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Cabinet dealers, interior designers and remodeling contractors in the U.S. hope new tariffs on imported kitchen cabinets, bathroom vanities and upholstered wooden furniture that kicked in Tuesday will create more business for them and eventually boost domestic production of those products. But several small business owners in the home improvement industry say they expect some short-term pains from the import taxes: Clients with projects already on the books might balk at having to pay more for the budget-priced cabinets they selected. Potential customers may postpone kitchen and bathroom renovations until costs — and the economy — seem more stable. “I think the volatili…

Fans are continuing to change the tune of how they consume music. It was recently reported that MTV was going to stop broadcasting five channels, including MTV Music, MTV 80s, MTV 90s, Club MTV, and MTV Live in the United Kingdom, and that the channels would go dark the end of this year. (Its flagship channel, MTV HD, will continue to air reality series.) Local news outlets in Australia, Poland, France, and Brazil have also reported that MTV could shut down music channels in those respective countries as well—leaving some to wonder if the United States is next to shutter those channels. It’s no secret that MTV’s parent company, Paramount Global, has been going…

America’s largest brick-and-mortar retailer is partnering with the country’s most prominent AI firm in the clearest signal yet that companies are hoping to boost their sales with artificial intelligence-assisted shopping tools. Today, Walmart and OpenAI announced a new partnership that will allow ChatGPT users to buy Walmart products directly from within the chatbot itself. Here’s what you need to know about the news, and how Walmart’s stock price is reacting. The Walmart-OpenAI deal explained Today, retail giant Walmart Inc. (NYSE: WMT) announced a major new deal with ChatGPT maker OpenAI. The deal will see the artificial intelligence firm’s chatbot gain t…

The top prize in landscape architecture has just been awarded to Mexican designer Mario Schjetnan, a multifaceted landscape architect whose work has transformed parks across Mexico City and vastly expanded social housing projects across his home coountry. Schjetnan and his firm, Grupo de Diseño Urbano (GDU), were announced winners of the 2025 Cornelia Hahn Oberlander International Landscape Architecture Prize, a biennial award from the Cultural Landscape Foundation recognizing the most influential and impactful practitioners in the field. Schjetnan and GDU have designed some of the most significant parks in Mexico, including Chapultepec Forest and Park, the se…

California Gov. Gavin Newsom on Monday vetoed landmark legislation that would have restricted children’s access to AI chatbots. The bill would have banned companies from making AI chatbots available to anyone under 18 years old unless the businesses could ensure the technology couldn’t engage in sexual conversations or encourage self-harm. “While I strongly support the author’s goal of establishing necessary safeguards for the safe use of AI by minors, (the bill) imposes such broad restrictions on the use of conversational AI tools that it may unintentionally lead to a total ban on the use of these products by minors,” Newsom said. The veto came hours after he signed a…

SpaceX launched another of its mammoth Starship rockets on a test flight Monday, successfully making it halfway around the world while releasing mock satellites like last time. Starship — the biggest and most powerful rocket ever built — thundered into the evening sky from the southern tip of Texas. The booster peeled away and made a controlled entry into the Gulf of Mexico as planned, with the spacecraft skimming space before descending into the Indian Ocean. Nothing was recovered. “Hey, welcome back to Earth, Starship,” SpaceX’s Dan Huot announced as employees cheered. “What a day.” It was the 11th test flight for a full-scale Starship, which SpaceX founder and CEO E…

News organizations including The New York Times, The Associated Press and the conservative Newsmax television network said Monday they will not sign a Defense Department document about its new press rules, making it likely the The President administration will evict their reporters from the Pentagon. Those outlets say the policy threatens to punish them for routine news gathering protected by the First Amendment. The Washington Post, The Atlantic and Reuters on Monday also publicly joined the group that says it will not be signing. AP confirmed Monday afternoon that it would not sign. “Reuters is bound by its commitment to accurate, impartial and independent news,” the …

I was asked to be the keynote speaker recently for an important conference at Rutgers Business School on the future of business education. I thought it would be helpful for business school leadership and students and for recruiters of business school graduates to recap my message in this Playing to Win/Practitioner Insights (PTW/PI) piece. It is called The Future[s] of Business Education: Two Strategy Paths. And as always, you can find all the previous PTW/PI here. Audience participation The conference attendees were mainly U.S. business school deans and other senior faculty members. The array of deans was quite impressive with deans from leading schools including …

