# From Edison to the AI age: inside GE Vernova’s reinvention and 600% stock spike > Source: > Published: 2026-08-12 09:21:59+00:00 **In today’s CEO Daily:** Scott Strazik’s stunning turnaround at GE Vernova.**The big leadership story:** Sam Altman’s magic email address.**The markets:** Mostly down amid wait for Hormuz deal.**Plus:** All the news and watercooler chat from*Fortune*. **Good morning.** The company Thomas [Edison](https://fortune.com/company/edison-international/) helped found in 1892 to light up the world is now betting its future on powering the AI age. As [GE Vernova](https://fortune.com/company/gevernova/) CEO Scott Strazik told me recently, “For us, our true north is to electrify the world. And if we electrify the world, we will decarbonize the world.” GE Vernova’s equipment and technology are used to generate about 25% of the world’s electricity, whether it’s gas, wind, steam, hydro, or nuclear energy. It also produces equipment and software for power grids. (Shawn Tully recently wrote about[ GE’s turnaround](https://fortune.com/2026/07/24/from-near-collapse-to-689-billion-inside-larry-culps-turnaround-of-ge/) and its split into three entities: GE Vernova is No. 124 on the Fortune 500, [GE Aerospace](https://fortune.com/company/general-electric/) is No. 101, and[ GE Healthcare](https://fortune.com/company/ge-healthcare-technologies/) is No. 217.) Since GE Vernova became an independent public company in April 2024, the stock is up more than 600%. But behind those incredible numbers is a deliberate strategy: Strazik has successfully pivoted to new growth areas, in part by turning new customers such as NVIDIA and nuclear-energy startup Blue Energy into R&D partners. In an era of accelerating speed and complexity of transformation, that’s a playbook worth studying. “The technical hurdle with how they want to run AI factories is much more complex than our standard‑fare offering, and that’s great,” said Strazik. “What I see happening is a lot of the technology we’re developing to help them … will ultimately apply to the broader grid over time. But they will have funded a lot of the learning curve.” Strazik appreciates but is not sentimental about the past, noting that “25% of our employees today weren’t part of the company the day we spun. They don’t even know GE.” The same is true for customers, 25% of whom only started buying from the company after it spun off, he added: “Technology companies that historically were not buying directly from us have become critical customers and strategic partners.” What Strazik thinks about is not just the technology but talent: “We need kids that get excited about building stuff, because we need to build a lot of stuff in the next decade.”*Contact CEO Daily via Diane Brady at diane.brady@fortune.com* ### Top leadership news **Schools running VCs** Crystal Springs, a 569-student private day school located on the peninsula between San Francisco and Silicon Valley, is one of a small but growing number of Silicon Valley private schools that [have built what amount to miniature venture capital funds](https://fortune.com/2026/08/12/forget-the-gala-these-silicon-valley-schools-run-their-own-venture-capital-funds/). The funds are capitalized with donations from the school community, guided and overseen by parent-investors from well-connected firms such as [Lightspeed](https://lsvp.com/), [Notable Capital](https://www.notablecap.com/), and [Sequoia](https://sequoiacap.com/), and are aimed at early-stage, pre-IPO companies. **Altman’s magic email address** OpenAI is [seeking to clear internal bottlenecks with an email address](https://fortune.com/2026/08/11/openai-employees-email-friction-address-to-eliminate-bureaucratic-bottlenecks-sam-altman/)that lands in the inboxes of the company’s leadership team. An employee can email friction@openai.com to raise issues ranging from a technical system that isn’t working to office-related frustrations, such as not having enough IT vending machines. A former OpenAI employee who spoke to *Fortune*praised the friction system as an effective way for leadership to get ground-level feedback, saying: “Literally anybody can complain about big company bullsh*t directly to Sam and they can act on it.” **Inside AI-free ChatTJB** Former Google employee Tucker Bryant has built a chatbot that behaves like many others: Users ask a question and wait for a response. The difference with ChatTJB is that an LLM or algorithm doesn’t create the answer. [It’s written by Bryant,](https://fortune.com/2026/08/12/chattjb-ai-chatbot-one-man-answering-volunteers-average-individual/) or increasingly, one of the more than 10,000 people who’ve applied to help him answer all those questions. Bryant told *Fortune* the volunteer waitlist is growing by roughly 1,000 people a day, turning what started as an art project about AI dependence into a strange reversal of the AI boom’s defining anxiety. ### The markets **S&P 500** futures are up 0.016% this morning. **The** **STOXX Europe 600** was down 0.02% in early trading. **The U.K.’s FTSE 100** was down 0.07% in early trading.** The Nikkei 225 **is up 0.83%. **South Korea’s KOSPI **was up 3.68%. **China’s CSI 300 **was up 0.58%.** Hong Kong’s Hang Seng** was down 1.01%.** India’s NIFTY 50 **was down 0.73%. **Bitcoin** was down at $63K. ### Around the watercooler [How a book that inspired Warren Buffett and a $14,000 side hustle helped billionaire Bill Ackman get started as an investor](https://fortune.com/2026/08/11/how-a-book-that-inspired-warren-buffett-and-a-14000-side-hustle-helped-billionaire-bill-ackman-get-started-as-an-investor/) By Emma Burleigh [Long-time OpenAI exec Brad Lightcap is leaving the ChatGPT maker to ‘start something new’](https://fortune.com/2026/08/11/openai-exec-brad-lightcap-leaving-start-something-new/) By Emily Forlini [France hits unsolicited telemarketers with $87,000 fine per call, following similar provisions in other European nations](https://fortune.com/2026/08/11/france-unsolicited-telemarketers-87000-fine-per-call/) By Joshua Hong [Former deputy mayor and now Mamdani nemesis sued the city’s pied-à-terre tax rollout. The city froze the judge’s pause within hours](https://fortune.com/2026/08/11/former-deputy-mayor-mamdani-nemesis-sued-paused-citys-pied-a-terre-tax/) By Catherina Gioino CEO Daily is curated and edited by Joseph Abrams, Jason Ma, Claire Zillman, and Lee Clifford. [Sign up](https://www.fortune.com/newsletters/ceo-daily?&itm_source=fortune&itm_medium=nl_article_tout&itm_campaign=ceo_daily)to get it delivered free to your inbox.