• Home
  • Latest
  • Fortune 500
  • Finance
  • Tech
  • Leadership
  • Lifestyle
  • Rankings
  • Multimedia

Exclusive

An hour in the Oval Office with President Trump Fortune Editor-in-Chief: Alyson Shontell sat down with President Trump in the Oval Office for an hour. Tariffs, Intel, AI, Boeing, Iran—and the question every CEO eventually has to answer: who's next?

An hour in the Oval Office with President Trump Fortune Editor-in-Chief: Alyson Shontell sat down with President Trump in the Oval Office for an hour. Tariffs, Intel, AI, Boeing, Iran—and the question every CEO eventually has to answer: who's next?

An hour in the Oval Office with President Trump Fortune Editor-in-Chief: Alyson Shontell sat down with President Trump in the Oval Office for an hour. Tariffs, Intel, AI, Boeing, Iran—and the question every CEO eventually has to answer: who's next?

An hour in the Oval Office with President Trump Fortune Editor-in-Chief: Alyson Shontell sat down with President Trump in the Oval Office for an hour. Tariffs, Intel, AI, Boeing, Iran—and the question every CEO eventually has to answer: who's next?

An hour in the Oval Office with President Trump Fortune Editor-in-Chief: Alyson Shontell sat down with President Trump in the Oval Office for an hour. Tariffs, Intel, AI, Boeing, Iran—and the question every CEO eventually has to answer: who's next?

An hour in the Oval Office with President Trump Fortune Editor-in-Chief: Alyson Shontell sat down with President Trump in the Oval Office for an hour. Tariffs, Intel, AI, Boeing, Iran—and the question every CEO eventually has to answer: who's next?

An hour in the Oval Office with President Trump Fortune Editor-in-Chief: Alyson Shontell sat down with President Trump in the Oval Office for an hour. Tariffs, Intel, AI, Boeing, Iran—and the question every CEO eventually has to answer: who's next?

An hour in the Oval Office with President Trump Fortune Editor-in-Chief: Alyson Shontell sat down with President Trump in the Oval Office for an hour. Tariffs, Intel, AI, Boeing, Iran—and the question every CEO eventually has to answer: who's next?

An hour in the Oval Office with President Trump Fortune Editor-in-Chief: Alyson Shontell sat down with President Trump in the Oval Office for an hour. Tariffs, Intel, AI, Boeing, Iran—and the question every CEO eventually has to answer: who's next?

An hour in the Oval Office with President Trump Fortune Editor-in-Chief: Alyson Shontell sat down with President Trump in the Oval Office for an hour. Tariffs, Intel, AI, Boeing, Iran—and the question every CEO eventually has to answer: who's next?

TechData Sheet

Data Sheet—Ford Demonstrates Fealty to the Idea of Silicon Valley

By
Aaron Pressman
Aaron Pressman
and
Adam Lashinsky
Adam Lashinsky
Down Arrow Button Icon
By
Aaron Pressman
Aaron Pressman
and
Adam Lashinsky
Adam Lashinsky
Down Arrow Button Icon
September 14, 2017, 7:47 AM ET

The intersection of Silicon Valley and the rest of the economy is as hot a topic as ever. The tech industry has its (many) faults. But when its companies work they grow fast, deploy bleeding-edge concepts and achieve sky-high valuations.

The latest company to demonstrate its fealty to the idea of Silicon Valley is Ford. Its new CEO, Jim Hackett, is a meat-and-potatoes business guy (he ran office furniture maker Steelcase for years) who also is an adherent of so-called design thinking. That product-conceptualization school of thought, centered at Stanford’s famous d.school and the nearby original office of global consultancy IDEO, posits the common-sense approach that human behavior should be at the center of making products.

My feature on Hackett in the current issue of Fortune explores the CEO’s proclivities by way of guessing what he might do with Ford. It also highlights an unusually close relationship Hackett shares with David Kelley (founder of both IDEO and the d.school) and what their collaboration means for Ford’s future. (Teaser: the two once had a 24/7 video link running between their respective offices.)

Hackett has little to show for his fresh approach in the four short months he’s been in the job. Some of Ford’s most aggressive moves in alternatives to goods and services related to cars and trucks happened with Hackett’s involvement but during the tenure of his predecessor Mark Fields.

