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Thursday, July 24, 2025 | |
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| Good morning, Quartz
readers! |
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HERE'S WHAT YOU NEED TO KNOW |
| Tesla’s profits
keep shrinking. The EV-maker couldn’t beat Wall Street’s already low expectations — posting its steepest drop in quarterly revenue in over a decade. |
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| Google beats the Street
(again). The Silicon Valley giant’s AI and cloud computing investments proved to be massive revenue drivers as services continued to boost the bottom line. |
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| Tesla sales crater in
CA. The EV-maker saw a 21% percent drop in registrations in the key market (and a seventh-straight decline) as hybrids gain ground amid the EV market’s stumbles. |
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| The trade war is
officially very real. GM and Hasbro just posted earnings that show tariffs aren’t just abstract political plays — they’re reshaping companies’ very real margins. |
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| Trump’s provision in the
U.S.-Japan trade deal. The agreement includes a $550 billion fund for Japan to make U.S. investments (resembling a sovereign wealth fund) that he’ll oversee. |
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| Nuclear
weapons agency part of hack. According to the Department of Energy, the arsenal, while not compromised, was among the victims of Microsoft’s recent SharePoint hack. |
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A MESSAGE FROM CARL FRIEDRIK |
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LUGGAGE THAT'S SO ELEGANT IT WINS DESIGN AWARDS |
Take the stress out of travel with The Carry-on X (43 L) — the iF Design award-winning cabin case renowned for its smart packing system and industry-leading durability. |
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STAFF OPTIONAL |
Some tech CEOs are betting we’ll see the first one-person billion-dollar private company (aka: “unicorn”) by 2026. At this rate, that might be conservative. A new generation of AI-first startups is ditching bloated org
charts and loading up on language models, reaching billion-dollar valuations with teams leaner than some group chats. From Lovable to Gumloop — which wants to become a unicorn with a staff of just 10 — companies are using AI agents to replace entire departments, cut burn, and scale at speeds that would’ve given traditional SaaS some serious whiplash.
For these companies, it’s not just about moving fast and breaking payroll. In 2025, AI companies pulled in nearly two-thirds of all
U.S. venture dollars, and many are hitting revenue milestones in half the time it took their cloud-software predecessors. But with churn rates climbing, usage-based pricing introducing volatility, and loyalty still up for grabs, even investors admit that revenue might be more “experimental run rate” than annual recurring revenue. Translation: Just because a product’s hot doesn’t mean it’s sticky.
Still, the biggest risk these companies face might be less about money and more about
accountability. With CEOs claiming that AI should be able to do their jobs and startups telling people to “Stop Hiring Humans,” the concept of leadership is looking more like prompt engineering than people management. But until AI can take the fall in a boardroom firing, the buck still stops with someone, even if they’re the only someone on payroll. Quartz’s Niamh Rowe has more on whether the one-person unicorn is a flex — or a façade. |
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THE COST OF CARING |
There’s a hidden line item in the modern workplace budget — and it’s called being a woman. Pam in accounting isn’t just the office glue. She’s the unofficial party planner, morale manager, grief counselor, and newbie whisperer. And while the cupcakes may be sweet, the economics aren’t: The invisible labor that women disproportionately perform at work is costing companies an estimated $1 billion a year in stress, turnover, disengagement, and lawsuits. It’s systemic, it’s strategic, and it’s
starting to show up in shareholder value.
This emotional labor — from remembering birthdays to office “housework” to team-building — isn’t tied to promotions or pay. It is tied to burnout. And unlike other corporate initiatives, emotional labor isn’t tracked, tagged, or budgeted. Women are 44% more likely to be asked to do this work, 76% more likely to say yes, and much more likely to be penalized if they don’t. The kicker? When men perform the same tasks, they’re seen as going above
and beyond. When women do them, it’s just another Tuesday.
Some companies are catching on. From performance metrics to paid caregiving policies, a growing handful are trying to make invisible labor... visible. But until cultural maintenance gets a cost center (or at least a bonus), most women will keep doing the work no one sees, and companies will keep paying the price they refuse to name. Quartz’s Matthew Fray has more on how invisible work became a very real liability.
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A MESSAGE FROM CARL FRIEDRIK |
|
LUGGAGE THAT'S SO ELEGANT IT WINS DESIGN AWARDS |
Take the stress out of travel with The Carry-on X (43 L) — the iF Design award-winning cabin case renowned for its smart packing system and industry-leading durability. |
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