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A haunting 1940 self-portrait by famed Mexican artist Frida Kahlo sold Thursday for $54.7 million and became the top-selling work by any female artist at an auction. The painting of Kahlo asleep in a bed — titled “El sueño (La cama)” or in English, “The Dream (The Bed)” — surpassed the record held by Georgia O’Keeffe’s “Jimson Weed/White Flower No. 1,” which sold for $44.4 million in 2014. The sale at Sotheby’s in New York also topped Kahlo’s own auction record for a work by a Latin American artist. The 1949 painting “Diego and I,” depicting the artist and her husband, muralist Diego Rivera, went for $34.9 million in 2021. Her paintings are reported to have sold p…

As it faces a growing number of lawsuits alleging it helps facilitate child sexual exploitation, online gaming platform Roblox has unveiled a new age verification system. That system, however, could open it up a different sort of criticism. The popular app, which has roughly 151 million users, announced last week that it plans to require a facial age check for all users who utilize the Roblox chat system. User verification can be accomplished by either submitting a government ID or by submitting a selfie, which AI will examine to estimate the age of the user. The verification will begin rolling out in early December in select markets (which do not include the U.S.…

Shares in Beyond Meat (Nasdaq: BYND) are again rising in premarket trading today after the company’s stock price surged a massive 36.4% yesterday. As of the time of this writing, BYND is up an additional 12.6% in trading before the bell. But is anything more than another round of meme stock mania driving the rising price? Here’s what you need to know. A volatile December The first day of asset trading for December kicked off yesterday, and already the final month of the year looks to be shaping up to be a volatile one. Yesterday, cryptocurrencies plunged across the board as nervous investors sold off the digital tokens amid ongoing uncertainty about next w…

Apple’s AI boss, John Giannandrea, is stepping down after seven years on the job. Apple’s stock price got a slight boost on the news, as some investors saw Apple signaling a new urgency to bring AI to its devices. Following a transition period, Giannandrea will “retire” next spring, Apple said in a press release Monday. Most of Giannandrea’s AI group will now be tucked into Craig Fedherigi’s software development group, which owns development of the various operating systems in Apple devices. While the reasons for Giannandrea’s departure are no doubt complicated, it’s a wonder he lasted so long. For years, he’s been linked to Apple’s failure to seize on generative…

Chanel’s new showman, Matthieu Blazy, took his designs on the road Tuesday — or rather, underground, with a buzzy New York runway show staged on an actual subway platform. The designer, just weeks after his splashy Paris debut for Chanel in October, took over a decommissioned part of Manhattan’s Bowery station for his first Métiers d’Art collection. The annual show, which takes place in a different city each year, celebrates the craftsmanship of the artisans that partner with Chanel. In this case, it was two shows—one in the afternoon and one in the evening. And befitting the first Chanel shows in New York since 2018, there were VIPs aplenty: A$AP Rocky, Tilda Swinton, …

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…

A baby and his family dog sit across from each other in a podcast studio. “Welcome to the talking baby podcast,” says the infant, wearing headphones and sounding like a deep-voiced radio broadcaster. “On today’s episode, we’ll be talking to the weird-looking person who lives at my house.” So begins a series of humorous interactions between two characters animated by artificial intelligence that’s attracted millions of views on social media. They’re a nod to the 1989 movie “Look Who’s Talking” but produced in a matter of hours and without a multimillion-dollar Hollywood budget. AI helped do all of that, but it didn’t craft the punch lines. It’s a relief to comedian Jon …

One of the world’s biggest AI startups might be eyeing a massive IPO. According to a new report in the Financial Times, Anthropic has tapped the Palo Alto-based law firm Wilson Sonsini to help the company go public as soon as early next year. The law firm has a deep well of experience shepherding major tech IPOs and has worked with Google, LinkedIn, Lyft, and Square on their public offerings. In the lead-up to a potential IPO, the Financial Times reports that the company is drumming up a private round of funding that would peg its value at over $300 billion. According to the report, the company is also discussing its plans with large investment banks, but those ta…

