The Amazon billionaire’s heavy-lift rocket is poised for its first spaceflight. If it succeeds, it will give satellite operators and the Pentagon a long-desired alternative to SpaceX—and at a cheaper price, Forbes reveals.



In2021, Elon Musk trolled Jeff Bezos’ Blue Origin, mocking his rival’s slow progress toward launching a rocket into space. “Can’t get it up (to orbit) lol,” he<a href="https://x.com/elonmusk/status/1386825367948644352" rel="noreferrer noopener" target="_blank">&nbsp;wrote</a>&nbsp;on Twitter.



Now, almost 25 years after Bezos started the company, Blue Origin is on the brink of clapping back. Its powerful New Glenn rocket is at Florida’s Kennedy Space Center for its inaugural launch, which could come as soon as early morning Monday.



Plenty of people in the space industry and government are cheering for it to succeed – and to end SpaceX’s near monopoly on lofting American satellites into orbit.



“The space industry likes having choices,” said Caleb Henry, an analyst at Quilty Space. “And it doesn&#8217;t have that today. It just has SpaceX.”



And Blue Origin is selling launches at a price per satellite that’s significantly better than SpaceX, a former employee told&nbsp;Forbes.



The launch attempt comes less than two weeks before Donald Trump returns to the White House. During his first term, the former president attacked Bezos over negative coverage in the Washington Post, which Bezos owns. Now Trump, with Musk at his right hand, is promising a shakeup in government spending and regulation that could tilt the playing field for the commercial space industry — and threaten some of Blue Origin’s government contracts.



<h3 class="wp-block-heading" id="h-animal-spirits">ANIMAL SPIRITS</h3>



Bezos has positioned Blue Origin as the slow and steady alternative to SpaceX’s “move fast and fail quickly” ethos. Its motto is “gradatim ferociter,” Latin for “step by step, ferociously,” and its logo features two tortoises. So far the tortoise has been soundly beaten by SpaceX’s hare.



Over the past decade, SpaceX ramped up its launch cadence to unprecedented levels while its competition was largely sidelined. The old heavyweights of space launch — the United Launch Alliance, a joint venture of Boeing and Lockheed Martin, and Europe’s Arianespace — struggled with delays in developing new rockets, and Western sanctions removed Russian rockets as an option. SpaceX’s Falcon rockets propelled cargo to orbit 133 times in 2024, with one failure, the vast majority of the 145 launches attempted in the U.S. last year and more than half of the 263 worldwide, according to space activity tracker<a href="https://planet4589.org/space/papers/space24.pdf" rel="noreferrer noopener" target="_blank">&nbsp;Jonathan McDowell</a>.



But New Glenn, first announced in 2016, promises to be a fierce competitor. Like SpaceX’s Falcon 9, it’s a two-stage heavy lift workhorse, with the first stage designed to return to earth for reuse. But according to Blue Origin, a larger nose cone gives New Glenn twice the cargo volume of Falcon 9, and its powerful engines are designed to propel double the payload mass.



And Blue Origin is pricing to give customers more bang for the buck than SpaceX, according to a former employee who now works for a competitor who spoke to&nbsp;Forbes&nbsp;on the condition of anonymity.



Blue Origin is charging roughly $110 million per launch, he said, compared to about $70 million for a Falcon 9 – effectively offering to carry twice as many satellites for roughly 50% more money.



Blue Origin didn’t respond to a request for comment from&nbsp;Forbes.



Blue Origin&#8217;s New Glenn rocket, which stands 32 stories tall and is designed to launch 45 tons of payload into orbit, is pictured during a hotfire test at Cape Canaveral, Fla., on Dec. 27.Blue Origin



New Glenn is already proving attractive to companies building large constellations of small satellites for low-Earth orbit, particularly as those satellites have gotten larger, said Henry.



Blue Origin has won contracts to use it to launch satellites for all of the major constellations, except, of course, for SpaceX’s Starlink. That includes AST Mobile, which is developing a network to provide cellular service from space. The company has said New Glenn can carry eight of its Block 2 satellites, which will be the largest yet put in low-Earth orbit. Falcon 9 can carry just four.



And Bezos’ Amazon.com is leaning heavily on Blue Origin to realize its plans for its Kuiper satellite network. Blue Origin is slated to launch at least 23% of the constellation and potentially as much as half. Amazon expects to pay Blue Origin $2.7 billion through 2028, it said in a financial filing last year.



The U.S. government is also eager for another option to launch its intelligence and communications satellites. In June the Defense Department picked Blue Origin, along with SpaceX and United Launch Alliance, to compete for up to $5.6 billion worth of launches through 2029.



<h3 class="wp-block-heading" id="h-money-out">MONEY OUT</h3>



It’s welcome revenue after years of heavy spending to build the company. On the New Glenn program alone, Blue Origin has spent on the order of $10 billion, the former employee estimated. Apart from a few NASA contracts, that money has come from the deep pockets of Bezos, who has committed to use the vast fortune he’s made from Amazon to realize his boyhood space dreams.&nbsp;Forbes&nbsp;estimates his net worth at $233 billion, a distant second in the world to Musk’s $416 billion.



While it’s taken a quarter century for Blue Origin to take its first shot at space, it has notched impressive achievements on the way, while building infrastructure for mass rocket launches that SpaceX only put together gradually after reaching orbit. The company developed a powerful rocket engine, the Be-4, that’s powered two successful launches of United Launch Alliance’s new Vulcan rocket. With its reusable New Shepard rocket, which is designed to bring tourists to the edge of space, Blue Origin has become the only rocket company besides SpaceX to pull off the trick of landing its first stage. And it has built up manufacturing facilities expected to produce over 100 Be-4 engines in 2025, and multiple boosters to support a pace of 12 launches a year.



“It&#8217;s easy to be a little flip about, ‘SpaceX has done so much and Blue Origin has done little,’ but it&#8217;s nuanced,” said Carissa Christensen, CEO of the space consulting firm BryceTech.



A successful launch would be powerful validation for Blue Origin, but the attempt comes against a cloudy political backdrop. Trump has tasked Musk with leading an effort to chop government spending and regulation. A relaxation of rules in the heavily regulated space industry would help all participants, but competitors fear<a href="https://www.forbes.com/sites/jeremybogaisky/2024/11/12/in-trumps-space-race-musks-spacex-is-a-sure-bet/">&nbsp;preferential treatment for SpaceX</a>.



Exhibit A: Trump’s nominee to run NASA, billionaire Jared Isaacman. His company Shift4 Payments has invested in SpaceX, and Isaacman has bankrolled two private spaceflights on Falcon rockets.



Last March, Isaacman&nbsp;<a href="https://x.com/rookisaacman/status/1767893365541032333" rel="noreferrer noopener" target="_blank">questioned</a>&nbsp;the wisdom of NASA’s decision to fund the development of redundant lunar landers from SpaceX and Blue Origin, in case one faltered.



But Bezos has professed confidence that Musk won’t use his influence in the Trump administration to benefit SpaceX at Blue Origin’s expense.



“I take at face value what has been said, which is that [Musk] is not going to use his political power to advantage his own companies or to disadvantage his competitors,” Bezos said in December at a&nbsp;New York Times&nbsp;conference.



Bezos, in any event, is looking far beyond the next four years. He wants Blue Origin to drive the creation of an off-world economy where manufacturing and mining is done in in space, and the “Earth will be zoned residential and light industry.” Someday he thinks that will make Blue Origin a bigger business than Amazon, he said at the&nbsp;Times&nbsp;event. But it’s all predicated on bringing down the cost of reaching space, starting with New Glenn.



“We know how to travel to space. We know how to land on the Moon. We need to be able to do it a hundred times cheaper,” Bezos told&nbsp;<a href="https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=rsuqSn7ifpU" rel="noreferrer noopener" target="_blank">space YouTuber Tim Dodd</a>&nbsp;in September. “That’s what will really open the heavens to humanity.”

New York Times Holds Annual DealBook Summit

With New Glenn Launch, Bezos Looks To Break Musk’s Stranglehold On Space

Anthony Joshua is targeting a showdown with Tyson Fury in 2025, but the two-time heavyweight champion isn’t just focused on reclaiming the world title — he’s also investing in Nigeria’s future.



British-Nigerian boxing star Anthony Joshua recently expressed his determination to reclaim the world champion title after paying Nigeria&#8217;s President Bola Tinubu a New Year&#8217;s Day courtesy visit.



