Month: December 2025

• Michael Stausholm bought the rights to a sustainable pencil from grad students at MIT.
• He thought the pencil was a great illustration of sustainability.
• He was surprised by the immediate commercial success.

This as-told-to essay is based on a conversation with Michael Stausholm, founder and CEO of SproutWorld. It has been edited for length and clarity.

Back in 2013, I saw a Kickstarter campaign for a plantable pencil. Three young students at the Massachusetts Institute of Technology (MIT) had invented the pencil in their class. The idea was to use the writing instrument, then plant it and watch herbs and vegetables grow from seeds encased in the pencil.

I thought this was brilliant. At the time, I was consulting with major companies, including Nike and Walmart, about sustainability efforts. I knew people had a really hard time understanding what sustainability was.

Yet, this pencil was a perfect illustration. It was a useful item, made from all-natural materials. It was designed with the end in mind: when it was no longer useful, users could quite literally give it new life. I wanted to integrate the pencil into my work.

I licensed limited rights, and then bought global rights

I reached out to the students and licensed their intellectual property to sell the pencil in Denmark, where I live. Just one month later, I obtained the rights for all of Europe and started my company, SproutWorld.

I had been interested in the Sprout pencil as a symbol, but almost as soon as I began selling it, I saw the huge commercial potential. That first summer, we sold 50,000 pencils. I had no idea how much space that inventory would take up. I had pencils all over my house, and the neighborhood kids were helping to pack them up.

Within a year, I reached out to the MIT students again, asking to purchase the global rights for the pencil. They were robotics students who dreamed of building robots, not pencils. I can’t share the specifics of the deal, but I was very happy with it and so were they, which tells me it was fair for both sides.

Thirteen years later, I still keep in touch with them, and they’re proud of how their classroom project has grown.

I was ready to turn down a major deal to project the brand

I thought schools would love the pencils, but I realized they weren’t viable customers because of their small budgets. Soon, corporations began reaching out about making custom-branded pencils. That side of the business flourished. Even today, our sales are about 80% commercial, and 20% direct to consumers.

The first major global brand to reach out to me was Ikea. They wanted about 50,000 pencils for an anniversary celebration at their Italian stores. There was just one problem: they didn’t want the SproutWorld logo on the pencil — they only wanted Ikea branding.

I’ve lived and worked in Asia, and I understood that as soon as I compromised on our branding, it would be easier for other companies in China and India to make copycat pencils. I wanted to do business with Ikea, but I had to decline. They asked me if I was sure, and I said yes. I dared to say no to a corporate giant in order to protect the company’s future.

Ikea came back, and we later made branded pencils for Michelle Obama

A couple of months later, Ikea reached back out — they wanted the pencils, and were willing to include our SproutWorld branding. That was a major milestone for the company.

Then, in 2018, an agency from New York City contacted me about using the pencils for one of their artists. I saw they represented major musicians, so I was a little disappointed when they said the work was for an author. However, we then obtained the purchase and sales agreement, which was signed by Michelle Obama. Working with the first lady, with her emphasis on healthy eating, was a perfect fit for our brand.

Today, we’ve sold more than 85 million Spout pencils around the world. We even make eyeliner pencils. Last year, we profited about $1.7 million across the globe.

The symbolism of the pencil is still important to me

I’m thrilled with the commercial success of the Sprout pencils. And still, the symbolism of the product is incredibly important to me.

Sustainability is a hard concept to get your head around. The pencil is an entry way: if you can choose a sustainable, all-natural pencil, what other changes can you make? No one can be 100% sustainable these days, but even if individuals and businesses change 20% of their behavior, that would make a difference.

Our motto is “from small things, big things grow.” That’s what drives us as a company: inspiring global change, one pencil at a time.

• Google unveiled Project Suncatcher earlier this month.
• It aims to reduce AI’s environmental impact by relocating data centers in space, powered by the sun.
• Google CEO Sundar Pichai said the company plans to begin sending ‘machines’ to space next year.

The great AI space race has begun.

Google has been quietly working on a long-term research initiative, internally known as Project Suncatcher, to “one day scale machine learning in space.”

Google CEO Sundar Pichai told Shannon Bream on Fox News Sunday that Google’s goal is to start putting data centers in space, powered by the sun, as soon as 2027.

“We are taking our first step in ’27,” he said. “We’ll send tiny, tiny racks of machines, and have them in satellites, test them out, and then start scaling from there.”

In a decade, Pichai said that it’ll be normal to build extraterrestrial data centers.

“At Google, we’re always proud of taking moonshots,” he said. “One of our moonshots is: How do we one day have data centers in space so that we can better harness the energy from the sun, which is one hundred trillion times more energy than we produce in all of Earth today.”

Google’s cosmic pivot comes amid growing global scrutiny over the power demands of data centers.

“There is still much we don’t know about the environmental impact of AI, but some of the data we do have is concerning,” Sally Radwan, the chief digital officer of the United Nations Environment Program, said in a press release in November. “We need to make sure the net effect of AI on the planet is positive before we deploy the technology at scale.”

The UN says AI’s toll on the environment stems from the extraction of rare materials and minerals needed to build the technology and microchips to power the technology, the massive amounts of electronic waste data centers produce, the water needed to operate and cool data centers, and the greenhouse gases produced by operating data centers.

Google’s plan is to divert some of that environmental toll off the planet.

“In 2027, hopefully we’ll have a TPU somewhere in space,” he said, referring to the company’s custom AI chip, on the “Google AI: Release Notes” podcast last week.

