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Exclusive: Metropolis appoints new CFO as AI company nears $5 billion valuation

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Good morning. An AI-powered urban infrastructure may be on the horizon.

“The future is one where transactions happen automatically, powered by AI, and that’s the future we’re building for,” Lookman Olusanya, the new CFO of Metropolis, told me.

Metropolis is an AI company enabling checkout-free payment experiences. Olusanya, who will join the company on June 30, most recently served as a CFO of Square, a company of Block. He previously held financial leadership roles at Google Cloud and Amazon Web Services (AWS).

According to reports, Metropolis is currently fundraising at a valuation approaching $5 billion. The company has streamlined “drive in, drive out” ticketless parking by automating vehicle recognition and payments using computer vision and AI. There’s no need to pull a ticket, scan a code, or wait in line at a machine.

Metropolis’ platform now serves over 50 million customers, processes $5 billion in annual transaction volume, and adds 35,000 new members daily. However, the company’s AI capabilities are expanding beyond parking solutions.

“The chance to architect the financial foundation of a company that’s redefining how people access and interact with the physical world, starting with mobility, was just impossible to pass up,” Olusanya said.

He also joined Metropolis because he believes in its team and founders. “There’s ambition and courage to create an entirely new category, and I wanted to help build that,” he said. “Frankly, I haven’t been this excited about a company since my early days helping build up Amazon Web Services.”

Lookman Olusanya, CFO of Metropolis

Courtesy of Metropolis

Los Angeles-based Metropolis, founded in 2017 by CEO Alex Israel, Peter Fisher, Courtney Fukuda, and Travis Kell, who previously served as CFO, acquired SP Plus last year for approximately $1.5 billion. The deal was financed by $1.8 billion in funding led by Eldridge and 3L, taking SP Plus private and making Metropolis the largest parking operator in North America.

Olusanya describes Metropolis as building something visionary at the intersection of infrastructure, real estate, payments, and AI. The goal is to bring seamless, checkout-free transactions to life across retail, hospitality, refueling, and security. In January, the company acquired Oosto (formerly AnyVision) for $125 million. Oosto develops facial recognition and biometric technologies used in industries like health care, retail, and gaming.

Olusanya has spent the past two decades scaling high-growth businesses across cloud infrastructure, payments, and SaaS, leading finance and strategy at Square, Google Cloud, and AWS. He began his career at American Airlines.

That journey, he said, has taught him how to build at scale, drive discipline, allocate capital, unify fragmented systems, and translate metrics into enterprise value.

“At Metropolis, I expect to bring that same operating rigor and investor readiness, paired with a builder’s mindset,” he said. As he steps into the CFO role, Olusanya has three priorities: listen and learn; grow the company’s financial systems with AI automation and precision analytics; and build the next chapter for Metropolis.

That includes creating a native AI finance organization that is nimble, deeply integrated with the business, and has AI at its core. “That’s my vision,” he said.

Olusanya is based in Seattle. When he’s not strategizing as CFO, you’ll find him outdoors hiking or kayaking.

Have a good weekend. See you on Monday.

Sheryl Estrada
sheryl.estrada@fortune.com

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Fortune 500 Power Moves

Chris Lialios has been appointed interim CFO of Ulta Beauty, Inc. (No. 375), effective immediately. Paula Oyibo, who joined the company in 2019 and had served as CFO since April 2024, has left the company. Ulta Beauty has started an external search for a permanent successor with the assistance of an executive search firm. The company reaffirmed its fiscal 2025 guidance, issued on May 29, for per-share earnings of $22.65 to $23.20 and comparable-store sales ranging from flat to up 1.5%. Lialios has served as SVP and controller since 2018 and joined Ulta Beauty in 1999 as assistant controller.

Every Friday morning, the weekly Fortune 500 Power Moves column tracks Fortune 500 company C-suite shiftssee the most recent edition

More notable moves this week:

Craig Albright was appointed EVP and CFO of Wiley (NYSE: WLY), effective June 26. Albright joins Wiley with over 30 years of global leadership experience. He recently served as CFO of Americas and Global Cash Center lead at Xerox. Before that, he served as CFO of commercial excellence at Xerox.

Deborah Andrews was appointed CFO of STAAR Surgical Company (Nasdaq: STAA), effective June 25. Andrews has served as interim CFO since March, and she previously served as STAAR’s CFO from 2007-2013 and 2017-2020.

Joe Falcão was appointed CFO of Bose Professional, an independent developer of audio systems for business and institutional settings. Falcão brings more than 20 years of international financial leadership to the role. Previously Falcão has provided financial leadership for global brands including Dunkin and Cabot Corporation and managed teams at Invensys, iBasis, Thrasio, and Orva, among others. 

