Fortune

In 2019, cofounders Eric Glyman and Karim Atiyeh launched Ramp to build a more efficient generation of corporate cards. Atiyeh made a bold claim: Ramp would become a unicorn—worth more than $1 billion—within two years. Exactly two years later, in April 2021, Ramp announced a Series B funding round that put its valuation at $1.6 billion. Today, Atiyeh’s unicorn promise looks almost quaint. The six-year-old startup recently surpassed $1 billion in annualized revenue and now serves more than 45,000 businesses. Read the full story in the latest issue of Fortune: https://lnkd.in/eheKH3j8

Fortune #BrainstormTech continues in Park City, Utah. 🎉 We’ll hear from: ➡️ Gwen Lighter, Chief Executive Officer, GoAERO ➡️ Frank Cooper III, Chief Marketing Officer, Visa ➡️ Rachel Thornton, Chief Marketing Officer, Enterprise, Adobe ➡️ Dara Treseder, Chief Marketing Officer, Autodesk ➡️ John Furner, President and CEO, Walmart U.S. ➡️ Arjun Sethi, Co-chief Executive Officer, Kraken ➡️ Barry Silbert, Founder and CEO, Digital Currency Group (DCG) ➡️ Chris Barman, Chief Executive Officer, Slate Auto ➡️ Jeff Wilke, Chairman and Cofounder, Re:Build Manufacturing …and many more!

“Candidly, it’s mostly been filled with lots of pain and suffering.” Tony Xu, cofounder and CEO of food and grocery giant DoorDash, doesn’t sugar coat the company’s efforts, and challenges, developing autonomous delivery technologies. DoorDash has been working on autonomy and robotics technology since about 2017, Xu said in what he described as a “long journey.” Xu said that those long-term investments the company started making eight years ago have started to pay off in an on-stage interview on Monday at Fortune’s #BrainstormTech conference in Park City, Utah. Read more: https://lnkd.in/eGdpMnBX

“My oldest is halfway through his college career. He’s at a liberal arts university on the East Coast in the United States, and he’s asking himself real questions—even bluntly: Is this education a scam?” Onstage at Fortune #BrainstormTech in Park City, Utah, GV (Google Ventures) CEO David Krane said that Gen Z is debating whether college is worth it. “He spent his entire summer working in AI, working with large models, working with coding assistants. And he spent the last month of his summer spending a lot of time with peers at Ivy League schools and other notable undergraduate programs who are wrestling with exactly that tension,” he added. Read more here: https://lnkd.in/epsGeyvk

At just 5.6 millimeters thick, the iPhone Air is officially Apple’s thinnest iPhone ever. It has 3 times the scratch resistance as the previous glass Apple would use for iPhones, and is made out of recycled titanium. It comes in black, white, gold, and blue. The inside was precision-milled to make room for all of the necessary chips and sensors. The iPhone Air is powered by the A19 Pro chip, which Apple says is the fastest CPU in any smartphone. A new 5-core GPU most notably helps power AI thanks to neural accelerators into each GPU core. Apple calls it MacBook Pro levels of compute, in an iPhone, which it says is perfect for AI workflows. Read more: https://lnkd.in/eyJeztq9

OpenAI Chief Revenue Officer Ashley Kramer says the "trust, privacy, safety, and security" of users is always "top of mind." "For us, it's less about time to market to get there first and more about is it is the most trusted, privacy-first model solution out there," she said at #BrainstormTech. See more here: https://lnkd.in/epsGeyvk

"When AI and GenAI was first introduced, it was all about people saving time, being more productive, [and] teams working better together," said OpenAI Chief Revenue Officer Ashley Kramer at #BrainstormTech. "Now we're seeing they really want to figure out how to transform," she added. See more here: https://lnkd.in/epsGeyvk

Rupert Murdoch’s decades-long, high-stakes battle over the future of his media empire has ended with a sweeping settlement. The settlement restructures the Murdoch Family Trust, a so-called irrevocable trust at the center of the litigation that pitted Rupert and Lachlan on one side and other children of Rupert’s, Prudence MacLeod, Elisabeth Murdoch and James Murdoch, on the other. The legal dispute arose when Rupert went to court to attempt to change the trust, moving from a structure of equal voting shares held by the four siblings into one with control held by Lachlan. Read more: https://lnkd.in/euyWAwj7

Big congrats to David Gelles on the release today of his superb book on the founder of Patagonia, Yvon Chouinard. An excerpt ran this morning in Fortune. I had the pleasure of reading this book this summer while I was hiding (clad in a Patagonia fleece) from civilization at Lac Notre-Dame, deep inside the Outaouais region of Quebec, where Chouinard had his roots. Chouinard famously made sustainability a founding principle of Patagonia and famously made the decision a few years ago to give the company away to help fund environmental causes. But what I appreciated most about David's book is how he went into the contradictions inherent in Patagonia's success: it's still consumption after, and consumption of a higher end item. Chouinard himself is a complex not really lovable character with an authoritarian streak that contrasts with his do-gooder identity. I learned so much about the world of apparel, the complexity of sustainability in apparel and so much about this brand, that although small at $1 billion in annual sales, is full of lessons a business reader (any reader, really) will appreciate. Highly recommended book. https://lnkd.in/eMF3DuWe

Ramp just made the cover of Fortune. This moment is a testament to our customers. Your trust and feedback fuel our work. And our work is built around helping you grow faster and smarter than the day before. We know the bar is raised. Not only on behalf of those 45,000+ businesses, but also our investors, our team, and the market. We’re here to meet it head on and full of gratitude. Read the story: https://lnkd.in/eheKH3j8