A SpongeBob Menu Boosted Burger King’s Traffic 19%. Now Every Chain Wants a Piece of Hollywood.
This summer alone, KFC, Papa Johns, Dunkin, Wendy’s and Subway all have major film promotions launching.
The Download: failed social media bans, and extending pets’ lives
This is today’s edition of The Download, our weekday newsletter that provides a daily dose of what’s going on in the world of technology. Kids are outsmarting social media bans. That’s not a problem we need to solve. —Michal Luria, Aliya Bhatia, and Danah Boyd Social media bans are stacking up. In July, France joined…
TopTechTrends
Why Founders Who Wait Around for a Playbook End Up Following One
The companies that survive misunderstood industries aren’t the ones that move fastest. They’re the ones that reduce confusion, build trust early and create standards before they’re forced to.
He Built a Knicks Championship Team Out of NBA Players Others Overlooked — Here’s the Lesson for Any Leader
Knicks President Leon Rose bet on undervalued players others passed over. The strategy ended the team’s 53-year title drought.
SpaceX Hits $2.5 Trillion. Retail Investors Bought as Much of It as the Entire Stock Market.
Elon Musk is now worth more than three times the world’s second-richest person.
Payments startup Flutterwave hits $3.2B valuation, backed by Ripple
African payments infrastructure company Flutterwave has hit a new valuation and landed blockchain company Ripple as investor and partner.
DOJ claims xAI’s unpermitted gas turbines are a matter of ‘national, economic, and energy security’
The Justice department says the Pentagon needs xAI to keep using its unpermitted gas turbines.
Plaud says its software business topped $100M in ARR after shipping over 2M AI notetakers
Plaud is trying to make a mark in a crowded market full of AI-powered meeting notetakers.
Robinhood’s note on 10% layoffs shows blaming AI isn’t cutting it
Unlike many of his tech industry peers who have cut thousands of jobs citing the need to restructure to make the most of AI, Robinhood’s CEO Vlad Tenev conspicuously made no mention of AI in his note about layoffs.
SpaceX passes Amazon as valuation balloons to $2.7T
SpaceX’s valuation has increased by $1 trillion since its shares started trading on Friday.
Probably raises $9M to build a more reliable kind of AI
Probably wants to prevent hallucinations and factual errors from reaching users, and achieve accuracy on par with deterministic systems.