Axios CEO Jim VandeHei wrote a piece in his Axios C-Suite newsletter (ask to join) to help other CEOs think about how to future-proof themselves during this moment of profound technological change.

• He wanted to expand it for the Axios AM audience because EVERYONE is staring down this moment together. Whether you're the CEO or an entry-level hire, we want you to see how a really good leader can approach the AI transition.

Your employer's job is getting harder, faster, too.

• Companies are being redesigned from the top down around AI. The leaders who get it right will look very different from the ones who don't.
• A startup with a handful of people and a team of AI agents might undercut your work at any moment, at a fraction of your cost.

Why it matters: The next 18 months will sort companies into two camps — those with leaders committed to running a genuinely AI-integrated organization, and those that bought a bunch of AI tools and called it transformation.

Here's what a future-proofed CEO is actually acting on right now:

1. Becoming an AI decision-maker. AI strategy is no longer being handed off to CTOs. Corporate leaders are becoming systems architects. They personally decide where AI agents run workflows end-to-end, where humans stay in the loop and where both work together.

• Nearly three-quarters of CEOs say they're now their companies' chief AI decision-maker, per the consulting firm BCG. Half say their job stability depends on getting it right this year.

2. Reimagining their team. The most important role in any company by 2027 won't have a clean title. It's someone who understands AI systems well enough to architect workflows, people well enough to keep talent motivated through the transition, and the business well enough to know what matters.

• That's a hybrid of your current CTO, CHRO and COO.
• The companies that find or develop this person first will move at twice the speed of those still routing AI decisions through a committee.

3. Anticipating the politics. The pressure on leaders not to replace workers with AI is already real. The temptation to do so anyway once the tech gets good enough will be real, too.

• Klarna learned this the hard way. It cut 700 customer service jobs, watched satisfaction crater and quietly rehired humans after CEO Sebastian Siemiatkowski admitted he went too far.
• The gap between executive optimism and employee anxiety is a powder keg most organizations haven't figured out how to defuse.

4. Managing trust issues. Employees fear replacement. Customers fear misuse. Regulators fear concentration. Investors fear wasted spending. That's a big balancing act to manage.

• The companies getting this right aren't winging it. PwC found that firms with formal responsible AI frameworks are 1.7x more likely to capture real ROI from the tech.

5. Running at dual speed. The planning cycle that matters now requires leaders to think on two time scales simultaneously. Keeping both in sync will be a massive challenge in the years ahead.

• There's a fast clock (weekly and monthly cycles of AI deployment, agent testing, efficiency pushes and product shifts) where companies are trying to move like startups.
• And there's a slow clock (quarterly culture shifts, trust-building, infrastructure investment and talent development) where they're trying to build something that lasts.

6. Retaining talent. Most companies already anticipate bringing on fewer junior workers in the near term as AI absorbs that work.

• That's rough when seniority amounts to thousands of solved problems, fixed mistakes and navigated crises that accumulated over time. Leaders who shrink the pipeline now are quietly borrowing against the institutional judgment they'll need later.

The bottom line: The leaders you trust won't be defined by vision alone. They'll be the ones who treated AI like a discipline — not a distraction — and stayed honest with you all the way through.

• 📈 If you're a CEO or on a CEO's team: Ask to join Jim's new weekly Axios C-Suite newsletter.

Caterpillar — founded decades before computers and nearly a century before ChatGPT — is becoming an AI play, Axios' Nathan Bomey writes.

• Why it matters: The equipment maker is enjoying a sales boom from the surge in development of AI data centers and power plants.

Between the lines: Much of Caterpillar's growth in power and energy is driven by data center demand and the electricity needed to support cloud computing and generative AI, CEO Joe Creed said on an earnings call.

• Caterpillar makes the engines and turbines that supply both primary and backup power to those facilities, as well as the electrical infrastructure to run them.

🚜 Driving the news: Caterpillar this week recorded a 22% increase in revenue, compared with a year earlier, to $17.4 billion.

• That crushed S&P Capital IQ estimates of $16.4 billion.
• It included a 38% increase in construction industry revenue and a 22% rise in its power and energy segment.
• Caterpillar has accumulated a "record" backlog in orders, Creed said. The backlog totaled $63 billion, up 79% from a year earlier.

The bottom line: The AI economy continues to translate into demand for actual stuff like Nvidia chips and Caterpillar machines.

• That's making it increasingly difficult to argue the AI boom is a mirage.

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Spirit Airlines may have been the butt of jokes, but it filled a vital niche for cost-conscious travelers, Axios' Alex Fitzpatrick writes.

• 🚌 It was the Fung Wah bus of the skies, offering a cheap way to get around so long as you managed your expectations, brought your own snacks and didn't mind a delay or two.
• 🤳 Wharton School professor Mohamed A. El-Erian wrote on Bluesky yesterday that Spirit "helped democratize the skies, providing a bridge for those who previously found travel out of reach."

💺 It also provided badly needed competition, pushing rivals to offer no-frills basic economy options of their own.

