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Plenty of brands use AI to talk to consumers. In other words, they’re tapping AI to generate customer service responses, automate interactions, and speed up outreach. But what they’re not doing is investing in the listening side of AI or leveraging into its vast capabilities here—i.e., using AI to better understand customer friction, synthesize feedback, spot patterns, or act on what people are saying. And to me, this is a major miss. Whenever leadership looks out onto their world below—rather than from within the trenches—gaps can emerge. And while leaders routinely make business decisions with the aid of spreadsheets, dashboards, and second-hand summaries, you c…

Bringing home the Baconator is not as easy as it used to be, and it’s about to get even harder in cities around the country. Fast food giant Wendy’s is continuing its push to close hundreds of locations as it seeks to stabilize profits and shed underperforming restaurants. Nearly six months after the burger chain first announced the plan on an investor call, its U.S. footprint is decidedly smaller, with multiple states seeing net store declines in the double digits, according to a review of Wendy’s store locator tool. As of Friday, the tool showed 5,675 locations in the United States. That’s roughly 200 fewer locations than what it showed at the end of Sep…

I sat in my car staring at the front door of the community mental health center, questioning if I could walk in. If anyone saw me, they might have assumed I was a patient struggling to face my mental health issues head-on in treatment. But I wasn’t. I was the therapist who was struggling to find the courage to walk in the door. My husband had passed away unexpectedly just two months before, at the age of 26. After my three days of bereavement time, I wasn’t in any shape to return to work. Fortunately, my doctor diagnosed me with “acute stress disorder” and bought me two months of short-term disability. I still didn’t feel ready to go back to work but my mortgage bill …

It’s been a busy month for Hugh Jackman. Between headlining New Born on Broadway and starring in an upcoming mystery-comedy called The Sheep Detectives, the X-Men actor stopped by Ball State University to deliver a commencement speech for the graduating class. “I’ve been asked [countless times] to give a speech like this over the years, and I have always said no, because the money just was never really good enough,” the actor joked. Jackman reportedly first visited Ball State University in Muncie, Indiana last year with his Broadway costar turned romantic partner, Sutton Foster—a longtime faculty member of the school’s theater department. Jackman himself studied c…

The organizations that are pulling ahead on AI adoption aren’t simply onboarding new tools, they’re rearchitecting work itself. That’s according to the latest edition of Microsoft’s annual Work Trends Index published today. The study—which included surveys with 20,000 workers using AI in 10 countries and trillions of anonymized Microsoft 365 productivity signals—suggests that AI can unlock immense value, but success depends on the surrounding workplace culture. It falls on leaders to align on their AI strategies, create time and space for collective experimentation, and adopt a less prescriptive approach to how work gets done more broadly. According to the …

Affordability concerns continue to reshape the American housing market, upending expectations about home ownership and forcing buyers to get creative to make ends meet. According to a new report from Realtor.com, the high cost of living is bringing multiple generations of family members together under the same roof—making homes that can accommodate them a hot commodity. In its report, Realtor.com revealed that multigenerational homes come with a 65% higher median asking price than traditional family homes. But apparently that premium hasn’t deterred motivated buyers. A multigenerational living situation involves two or more adult generations of family members—ofte…

Another major food brand is voluntarily recalling products after potential salmonella contamination linked to milk powder. Utz Quality Foods LLC, a subsidiary of Pennsylvania-based Utz Brands Inc, recalled some varieties of its Zapp’s and Dirty potato chips. The impacted chips’ seasoning contained dry milk powder manufactured by food producer California Dairies, which might be contaminated with salmonella. That’s according to a recall notice posted Monday by the Food and Drug Administration (FDA). “The affected seasoning batches tested negative for Salmonella prior to use; however, out of an abundance of caution, Utz is recalling the limited varieties of Zapp’…

Bose is rethinking its approach to smart speakers. While the company has released plenty of Wi-Fi-connected speakers over the years, its new Lifestyle Ultra line is a strategic reset, with a new platform that Bose spent the last few years building. (The name is also a nod to Bose’s original Lifestyle systems from the 1990s.) The new Bose offerings include a $299 standalone speaker, a $1,099 soundbar, and an $899 subwoofer, which can also be combined into a surround system. Raza Haider, Bose’s president of premium consumer audio, says these are the first of many speakers that it will launch on the new technology stack. “It’s a completely brand new platform, whe…

Alysa Liu surveyed the glittery crowd arrayed in front of her, sipping cocktails and chatting. It was her first Met Gala, and she hesitated for a second, searching for a word to describe it. “It’s … BIG,” the Olympic skater finally said with a grin. But what Liu, dressed in a blood-red custom Louis Vuitton gown with a full skirt and huge ruffles, couldn’t quite get was how big SHE had become. Even at a party full of very, very famous people, everyone wanted to greet her. Some Met Gala guests have been famous for many years. Others have achieved fame with dizzying speed. For Liu, all it took was a gold-medal performance that charmed the whole world. “Everybody recogniz…

Finding qualified talent locally is harder than it was a year ago, according to 60% of U.S. leaders who responded to Remote’s 2025 Global Workforce Report. More than 3,600 HR and business leaders around the world responded to the survey. On the surface, it looks like a cooler hiring market because overall hiring in the U.S. has slowed. But that is not the full picture. When some industries are cutting roles, others are still competing for specialized talent. Companies are struggling to find the specific skills they need locally. At the same time, immigration pathways have tightened and AI is reshaping job requirements faster than many workers can reskill, adding to hi…

