Chick-fil-A and Chipotle were the tip of the spear in augmenting new restaurant locations last year among top brands, per a new report from food service research firm Technomic.

Chick-fil-a grew its footprint by 4.9% in 2024 to a total of 3,109 restaurants, while Chipotle Mexican Grill (CMG) expanded 8.1% in the same period to a total of 3,644 locations, according to the firm’s “Top 500 Chain Restaurant Report.”

It was the fourth year in a row of U.S. restaurants expanding their number of overall locations. “Location development buoyed Top 500 performance,” the company said. “The Top 500 footprint expanded by 1.6% in 2024 to a total of over 236,000 restaurants, marking the fourth consecutive year of robust location development for chain restaurants.”

Chipotle CEO Scott Boatwright said in a February earnings call that part of the company’s success rested on “tremendous progress” in expanding its footprint in Europe. The company, though, reported a “slowdown” in consumer spending during the first quarter of 2025, citing customers foregoing restaurant visits to save money along with adverse weather.

Meanwhile, Chick-fil-A had its sales slow in 2024, per Nation’s Restaurant News. The fast-food chain is charting a $1 billion international expansion overseas starting with five new locations in the U.K. and one in Singapore this year.

Chick-fil-A is also automating as part of a bigger strategy to reduce labor costs and improve company efficiency. It’s tapping into other revenue streams as well, like selling lemon oil to the beauty and fragrance industries.

The increased competition among chicken-based restaurants is prompting more jockeying to increase market share, especially as consumers get pickier about where and how they spend their cash.

Raising Cane’s was another chicken-based fast-food establishment that grew enormously last year. In 2024, it expanded by 13.9% and reached 828 destinations, according to the Technomic report.

Amazon’s corporate workforce woke up Tuesday to a not-so-cheery note from CEO Andy Jassy: The AI era is here — and your job might not be.

That didn’t go over well internally.

According to Business Insider, white-collar employees pushed back — hard — across internal Slack channels. In messages viewed by the publication, some employees called the message demoralizing; others accused Jassy of prioritizing AI hype over human impact. One employee said there’s “nothing more motivating on a Tuesday than reading that your job will be replaced by AI.” 

Another quipped: “At least [Jassy] said the quiet part out loud.”

In a company-wide memo, Jassy had framed generative AI as the engine powering Amazon’s next chapter — from customer service to code writing to warehouse logistics. The technology, he said, is already streamlining operations and enabling new tools such as Alexa+, “Buy for Me,” and a swelling army of over 750,000 warehouse robots. But the efficiency gains, he said, won’t just change how Amazon works — they’ll change who does the work.

“We will need fewer people doing some of the jobs that are being done today,” Jassy wrote, “and more people doing other types of jobs.” That will likely mean headcount reductions on the corporate side; Amazon has already laid off more than 27,000 workers since late 2022.

While a few employees said in messages that middle management could be replaced with AI without consequence — “No one would notice,” someone wrote — the broader sentiment skewed critical. Employees said Amazon is choosing to use AI to reduce staff rather than expand what existing teams can accomplish.

Jassy wrote in his email that research, summarization, anomaly detection, translation, coding, and more will soon be delegated to bots that get smarter over time, leaving humans to “focus less on rote work and more on thinking strategically.”  

“Agents will allow us to start almost everything from a more advanced starting point,” he wrote, adding that they’ll “change the scope and speed at which we can innovate for customers.” Jassy encouraged employees to “get more done with scrappier teams,” attend training sessions, and adopt an AI-first mindset. In his words, those who embrace AI and help Amazon build its future will be “well-positioned to have high impact and help us reinvent the company.”

In an annual shareholder letter in April, he had said Amazon needs to operate like “the world’s largest startup,” but in the recent messages, some employees described Amazon’s culture as increasingly focused on cost-cutting, not innovation, and questioned why AI-driven downsizing seems to target the rank and file — not Amazon’s growing executive ranks. “Will it result in less SVPs?” one employee asked.