• 💵 Delta and United are now essentially operating premium and budget airlines all at once, extracting maximum cash from folks sitting up front while filling as many seats as possible in the back.
• Spirit and Southwest both tried to go upscale in response — but it wasn't enough to save the former.

📊 Even Spirit's reputation for delays was unearned — about 77% of Spirit flights arrived on time in 2025, per Transportation Department data.

• That's nearly as good as Delta (79%) and United (78%), and notably better than American (73%).

🪦 The bottom line: Spirit's primary cause of death will be listed as skyrocketing jet fuel prices tied to the Iran war that exacerbated longstanding financial issues.

• More turbulence for airlines — especially troubled carriers like JetBlue — seems inevitable with no end to the Hormuz crisis in sight.

Tips for stranded travelers.

Asian Americans report higher levels of anxiety than any other racial group in the U.S., Axios' Russell Contreras writes.

Why it matters: As Washington hardens its policies on immigration, citizenship and its relationship with China, public attitudes toward Asian Americans are shifting in parallel.

• They're widely seen as successful — placed near the top of the U.S. "social ladder" by the public — but report a more fragile reality marked by anxiety, discrimination and policy concerns.

By the numbers: 44% of Asian Americans say they feel worried about life right now, according to the STAATUS Index (Social Tracking of Asian Americans in the U.S.) released this week.

• They're the only group where worry outweighs hope (40%), the wide-ranging survey of all U.S. adults found.

🔬 Zoom in: The report also highlighted hardening attitudes and misconceptions toward Asian Americans from the general public.

• More than 1 in 5 U.S. adults (21%) say Chinese Americans pose a threat to society, the survey found.
• Nearly 1 in 4 U.S. adults believe Asian Americans are more loyal to another country than the U.S., with half unsure.

The bottom line: Asian Americans are gaining visibility in culture and public life. But the data show (for our grammar nerds) that recognition, safety, and belonging haven't caught up.

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AI large language models were trained to write like humans. But we're starting to write and even talk like them, Axios' Josephine Walker writes.

🧠 Researchers found that AI pushes users toward a more standardized speaking and writing style, reducing variations in sentence structure and vocabulary:

• ChatGPT's favored words — such as "delve," "meticulous," "boast" and "comprehend" — are showing up more in everyday conversation, researchers at the Max Planck Institute for Human Development found after reviewing 740,249 hours of content.

A USC study analyzed scientific journals, local news articles and social media and found writing style diversity dropped sharply after ChatGPT's release.

• Morteza Dehghani, a USC professor who oversaw the study, tells Axios: "People get used to this idealized, very predictable form of language. And even people who are not using it, in order to have that sense of powerful, influential writing, start writing more like LLMs."

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We got a look behind the scenes of the Miami Grand Prix as Oracle Red Bull Racing gears up for today's race, via Axios Miami's Martin Vassolo:

• It's been three years since Martin last visited the Red Bull garage and interviewed Jack Harington, partnerships group lead at Red Bull Racing & Red Bull Technology.
• In 2023, he learned how Red Bull uses Oracle's AI to bolster its race strategy by running millions of simulations.

Martin was allowed inside the Red Bull garage as mechanics worked on Max Verstappen's and Isack Hadjar's cars while dance music blared from speakers. (Harington said the team does it to pump up the mechanics and annoy neighboring teams on the pit lane.)

• This year, Oracle AI and cloud tech were used to help develop the team's new engine.
• The tech is also being used as a supercharged AI strategy agent on the pit wall and for business operations.

What's next: Harington said the team hopes to use AI to discover the next great racing driver by scraping data from youth go-kart races across the world.

• "It's really cool. It's just an evolution," Harington said.

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I'm coming to you this morning from the Shenandoah Valley — Lexington, Va., where my 40th reunion class at Washington and Lee University has been celebrating our lives of consequence.

• Why it matters: This is a sweet season of life to get together. People are still healthy and at it. But we've mostly made our marks. Pretenses are down. We can just enjoy, celebrate and learn from each other.

💻 I had a full-arc moment Friday afternoon, when I touched up Axios PM in the journalism school, Reid Hall ("In Reid we write").

• Four decades ago, I spent countless hours there, predawn till way too late, sharpening skills that made a difference in the world and brought me a fun and fulfilling life.

On opening night, we had a fun class event where I was grilled by reunion chairs Randy Ellis, Lee Hollis and Jim Kerr — three guys I'd admired since my first day on campus as a stranger from the strange land of California.

• I ran through some longevity learnings from Finish Line (Sleep longer, live longer) and told everyone their one job was to live 10 more years — and return for our 50th.

Stretch goal: Make it 23 years to 2049 for the university's 300th birthday.

Cherie DeVaux started her career exercising horses at Churchill Downs 22 years ago. Yesterday, she returned and made history as the first woman to train a Kentucky Derby winner, guiding 23–1 longshot Golden Tempo to win on her very first try.

• Jockey José Ortiz had to outrun his own brother on the favorite to get there, with their parents in the stands to witness it.

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