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Newsweek
23-07-2025
- Business
- Newsweek
Alex Schinasi's Tote-On-Wheels Makes Schlepping Easy
Based on facts, either observed and verified firsthand by the reporter, or reported and verified from knowledgeable sources. Anyone who has tried to carry groceries through the city knows what it means to schlep. The word evokes summer heat, heavy grocery bags and feeling that whatever load you are carrying is one missed step away from scattering across the sidewalk. But this is not how Alex Schinasi sees it. Schinasi is redefining what it means to schlep. "There's the vision of the person carrying a million grocery bags from Trader Joe's back to their house and you have the marks on your arms from all the heavy lifting," Schinasi told Newsweek. "But there's the mental schlep too, of like, 'How am I going to carry this from my car to my house?' or 'How am I going to deal with this long day out and about in the city when I know I have five clients to visit?' Hulken makes that better for you." Hulken launched in 2020, but the idea originated almost 15 years earlier, when Schinasi's father built a bag for the family to use around the house. His background in manufacturing helped him develop the design, but her entrepreneurial experience took Hulken to the next level. Women's Global Impact: Alex Schinasi Women's Global Impact: Alex Schinasi Newsweek Illustration Schinasi's first company, Ivy, a workflow tool for the home remodeling industry, was acquired by Houzz in 2018, while her second company, Clay, an early AI-powered platform in early education, was acquired by Kangarootime in 2024. Both companies empowered people to do their jobs better and, at its core, Hulken is no different. Building community is at the center of everything Schinasi does, from the software companies to Hulken. "People would come for the software, stay for the community and it's similar with Hulken, right?" Schinasi mused. "One of my favorite parts of running Hulken is seeing all these thrifters and interior designers and makeup artists and hairstylists using Hulken to do their jobs better." This community has continued to grow, as the iconic tote-on-wheels has appealed to people both in the home and outside of it. "What makes me happy and happy to wake up every morning is to see that we're empowering these people professionally," Schinasi reflected. "But of course, much beyond that too, moms will use us to do daily errands." A mom and a female entrepreneur, Schinasi has always focused on how her companies can impact women and help build them up in their lives and in their careers. This mission has driven her work and her experiences as a founder. "If you look at our demographic: 95 percent women. And so every one of my companies is really focused on empowering these women and whatever it is that they do, and I think that's, for me, a very, very proud achievement" Schinasi said. Having started three companies, Schinasi knows how hard it is to be taken seriously as a female entrepreneur. While she has found a lot of success today, the road was not always easy. "Being a female founder, especially in my 20s with my first company was very money, being taken seriously, especially when you deal with a female audience," Schinasi said. "As I aged, obviously we got street cred because we sold companies and we made a name for ourselves, but we had to fight for it." In the end, the fight seems to have been worth it, with the distinctive bags popping up on street corners across the United States, carrying everything from groceries to books to children's toys. With limitless potential, what might one find Schinasi schlepping in her Hulken? "My emotional baggage?" Schinasi joked. "As a mom, I obviously am a professional schlepper because I'm schlepping my kids and everything else that comes with it in my Hulken," Schinasi said, emphasizing, "literally everything." Schinasi will join Newsweek at this year's inaugural Women's Global Impact forum. The August 5 event, hosted at Newsweek's headquarters in New York City, will bring together some of the world's top female executives and connect them with rising stars across industries and job functions. For more information on the event and entry guidelines, please visit the Women's Global Impact homepage.
Newsweek
22-07-2025
- Business
- Newsweek
AI Impact Awards 2025: Meet the 'Best Of' Winners
Newsweek AI is in beta. Translations may contain inaccuracies—please refer to the original content. Newsweek announced its inaugural AI Impact Awards last month, recognizing 38 companies for tackling everyday problems with innovative solutions. Winners were announced across 13 categories, including Best of—Most Innovative AI Technology or Service, which highlighted some of the most outstanding cross-industry advancements in the practical use of machine learning. Among the five recipients in the Best Of category is Ex-Human, a digital platform that allows users to create customizable AI humans to interact with. Ex-Human took home the Extraordinary Impact in AI Human Interactivity or Collaboration award. Artem Rodichev, the founder and CEO of Ex-Human, told Newsweek that he started his company in response to the growing loneliness epidemic. According to the U.S. Surgeon General, some 30 percent of U.S. adults experience feelings of loneliness once a week. Those figures are even higher in young Americans. Roughly 80 percent of Gen Z report feeling lonely. The epidemic is also keeping college kids up at night, and studies show that a lack of connection can lead to negative health outcomes. To help bridge that gap, Rodichev sought to create empathetic characters, or what he described as "non-boring AI." "If you chat with ChatGPT, it doesn't feel like you are chatting with your friend," Rodichev said. "You feel more like you're chatting with Mr. Wikipedia. The responses are informative, but they're boring." What his company wanted to create, instead, was "AI that can feel, that can love, that can hate, that can feel emotions and can connect on an emotional level with users," Rodichev said. He cited the 1982 sci-fi classic Blade Runner and the Oscar-nominated film Her as two main forms of inspiration. AI Impact Awards: Best of Most Innovative AI Impact Awards: Best of Most Innovative Newsweek Illustration Trained on millions of real conversations, Ex-Human enables companies to create personalized AI companions that can strengthen digital connections between those characters and human users. Internal data suggests Ex-Human's technology is working. Their users spend an average of 90 minutes per day interacting with their AI companions, exchanging over 600 messages per week on average. "At any moment, a user can decide, 'It's