Another wrote: “This seems to be the [antithesis] of Think Big, and is part of a continual trend that our CEO doesn't seem to have a vision for the company other than ’do what we do today cheaper, and also AI will happen.’”

Amazon didn’t respond to a request for comment.

In the memo, Jassy said employees who embrace the AI-first mindset will be “well-positioned” to help reinvent the company. But the company’s pivot is “dangerous,” one employee wrote, “and it will have real consequences.”

The debate unfolding at Amazon echoes broader tensions in Big Tech. Microsoft, Google, and others are pouring billions into AI while working to reduce their headcount. Startups such as Harvey and Adept are building AI agents meant to handle knowledge work. And leading voices — from Nvidia’s Jensen Huang to Anthropic’s Dario Amodei — have warned that widespread displacement is coming.

At Amazon, that future seems like it could be less theoretical by the day.

President Donald Trump is still fed up with the Fed, this time for not bending to his longstanding and extraordinary pressure campaign.

Ahead of the Federal Reserve meeting, Trump on Wednesday renewed his barrage of attacks against Fed Chair Jerome Powell. He insulted Powell and toyed with the idea of installing himself as Fed Chair. He also said that if he were in the position, he would lower interest rates by 2.5 percentage points.

"We have a stupid person, frankly, at the Fed. He probably won't cut today ... Maybe I should go to the Fed. Am I allowed to appoint myself at the Fed?" Trump said outside the White House.

Trump continued his freewheeling remarks and said nothing he's done to pressure the central bank has been successful at getting it to lower interest rates. "Now we have a man that just refuses to lower the Fed rate, just refuses to do it," he said. "He's not a smart person. I don't even think he's that political. I think he hates me, but that's okay."

Trump continued: "He should, I call him every name in the book trying to get him to do something. I've been nice to him. I do it every way in the book. I'm nasty, I'm nice. Nothing works. He's like a stupid person."

The Federal Reserve did not immediately respond to a request for comment.

Few are expecting an interest rate cut from the Federal Reserve as it wraps up its two-day meeting. The Fed is sitting tight at the moment to better measure the effect of Trump's policies — including the armada of tariffs he's deployed — on the U.S. economy before deciding to lower interest rates. Inflation is still above the Fed's 2% target. The central bank operates independently.

Trump first nominated Powell to the position in 2017. Powell visited Trump at the White House's request last month in a rare meeting. In a statement following the meeting, the Fed said Powell didn't discuss specifics on monetary policy "except to stress that the path of policy will depend entirely on incoming economic information and what that means for the outlook."

Death and destruction in the Middle East have meant rising gas prices in the U.S.

Data from GasBuddy, compiled from more than 150,000 gas stations across the U.S., reports that the average price has gone up 1.1 cents to $3.08 per gallon since Israel and Iran started bombing each other on June 13, although that is still 9.5 cents lower than in May and 32.7 cents lower than this time last year. Diesel prices went up four cents in the last week.

Gas is most expensive in California, Hawaii and Washington; it is cheapest in Mississippi, Tennessee and Oklahoma. The biggest increases in the last week were found in Indiana, Virginia, West Virginia, and Pennsylvania. Prices in Florida fell 11.4 cents. 

“As long as tensions in the Middle East continue to escalate, the risk of further impacts on oil prices remains high,” said Patrick De Haan, head of petroleum analysis at GasBuddy. “For now, I expect gas prices could rise by 10 to 20 cents, while diesel could climb 15 to 25 cents in the coming days."

De Haan added that “the situation has the potential to worsen at any moment.”

Though both countries have targeted oil refineries, no supply has yet been disrupted. The biggest concern is if Iran were to block access to the Strait of Hormuz, which connects the Persian Gulf to the Arabian Sea, through which one-third of global seaborne oil passes through. 

ING analysts predict that this would bump prices by $120 a barrel, though it might not be in Iran’s strategic interest to do so — particularly due to the risk of angering its biggest customer, China.

In the meantime, U.S. consumers will be subject to a “risk premium,” UBS commodities analyst Giovanni Staunovo told GasBuddy. “Risk premia tend to fade if there are no disruptions,” he added.

