- AI-bubble fears are growing. For almost as long as the artificial intelligence boom has been in full swing, there have been warnings of a speculative bubble that could rival the dot-com craze of the late 1990s that ended in a spectacular crash and a wave of bankruptcies. Tech firms are spending to shift economic activity from humans to machines. The final bill may run into the trillions. The financing is coming from venture capital, debt and, lately, some more unconventional arrangements that have raised eyebrows on Wall Street.
- Artificial Intelligence: AMD Soars on OpenAI Deal Worth Tens of Billions of Dollars.
- Will shoppers still follow where athleisure leads?: Brands that started off selling leggings are now offering cardigans, jeans and luxury bags as the category extends past its roots.
- Rite Aid closes all stores: When the drugstore retailer filed for bankruptcy in May, its second Chapter 11 in eight months, it was running about 1,275 locations.
- Online holiday discounts expected to remain flat: New data from Adobe predicts U.S. online sales this holiday season could grow 5.3% compared to last year, driven by electronics, apparel and furniture.
- Gen Z shoppers to cut holiday gifting budgets: The generation is paring back their spending and heading to stores to find promotions on products.
- Jordan’s first US World of Flight store is in Philadelphia: The location, the concept’s sixth worldwide, will open next week near Rittenhouse Square.
- Sora soars to the top of the App Store: “The artificial intelligence startup launched Sora on Tuesday, and it allows users to generate short-form AI videos, remix videos created by other users and post them to a shared feed. Sora is only available on iOS devices and is invite-based, which means users need a code to access it.”
- The US Supreme Court refused Google’s plea to pause a ruling forcing Play Store reform. Developers can soon link users to outside payment options—skipping Google’s cut.
- Instagram announces Rings awards, which will honor the platform’s top creators.
- Google testing AI-generated descriptions for search snippets: Google Search is testing replacing your meta description with an AI-generated one and an AI-generated summary of your search snippet.
- Google Search serving issue in some locales: Google confirmed a data center issue impacting serving some search results in some regions.
- New Bing Places for Business is live: A new interface, new URL, new commendations and more are now live in the updated Bing Places for Business.
- YouTube launches Activation Partners program: YouTube’s new program links advertisers and agencies with vetted third-party experts in media buying and campaign management.
- OpenAI launches apps inside of ChatGPT: ChatGPT users can now access interactive applications from companies like Booking.com, Spotify, Figma, and Canva right inside the conversation. OpenAI is trying to build an ecosystem of apps that can be launched directly in ChatGPT’s responses, letting users call up third-party tools in their conversations. It has launched a preview of its Apps SDK for developers to start building apps. OpenAI says the new system is built using the Model Context Protocol, which allows developers to connect data sources to AI systems.
- OpenAI, AMD Announce Massive Computing Deal, Marking New Phase of AI Boom: OpenAI and AMD have announced a multibillion-dollar partnership to collaborate on data centers running on AMD processors. OpenAI has committed to purchasing 6 gigawatts worth of AMD chips starting with the MI450 chip next year. The deal is AMD’s biggest win against Nvidia’s dominance in the artificial intelligence space. OpenAI plans to use the AMD chips for inference functions.
- Elon Musk tries to make Apple and mobile carriers regret choosing Starlink rivals: SpaceX has signed a $17 billion deal to buy spectrum licenses from EchoStar. The deal will help Starlink satellites deliver better service to smartphones. SpaceX will acquire EchoStar’s AWS-4 and H-block spectrum licenses, giving it the rights to 50 MHz of spectrum in the 1.9 and lower 2 GHz spectrum bands. The spectrum will allow SpaceX to provide phone, text, and broadband services from space to mobile users globally.
- Discovery of cells that keep immune responses in check wins medicine Nobel Prize: Mary Brunkow, Fred Ramsdell, and Shimon Sakaguchi were awarded the 2025 Nobel Prize in Physiology or Medicine for their work in the discovery of specialized immune cells that keep potentially harmful immune responses in check. These regulatory T cells play a key role in peripheral immune tolerance, a non-central process that allows the immune system to balance its response. The discovery has opened up new lines of research into peripheral immune tolerance. Researchers are now working on manipulating T cells so that they can’t protect cancerous tumors, engineering them to treat autoimmune diseases, and recruiting them to protect transplanted organs and tissues.
- OpenZL: OpenZL is a novel data compression framework that delivers high compression ratios while preserving high speed. It takes descriptions of data and builds specialized and optimized compressors. OpenZL is designed for engineers who deal with large quantities of specialized data sets that require high speed for their processing pipelines. It consists of a core library and tools to generate specialized compressors, all compatible with a single universal decompressor.