boring to chat with a character. I'll go check my Instagram feed. I'll watch this funny TikTok video.' But for some reason, they stay," Rodichev said. "They stay and continue to chat with these companions." "A lot of these people struggle with social connections. They don't have a lot of friends and they have social anxiety," he said. "By chatting with these companions, they can reduce the social anxiety, they can improve their mental health. Because these kind of fake companions, they act as social trainers. They never judge you, they're available to you 24/7, you can discuss any fears, everything that you have in your head in a no-judgment environment." Ex-Human projects that it will have 10 million users by early next year. The company has also raised over $3.7 million from investors, including venture capitalist firm Andreessen Horowitz. Rodichev said while Ex-Human's AIs have been popular among young people, he foresees it becoming more popular among the elderly—another population that often suffers from loneliness—as AI adoption becomes more widespread. He also anticipated that Ex-Human would be a popular technology for companies with big IP portfolios, like Disney, whose popular characters may be "heavily underutilized" in the age of AI. Also among this year's "Best Of" winners is a developer-focused platform that allows users to create AI-generated audio, video and images. was the recipient of this year's Extraordinary Impact in General Purpose AI Tool or Service award. Co-founder Gorkem Yurtseven told Newsweek that the award was particularly meaningful to him "because it recognizes generative media as its own market and sector that is very promising and growing really fast." is almost exclusively focused on B2B, selling AI media tools to help other companies generate audio, video and images for their business. Essentially a "building block," the AI allows different clients to have unique experiences, Yurtseven explained. So far, the biggest categories for are advertising and marketing, and retail and e-commerce. "AI-generated ads are a very clear product-market fit. You can create unlimited versions of the same ad and test it to understand which ones perform better than the others. The cost of creation also goes down to zero," Yurtseven said. In the retail space, he said has commonly been used for product photography. His company's capabilities allow businesses to display products on diverse background or in various settings, and to even build experiences where customers are pictured wearing the items. Yurtseven believes that in some ways, he and his co-founder, Burkay Gur, got lucky. When large language models (LLM) started to gain steam, many thought the market for image and video models was too small. "Turns out, they were wrong," Yurtseven chuckled. "The market is very big, and now, everyone understands it." "We were able to ride the LLM AI wave, in a sense," he said. "People got excited about AI. It was, in the beginning, mostly LLMs. But image and media models got included into that as well, and you were able to tap into the AI budgets of different companies that were created because of the general AI wave." The one sector that he's waiting to embrace AI-generated audio, images and videos is social media. Yurtseven said this could be on an existing app or a completely new platform, but so far, "a true social media app, at the largest scale, hasn't been able to utilize this in a fun and engaging way." "I think it's going to be very interesting once someone figures that out," he said. "There's a lot of interesting and creative ways people are using this in smaller circles, but it hasn't reached a big social network where it becomes a daily part of our lives, similar to how Snapchat stories or Instagram stories became. So, I'm still expecting that's going to happen." There's no doubt that AI continues to evolve at a rapid pace, but initiatives to address AI's potential dangers and ethical concerns haven't quite matched that speed. The winner of this year's Extraordinary Impact in AI Transparency or Responsibility award is EY, which created a responsible AI framework compliant with one of the most comprehensive AI regulations to date: the European Union's Artificial Intelligence Act, which took effect on August 1, 2024. Joe Depa, EY's global chief innovation officer, told Newsweek that developing the framework was a natural next step for EY, a global professional services company with 400,000 employees that does everything from consulting to tax to assurance to strategy and transactions. "If you think about what that is, it's a lot of data," Depa said. "And when I think about data, one of the most important components around data right now is responsible AI." As a company operating in 150 countries worldwide, EY has seen firsthand how each country approaches AI differently. While some have more restrictive policies, others have almost none around responsible AI. This means there's no real "playbook" for what works and what doesn't work, Depa said. "It used to be that there was policy that you could follow. The policymakers would set policy, and then you could follow that policy," he said. "In this case, the speed of technology and the speed of AI and the rate of technology and pace of technology evolution is creating an environment where we have to be much more proactive about the way that we integrate responsible AI into everything we do, until the policy makers can catch up." "Now, it's incumbent upon leaders, and in particular, leaders that have technology prowess and have data sets to make sure that responsible AI is integrated into everything we do," Depa said. As part of their framework, EY teams at the company implemented firm-wide AI definitions that would promote consistency and clarity across all business functions. So far, their clients have been excited about the framework, Depa said. "At EY, trust is everything that we do for our clients," he said. "We want to be a trusted brand that they can they can trust with their data—their tax data, the ability to assure that the data from our insurance business and then hopefully help them lead through this transformation." "We're really proud of the award. We're excited for it. It confirms our approach, it confirms our understanding, and it confirms some of the core values that we have at EY," Depa said. As part of Newsweek's AI Impact Awards, Pharebio and Axon were also recognized in the Best of—Most Innovative AI Technology or Service category. Pharebio received the Extraordinary Impact in AI Innovation award, while Axon received the Extraordinary Impact in Commercial Tool or Service Award. To see the full list of winners and awards, visit the official page for Newsweek's AI Impact Awards.