The Senate approved a big cryptocurrency bill in a 68-30 vote on Tuesday, with 18 Democrats joining most GOP senators to hand a victory to a digital asset sector that's long craved legitimacy through federal regulation.

The bill, known as the "GENIUS Act," would establish consumer protections and impose guardrails on stablecoins, a digital asset that's pegged to the U.S. dollar. Stablecoins are designed to be less volatile than Bitcoin, a token that swings wildly in price. Now the bill heads to the House, where lawmakers are expected to leave their imprint and amend it.

“With this bill, the United States is a step closer to being a global leader in crypto,” Republican Sen. Bill Hagerty of Tennessee, a bill sponsor, said on the Senate floor.

The crypto industry also cheered the development. "By advancing bipartisan stablecoin legislation, the Senate has taken a critical step toward providing the legal and regulatory clarity needed to foster responsible innovation and protect consumers," said Summer Mersinger, Blockchain Association CEO in a statement. She called it a "win" for American developers and entrepreneurs.

Sens. Josh Hawley of Missouri and Rand Paul of Kentucky were the only two GOP senators to oppose the measure. Most Democrats lined up against the measure since they argued it didn't do enough to establish limits on the Trump family's ability to profit off of their cryptocurrency ventures.

“Passing the GENIUS Act without strong anti-corruption measures stamps a Congressional seal of approval on President Trump selling access to the government for personal profit," said Sen. Jeff Merkley, a Democrat from Oregon, in a statement following the bill's passage.

President Donald Trump has signaled he wants passage of major cryptocurrency legislation before Congress adjourns for its regular summer recess in August. But that schedule is already getting packed with consideration of his megabill carrying the bulk of his agenda on taxes, border enforcement, and defense spending.

Fewer Western Europeans are traveling to the U.S., according to the National Travel and Tourism Office (NTTO), which reported a 4.4% drop in May.

Eastern Europeans appear to have fewer qualms: Trips from that region are up 4.6%. The net result in the short term is that travel from Europe to the U.S. is down.

These are just the latest figures in a year filled with generally dire news for the U.S. travel industry, which faces a multi-billion-dollar deficit, its worst in more than 25 years.

The NTTO report says arrivals from anywhere in the globe are down 2.8%, and inbound bookings for July are down 13% year-over-year. The only regions that increased their trips to the U.S. in May were the Middle East (2%, for an increase of 5.3% year-over-year) and Central America excluding Mexico (2.9%).

Germany in particular is avoiding the U.S.: The number of German travelers is down 18.7% year-over-year. Argentinians, on the other hand, are flocking to the U.S., with trips up 20.7%.

Student visas from many countries have plummeted, often by double-digit percentages. Yet they’re up 63% from Slovenia, 50% from Latvia, and 100% from Fiji. The Institute of Educational Enrollment expects the drop to result in a loss of up to $4 billion in spending.

The U.S. Travel Association says the United States is now running an annual travel trade deficit of $50 billion, compared with a $3.5 billion surplus in 2022.

“This presumably reflects increased hostility by many foreigners to the U.S., as well as fear of harassment by ICE officers,” Dean Baker, senior economist for the Center for Economic and Policy Research, wrote in an April 30 note reviewing the first quarter GDP numbers.

A strong U.S. dollar earlier in the year might also be a factor, although it has been freefall since January.

Reuters reported that airfares between London and Atlanta were down 55% year-over-year, according to data from aviation analytics firm Cirium.  More than 50 routes from the U.S. to Europe saw the average round-trip economy airfare fall by an average of 7%. 

With European reluctance to travel to the U.S., airlines are cutting fares headed across the Atlantic in hopes of attracting bargain-conscious Americans. As a result, U.S. bookings to Europe are up 4.3%, according to the travel-booking app Hopper. 

“Airfare from the U.S. to Europe is averaging $817 per ticket this summer, down 10% compared to prices last year, or about $96 per ticket,” reads Hopper’s Summer 2025 International Travel Guide. “Fares are in line with prices available to Europe in the summer of 2019, marking a return to pre-pandemic pricing for travel to Europe.”

