Tech CEOs are writing 6,500-word manifestos. Who’s actually reading?

Meta CEO Mark Zuckerberg published a 6,500-word manifesto on spreading AI benefits, joining a trend of lengthy essays by tech leaders like Anthropic CEO Dario Amodei's 13,000-word piece, but communications specialist Patrick Riccards and Columbia Business School professor Dan Wang question whether these essays are read by the public or merely serve as a competition among CEOs. Warren Buffett's annual letters to Berkshire Hathaway shareholders, often over 10,000 words, are cited as a model of effective long-form leadership because Buffett wrote to be understood by anyone and earned the right to be heard through decades of results.

In today’s CEO Daily: Tech CEOs could learn from Buffett. The big leadership story: Traders will pay for an early look at Trump posts. The markets: Mixed following U.S. inflation report and Middle East tensions. Plus: All the news and watercooler chat from Fortune . Good morning. Phil Wahba writing this morning from New York. Earlier this week, Meta https://fortune.com/company/facebook/ founder and CEO Mark Zuckerberg published a few of his thoughts. Specifically 6,500 words outlining ways https://about.fb.com/news/2026/08/the-future-is-for-everyone/ to spread the wealth and opportunity from AI to all people, including skeptics such as residents of communities that host data centers https://www.wsj.com/topics/industry/data-centers . That word count made the piece about one-tenth the length of the average novel—and 10x his article on Personal Superintelligence https://www.meta.com/superintelligence/ a year ago. And Zuckerberg is not alone: Anthropic CEO Dario Amodei delivered the longest piece in this genre so far in 2024 with his 13,000-word “Machines of Loving Grace” essay, while Nvidia’s Jensen Huang has also joined in, as have other AI CEOs. The official explanation is high-minded: with Wall Street scrutinizing Meta’s tens of billions in spending and rival labs racing for dominance, these founders want to lay out their vision in exacting detail and bring regulators and the public along. As Columbia Business School professor Dan Wang told me, “They have to draw the boundaries around why AI can be useful even before they begin selling products.” But there’s a less flattering read, and communications specialist Patrick Riccards put it best. “CEOs, particularly tech CEOs, believe that their words are gospel,” he told me. These essays, he says, are flags planted in the ground: “You essentially have five or six tech CEOs that are trying to demonstrate whose… shall we say essay is bigger.” In our era of short attention spans, that raises an obvious problem. Do people other than AI titans even read these? And if not, what’s the point? For a model of what leadership via long form can actually look like, it’s useful to examine the master of the genre. Warren Buffett went long in his annual letters to Berkshire Hathaway https://fortune.com/company/berkshire-hathaway/ shareholders—often 10,000-plus words, deep on the year’s lessons and the company’s results, sprinkled with folksy wisdom. But the length was never the point. Buffett wrote to be understood by anyone; he famously drafted his letters as if explaining the business to his own sisters, smart people who happened to be outside finance. People didn’t read him because he wrote a lot. They read him because he’d earned the right to be heard, over decades of results, and then chose to be plain about it. His successor Greg Abel’s first letter as CEO this year https://www.berkshirehathaway.com/letters/2025ltr.pdf followed that tradition. And there’s the distinction. Buffett knew exactly who his readers were. Zuckerberg, Amodei and the rest are writing to each other—a closed loop of founders, investors and the reporters who cover them, each essay answering the last. But is that the right audience? Zuckerberg is facing heat from the public who are wary of data centers in their communities and low on trust for Big Tech. A 6,500-word manifesto seems unlikely to change their minds. If there’s one lesson any CEO can take from Buffett, it’s that the writing is easy—earning the right to be read is the hard part. Contact CEO Daily via Diane Brady at diane.brady@fortune.com Top leadership news Traders pay for Trump posts Trump Media has signed up https://fortune.com/2026/08/12/trump-media-truth-api-insider-trading/ nearly a dozen customers, including high-frequency trading firms, for a service that provides early access to President Trump's Truth Social posts for up to $100,000 per month. NYU Stern economist Gian Luca Clementi told Fortune , "This is insider trading by definition.” Canva cuts growth forecast Canva lowered https://fortune.com/2026/08/12/canva-startup-growth-ai-costs-revenue-forecast-by-third/ its expected revenue growth rate to 20% after unexpectedly high AI-delivery costs forced it to slow its rollout, despite demand for the new tools exceeding expectations. CEO Melanie Perkins told Fortune the company chose to "slow the rollout while we rebuilt the architecture, reduced unit costs and strengthened the business model" rather than release a product before its economics worked. 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