Also: Peak Tesla, home shopping for the streaming age, big hack. 
Good morning,
It’s Fortune 500 week, so here’s some more data to feed into your Vision Pro (when it actually becomes available). There are 28 companies on our new list that weren’t there a year ago. Some of them are bounce-backs, like Marathon Oil (No. 464) and Sonoco Products (No. 498). Some are spin-offs, like Kyndryl (No. 225), which spun out of IBM, and VMware (No. 313), which spun out of Dell. And some are firms that just scrambled their way onto the list for the first time, like Airbnb (No. 450), Lululemon (No. 461) and ServiceNow (No. 499).
ServiceNow is a good proxy for what it takes to make the list these days, with revenues of $7.25 billion, just above the $7.238 billion cut-off. CEO Bill McDermott said his company’s growth will continue to be driven by exploding interest in A.I. Here’s what he told his team yesterday:
“Breaking into this distinguished list puts ServiceNow in a new era. The biggest businesses in the world want ServiceNow to help them become exponential enterprises. We are engineering even more intelligence into our Now platform with the power of generative A.I. to unleash the combination of machine speed and human judgement.”
Needless to say, ServiceNow is not the only company adding generative A.I. to their product. Their numbers increase daily. Customer data platform Twilio this morning is launching a new product called Customer AI, which will combine the data that sits on Twilio with the power of large language models to help companies “better understand, and provide value to, their customers.” I spoke with Twilio CEO Jeff Lawson last week. He called generative A.I. “the next platform shift”:
“It’s like PC to web, or web to mobile. The effects are going to be profound and wide-reaching.” With Twilio’s new product, “you can have A.I. that is constantly learning about your customers…and inject A.I. across every part of the company that touches the customer.”
More news below.
Alan Murray
@alansmurray
alan.murray@fortune.com
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Peak Tesla?
Few companies have jumped the ranks of the Fortune 500 by as much—and as quickly—as Tesla. Yet the company is now cutting prices and considering advertising thanks to stiff competition in the EV sector, even as CEO Elon Musk promises that moonshot initiatives like automated driving will supercharge future revenue. Fortune’s Vivienne Walt digs into Tesla's struggles and makes a visit to the company’s Berlin factory, the first by a non-German reporter.
Streaming pivot
Qurate CEO David Rawlinson sat down with Fortune’s Paolo Confino as the shopping network tries to break into streaming. The parent of channels QVC and HSN posted a 47% quarterly drop in operating income in its latest earnings release, and risks delisting from the NASDAQ exchange. But Rawlinson, one of eight Black CEOs in the Fortune 500, believes the entertainment company has an edge in the new industry of “live shopping,” still nascent in the U.S.
Cybersecurity
Several major U.K. companies, including airline British Airways and pharmaceutical chain Boots, warned tens of thousands of employees Monday that their personal data was compromised. The hack was due to a recently-discovered software vulnerability in MOVEit, a file transfer program. More victims may emerge: the program is more popular in the U.S. Financial Times
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Gen Zs and millennials on workplace progress According to the Deloitte Global 2023 Gen Z and Millennial Survey, respondents across 44 countries believe that many employers have made progress on work/life balance, workplace flexibility, DEI, social impact, and environmental sustainability in recent years. However, new setbacks are impacting both generations’ ability to plan for their futures. How might business leaders accelerate progress to meet employee expectations? Read more
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Unlock the new FORTUNE 500 Access the ultimate benchmark of business success and gain unparalleled insight into which companies are winning and why. Explore the 500. |
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