From reality TV to fashion and beauty and everywhere in between, you’ve unmistakably heard of Kim Kardashian. Critics may talk, but there’s no denying she’s one of the most influential and accomplished women of our time—with a net worth of $1.7 billion. And she’s still expanding. Now, after building a multibillion-dollar empire, Kardashian is taking on a new role: instructor. Her new MasterClass, “The New Rules of Business: The Ten Kimmandments with Kim Kardashian,” launches today. “Master them and you’ll create marketing that commands attention and build businesses that will scale,” Kardashian says. The tenets cover a range of 10 lessons, but Kimmandment #8—“Know…

Netflix has announced that it intends to buy legendary Hollywood studio Warner Bros. in a deal valued at approximately $82.7 billion. The deal, which must be approved by regulators, will further consolidate the entertainment industry and give Netflix ownership of some of the most iconic films and television franchises ever, not to mention HBO. Here’s what you need to know: What’s happened? Today, Netflix and Warner Bros announced a deal in which Netflix will purchase the legendary Hollywood studio, along with its HBO Max and HBO divisions, for a total enterprise value of approximately $82.7 billion (which Netflix says has an equity value of $72.0 billion)…

A recent New York Times headline—“Did Women Ruin the Workplace?”—sparked a firestorm across social media. Alison Moore, CEO of Chief, the prestigious network for senior women executives, is pushing back on this notion with data and nuance. Drawing from an exclusive nationwide survey of women leaders, Moore unpacks how evolving career paths are being misread, the impact of market disruption, and why women-centered spaces remain vital. This is an abridged transcript of an interview from Rapid Response, hosted by the former editor-in-chief of Fast Company Bob Safian. From the team behind the Masters of Scalepodcast, Rapid Response features candid conversations with today…

Most entrepreneurs are familiar with diminishing returns: how, when other variables stay constant, at some point putting in additional time and effort results in increasingly smaller results. Since resources are always limited, figuring out where to spend your entrepreneurial time so it delivers the best bang per hour is critical. That same premise extends to health and fitness. If you’re like many entrepreneurs, you try to stay reasonably fit not just because it’s good for you, but because exercise helps you perform better under stress. Can elevate your mood for up to 12 hours. Can even make you a little smarter. Still: how healthy and fit . . . is healthy and fi…

Reducing the visibility of polarizing content in social media feeds can measurably lower partisan animosity. To come up with this finding, my colleagues and I developed a method that let us alter the ranking of people’s feeds, previously something only the social media companies could do. Re-ranking social media feeds to reduce exposure to posts expressing anti-democratic attitudes and partisan animosity affected people’s emotions and their views of people with opposing political views. I’m a computer scientist who studies social computing, artificial intelligence, and the web. Because only social media platforms can modify their algorithms, we developed and relea…

IBM announced on Monday it is acquiring Confluent for $11 billion, sending shares of the data streaming platform up about 29% in morning trading. By midday trading, at the time of this writing, Confluent (CFLT) stock was holding steady, up 29%. International Business Machines Corporation (IBM) stock was up about 1.5%. Confluent provides a leading open-source enterprise data streaming platform that connects, processes, and governs reusable and reliable data and events in real time, foundational for the deployment of AI. The deal is an example of how IBM is actively engaging in the increasingly competitive, high-stakes AI arms race that’s now dominating technolo…

On November 26, a water leak at Paris’ Louvre Museum damaged between 300 and 400 historical books in the Egyptology and scientific documentation section. Then, on December 8, workers at the museum voted to initiate a strike over poor working conditions. And that’s only a drop in the bucket compared to the Louvre’s overall woes so far this year. For years, the Louvre has been struggling with a combination of old, weathered infrastructure and increased foot traffic brought about by mass tourism. But in 2025, the museum has been hit by the full consequences of operating out of a relatively un-updated building to house some of the world’s most influential (and valuabl…