“Ups and downs happen, but I can’t stop now. I keep riding the wave. My goal is to become a three-time world champion and face Tyson Fury in 2025,” Joshua told reporters.


<div class="wp-block-image">
<figure class="aligncenter size-large is-resized"><img loading="lazy" decoding="async" width="1024" height="698" src="https://cms.forbesafrica.com/wp-content/uploads/2025/01/IMG_20250103_154612-1024x698.jpg" alt="" class="wp-image-64318" style="width:612px;height:auto" srcset="https://cms.forbesafrica.com/wp-content/uploads/2025/01/IMG_20250103_154612-1024x698.jpg 1024w, https://cms.forbesafrica.com/wp-content/uploads/2025/01/IMG_20250103_154612-300x204.jpg 300w, https://cms.forbesafrica.com/wp-content/uploads/2025/01/IMG_20250103_154612-768x524.jpg 768w, https://cms.forbesafrica.com/wp-content/uploads/2025/01/IMG_20250103_154612-1536x1047.jpg 1536w, https://cms.forbesafrica.com/wp-content/uploads/2025/01/IMG_20250103_154612-2048x1396.jpg 2048w" sizes="auto, (max-width: 1024px) 100vw, 1024px" /><figcaption class="wp-element-caption">Photo courtesy of X</figcaption></figure></div>


He met with Tinubu at his Lagos residence, where he presented the president with an autographed boxing glove. Tinubu expressed pride in Joshua’s achievements, calling him &#8220;a true champion and worthy ambassador of Nigeria&#8221;.



&#8220;Anthony Joshua’s dedication and achievements continue to inspire millions daily,&#8221; Tinubu shared in a post on X. &#8220;Thank you for the autographed glove — it is a symbol of perseverance and excellence. A symbol of what Nigerians are known for.&#8221;



On returning to his roots in December, Joshua began his visit in Sagamu, Ogun State — his hometown —on the outskirts of commercial capital Lagos.



The visit was marked by warm receptions as he connected with residents and local leaders. A highlight of the visit was his meeting with Governor Dapo Abiodun in the state capital, Abeokuta. Following their discussions, the Ogun State Government announced plans to build a state-of-the-art Anthony Joshua Indoor Boxing Ring in Abeokuta.



&#8220;Joshua’s achievements on the global stage bring pride to Ogun State, and we are committed to supporting him while celebrating the immense talents that put our state on the world map,” the governor’s office stated. Joshua was also named Ogun State’s official sports ambassador, and he is set to play a key role in the Gateway Games National Sports Festival, where he will light the ceremonial torch in May.



The boxer also visited Lagos State Governor Babajide Sanwo-Olu, who praised him for his determination and highlighted Lagos’ role as a hub for culture and &#8220;endless&#8221; inspiration. &#8220;As Anthony prepares for a bigger and better 2025, we encourage him to keep inspiring the world with his grit and determination,&#8221; Sanwo-Olu said.


<div class="wp-block-image">
<figure class="aligncenter size-large is-resized"><img loading="lazy" decoding="async" width="1024" height="683" src="https://cms.forbesafrica.com/wp-content/uploads/2025/01/IMG_20250103_154621-1024x683.jpg" alt="" class="wp-image-64317" style="width:556px;height:auto" srcset="https://cms.forbesafrica.com/wp-content/uploads/2025/01/IMG_20250103_154621-1024x683.jpg 1024w, https://cms.forbesafrica.com/wp-content/uploads/2025/01/IMG_20250103_154621-300x200.jpg 300w, https://cms.forbesafrica.com/wp-content/uploads/2025/01/IMG_20250103_154621-768x512.jpg 768w, https://cms.forbesafrica.com/wp-content/uploads/2025/01/IMG_20250103_154621-1536x1024.jpg 1536w, https://cms.forbesafrica.com/wp-content/uploads/2025/01/IMG_20250103_154621-2048x1365.jpg 2048w" sizes="auto, (max-width: 1024px) 100vw, 1024px" /><figcaption class="wp-element-caption">Photo courtesy of X</figcaption></figure></div>


Joshua, 35, rose to international fame by winning his first 22 professional fights, holding the heavyweight title from 2016 to 2019. Though he faced setbacks, including two losses to Oleksandr Usyk, Joshua rebounded in 2023 with a series of victories, including a knockout win over Cameroonian boxer Francis Ngannou early last year.



&#8220;To all Nigerians in the diaspora, you have a place to call home. I’ll continue to put my feet on the soil here and give back to communities,&#8221; declared Joshua, ranked by Forbes as the 16th highest-paid athlete globally in 2024, with earnings of $83 million

RING Magazine Awards London

‘A Place To Call Home’: Celebrity Boxer On Reconnecting With Nigeria As He Eyes Third World Title

Finishing school, possibly earning a degree, staying with one employer, and steadily climb- ing the corporate ladder once defined the path to career success.



Today, those conventions are vanishing as quickly as metal filing cabinets in a paperless office.



The modern workforce is navigating a new landscape, where traditional career paths that once offered stability and direction are rapidly crumbling.



The rules, traditions, and practices that shape sional advancement are being swiftly filed away, by new approaches to work.



Consider the traditional belief in long-term job stability and loyalty to a single employer. Lifetime employment with one company, once a hallmark of success, is being replaced by more dynamic career models where multiple job changes, freelancing, and gig work are seen as strengths rather than liabilities.



In line with this, a degree, once viewed as the mandatory ticket to career success, is no longer a universal requirement.



Many employers are now prioritizing skills, experience, and adaptability over formal education.



With the rise of alternative learning platforms, certifications, and on-the-job training, many workers are proving that career growth doesn’t always require a traditional degree.



The expectation of a linear career path — from entry- level to senior roles within the same field — is also losing its grip.



Workers today are embracing sideways moves, skills diversification, and career shifts that defy predictable patterns.



Many now prioritize work-life balance, creative fulfillment, and autonomy over simply reaching the top.



The belief that years of experience determine an employee’s worth is also being challenged.



Employers are increasingly focusing on potential, the ability to learn quickly, and adaptability.



Soft skills — such as communication, collaboration, and emotional intelligence — are becoming more critical than ever, overtaking the once-dominant focus on tech- nical expertise.



As career pathways become less predictable, the dominance of full-time, permanent roles is also fading.



And the once-rigid nine-to-five schedule is collapsing under the weight of flexible work models, with a growing emphasis on results rather than hours spent at a desk.



Even the physical office is losing its appeal.



The rise of remote and hybrid work models has shifted the focus to location flexibility, a critical factor for job seekers today.



The traditional concept of retirement, too, is being retired.



The assumption that workers stop working in their 50s or 60s is fading, as life expectancy increases and professionals seek continued engagement.



Some are opting to work well beyond traditional re- tirement age, often transitioning into phased retirement plans that allow them to stay connected to their careers in ways that suit their lifestyles.



The bottom line is that the old rules for career success no longer apply.



With so many job conventions crumbling, the question is: what’s driving this shift in how careers are built?



It all boils down to the relentless pace of technological change, shifting attitudes, and evolving economic forces.



Technology has been the primary driver, reshaping industries at a rapid pace and making adaptability far more valuable than the old standard of longevity.



Job roles are being redefined, and entirely new indus- tries are emerging seemingly overnight, forcing both employers and employees to rethink their approaches. In addition to technological change, people’s priorities are changing.



Workers today demand more than fair com- pensation – they want careers that align with their personal values, offer work-life balance, and provide a sense of fulfillment.



Burnout is no longer a badge of honor — it’s a signal to seek the type of work that offers flexibility and purpose.



From an economic perspective, businesses also require flexibility.



The rise of freelancing, short-term contracts, and gig work allows companies to respond more nimbly to changing market conditions.



For workers, this shift means more freedom to craft careers that don’t fit into the traditional one-company- for-life mould.



The workforce is embracing a patchwork of experienc- es, projects, and roles, stitched together to create a career that’s more personalized and dynamic than ever before.



The collapse of career conventions is not a crisis — it’s a necessary shift.



The future of work is no longer about following a pre- set path – it’s about each individual charting their own career course.



Whether it’s ditching the nine-to-five or working for multiple employers over a lifetime, today’s workers are finding new ways to thrive in a world where the old rules no longer apply.



In this new landscape, adaptability, flexibility, and creativity are the true keys to success. And while the career ladder may be a bit wobbly, it’s offering far more interesting ways to climb

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Expert-Speak: The Old Rules Of Getting Ahead At Work Are Taking Early Retirement

The exchange’s ownership structure mandates that up to 25% of the shares be held publicly, while the remaining 75% is reserved for private investors.