Google did not immediately respond to a request for comment from Business Insider.

• As AI becomes table stakes on Wall Street, business schools are racing to keep pace.
• Elite programs nationwide are launching new courses at the nexus of AI and finance.
• Leaders from Wharton and Goldman Sachs explain how AI is reshaping teaching and hiring.

Yesterday’s classroom threat was: Use AI and you’ll be caught.

Today’s is: Don’t use it, and you’ll be obsolete.

As artificial intelligence becomes table stakes on Wall Street, business schools are racing to overhaul their programs for finance industry hopefuls. The technology is set to automate much of the work that has defined junior bankers’ roles, including the rote tasks of building models or the endless tinkering of slide decks.

Across the country, universities are adding AI-focused courses, launching new majors, and retraining professors to prepare students for a world where algorithms handle the grunt work and humans provide the judgment.

Wharton, the famed business school at the University of Pennsylvania, is introducing a new academic track built around AI, offering students classes that fold in psychology, ethics, and governance to help them understand how humans and machines will reshape business. In Tennessee, Vanderbilt University is establishing a new College of Connected Computing to meet the moment. Nationwide, insiders say a debate is underway about how to update business-school curricula that have long centered on traditional finance fundamentals — like accounting, statistics, and financial modeling — as the advanced technology races past anyone’s ability to keep up.

The push is to better prepare the next generation of Wall Street talent, as recruiters now prize candidates who have the human insight to interpret the outputs that AI produces, question a system’s logic, and channel insights into cohesive strategies on deals.

Jacqueline Arthur, global head of human capital management at Goldman Sachs, told Business Insider that, as AI becomes more commonplace, the firm has doubled down on efforts to probe candidates’ analytical thinking. When meeting with students, the firm tries “to see how they think critically, react in the moment, and solve a problem,” she said — essentially, the attributes that would make a human more valuable than a robot.

Business Insider spoke to leaders at educational institutions as well as bank-hiring executives to determine how the AI revolution is transforming what and how students learn as they prepare to embark on Wall Street careers.

Wharton’s AI reboot

About 10 years ago, Wharton, the famed business school at the University of Pennsylvania, became one of the first business schools to formally explore the potential of artificial intelligence. It launched a research center, enhancing its academic offerings, and partnering with corporations on real-life projects for its students.

Now, the school is taking that work into the classroom, rolling out new courses and an undergraduate and MBA academic track built around AI, Eric Bradlow, Wharton’s vice dean of AI and analytics, told Business Insider.

New course offerings explore classes from interdisciplinary points of view, looking at how AI will change business and society from philosophical and psychological lenses. They include “Artificial Intelligence, Business, and Society,” “Applied Machine Learning in Business,” “Big Data, Big Responsibilities,” and “AI in Our Lives,” according to Wharton’s online course listings. Classes combine quantitative analysis and lab-based data projects with coursework on ethics, governance, and behavioral responses to AI technologies; or case studies that unpack how humans and AI will work together to reshape organizations and the labor economy.

While some classes involve coding, training of large language models, or statistics, many also tie in elements of critical analysis to teach students how to validate the output of AI systems.

Students learn to query models, review results, and determine whether the underlying assumptions withstand business scrutiny. To accelerate the shift, Bradlow said, Wharton established an AI in Education Fund that provides faculty with funding, data, and technical support to integrate AI material into existing courses.

Six months ago, a tech executive at a large private-equity firm, Bradlow, sought recommendations for hires who could sit at the intersection of business strategy and data science.

“I said, ‘We’ll send you five names,’ Bradlow told BI. “He hired every single one of them the next day.”

The AI wave sweeps other schools

Across the country, other schools besides Wharton are also catching the AI wave. One is Vanderbilt University in Tennessee, which recently announced the creation of a standalone college that will be dedicated to advanced technologies in AI, computing, data science, and robotics.

Though the school hasn’t finalized its curricular programming, the College of Connected Computing is exploring where subjects overlap as part of its ongoing academic planning with Vanderbilt’s Owen Graduate School of Management, the University told Business Insider in a statement.

“Our teams are actively developing opportunities that reflect the rapidly evolving role of data, AI, and analytics in business education,” Vanderbilt added.

At the Kelley School of Business at Indiana University, Steve Sibley, a professor who oversees the investment-banking workshop — a program that’s sent students to leading banks including Goldman Sachs, Bank of America, and Moelis — said faculty were exploring how to “pivot the curriculum” in light of AI’s rise. The school is expanding the number of case-based classes it offers, he said, and exploring more coursework tied to AI and programming, such as Python for Finance and a graduate-level AI and Business class.

Training The Street, which provides technical training to banks and early-career finance professionals, has launched a series of free online resources on how to use AI and data tools in finance roles. Scott Rostan, the company’s founder and chief learning and strategy officer, told Business Insider the tutorials are open to the public, underscoring the growing demand for AI training.

Recruiters say those changes mirror what Wall Street is looking for.

“Many of the tasks junior employees would have traditionally performed will over time be automated, but that will really enable them to focus their attention on higher-value deliverables,” said Arthur, Goldman’s human global human capital management head. Training programs at Goldman incorporate AI lessons, she added, with new-hire development including hands-on experience with the firm’s internal AI tools as well as instruction on responsible use and continuous human oversight.

“Many of these quantitative analyses will be automated, but will we need our people to understand how to look at that and actually assess it and make sure that what the AI has delivered is actually right?” Arthur asked. “Absolutely.”