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A Cinnabon worker in Wisconsin has been fired after a racist outburst directed at two customers went viral, the Georgia-based cinnamon roll chain said. Cinnabon posted a statement on social media that the worker, who it did not identify, was “immediately terminated” by the franchise owner over a “disturbing video” of the incident. “Their actions and statements are completely unacceptable and in no way reflect the values of Cinnabon, our franchisees, or the welcoming environment we expect for every guest and team member,” the company added in a follow-up statement to The Associated Press on Sunday. The video was posted on TikTok and showed a white, female emplo…

When Steve Jobs and Steve Wozniak built Apple in a garage, the incumbents they were up against were slow-moving hardware companies. When Jeff Bezos started Amazon, Barnes & Noble wasn’t pouring billions into machine learning or cloud infrastructure. This doesn’t mean that it was easy for these entrepreneurs to change the face of whole industries. It was not. But it was at least possible. Back then, giants could be out-innovated because they were bureaucratic, cautious, and often blind to the potential of what the upstart start-ups were building. The situation is very different today. The startup landscape has changed radically. Where once it was populated by boots…

For global companies, Africa’s promise has long been tempered by a persistent operational myth: that the continent is not ready for complex business. The reality is different, however. The barrier isn’t a lack of demand, but the inability of traditional global systems to handle Africa’s unique financial landscape. Nearly 400 million African adults remain on the fringes of the formal financial system, yet digital adoption is exploding. The conversation has decisively shifted from basic financial access to a more critical question: How can multinationals efficiently manage their core operations like paying suppliers, collecting revenue, and moving money across borders, …

Miami Art Week usually exists behind invisible velvet ropes. It is a place where private dinners, celebrity walkthroughs, and invitation-only installations dominate the social landscape. But this past week, Capital One tried something unusual. It opened one of Art Week’s most insular cultural moments to people who are not part of the traditional art world by giving its cardholders access to the kind of programming that normally requires a personal invitation, using Art Week not simply as a cultural stage but as a strategic laboratory for understanding what premium consumers now expect from financial brands. The brand’s presence featured a collaboration with artist…

Massachusetts’ highest court heard oral arguments Friday in the state’s lawsuit arguing that Meta designed features on Facebook and Instagram to make them addictive to young users. The lawsuit, filed in 2024 by Attorney General Andrea Campbell, alleges that Meta did this to make a profit and that its actions affected hundreds of thousands of teenagers in Massachusetts who use the social media platforms. “We are making claims based only on the tools that Meta has developed because its own research shows they encourage addiction to the platform in a variety of ways,” said State Solicitor David Kravitz, adding that the state’s claim has nothing to do the company’s al…

Like many American cities, the streetscape in downtown Brooklyn was for a long time very heavy on the street: a great place to park a car or drive through. But over the past 20 years, the area itself has gone from being a 9-to-5 shopping and business district to one where a growing number of people live 24-7. Since 2004, more than 22,000 housing units have been added to the neighborhood, changing its character so much that its old streetscape just wasn’t cutting it. “There was a real evolution of the neighborhood,” says Regina Myer, president of the Downtown Brooklyn Partnership (DBP), a business improvement district representing the area’s business owners, shopkee…

For budding influencers, class is now in session. Jessica Henig, founder of Unlocked Branding, is rolling out Social Media University, a new platform launching today that promises to decode the influencer industry for the next wave of creators and industry professionals. The platform is free to join. “We wanted it to be accessible for anyone who is interested in building a career in media and their network,” Henig tells Fast Company. “This community was built on after years of successfully building talent into top tier brands themselves, and we’ve seen such high demand from others who want to know where to start.” Henig knows the formula, after helping shape…

Nearly a quarter of American workers didn’t take any of their vacation days this year. That’s according to a report published in October from FlexJobs based on a survey of over 3,000 U.S. workers. Despite workers being more burnt out and disengaged than ever, many refuse to take time off. Could unlimited PTO be to blame? It’s been well-documented that unlimited PTO may not be the generous gift workers are led to believe. A recent skit from TikToker and comedian Jacob Capozzi assumes the role of “the guy who invented unlimited PTO” to highlight some of the reasons why. Capozzi poses as an executive who wants to incorporate “something more interesting to get p…