Ethiopia made history on Friday with the launch of its first securities exchange in over five decades.



The Ethiopian Securities Exchange (ESX) debuted with a single listed company, Wegagen Bank, marking a significant milestone in the country&#8217;s economic liberalization efforts.



The socialist military government abolished the securities exchange in 1974.



After ringing the launch bell, Prime Minister Abiy Ahmed tweeted, “Invest in Ethiopia — a fast-growing economy with immense potential and a dynamic trajectory toward prosperity.”



The ESX is expected to operate from 9AM to 3PM, and its chief executive, Tilahun Kassahun, anticipates that 90 companies will join the exchange within the next decade.



Ethiopia Investment Holdings (EIH), which controls 40 state-run companies, will play a crucial role in developing the market. The state-run company is already offering shares for the Ethio Telecom offer.



&#8220;Today marks the beginning of a new era for Ethiopia, where capital can flow freely to unlock opportunities,&#8221; Kassahun said at the opening ceremony.



In April 2024, the ESX established October 2023, concluded its capital-raising exercise, achieving more than double the funds needed to commence operations.



Through a public-private partnership, the ESX has the EIH as its founding shareholder, representing the government’s interests.



As of April 2024, key investors included entities such as FSD Africa, the Trade and Development Bank Group (TDB), and the Nigerian Exchange Group Plc (NGX Group).



Also, 16 domestic private commercial banks, 12 private insurance companies, and 17 other private domestic investors have also invested in the exchange.

IMG_20250110_220758

Ethiopia Rings In ‘New Era’ With Launch Of First Stock Exchange In Over 50 Years

In this week’s edition of The Prototype, we look at how too much reliance on AI assistants could make it harder to think, a company building bioengineered arteries, the role viruses play in Alzheimer’s and more. <a href="https://www.forbes.com/newsletter/the-prototype">You can sign up to get The Prototype in your inbox here</a>.



<abbr>N</abbr>ew AI tools&nbsp;are slowly becoming ubiquitous, being added to the software and hardware we use every day (sometimes whether we like it or not). But if we’re using artificial intelligence to perform tasks, search for information and solve problems, what does that mean for the intelligence we’re born with?



To figure this out, a team of researchers conducted a study involving 666 individuals ages 17 and up, representing a diverse population. It first evaluated the extent to which each of them made use of AI tools, then tested their critical thinking skills. The results of the study,&nbsp;<a href="https://www.mdpi.com/2075-4698/15/1/6" rel="noreferrer noopener" target="_blank">which were published</a>&nbsp;in the journal&nbsp;Societies, found that those who used AI tools a lot showed worse critical thinking abilities than those who didn’t use them often or at all. Whether someone used AI tools was a bigger predictor of a person’s thinking skills than any other factor, including educational attainment.



The reason for this is a phenomenon called “cognitive offloading” – where people’s thinking and problem-solving are essentially delegated. Frequent cognitive offloading reduces a person’s ability to independently think and solve problems. “This relationship underscores the dual-edged nature of AI technology,” the study authors wrote. “While it enhances efficiency and convenience, it inadvertently fosters dependence, which can compromise critical thinking skills over time.”



These findings are consistent with other studies that have shown a similar negative impact from AI tools on critical thinking skills. The authors note, however, that other studies show AI tools can be beneficial when they complement critical thinking, rather than offloading it. “Future research should explore strategies to integrate AI tools in ways that enhance rather than hinder cognitive engagement,” they wrote. “Ensuring that the next generation is equipped with the skills necessary to navigate an increasingly complex digital landscape.”



Stay tuned.



<h2 class="wp-block-heading" id="h-bioengineering-off-the-shelf-arteries-for-trauma-patients">Bioengineering Off-The-Shelf Arteries For Trauma Patients</h2>



<abbr>E</abbr>very year, thousands of Americans receive traumatic injuries that damage the arteries that crucially carry blood to their limbs. When these occur, patients basically have three options, Laura Niklason, CEO of regenerative medicine startup Humacyte, told me: they can have a vein grafted from another part of their body, which takes extra time and causes additional trauma; the surgeon can replace the artery with a synthetic plastic one, which creates a high risk of infection; or the limb can be amputated.



Niklason has a fourth option: her company has developed a bioengineered artery called Symvess which can be surgically implanted in a patient’s body, helping to both preserve the limb and reduce risk of infection. Symvess is derived from human donor cells that are grown in a lab on a degradable scaffold, in batches of 200 at a time. Over time, the cells recreate the physical structure of a blood vessel. Once that’s complete, the living cells are then processed away, leaving the artery structure behind, which can then be implanted in a new patient without risk of rejection. Cells in the patient&#8217;s body then occupy the implant, essentially regenerating a new artery.



Last month, Symvess was&nbsp;<a href="https://investors.humacyte.com/news-releases/news-release-details/humacyte-announces-fda-approval-symvesstm-acellular-tissue" rel="noreferrer noopener" target="_blank">approved by the FDA</a>&nbsp;for use in patients with traumatic injuries. That approval was based on studies that showed that the product, which has been implanted in over 600 patients so far, is significantly less likely to cause infection or lead to limb amputation compared to conventional synthetic arteries made from plastic.



For its next steps, the company will be working with Medicare and private insurers to ensure that they will pay for transplant procedures using Symvess. It’s also conducting studies to use Symvess with patients who have kidney dialysis and patients who have pulmonary arterial hypertension. It’s also developing a new, smaller version of its product that could potentially be used for heart bypass patients.



“This is truly a first-of-its-kind technology, and the FDA had to see a lot of data before they could get comfortable and say yes,” said Niklason. “So I’m very glad to be here.”



<h2 class="wp-block-heading">DISCOVERY OF THE WEEK: INACTIVE VIRUSES MAY CAUSE NEURODEGENERATION</h2>



It’s long been known that repeated head injuries can lead to&nbsp;neurodegenerative diseases&nbsp;like Parkinson’s, Alzheimer’s and CTE. But it wasn’t clear exactly how that happened. New research suggests the answer may be&nbsp;dormant viruses, particularly&nbsp;herpes simplex 1, which is found in the brains of over 80% of the population. These findings were reached by growing&nbsp;small tissue models&nbsp;of the brain, some with the herpes virus and some without, which were then struck repeatedly with a piston to mimic concussion.



The study, which was&nbsp;<a href="https://www.science.org/doi/10.1126/scisignal.ado6430" rel="noreferrer noopener" target="_blank">published in&nbsp;Science Signalling</a>, found that the brain tissues with the virus developed signs of&nbsp;Alzheimer’s disease, while those without did not, and that the damage was markedly increased with repeated blows. The researchers plan to conduct future studies that explore whether exposure to&nbsp;antiviral or anti-inflammatory drugs&nbsp;shortly after an injury could help prevent the onset of Alzheimer’s.



<h2 class="wp-block-heading">FINAL FRONTIER: WATER-BASED PROPULSION TEST</h2>



Japanese startup&nbsp;Pale Blue&nbsp;<a href="https://pale-blue.co.jp/news/543/" rel="noreferrer noopener" target="_blank">announced</a>&nbsp;it has signed a deal with Italy-based company&nbsp;D-Orbit&nbsp;to conduct two demonstrations in-orbit of its&nbsp;new ion thruster, which allows satellites both to maneuver and to take themselves out of orbit at the end of their life. Pale Blue’s thruster uses&nbsp;water&nbsp;as a propellant, which potentially offers a cleaner and more sustainable fuel for small satellites.



<h2 class="wp-block-heading">WHAT ELSE I WROTE THIS WEEK</h2>



In my other newsletter,&nbsp;InnovationRx, my colleague&nbsp;Amy Feldman&nbsp;and I&nbsp;<a href="https://www.forbes.com/sites/innovationrx/2025/01/08/innovationrx-medical-debts-will-be-erased-from-credit-histories/">covered a number of healthcare stories</a>, including a drug that significantly improves survival for&nbsp;lung cancer&nbsp;patients, the controversy over&nbsp;pulse oximetry&nbsp;technology and a new study that finds that while&nbsp;LLMs&nbsp;are good at answering medical exam questions, they’re much less proficient at making diagnoses from patient conversations.



<h2 class="wp-block-heading">SCIENCE AND TECH TIDBITS</h2>



My colleague Jeremy Bogaisky&nbsp;<a href="https://www.forbes.com/sites/jeremybogaisky/2025/01/09/amazon-alibaba-fiber-optic-drone-ukraine/">reports</a>&nbsp;that online retailers like Amazon and Alibaba are selling technology that&nbsp;protects drones&nbsp;from having their signals jammed or being remotely taken over.