Newsweek
25-06-2025
- Business
- Newsweek
AI Impact Awards 2025: The Changing Human Role in Science and Engineering
Anuj Kapur, the president and CEO of software delivery company CloudBees, said artificial intelligence (AI) will help solve many of humanity's most pressing problems. But along with disruption and advancement must come responsible use and oversight. "There's already people equating what AI has been able to do with what Oppenheimer was able to discover, and the parallels are that once you create something that's so disruptive, let's just make sure that you have the frameworks and guardrails in place to be able to actually ensure that its impact is more positive than less," he told Newsweek. "And I think similar sentiments will actually come out around AI." AI Impact Awards: Science and Engineering AI Impact Awards: Science and Engineering Newsweek Illustration CloudBees is one of the companies recognized by Newsweek's AI Impact Awards, which highlights companies across a dozen industries that are adopting AI tools to improve both internal and external operations for their business and their clients. The 38 winners were chosen by a panel of AI and subject matter experts. The awards celebrate practical uses of AI that solve real problems and have measurable impacts and outcomes. In the category of AI Science & Engineering, the winners are using AI to boost efficiency and productivity, and to save lives around the world. CloudBees CloudBees is the winner of the Best Outcomes, Engineering award. In 2024, CloudBees acquired Launchable, an AI platform for software testing and quality assurance. CloudBees Smart Tests is a production-ready solution that supports development and testing workloads. With the integration of the AI, CloubBees Smart Tests reduces cycle time, improves triage accuracy and enhances visibility into test behavior across teams, according to the company's application. The AI has "reinforced CloudBees commitment to innovation, introducing the solution to its broad developer network—making the tool easily accessible through seamless integration into their platform." Kapur told Newsweek that CloudBees compresses the time it takes developers to work through higher levels of automation and machine learning. "AI is effectively the next inflection point in our journey that allows us to use best-in-class technology that has effectively been democratized over the last two and a half years and apply that under the hood to basically create the similar outcomes that we always had, but create them much more effectively, or to be able to solve new problems that are created as a result of widespread adoption of AI tooling," he said. He said the predictive testing enabled by AI helps clients prioritize and give visibility into successes and failures. CloudBees reinforces three things: where to focus when there is a failure, how to find it fast and how to do it faster. "Unnecessary tests and late-stage issue detection were dragging down productivity," the company's application said. "After implementing CloudBees Smart Tests, [customers] cut regression testing time by 80 percent and pre-commit testing by 66 percent—from six hours to two. The results: thousands of test hours saved annually, faster developer feedback loops, earlier code commits, and reduced cloud costs thanks to shorter test runs." CloudBees also recently introduced its newest tool: Unify. It centralizes control across all major CI/CD tools to unify analytics, standardize governance and secure workflows without switching costs, according to the website. "We are focused on helping our customers transform using the power of the tools and capabilities we have, regardless of where they are in their transformation journey," Kapur said. "We meet the customers where they are because the needs of a BMW are very different to the needs of Bank of we want to make sure that we are open, we are flexible, and we're secure in our platform that meets the needs of our customers, calibrated to their ambitions and their capabilities." Warp Warp is the AI Science & Engineering winner for Best Outcomes, Computer Science for its Warp Agent Mode. The 5-year-old software developer startup aims to empower developers to ship better software more quickly and reliably to free them time to focus on more creative and rewarding work. Warp integrates large language models (LLMs) directly into the terminal to understand commands in simpler language. "Warp is not the only tool delivering this kind of benefit, but Warp's solution can have that kind of impact because it takes you as a developer, from a world where you are largely doing things by hand [into] a world where you're using Warp [where] you're typing instructions to an agent at the level of English, and then that agent is producing all [these] coding commands for you," founder and CEO Zach Lloyd told Newsweek in an interview. Lloyd said that by using Warp as a developer, users can prompt it however they want—to write code, help set up new projects, debug problems in the software and production. This not only saves valuable time and resources but also democratizes access to complex systems, enabling junior developers to perform tasks without requiring senior oversight. The results are increased productivity and time saved, allowing developers to produce more software and write more lines of code. Agent Mode processes nearly 400,000 daily requests, growing at 25 percent weekly, according to Warp. This saves developers about 187,000 engineering hours monthly. The AI generates six million lines of code monthly and powers 2.3 million weekly Agent Mode requests. As a result, Warp is achieving 70 percent monthly revenue growth, the company said. This doesn't mean the AI agent will do all the work for you—it still requires the user to input the right commands and context. "We're not at a place in the technology where a product manager, designer, business person, is going to be nearly as effective using these as someone who is an experienced developer and pointed in the right direction," he said. "You're letting them use this technology to amplify the impact of them having that knowledge." Lloyd adds that he is optimistic that there will always be a human element to software development and that AI is something that "gets rid of a lot of the drudgery of work and lets people focus on more interesting stuff." "The problem-solving skills that make a great software developer have always been somewhat divorced from what language you write code in," he said. "It's kind of like you learn how to do arithmetic because it's important you do arithmetic. But at the end of the day, you're gonna use a spreadsheet or a calculator, and you as a thinking person [are] going to be able to focus on the harder, more interesting parts of the job." With the "infinite demand for software in the world right now," Lloyd said AI can increase the capacity and speed of software production by overcoming some limitations. "What I imagine happening is that the amount of software that is produced in the world goes up dramatically, and you'll probably have around the same number of software engineers, but each engineer being able to produce vastly more than they do today," he said. "And I also think the role of