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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…

2025 was a banner year for cryptocurrencies on many fronts. Global regulation eased. Stablecoins powered $46 trillion in annual transactions. And major shifts in U.S. government policy spurred wider adoption. But with that expansion came a notable bump in crypto fraud. A new report from Chainalysis, a blockchain data platform based in New York City, estimates that $17 billion in crypto was stolen last year through fraud and scams. Impersonation scams, where criminals pretend to be trusted entities or use fake tokens or websites to trick victims into sending them crypto, were up a jaw-dropping 1,400% year over year. And while it’s much too early to gather any concl…

What shape could buildings take in 2026? Fast Company asked architects from some of the top firms working around the world what they thought about the look of architecture in 2026. Of course, a building designed in 2026 almost certainly will not be completed in 2026, and construction timelines are notoriously fluid. But according to experts, there are some overarching trends in architectural design that could put a clear 2026 stamp on buildings designed this year, whenever they officially open. Here’s the question we put to a panel of designers and leaders in architecture: When they finally get built, what will buildings designed in 2026 look like, and what w…

Nearly 500 buildings designed by Wright were built during his lifetime, but almost 15% of those have been demolished or lost through neglect, according to the Frank Lloyd Wright Building Conservancy, an organization that works to preserve the famed architect’s work Now, a new logo for the organization serves as a reminder of how important it is to protect architectural history. Designed by the studio Order, the Conservancy’s new logo features a missing square that’s meant to represent the void when one of Wright’s buildings is lost or neglected. The Conservancy’s previous logo was a representation of the Lark Administration Building in Buffalo, New York, which…

The fiercest space race is not about getting back to the moon—it’s about allowing you to post a TikTok or watch Netflix on your phone anywhere around the globe, from the Atacama Salt Flats to the Khongor sand dunes in the Gobi Desert. To make this happen, two distinct design philosophies are at war, as companies build out the infrastructure needed to ensure every phone on the planet is permanently connected to the internet. On one side is Elon Musk’s SpaceX/Starlink and the copycat companies that have followed in Starlink’s wake. Their approach is to invade space with tens of thousands of small satellites, creating a network of objects that blanket low Earth orbit. O…

A year after President The President took office, clean energy is still growing in the U.S. In 2025, nearly all new power added to the grid came from solar, wind, and batteries. In September, for example, solar made up 98% of new capacity. And in 2026, the U.S. Energy Administration projects that all net new generating capacity will come from renewable energy and batteries. That’s despite obvious policy challenges. On his first day in office, after declaring an “energy emergency,” The President paused permitting for some wind projects and promised to boost fossil fuels. A few months later, the administration ordered an offshore wind project to stop construction; other…

Let’s do a thought exercise. If the role of the chief marketing officer is to oversee marketing and the role of the chief operating officer is to oversee operations, while the chief financial officer’s responsibility is to safeguard the organization’s finances, then what’s the responsibility of the chief executive officer? Surely, it’s more than overseeing executions or leading executives, yet the “CEO” naming convention doesn’t give much insight as to what the role is or what it’s responsible for. This gets even more convoluted when an organization has both a CEO and a president. Who’s responsible for what? Clearly, a president presides over the organization or nation st…

As the September evening inched along, the line of residents waiting their turn for the microphone held steady. Filing down the auditorium aisles at the Indiana University of Pennsylvania, they were armed with questions about a new gas plant slated for their community. Sitting quietly in the audience was John Dudash. For decades, he’s lived in Homer City, a southwestern Pennsylvania town that was once home to the largest coal-fired power plant in the state. The plant, which shares its name with the town, closed nearly three years ago after years of financial distress. Dudash, 89, has lived in the shadow of its smokestacks—said to be the tallest in the country befo…

Fifty minutes into a training session at a gym in lower Manhattan, I’m doing burpees and clean-and-jerks while Beyond Meat CEO Ethan Brown—all 6 feet, 5 inches of him—is bear-crawling into pushups, then slamming a medicine ball to the ground from overhead. I was lured to this TMPL gym off Astor Place because Brown is a lifelong fitness nut, and he’d shoehorned this workout in on Monday morning between arriving from L.A. the night before and departing again that afternoon. But Brown also wanted me to experience Beyond’s radical new launch, its first product that is not a savory meal option, the way a target customer would: post-workout, desperate for a functional r…

