Good evening, this is Markets Desk with your end-of-day briefing.
Stanford's Graduate School of Business dean Sarah Soule is sounding the alarm on a talent war that threatens academia at its core. AI labs are pulling faculty away from universities with compensation packages that schools simply cannot match, and Soule says she won't pretend it isn't keeping her up at night. Budgets and staffing, she says, are her two defining concerns heading into the next academic cycle.
Shifting to the AI economy itself, former Google engineer Rob Waters turned down a six-figure return offer from the company that laid him off, walking away from six figures in unvested equity to pursue his AI startup, Kanawai AI, in San Francisco. He's living off savings now. It's a high-stakes bet, but one that reflects how many technical professionals are reading the current moment.
And from the consumer front, luxury activewear brand Alo is threading the needle in China, moving one and a half million dollars in merchandise in a single minute despite retail sales in that country growing just four-tenths of a percent year over year in August. With eight new stores planned, Alo is treating China's slowdown as a positioning opportunity rather than a warning sign.
That's the tape. Markets Desk, signing off the floor.
