Author: Editor

Artist concept art of the yet animatronic from Expedition Everest at Disney’s Animal Kingdom in Orlando, Florida.DisneyIt’s not everyday that a live crowd goes wild for an animatronic yeti. But the audience at Disney’s D23 Expo isn’t just any old crowd, and its superfans are central to Disney’s strategic parks investments — some $60 billion planned over a decade. “We are bringing the yeti back to life,” Thomas Mazloum, chairman of Disney Experiences, announced to 12,000 Disney parks fans Saturday night during the division’s D23 showcase in Anaheim, California.The repair he was referencing is within the Expedition Everest attraction at…

The Paramount Pictures logo is displayed on a water tower in Los Angeles, California, on August 6, 2026. Michael Yanow | Nurphoto | Getty ImagesParamount Skydance will seek to force the states holding up its merger with Warner Bros. Discovery to pay for the fees and costs associated with the delay, according to a new filing in the antitrust case Monday. Paramount is requesting a $1.88 billion bond that would be posted by the states behind the lawsuit. In July, a dozen state attorneys general led by California’s Rob Bonta filed to challenge the proposed $110 billion merger between Paramount…

One car ride home, my observant 6-year-old asked a tough question: “Mommy, do you want to live here?”I suppose she’d heard me complain about life in the DC suburbs a few too many times. Still, in a moment of vulnerability and sadness, I said, “No, I miss my friends, and I miss Georgia.”In her most supportive and matter-of-fact tone, she reminded me that I’m the boss of us, and that we can move whenever I want to. I’ve weighed these words many nights.After all, before moving here seven years ago, I’d spent more than a decade building a life I…

Avishek Das | Lightrocket | Getty ImagesSynchrony Financial, the credit card issuer for brands including Amazon, Walmart and Lowe’s, is working with OpenAI to allow shoppers to buy products directly inside ChatGPT using their store cards.The deal is one of the first major moves by a U.S. consumer lender to bring financing, payments and rewards directly into an AI chatbot.While agentic commerce has become a catchphrase for the next phase of online shopping, consumers who discover items in an AI agent are typically still routed to a brand’s website to complete the purchase. To change that, OpenAI has signed deals…

In this photo illustration, the stock market information of Synchrony Financial displayed on a smartphone while the logo of Synchrony Financial seen in the background.Igor Golovniov | Lightrocket | Getty ImagesEditor’s note: A previous version of this story, based on information provided by a Synchrony Financial executive, mischaracterized the collaboration between Synchrony and OpenAI. Details, quotes and characterizations attributed to Synchrony and the executive have been removed. A corrected version is below.Synchrony Financial, the credit card issuer for brands including Amazon, Walmart and Lowe’s, on Monday announced a collaboration with OpenAI allowing the artificial intelligence company’s models to power the card company’s consumer portals.…

Get ready for a consumer slowdown to hit the US economy, Goldman Sachs warns.The Wall Street bank is flagging a handful of risks that loom over consumer spending, a key pillar for economic growth and corporate earnings.While retail sales have been mostly solid so far this year, Americans appear poised to slash their pace of spending by about half in the coming months, Goldman said, estimating that real consumer spending growth could slow to as low as 1% in the second half of 2026. That compares to the 2.5% annual growth in personal consumption expenditures recorded in June, according to…

Billionaire investor Jeff Gundlach says Wall Street’s bid to turn artificial-intelligence chips into an investable asset class could be a warning that risk markets are nearing a peak.The DoubleLine Capital CEO and chief investment officer took aim at Nvidia’s newly announced partnerships with six finance heavyweights, which are intended to mobilize more than $500 billion for AI infrastructure.Nvidia said last week that it had signed memoranda of understanding with Apollo, BlackRock, Blackstone, Brookfield, Goldman Sachs, and KKR to create financing platforms for its customers.In a press release, the chipmaker said the capital would help companies fund access to Nvidia chips…

Leopold Aschenbrenner, the Wall Street wunderkind whose hedge fund imploded in late July, placed huge bets on two AI stocks in the lead-up to the disaster.Aschenbrenner’s firm, Situational Awareness, owned a $5.7 billion stake in SanDisk and a $5.6 billion stake in Micron at the end of June, its quarterly portfolio update revealed on Friday.Its positions in the memory-and-storage chipmakers accounted for 56% of a US stock portfolio worth just over $20 billion, excluding put and call options.Situational directly owned less than $4 billion of stocks at the end of March, led by a $879 million stake in Bloom Energy.…

Two federal agents in blue jackets stand on David Streever’s porch at his home in Rochester, N.Y. David Streever hide caption toggle caption David Streever After U.S. Immigration and Customs Enforcement agents tried to track down a New York man at his home, an airport and a hotel to confront him over a critical email he sent to the former head of ICE five months prior, federal officials are defending such investigations in court filings. The same court filings say the investigation into the man, David Streever, was closed at the end of June. NPR wrote about Streever’s case last…

The television industry is in flux.Deals, spinouts and partnerships are all reshaping the landscape for traditional TV. While the industry is no stranger to turmoil, the recently rapid pace of change is keeping media investors and onlookers on their toes. This is the backdrop for CNBC’s Future of TV survey: an update from our 2023 exercise that asks media insiders and executives to forecast the next three years in TV.Depending on who you ask, the TV industry may be in crisis. The number of cable TV subscribers has been declining for more than a decade. Streaming services are now profitable,…