Get Data Sheet, Fortune’s technology newsletter.

One of these, buying the “micro-transit” service Chariot, is indeed an intriguing prism through which to view how Ford might evolve. Chariot has a fascinating model. It crowdsources its rush-hour routes and gathers the information to do so by collating and analyzing expressions of interest from prospective and existing customers. That is so obviously superior to the public-transit method of establishing fixed routes and sticking with them for years.

Chariot also operates dedicated routes for companies who have employees commuting from similar areas to its offices. Think of this as a “Google bus” for companies with smaller employee populations and fewer means. This week I noticed a Chariot van marked “Intuit” in San Francisco’s Mission District. (Intuit’s offices are a solid hour’s drive south of there.) Chariot founder Ali Vahabzadeh, who has stayed on to run the company under Ford, told me its “enterprise” business is its fastest-growing offering.

Ford sells its 14-passenger Transit Wagons to Chariot, but that’s not the primary reason it likes the acquisition. Hackett sees a day—he won’t get specific—when Ford’s non-vehicle revenue becomes bigger than selling cars and trucks. That would be a paradigm shift to set the heart racing of any Silicon Valley thinker.

Adam Lashinsky
@adamlashinsky
adam_lashinsky@fortune.com

NEWSWORTHY

Gaping holes. The Equifax hack was made possible by a flaw in web software that had been identified months earlier. Whoever stole the personal data of 143 million Americans exploited the known security bug in the open-source Apache Struts framework used to support web apps. That suggests Equifax failed to keep the software up to date, Ars Technica reports.

Beautiful people. Model Naomi Campbell and actresses Lindsay Lohan and Vanessa Hudgens are really popular on Instagram. But the Federal Trade Commission wants them, and at least 18 other celebs, to disclose whether they've been paid to endorse any commercial products they posted to the 'Gram. Reuters got the stern warning letters via a Freedom of Information Act request.

Ten four, good buddy. Curious about Elon Musk's electric truck? Musk had said back in April that he'd unveil the Tesla-like semi about now, but on Wednesday he set the date back a few weeks: October 26. "Worth seeing this beast in person," he wrote on Twitter. "It's unreal."

Can you see me now? Magic Leap, the mysterious startup working on wearable gadgets, is raising money again and this round may value the company at $6 billion, up 33% since last year, Bloomberg reported. The company's much-anticipated augmented reality glasses could be shipping to a small group of users within six months, according to the report.

Getting tough. President Trump blocked Canyon Bridge Capital Partners’ planned $1.3-billion acquisition of Lattice Semiconductor. The Chinese-backed private equity firm has investment backing from the Chinese government. The administration also banned federal government use of cybersecurity software from Kaspersky Lab over fears of the firm's close ties to the Kremlin.

Look out below. After hitting an all-time high just over $5,000, the price of bitcoin has been plunging. A Chinese crackdown and snarky comments from some old school U.S. financiers have spooked the market, it seems. On Thursday morning, bitcoin was trading around $3,832.

FOOD FOR THOUGHT

A keyboard, as you might expect, is integral to the production of Data Sheet, and almost all the world's typed output. But a startup called CTRL-Labs has invented a way to type that relies on signals generated in the human brain. It's not science fiction, according to Wired writer Steven Levy, it's for real.

Thomas Reardon, the company's CEO, demonstrated armbands for Levy that intercept signals sent by the brain to the fingers while typing to generate text on a computer sans keyboard. The technique might work well for smartphones, he says.

When I see these announcements about brain-scanning techniques and the obsession with the disembodied-head-in-a-jar approach to neuroscience, I just feel like they are missing the point of how all new scientific technologies get commercialized, which is relentless pragmatism. We are looking for enriched lives, more control over things over things around us, [and] more control over that stupid little device in your pocket—which is basically a read-only device right now, with horrible means of output.