Ai startup Anthropic’s new funding round will make all seven of its founders&nbsp;billionaires,&nbsp;<a href="https://www.forbes.com/sites/alexkonrad/2025/01/08/anthropic-60-billion-valuation-will-make-all-seven-cofounders-billionaires/">write my colleagues</a>&nbsp;Alex Konrad and Phoebe Liu.



Researchers&nbsp;<a href="https://www.nist.gov/news-events/news/2025/01/novel-quantum-refrigerator-great-erasing-quantum-computers-chalkboard" rel="noreferrer noopener" target="_blank">developed a technique</a>&nbsp;for&nbsp;refrigerating quantum computers&nbsp;in a way that reduces errors and could potentially make them more reliable.



Eating&nbsp;grapefruit&nbsp;can interfere with the action of several kinds of medications, including anti-anxiety drugs and statins. But new research suggests it may be possible to&nbsp;<a href="https://nph.onlinelibrary.wiley.com/doi/epdf/10.1111/nph.20322" rel="noreferrer noopener" target="_blank">grow a variety of the fruit</a>&nbsp;that doesn’t interfere with prescription drugs.



Biologists successfully transplanted&nbsp;chloroplasts–the cells that power photosynthesis– from algae into&nbsp;hamsters, where they&nbsp;<a href="https://www.jstage.jst.go.jp/article/pjab/100/9/100_pjab.100.035/_article" rel="noreferrer noopener" target="_blank">successfully functioned</a>&nbsp;for about three days.



Scientists at Northwestern University&nbsp;<a href="https://news.northwestern.edu/stories/2025/01/trash-to-treasure-industrial-waste-battery/?fj=1" rel="noreferrer noopener" target="_blank">built a battery</a>&nbsp;that uses triphenylphosphine oxide, a common&nbsp;industrial waste product, to store energy instead of metals.



<h2 class="wp-block-heading">PRO SCIENCE TIP: ADD WATER TO YOUR COFFEE BEANS</h2>



Here’s an easy tip to enhance the flavor of your morning cup of&nbsp;coffee: add a little&nbsp;water&nbsp;to the beans before you grind them. This isn’t a new idea–among coffee professionals this is known as the “Ross Droplet Technique”–but new research gives scientific backing to the idea. When beans are ground, they build up a&nbsp;static electric charge, which causes clumping and inconsistent extraction during the brewing process. In new&nbsp;<a href="https://www.cell.com/matter/fulltext/S2590-2385(23)00568-4" rel="noreferrer noopener" target="_blank">research published</a>&nbsp;in the journal&nbsp;Matter, scientists found that the Ross Droplet Technique reduced the static charge during grinding, producing a&nbsp;better-tasting coffee.



<h2 class="wp-block-heading">WHAT’S ENTERTAINING ME THIS WEEK</h2>



I’ve been listening to the concept album&nbsp;Epic&nbsp;by&nbsp;<a href="https://www.epicthemusical.com/" rel="noreferrer noopener" target="_blank">Jorge Rivera-Herrans</a>. It’s a musical-style adaptation of&nbsp;The Odyssey, telling the tale of&nbsp;Odysseus&nbsp;from the end of the&nbsp;Trojan War&nbsp;until his return home to&nbsp;Ithaca. The album is divided into nine sagas of a few songs each, serving as chapters in the story. It’s an amazing version of one of humanity’s oldest stories, and it’s appropriate for it to be sung–that is, after all, how it was originally presented in the time of Homer. It’s streaming on most of the major music services.

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The West African sub-region, including countries like Burkina Faso, Niger, Mali, and Nigeria, continues to grapple with insecurity and violence fueled by terrorist attacks.



Al-Qaeda affiliate Jama&#8217;at Nusrat al-Islam wal-Muslimin (JNIM) claimed responsibility for the late Wednesday carnage in northern Benin on Friday.



This jihadist group, known for its operations in Mali, Burkina Faso, and Niger, reportedly said it killed soldiers exceeding 30, and seized weapons, ammunition, and a drone.



The attack occurred near the borders of Burkina Faso and Niger, a region plagued by terrorist activities.



Benin&#8217;s Army Chief, Colonel Faizou Gomina, described the loss as &#8220;very heavy&#8221; and revealed that &#8220;the targeted position was one of the strongest and most militarized under Operation Mirador&#8221;.



This operation was launched to bolster the country&#8217;s security forces in response to the growing terrorist threat.



This attack is not an isolated incident. In December, gunmen killed three Operation Mirador soldiers and wounded four others who were guarding an oil pipeline in northeast Benin.

Streetlife

Jihadist Group Claims Responsibility For Attack On Northern Benin’s ‘Most Militarized Operation’

South Africa boasts a rich potential of sprint stars. Akani Simbine’s coach Werner Prinsloo weighs in on what’s needed to give the world a run for its money.



South Africa has a new wave of exciting young sprinters to add to the established talent of Akani Simbine, which led to a surprise silver medal in the 4 x 100-meters at the Paris Olympic Games. Simbine, Shaun Maswanganyi, Bradley Nkoana and Bayanda Walaza stunned the field to finish second and underline the rich potential of sprint stars in the country.



But nurturing talent from young prospects to the finish is both a labor of love and a long process, with many pitfalls, and highs and lows, along the way.



Werner Prinsloo has been coach of Simbine, 31, for the last 14 years and is regarded as one of the top sprint trainers in the country, and by extension, the African continent.



He is excited by the prospects for several athletes coming through, but has also seen this movie before, and it did not end as he had hoped last time.



“Sprinters seem to come in waves. If you go back to 2014 or 2015, there was a group of very good sprinters and we thought we were going to dominate the world. But it didn’t happen. They come and go,” Prinsloo tells FORBES AFRICA.



“It’s up to the coaches to nurture the talent and we’ve got a group of really good trainers that can manage these sprinters over time. The big issue we have, and we see this not just in South Africa, is the fact that a lot of juniors don’t transition to the senior level.



“That’s our biggest challenge, because we have a big group of high school sprinters that are very, very good. But taking the next step is the challenge.



“Someone like Akani is an example. He started with me at the age of 17 and he wasn’t a top sprinter in his age group. But over the last 14 years he matured and got better, and that’s what we need to be able to get right with the current youngsters.”



The reason why many promising sprinters fail is largely a socio-economic one, according to Prinsloo.



“There are a lot of factors and we’ve had these discussions among coaches and administrators so many times. A lot of these kids, when they’re in high school, they have a system to work in, they have a coach. Everything’s done for them,” he says.



“Some get to university and that continues, but most don’t. So, what happens then? They don’t have that support system anymore. Now they have to do everything for themselves. Find and pay for a coach, find a physiotherapist and travel from wherever they live to training.



“Most kids come from poor backgrounds and they just can’t afford that. Unless they can somehow go to university, they are lost to the system, despite their enormous potential.”



A MEN’S 100M is  generally over in under 10 seconds and to the untrained eye, it just looks like guys trying to run very fast. But Prinsloo reveals there is a real science behind it and a mix of good genes and working on the mechanics of each portion of the race is vital. “People underestimate real sprinting. Everyone can run, but sprinting is a skill that needs to be developed over time,” he says. “Obviously, the best of the best are born with what they call ‘fast twitch muscle fibers’. And they have more of it than everyone else.



“So that gives them a bit of an edge, because they have that ‘speed gene’. Most of the Jamaicans are born with it and those are the guys that become the top sprinters.



“And then over time, it’s just developing the mechanics of sprinting. Some of the guys get it at a young age, some need more maturity over the years to develop it.



“If you break down the 100m, you have your start phase, you have a drive phase, then you have an acceleration and transition phase, which goes into the maximum speed phase. All in under 10 seconds.



“And in each one of these phases, the mechanics are different. The public don’t see it. They just see the guys coming out of the blocks and running, but in each phase the biomechanics are different. We work on each separately.



“Akani is one of the fastest in the world in the maximum speed phase, that is the best part of his race. And we know if we can work on him to get better in the acceleration phase, for example, that will put him in a good position.”



Simbine remains the gold standard, so to speak, in South African sprinting, but has yet to pick up an individual medal at the Olympics despite coming agonizingly close on two occasions.



His time of 9.93s in the Tokyo final in 2021 was four hundredths of a second behind bronze medalist Andre De Grasse. Marcell Jacobs won gold in 9.80.



