Bob Jordan, CEO of Southwest Airlines, listens to questions from media during Southwest Airlines Investor day at Southwest Airlines Headquarters on September 26 in Dallas (Sam Hodde for The Washington Post via Getty Images)

Southwest hasn't pulled out of the turbulence yet, but it gets to keep its pilot

Meanwhile, former CEO Gary Kelly, who’s currently executive chairman, “will accelerate his retirement” in a deal with activist investors.

J. Edward Moreno

10/24/24 9:54AM

Southwest Airlines said Thursday that it reached a deal with activist investor Elliott Investment Management that would allow CEO Bob Jordan to keep his job, avoiding a brewing proxy fight.

The deal adds six new directors, five of them picked by Elliott, to the airline’s board, which will be reduced to 13 members next year. They include Pierre Breber, the former chief financial officer of Chevron, and David Cush, former CEO of Virgin America.

Elliott was reportedly pushing to oust Jordan. While he was able to keep his job, former longtime CEO and current executive chairman Gary Kelly “will accelerate his retirement” and walk out the door November 1.

Airlines went through a rough patch during the pandemic, taking on loads of debt while revenue dropped. But Southwest hasn’t enjoyed the same level of postpandemic recovery that its peers have.

Southwest Airlines share price took a beating before Elliott announced a $2 billion stake in June. The company recently said it would scrap its love-it-or-hate-it cattle-call boarding in favor of assigning seats like other airlines.

There may be a light at the end of the tunnel: the company reported better-than-expected earnings on Thursday.

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OpenAI’s ARR reached over $20 billion in 2025, CFO says

Sam Altman’s $500 billion artificial intelligence behemoth hit a major financial milestone last year, according to a new blog post over the weekend from OpenAI CFO Sarah Friar, as the company confirmed it had hit a more than $20 billion annual revenue run rate at the end of 2025.

Elsewhere in the blog post, Friar spent time addressing the company’s shifting goals, referencing plans to “close the distance between where intelligence is advancing and how individuals, companies, and countries actually adopt and use it.” As has become customary in the AI company press release genre, the CFO was also keen to tout the unending growth of the business, writing:

“Both our Weekly Active User (WAU) and Daily Active User (DAU) figures continue to produce all-time highs. This growth is driven by a flywheel across compute, frontier research, products, and monetization.”
“Compute grew 3X year over year or 9.5X from 2023 to 2025: 0.2 GW in 2023, 0.6 GW in 2024, and ~1.9 GW in 2025.”

And, perhaps most importantly for current backers and those keeping an eye on the private company before its rumored mega IPO:

“Revenue followed the same curve growing 3X year over year, or 10X from 2023 to 2025: $2B ARR in 2023, $6B in 2024, and $20B+ in 2025. This is never-before-seen growth at such scale.”

That latest figure has certainly set tongues in the tech world wagging, just as the company announced it would begin rolling out ads to free and ChatGPT Go users. It also puts the chatbot giant a fair way ahead of competitors like Anthropic, the company behind Claude.

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A business that scales with the value of intelligence

“Both our Weekly Active User (WAU) and Daily Active User (DAU) figures continue to produce all-time highs. This growth is driven by a flywheel across compute, frontier research, products, and monetization.”
“Compute grew 3X year over year or 9.5X from 2023 to 2025: 0.2 GW in 2023, 0.6 GW in 2024, and ~1.9 GW in 2025.”