IN CASE YOU MISSED IT

Can Evil Twins Hack Apple iPhone X’s FaceID? by Robert Hackett

Samsung is Investing $300 Million to Fund Autonomous Driving and Automotive Startups by Natasha Bach

Apple’s iPhone Philosophy: Not First, But Best by Don Reisinger

Prepaid Wireless Customers Can’t Add Apple Watch Series 3 to Their Plans by Aaron Pressman

Equifax Data Breach: How to Protect Yourself With Chatbot Tech by John Patrick Pullen

Apple Just Made a Big Change to iTunes by Jonathan Vanian

Oracle Joins the Cool Cloud Crowd as a Member of This Google-Backed Foundation by Barb Darrow

BEFORE YOU GO

Some say statistics ruined baseball, so how about the movies? The Ringer has come up with a formula to rank sci-fi space movies, which includes the rankings of critics as well as some crowd-sourced data. I won't spoil the #1 on their list, but let's just say the 1970s rule again.

This edition of Data Sheet was curated by Aaron Pressman. Find past issues, and sign up for other Fortune newsletters.
About the Authors
By Aaron Pressman
See full bioRight Arrow Button Icon
By Adam Lashinsky
See full bioRight Arrow Button Icon

Latest in Tech

Finance
Lorem ipsum dolor sit amet, consectetur adipiscing elit, sed do eiusmod tempor incididunt ut labore et dolore magna aliqua. Ut enim ad minim veniam
By Fortune Editors
October 20, 2025
Finance
Lorem ipsum dolor sit amet, consectetur adipiscing elit, sed do eiusmod tempor incididunt ut labore et dolore magna aliqua. Ut enim ad minim veniam
By Fortune Editors
October 20, 2025
Finance
Lorem ipsum dolor sit amet, consectetur adipiscing elit, sed do eiusmod tempor incididunt ut labore et dolore magna aliqua. Ut enim ad minim veniam
By Fortune Editors
October 20, 2025
Finance
Lorem ipsum dolor sit amet, consectetur adipiscing elit, sed do eiusmod tempor incididunt ut labore et dolore magna aliqua. Ut enim ad minim veniam
By Fortune Editors
October 20, 2025
Finance
Lorem ipsum dolor sit amet, consectetur adipiscing elit, sed do eiusmod tempor incididunt ut labore et dolore magna aliqua. Ut enim ad minim veniam
By Fortune Editors
October 20, 2025
Finance
Lorem ipsum dolor sit amet, consectetur adipiscing elit, sed do eiusmod tempor incididunt ut labore et dolore magna aliqua. Ut enim ad minim veniam
By Fortune Editors
October 20, 2025

Most Popular

Finance
Lorem ipsum dolor sit amet, consectetur adipiscing elit, sed do eiusmod tempor incididunt ut labore et dolore magna aliqua. Ut enim ad minim veniam
By Fortune Editors
October 20, 2025
Finance
Lorem ipsum dolor sit amet, consectetur adipiscing elit, sed do eiusmod tempor incididunt ut labore et dolore magna aliqua. Ut enim ad minim veniam
By Fortune Editors
October 20, 2025
Finance
Lorem ipsum dolor sit amet, consectetur adipiscing elit, sed do eiusmod tempor incididunt ut labore et dolore magna aliqua. Ut enim ad minim veniam
By Fortune Editors
October 20, 2025
Finance
Lorem ipsum dolor sit amet, consectetur adipiscing elit, sed do eiusmod tempor incididunt ut labore et dolore magna aliqua. Ut enim ad minim veniam
By Fortune Editors
October 20, 2025
Finance
Lorem ipsum dolor sit amet, consectetur adipiscing elit, sed do eiusmod tempor incididunt ut labore et dolore magna aliqua. Ut enim ad minim veniam
By Fortune Editors
October 20, 2025
Finance
Lorem ipsum dolor sit amet, consectetur adipiscing elit, sed do eiusmod tempor incididunt ut labore et dolore magna aliqua. Ut enim ad minim veniam
By Fortune Editors
October 20, 2025
Fortune Secondary Logo
Rankings
  • 100 Best Companies
  • Fortune 500
  • Global 500
  • Fortune 500 Europe
  • Most Powerful Women
  • World's Most Admired Companies
  • See All Rankings
  • Lists Calendar
Sections
  • Finance
  • Fortune Crypto
  • Features
  • Leadership
  • Health
  • Commentary
  • Success
  • Retail
  • Mpw
  • Tech
  • Lifestyle
  • CEO Initiative
  • Asia
  • Politics
  • Conferences
  • Europe
  • Newsletters
  • Personal Finance
  • Environment
  • Magazine
  • Education
Customer Support
  • Frequently Asked Questions
  • Customer Service Portal
  • Privacy Policy
  • Terms Of Use
  • Single Issues For Purchase
  • International Print
Commercial Services
  • Advertising
  • Fortune Brand Studio
  • Fortune Analytics
  • Fortune Conferences
  • Business Development
  • Group Subscriptions
About Us
  • About Us
  • Press Center
  • Work At Fortune
  • Terms And Conditions
  • Site Map
  • About Us
  • Press Center
  • Work At Fortune
  • Terms And Conditions
  • Site Map
  • Facebook icon
  • Twitter icon
  • LinkedIn icon
  • Instagram icon
  • Pinterest icon