He bettered his time in Paris to 9.82, and on this occasion was one hundredth of a second behind Fred Kerley (9.81) for the bronze and fractions of a second behind gold medal winner Noah Lyles (9.79).



“Leading up to Paris, we said, ‘look, we have to make this the year to perform’. And so everything in the last few years was geared towards getting him ready,” Prinsloo says.



“We got to a point where in training and in our approach to the work that we do, we found this groove. A big factor was his mentality, his emotional state. He was in a much better space. And that builds a lot of confidence in athletes. “It’s unfortunate he couldn’t get into the medals in the 100m, but the time was good. He ran a personal best and a national record, and that set up everything for the relay silver.”



Prinsloo confirms that the next games in 2028 are very much in Simbine’s sights. “We are looking to the next Olympics in Los Angeles. We are so close to the 9.7s and that’s what we’re pushing for now. It’s going to be small things that will get us there.”

The Olympic Games-Paris 2024

Getting Up to Speed: On South Africa’s Exciting Young Sprinters

<h2 class="wp-block-heading" id="h-topline">Topline</h2>



The Supreme Court’s&nbsp;<a href="https://www.forbes.com/sites/alisondurkee/2025/01/10/supreme-court-signals-it-will-uphold-tiktok-ban-live-updates/">signaling</a>&nbsp;it may uphold a ban on TikTok, the wildly popular shortform video social media app, sent shockwaves through the stock market Friday, boosting shares of companies behind rival platforms and hitting hard one key TikTok partner.



<h2 class="wp-block-heading" id="h-key-facts">Key Facts</h2>



The Supreme Court heard oral arguments Friday in TikTok’s appeal against a law requiring its private Chinese parent company ByteDance to divest its TikTok holdings by or face a U.S. ban Jan. 19, and several justices&nbsp;<a href="https://www.forbes.com/sites/alisondurkee/2025/01/10/supreme-court-signals-it-will-uphold-tiktok-ban-live-updates/">cast doubt</a>&nbsp;on the legitimacy of TikTok’s argument.



In an otherwise&nbsp;<a href="https://www.forbes.com/sites/dereksaul/2025/01/10/stocks-drop-after-jobs-report-shows-hot-us-labor-market-heres-why/">down day</a>&nbsp;for U.S. stocks – the S&amp;P 500 fell more than 1.5% to a two-month low and the tech-heavy Nasdaq was down 1.6% – two of the biggest stock gainers were a pair of American social media companies behind other short-form video platforms in Snapchat parent Snap, which owns TikTok competitor Spotlight, and Meta, which operates TikTok rival Instagram Reels.



Snap stock gained 4% by close, notching its highest intraday share price since Aug. 1, while shares of the much larger Meta rallied 1%.



Shares of Google parent Alphabet, which owns YouTube Shorts, were less affected by the TikTok hearing, dropping 1.1%, though that was a slimmer loss than the at least 1.4% losses experienced by stocks of Apple, Nvidia, Microsoft and Amazon, the world’s only other $2 trillion companies.



<h2 class="wp-block-heading" id="h-big-number">Big Number</h2>



$1.5 billion. That’s how much richer&nbsp;<a href="https://www.forbes.com/profile/mark-zuckerberg/">Meta CEO Mark Zuckerberg</a>&nbsp;got thanks to Friday’s rally, the biggest daily jump of any American billionaire, according to Forbes’ real-time&nbsp;<a href="https://www.forbes.com/real-time-billionaires/#5dd06783d788">net worth tracker</a>.



<h2 class="wp-block-heading" id="h-contra">Contra</h2>



Friday was a rough day for perhaps TikTok’s most notable American collaborator, software giant Oracle, whose stock tanked 5%, the worst daily loss of any of the U.S.’ 40 mega-cap companies worth at least $200 billion. Shares of Oracle hit their lowest price since early September. Oracle, which hosts the U.S. data of TikTok,&nbsp;<a href="https://www.cnbc.com/2024/06/24/oracle-warns-that-a-tiktok-ban-would-hurt-business.html" rel="noreferrer noopener" target="_blank">cautioned</a>&nbsp;in July its earnings would take a hit if TikTok got banned. Oracle’s cofounder and chairman,&nbsp;<a href="https://www.forbes.com/profile/larry-ellison/">Larry Ellison</a>, was the biggest billionaire loser Friday, as his net worth tanked $10 billion.



PROMOTED



<h2 class="wp-block-heading" id="h-tangent">Tangent</h2>



Betting markets have moved heavily in favor of a TikTok ban: The odds of a TikTok ban by May have jumped from 30% to 70% over the last week on the blockchain-based site&nbsp;<a href="https://polymarket.com/event/tiktok-banned-in-the-us-before-may-2025?tid=1736539655150" rel="noreferrer noopener" target="_blank">Polymarket</a>.



<h2 class="wp-block-heading" id="h-key-background">Key Background</h2>



Meta and Oracle’s opposite fortunes widened the net worth gap between Zuckerberg, the world’s third-richest person, and Ellison, the fourth-wealthiest, to nearly $20 billion, just two days after Zuckerberg’s riches <a href="https://www.forbes.com/sites/mollybohannon/2025/01/06/mark-zuckerberg-overtakes-larry-ellison-as-worlds-third-wealthiest-person/">surpassed</a> Ellison’s. ByteDance last fetched a <a href="https://www.forbes.com/sites/alexkonrad/2023/05/04/bytedance-scrutiny-leaves-midas-investors-waiting-billions/">$220 billion</a> valuation in a 2023 funding round and valued itself internally at $300 billion in November, according to <a href="https://www.reuters.com/technology/tiktok-parent-bytedances-valuation-hits-300-billion-amid-us-ban-uncertainty-wsj-2024-11-16/" target="_blank" rel="noreferrer noopener">Reuters</a>, which would make it the world’s second-most valuable private company, trailing only SpaceX, which valued itself at $350 billion in an internal share sale last month, <a href="https://www.bloomberg.com/news/articles/2024-12-10/spacex-share-sale-is-said-to-value-company-at-about-350-billion" target="_blank" rel="noreferrer noopener">Bloomberg</a> reported.

Meta Announces Threads App

Meta Stock Rallies, Oracle Slides As Market Reacts To TikTok Ban Hearing At Supreme Court

CES Las Vegas kicked off this week with a keynote from Nvidia, the second-most valuable company after Apple, with AI-powered innovations for gaming, robotics, autonomous vehicles, agentic AI, and its first desktop computer.



Nvidia CEO and founder Jensen Huang said AI is advancing at an incredible pace, which started with perception AI, then generative AI, and now, “physical AI, AI that can proceed, reason, plan and act”.



Its newly announced Nvidia Cosmos platform was described as a “ChatGPT moment” for robotics and autonomous vehicles by Huang intended to advance ‘physical AI’.



Its gen-AI capabilities will simulate and predict real-world outcomes by generating high-fidelity, physics-aware video from simple inputs, explains Nvidia.



Huang described agentic AI as the next big thing for the enterprise, designed to exhibit autonomy, decision-making capabilities, and perform tasks proactively, rather than reactive AI.



Apart from its Blackwell-based GeForce RTX 50 Series graphics cards for high performance applications for gaming, AI development, content creation, etc, it also announced a partnership with Toyota to power its next-generation of vehicles.



The DriveOS operating system focuses on safety, autonomous driving and AI-powered cockpit experiences.



Nvidia will also partner with Aurora Innovation, an autonomous trucking company, to power its next-generation self-driving trucks.



Other car news included Honda’s unveiling of two new EV prototype models, the Honda 0 Saloon and Honda 0 SUV. It is expected to go on sale in North America in 2026, as part of the company’s 0 Series lineup. No technical specifications were shared.



Sony and Honda announced pricing for its previously introduced electric Afeela, which starts at $89,900. The EV is powered by Sony software, which supports PS5 games through its infotainment system.



BMW unveiled a new iDrive version, featuring BMW Panoramic Vision, to be introduced first on all its Neue Klasse models at the end of 2025.



It’s a futuristic head-up display (HUD) that spans across the bottom of the windscreen, projecting driver information that is customisable.



Zeekr showed off an autonomous robotaxi (RT), with Nvidia’s Drive AGX Thor system-on-chip, making it the first automaker in the world to do so.



The company says the Zeekr RT will begin mass production this year, which will be used by Google’s Waymo for its next-gen self-driving taxis. Delivery is expected before the end of 2025.



And taking things a notch higher is Chinese EV maker XPeng who showed off a modular flying car called the AeroHT.



