Norman Notes

Homebuyers continued to wait for mortgage rates to drop last year and sellers, especially condo owners, waited for buyers to show up in a meaningful way during what was another sluggish year for the state’s housing market, according to a monthly update from the Colorado Association of Realtors. The number of single-family homes sold statewide rose a modest 3.1%, from 64,086 in 2023 to 66,098 in 2024.

Since elementary school, Aidan Boyd has learned about how climate change will reshape Colorado’s future — how aridification will dry streams and summers will become increasingly hot. Now 24, he hopes that training to be an electrician will help him be part of the solution to the environmental challenges that he believes are the most critical problems society faces.

King Soopers employees in metro Denver and Boulder will vote Jan. 29 and 30 on authorizing a strike against the supermarket chain. About 10,000 members of United Food and Commercial Workers Local 7 will be eligible to vote. The employees’ contract with King Soopers expired Friday, Jan. 17 after the company made what it called its “last, best and final offer.” Contracts at other Colorado King Soopers and City Market stores, all owned by Kroger, expire in February.

Psychedelic therapy is set to launch in Colorado this spring, with the state considering licenses for healing centers, psilocybin mushroom cultivations, a product manufacturer and a testing lab. Regulators recently began accepting applications from those interested in getting in on the ground floor of the state’s nascent industry, and while it’s too soon to know how widespread businesses offering psilocybin-assisted therapy will be in Colorado, the applicant pool so far indicates interest is concentrated along the Front Range. Healing centers — the facilities where people go to receive psychedelic-assisted therapy — are being proposed in Denver, Aurora, Centennial and Lakewood, according to state data. While the therapeutic use of psychedelics has long happened underground, clinical research into psilocybin’s potential to treat ailments like major depression and post-traumatic stress disorder has fueled greater acceptance of it in the mainstream.

Paul Hudson, CEO of Sanofi, said the pharmaceutical company uses AI to help recommend which drugs to move forward with on development. Jemal Countess/Getty Images for Fortune MediaSanofi's CEO said the pharma firm uses AI to help decide to move a drug to the next developmental phase. He said it's a "sobering" process because AI agents have no careers at stake."The agent isn't wedded to the project for 10 years," Paul Hudson said at Davos.

EY's EMEIA managing partner believes there are five short-term solutions for Europe's competitiveness problem. Jacek Kadaj/Getty ImagesEurope's economy has a competitiveness and innovation problem. The new Trump administration and Chinese pressure will only squeeze the economic bloc harder. These five things could help Europe drive innovation, according to EY's Europe boss, Julie Teigland.