what an engineer does is going to change very much – from manual work to one where you're much more like an orchestrator of AI." Every Cure Every Cure is the overall winner of Newsweek's AI Impact Awards and it's using AI to advance drug engineering to treat some of the world's rarest and most aggressive diseases. After surviving Castleman disease while in medical school by repurposing existing drugs to find a new treatment, David Fajgenbaum and his co-founder, Grant Mitchell, started Every Cure to help save other people's lives. Every Cure is on a mission to "systematically identify, validate and deliver repurposed treatment to patients suffering from rare and undertreated diseases" using AI, according to the company's application. Mitchell told Newsweek that the approximately 4,000 FDA-approved drugs are "available to use and they're just like sitting on the one yard line waiting to be unlocked for further uses." The AI they use helps make predictions about which existing drugs can potentially treat which diseases. The AI engine, known as MATRIX (Therapeutic Repurposing in eXtended uses), is trained to analyze massive biomedical data sets to evaluate the viability of every possible drug and disease combination. Every Cure collaborates with tech companies, pharmaceutical companies, academics, researchers, patient advocacy groups and physicians. They also have a Scientific Advisory Board and a Technical Advisory Board to provide guidance. The company defines success by three main outcomes: accuracy and utility of the AI platform, advancement of promising treatments and building an ecosystem for broader repurposing. So far, 87 percent of the top 100 predictions from the MATRIX platform have aligned with known effective treatments, and more than eight promising repurposing projects have been identified. Additionally, partnerships with seven major organizations have been established. Every Cure also received new funding, including a $48.3 million contract from the Advanced Research Projects Agency for Health (ARPA-H) and $60 million in philanthropic funding through The Audacious Project. In 2025, Mitchell said the company is moving from a research phase into actual patient impact projects. One of the latest areas of success has been research into treatment for autism. The company was able to identify a precision therapy for verbal impairment by administering folinic acid, also known as leucovorin, to individuals with autism. This treatment helps bypass the blocked folate receptor, helping patients regain their ability to speak. "So if little Every Cure can be launching five or more projects a year [for] diseases of real unmet need, that's an amazing amount of impact for the size of our organization," Mitchell said. "I really think that drug repurposing is the highest ROI for dollars in lives saved." He adds that their model for AI drug discovery goes directly to patients, leading to an immediate feedback loop. "Not only are we helping patients in the fastest and most efficient way possible, we're advancing the field of computational biology by building models and improving on them at a faster rate than you could otherwise," he said. Many of the AI Impact Award winners will be present at Newsweek's AI Impact Summit later this month. The three-day event sponsored by will take place from June 23 to 25 in Sonoma, California, and will bring together diverse leaders across industries and expertise to share insights on how organizations can most effectively implement AI to achieve their goals. To see the full list of AI Impact winners, visit the official page for Newsweek's AI Impact Awards. Newsweek will continue the conversation on meaningful AI innovations at our AI Impact Summit from June 23 to 25 in Sonoma, California. Click here to follow along on the live blog.
Newsweek
23-06-2025
- Business
- Newsweek
AI Impact Awards 2025: How 7 Health Care Winners Measure Impact
Newsweek AI is in beta. Translations may contain inaccuracies—please refer to the original content. Artificial intelligence is an all-consuming force in the health care industry—and it's still gaining momentum. In 2024, the global health care AI market was estimated at more than $26 billion, and it's expected to grow to over $187 billion by 2030. There's good reason for the boom. Health care executives, physicians and tech leaders alike agree that AI has enormous potential in the industry. It can help make outdated processes more efficient, generate new meaning from massive pools of data and even improve communications between industry stakeholders. But as the AI market grows, it's becoming more challenging for health systems to parse through the noise and find solutions that will actually improve care outcomes. Newsweek spoke with health care and life sciences winners of our inaugural AI Impact Awards to determine how they define and measure impact. Health care and life sciences were just one of the industries represented, and across more than a dozen categories, there were 38 total winners were selected by a panel of AI and subject matter experts. Here's how seven award-winning companies distinguish their AI models from the hype cycle: Several health care companies received AI Impact awards for their significant contributions to the industry. Several health care companies received AI Impact awards for their significant contributions to the industry. Newsweek Illustration AI Health Care, Best Outcomes, Care Coordination – Xsolis Xsolis has created a suite of AI solutions to better connect health care providers with payer organizations and health plans. It serves more than 500 hospitals and health systems and 18 health plans nationwide—and is rapidly expanding its market share, securing spots on the Inc. 5000 and the Deloitte Tech Fast 500 for the fastest growing private companies. To measure impact, Xsolis tracks the number of cases that are denied and overturned by insurance companies, according to Dr. Heather Bassett, the company's chief medical officer. "We're able to show our clients, through the use of our AI and other analytics, that they were able to appropriately capture revenue based on the medical intensity of their patient population," Bassett told Newsweek. "Today, we're at about $1.5 billion that we've either protected or helped our clients appropriately capture [across our company's lifetime]." Since most hospitals are understaffed, they aren't always able to fight every claim and maximize their reimbursements, she added. Xsolis' tool boosts the efficiency of utilization management teams by approximately 20 percent, allowing them to review a larger share of cases. AI Health Care, Best Outcomes, Health Equity – Bunkerhill Health "For us, it's actually fairly easy to quantify impact," Nishith Khandwala, co-founder and CEO of Bunkerhill Health, told Newsweek. The company uses AI to identify clinically significant findings that are hidden in patient records, and ensure that patients receive the follow-up care they need to prevent future complications. For example, a patient might get into a car accident and receive a CT scan to check for cracked ribs. The CT scan might also find signs of coronary artery disease—but in today's medical system, those findings would never be flagged because they weren't