The ‘Land Aircraft Carrier’ is an electric van with six wheels, and at the back it houses an electric vehicle take-off and landing (eVTOL) aircraft for one passenger to fly in.



XPeng says its flying car takes “five minutes to learn and three hours to master”, featuring a joystick and large touchscreen. It is not made for commutes, but rather to explore remote areas like if you’re camping.



CES also showcased pet tech, such as GPS tracking, health monitoring and bark monitoring, by Tractive, which lets dog owners monitor things like health and happiness.



The company says its app will “alert pet owners when a concerning pattern is emerging, as dogs can’t speak and are often very good at hiding pain or discomfort”.



Speaking about wellbeing, the Nutrix coriSense is a small handheld gadget that tells you if you’re stressed by spitting into it. It recommends testing four times a day, and analyses cortisol levels from your saliva.



Other wacky gadgets showcased was the Kirin Electric Salt Spoon concept that enhances the perception of saltiness in your food using mild electric currents, and the Spicerr dispenser with touchscreen that measures out your spices from six spice capsules.



Only time will tell if these concepts make it to the real world.

XPeng Flying Car; Image supplied

Global Tech Event Unveils AI Breakthroughs, Flying Cars And PetTech: A Glimpse Of The Weird And Wacky

South African Kwaito musician, Victor Bogopane, popularly known as Doc Shebeleza, passed away on Thursday morning. According to reports, the S&#8217;kumfete artist died at home.



<a href="https://twitter.com/tsheko2020/status/1877302658731577383">https://twitter.com/tsheko2020/status/1877302658731577383</a>



There is no confirmation as to the cause of the death but family spokesperson Shakes Mavundla told News24 that Bogopane, 51, had been undergoing medical treatment.



“He was going back on Monday in preparation for his second operation. He is survived by his mother, brother, sister and nine children,&#8221; added Mavundla.



<figure class="wp-block-embed is-type-rich is-provider-twitter wp-block-embed-twitter"><div class="wp-block-embed__wrapper">
<blockquote class="twitter-tweet" data-width="500" data-dnt="true">Heartbreaking news: South African music legend Doc Shebeleza has sadly passed away after battling illness. His impact on the music industry and our hearts will never be forgotten. Deepest condolences to her family and fans!<a href="https://twitter.com/hashtag/RIPDocShebeleza?src=hash&amp;ref_src=twsrc%5Etfw">#RIPDocShebeleza</a> <a href="https://t.co/7j5rc7BpwN">pic.twitter.com/7j5rc7BpwN</a>&mdash; TK_Nala (@NalaThokozane) <a href="https://twitter.com/NalaThokozane/status/1877342976600420491?ref_src=twsrc%5Etfw">January 9, 2025</a></blockquote><script async src="https://platform.twitter.com/widgets.js" charset="utf-8"></script>
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Considered a Kwaito music veteran and icon in the country, many took to social media to express how the artist contributed to the music industry. From the vibrant township of Soweto and growing up in a family that valued cultural expression, Bogopane’s music career began very early and he was able to introduce styles ranging from Kwaito to traditional South African music.



His songs such as S’kumfete, Ingagara, Ebumnandini, and Ghets Ghetsa are fan favorites in South Africa.



South African political party, African National Congress (ANC), said in a statement on Thursday that Bogopane’s loss is marked as a profound loss to the music industry and the nation as a whole.



“His contributions significantly shaped South Africa’s cultural landscape, providing a soundtrack to the lives of many during a transformative era in our country’s history,” ANC Secretary-General Fikile Mbalula said in the statement.

0000110227

Legendary South African Kwaito Artist Dies At 51

The attackers, described by Chad’s foreign minister as disorganized, were subsequently neutralized by the presidential guard of the Sahelian and landlocked country in Central Africa, facing security challenges related to conflicts in neighboring countries.



In a Wednesday evening attack on Chad&#8217;s seat of power, 24 assailants stormed the presidential palace in the capital N&#8217;Djamena, stabbing four guards and leaving one dead and two critically injured.



The attack coincided with the official visit of China’s Foreign Minister Wang Yi. A spokesperson for the Chinese delegation confirmed that the visit concluded without disruption.



According to Abderaman Koulamallah, Chad’s Minister of State for Foreign Affairs and government spokesperson, the group advanced toward the compound but was met with decisive force. Presidential guards opened fire, killing 18 of the assailants and capturing the remaining six.



<div class="wp-block-media-text is-stacked-on-mobile"><figure class="wp-block-media-text__media"><img loading="lazy" decoding="async" width="1024" height="1024" src="https://cms.forbesafrica.com/wp-content/uploads/2025/01/GettyImages-2192452293.jpg" alt="" class="wp-image-64270 size-full" srcset="https://cms.forbesafrica.com/wp-content/uploads/2025/01/GettyImages-2192452293.jpg 1024w, https://cms.forbesafrica.com/wp-content/uploads/2025/01/GettyImages-2192452293-300x300.jpg 300w, https://cms.forbesafrica.com/wp-content/uploads/2025/01/GettyImages-2192452293-150x150.jpg 150w, https://cms.forbesafrica.com/wp-content/uploads/2025/01/GettyImages-2192452293-768x768.jpg 768w" sizes="auto, (max-width: 1024px) 100vw, 1024px" /></figure><div class="wp-block-media-text__content">
An infographic titled &#8220;Assault on Chad&#8217;s presidential palace&#8221; created in Ankara, Turkiye on January 9, 2025. Gunmen launched an attack on the presidential palace in Chad&#8217;s capital N&#8217;Djamena, sparking a battle that left 18 attackers and one security personnel member dead and several others injured. (Photo by Omar Zaghloul/Anadolu via Getty Images)
</div></div>



“These are people who came from a certain neighborhood of N&#8217;Djamena that I will not name,” Koulamallah explained during a television interview. “They did not have war weapons. Their attempt was disorganized and completely incomprehensible. This is probably not a terrorist act.”



N&#8217;Djamena remained calm on Thursday morning, with military forces securing the area around the palace. Residents reported no further gunfire overnight, though some neighborhoods near the presidency were still blocked off.



The 18.3 million population country, led by President Mahamat Idriss Deby, continues to face security challenges, including insurgencies linked to groups such as Boko Haram.



Deby took power in 2021 following the death of his father, Idriss Deby, who ruled Chad for over three decades. Despite its oil wealth, the nation remains one of the poorest in Africa, grappling with ongoing instability.



Military authorities and the public prosecutor are expected to provide additional details as investigations unfold.

Recep Tayyip Erdogan – Mahamat Idriss Deby Itno meeting

‘Probably Not A Terrorist Act’: Chad’s Foreign Minister On 24 Assailants Storming Presidential Palace, Stabbing Four Guards, Killing One

Scott Belsky Says AI Is Collapsing Boundaries Between Traditional Business Functions And Putting More Creative Ability Within Anyone’s Reach.



Tell me a bit about your role at Adobe.



Belsky:&nbsp;My responsibility is overseeing our emerging product groups. These are the groups that include 3D &amp; Immersive. They include the AI-first products, like&nbsp;<a href="https://blog.adobe.com/en/publish/2024/10/14/new-creative-beginnings-gen-ai-redefining-ideation-with-project-concept" rel="noreferrer noopener" target="_blank">Project Concept</a>&nbsp;and a whole roadmap of others. They include the Adobe Stock business, which is going through a re-imagination in the world of AI, and is also responsible for sourcing the data that we train our models on.



Then, of course, design. The design organization spans all of our products and services across the company, and it’s an important part of my role to make sure that the designers are aligned around the experiences we’re delivering to our customers. Upgrading our design system, ensuring that we don’t reinvent the wheel across different products when it relates to a particular component or function.



The Strategy &amp; Corporate Development Group also is in my organization. That’s a group that plots the strategy for Adobe going forward, and explores the edges that may someday become the center for the company, then also takes action on some of the inorganic opportunities that we have on the M&amp;A side.



When you’re looking forward, how large of a role does AI play in corporate strategy?



Artificial intelligence to me is reimagining and refactoring every function of an organization. Whether it be finance and accounting, or HR, or legal, or creative, or marketing, these functions are being re-imagined based on these tools. These tools are also collapsing the boundaries between some of these functions, which allow stakeholders who ordinarily were never able to access the power of these functions to be able to do stuff on their behalf.



