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In late October, dozens of federal law enforcement officers flooded Canal street, a busy thoroughfare in Manhattan, arresting street vendors. Some officers donned full military uniforms; some wore plain clothes, baseball caps, and neck gaiters pulled over their faces. All were equipped with tactical vests of various styles and with a medley of identifying patches—“HSI,” “Customs and Border Patrol,” “Federal Agent,” or, simply, “Police.” They wore markers of power and authority, but with little consistency across them. As news of the raid unfolded, the NYPD released a statement on X saying it had no involvement with the operation. So who, exactly, were all the people …

OpenAI just released Instant Checkout for ChatGPT—a new feature that lets users directly make purchases within the ChatGPT interface. ChatGPT can now spend your money for you. It’s a huge deal—both for users, brands, and the future of agentic AI. Here’s why. Stickers at the ready Consumers are already enthusiastically turning to chatbots like ChatGPT to research products before deciding what to buy. As TechCrunch shared earlier this year, referrals from chatbots to top merchant websites are up almost 400% year over year. I personally used ChatGPT to research an $800+ laptop purchase this summer. Before, users could do their research in ChatGPT, …

Dick’s Sporting Goods (NYSE: DKS) announced it will close select Foot Locker stores and raised its full-year year outlook, in its third quarter earnings report on Tuesday. While Dick’s has not disclosed how many locations it will shutter (Fast Company has reached out for confirmation), it is part of a larger restructuring effort, according to executive chairman Ed Stack who spoke with CNBC. Dick’s acquired leading footwear and apparel retailer Foot Locker for $2.5 billion back in September, according to its latest earnings release. As of November 1, the company was operating 3,230 store locations across the combined Dick’s and Foot Locker businesses globally. …

Ozempic-maker Novo Nordisk turned to the actors from Apple’s 2000s “Get a Mac” ads to differentiate its GLP-1 medication amid a rising sea of competitors. On January 20, the Danish pharmaceutical company announced its “There’s Only One Ozempic” campaign starring Justin Long and John Hodgman. The actors are reprising their roles from Apple’s Mac vs. PC ads playing the personifications of a name brand and the alternative—but now for weight-loss drugs. Long personified Mac in the original Apple campaign by dressing in a more youthful, casual way than Hodgman, who personified a stuffy, dorky PC by wearing glasses and a suit and tie with a closely cropped haircut. …

Boeing and NASA have agreed to keep astronauts off the company’s next Starliner flight and instead perform a trial run with cargo to prove its safety. Monday’s announcement comes eight months after the first and only Starliner crew returned to Earth aboard SpaceX after a prolonged mission. Although NASA test pilots Butch Wilmore and Suni Williams managed to dock Starliner to the International Space Station in 2024, the capsule had so many problems that NASA ordered it to come back empty, leaving the astronauts stuck there for more than nine months. Engineers have since been poring over the thruster and other issues that plagued the Starliner capsule. Its next carg…

For the past two years, I’ve written predictions for how AI will continue to change the media industry and the business of news in the coming year. Prognosticating is a risky business even at the most tranquil of times, and media’s AI era is anything but: bots are multiplying, newsrooms are shrinking, and new business models always seem to be still developing. Last year, four of the five predictions I made came true, those being the spread of audio experiences like NotebookLM’s audio overviews, a greater emphasis on content licensing, more “legit” AI-generated content, and publishers doing more with their own summarization and chatbots. I should have probably known my…

The stat that women receive less than 2% of VC funding is often cited—but that figure tells only part of the story. Angel investors, non-dilutive grants, and other funding methods are shifting the landscape for women and other underrepresented founders—especially at a time when DEI initiatives are in peril. This panel explores how investors are closing the funding gap and what you should know to get the capital you need. View the full article

Liftoff Mobile, a California-based mobile app marketing provider, announced on Thursday that it plans to launch . . . into the public markets. The company, backed by Blackstone, is targeting a valuation of nearly $5.2 billion for its IPO, and is looking to raise as much as $762 million in funding by selling more than 25 million shares. Share prices are expected to range between $26 and $30. It will trade under the ticker “LFTO.” The company’s roots go back to 2012, when it was initially founded. A majority stake was later acquired by Blackstone in 2021, and Liftoff was then combined with Vungle to create a single, large, independent mobile adtech platform. That pl…

If you’ve received any text messages from California-based healthcare giant Kaiser Permanente, you could be eligible for cash under the terms of a new settlement. The Kaiser Foundation Health Plan agreed to pay $10.5 million to settle a class action suit filed in August 2025. That suit alleged that the healthcare company sent marketing texts to people who had already replied “stop” to opt out of receiving them. That practice could run afoul of the Telephone Consumer Protection Act (TCPA), a law protecting consumers from aggressive telemarketing and robocalls, and the Florida Telephone Solicitation Act. Jonathan Fried, the plaintiff who brought the suit, lived in …

Figma burst into the public eye in 2022 after Adobe was blocked from buying the design startup for $20 billion. This chapter set the stage for an even bigger milestone at Figma: a splashy IPO this summer at nearly double that valuation. Cofounder and CEO Dylan Field shares what distinguishes Figma from competitors, and why design is increasingly at the center of every industry in today’s software-driven economy. This is an abridged transcript of an interview from Rapid Response, hosted by Robert Safian, former editor-in-chief of Fast Company. From the team behind the Masters of Scale podcast, Rapid Response features candid conversations with today’s top business lead…

Amazon is rolling out a new feature in hopes of retaining, or perhaps attracting, new Prime members. The tech giant announced Wednesday that Alexa+, its AI-powered assistant, is now available for free to all Prime members. Last March, Amazon began offering an “early access” preview for the new voice assistant that saw an “inspiring” response, with tens of millions of customers requesting access, according to a statement. The company has revamped its legacy Alexa product to handle more complex interactions—offering examples of how users can engage in “deep conversations” with Alexa+ that may be ongoing over the course of potentially several days, as the technology …