relevant to the car crash. Bunkerhill Health tracks success by counting the number of patients that it flags for a separate encounter with a specialist, like a cardiologist or an oncologist. "In our office, we have a counter," Khandwala said. "Every time we find a patient who we discovered to have high risk for some other problem, we increment that counter, because that's the number of lives that we have impacted." AI Health Care, Best Outcomes, Patient Care – Cera Based in the United Kingdom, Cera is harnessing technology and AI to predict and prevent avoidable falls and hospitalizations in the elderly population. Its ecosystem includes a proprietary app that allows health care staff, patients and families to log health indicators in real time, along with two AI models. The first, Falls Prevention AI, predicts 83 percent of falls up to seven days in advance—allowing health care staff to intervene and prevent the leading cause of hospitalizations in adults over age 65. The second, its Hospitalization Predict-Prevent tool, predicts three-quarters of hospitalizations one week in advance. Together, the pair of AI tools flag up to 5,000 high-risk alerts each day, according to Cera founder and CEO Dr. Ben Maruthappu. Data like this shows the impact that the tools are having on patient safety (and on the U.K.'s health system, which spends over £2.3 billion per year on falls in the over-65 population). "Most importantly of all, we are using AI to make an impact at scale," Maruthappu told Newsweek. "Cera works with over a hundred U.K. Local Governments and the majority of NHS regions, reducing costs, transforming life for patients, and bringing healthcare services into the future." AI Health Care, Best Outcomes, Diagnostics – Color Health Color Health is the largest virtual cancer clinic in the United States, created in partnership with the American Cancer Society. Last summer, it teamed up with OpenAI to develop its Cancer Copilot: a novel AI architecture that creates accurate clinical recommendations for clinicians, expanding access to world-class oncology expertise for doctors working at major cancer centers, small community health facilities and every setting in between. The company primarily charts AI impact in two ways, co-founder and CEO Othman Laraki told Newsweek. First, it tracks how much time clinicians save by using the AI tool. Traditionally, nurses and oncologists had to spend 1-2 hours looking through a patient chart and determining how to prepare them for treatment, Laraki said. Using AI, they can craft the same plan in just 15 minutes. Additionally, Color Health measures how, when and why clinicians opt to change the output of the AI model. The company's most recent data shows that physicians choose to make changes in less than two percent of the clinical decision factors suggested by the model. Most of those changes had to do with formatting, Laraki added; the model has an error rate under one percent. "It's performing way better than anything that we've seen published so far," Laraki said. "And it's not because we're using better models—we're using standard open AI release models—but it's because of this architecture that makes the model behave in a very predictable way." AI Health Care, Best Outcomes, Physician Satisfaction – Iodine Software At Iodine Software, impact is measured in reimbursement gains, along with improvements in productivity and physician satisfaction, according to co-founder and CEO William Chan. The company utilizes AI to automate the middle of the revenue cycle, which traditionally requires nurses and physicians to manually collect, interpret and analyze patient data. By inserting AI into the process, Iodine Software paints a more complete clinical picture for insurance companies, ultimately resulting in fewer denials and more accurate reimbursements to health systems. Across all of Iodine's 1,000 hospital clients, that rightsizing yields a cumulative $2.4 billion per year, Chan told Newsweek. Iodine Software also saves time for health care providers, cutting the time spent reviewing patient case records by "at least half," Chan said. Since the AI model presents information in a concise, precise and actionable way, physicians can respond to information requests more quickly. Clarification asks that once took three days to answer have been whittled down to two hours, in some instances. "Physicians love that interaction compared to what it was previously," Chan said. Best of – Most Innovative AI Technology or Service, Extraordinary Impact in AI Innovation – Phare Bio In 2020, researchers at the Collins Lab at MIT made a landmark discovery when they used AI to identify a new class of antibiotics. Phare Bio was born from that breakthrough, and has since leveraged AI to uncover two additional novel antibiotic classes. The company's model prioritizes the superbugs identified as the most dangerous by the CDC and the WHO, and predicts drug efficacy, toxicity and pharmacokinetics with high accuracy. Phare Bio has also developed AIBiotics, a generative AI platform that designs new antibiotics. Ultimately, the company aims to improve the efficiency of antibiotic research and development, according to Dr. Akhila Kosaraju, its president and CEO. How does it measure that? Ultimately, by "taking better and fewer shots on goal," Kosaraju told Newsweek. It often costs between $1.3 and $1.5 billion to get a single drug over the finish line for FDA approval. "Those numbers are so high [because they] encompass all of the failures along the way to get to that one exceptional drug," Kosaraju said. "If we can reduce the number of shots on goal substantially, we can half or quarter the cost and time to get these drugs into clinical trials, and then ultimately to be FDA-approved." AI Education, Best Outcomes, Higher Education – MedCerts MedCerts has integrated conversational AI, generative AI and natural language processing into its training programs for health care and IT students. Now, students can interact with virtual patients who respond and adapt to their input in real time. One of the company's major innovations was an in-house AI program for certified nursing assistants (CNAs), designed to develop and assess soft skills like empathy, communication and problem-solving. Traditionally, these skills have been tough to measure—but with MedCerts' AI model, students can practice responding to high-pressure situations in a safe, yet nuanced environment. Student engagement is a primary indicator of an educational tool's impact, according to Dana Janssen, MedCerts' chief product officer. AI has enabled the company to give students a more interactive experience and bolster their chances of success. "One of the biggest KPIs for us is program completion, because you can't get certified and you can't get a job without first completing your programs," Janssen told Newsweek. "The more engaging we can make our content or our training—the more interactive—the more effective it ultimately is." To see the full list of AI Impact winners, visit the official page for Newsweek's AI Impact Awards. Newsweek will continue the conversation on meaningful AI innovations at our AI Impact Summit from June 23 to 25 in Sonoma, California. Click here to follow along on the live blog.
