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Chick-fil-A says it’s testing out a stand-alone drinks-focused restaurant concept. Called Daybright, the new concept will open this fall outside Atlanta, Chick-fil-A tells Fast Company. It’s being brought to life by Red Wagon Ventures, a Chick-fil-A subsidiary and business incubator named after founder Truett Cathy’s first business selling Coca-Cola out of a red wagon when he was 6 years old. “We look forward to sharing more details in the future,” Chick-fil-A says about the concept. Though there’s not yet a public menu for Daybright, it’s expected to serve coffee, smoothies, and cold-pressed juice alongside a limited selection of food. But sorry, peach milksh…

In a rural corner of Louisiana, Meta is building one of the world’s largest data centers, a $10 billion behemoth as big as 70 football fields that will consume more power in a day than the entire city of New Orleans at the peak of summer. While the colossal project is impossible to miss in Richland Parish, a farming community of 20,000 residents, not everything is visible, including how much the social media giant will pay toward the more than $3 billion in new electricity infrastructure needed to power the facility. Watchdogs have warned that in the rush to capitalize on the AI-driven data center boom, some states are allowing massive tech companies to direct exp…

Amazon reached a $2.5 billion settlement with the Federal Trade Commission (FTC) on Thursday over whether the e-commerce giant used “deceptive methods” to sign up consumers for Prime subscriptions, then made it “exceedingly difficult” to cancel. The agency argued Amazon enrolled millions of customers in Prime subscriptions without their consent, and knowingly made it difficult for consumers to get out of the agreement. That settlement, which comes just three days into the civil trial in federal court in Seattle, included a whopping $1 billion civil penalty, the highest in history, and a $1.5 billion fund to refund Prime users harmed by the deceptive enrollment pra…

The meteoric rise in artificial intelligence and its usage in nearly every facet of our daily life is leaving a profound mark on the job market. In the first quarter of 2025 alone, more than 76,000 jobs were lost to automation, as AI-powered analytics platforms replaced junior data analysts. Nearly 40% of employers expect to cut staff in areas where AI can handle tasks, according to the World Economic Forum’s Future of Jobs Report 2025. Now, with the rise of generative AI’s successor, agentic AI, many in the tech industry fear that AI will soon claim coding and tech jobs. After all, if AI-powered coding assistants can write, debug, and refactor code in seconds, what …

The U.S. Food and Drug Administration blocked imports of spices this week from an Indonesian company amid widespread worries of radioactive contamination. The agency said it found cesium 137 in spices—specifically cloves—from Indonesian company PT Natural Java Spice that were shipped to California. The discovery marks the second food product imported from Indonesia found to have radioactive contamination, as recalls of potentially tainted imported shrimp expanded. “Products from PT. Bahari Makmur Sejati and from PT Natural Java Spice will not be permitted to enter the U.S. market until these firms provide the FDA with information to adequately demonstrate that th…

Do you suffer from time anxiety? Before you answer, consider if any of the following scenarios sound familiar: You get a late start, and the whole day you’re running behind. You always feel rushed, to the point that you start to get panicky. You look at your task list at the end of the day, and you’ve only finished half of what you planned. You constantly feel that time is slipping away. In other words, you’re constantly battling the feeling that there’s simply not enough time. But what if you could reframe the way you think about time? Well, you can. It involves learning a little ancient Greek, and getting to know that society’s approach to …

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, …

In part four of How YouTube Ate TV, Fast Company’s oral history of YouTube, insiders describe how the company’s Partner Program began sharing ad revenue with creators, kicking off the age of the professional YouTuber. As monetization transformed the platform, creators faced the newfangled challenges of managing fame in the viral video age. YouTube, meanwhile, wrestled with hate speech and other unsavory content. With YouTube increasingly competing with TV in its classic form, it also spent billions to bring one of broadcasting’s most iconic offerings—the NFL—on board. Comments have been edited for length and clarity. Read more How YouTube Ate TV Part one: YouTube…

Last week, in subway stations and train cars across all five boroughs of New York City, stark black-and-white print ads appeared featuring a variety of servile messages. “I’ll never leave dirty dishes in the sink,” one read. “I’ll never bail on our dinner plans,” another said. “I’ll binge the entire series with you,” a third promised. The ads—which rolled out on September 25 in the form of more than 11,000 car cards, 1,000 platform posters, and 130 urban panels—are part of a massive outdoor campaign for Friend, a wearable AI company billed as a portable “companion.” Since the campaign rolled out, it has received overwhelming criticism from local New Yorkers, with…

It’s official: AOL‘s dial-up internet has taken its last bow. AOL previously confirmed it would be pulling the plug on Tuesday (Sept. 30) — writing in a brief update on its support site last month that it “routinely evaluates” its offerings and had decided to discontinue dial-up, as well as associated software “optimized for older operating systems,” from its plans. Dial-up is now no longer advertised on AOL’s website. As of Wednesday, former company help pages like “connect to the internet with AOL Dialer” appeared unavailable — and nostalgic social media users took to the internet to say their final goodbyes. AOL, formerly America Online, introduced many hou…

David Droga was the face of Accenture Song even before it was called Accenture Song. The ad legend sold his agency Droga5 to Accenture’s creative advertising and marketing division then-called Accenture Interactive in 2019. He became CEO of that division in 2021, and rebranded Interactive as Accenture Song in 2022. So when he stepped down in May, the $20 billion company was not only losing its CEO, it was also losing the voice of the agency. Named to lead the new era was Ndidi Oteh, who comes from leading Song’s operations in the Americas, and has been at Accenture for about 14 years, where in her previous role she was the global account lead for Nike, and retail in…

Discussing English football ownership is turning into the ultimate name drop. Ryan Reynolds and Rob McElhenney at Wrexham. Tom Brady at Birmingham City. Michael B. Jordan at Bournemouth. J.J. Watt at Burnley. Even Snoop Dogg is in on the action, becoming co-owner of Swansea City this summer. But the American invasion of English football has moved beyond novelty. Twelve of the Premier League’s 20 clubs now answer to U.S. ownership—either wholly or partially. Drop down to the Championship, English football’s second tier, and nine more clubs are backed by American money. On Friday, when Wrexham hosts Birmingham City, it will be a clash of two celebrity-driven, Americ…