—Catherine Arnst contributed to this article.

It seems TikTok’s clock isn’t going ticktock. President Donald Trump is once again giving the app a lifeline, extending the deadline for its Chinese owner, ByteDance, to sell its U.S. operations — for the third time.

The move, confirmed by the White House on Tuesday, pushes enforcement of the federal ban to mid-September and gives negotiators another 90 days to cobble together a deal that satisfies both Washington and Beijing. Trump had told reporters aboard Air Force One on Tuesday that he expected to extend the deadline.

“Probably have to get China approval, but I think we’ll get it,” Trump said. “I think President Xi will ultimately approve it.”

The White House framed the extension on Wednesday as a practical necessity to “ensure this deal is closed so that the American people can continue to use TikTok with the assurance that their data is safe and secure,” White House Press Secretary Karoline Leavitt said, adding that the president doesn’t want TikTok “to go dark.”

That’s a far cry from the administration’s original posture, which promised a hardline stance against Chinese ownership of U.S. user data. The Protecting Americans from Foreign Adversary Controlled Applications Act (PAFACA), passed in April 2024, set a January 19 deadline for divestment, with a single 90-day extension permitted if real progress was underway.

That extension had already been invoked twice (after the first deadline passed in April and the second in mid-June), and critics argue the law is being stretched past its limits. Senator Mark Warner (D-Va.) has called the postponed sale deadlines “against the law,” and Congress’s frequent extended deadlines have frustrated lawmakers on both sides of the aisle.

So far, there’s little evidence that a sale is imminent. Oracle, Walmart, and a shortlist of financial backers have circled TikTok’s U.S. operations, but talks have reportedly stalled, thanks in part to rising tensions with Beijing and a fresh wave of Trump-imposed tariffs. Former Los Angeles Dodgers owner Frank McCourt has been vocal about his $20 billion bid for the app — and his plans to transform it. But ByteDance is holding tight. The deal’s biggest sticking point remains TikTok’s prized recommendation algorithm, which Chinese officials consider a sensitive export.

Meanwhile, app stores are stuck in purgatory. 

Under the law, Apple and Google are required to pull TikTok from their platforms if ByteDance doesn’t divest. But Trump’s reassurances have kept enforcement at bay — for now. That hasn’t satisfied shareholders: Alphabet is already facing a lawsuit from an investor alleging that the company is exposing itself to legal risk by continuing to distribute the app.

For now, TikTok remains available and fully operational. But the clock is still ticking. TikTok has three more months to broker a deal that satisfies Washington, placates Beijing, and somehow preserves the magic of the “For You” page. Failing that, TikTok could be back to the ban hammer — unless, of course, Trump finds another magic snooze button to press.

Shares of Nintendo hit a record high on Wednesday thanks to the company's new Switch 2 console, which hasn't been on the market for long but has already added tens of billions of dollars to the company's value.

The Japanese video game maker, whose stock is traded in the U.S. as an American Depository Receipt, or ADR, has seen its shares jump by around 47% this year.

Nintendo's much anticipated Switch 2, a follow-up to its 2017 console, finally became available for purchase this month and is already in short supply. CNBC estimates that the Switch 2 has added $39 billion to the stock's value. 

The company hopes to sell 15 million units by March of next year. It sold an incredible 3.5 million Switch 2 consoles, which retail for $449 each in the U.S., in the first four days of its release. 

Since the launch of the original Switch in 2017, Nintendo shares have more than quadrupled.

The Switch 2 release was almost derailed by President Donald Trump's trade war. Nintendo made headlines in April when it announced it was delaying pre-orders of the console due to tariffs. The company quickly resumed pre-orders and said it was keeping the price of the console the same, but it told consumers to expect hikes elsewhere.

“Nintendo Switch 2 accessories will experience price adjustments from those announced on April 2 due to changes in market conditions,” the company said at the time. “Other adjustments to the price of any Nintendo product are also possible in the future depending on market conditions.”

