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|  |  | Wednesday, September 10, 2025 | | Sponsored by | -2025-09-09t212850-2025-09-09t212858.png) | |  | | Michael Nagle/Bloomberg via Getty Images | Good morning, Quartz readers! | | HERE'S WHAT YOU NEED TO KNOW | Jobs revisions were worse than the Street’s low expectations. Tuesday’s revision wiped out 911,000 in job gains, and the numbers land at a
moment of widespread political and economic turmoil. | The BLS finds itself deeper in Washington’s hot water. The routine jobs revisions have the White House crying foul at annual benchmarking data, while economists insist: This is business as usual. | Small-business owners are more
confident — mostly. The NFIB’s monthly optimism index rose half a point from July (and above the 50-year average), but hiring challenges remain, and investment is subdued. | CoreWeave’s stock is rising on its new AI venture fund. The company unveiled its plan to make its AI infrastructure indispensable (a “bidirectional pipeline”), a nice boost after a turbulent summer. | Uncle Sam now owns 10% of Intel. Washington’s $8.9 billion equity stake in the company signals a new era of U.S. industrial policy, with
semiconductors at the center of strategy — and controversy. | Weight-loss drugs are now delivering greater value. A drug pricing watchdog announced that falling prices and proven heart-health benefits have boosted the cost-effectiveness of the drugs. | | | A MESSAGE FROM KANTAR |  | INNOVATING WITH INTENT | In a world where AI is rewriting the rules and consumer expectations shift overnight, the
most successful brands aren’t reacting, they’re leading. They are engineering what’s next, with purpose, precision, and bold ambition.
This insightful booklet challenges the myth of accidental innovation and demonstrates how the most successful brands transform insights into impact and ideas into growth.
Download and discover:
- Where to focus next for meaningful brand growth
- How award-winning brands like Dove and Google Cloud innovate with impact
- The blueprint for strategic, purposeful innovation
- How to turn insights into bold,
category-shaping ideas
- Ways to build innovation that drives both equity and commercial success
| | | WALL STREET READIES FOR KLARNA-GEDDON | Wall Street is polishing the welcome mat. After months of tumbleweeds, the IPO calendar suddenly looks like a Broadway marquee, with Klarna, Gemini, and a supporting cast of hopefuls rushing toward the stage — or the public markets — this week. Bankers are billing it as the busiest lineup since 2021: a revival tour, a stress test, and maybe the start of an autumn run where “going public” finally means more than a roadshow PowerPoint.
Klarna is the headliner, aiming to raise up to $1.27 billion at a valuation north of $12 billion. The buy-now-pay-later giant is selling itself less as a fintech middleman and more as a digital bank in waiting. Gemini is the drama — the Winklevoss twins’ crypto exchange, daring investors to believe that Bitcoin bros can play nice in the Trump-era sandbox. Then there’s Figure (blockchain plumbing), Black Rock Coffee (caffeine fix), Legence (HVAC), and Via (traffic apps) — a roster eclectic enough to look
like someone tossed darts at the Fortune 500.
The window feels open, but no one’s betting it stays that way. Rate cuts, tariff calm, and a summer growth rally have cracked the market wide, yet political roulette and market whiplash could slam it shut. Bankers are pricing deals cautiously, which has juiced first-day pops — averaging 36% this year — but that’s momentum you rent, not own. As PwC warned, IPO windows in 2025 are moving like revolving doors. This fall is less about who
gets out first than who gets caught halfway through. Quartz’s Alex Daniel has more on Klarna’s plan to buy now, IPO now. | | THINNER THAN INVESTORS' PATIENCE? | Apple did its best impression of a magician Tuesday, rolling out the annual “a rectangle, but shinier” ritual at its “Awe Dropping” event. The star was the iPhone Air — pitched as impossibly sleek,
stuffed with MacBook-level power, and engineered like it was auditioning for a physics textbook — alongside the new iPhone 17 lineup, AirPods that can translate strangers on the fly and tell you if you’re running a fever, plus a Watch that’s rapidly morphing from fitness tracker to medical alert bracelet.
The script on Cupertino’s campus was familiar, with CEO Tim Cook reprising his favorite trick: turning incremental upgrades into a sermon about “design.” But the stakes felt
heavier. Apple’s pitch wasn’t a jaw-dropping Siri reinvention or a ChatGPT-killer cameo. Instead, “Apple Intelligence” slipped quietly under the hood. That restraint could read as elegance — or as Apple showing up to an AI fireworks show with a scented candle. Investors leaned toward the latter: Shares slid as Cook wrapped up, a reminder that Wall Street isn’t impressed by adjectives such as “thinnest ever” or “most scratch-resistant at the atomic level.”
And that’s the problem with
ritual. You can bend glass, polish chips, and coax a rectangle into ever-skinnier jeans, but surprise is harder to stage. For diehards, the Air proved Apple hasn’t run out of audacity. For everyone else, the question is whether “brighter, shinier, faster” is enough to break through upgrade fatigue. Apple still owns the rectangle. Now it has to prove the rectangle still owns everyone else. Quartz’s Shannon Carroll has more on iPhones stretching their screen time. | | | A MESSAGE FROM KANTAR | | INNOVATING WITH INTENT | In a world where AI is rewriting the rules and consumer expectations shift overnight, the most successful brands aren’t reacting, they’re leading. They are engineering what’s next, with purpose, precision, and bold ambition.
This insightful booklet challenges the myth of accidental
innovation and demonstrates how the most successful brands transform insights into impact and ideas into growth.
Download and discover:
- Where to focus next for meaningful brand growth
- How award-winning brands like Dove and Google Cloud innovate with
impact
- The blueprint for strategic, purposeful innovation
- How to turn insights into bold, category-shaping ideas
- Ways to build innovation that drives both equity and commercial success
| | | MORE FROM QUARTZ | |
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