It’s a historic day for both Walmart and the Nasdaq. Today, America’s largest brick-and-mortar retailer begins trading on the Nasdaq after its shares spent over half a century on the New York Stock Exchange (NYSE). Here’s what you need to know about Walmart’s move to the Nasdaq. What’s happened? A week before Thanksgiving, Walmart announced that it would transfer its common stock listing from the New York Stock Exchange (NYSE) to the Nasdaq Global Select Market. The move is historic for a few reasons. The first is that Walmart (Nasdaq: WMT) shares have traded on the NYSE since 1972—the last 53 years. Walmart went public in 1970, but traded on over-the-cou…

In the English countryside, a new project has emerged from the landscape—quite literally. Rammed Earth House, a residential estate by London-based Tuckey Design Studio, combines renovated brick buildings with new rammed earth structures, harnessing the clay soil of the very land it sits on. “The material is already under your feet, and it doesn’t come with all the carbon baggage that other [building] materials come with,” says studio founder Jonathan Tuckey. As a building technique, rammed earth—which combines clay soil with aggregate such as gravel into tightly compressed layers—traces back thousands of years. It was widely used in ancient China, but appears globall…

After Joey Zwillinger stepped down as CEO of Allbirds in March 2024, he took three months off—mainly because his wife Liz said she’d divorce him if he jumped into another venture. He had run the sustainable shoe company for 10 years while the couple raised their three young children. “It took a real toll on the family,” Liz says. (“I would say it developed character in our family,” Zwillinger counters.) Before long, he was itching to start a new project, an ambition he shyly expressed to his wife. “It was really hard to want to sign up for something like that all over again,” Liz says. But this time, he cofounded the venture with Liz. It’s also a bold piv…

If you’re searching for a new snack that’s heavy on flavor but manages to skip the unhealthy additives, you’re in luck. There’s a new one called Ragerz from Good Eat’n, NBA star Chris Paul’s snack brand, in partnership with the WNBA’s Paige Bueckers. And it sounds like a slam dunk. For starters, the snack—which is a bit like a healthier take on Takis—is focused on delivering a fierce flavor without the junk. It comes in Chili Lime and Sweet Chili Crunch flavors that, Bueckers tells Fast Company, do not miss the mark (hoop?). The snack “isn’t asking people to give up flavor to feel better about what they’re eating,” she says, adding that with Ragerz, “you ca…

Spotify has a knack for mining your listening data into something fun and shareable rather than weird and creepy for its annual “Wrapped” feature. This year, it outdid itself. The 2025 edition of Spotify Wrapped goes beyond just summarizing what you listened to with charts and infographics. This year, Spotify is also assigning each user a “Listening Age,” which is based on the release years of their favorite tracks compared to others in the same age group. The feature quickly went viral, as users recoiled at their seemingly geriatric (or juvenile) musical tastes. At the risk of reading too much into something that’s ultimately good fun, Wrapped’s expanding purview…

The Department of Transportation (DOT) has created a new $1 billion grant program to make U.S. airports more family- and health-friendly. Transportation Secretary Sean Duffy launched the “Make Travel Family Friendly Again” campaign alongside Health Secretary Robert F. Kennedy Jr. on Monday, December 8, at Ronald Reagan Washington National Airport. “I am talking about ushering in the golden age of transportation,” Duffy said, adding they are hiring more air traffic controllers, and asking retiring air traffic controllers to stay on the job. However, the Transportation Secretary said the funding is dedicated to “making the experience better in airports and its…

For an architect whose name and work have become known all over the world by laypeople and architecture fans alike, Frank Gehry’s buildings are about as far from the mainstream as one can get. Bent, curved, and clad in shiny metal, the most famous buildings by Gehry, who died last week at 96, are also the most improbable. Coming up with the flamboyant designs for landmark buildings like the Guggenheim Museum in Bilbao and the Walt Disney Concert Hall in Los Angeles was only part of what made Gehry one of the most successful and celebrated architects in American history. Just as impressive are the ways Gehry helped explore and expand the architecture technologies used …

CoreWeave stock dropped 8% Monday after the AI cloud computing company announced plans to raise another $2 billion, this time through convertible debt, to finance its rapid build-out of new data centers. On Tuesday, the company said it would increase the total offering to $2.25 billion. CoreWeave, which sells access to powerful Nvidia GPUs to run AI models, may be a bellwether in an industry placing unprecedented bets on an AI boom they believe is around the corner. CoreWeave is a “pick-and-shovel” infrastructure company in AI (like Nvidia) whose fortunes may test the narrative that tech companies — and their stock values — are riding the long wave of the next techno…