. We used wind as a metaphor to talk about change that is both scary and exciting.”
“It’s hope punk. It’s making hope cool again,” Tartaglia said. “This family of characters can speak to a new generation of kids and hopefully make the world a better place.”
Story continues below advertisement
You can watch Fraggle Rock: Back to the Rock season 2 on AppleTV+ starting March 29, 2024.