When Apple’s AirTag came out four years ago, one of the most obvious uses for it was for luggage. On my long trips to Asia, I always breathe a sign of relief when I glance at my phone and find that my checked suitcase has been loaded onto the aircraft. And I often wish I had one in my carry-on suitcase, especially when the overhead bins run out of space and the flight attendant checks my bag at the gate. July, a fast-growing Australian startup, has become the first luggage brand to incorporate AirTags directly into its suitcases. The technology was made in partnership with Apple and Google, so the tags are integrated with both Apple’s Find My and Google’s Find Hub…

Shares in America’s “Quantum Four” quantum computing companies surged again yesterday. D-Wave, IonQ, Quantum Computing, and Rigetti all saw their stock prices jump by double-digit percentages. But why? The Quantum Four’s big stock price gains had nothing to do with radical new quantum computing breakthroughs. Instead, investors can thank banking giant JPMorganChase for the gains. Here’s what you need to know. Why did quantum computing shares surge yesterday? Yesterday, America’s four most prominent quantum computing companies saw their stock prices surge by double-digit percentages. But the genesis behind these soaring share prices wasn’t directly related to n…

Headaches continued for U.S. travelers over the weekend as a combination of bad weather and impacts from the ongoing government shutdown ensnarled many would-be fliers. Flight delays and cancellations piled up over the three-day holiday period, with flight-tracking service FlightAware showing nearly 30,000 delays in and out of U.S. airports from Sunday of last week through Monday. Here’s the latest on the situation at U.S. airports and what travelers need to know: How bad have flight delays been? Delays and cancellations at many airports have grown progressively worse since the U.S. government shut down on October 1. With no end in sight to the political impa…

Companies that endure beyond 15 years understand that innovation is not optional—it’s essential to fend off constant disruption, stay ahead of competitors, and sustain growth. The opportunities are endless, from modernizing entrenched processes to strengthening business continuity. Axon For helping law enforcement coordinate manhunts The proliferation of public cameras, vehicle sensors, and other data sources can greatly aid law enforcement in locating suspects, but only if the information is efficiently collected and analyzed. Axon Fusus provides a unified interface that integrates video feeds, alerts, analytics, and vehicle data from Axon devices, community cameras, …

Data centers have become the starting blocks in the global race for AI supremacy. Tech giants like Meta, Alphabet, and OpenAI have committed hundreds of billions of dollars collectively to building more of them. States are offering incentives for their development, and President Donald The President signed an executive order in July cutting regulations to speed up construction. For all the breakthroughs they promise, the environmental toll of these facilities is already staggering: According to the International Energy Agency, U.S. data centers used roughly 185 terawatt-hours of electricity in 2024—more than all of Pakistan’s 248 million people used that year. To keep…

For the past five years, Fast Company’s Next Big Things in Tech awards have celebrated technological breakthroughs that are changing the way we work and live. This year’s awards include 137 honors for innovations impacting everything from applied AI to telecommunications to agriculture. Arriving at that cadre of winners from a pool of 1,200 applicants requires many hours of work sifting through applications, scrutinizing projects, and deciding which achievements rank at the top. Here is a peek into how our small army of editorial staffers make it happen. Methodology Our team of editors and writers assessed each application based on factors such as: Relevan…

Across both white-collar and blue-collar settings, productivity depends on how well information is organized and communicated. DataSnipper uses AI to help auditors quickly surface relevant details in lengthy legal documents, while Sharebite streamlines employee meal programs for the hybrid workplace. Tines has developed a unified AI platform to manage a wide range of workplace software, and Weavix has reimagined the shop-floor radio for modern communication needs. DataSnipper For helping rapidly sift through lengthy financial documents Auditors often need to extract dates and financial details from dense documents such as leases, loan agreements, and meeting minutes—ta…

This year’s wellness and fitness honorees encompass innovations in sleep, fitness, and mental well-being. They help users chill out, de-stress, and take concrete actions to reduce their chronic disease risk. Sure, some of these may seem over the top. But as technologies improve and reach scale, what’s over the top now could become a basic necessity tomorrow. Ammortal For building the ultimate rejuvenation machine The Ammortal Chamber may be the ultimate self-care flex at the moment. The fully immersive “wellness experience” combines red light therapy for cellular regeneration, vibro-acoustic sound therapy to harmonize the nervous system, pulsed electromagnetic fields to…

Our honorees in the new tech visionaries category are executives who applied new thinking to pressing problems. One is working to take cellular broadband places it’s never gone before. Another aims to make the tech industry less dependent on the risky business of mining rare earth materials. And the third is applying AI to the thorny challenge of defending against ever-smarter missiles and drones. Abel Avellan, CEO, AST SpaceMobile For sending cellular broadband to space Founded in 2017 by chairman and CEO Abel Avellan, AST SpaceMobile has launched six of its BlueBird satellites into low Earth orbit, with plans to have 60 more in orbit by the end of 2026. The goal is t…