- US v. Google: What Each Side Argued for Fixing Google’s Ad Tech Monopoly: The Justice Department and Google spent two weeks arguing over how to address Google’s illegal monopoly in advertising software. The government argued that the only way to end Google’s dominance in ad tech is to force a breakup and make Google sell the software that connects the buyers and sellers of ad space. Google says that the proposal was too complicated to pull off without harming publishers and instead proposed that the company make its systems work better with products produced by its competitors. The judge presiding over the case will reach a decision in the coming months.
- Elon Musk Gambles Billions in Memphis to Catch Up on AI: xAI is preparing to build a new plant in Memphis capable of generating over a gigawatt of electricity to power a million-square-foot data center that is also under development nearby. The Colossus data center houses over 200,000 Nvidia chips and powers the technology behind Grok, xAI’s AI chatbot. xAI is close to finishing another bigger facility called Colossus 2. Colossus 2 will have a total of 550,000 chips and cost tens of billions of dollars.
- The NHS is expanding social prescribing, a concept that links people to non-medical activities to help boost wellbeing.
- Duolingo is building an in-house adtech platform.
- Gen AI platforms are rapidly earning consumer loyalty.
- But can you trust AI to create your audience personas?
- YouTube launches Activation Partners program.
- Consumers grow frustrated with unclear digital self service: Most consumers say they have abandoned a digital task because it was too annoying, Liferay found.
- CX quality is improving, no thanks to AI customer support: Half of consumers are concerned that Al will impede their ability to connect to a human, according to Qualtrics XM Institute.
- Dunkin’ changes its rewards redemptions, again: A Restaurant Dive analysis of new discount rates shows the coffee chain has largely made it more expensive to redeem items.
- The unlikely retailers winning Halloween: Consumers are expecting higher prices this year, but that’s not deterring them from spending on the holiday.
- Online holiday discounts expected to remain flat: New data from Adobe predicts U.S. online sales this holiday season could grow 5.3% compared to last year, driven by electronics, apparel and furniture.
- Peloton raises membership pricing ahead of holidays: The company also deployed an AI system called Peloton IQ across all connected fitness equipment.
- Gen Z shoppers to cut holiday gifting budgets: The generation is paring back spending and heading to stores to find promotions on products.
- Staples launches first ‘Easy Deal Days’ ahead of the holidays: The office supplies retailer is the latest to kick off an October sales event to entice consumers to shop earlier in the season.
- One-third of consumers plan to use AI for holiday shopping: Customers are using AI tools to search for better deals and gift ideas, but they remain skeptical of the technology, a UserTesting survey found.
- Target plots retail, marketing blitz around ‘Stranger Things’ final season: Target is the only retailer running a national campaign developed directly with Netflix and featuring on-screen talent from the show.
- More than a quarter of consumers plan to cut holiday spending: Only 22% of shoppers are expecting to spend more this holiday season compared to last year, according to a recent report from Experian.
- What Amazon shippers should prioritize this peak season: Being mindful of deadlines, maintaining minimum inventory and providing accurate delivery windows is key to meeting holiday demand, experts said at Amazon Accelerate 2025.
- $253.4 Billion: The amount online holiday sales are expected to reach from Nov. 1 to Dec. 31.
- CIPA Data Reveals a Sharper-Than-Usual Summer Slump in Camera Shipments.
- Impressive Sony FE 100mm F2.8 Macro GM OSS Announced.
- A Dutch court has ruled that Meta needs to offer users more control over in-app experiences.
- Amapiano – a genre born in South Africa’s townships during the previous decade — has rapidly evolved from a local blend of jazz and house music with traditional log drums into a pan-African super-genre. Initially popularised in the country’s northern cities, the compelling beats and danceable melodies spread deeper into Africa in the early 2020s, propelled by influential DJs and growing social media interest.
- England cricketer Liam Livingstone recently got engaged to his longtime girlfriend Olivia Reid, sparking a wave of excitement across social media. The couple, who have been together since 2023, made their engagement official in a private ceremony attended by close family and friends.
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Fun South African Fact: Some of the earliest evidence of human evolution has been unearthed at fossil sites northwest of Johannesburg in the Sterkfontein Caves! Archaeologists have discovered human remains here, some of which are more than 2 million years old! These discoveries have earned the area the title of “the Cradle of Humankind” which is now a UNESCO World Heritage Site.