When you look at the world of creativity and marketing, a few things become clear. First of all, you have a lot of marketers at the edge, like these social media marketers, and people who are engaging in real-time on behalf of the brand on social platforms, where a lot of the spend goes these days for marketing. Those folks need to be outfitted to be able to create in real time. They need to be able to create variations of marketing campaigns. They need to be able to create content that responds to the moment. So in some ways, the lines are blurry. These marketers are acting more like creators.



Similarly on the creator side, creators are starting to act as if they’re art directors and creative directors when they have the ability to assign tasks to AI. Instead of the three or five options that they have the time to explore, now they can explore 300 options leveraging the superpowers of AI. In some cases, that makes them more tastemakers, creative directors and art directors when they’re at that stage of the process.



When it comes to using tools to get exactly what’s in their mind’s eye reflected in some sort of content or creative asset, they have these new tools at their disposal. That’s one of the things that we’re most excited about at Adobe: Taking our creative pros from the prompt era of AI creativity to the controls era. Right now, the creative pros that I talk to are still tinkering with these models. They have fun putting in prompts and stuff like that. It’s a cool concepting and ideation process, but none of it is commercially ready for them to use for putting out something. They want to make all these changes, so they take it into Photoshop, they take it into Illustrator, they take it into our products. I think that control era, where AI becomes even more granular and they can take the reins, is an important step for creative pros.



It’s been two years since ChatGPT hit and every enterprise decided they wanted to have generative AI. How have you seen businesses change their perspective on AI? How do they look at it now?



I think there are two camps of businesses. There are the businesses that typically are the pragmatists. They’re always late to adopt new technologies, for all sorts of reasons. It could be regulatory, it could be deeply ingrained traditions, patterns and reflexes. And it could be the leaders are somewhat technophobic and they want to wait until they have to change something.



Then there’s the camp that’s always saying, we need to reimagine how we do what we do before someone else does. I think [a] characteristic of that camp that leans forward in new technology is they recognize that not only should they be optimizing their product, but they should also be optimizing how they work to create their product. They’re always saying: if we could have more efficient meetings, or if we could have more efficient usage of our data, or if we could optimize the way that we come up with marketing ideas, or if we could streamline this and streamline that.



In that camp, I feel like there’s a big lean in on this technology. They’re in most cases at least playing with it. Many of them are piloting it in some way, shape or form across specific projects. And those who are still playing and piloting are trying to protect the groups that are doing so by making the objectives more along the lines of learning, as opposed to a business outcome, because they want to make sure that they grasp the knowledge and learnings of these tools and their workflows.



And then there are some that have already started to achieve business outcomes and really refactor. When I look at Adobe, we are using products like Copilot and GitHub for our engineers. That has a material impact on how we work. We use Firefly for our branding and marketing work. We’re already creating variations of content and experiencing this kind of multiplier benefit of using those tools.



From where you sit and what you see, both at Adobe but also in the wider space, what do you see coming online and becoming available and accessible to businesses in the way of AI in 2025?



In 2025, there will be a few themes. Number one is that the memory that these AI tools have of our preferences is going to start to enhance the outcomes that we can achieve. On the content and marketing side, the AI remembering the character consistency of something you’re trying to generate content around—whether it be a product that you’re shooting marketing images of, or a character going through a commercial or a short piece of video that you’re developing. The remembering of your brand components, your preferences for brand tone and copy and all that sort of stuff.



On the personal consumer LLM stuff that we all use, the context windows are getting longer and more sophisticated. These AI agents remembering everything we’ve ever purchased, everything we’ve ever liked or disliked, those preferences are going to start to kick in to uplevel the quality of those experiences.



The rise of [AI] agents is going to surprise all of us. We’ve always had a learning curve when it comes to learning tools, software and processes. That’s the learning curve of starting a job or rising the ranks. I would imagine sometime this year, these agents are going to start to meet us where we are in the software tools that we use. They’re going to know what we know and don’t know about it, and they’ll allow us to leverage a lot of power with natural language.



I think it’s really exciting to know that anyone could be able to use a lot of tools that were out of reach. It [also] allows companies like us to not just target marketers and creative pros, but also the stakeholders of marketing and creative, which is almost everyone in an organization. And it also just drives better usage of the product. If an agent helps you and takes actions on your behalf and can explain and show you, it’s really a holy grail for helping people get value out of the products they use.



For creative and marketing tools at Adobe, what is on the horizon—in terms of new developments, ideas and concepts—that will impact what you do?



A couple come to mind. Number one is this new category of ideation and concepting. That typically is the top of the funnel of any creative process. It typically happens in a very offline or manual way, in the form of people making mood boards of images or bookmarks on Instagram of things that inspire them. As I’ve gone around and talked to a lot of creators, art and creative directors and brand managers, they’re constantly collecting all this stuff. For them to be able to use AI to rapidly expand the surface area of possibility they can explore to find great solutions to problems, that category of concepting and mood boarding in the age of AI is really interesting to us. I think that’s one new category that’s going to emerge that’s going to be important for Adobe, and also for the creative and marketing worlds.



The second thing that I think we will see is the maturing, development and innovation of our foundation models. Firefly is in the leading pack of models out there for media generation. The key difference is that Firefly was only trained on commercially safe content that we have licensed. I think we’re one of the only companies that’s really transparent about exactly how we’ve trained our model—as opposed to politely not answering the question. I think that’s important to a lot of our customers, especially in the enterprise, or [among] artists who want to use new tools like AI, but in the right way. I think these models will continue to get better, but that differentiation will continue to become more important.



While we want to make Firefly as great as possible and have it be the commercially safe model for commercial creativity and marketing, I also think that customers may want to use third-party models for various purposes. They might want to use a certain generative model that was trained to make explosions, or to help typography. I’ve been an advocate internally of us supporting third-party models in the workflows that people have. Adobe’s always been a platform-agnostic company, and whenever a platform like Apple or Windows gets better, so do our tools. Similarly, if a new video model comes out, and then another better one, and another better one, if all of those are accessible to our customers for various use cases, how could we not help our customers make use of them? That’s also something that we’re exploring.



You are one of the creators of the&nbsp;<a href="https://contentauthenticity.org/" rel="noreferrer noopener" target="_blank">Content Authenticity Initiative</a>. Where do you see that going in 2025?



This is one of the true passion projects of my career that I think [is] most important. The Content Authenticity Initiative started over five years ago when we started to see new features emerge in products like After Effects that allowed people to edit real video in a very fast way using AI. So this is before the advent of generative AI, but [it] allowed you to remove objects, mask and do things in video that made something very clear to us: The era ahead was one where we could no longer believe our eyes. In that sense, the question was: What do we do to help people demonstrate that something is real? Or if they’ve edited it, how do we help them show how it was changed so that they can still be trusted? It wasn’t developed to punish bad actors. It was developed to reward good actors who are willing to show the provenance and attribution of their work, which creators love. They want to get credit for their work, so they want to add credentials if they can.



Now, in the age of generative AI and the ubiquity of these technologies, the importance of the Content Authenticity Initiative became 10x, because suddenly all of this stuff, anything in your mind could be generated in a second. In some of the models out there that are trained on the open internet, you can make anyone be doing anything. We realized everyone’s looking for the same solution. The social platforms want a way to expose credentials of assets to show how they were edited or made. The enterprises of the world want to know which model was used to create assets, because if it’s a non-commercially safe model, they may not want to use it in a marketing campaign.



Over the last five years, this has become way bigger than Adobe. We are one of the leaders of a number of people. It’s an open-source, open protocol. It’s a nonprofit organization that runs this with constituents from other companies, including competitive companies. The adoption of content credentials is now north of 3,000. Organizations including all the major camera companies like Nikon, Leica, Canon, Sony. You name it, folks are getting on board.



The vision here is very simple. There’s a cryptographic signature that is put into every asset. It’s not a centralized service. This manifest of data, and how this asset was edited and made, travels with the asset. It’s done in such a way where even if you take a screenshot, it still preserves that information. The platforms that display it have the option—whether it’s YouTube, who’s on board, or Facebook, Meta’s on board—has the option of showing any degree of granularity over those credentials that are attached to that asset. And at the end of the day, us as end viewers can determine whether we can trust it or not.



If we were to be having a conversation a year from today, looking back on what’s happened in 2025 and what to expect in terms of AI for 2026, what would we be talking about?



I think we’d be talking about the new discoveries we’ve had on how to use these reasoning engines. I think we’re still at the infancy of how we leverage these state-of-the-art LLMs. As they gain more powerful and longer context windows, and they start to learn who we are, and in some ways empathize with us and where we are in our knowledge, and what our interests are, et cetera, these reasoning engines are going to play a really interesting role, kind of augmenting the way our brain works.



