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Fast-casual salad chain Salad and Go is closing more stores and exiting Texas and Oklahoma completely. The eatery will close a total of 32 stores, 25 in Texas and seven in Oklahoma, by January 11. The closures will impact around 600 employees. The company will also close its Dallas headquarters and relocate to Phoenix. Salad and Go operates as a drive-through and grab-and-go business, known for affordable salads, wraps, and other healthy menu items. The fast-casual chain was founded in 2013 in Gilbert, Arizona. Salad and Go began rapid expansion efforts in 2022. However, the salad chain has recently been reducing its retail footprint, closing 41 of its stores …

Salesforce is buying AI-powered cloud data management company Informatica in an approximately $8 billion deal. Informatica’s shareholders will receive $25 per share, a premium of about 11% from Friday’s closing price of $22.55. The transaction will give Salesforce access to Informatica’s data management capabilities. Informatica was taken private in 2015 by private equity firm Permira and the Canada Pension Plan Investment Board for about $5.3 billion. It went public again in 2021. “Joining forces with Salesforce represents a significant leap forward in our journey to bring data and AI to life by empowering businesses with the transformative power of their most critic…

Indian Prime Minister Narendra Modi on Thursday invited leaders of some of the top artificial intelligence companies to gather on stage as part of a commitment to build more “inclusive and multilingual” AI around the world. And they did. But what caught some of the audience’s attention, and later went viral on social media, was an awkward interaction between two rival tech leaders: OpenAI CEO Sam Altman and Anthropic CEO Dario Amodei. Modi, host of the India AI Impact Summit in New Delhi, clasped hands with those closest to him — Altman to his left and Google CEO Sundar Pichai to his right — and beckoned all 13 tech leaders to lift their hands up in a chain, like …

OpenAI CEO Sam Altman has defended the resource-intensive use of AI by comparing it to all the energy—and food—that humans require, sparking a wave of backlash across social media. That comparison, experts in climate and tech spaces say, is misguided, downplays the climate risks associated with AI, and illustrates the disconnect between tech CEOs and the rest of society. Altman’s comments came while speaking to the Indian Express at the India AI Impact summit. The outlet asked him to address some of the common criticisms of AI, including the amount of energy and water the technology requires. “One of the things that is always unfair in this comparison is peop…

Han Jong-Hee, a senior Samsung Electronics executive credited with elevating the company’s television business, died Tuesday, the company said. He was 63. Han, a co-chief executive who oversaw the company’s consumer electronics and mobile devices businesses, died at a hospital after being treated for a heart attack, Samsung said. Han joined Samsung in 1988 and spent most of his career in TV-related divisions, during which the company became the world’s leading TV manufacturer. He was appointed co-vice chairman and CEO in 2022. Samsung, one of the world’s largest technology companies, has dual strengths in components and finished consumer products. The company had separ…

Foldable phones have spent years trying to justify themselves. Some were too fragile, others too bulky, and most felt like solutions in search of a problem. The Galaxy Z TriFold is Samsung’s clearest attempt yet to answer a more reasonable question: Can one device replace the phone-tablet combo without becoming a chore to carry? Coming to the United States later this month, the TriFold folds twice, opens into a 10-inch screen, and closes back into a pocketable form. It’s an assertive design, but not a novelty play. Samsung seems very aware that this kind of device only makes sense for a specific kind of user. The double fold is the trick, but the software does…

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…

When samurai warriors went into battle in 16th century Japan, their swords included a piece of hidden art. Within the tsuba, the hand guard at the bottom of the blade, metal smiths carefully crafted beautiful and complex designs, including flowers, animals, and landscapes. The Museum of Fine Arts in Boston has one of the largest collections of Japanese art in the United States in its permanent collection, including hundreds of tsubas. It has just collaborated with the fine jewelry designer Monica Rich Kosann to create a collection of necklaces inspired by three tsuba designs—a crane, a turtle, and a butterfly—to introduce these ancient works of art back into the m…

Immigration Judge Ana Partida sat before a mostly empty courtroom on an afternoon in October, her body angled toward a television on one of the side walls. None of the people scheduled to appear before Partida, who hears cases inside San Diego’s Otay Mesa Detention Center, were present in person. That’s because Immigration and Customs Enforcement (ICE) had transferred all of them to other locations around the country, even though their cases were already underway in San Diego. One by one, an ICE attorney asked Partida to move the detainees’ cases to courts closer to their new locations. All of the people who were transferred had attorneys in San Diego, including …

San Francisco Bay Area residents woke up to some bad news for their Friday commute. Bay Area Rapid Transit, or BART, the region’s main commuter rail system, which connects San Francisco’s peninsula with the East and South Bay, systematically shut down due to a “computer networking problem” affecting train control. The agency announced it was closing all 50 stations at 4:24 a.m. on Friday morning, the East Bay Times reported. As of this writing on Friday morning, BART said that train service had resumed, although passengers should expect “major delays.” “Technicians are on site trying to get to the bottom of the situation, but right now, that is the infor…

The city of San Francisco filed a lawsuit against some of the nation’s top food manufacturers on Tuesday, arguing that ultraprocessed food from the likes of Coca-Cola and Nestle are responsible for a public health crisis. City Attorney David Chiu named 10 companies in the lawsuit, including the makers of such popular foods as Oreo cookies, Sour Patch Kids, Kit Kat, Cheerios and Lunchables. The lawsuit argues that ultraprocessed foods are linked to diseases such as Type 2 diabetes, fatty liver disease and cancer. “They took food and made it unrecognizable and harmful to the human body,” Chiu said in a news release. “These companies engineered a public health crisis, they…

