• In today’s CEO Daily: Peter Vanham talks to Thomas Mackenbrock, CEO-designate of Teleperformance, about AI and job creation.
• The big story: U.S. pushes for Ukraine mineral deal; Zelenskyy pushes back.
• The markets: Low drama so far.
• Analyst notes from Apollo (on taxes vs tariffs), Wedbush (on Anduril), and EY (on inflation and the Fed).
• Plus: All the news and watercooler chat from Fortune.
Good morning. It’s a tale told often: the customer service sector is undergoing a major transformation thanks to AI-powered chatbots and virtual assistants, and will be one of the first and hardest hit when AI replaces human jobs.
But when I spoke to Thomas Mackenbrock, deputy CEO and CEO-designate of Teleperformance (No.399 on the Fortune 500 Europe), one of the world’s largest business process outsourcing firms—and the largest historically focusing on call centers—he told me a different story.
“Of course you automate,” he told me. “That’s the name of the game. AI microservices are now part of many of our clients and services. But it’s a misconception that this is a curse. It is a blessing.”
As the adoption of AI took hold, the business portfolio of Teleperformance has changed along with it, he said. The result is that the company’s global workforce is now roughly 500,000, up from 410,000 two years ago.
How did this happen?
First, some of the company’s most successful AI applications favor more employment, Mockenbrock said, as they allow for better and faster “resolutions” and a higher emotional connection between caller and agent.
One AI application Teleperformance has adopted, for example, is a “speech understanding” tool, which the company says increases chances of better human connections. “If you talk to a [foreign] call center agent, it’s sometimes hard to understand them, and that may make it harder to create empathy,” he said. (Indeed Sharath Keshava Narayana, a co-founder of the company that developed the tool in question, said previously that his motivation for the software dated back to when he started working at a call center in Bangalore, and faced discrimination for his Indian accent.)
The second force driving more employment is that the kinds of services “business process outsourcing” companies can offer thanks to AI have vastly expanded. “When we started, there was a telephone line and a person,” Mackenbrock said. Today, thanks to the “triad” (humans, AI copilots that augment human work, and AI agents that replace human work), the company can replace ever more complex front and back-office tasks. Will the trend of increasing employment at call centers continue, then, as AI adoption increases? “I honestly don’t know,” Mackenbrock said. “But it doesn’t really matter. What matters is driving outcomes for the client.” — Peter Vanham
More news below.
Contact CEO Daily via Diane Brady, diane.brady@fortune.com, LinkedIn.
|
|
|
2025 M&A Activity Will 2025 be a year of rebound for M&A? Deloitte’s 2025 M&A Trends Survey indicates dealmakers remain cautiously optimistic about M&A activity for the year ahead, with agility and flexibility becoming essential in a rapidly evolving market. Explore insights here.
|
|
|
U.S. pushes for Ukraine mineral deal. Treasury Secretary Scott Bessent pushed Ukraine’s Zelenskyy to sign a deal that would grant the U.S. rights to vast chunks of its rare earth mineral deposits, literally shoving a contract in front of him and demanding he sign, per the WSJ.
Zelenskyy isn’t having it. He says he won’t sign a deal that doesn't include U.S. military security guarantees. But some of Zelenskyy’s aides think signing the deal would be wise — because it might allow the U.S. to justify maintaining a presence in Ukraine, which would in turn deter Russian aggression.
Sanctions: Bessent said the U.S. could ramp up or reduce sanctions on Russia to get a deal in Ukraine.
U.S. takes Russia's side, again. American officials are opposed to describing Russia’s invasion of Ukraine as “Russian aggression” in the G7’s annual statement on the anniversary of the start of the war.
Hamas corpse switch: Hamas released the bodies of three hostages, baby Kfir, four-year-old Ariel, and their mother Shiri Bibas, who was 32. But the body of Shiri turned out to be the “anonymous, unidentified body” of someone else, Israeli officials said. Israel regards this as a violation of the ceasefire.
From Fortune
• Fortune 500 Power Moves
• Fluor (No. 265) appointed Jim Breuer as CEO, effective May 1. Breuer currently serves as COO at Fluor and succeeds David E. Constable, who will transition to Executive Chairman.
• Prologis (No. 463) announced that co-founder Hamid R. Moghadam will retire as CEO, effective Jan. 1, 2026. He will be succeeded by Dan Letter, who currently serves as president of the company.
Experts doubt Microsoft’s quantum computing breakthrough
Microsoft has claimed a quantum computing breakthrough with its new “Majorana 1” chip. But skeptics argue key evidence is still missing. Several experts, including leading theoretical physicist John Preskill, said the company had yet to release any performance data to back up its claim. Fortune.
Walmart unveils Q4 earnings
Walmart’s share price fell around 6% on Thursday following an earnings call in which company leadership warned that economic instability will likely cause profit growth to slow in 2025. Still, Walmart beat Q4 expectations with more than $180 billion in revenue, though was overtaken in quarterly revenue for the first time by Amazon, who reported $187 billion in quarterly revenue earlier this month.
Palantir slumps on Pentagon cuts plan
The share price of defense tech company Palantir has also slumped this week, dropping nearly 20% from Wednesday to Thursday. That’s thanks to Secretary of Defense Pete Hegseth’s plan to cut Pentagon spending. Fortune
Trump backs DOGE rebate idea
During an appearance at the FII Institute this week, President Donald Trump threw his support behind a plan to send American taxpayers a portion of the money saved by the Department of Government Efficiency. President Trump also suggested using a portion to pay down the national debt. Fortune
The markets
• The S&P 500 closed down 0.4% yesterday, shaving gains from its recent all-time high … Futures in the S&P were flat this morning … Europe, Japan, and China indexes started the day with gains across the board … Bitcoin perked up to above $98,000.
From the analysts
• Wedbush on Anduril: “America’s defense industrial base, which has helped to deter war and maintain peace for decades, is being left behind and the arsenal needed is an order of magnitude more than American can build at present so Anduril is disrupting defense production with a different approach to generating military power,” per Daniel Ives et al.
• Convera on the Trump-Fed “double-put”: “The idea is that widening credit spreads and falling equity markets may prompt both to shift from their hawkish stances on tariffs and monetary policy. This sentiment was fueled by the FOMC meeting release, in which policymakers highlighted the importance of addressing bank balance sheet stress amid unresolved debt ceiling and Treasury refinancing issues. Consequently, the Fed considered slowing or pausing its balance sheet run-off. As yields fell, US equity markets reached record highs,” per Boris Kovacevic.
• JP Morgan on global car production: “2025 Global light vehicle production is now expected to track to 89.5 mn units (flat y/y), higher relative to the mid-Jan update of 89.0 mn units (-0.5% y/y), with the upward revision to the full-year outlook driven almost entirely by China (+0.4 mn), while the outlook for other regions is largely unchanged,” per Samik Chatterjee et al.
• EY on inflation and the Fed: “The minutes [of the last meeting] had a hawkish flavor with many participants stressing that the Fed could hold the policy rate at a restrictive level if the economy remained strong and inflation remained elevated,” per Gregory Daco.
• Apollo on replacing taxes with tariffs: “Total revenue raised from income taxes is currently around $3 trillion, and total imports into the US are also around $3 trillion, see chart below. This means that tariffs would have to be at least 100% on all imported goods for tariffs to replace income taxes,” per Torsten Sløk.
|
|
|
|
