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Fast Company has unveiled its Pacesetters list, spotlighting 40 executives who are embedding generative AI, autonomous agents, and machine learning into their companies' operations and customer interactions. The recognition highlights how these leaders are moving beyond basic chatbots toward more dynamic, AI-driven engagement with customers.
Fast Company published an explanation of how it compiled its 2026 Pacesetters ranking, a list of 40 executives recognized for embedding generative AI, autonomous agents, and machine learning into their companies and customer experiences. The selections were made by a mix of internal editors and writers alongside external judges who evaluated candidates across multiple industries.
E.l.f. Beauty's chief technology and AI officer Ekta Chopra has introduced an AI system called E.l.fluencer that helps community managers respond to the huge volume of comments the brand receives on TikTok and Instagram. The tool was trained on the company's stylebook and years of past human-written replies, allowing it to autogenerate answers to common shopper questions about product launches, comparisons, and suitability for different skin or hair types.
Caterpillar CIO Jamie Engstrom, who leads a global IT team of over 2,200 employees across 28 countries, is expanding the company's three-decade use of AI into advanced analytics, automation, and supply chain optimization. Engstrom frames the effort around 'the art of the possible,' emphasizing that AI should augment employees' capabilities rather than replace their jobs.
Delta has completed rollout of Delta Concierge, its generative AI travel assistant, to 100% of SkyMiles members as of August 2026. The tool, first unveiled by CEO Ed Bastian at CES in January 2025, helps travelers with flight disruptions, self-service cancellations, and bag tracking. The expansion has occurred under new chief digital & technology officer Amala Duggirala, who is extending AI beyond this assistant into other airline operations like baggage handling.
The Kansas Department of Labor, under Secretary Amber Shultz, has modernized its unemployment insurance technology, replacing software that dated back to the 1970s. Previously, agents juggled five separate screens, some requiring command-line input without mouse support, and the system shut down nightly for batch processing, blocking claims filed in the evening. The agency has now introduced AI-driven tools to streamline the filing process and support staff.
Students, teachers, and the school's principal have filed 30 lawsuits in a California federal court alleging OpenAI and CEO Sam Altman gave 'substantial assistance' to Jesse Van Rootselaar, the suspect in the Tumbler Ridge school shooting. The suits claim OpenAI's safety team flagged the suspect's violent conversations with ChatGPT and recommended alerting Canadian authorities, but executives chose silence to protect the company's reputation and finances, then merely deactivated the account rather than banning the user outright.
Archiv is a newly launched app that lets users photograph mundane items—fire hydrants, furniture, food—and automatically arranges them into a stylized, gallery-like personal catalog. The tool blends photography and organization, giving users a portable, aesthetically curated record of objects they encounter.
Acer showed a brief glimpse of its upcoming Googlebook at IFA 2026, confirming the device is
Google has released Android 17 QPR2 Beta 4 to supported Pixel devices, a smaller update than the previous beta but one that introduces meaningful refinements. The standout addition lets users control which notification and system icons appear in the status bar through a new settings menu, alongside a Voice Broadcast option added to Quick Settings.
Fomu is a tiny programmable device that plugs directly into a USB-A port, combining an FPGA chip, four touch pads, and an RGB LED in a compact plastic case. It ships with enough RAM and storage to run Python natively, while also supporting a RISC-V softcore and other softcores like LM32 and OpenRISC, all programmable through a fully open-source toolchain without accounts, NDAs, or heavy installers.
Acer showed off a concept device called Project DualPlay Mini, an 8-inch Windows handheld gaming PC that opens up like a laptop to reveal a backlit physical keyboard, with the screen swiveling inward to complete the transformation. Alongside it, Acer launched the Predator Atlas 7, a smaller 7-inch sibling to the Predator Atlas 8 handheld released earlier this year.