The Federal Reserve has appointed Xbox CEO Asha Sharma and venture capitalist Marc Andreessen to a new task force that will examine how artificial intelligence and emerging technologies impact jobs, productivity, and the broader economy. The announcement, made on Thursday, comes just days after Sharma announced the largest restructuring in Xbox history, including plans to cut approximately 3,200 roles.
Sharma joins Andreessen, co-founder of Andreessen Horowitz (a16z), and Charles I. Jones, a Stanford economics professor currently on leave at AI company Anthropic, on the Productivity and Jobs panel. The group is one of five task forces created by Fed Chair Kevin Warsh to challenge how the central bank approaches monetary policy. Other panels will focus on communications, balance sheet policy, economic data, and inflation frameworks.
"The U.S. economy has changed significantly over the last generation, and never more so than right now," Warsh said in a statement, emphasizing that each task force will review whether the Fed's analytical tools and policy methods need improvement. The Productivity and Jobs group will supply research to the Federal Open Market Committee, but it holds no rulemaking or rate-setting power itself.
Sharma’s appointment is particularly striking given recent events at Xbox. In an internal letter earlier this week, she described the division’s business as "not healthy" and announced the elimination of 1,600 roles immediately, with four studios leaving Xbox. The cuts, which will eventually total 3,200 through fiscal year 2027, were attributed to lower margins, a smaller Gen 9 console install base, and rising costs. Sharma said Xbox must "reset." The contrast between her role in studying AI’s workforce impact while presiding over layoffs has drawn attention.
Andreessen’s inclusion adds a notable crypto dimension. His firm a16z is one of the largest institutional backers of digital assets, and he is an outspoken supporter of Bitcoin. While the task force has no direct crypto mandate, its conclusions on productivity and inflation could influence Fed interest rate decisions, which in turn affect Bitcoin and other risk assets. The Fed itself is split on whether AI will cool inflation through higher productivity or stoke it via heavy investment in chips and data centers. Fed Governor Lisa Cook recently warned that AI carries risks of higher inflation, while former Chair Jerome Powell noted that data center construction was pushing inflation up at the margin.
The task forces are expected to start work within weeks and deliver early findings by fall, though no final deadline has been set. For now, the appointments put a crypto-friendly voice inside a process that could shape how the central bank interprets technological change for years.