** NEEDS JUSTIN POT BYLINE ** Have you ever opened your favorite music-streaming app and wondered why all your playlists have the same five songs? It can be annoying, even if they happen to be five songs you’re really into right now. And, make no mistake, they will be five songs you’re really into right now, because that’s how many of these services work—and it’s not because everyone else has the same taste in music as you. For instance, any Spotify playlist that says “created for” in the header is catered to the individual user, based on their listening history. There’s nothing wrong with that, necessarily—it can be nice to know you’re going to hear songs you lik…

Over a long and industrious career, the investor George Soros developed a theory he calls reflexivity. The basic idea is that expectations don’t form in a vacuum. They are shaped, in part, by our perceptions of what other people believe. The more widely an idea is accepted, the more likely we are to accept it ourselves and that, in turn, reinforces the collective wisdom. If many believe that, say, the stock market will go up or that AI will create an economic boom, we’re more likely to believe it too. That belief then drives behavior: investors buy stocks, companies pour money into AI, and the prediction begins to fulfill itself. All of this only adds fuel to the fir…

Two data breaches, multiple class action lawsuits, and a removal from the Apple App Store later, the popular and controversial dating safety app Tea for Women is back and launching a new website version of its services today. Billed as a “Yelp for men,” Tea was created in 2023 but was relatively unknown until July 2025, when it quickly became a viral sensation and shot to the top of App Store downloads—at one point outranking ChatGPT on the Apple App Store. Similar to “Are We Dating the Same Guy?” Facebook groups, Tea offered women what they thought was a secure forum to obtain information and advice on men they had matched with on dating apps. Women using …

For most people, leaving Apple after two decades would mean stepping away from sleek design and obsessive detail. For Xander Soren, it simply meant translating those principles into a different medium and bottling them. During his 20-plus years at Apple, Soren helped shape some of the company’s most culture-defining products and creative tools. He was the original product manager for iTunes, worked on the launch of the iPod, led the development of GarageBand, and oversaw features like iPhone ringtones that became ubiquitous parts of Apple’s ecosystem. His career spanned Apple’s rebirth into a design-led powerhouse, a period in which he absorbed the philosophy of …

Yesterday, customers of Verizon Communications across the country picked up their phones only to discover that they had no service. Calls, texts, and the internet simply didn’t work. Verizon now says the underlying issue has been resolved. But just what caused it, and will Verizon compensate customers for the outage? Here’s what you need to know. What happened? On Wednesday, a little after noon ET, customers around the country began taking to social media to report that they had lost Verizon service on their phones. Calls and texts could not be made or received, and internet access was nonexistent. Many iPhone owners on Verizon’s network saw the “SOS” ico…

The Food and Drug Administration (FDA) is investigating a salmonella outbreak linked to dietary supplement powder that left 45 people sick and a dozen people hospitalized across the country. In the wake of the outbreak, New York-based Superfoods, Inc. has issued a voluntary recall of Live it Up-brand Super Greens dietary supplement powder in the original and wild berry flavors. However, the FDA cautions that additional products might join the recall during its investigation. “To determine a source of contamination, FDA is conducting a traceback investigation of products ill people reported consuming before becoming ill and is working with state partners to sample…

I was born an only child, but now I have a twin. He’s an exact duplicate of me—down to my clothing, my home, my facial expressions, and even my voice. I built him with AI, and I can make him say whatever I want. He’s so convincing that he could fool my own mother. Here’s how I built him—and what AI digital twins mean for the future of people. Deepfake yourself From the moment generative AI was born, criminals started using it to trick people. Deepfakes were one of the first widespread uses of the tech. Today, they’re a scourge to celebrities and even everyday teenagers, and a massive problem for anyone interested in the truth. As criminals were …

Elon Musk’s AI chatbot Grok won’t be able to edit photos to portray real people in revealing clothing in places where that is illegal, according to a statement posted on X. The announcement late Wednesday followed a global backlash over sexualized images of women and children, including bans and warnings by some governments. The pushback included an investigation announced Wednesday by the state of California, the U.S.’s most populous, into the proliferation of nonconsensual sexually explicit material produced using Grok that it said was harassing women and girls. Initially, media queries about the problem drew only the response, “legacy media lies.” Musk’…

