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The United States and South Korea advanced trade talks on Wednesday, addressing details of $350 billion that would be invested in the American economy, after negotiations and ceremonies that included the presentation of a gold medal and crown to President Donald The President. Both were gifts from the country’s president, Lee Jae Myung, who dialed up the flattery while Washington and Seoul worked to nail down financial promises during the last stop of The President’s Asia trip. Although both sides said progress has been made — The President said things were “pretty much finalized” — no agreement has been signed yet. The framework includes gradual investments, cooperatio…

Uber said Wednesday that the San Francisco Bay Area will be the first market for its specially built autonomous taxi, which is expected to launch in late 2026. The San Francisco ride-hailing company said in July it was developing a robotaxi with the electric car company Lucid and the self-driving technology company Nuro Inc. The vehicle is exclusive to Uber but is based on the Lucid Gravity SUV. Uber said Lucid recently delivered test vehicles to Nuro and said it plans to have 100 test vehicles on the road in the coming months. Within six years, Uber plans to deploy 20,000 or more Lucid-based autonomous taxis in multiple locations. The vehicles will be availab…

U.S. stocks are rising toward more records on Wednesday as Wall Street waits to hear from the Federal Reserve in the afternoon about what it will do with interest rates. The S&P 500 added 0.3% in morning trading. The Dow Jones Industrial Average was up 231 points, or 0.5%, as of 10:15 a.m. Eastern time, and the Nasdaq composite was 0.6% higher. All three indexes are coming off their latest all-time high. The bond market was also relatively steady as the countdown ticked to the announcement from the Fed. The widespread expectation is that it will announce the second cut of the year to its main interest rate in hopes of helping the slowing job market. More impor…

You may remember this, if you are old enough: in 2002, search engine optimization (SEO) transformed from a technical curiosity into a full-blown industry. All of a sudden, agencies, consultants, and “black-hat sorcerers” emerged overnight, offering tricks and hacks to get brands onto the first page. Today, we stand at the dawn of the next wave: what some call Generative Engine Optimisation (GEO), Answer Engine Optimisation (AEO) or simply AI Engine Optimisation (AIO). The logic is similar: get your brand seen, but the stakes are higher, the rules blurrier, and the risks far more structural. Imagine a world where users no longer click search results but instead ask an…

Toyota was quick to pump the brakes on a claim President Donald The President made this week regarding an alleged promise by the Japanese automaker to invest $10 billion in the U.S. “We didn’t specifically say that we’ll invest $10 billion over the next few years,” Hiroyuki Ueda, president director, told reporters on Wednesday during the Japan Mobility Show in Tokyo, as first reported by Reuters. While Ueda stressed that the automaker will continue to invest and create jobs in the U.S. over the next few years, it hasn’t made any explicit promise of an investment of the magnitude The President referenced—nor, in fact, of any particular amount. The confusion,…

At last, the X-59 is airborne. NASA’s quiet supersonic airplane took to the skies in Palmdale, California, successfully landing back a few minutes later. While this initial sortie on October 28 was a subsonic check of basic systems and airworthiness, the flight represents the penultimate step toward reviving supersonic passenger travel over land. It also marks the beginning of a race to see which of three supersonic airplane ideas wins to become the dominant design of the 21st century. There’s Lockheed Martin’s X-59 dart-like shape developed to avoid the sonic boom. Then we have Boom Supersonic’s XB-1, which doesn’t look to avoid the sonic boom but to stop it from re…

The Federal Reserve cut its key interest rate Wednesday for a second time this year as it seeks to shore up economic growth and hiring even as inflation stays elevated. “Job gains have slowed this year, and the unemployment rate has edged up but remained low through August,” the Fed said in a statement issued Wednesday. “More recent indicators are consistent with these developments.” The government hasn’t issued unemployment data after August because of the shutdown. The Fed is watching private-sector figures instead. Wednesday’s decision brings the Fed’s key rate down to about 3.9%, from about 4.1%. The central bank had cranked its rate to roughly 5.3% in 2023 an…