After federal funding for renewables evaporated this year, the future path of the energy sector has been unclear. But even in uncertain times, companies are advancing the technology needed to push for a clean-energy transition—while also accommodating for a new grid that needs to keep up with the huge power demands of the wave of data centers coming online. From new battery tech to all-day solar power to better ways to track emissions and more, these innovations can help see the sector through this precarious period. Exowatt For generating solar power even when the sun isn’t shining Exowatt’s P3 unit is a power plant in a 40-foot-long shipping container. The unit uses…

The space and telecom industries can look increasingly intertwined as satellite roaming—today for messages, tomorrow for data—becomes a standard feature. But while wireless services have the luxury of iterating as often as they want once they start signing up customers, space startups have to take things one launch at a time. Eascra Biotech For making the International Space Station a pharmaceutical research lab Eascra has one of the most interesting worksites of any of this year’s honorees: the International Space Station, where astronauts conduct research on developing nanoparticles to treat cancer and other maladies. Growing these materials in microgravity yields more…

Let’s face it: The fact that AI is amazing is no longer all that … amazing. The technology is under ever-increasing pressure to prove its real-world value for consumers, businesses, and researchers in specific contexts. These honorees in the applied AI category are proving AI’s worth for fashion advice, pharmaceutical advice, coding, and much more. Alta For bringing AI to personal styling For people who lack style expertise or time for outfit planning, the task of choosing what to wear can be a daily frustration. Alta built a personal AI stylist app that generates outfits based on users’ actual wardrobes, lifestyle, budget, weather, and upcoming events—whether they’r…

The next frontier of consumer tech isn’t just about adding more screens to your life or boosting your devices’ processing power. Instead, it’s empowering users to accomplish more, from powerful new maker tools to more efficient skincare solutions. On the home front, assistive robots are suddenly in reach, and AI cameras are learning to provide better pet care instead of just surveilling humans. Of course, there’s cool screen-related stuff too, including wildly thin foldable phones and increasingly immersive AR glasses. Anker For 3D printing onto pretty much anything Printing 3D textures onto materials such as wood and metal usually requires industrial-grade tools, but A…

These companies aren’t big—but they’re bringing new ideas to some thorny challenges. Kids have been crafting with cardboard for decades, but Chompshop has found a way to make it safer and more fun. Online clothes shopping has long been a bit hit or miss, but Veesual’s found a way to maximize the number of hits. And GoodMaps and Overture Maps have tackled longstanding navigation problems. Chompshop For making kids’ cardboard crafts safer and more fun Cheap, abundant cardboard is great for kids’ art and science projects, but it’s often hard to trim with scissors. Chompshop has developed a kid-safe power tool specifically designed for this versatile material. While it’s…

The coming years offer an opportunity to transform education. AI can provide precise insights about student needs and deliver lessons in a way that resonates with students’ interests and learning style. However, the technology also raises questions about academic integrity and the future nature of learning and teaching, questions that emerging tools are taking thoughtful approaches to addressing. Amira Learning For accelerating literacy with AI and neuroscience The Amira Reading Suite is designed to capture virtually every aspect of a student’s reading performance, using AI and neuroscience to prioritize instruction needs. Thanks to a partnership with Anthropic, the plat…

If there’s one thing businesses have in abundance, it’s data—in some cases, far more of it than they know what to do with. AI can turn daunting mountains of information into knowledge that’s accessible to staffers across the organization, regardless of their technical chops. These honorees are helping their customers unlock better understanding of data to do everything from supercharging sales teams to choosing the right music to license. Baseten For giving companies big and small a head start on inference Anyone building an AI application has access to powerful open-weight LLMs such as DeepSeek-R1. But the fact that the models are freely available doesn’t mean they’re…

Construction and real estate are in a challenging moment, with prices beyond reach for many buyers and little sign of near-term relief. Still, several recent breakthroughs could bring the goal of homeownership closer for more Americans, while other innovations focus on providing shelter for those who might otherwise go without. Beewise For a buzzy way to help resurrect the bee population Honeybee colonies in the United States could decline by as much as 70% in 2025, according to researchers at Washington State University. Beewise aims to counter that trend with the BeeHome, an autonomous hive that manages routine tasks and helps commercial beekeepers reduce colony loss…