When a major power outage left tens of thousands of San Francisco residents in the dark weekend, the city’s fleet of high tech self-driving vehicles went offline too. Videos circulating on social media showed Waymo robotaxis clogging up intersections, addled by the sudden absence of guidance from traffic lights. In one video posted to TikTok, a Waymo robotaxi sporting its telltale rooftop cluster of sensors blocks a busy intersection as human drivers stream around it on both sides. “This car did not move for 10+ min – it only left when the passengers ditched the car,” the TikTok user who caught the footage wrote in the caption. In another widely circulated video,…

Power was restored Sunday to the bulk of the 130,000 homes and businesses in San Francisco impacted by a massive outage a day earlier that caused major disruptions in the city. About 17,000 customers remained without power as of noon Sunday, Pacific Gas and Electric Co. said. PG&E said earlier its crews were working to restore electricity in several neighborhoods and small areas of downtown San Francisco following Saturday’s outage. PG&E in a statement said it expects to restore power to remaining customers no later than 2 p.m. Monday. “The damage from the fire in our substation was significant and extensive, and the repairs and safe restoration will be complex…

Sandisk Corporation has announced plans for a secondary public offering. The data storage company will open up 5,821,135 common stock shares (Nasdaq:SNDK) at $545 a pop. The shares are currently owned by Western Digital Corporation (WDC), Sandisk’s former parent company. Sandisk separated from WDC nearly a year ago to the date, and subsequently joined the S&P 500 in November. Now, WDC is furthering that split. It will be left with 1,691,884 shares of common stock, but it plans to get rid of those as well. WDC intends to complete a debt-for-equity exchange with J.P. Morgan Securities LLC and BofA Securities—both of which will act as selling stockhol…

Multiple earthquakes are rattling Santorini, a volcanic island in Greece, prompting authorities to dispatch rescuers with tents, a sniffer dog and drones, and to shut schools on four islands. Residents have been warned to avoid indoor gatherings, check escape routes, stay away from cliffs and to drain swimming pools to reduce potential structural damage to buildings in the event of a large earthquake. Greece lies in a highly seismically active part of the world, and earthquakes are frequent. The vast majority cause no injuries and little or no damage, but the country has also seen deadly quakes. Earthquakes can’t be predicted, but authorities are taking measures a…

3:52 a.m.: Wake up. 3:54 a.m.: Pour out a cup of Saratoga Water. 4:04 a.m.: Work out next to a bottle of Saratoga Water. 5:49 a.m.: Dunk face in ice-cold bowl of Saratoga Water. These are just a few of the steps of fitness influencer Ashton Hall’s extremely specific morning routine, which grabbed the internet’s attention over the weekend for its oddly regimented timing and near-comical flaunting of wealth. One particular video of Hall’s schedule has amassed 98.4 million views on TikTok and 674.5 million views on X, spawning countless reactions and copycats, as well as shout-outs from Mr. Beast and Sweetgreen. And there’s one brand that’s clearly the …

The ceasefire agreed between Israel and Hamas makes provisions for the passage of food and humanitarian aid into Gaza. This support is much needed given that Gaza’s agricultural system has been severely damaged over the course of the war. Over the past 17 months we have analysed satellite images across the Gaza Strip to quantify the scale of agricultural destruction across the region. Our newly published research reveals not only the widespread extent of this destruction but also the potentially unprecedented pace at which it occurred. Our work covers the period until September 2024 but further data through to January 2025 is also available. Before the war, tomato…

A new insult for artificial intelligence just dropped thanks to Microsoft’s CEO. If you use Microsoft products, it’s near impossible to avoid AI now. The company is pushing AI agents deep into Windows, with every app, service, and product Microsoft has on the market now including some kind of AI integration, without the option to opt out. Microsoft CEO Satya Nadella recently shared a blog post to LinkedIn titled “Looking Ahead to 2026” offering an insight into the company’s focus for the new year. Spoiler alert: it’s AI. Nadella wrote that he wants users to stop thinking of AI as “slop” and start thinking of it as “bicycles for the mind.” Many took the post…

While traveling to Riyadh for the Fortune Global Forum, FII9, and the Global Health Exhibition, I witnessed something that should be a wake-up call for health systems everywhere. Saudi Arabia is already operating the kind of connected, AI-enabled healthcare infrastructure many countries are still debating how to build. At FII9, the conversation was unmistakable. Global innovation momentum is shifting toward the Middle East, and nowhere more than Saudi Arabia, where national digital platforms like Sehhaty already give millions of residents unified access to their health data. At the Global Health Exhibition, I saw population-level analytics, AI-powered diagnostics, multiom…

The record-breaking Falcons Flight roller coaster starts out slow, but don’t be fooled. Seconds into the ride at the new Six Flags Qiddiya City in Saudi Arabia, passengers are jolted into a high-speed journey that ascends mountainsides, passes through dark tunnels, and then does it all over again. The ride reaches a height of nearly 640 feet, lasts for nearly 3.5 minutes, and travels more than 2.6 miles. It’s the largest, longest, and fastest roller coaster in the world, reaching peak speeds of about 155 mph. To make it, a European design and manufacturing company used the most powerful electro-magnetic propulsion system on the market. Though Saudi Arabia just kil…

Saudi Arabia is officially gutting Neom and turning the Line into a server farm. After a year-long review triggered by financial reality, the Financial Times reports that Crown Prince Mohammed bin Salman’s flagship project is being “significantly downscaled.” The futuristic linear city known as the Line, originally designed to stretch 150 miles across the desert, is scrapping its sci-fi ambitions to become a far smaller project focused on industrial sectors, says the Financial Times. It’s a rumor that the Saudis originally dismissed when The Guardian first reported on it in 2024. The redesign confirms what skeptics have long suspected: The laws of physics and economics ha…