Paramount is the latest company to join the bloodbath of layoffs this week. The entertainment giant began cutting around 1,000 workers on Wednesday, with twice that many pink slips expected in the days to come. In a memo to staff, new Paramount CEO David Ellison characterized the reductions, which will ultimately shrink the company by 10%, as a necessary step for the company’s long-term growth. “In some areas, we are addressing redundancies that have emerged across the organization,” Ellison wrote in a memo obtained by The Guardian and other outlets. “In others, we are phasing out roles that are no longer aligned with our evolving priorities and the new structure…

And the layoffs keep coming. General Motors joins Amazon and Paramount this week, announcing on Wednesday it will be laying off 1,750 workers in Michigan and Ohio, in response to the downturn in U.S. electric vehicle (EV) market. The Detroit News first reported the news. Shares in the automotive maker (NYSE: GM) were down less than 1% in midday trading on Wednesday. The company said those cuts include 1,200 workers in Detroit at the company’s electric vehicle plant and another 550 employees at Ohio’s Ultium Cells battery cell plant. The company is also instituting temporary layoffs for some 850 workers at the Ohio plant and another 700 workers in Tennessee,…

It’s already been an exciting Major League Baseball season. And that excitement is clearly translating into the business and advertising side as well. Earlier this summer, Variety reported that ads for the MLB All-Star Game, which took place in July, sold out over a month in advance. On Monday night during Game 3 of the World Series, when the Los Angeles Dodgers won against the Toronto Blue Jays—which gave L.A. a 2-1 series lead and featured another significant performance from Shohei Ohtani—the game went to 18 innings and lasted six hours and 39 minutes. So what happens to ads when a game has extra innings? When a large tentpole tournament or games lik…

Meta recorded a nearly $16 billion one-time charge in the third quarter related to U.S. President Donald The President’s Big Beautiful Bill, and said its capital expenditure next year would be “notably larger” than in 2025. Shares of the company fell around 6% after the bell. Excluding the charge, Meta said its third-quarter net income would have increased by $15.93 billion to $18.64 billion, compared to the reported net income of $2.71 billion. The social media company now expects capital expenditure to be between $70 billion and $72 billion, compared with its prior forecast of $66 billion to $72 billion. Meta continues to benefit from its massive user ba…

Google-parent Alphabet beat Wall Street estimates for third-quarter revenue on Wednesday, as both its core advertising business and cloud computing unit showed steady growth. Shares of the company rose 6% in extended trading. The company reported total revenue of $102.35 billion for the quarter, compared with analysts’ average estimate of $99.89 billion, according to data compiled by LSEG. The cloud services and AI giant raised its capital expenditure forecast for the year to between $91 billion and $93 billion, compared with the estimates of $80.67 billion. Google Cloud remained one of Alphabet’s fastest-growing segments, benefiting from surging enterpris…

One of Paramount’s most powerful creative minds has left the production company: Taylor Sheridan, whose major hits like Yellowstone, Landman, and Lioness made him one of Paramount’s most powerful writers and producers, has ditched the media house. The move comes shortly after a new Chief Executive, David Ellison, came on board in August and a merger between the company and Skydance was approved. Sheridan will remain involved with his Paramount projects until his current deal ends in January. But while Sheridan helped prime Paramount for success, starting early next year, he will be making programs for NBCU’s streaming service, Peacock — a direct competitor. S…

In order to keep US aviation operational through the government shutdown, air traffic controllers have been working without pay. But for the people involved in inspecting our planes to ensure they follow Federal Aviation Administration (FAA) safety standards, the situation is more complicated. While principal aviation inspectors were told to keep working, assistant-level inspectors and other support staff were sent home and then had to be recalled, several sources tell Fast Company. In some cases, the government is still cycling them in and out of service, adding to the overall disruption. The approach puts even more pressure on the airline industry, which is already …