Brenda Lovcik has resigned as SVP and CFO of Trex Company, Inc. (NYSE: TREX), a manufacturer of wood-alternative decking and railing. Lovcik has accepted a position in Minnesota, near her family. She will continue to serve as CFO through Aug. 5, at which time the CFO responsibilities will be assumed on an interim basis by Bryan Fairbanks. He previously served as CFO of Trex from August 2015 until being named CEO in April 2020.

Jason Wilson was promoted to CFO of Ahold Delhaize USA, a grocery retail group with brands including Food Lion, The GIANT Company, Giant Food, Hannaford, and Stop & Shop. Prior to this role, Wilson served as SVP of finance for Food Lion. Wilson started his career in 2000 at Ahold Delhaize USA’s predecessor support brands, serving as director of business development, VP of strategy, and VP of finance and business planning. 

Michael Zambito was appointed CFO of Acacia Research Corporation (Nasdaq: ACTG), effective June 24. Kirsten Hoover, Acacia’s current interim CFO, will continue to serve as controller. Before joining Acacia, Zambito spent the past 30 years at Ernst & Young. Most recently, he spent over 23 years, including the last 17 as a partner, in Ernst & Young’s EY-Parthenon.

Big Deal

The use of AI at work is accelerating, according to research. In the past two years, the percentage of U.S. employees who say they have used AI in their role a few times a year or more has nearly doubled, from 21% to 40%, a new Gallup report finds. Frequent AI use (a few times a week or more) has also nearly doubled, from 11% to 19% since Gallup’s first measure in 2023. Daily use has doubled in the past 12 months alone, from 4% to 8%.

Courtesy of Gallup

Going deeper

Here are four Fortune weekend reads:

Fortune‘s Special Digital Issue: AI at Work, is a collection of Fortune AIQ stories detailing how companies in finance, law, agriculture, manufacturing, and more are using AI to their advantage.

“After denying reports of BP takeover, Shell is legally barred from making an offer for six months—and there are no other suitors in sight” by Jordan Blum

“The IPO market is booming—and more big listings like Klarna and StubHub could come this fall” by Luisa Beltran

“OpenAI CEO says his kids will ‘never be smarter than AI—and that his parenting style relies on ChatGPT” by Ani Freedman

Overheard

“Leadership in 2025 and beyond requires fitting humans—who supply feelings and ethics—together with technology that enhances the speed, reach, and uniformity of processes.”

—Mark Minevich, president of Going Global Ventures and a strategic partner at Mayfield Venture Capital, writes in a new Fortune commentary piece, “How to lead when machines can do everything (except be human).”



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Can AI run a successful vending business? An AI startup tested it out

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Because AI isn’t (yet) able to physically restock the machine, the AI model could email company employees who handled such tasks. Beyond that, however, the AI model, dubbed Claudius for the experiment, was tasked with many of the responsibilities of a traditional operator, including selecting and maintaining inventory, setting prices and maximizing profit.

The upshot: “If Anthropic were deciding today to expand into the in-office vending market, we would not hire Claudius,” the company wrote in its blog.

The experiment showed that while the AI model was effective at tasks such as identifying suppliers, adapting to users’ requests and “jailbreak resistance,” as Anthropic employees tried to trick Claudius into stock sensitive items, Claudius failed as a convenience service operator because it ignored profitable opportunities, instructed customers to make payments at a Venmo address it had imagined (instead of the one created), sold products at a loss, offered excessive discounts and mismanaged inventory.

Although version one of Project Vend wasn’t successful at the bottom line, Anthropic predicts that AI middle managers will come to pass. “It’s worth remembering that the AI won’t have to be perfect to be adopted; it will just have to be competitive with human performance at a lower cost in some cases,” the company wrote in its blog.

Read the full story here.



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Suntory Global Spirits chooses Globant to build a Commercial Insights AI Agent and unlock Business Intelligence at Scale

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Suntory Global Spirits chooses Globant to build a Commercial Insights AI Agent and unlock Business Intelligence at Scale

Suntory Global Spirits chooses Globant to build a Commercial Insights AI Agent and unlock Business Intelligence at Scale

PR Newswire

NEW YORK, July 7, 2025


  • Globant is partnering with Suntory Global Spirits to build a generative AI-powered Commercial Insights Agent
  • With the Agent, Suntory Global Spirits employees can access data insights and self-service intelligence, speeding up decision-making across product development, marketing, sales and strategy

NEW YORK, July 7, 2025 /PRNewswire/ — Globant (NYSE: GLOB), a digitally native company focused on reinventing businesses through innovative technology solutions, today announced a reinvention partnership with Suntory Global Spirits, the world leader in premium spirits, to build and deploy a generative AI-powered Commercial Insights Agent. By compressing days of work into seconds and supporting real-time decision-making for sales, marketing, and strategy, Globant’s Commercial Insights Agent is transforming operations for the beverage company.