An aging brain’s sad, slow decline may not be as inevitable as everyone thinks. A new scientific study from the University of California, San Francisco (UCSF), has come to the startling conclusion that a single protein is the catalyst for cognitive dysfunction—and the damage it causes can be reversed. Scientists at UCSF’s Bakar Aging Research Institute examined activity in the hippocampus, the brain’s command center for learning and memory. Comparing young and old mice, the researchers discovered that older brains, unlike younger ones, were flooded with the FTL1 protein. To figure out whether the protein was actually the culprit or just another byproduct of the a…

May is kicking off with another brutal round of tech layoffs that have been affecting the industry for much of the year. Today, the U.S.’s largest cryptocurrency exchange, Coinbase Global, Inc. (Nasdaq: COIN), announced it was laying off a staggering 14% of its staff. The company’s CEO says one of the main drivers of those layoffs is AI adoption at the company. Here’s what you need to know. Coinbase cuts hundreds of jobs in ‘AI-native’ restructuring This morning, Coinbase CEO Brian Armstrong posted a letter on X that he sent to the company’s nearly 4,700-strong workforce. In the letter, Armstrong announced that Coinbase was letting go of around 14% of its staff…

Amid an airline industry in crisis, Delta Air Lines found an unexpected way to cut corners: nixing its snack and drink service on flights under 350 miles long. Delta is doing away with its “Express Service” tier of in-flight food and drink, which previously offered basic amenities including water, tea, coffee, and two snack options to passengers on flights between 250 and 500 miles in length. Instead, all flights longer than 350 miles will get Delta’s full beverage and snack service—while all flights shorter than 350 miles will get no food or drink offerings at all. The news of Delta’s new policy comes just days after Spirit Airlines announced its near-immediate c…

Want more housing market stories from Lance Lambert’s ResiClub in your inbox? Subscribe to the ResiClub newsletter. Before a home falls into foreclosure, the warning signs typically appear months earlier. A borrower first misses a payment or two, landing in the 30- or 60-day delinquency bucket. If financial stress persists, they fall further behind—90 to 180 days past due—and only around then (lenders generally can’t start foreclosure until a borrower is at least 120 days delinquent) does the foreclosure process typically begin. This progression matters because the pipeline of early-stage delinquencies today tells us a great deal about where foreclosure activity i…

On a recent weekday, around 50 people gathered outside the headquarters of a Chinese mobile internet company, waiting to get help with installing an artificial intelligence assistant. The scene in Beijing, China’s capital, was repeated for days at several events and was also seen in the southern technology hub Shenzhen in March, as engineers helped crowds trying to set up the popular AI “agent” OpenClaw on their laptops. “I’m worried about falling behind in technological developments,” said Sun Lei, a 41-year-old human resources manager at the Cheetah event. She said she hoped the tool might help her source and screen resumes across various recruitment platforms. More …

Fire Rover is all about responding quickly and efficiently to crises: The Farmington Hills, Michigan-based tech company—which has now cracked the Inc. 5000 list five years in a row—works to detect and extinguish industrial fires before they get too big. So it’s fitting that Will Schmidt, Fire Rover’s CEO, joined the company in a moment of crisis, too. Schmidt says he initially met the Fire Rover team at a trade show in early 2018, back when he was still working for Pacific Western Bank. The firefighting company so interested him that he made a trip out to their Detroit-area headquarters for a tour. “It didn’t really fit into any box that I had at the time—it w…

On Wednesday, Nvidia and Corning announced a $500 million deal to build fiber-optic cables to power AI data centers. For Nvidia, which manufactures graphics processing units key to building and training top-tier AI models, the partnership will help the chipmaker reduce latency and energy consumption for AI systems and likely accelerate its move to co-packaged optics. This would have fiber connections more directly integrated with chips. Per a Securities and Exchange Commission filing, Nvidia now has a pre-funded warrant to purchase 3 million shares in Corning and the option to purchase 15 million more. As part of the agreement, Corning says it will increase its optic…

The boom in data center construction is taking up much of the supply of high-tech components, especially processor and memory chips. This demand is squeezing consumer device makers, which are having trouble acquiring enough chips. This is happening even though data center servers and smartphones use different types of chips. The key distinction between consumer electronics and data centers is what they need chips to be optimized for. Smartphones and PCs require low power use, thermal efficiency, and tight integration. Data centers that run AI systems such as large language models, or LLMs, require maximum compute power, memory bandwidth, and storage throughput. To…

Breaking your arm or wrist typically comes with another layer of misery: wearing a hot, itchy cast that makes showering tedious and swimming impossible. But in Singapore, patients at some hospitals and clinics now have another option—an open, 3D-printed cast that’s more comfortable to wear and fully waterproof. Castomize, the Singapore-based startup behind the product, says that it’s also easier for doctors to use. To apply the cast, the medical team first heats it up to become soft and flexible. Then a doctor wraps it around the arm and clips it together with small built-in buckles. As it cools, it hardens in place. The traditional process, by contrast, takes…

I’m a big believer in the power of mindset. My journey as an entrepreneur has, frankly, demanded it. Building a business from scratch forces you into deeper work on self-inquiry and meta-cognition—that recursive question of Why do I think the way I think about this? It has pushed me to examine my assumptions, sit with discomfort, and deliberately fortify my inner life in ways I never anticipated when I started out. So when I sat down with Nir Eyal, author of the new New York Times bestselling book Beyond Belief, I expected a great conversation. What I got was an inspiration catalyst, a reframe that gave me fresh language and rigorous science for something I’d been doi…