For leaders today, the pressure to do more with less feels relentless. Leaner teams, flatter organizations, and the rise of productivity tools such as Slack, Notion.ai, and Monday.com promise efficiency but often deliver the opposite: more reporting, more deliverables, and the demand to be “always on.”​​Organizations are increasingly falling into the “acceleration trap,” taking on too much too quickly and undermining their effectiveness and well-being. Sandra, a senior leader in the tech sector, saw this firsthand. After a reorganization left her team stretched thin, she slipped into a “9-9-6” routine—working nine to nine, six days a week. Gallup’s research shows unma…

The latest buzzword is “AI literacy.” Much like “social media,” “ESG,” and “CSR” before it, employers are now looking for proof of fluency on résumés, and individuals are desperate to differentiate themselves to show that they are keeping pace. And it’s everywhere, mentions of terms like “agentic AI,” “AI workforce,” “digital labor,” and “AI agents” during earnings calls increased by nearly 800% in the last year, according to AlphaSense data. Over the last five years, workers across industries have become expected to be well-versed in a technology that is ever-evolving and still relatively new for so many, including the leaders implementing it. The trouble with AI is…

In these volatile times, how do we navigate the intersection between values and commerce? Patagonia CEO Ryan Gellert and Chobani CEO Hamdi Ulukaya join New York Times reporter David Gelles onstage at the Masters of Scale Summit to reveal their different strategies for dealing with an activist White House, the pressure for what moderator Gelles calls “anticipatory compliance,” and how they grow their businesses while also prioritizing causes like environmental conservation and immigration. This is an abridged transcript of an interview from Rapid Response recorded live at the 2025 Masters of Scale Summit in San Francisco. From the team behind the Masters of Scale podc…

Some 99% of hiring managers in the U.S. say they’ve used AI in some form during the hiring process, a 2025 report reveals. AI can whiz in and speed up cumbersome workflows (or make them disappear altogether). But after Fast Company spoke to several hiring managers and chief human resources officers to understand how HR is using AI to hire today, it became clear that for every benefit that AI offers there’s a human cost. In this piece paid subscribers will: Get a step-by-step guide outlining how AI is reshaping hiring—and who gets jobs. Learn what HR is doing to ensure hiring remains as fair as possible across the workforce. What job seekers can do to ma…

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…

The The President administration has agreed to resume student loan forgiveness for an estimated 2.5 million borrowers who are enrolled in certain federal repayment plans following a lawsuit from the American Federation of Teachers. Under the agreement reached Friday between the teachers union and the administration, the Education Department will process loan forgiveness for those eligible in certain repayment plans that offer lower monthly payments based on a borrower’s earnings. The government had stopped providing forgiveness under those plans based on its interpretation of a different court decision. The agreement will also protect borrowers from being hit with high …

President Donald The President’s meeting Thursday with China’s top leader Xi Jinping produced a raft of decisions to help dial back trade tensions, but no agreement on TikTok’s ownership. “China will work with the U.S. to properly resolve issues related to TikTok,” China’s Commerce Ministry said after the meeting. It gave no details on any progress toward ending uncertainty about the fate of the popular video-sharing platform in the U.S. The The President administration had been signaling that it may have finally reached a deal with Beijing to keep TikTok running in the U.S. Treasury Secretary Scott Bessent had said on CBS’s “Face the Nation” on Sunday that the two le…

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…

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…

With federal SNAP food assistance set to run dry this weekend amid the protracted U.S. government shutdown, Louisiana, New Mexico and Vermont became the latest states Wednesday to announce help for low-income households that rely on the funds to eat. They join states from New York to Nevada in scrambling to find ways to get food to people who are increasingly anxious and will otherwise go hungry without their normal monthly payments from the Supplemental Nutrition Assistance Program, or SNAP. Several states take action Wednesday In Louisiana, where nearly one in five residents receive SNAP benefits, lawmakers authorized $150 million in state funding Wednesday to h…

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.…