Business, technology and what comes next.
NextNow / Archive
The retailer removed an offensive children’s costume and apologized as its shares fell 3.8%, reviving questions about merchandising controls during a turnaround.
The data and AI company says its revenue run rate has passed $7 billion, while the new capital will support databases, agents and acquisitions.
Denise Dresser will leave OpenAI after a transition period, and former Wiz president and COO Dali Rajic will take over the company’s global revenue organization.
Sam Altman’s claim that AI has crossed a historic threshold is less prophecy than operating warning: Capability is compounding faster than institutions can absorb it.
ProSiebenSat.1 is bringing ZDF programming into Joyn and seeking more domestic partnerships while its parent prepares a six-market streaming platform. Europe’s broadcasters are responding to global streamers by pooling distribution, not just producing more content.
Atlas shuts down Aug. 9 as OpenAI moves browser-based agentic work into ChatGPT and Codex. Google is embedding Gemini into Chrome while Perplexity keeps Comet as a browser. The emerging contest is less about browser chrome than who controls the agent that can act across the web.
AI-referred shoppers are arriving with higher intent and converting better than conventional traffic. Retailers are racing to become visible inside ChatGPT and Gemini while drawing a hard line around checkout, loyalty and customer data.
AI is not simply replacing software features. It is changing the unit of value from access to execution, forcing software companies to rethink architecture, pricing and what their products are actually responsible for.
July payrolls missed economists’ forecasts by more than 100,000 jobs. Revisions to prior months, slowing hiring and emerging changes in how companies use labor suggest the decline was less sudden than the headline implies.
Second-quarter revenue rose 93% as U.S. commercial customers expanded deployments, offering one of the clearest signals yet that some enterprise AI budgets are moving into operational systems.
