Forbes Australia

Issue 15 is out today. ■ Australia's richest person, Gina Rinehart, speaks exclusively to Forbes Australia on leadership, wealth, and her vision for the nation. ■ Mike Cannon-Brookes & Scott Farquhar on Atlassian, AI, and the future of Australian tech. ■ Jack Cowin on 55 years of Hungry Jack's® Pty Ltd, dealmaking, and the lessons that built his empire. ■ Ed Craven & Bijan Tehrani: How the founders of Stake turned a controversial crypto casino into a billion-dollar powerhouse. 📌 Australia's 50 Richest: https://lnkd.in/gSnS7JyM 📌 Gina Rinehart Q&A: https://lnkd.in/g4DATjyP 📌 Issue 15: https://lnkd.in/gTThw8mb

The 2025 #WorldHappinessReport is out, ranking the happiest nations on the planet - and while Finland takes the top spot for the eighth year running, Australia comes in at number 11. The report measures factors like social trust, life expectancy, and economic stability, with Nordic countries continuing to dominate. Meanwhile, the U.S. has slipped to its lowest position yet, with loneliness and declining social support among younger generations playing a major role. See the full rankings and key trends shaping global happiness. 📌 Full List: https://lnkd.in/grcJvZyz

AI companies promised publishers their AI search engines would send them more readers via referral traffic. New data shows that’s not the case. Companies like OpenAI and Perplexity have made lofty claims that their AI-powered search engines, which scrape information from the web to generate summariSed answers, will provide new sources of income for publishers by directing more readers to their sites. But the reality is starkly different — AI search engines send 96% less referral traffic to news sites and blogs than traditional Google search, per a new report by content licensing platform TollBit, shared exclusively with Forbes. Meanwhile, AI developers’ scraping of websites has more than doubled in recent months, the report found. “We are seeing an influx of bots that are hammering these sites every time a user asks a question,” CEO Toshit Panigrahi told Forbes. “The amount of demand for publisher content is nontrivial.”

A Melbourne man with ALS just controlled his smart home - feeding his dog, playing music, turning on a fan, and starting a vacuum - using nothing but his brain and eyes. Rodney Gorham, who has been implanted with Synchron’s Stentrode brain-computer interface (BCI) since 2020, demonstrated the system’s ability to translate thought into action at NVIDIA’s GTC event. The key enabler? AI-powered computing from NVIDIA, combined with Apple Vision Pro. Synchron CEO Thomas Oxley describes the next phase of BCI as “cognitive AI” - technology that doesn’t just detect brain activity but interprets human intention in real time. "What we’re doing is building a foundation model of human cognition, trained directly on brain activity. If this works, it’s going to be a GPT-like moment for the brain—where AI can extract, interpret, and act on human thought at scale." 🖋️ Mark Whittaker for Forbes Australia 📌 Story: https://lnkd.in/gKZPd7Xd

One of the best-known (and most optimistic) analysts covering Tesla declared the company is in “crisis” and Elon Musk, the world’s richest man and Tesla’s chief executive officer, must recommit himself to his electric vehicle firm, adding further fuel to the Wall Street pushback on Musk’s time-consuming and controversial role in the Trump administration.

How Kyndryl's CMO built an $8 billion brand in less than 5yrs. Maria Bartolome Winans former IBM CMO, was the second employee of its 2021 managed infrastructure services spinoff, creating something new on the legacy company’s foundation. Fascinating story - read now on Forbes Australia https://lnkd.in/gw3xy9ez #leadership #forbes #Kyndryl #success #cmo

Australia has an AI Blind Spot. AI is moving fast - so why are Australia’s political leaders stuck in neutral? While global companies are pouring billions into AI infrastructure, our major parties have barely acknowledged the technology that’s already transforming industries. From legal work to software development, AI agents are replacing tasks once handled by junior staff. It’s a shift that presents massive opportunities for Australian startups - but also big challenges for jobs, education, and economic policy. And yet, there’s no serious AI strategy coming from either side of politics. 🖋️ Bede Moore (Global Chief Commercial Officer for Antler) for Forbes Australia

AI art is evolving, and these women are leading the charge. Jessie Hughes, Senior Creative Technologist at Leonardo.Ai, curates a list of 50 female artists reshaping the creative landscape - combining AI with artistry, pushing boundaries, and redefining digital craftsmanship.

“And Splashdown, Crew 9 back on Earth.” After 286 days in orbit, they’re finally home. #NASA astronauts Butch Wilmore, Suni Williams alongside Nick Hague, and Roscosmos’ Aleksandr Gorbunov have splashed down off the coast of Florida after a 17-hour return journey in SpaceX’s Dragon capsule #NASA #SpaceX 📽️ NASA - National Aeronautics and Space Administration 📌 Story: https://lnkd.in/gYibSGbM