On Secretary of Defense Pete Hegseth's trip to Asia last month, Air Force leadership issued an unusual directive: Keep him from seeing a service member with a beard. The instruction was surreal, the kind of stage management usually reserved for celebrities with eccentric phobias. Yet for Hegseth, facial hair has become a symbol of everything he believes has gone wrong in the U.S. military'a distraction from its 'warrior ethos,' and, somehow, a threat to military readiness. In late September, he lectured on the subject of beards at an unprecedented global convening of the military's most senior leaders, where'framed by the American flag'he proclaimed, "No more beardos. The era of rampant and ridiculous shaving profiles is done.' I served as assistant secretary of the Air Force during the Biden administration, as well as the Army secretary's chief of staff during the Obama administration. Shaving profiles'exceptions to the general grooming policy that members of the military must be clean-shaven, save for mustaches'were without question the most emotional military-personnel matter I worked on in nearly a decade as a political appointee in the Pentagon....

At least, that seems to be the case with companies like Airtable, Handshake, and Opendoor, which all announced in recent months that they are 'refounding.' As reported in The New York Times these announcements are usually tied to new business models or the launch of new AI products. The startup's co-founder and CEO Howie Liu told the NYT that this is not a pivot because it's not about changing direction after getting something wrong. Liu said the company considered calling it a relaunch or transformation, but ultimately chose 'the language of founding because the stakes feel the same.' Similarly, Handshake's chief marketing officer Katherine Kelly said the company is trying to bring startup culture 'back into an existing business.' That can also mean harder work ' Kelly said handshake told employees they have to be back in the office five days a week, 'operating with a pace and number of hours that is meaningful and will help us hit goals.' Show your CFO the marketing proof they want!Join a free webinar hosted by Pantheon on Tuesday December 9 at 10am PT to learn where spend delivers & how to build a 2026 strategy grounded in real results....

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The funding round included different valuation tiers, these people said. Although some equity was acquired at a $1 billion valuation, a lower valuation for other investors resulted in a blended valuation below $1 billion, according to people familiar with the deal. Multi-tier valuations within the same round are an unusual mechanism in venture capital, but investors say they are becoming increasingly common for desirable AI startups in the current market. This approach allows the company to report a higher 'headline' valuation while simultaneously offering better terms to specific investors. The exact round size couldn't be learned, but one person said that it is above $50 million. Another source said that the startup is growing quickly, but its annual recurring revenue (ARR) is still below $10 million. The startup's prediction model generates thousands of AI agents that simulate human behavior using public and proprietary data. Aaru replaces traditional market research methods, which generally include surveys and focus groups, by using agents to predict how groups in specific demographics or geographies will respond to future events....