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Hurricane Melissa, which made landfall in Jamaica on Tuesday, October 28, was one of strongest hurricanes to make landfall in the Atlantic ocean ever recorded. And it was supercharged by the effects of climate change. As it approached the Caribbean, Melissa—a Category 5 storm with winds of 185 mph—moved over exceptionally warm waters. The ocean was 2.2°F (or 1.2°C) warmer than average for this time of year—conditions that were “made up to 900 times more likely by human-caused climate change,” according to the scientists at the research nonprofit Climate Central. Carbon emissions from human actions trap heat in the atmosphere, but our oceans absorb most of tha…

For U.S. soldiers who find themselves at the front lines of a future conflict, it’s fast becoming gospel, due to the way warfare is rapidly evolving on the battlefields of Ukraine, that drones will be crucial to winning (or losing) the fight But the roughly 500 U.S. dronemakers can only build about 100,000 a year combined, according to Ryan Carver, communications manager for the Association for Uncrewed Vehicle Systems International. For comparison: One Chinese firm, DJI, can pump out millions of unmanned aerial vehicles (UAVs) a year — 70% of the global supply. To ameliorate this challenge/problem, a number of startups believe 3D printing, specifically of drones,…

Last year Canva reworked its user experience and tools in a full-frontal attack on the productivity and enterprise markets now dominated by Microsoft Office and Google Workspace. Now the Australian company is going for Adobe’s jugular. Affinity—the British company Canva bought in 2024—is out with a new app that aims to sink Photoshop, Illustrator, and InDesign with a simple proposal: If you are a professional designer, here’s an integrated photo editing, vector illustration, and page layout studio seamlessly integrated into a single application, with a feature set comparable to Adobe’s apps and a fully customizable UI. For free. You know, free free. “Free for…

The obesity rate in the U.S. is continuing its downward trend. The news comes three years after obesity rates hit a record high. In 2022, almost four out of 10 (39.9%) of Americans met the threshold for the classification, however, the number first began to shrink in 2023. Now, the rate of obesity is now down to 37%, according to new data from Gallup. The new findings are based on data from three nationally representative surveys of 16,946 U.S. adults. And while the numbers don’t seem massively significant, the report found that those three percentage points add up to around 7.6 million Americans who no longer meet the criteria for being obese. According to the n…

Generative AI ranges from gimmicky to powerful, depending on its context. But the biggest shortcoming is that whatever you make isn’t really all that editable— you typically have to juggle several apps to get the outcome you want. Now, a new update to Canva, called Ask @Canva, makes just about everything you’re working on editable by AI with a tap and a request. Ask @Canva is built upon Canva’s first foundational model—an AI model it trained in-house specifically for its own purposes. Instead of generating static designs, it produces new projects as full, editable design templates. That means when Canva uses AI to generate your slide deck or social post, all of t…

Starbucks released its fourth-quarter earnings on Wednesday, October 30, finally providing an official figure for its recent wave of store closings. The Seattle-based coffee chain shuttered a total of 627 locations worldwide over the three months, ending up with a net closure of 107 stores. More than 90% of impacted locations were in North America, Starbucks said. In the United States, 520 stores were shuttered as part of the company’s turnaround efforts, Starbucks disclosed in an earnings release. Starbucks now runs 40,990 stores globally and 16,864 in the United States. Estimates of store closures varied widely In September, Starbucks announced the shutt…

For the past 30 years, the web browser has been the primary way humans navigate the internet. It makes sense, then, that as artificial intelligence becomes more humanlike in its capabilities, it would use the same tool. That’s basically the idea behind AI-powered browsers, which are definitely having an “it” moment now that OpenAI has launched Atlas, its own web browser that incorporates ChatGPT as an ever-present helper. Atlas follows Perplexity’s Comet, which arrived in the summer to quickly capture the imagination of what an AI browser could do. In both cases, the user can, at any time, call up an AI assistant (aka agent), able to perform multistep tasks—such as na…

Welcome to AI Decoded, Fast Company’s weekly newsletter that breaks down the most important news in the world of AI. I’m Mark Sullivan, a senior writer at Fast Company, covering emerging tech, AI, and tech policy. This week, I’m focusing on a stunning stat showing that OpenAI’s ChatGPT engages with more than a million users a week about suicidal thoughts. I also look at new Anthropic research on AI “introspection,” and at a Texas philosopher’s take on AI and morality. Sign up to receive this newsletter every week via email here. And if you have comments on this issue and/or ideas for future ones, drop me a line at sullivan@fastcompany.com, and follow me on X (form…

Samsung Electronics on Thursday reported a 32.5% increase in operating profit for the third quarter, driven by rebounding demand for its computer memory chips, which the company expects will continue to grow on the back of artificial intelligence. The South Korean technology giant set a new high in quarterly revenue, which rose nearly 9% to 86 trillion won ($60.4 billion) for the July-September period, fueled by increased sales of semiconductor products and mobile phones. Samsung, which has dual strength in both components and finished products, said it expects the demand driven by AI to further expand market opportunities in coming months. SK Hynix, another major South…

Seven people have been arrested in the investigation of a stunning heist at the Louvre Museum in Paris, but the lavish, stolen jewels that once adorned France’s royals are still missing. In the days after the theft, a handful of experts warned that the artifacts valued at more than $100 million (88 million euros) could be melted or broken into parts. If done successfully, some say those smaller pieces could later go up for sale as part of a new necklace, earrings, or other jewelry, without turning too many heads. “You don’t even have to put them on a black market, you just put them in a jewelry store,” said Erin Thompson, an art crime professor at the John Jay Col…