The thing that I find most interesting these days, personally, is when I talk to friends about how they’re using these tools: To go back and forth and make health decisions about themselves that they never had the resources to make. Or they’re putting a proposal together for a customer, and putting it into the LLM first and saying, what might give my customer pause? Why might my customer not want to do business with me based on this proposal? They’re getting such incredible, interesting responses increasingly based on who they are or what their company does. It’s really magical. It’s like having an instant focus group of exactly who you’d want to be in front of you at every given moment in time, and having those insights come back to you. I think we’re going to be surprised by the power of these reasoning engines for making decisions, for managing personal things, for being more effective in our jobs.



I also think they’re going to start to play a role in the commerce or purchase decisions that we make. The idea that we used to decide what restaurant to go to or what thing to buy based on how many stars it has from strangers is going to be replaced by the wisdom and guidance of an AI that knows us extremely well and can give us a recommendation based on our preferences, opposed to based on what the average person thinks.



If you could give some wisdom to CEOs that are looking forward and trying to map out an AI strategy for 2025, what would you say?



No. 1 is allow your teams to play and pilot this technology. Novelty precedes utility when it comes to adoption of new technology. You might not feel like it’s driving the bottom line immediately, but that play helps them discover the utility that ultimately makes a huge impact in the business.



No. 2 is constantly asking yourself a question. Whenever you’re reviewing the roadmap for a particular function of your organization, or the hiring plan, or the product strategy, you should always be asking yourself: Are we sufficiently refactoring how this works? And are we sufficiently re-imagining what’s possible? We’re in a platform shift now that happens probably once every decade—if not longer—where you actually can fundamentally change the way something operates. Over the coming years, roles will change. The tools that we use to run certain functions will change. And as a leader of an organization, you have to be asking yourself: Are we sufficiently refactoring? Are we sufficiently reimagining how we can achieve our mission?

In this photo illustration, the Adobe, Inc. logo is seen

AI Is Reimagining Every Aspect Of Business, Adobe’s Strategy Lead Says

A recent global report by Inrix, which specializes in transportation analytics, highlighted that in 2024, residents of Cape Town in South Africa spent the most time on congested roads, with an average of 94 hours lost in traffic. The city ranked ninth in the world.



Istanbul in Turkey was the worst, as per the study, with an average of 105 hours lost in traffic last year.



According to the report, traffic congestion occurs when demand for road travel exceeds the supply of roadways. “As vehicular traffic builds, drivers, freight movers and bus riders lose time and spend fuel unproductively.”



In Africa, the majority of cities with the worst record is from South Africa, with commuters and motorists in Johannesburg losing 55 hours and Pretoria trailing with 45 hours.



This time lost due to congestion also leads to a disruption of the economy, with rising fuel costs adding to commuter woes.



South African roads are also seeing a rise in the number of accidents. The Road Traffic Management Corporation said in its State of Road Safety Report that a total of 2,818 fatalities were recorded between January and March 2024, compared to the 2,498 for the same period in 2023.



According to Budget Insurance and its vehicle accident claims data, between 2021 to 2023, drivers in Cape Town had the most car accidents of any city in South Africa. Reports indicate that the number of claims submitted to Budget Insurance increased by 36%.



“In addition to lost time, negative externalities like freight delay, inflationary pressure and environmental impact are generally exacerbated due to traffic congestion,” Inrix said in the recent report. “While not measured in this report, these externalities decrease our quality of life.”

Cape Town, South Africa, Heavy commuter traffic heading out of Cape Town along the N2 highway towards the airport.

The Mother City Ranked The Worst In Africa For Hours Lost In Traffic

Government Statistician Samuel Kobina Annim, while addressing the media in Ghana&#8217;s capital Accra today, attributed the increase to skyrocketing food prices.



Ghana&#8217;s annual inflation rate has surged to its highest level in eight months, reaching 23.8% in December.



This marks the fourth consecutive month of rising consumer prices, up from 23% in November.



The development comes on the heels of President John Mahama&#8217;s inauguration, where he acknowledged the country&#8217;s economic struggles, describing the circumstances as &#8220;dire&#8221;.



He pledged to take decisive action, outlining a plan to implement 26 measures within his first 120 days in office to drive immediate change.



Ghana&#8217;s inflation rate has been volatile in recent years. In March 2024, the inflation rate accelerated to 25.8% year-on-year, driven by a depreciating currency and higher costs for imported goods.



The country&#8217;s inflation rate has also reached as high as 54.1% in December 2022, a 22-year high.

Ghana’s Currency As Cedi Weakens To Historic Decline Versus Dollar

Food Prices Send Ghana’s Inflation Rate To Eight-Month High

Nasdaq and JSE-Listed Karooooo has set its sights on innovation and expansion, headquartered in Singapore and with operations in about 23 countries and over 2.13 million subscribers. The tech tycoon behind it, ZAK CALISTO, accelerated to ai over a decade ago long before the rest of us.



Ask Karooooo Group Chief Executive and Cartrack founder, Zak Calisto, how he has stayed ahead of the curve and he will tell you that innovation is the key. It’s this concept that is seemingly at the core of his professional ethos, and more than 20 years on, the narrative hasn’t changed.



Karooooo, with five o’s, and a reported market cap of around $1.22 billion, provides on-the-ground operations cloud. Cartrack (wholly owned by Karooooo) is a Soft- ware-as-a-Service (SaaS) vehicle-tracking platform that provides insights, real-time data analytics and business intelligence reports. Calisto explains that the business initially addressed telemetry challenges, IoT devices and vehicle theft. But, by 2007, the company’s commercial customers wanted more than just track and trace – they wanted data on the vehicles. “So, we launched our first fleet management platform. We were the first company in South Africa to have our platform on the cloud,” Calisto tells FORBES AFRICA. “Everybody was still at desktop solutions and since then we’ve just continuously evolved our platforms. Today, I think we’ve got one of the most comprehensive operations platforms.



“I think we’ve been doing AI for over 10 years. Clearly, what we are doing is getting better and better at it. I do believe we’ve got very advanced technology for what we’re currently doing. It’s innovation… if we stand still, we die. We’ve got to continuously compound on our innovation capabilities.”



He also explains the interesting story behind the company’s name. Calisto held his shares in Cartrack through holding company Karooooo (sans the five o’s), which was incorporated in Singapore. During the takeover process of Cartrack, this involved the buying out and reinvesting of shareholders, so he sought to acquire the URL for the holding business.



Unfortunately, the owner of the URL wanted “a few million dollars for it” so Calisto had to get creative.



“I said if that’s the case, I’d rather keep the zeros in my bank account and put the zeros on to the name.” And that’s how Karooooo came to be.



The company, which listed on the NASDAQ in 2021, with a secondary listing on the Johannesburg Stock Exchange (JSE), has operations in about 23 countries spanning Africa, Asia Pacific, the Middle East, the United States and Europe.



According to the company’s Second Quarter 2025 Financial Overview (unaudited), Cartrack subscribers were up 17% to over 2.13 million as at August 31, 2024.



South Africa, in particular, where Calisto founded Cartrack in 2001, saw the number of subscribers increase 16% to approximately 1.6 million for the same period, with subscription revenue growth of 15%.



Calisto also shares his delight at the company’s recently-built office space in Johannesburg, which, according to him, can house around 3,500 employees.



“All these geographies we operate in, I think the room for growth is so obvious, it’s so big. It’s just about us having the capacity to onboard more business.”



At this point, Calisto also harks back to his own early days, the days that he didn’t know he would be heading up such a large business. He studied Mathematics and Statistics at the University of South Africa (UNISA) and Actuarial Science at the University of the Witwatersrand, but indicates he did not finish either degree.



He completed an accelerated training program at Standard Bank from 1986 to 1991.



At the beginning of his journey as an entrepreneur, he faced several notable challenges, though he acknowledges the businesses that were instrumental to the company’s progress.



“Today, our biggest partners in the business are the cell phone networks. They still are. We contribute a lot of revenue to the cell phone providers. I was able to convince them to believe in me and for our past finance. Without them, we would never have been able to get off the ground.”



Entrepreneurs often face these types of challenges but, through them, emerge stronger and often with lessons that they can share with the next generation of change makers. Apart from being prudent with capital allocation, Calisto emphasizes that “culture and your management is key”. “You’ve got to always be agile. Communication is key, and not being scared of making mistakes, provided you fix them quickly – that is critical to success.”

Tag: South Africa

FORBES AFRICA SOCIAL MEDIA