Latest in Tech

broker
Investingbubble
AI is eating the market and Wall Street strategists have bubble brain as they debate: are we in 1997 or 1999?
By Nick LichtenbergMay 18, 2026
44 minutes ago
Attendees sit to watch a speech during the 2023 Consensus conference in Austin, Texas
CryptoCryptocurrency
A strip club scandal at a major crypto industry event triggers sponsor backlash
By Jack KubinecMay 18, 2026
1 hour ago
data center
AIData centers
Communities are blocking billions in data centers. Big Tech has wagered $1 trillion otherwise
By Nick LichtenbergMay 18, 2026
2 hours ago
griffin
AIBillionaires
Billionaire Ken Griffin used to dismiss AI as ‘garbage.’ Here’s why he changed his mind—and why he’s ‘depressed’
By Nick LichtenbergMay 18, 2026
3 hours ago
haidt
AIGen Z
A record number of 18-year-olds are set to graduate into an economy designed against them
By Nick LichtenbergMay 18, 2026
5 hours ago
A panel on Gen Z workers sit alongside Fortune's Kristin Stoller at the Fortune Workplace Innovation Summit.
NewslettersFortune Workplace Innovation
AI in the workplace is stumbling. Fortune’s Workplace Innovation Summit will dive in to why
By Kristin StollerMay 18, 2026
6 hours ago

Most Popular

The top foreign holders of U.S. debt may soon dump Treasury bonds and bring their money back home, potentially spiking borrowing costs
Economy
The top foreign holders of U.S. debt may soon dump Treasury bonds and bring their money back home, potentially spiking borrowing costs
By Jason MaMay 17, 2026
1 day ago
Microsoft AI chief gives it 18 months—for all white-collar work to be automated by AI
AI
Microsoft AI chief gives it 18 months—for all white-collar work to be automated by AI
By Jake AngeloMay 16, 2026
2 days ago
The Bezos family just donated $100 million to help achieve one of Mayor Zohran Mamdani’s top campaign promises
Politics
The Bezos family just donated $100 million to help achieve one of Mayor Zohran Mamdani’s top campaign promises
By Jake AngeloMay 12, 2026
6 days ago
'No one was coming to save me': How Reese Witherspoon built a $900 million company from a problem Hollywood wouldn't fix
Success
'No one was coming to save me': How Reese Witherspoon built a $900 million company from a problem Hollywood wouldn't fix
By Sydney LakeMay 17, 2026
1 day ago
SpaceX heads into a record-shattering IPO with the 'deepest moat that exists today' as investors vow to 'never bet against Elon'
Innovation
SpaceX heads into a record-shattering IPO with the 'deepest moat that exists today' as investors vow to 'never bet against Elon'
By Jason MaMay 16, 2026
2 days ago
Gen X is the most indebted generation in America. Their employers can fix that
Commentary
Gen X is the most indebted generation in America. Their employers can fix that
By Mary MorelandMay 17, 2026
1 day ago

© 2026 Fortune Media IP Limited. All Rights Reserved. Use of this site constitutes acceptance of our Terms of Use and Privacy Policy | CA Notice at Collection and Privacy Notice | Do Not Sell/Share My Personal Information
FORTUNE is a trademark of Fortune Media IP Limited, registered in the U.S. and other countries. FORTUNE may receive compensation for some links to products and services on this website. Offers may be subject to change without notice.