15 of the most important stories of 2025
How power, AI, and money shaped the year

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Wednesday, December 31, 2025
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Our Daily Brief writer will be off for New Year’s, so there will be no Daily Brief on Thursday. Visit qz.com for coverage, and we’ll be back in your inbox on Friday morning. See you in 2026!
Good morning, Quartz readers! Some years are about innovation. 2025 was about leverage.

Trump-era corporate math came back in style, AI turned into an industrial project with all sorts of bubble worries, and everything from medicine to retail started reorganizing around what people can afford, what companies can automate, and what Washington can make everyone pay for. The biggest stories weren’t about shiny new products so much as the systems under strain beneath them — and the people caught inside them.

Quartz spent 2025 asking the uncomfortable questions: Who’s really winning the AI race? Why are layoffs still spreading? What happens when data, power, and truth collide? And how do money, technology, and the body intersect in ways we’re only beginning to understand? The 15 stories below are 2025’s year’s clearest tells — and some of our favorite stories of the year — the ones that best captured the forces reshaping work, wealth, tech, and everyday life.
 

POLITICS, POWER, AND THE ECONOMY

How America's CEOs lost their voice — and found Trump's. Corporate leaders have reentered politics, and their strategy is simple: flatter in public, bargain in private, and hope the next ask doesn’t cost more.
Nvidia’s next big build is a bridge back to China. Jensen Huang is betting that a mix of Made-in-America manufacturing and quiet diplomacy can reopen the world’s second-largest AI lab before it learns to run without Nvidia.
Trump fired the BLS chief. History shows what comes next. Argentina tried this before, and the ending is messy and expensive, because once trust in official numbers cracks, the credibility lost in weeks can take years to rebuild.
The president’s trade war made Christmas more expensive. The toy industry spent decades duty-free and built accordingly, but tariffs are forcing toymakers to re-price, re-route, and explain why “two dolls” cost more.
A hidden time bomb in the tax code is fueling mass tech layoffs. Section 174 turned R&D from an immediate write-off into an amortized slog, and the industry responded with “efficiency” while blaming everything else.
 
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AI: BOOM, BUBBLE, AND BACKLASH

Wall Street is tiptoeing around an AI bubble. AI has become a private-sector stimulus, and the banks underwriting the capex binge are warning clients in euphemisms because saying “bubble” could spook the trade.
ChatGPT sparked an AI arms race. Now, nobody’s winning. Three years in, “best model” is a temporary title, and the edge goes to whoever ships, scales, and stays cheapest before the next leap resets the board.
Oracle stopped chasing cool and started chasing power. The company turned AI hype into industrial reality, locking in multibillion-dollar contracts — and in a year defined by AI shortages, that made Oracle unavoidable.
‘The weekend is disappearing’ for some AI startup workers. “996” was ruled illegal in China, but it’s finding new life in Silicon Valley, where job ads, office culture, and Saturday card swipes turn “optional” into expected.
Is ‘learn to craft’ the new ‘learn to code’? In the AI era, white-collar work is starting to become the automatable layer, so torch-and-wrench jobs are getting recast for people who want a paycheck that can’t be copy-pasted.
AI toys are here. Don’t trust them. They run on the same models that keep landing tech companies in court, except this product lives in a child’s bedroom, and the data includes voices, habits, and family routines.
 

RECOMMENDED READING

The future of tech, decoded.


Semafor Technology unpacks the ideas, innovations, and power shifts redefining the global tech landscape. From AI and machine learning to the startups and policies shaping the industry, each briefing delivers clarity and depth on the tech transforming our world

 

WORK, MONEY, AND THE BODY

A hidden tax on women is costing companies millions. “Office housework” gets treated like culture fairy dust, but it’s real labor with real costs, dragging down productivity and amping up burnout, churn, and lawsuits.
The weight-loss boom is just getting started. Oral versions are about to hit “go,” while generics abroad and a growing list of uses are turning a “weight-loss” story into the most lucrative drug category of the decade.
The ’90s are making a retail comeback. Can it last? Nostalgia is getting shoppers through the door, but the survivors are the brands using it as a reintroduction — then backing it up with execution and a playbook that works.
The new American Dream is: to leave America. A post-election surge and a cost-of-living math problem are pushing more toward expat life, with cheaper rent and health care turning “maybe someday” into an actual plan.
 
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Our best wishes on a safe start to the year. Send any news, comments, and more to talk@qz.com.