I-P-Go! Shares of Navan, a travel-tech firm based in Silicon Valley, hit the exchanges on Thursday. The company priced its initial public offering at $25 per share, raising roughly $923 million. The $25 per-share price is within the $24–$26 range the company zeroed-in on last week, when it also announced it would sell nearly 37 million shares of common stock. The IPO puts Navan’s valuation at around $9.2 billion. Navan shares will trade on the Nasdaq under the ticker “NAVN.” Founded in 2015, the company bills itself as “an all-in-one business travel, payments, and expense management platform that makes travel easy for frequent travelers,” helping customers fin…

House flippers are about to get an AI assist on their next renovation project. Kai is an AI-powered tool that can visually identify what’s needed to fix up a house and put it on the market. The system converts photos and videos of house projects into SKU-level material specifications and cost estimates, making it fast and easy for an institutional home renovator to create an actionable renovation plan and order all the materials needed to get the job done. Kai has just launched a partnership with home improvement retailer Home Depot to link its building material and product selection tools directly with Home Depot’s 3.5 million item inventory list. Home renovators…

Recently, Figma CEO Dylan Field assembled employees from throughout the company for a demo of a new-ish tool for generating, refining, and editing synthetic images and videos. Rather than being built around one-off prompts, it allowed users to create visual workflows for comparing and manipulating options created by different AI models. It also facilitated putting imagery through multiple rounds of polishing and remixing, adding a large dose of human taste and quality control to the process. According to Field, they were “mesmerized” by what they saw. “We had it scheduled for 20 minutes,” he remembers. “And 20 minutes came, and everyone’s like, ‘No, no, please keep go…

Shares of Meta Platforms (Nasdaq: META) were down about 9% in premarket trading on Thursday. It follows what can only be described as a mixed bag of a quarter-three earnings report on Wednesday, October 30. On the one hand, Meta announced $51.2 billion in revenue, a 26% increase year-over-year (YOY) from $40.6 billion and a quarterly record for the company. The boost also beat Wall Street’s estimate of $49.6 billion, according to consensus estimates cited by Bloomberg. However, Meta also reported a non-cash income tax charge of $15.93 billion. This one-time charge led to a significant decrease—83%—in Meta’s net income YOY. It also meant the company’s earnings per …

Fast-casual restaurant chain Chipotle Mexican Grill (NYSE: CMG) is seeing its stock price plummet this morning after reporting third-quarter 2025 earnings and a sales forecast that alarmed investors. As of the time of this writing, CMG shares are down a staggering 19% to $32.21 in premarket trading. Here’s what you need to know about the company’s stock price crash. What’s happened? On Wednesday, Chipotle reported its Q3 2025 earnings after the bell. Some of what the company revealed has alarmed investors. But first, here are the company’s most critical quarterly metrics: Total revenue: $3 billion (a 7.5% increase) Comparable restaurant sales: up 0.…

If you’ve been eager to try cultivated meat—meat grown from cells, without the need to raise an entire animal—your options, so far, have been limited. The innovation has only appeared on a handful of restaurant menus since its approval by the U.S. Food and Drug Administration (FDA) But if you’re in the Bay Area, you’re in luck: Cultivated meat startup Mission Barns will be selling its pork meatballs (made with a base of pea protein plus the company’s cultivated pork fat) at Berkeley Bowl West, one location of an independent grocery store in California. It marks the first retail sale of cultivated meat in the United States, though the products are available for…

In April 2025, Lucy Guo became the youngest female self-made billionaire after Meta paid $14.3 billion for a 49% stake in Scale AI, the company she cofounded with Alexandr Wang in 2016. Though Guo had left the company—which builds infrastructure and software to create AI applications—over disagreements with Wang in 2018, she retained her 5% stake in the business, which skyrocketed in value after Meta’s investment. In 2022 she reemerged with Passes, a platform that helps creators monetize their social media followings by selling access to exclusive offerings—from products and merch to pay-by-the-minute private phone calls. As of February, the company has raised a …

It’s official: Samsung has found a way to turn fridges into giant, unavoidable ads. In a move that comes as a shock to pretty much no one, Samsung announced on October 27 that its premium line of Family Hub fridges, which each come with a giant, AI-powered, embedded screen, will start displaying a widget featuring curated ads. By early November, anyone in the U.S. who owns a Family Hub fridge with a 21.5″ or 32″ screen will start seeing the ads, even if they bought the appliance well before the news was announced. Commenters on Reddit and Tiktok are reacting with outraged shock to the concept of their kitchens becoming the next venue for the performance of late-s…

Syracuse University is rolling out a new “Center for the Creator Economy,” looking to train the new class of influencers, streamers, podcasters and YouTubers. The center, the first of its kind in the U.S., is a joint project between the university’s communications and business schools, and aims to attract students planning to participate in the $250 billion creator economy. With rising unemployment rates, and a college degree no longer unlocking the career opportunities it once did, the creator economy could be a beacon of hope for young graduates in a dismal job market. The number of creators globally is expected to grow at a compound annual rate between 10 and 2…

In early 2023, Shopify made a bold and deliberate decision that rippled through its entire organization. Without warning anyone or conducting a phased rollout, they removed over 12,000 recurring meetings from employee calendars. They put a company-wide pause on all Wednesday meetings, and consolidated larger group sessions into a single window each week. From the outside, it looked like a scheduling adjustment. On the inside, it was an intentional reevaluation of how the company valued time, attention, and collaboration. Surprisingly, the decision resulted in very little chaos. Teams adapted and work moved. Space led to clarity surfacing. Shopify reported that the…