The AI-powered agent can interpret complex business questions across dashboards, reports, and unstructured documentation for Suntory Global Spirits, eliminating the need for manual insight requests. By automating insight retrieval, the Commercial Insights Agent reduces operating costs tied to traditional business intelligence workflows and significantly reduces time-to-action. What once required multiple cycles of back-and-forth between business and analytics teams can now be executed on demand, freeing up employees to focus on higher-value strategic tasks.

“Our work with Suntory Global Spirits exemplifies how visionary companies can harness the power of agentic and generative AI to fundamentally transform the way they operate,” said Santiago Noziglia, Retail, CPG and Automotive AI Studio CEO at Globant. “The Commercial Insights Agent is more than a productivity tool; it’s a strategic enabler that redefines how teams access knowledge, make decisions, and unlock growth. Together, we’re pushing the boundaries of what’s possible when building an AI-powered enterprise.”

Additional benefits of the Commercial Insights Agent include:

  • Self-serve decision support at scale: Teams at Suntory Global Spirits, especially across marketing, sales and product management, can independently access data insights, ask questions, or generate reports without bottlenecks or dependencies on other teams.
  • Contextual recommendations powered by GenAI: The Commercial Insights Agent is trained on internal data to provide contextual GenAI recommendations that speed up decision-making.
  • AI Agent foundation: The Commercial Insights Agent is just the beginning for Suntory Global Spirits, which can now use the agent as a template for new use cases across brand planning, commercial forecasting and innovation pipelines.

To learn more about Globant’s AI-powered tools, visit https://www.globant.com/enterprise-ai.

About Globant

At Globant, we create the digitally-native products that people love. We bridge the gap between businesses and consumers through technology and creativity, leveraging our expertise in AI. We dare to digitally transform organizations and strive to delight their customers.

  • We have more than 31,100 employees and are present in 36 countries across 5 continents, working for companies like Google, Electronic Arts, and Santander, among others.
  • We were named a Worldwide Leader in AI Services (2023) and a Worldwide Leader in Media Consultation, Integration, and Business Operations Cloud Service Providers (2024) by IDC MarketScape report.
  • We are the fastest-growing IT brand and the 5th strongest IT brand globally (2024), according to Brand Finance.
  • We were featured as a business case study at Harvard, MIT, and Stanford.
  • We are active members of The Green Software Foundation (GSF) and the Cybersecurity Tech Accord.

Contact: pr@globant.com
Sign up to get first dibs on press news and updates.
For more information, visit www.globant.com.



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AI Company Buys Bitcoin Miner in $9 Billion Deal to Expand Data Power

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AI cloud provider CoreWeave announced it will acquire bitcoin mining firm Core Scientific in an all-stock transaction valued at approximately $9 billion, according to Reuters.

As AI workloads continue to surge, energy-hungry data centers have become a crucial asset. Firms like CoreWeave, which began as a crypto miner and later transitioned into AI infrastructure, are aggressively expanding their access to power and physical computing capacity. Per Reuters, the acquisition will give CoreWeave control of Core Scientific’s 1.3 gigawatts of contracted power and its development pipeline, a major boost in the race to scale AI operations.

Under the terms of the deal, Core Scientific shareholders will receive 0.1235 shares of newly issued CoreWeave stock for each Core Scientific share they hold. The offer values Core Scientific at $20.40 per share—a 66% premium over the stock’s price before deal discussions became public in late June, Reuters noted.

Despite the premium, Core Scientific’s stock dropped 22% in early trading Monday, while CoreWeave, which is backed by Nvidia, saw its shares decline 4.5%.

Related: Binance Advises Governments on Crypto Rules and Digital Asset Reserves

The acquisition is expected to help CoreWeave reduce more than $10 billion in projected future lease expenses tied to current site agreements over the next 12 years. The move not only expands CoreWeave’s energy footprint but also signals a broader trend of bitcoin miners diversifying into AI to remain viable in a rapidly shifting tech landscape.

“This acquisition accelerates our strategy to deploy AI and HPC (high-performance computing) workloads at scale,” said CoreWeave CEO Michael Intrator, in a statement released alongside the announcement.

Industry analysts see the transaction as a potential inflection point. Gautam Chhugani of Bernstein told Reuters the deal could become a blueprint for other miners looking to reposition themselves in the AI economy. Power access, he emphasized, remains the chief bottleneck for the expansion of AI-focused data centers.

Founded in 2017 as an Ethereum mining operation, CoreWeave exited the crypto mining business following Ethereum’s 2022 shift to a proof-of-stake model, which dramatically reduced miner incentives. Since then, the company has grown rapidly, with revenue surging more than eightfold last year, per its IPO filing.

Source: Reuters



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