Newsweek
07-05-2025
- Business
- Newsweek
College Graduates Are Feeling Pessimistic About the Job Market. Here's Why
Based on facts, either observed and verified firsthand by the reporter, or reported and verified from knowledgeable sources. Hope springs eternal—except for many college graduates prepping to enter an unsteady job market rife with contradictions. Hailey Washington, a senior majoring in marketing at Drexel University in Philadelphia, isn't bullish about her job prospects despite stellar undergraduate performance and indispensable industry experience from an internship at a luxury fashion brand. "I would like to be optimistic but, based on the current job market, I feel pessimistic," Washington, 21, told Newsweek. "Most of my friends and myself do not have jobs lined up after graduation and are not getting interviews. We're all currently seeking part-time positions to build our resumes and to make some money as we search for full-time positions." Newsweek Illustration Washington, whose job hunt began in Philadelphia and has expanded into New York City and beyond, realizes she must remain nimble to navigate a turbulent economy wracked by uncertainty due to widespread cuts at government agencies, President Donald Trump's flurry of tariffs and freezes in federal funding for higher education. While unemployment remains relatively low and key sectors like health care and technology foresee looming labor shortages, the specter of increased economic volatility obscures the future for many new graduates like Washington. The jobless rate for workers aged 16 to 24 currently hovers below 10 percent, well above the national average of 4.2 percent, as the ascent of automation, global competition and overall economic upheaval have created a potent mix of trepidation and hope within the Class of 2025, often prompting a simple yet existential question: What happens now? Profile shot of Hailey Washington Profile shot of Hailey Washington Kerri Sage For many new graduates, the college experience was entirely atypical—dominated by a pandemic that popularized hybrid learning and a rapidly changing economy that reshaped industries in just a few semesters. As millions of young candidates prepare to enter the workforce, many still face an evolving landscape adjusting to rapid technological shifts and fluctuating hiring trends. Those with degrees in fields like data science, cybersecurity and artificial intelligence may find themselves with more immediate opportunities than their counterparts with backgrounds in humanities and social sciences, but the need to continuously adapt appears to be a prerequisite for most entry-level workers, experts told Newsweek. Jobs Are Uncertain Due to 'Economic Chaos' More than 200,000 federal employees, spanning environmental regulators to defense contractors, have been laid off this year amid steep reductions by the Trump administration and the Department of Government Efficiency. Billionaire Elon Musk, who has overseen the agency, has defended the cuts as necessary to curb government bloat, but the already competitive market is now being flooded by hundreds of thousands of new applicants—adding yet another layer of complexity for young job seekers who are increasingly concerned about their prospects. In a College Pulse/Newsweek poll from mid-April, 39 percent of students polled were somewhat or very unconfident about their ability to secure a job in their desired field after graduation, up from 33 percent in January. The ensuing turmoil has seemingly ended the notion that a government job could be a relatively safe avenue, as hiring freezes and reductions continue. President Trump further exacerbated the muddy outlook for some grads by announcing sweeping tariffs against nearly all U.S. trading partners on April 2, triggering global economic tumult and huge stock market losses. The administration reversed course a week later, but Washington continues to target China with 145 percent tariffs, while Beijing has responded with levies on most U.S. imports of 125 percent. Funding freezes at universities like Harvard may translate to fewer academic opportunities for graduates. Funding freezes at universities like Harvard may translate to fewer academic opportunities for graduates. Sophie Park/Getty "College graduates this year are facing a very uncertain labor market," said Thomas Kochan, professor emeritus at the MIT Sloan School of Management. "With employers not clear on whether the economy is going to go into a recession, whether there's going to be more economic chaos in general, with layoffs of federal employees and maybe backlash from other decisions by the Trump administration, the uncertainty is going to create a softer labor market for college graduates this year than they've experienced in recent years." The Trump administration is also targeting federal funding doled out to some elite higher education institutions, most notably taking aim at Harvard University by freezing more than $2.2 billion in grants and $60 million in contracts. The Treasury Department, meanwhile, has reportedly started the process of revoking the school's tax-exempt status. Columbia University, where pro-Palestinian protests erupted last year, was the first college caught in Trump's crosshairs, with the cancellation of roughly $400 million in federal funding in early March for not addressing "persistent harassment of Jewish students," according to the administration. The school later announced several policy changes, including beefed-up enforcement of rules and hiring additional campus officers. Protesters participate in a march and rally from City College to Columbia University on April 25, 2025 in New York City. Protesters participate in a march and rally from City College to Columbia University on April 25, 2025 in New York City. Spencer Platt/Getty In addition to Harvard and Columbia, the administration has also paused hundreds of millions in federal funding for Brown, Cornell, Northwestern, Princeton and the University of Pennsylvania over alleged Title VI civil rights violations and ideological demands, especially related to DEI programs. The $11 billion-plus of university research funding cuts overall is causing chaos across academia, with trimmed budgets, hiring freezes or reductions in Ph.D. admissions. More generally, the collective ongoing efforts by the Trump administration could equate to fewer opportunities for job seekers as employers become more hesitant to hire due to a lack of overall stability, veteran observers told Newsweek. That sobering assessment comes atop a slight uptick in unemployment among 16- to 24-year-old workers last year and fewer new job opportunities overall. But it is "not a grave situation" for most new grads, especially those skilled in data analytics, AI and related tools, Kochan of MIT said. "They need to cast their net widely," he said. "They need to really emphasize the skills that they will bring to an organization that are in high demand today and how they will get started right on the first day." Opportunities for job hunters are more robust in STEM fields like data analytics and engineering. Opportunities for job hunters are more robust in STEM fields like data analytics and engineering. Hill Street Studios/Getty For Washington, the Drexel marketing major, the daunting task of landing her first post-undergrad job has been emphatically underwhelming thus far, the perennial dean's list standout said. "I have not heard back from the places I have applied to, unfortunately," Washington told Newsweek. "Places are not even reaching out to say they will not move forward with your application. They are simply ghosting applicants, which