Good morning, Broadsheet readers! Angel City Football Club becomes the most valuable women’s sports team in the world, AI researcher Fei-Fei Li earns a $1 billion valuation, and female founders and CEOs wowed the crowd at Brainstorm Tech. Have a terrific Thursday.
– Top tech. We just wrapped Fortune’s Brainstorm Tech—and while Broadsheet readers have already heard from San Francisco Fed President Mary Daly and Fearless Fund founding partner Arian Simone, I’d be remiss if I didn’t share more from the powerhouse women in technology who joined us in Park City, Utah this week.
— Aicha Evans, the CEO of Amazon-owned robotaxi business Zoox, has been slower to market than some of her competitors (or “fellow travelers,” as Evans calls them). “In tech, sometimes being first has been good. And sometimes it hasn’t,” the CEO said in an interview after her onstage session. Still, she calls New York the “holy grail” for autonomous vehicles and says she expects broad deployment in the city within a decade.
— Forerunner Ventures managing partner Kirsten Green gave a presentation on consumer sentiment and generative AI. “People are feeling overwhelmed, if not burdened, by the level of information and hyperconnectivity they have,” Green explains. A key opportunity for AI startups will be to provide relief from that hyperconnection.
— Jenny Fleiss, cofounder of Rent the Runway and former CEO of Walmart’s JetBlack, says her relationship with Rent the Runway cofounder Jenn Hyman was critical to her mental health during her years building a business. “The idea that you’re not in this alone because your cofounder implicitly cares just as much as you do…that’s what kept me afloat in a very sane way amidst losing my mom and having three kids while being at Rent the Runway,” she told Bonobos founder Andy Dunn in an onstage conversation.
—Salesforce AI chief Clara Shih says that many companies are frustrated by the still-unreliable nature of generative AI, from spouting incorrect information to “hallucinations.” The frustrations are holding back businesses from widely releasing products that use the technology.
—Agility Robotics CEO Peggy Johnson, the former chief of Magic Leap, says her company’s humanoid robot Digit is already at work at a factory in Georgia that makes Spanx. That’s thanks to a deal with logistics provider GXO Logistics.
That’s all from Brainstorm Tech this year. Thank you for following along!
Emma Hinchliffe
[email protected]
The Broadsheet is Fortune’s newsletter for and about the world’s most powerful women. Today’s edition was curated by Joseph Abrams. Subscribe here.
ALSO IN THE HEADLINES
- Angel investors. Disney CEO Bob Iger and his wife Willow Bay, a dean at the University of Southern California, announced that they will acquire a controlling stake in women’s soccer team Angel City Football Club. The deal makes the Los Angeles-based team the most valuable in women’s sports with a valuation of $250 million. Bloomberg
- Newborn unicorn. World Labs, the AI research firm founded by prominent AI researcher Fei-Fei Li, has earned a valuation of more than $1 billion just four months after it launched. The mission of World Labs is to develop an AI model with a human-like ability to process visual information. Financial Times
- Into the spotlight. Usha Vance, the child of Indian immigrants and wife of Donald Trump’s vice presidential pick, introduced her husband J.D. at the RNC last night as someone who “approached our differences with curiosity and enthusiasm.” Associates of Vance, who once registered as a Democrat, say the highly credentialed lawyer is an unlikely political figure without an obvious ideology. Wall Street Journal
- Ovarian cancer link. A new study in the JAMA medical journal suggests that women who have endometriosis are four times more likely to develop ovarian cancer than those who don’t. The condition is estimated to affect more than 11% of U.S. women aged 15 to 44. CNN
MOVERS AND SHAKERS:
- Lyft hired comms veteran Terra Carmichael as chief communications officer, per Axios. Carmichael most recently served as the first chief communications officer of StockX and held communications roles at companies like Eventbrite and Yahoo before that.
ON MY RADAR
Mayor of Paris takes an Olympian plunge in a beautified Seine New York Times
Lambrini Girls are full of feminist rage, but humor is their superpower Washington Post
More women are working than ever. But they’re doing two jobs Wall Street Journal
PARTING WORDS
“When you’re unseen, then they’ll never see you coming.”
— Leslie Feinzaig, founder and general partner of venture capital firm Graham & Walker, on the potential of the underrepresented founders she invests in