Noodles & Company is set to close additional restaurants. In a January 12 press release, Noodles & Company announced plans to close between 30 and 35 restaurants in 2026, with the aim of improving financial health and profitability. As of December 30, 2025, the fast-casual noodle chain had 340 company-owned restaurants and 83 franchise restaurants. The eatery already reduced its footprint last year, when it closed 42 restaurants (33 were company-owned, and nine were franchise locations). “Decisions like this are made thoughtfully and with a long-term view of the business,” Joe Christina, CEO and president of Noodles & Company, shared in the company pre…

Satellite communications networks have proved resilient amid a crackdown. Amid growing protests and escalating violence in Iran, the country’s government has blocked access to domestic communications systems and imposed a nearly week-long internet blackout. But Starlink, the satellite internet service run by SpaceX, only uses personal terminals that connect to its constellation, and doesn’t rely on any regime-controlled infrastructure. As a result, technology has now become a lifeline, and one of the only ways people in Iran can bring their disturbing reality on the ground to the rest of the world. “The biggest part of the communication [in the country] is b…

With a ring of massive columns and seating for more than 70,000 people, President Donald The President may be getting the football stadium of his dreams. Renderings have just been released of the proposed design for a new stadium for the Washington Commanders NFL team, and the aesthetic is right in line with an architectural style the The President administration has been championing with increasing passion. The stadium is an oval of dozens of white columns recalling the classical-influenced architecture of some of the capital’s most recognizable buildings. Designed by the architecture firm HKS, the stadium’s concept takes one of the most familiar elements of …

In 2025, employers cited artificial intelligence as the rationale for nearly 55,000 layoffs at companies like Amazon and Microsoft. And with the new year barely underway, we’re already seeing a new crop of AI-related job cuts. Citigroup is cutting over a thousand jobs, according to Bloomberg, and in a memo this week, CEO Jane Fraser warned of more layoffs later this year. “Over time, we can expect automation, AI and further process simplification to reshape how work gets done,” she added. Meanwhile, Meta is conducting more layoffs in its virtual reality division, cutting about 1,500 jobs as part of a broader strategic shift to invest further in AI. Given these r…

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 how and why AI will grow from something that chats to something that works in 2026. I also focus on a new privacy-focused AI platform from the maker of Signal, and on Google’s work on e-commerce agents. 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 (formerly Twitter) @thesullivan. …

An ailing astronaut returned to Earth with three others on Thursday, ending their space station mission more than a month early in NASA’s first medical evacuation. SpaceX guided the capsule to a middle-of-the-night splashdown in the Pacific near San Diego, less than 11 hours after the astronauts exited the International Space Station. Their first stop was a hospital for an overnight stay. “Obviously, we took this action (early return) because it was a serious medical condition,” NASA’s new administrator Jared Isaacman said following splashdown. “The astronaut in question is fine right now, in good spirits and going through the proper medical checks.” It was an…

2025 unleashed the enormous potential of AI. According to Pew Research, 62% of adults say they interact with AI at least several times a week, and 73% of U.S. adults say they are at least a little bit willing to let AI assist with their day-to-day activities. However, while most people today use AI primarily for answering their questions or researching products to buy, the real opportunity isn’t in better search functionality alone. In the consumer tech industry, we are at the threshold of a generational opportunity to leverage AI to make people’s lives better and more meaningful, saving them time on what they need to do so they can focus on doing what they want to do…

A reader asks: A while back, an employee who reported to me (I’m a man) became visibly pregnant soon after she started. But she never brought it up. Not with me, not with HR, not with anyone. I didn’t ask her about it, though nearly everyone else in our office asked me. I cringed when I responded since it was obvious she was pregnant but I felt that I needed to protect her privacy. I felt like I was walking around on pins and needles with this very obvious elephant in the room. Her job description included occasionally lifting objects up to 40 pounds, and the only way I treated her differently was that I went out of my way to pick up anything remotely heavy. E…