makes me discouraged to apply to more jobs." Washington, who graduates in June, aspires to work in sales or marketing for a major fashion brand and is hoping to build on her successful internship at Marchesa, a New York City-based luxury label. But designers like Louis Vuitton, Prada Group and Calvin Klein aren't ready to turn over their ensembles to the chic self-starter just yet, she said. "There are not many people hiring in the current moment for fall 2025," Washington said, as she tries to plan for the future. Attendees visit the FDNY recruiting table during a job fair at the YMCA Gerard Carter Center on March 27, 2025 in the Stapleton Heights neighborhood of the Staten Island borough in New York City. Attendees visit the FDNY recruiting table during a job fair at the YMCA Gerard Carter Center on March 27, 2025 in the Stapleton Heights neighborhood of the Staten Island borough in New York City. Michael M. Santiago/Getty Washington considers fashion sales and marketing to be a "very saturated" industry in which the chances of landing an interview remains low—even for top candidates. The unpredictable path has prompted the budding fashionista to take a part-time sales gig at the retailer Rag & Bone in Philadelphia. "This job will both help me financially and with my resume," Washington said. "But I plan to continue my search while working part-time." Washington, who wants to avoid moving back home once her apartment lease expires in September, said she's concerned that federal layoffs, the ongoing trade war and university funding cuts are creating an even tougher climate for new grads. "I believe the tariffs and federal layoffs have led to uncertainty for graduates," she said. "Tariffs will directly affect the fashion supply chain and will ultimately affect the fashion industry as a whole. I'm worried about job opportunities." Some scholars told Newsweek they're relieved to have their next role in sight. Claire Downing, who graduates from Vanderbilt University in May, said she feels "quite fortunate" to have a job lined up as a student aviator in the U.S. Navy. The Montana native—who double majored in cognitive studies along with ecology, evolution and organismal biology—has been affiliated with Reserve Officers' Training Corps since high school, making her route decidedly clearer than some of her counterparts. Profile shot of Claire Downing Profile shot of Claire Downing Kelly VanDyke "I'll go to flight school and, provided I make it through, I'll be a pilot in the Navy," Downing said of the two-year program. "About half of my friends are split between having plans otherwise, whether that be grad school, medical school or a gap year, and the other half have jobs. A small section are currently searching, but I would say the majority have a job secured." The youth unemployment rate stood at 9.6 percent as of April, down from 9.7 percent in February, but significantly higher than a recent low of 6.6 percent in April 2023, according to the Federal Reserve Bank of St. Louis. Overall unemployment in April, meanwhile, stayed stable at 4.2 percent, Bureau of Labor Statistics data shows. Downing, 22, envisions becoming a fish and wildlife biologist following her naval career, but acknowledged that finding an entry-level role straight out of college would be difficult since most full-time positions require graduate degrees and the "shift away from natural resources and government jobs that support those" by the Trump administration. "I don't think there would be many job opportunities," she said. "I know that seniority is really important in those jobs right now to even hold on to them. I would probably have to look for a job with a [nongovernmental organization] or something like that, but finding a very sustaining job could be potentially difficult." Downing said she'd also be worried about overall stability as a federal worker given President Trump's evolving priorities and cost-cutting efforts by DOGE, which could reportedly affect at least 12 percent of 2.4 million civilian federal workers nationwide. "You know, 'Write everything you've done in the past two weeks' kind of monitoring of the government positions," she said, referring to Musk's ultimatum to federal employees in late February. "I don't think job security is super high right now." Upon completion of flight school, Downing must serve an additional eight years of active duty in the Navy, which she believes will be an asset once she pivots into the private sector in search of fish and wildlife biology positions. "I was motivated to serve prior to becoming more interested in potentially pursuing a career in fish-wildlife biology, so job availability wasn't a factor in my decision," she said. Why Some Students Are Striking Out Alone for a Job Some students are taking a nontraditional path in these unsettled times. Jack Cocchiarella, who studied political science at Columbia University, plans to leave New York City following commencement to capitalize on his early success as a progressive political commentator. The 22-year-old Florida native, who has amassed more than 850,000 YouTube subscribers since July, said he's eager to move to Washington to fully "build out" his brand. Like Downing, Cocchiarella said he "absolutely" considers himself lucky to have some sense of post-college clarity amid the unstable job market. "It's been very successful, more so than I maybe could've thought," the young entrepreneur said. "I guess I caught it at the right time." Headshot of Jack Cocchiarella Headshot of Jack Cocchiarella Jack Cocchiarella Cocchiarella, who acknowledged taking "something outside the normal path," said some of his Columbia classmates and friends of friends received emails from private businesses and federal agencies in late January and early February informing them that previous offers of employment had been rescinded due to widespread uncertainty. "You know, this is something that I cover every day," he said. "So, I feel a lot closer to it even if it's not directly impacting me because I'm self-employed." Cocchiarella said the bulk of his peers consider this spring to be an unusually fraught time to enter the workforce. He characterized the collective sentiment as "terrible" and very concerned. "They don't see a path forward, with what would be considered like, 'this is what you do, this is what we've been told to do' to get a good job and to build wealth or at least a life in which you're not living just paycheck to paycheck," Cocchiarella said. Why Going to Grad School Appeals to Some Eleanor Schoenbrun, another soon-to-be graduate, said her recent assessment of the job market influenced her pursuit of a master's degree after majoring in global affairs and political science at Yale University. "It was a part of my decision," Schoenbrun, 21, told Newsweek. "I was in the process of figuring out what I wanted to do, which is the whole point of college." After considering legal and financial fields, the Texas native decided to set her sights on foreign service and continue in the classroom at Georgetown University's McCourt School of Public Policy. "I want to be able to make a difference in government work or something adjacent but, given the current climate, a lot of people's decisions changed on where they wanted to go and how they wanted to spend their next few years," she said. "I've seen that on campus with friends who were originally going to work in D.C. and are having to pivot a little bit or ultimately they weren't really affected—they were going into a finance job that would maintain security over the next few years." The New York Stock Exchange is seen during morning trading on April 21, 2025 in New York City. The New York Stock Exchange is seen during morning trading on April 21, 2025 in New York City. Michael M. Santiago/Getty Staying in school will enable Schoenbrun to better prepare herself to enter the job market sometime in 2027, she said. "I'm hoping there will be opportunities to make a positive difference at home and abroad for our country, and I hope that this administration will allow me to do that," the aspiring foreign service officer said. "And if I can't, there are other opportunities adjacent to the government." Schoenbrun also considered nonprofits and government relations roles before deciding on graduate school, but noted how finding an attractive opening had "continuously" grown more competitive throughout her Ivy League experience. "It's very difficult to navigate that, especially as a student who is the first in my family to go to a school like Yale," she said. "It's difficult to see where and how you can pursue your passions." Bright Spots Amid 'Economic Uncertainty' Hiring projections for the Class of 2025 have indeed cooled since last fall, when companies reported planning to employ 7.3 percent more graduates than they did from the Class of 2024, according to the National Association of Colleges and Employers. That figure has since decreased to less than 1 percent, NACE President and Chief Executive Officer Shawn VanDerziel told Newsweek. "The market has tightened and has shifted from the expectations of the fall," he said. "Now we're looking at just about a flat market from last year. So, things have shifted a little bit." Participants in a rally of scientists and researchers protest at the Lincoln Memorial against budget cuts and job cuts, among other things. Participants in a rally of scientists and researchers protest at the Lincoln Memorial against budget cuts and job cuts, among other things. Thomas M'ller/picture-alliance/dpa/AP There are some bright spots in the "tight" market, VanDerziel said, including nearly 65 percent of employers who reported maintaining hiring levels from a year ago, according to NACE's Job Outlook 2025 Spring Update survey. Employers regularly report high demand for candidates with degrees in finance, computer science and accounting, but graduates across all disciplines should remain flexible, keep a positive attitude and remain determined while searching for their first post-college job, VanDerziel said. Networking is also critical. "As a new college graduate, you should be leveraging everyone around you—continually telling the story of your job search and what it is you're looking for in addition to what you can offer an employer," he said. "You'd never know who you're talking to and how that person might be able to help you in your job search." Elise Gould, a senior economist at the Economic Policy Institute, said college graduates a year ago found themselves entering a "pretty tremendous" market, citing strong wage growth and historically low unemployment rates. People affiliated with the 50501 movement march through downtown Detroit, Michigan on Saturday, April 19, 2025, to protest the Trump administration on the 250th anniversary of the start of the American Revolution. People affiliated with the 50501 movement march through downtown Detroit, Michigan on Saturday, April 19, 2025, to protest the Trump administration on the 250th anniversary of the start of the American Revolution. DOMINIC GWINN/Middle East Image/AFP/Getty "And it has been fairly strong through 2024," Gould said of the overall job market. "Unemployment is up slightly since its low last year, but it remains low by historical standards. When you look compared to the booming labor market of the late 1990s and early 2000s, the unemployment rate for young adults is still lower than that today—pretty much lower than any time before 2018." Yet, while some key economic indicators look promising, hiring overall remains lower than pandemic levels, possibly making it more difficult for recent graduates to break into the market than a year ago, Gould said. "And obviously, the thing we can't ignore is the policy landscape, what's happening right now," she continued. "The federal layoffs, layoffs of contract workers, announcements of layoffs in the private sector, hiring freezes—all of these things can make it harder for young workers to break in. A lot of the data says that things are pretty good, but there's obviously a fair amount of economic insecurity and concern on the horizon." As fears of a recession escalate amid Trump's sweeping tariffs and cuts to the federal workforce, young workers would be especially impacted if the U.S. economy shrinks, Gould noted. Shipping containers parked at the Union Pacific Railroad intermodal facility which specializes in rail services for freight and passengers on April 16, 2025 in Commerce, California. Shipping containers parked at the Union Pacific Railroad intermodal facility which specializes in rail services for freight and passengers on April 16, 2025 in Commerce, California. FREDERIC J. BROWN/AFP/Getty "Sort of like the last hired, first fired," she said flatly. "They're just going to be less secure and face more uncertainty. So, I can see the trepidation because of that. When you look at the data touchpoints, things still look strong. I think it's the economic uncertainty that is particularly troubling." Nich Tremper, senior economist at payroll services provider Gusto, characterized the job market for new grads as "tough and frozen" as many entry-level professionals are holding on to their coveted positions as businesses take a predominantly cautious approach. The average May and June hiring rate for the Class of 2025 is projected to be 44 percent lower than 2022 and down 16 percent from a year ago, according to Gusto data. "Following the Great Resignation—or whatever we're calling that time between 2021 and 2023—there was a slowdown in recent grad hiring and that frozen labor market just seems to be keeping that going," Tremper said. Tremper advised young candidates to embrace unpredictably as they plot their early career. Profile shot of Eleanor Schoenbrun Profile shot of Eleanor Schoenbrun Annalie Sandor "These graduates are entering a space where technology is rapidly changing," Tremper said of artificial intelligence. "There's really an opportunity for this younger generation to make its mark. They're natively using generative AI and they don't have to relearn based off the way that things have always been done. That's at least an exciting element of what the future might look like." Consistent with data cited by VanDerziel and other experts, Jai Kedia, a research fellow at the Cato Institute, said jobs with the highest growth projections by the Bureau of Labor Statistics are primarily linked to STEM fields, with engineers, software developers, data scientists and financial analysts among those in demand. Teachers, religious workers and some media professionals have the slowest projected growth rates by BLS, Kedia noted. "Despite the recent uptick, the recent record of youth unemployment is among the lowest on record since the 1970s," Kedia told Newsweek. "Of course, employment is highly susceptible to the business cycle and youth unemployment even more so. If the economy heads into a recession, an unlikely but still possible outcome, we expect to see a surge in job losses for recent college graduates." Washington, meanwhile, acknowledged she's facing formidable headwinds, particularly as she grapples with the prospect of repaying over $100,000 in student loans. "Very concerned," she told Newsweek. "If I do not have a job lined up soon, I worry how I will be able to pay back any debt right away."