The Switch 2 is so popular it has even become the target of theft. More than $1.4 million worth of the video game consoles were stolen from the back of a semi-truck in Colorado earlier this month and the suspects are still at large, according to local news station Denver 7.

Big Tech’s AI talent turf war is heating up. 

Meta has been offering certain OpenAI employees $100 million signing bonuses to jump ship, according to Sam Altman, CEO of the ChatGPT maker.

“They started making these giant offers to a lot of people in our team,” Altman said on his brother’s podcast Tuesday. “It is crazy.  I'm really happy that at least so far none of our best people have decided to take them up,” he added.

The comments were in reference to The Information’s report last week that Meta plans to unveil a new artificial intelligence research lab dedicated to pursuing “superintelligence,” a hypothetical AI system that exceeds the powers of the human brain. 

Meta has tapped Alexandr Wang, 28, the founder and CEO of start-up Scale AI, to join the lab, sources told The Information. Meta has also been in talks to invest almost $5 billion into Wang’s company, while bring other Scale AI employees on board. It's part of a wider recruitment effort, sources told the publication, as the firm offers seven- to nine-figure compensation packages to dozens of AI researchers from competitors such as OpenAI and Google.

Altman, however, doesn't believe this will be enough to revive Meta's edge, he said on Tuesday's podcast, as attracting workers with financial incentives doesn’t always pay off long-term. “The degree to which they're focusing on that and not the work and not the mission, I don't think that's going to set up a great culture,” he said. “I think that people sort of look at the two paths and say, alright, OpenAI’s got a really good shot at actually delivering on super intelligence and may eventually be the more valuable company,” he added.

Moreover, while top talent may get a better deal working for Mark Zuckerberg, this isn’t strictly true across the board. The average salaries for software engineers at OpenAI start at $238,000 for entry-level, and climb to $1.34 million for L6, according to estimates by Levels.fyi. By contrast, Meta's average earnings appear lower, ranging from $106,000 to $658,000 for the same roles. 

Altman also delivered a broader critique of his competitor’s ranking in the AI race, comparing its efforts to when Google sought to break into the social media space during the early days of Facebook.

“I don't think they're a company that's great at innovation,” he said of Meta. “Their current AI efforts have not worked as well as they hoped.” Indeed, illustrating this, Meta's new lab is part of a larger re-think of its AI strategy, sources told the New York Times. Internal management struggles over the technology, employee churn and several disappointing product releases, have been holding the company back, they added.

The world got richer in 2024 — and in the U.S., new millionaires were minted at a rate of more than 1,000 per day.

That’s one takeaway from the UBS 2025 Global Wealth Report, which highlights the growing significance of “everyday millionaires,” or “EMILLIs,” defined as individuals with between $1 million and $5 million in assets.

The number of these so-called EMILLIs has more than quadrupled since 2000, reaching 52 million people globally and accounting for $107 trillion in total wealth. That's almost as much as the $119 trillion held by individuals worth more than $5 million.

U.S. sees growth on back of stock market gains

In all, global personal wealth rose 4.6% in 2024, outpacing the previous year’s 4.2% gain. The growth was uneven, however, with North America leading the pack. Booming financial markets drove U.S. wealth levels up more than 11%, accounting for a significant share of the total global rebound. That's unsurprising given the returns in major U.S. indexes, including a 25% gain in the S&P 500 and a 30% leap in the tech-heavy Nasdaq Composite.

On the other hand, with weaker stock market returns, regions like Western Europe and Latin America saw modest relative declines in wealth.

Number of billionaires increases, too

The number of billionaires worldwide also grew, but not at the same sharp pace.

UBS tallied almost 3,000 individuals with more than $1 billion in assets at the end of 2024, edging up slightly from the year prior. Most held between $1 billion and $49 billion, and only 31 held assets topping the $50 billion mark.

The report also emphasizes a longstanding truth: Wealth and income are not the same thing. While salaries influence public perceptions of prosperity, long-term wealth depends more on inheritances, market access, real estate values, and compounding capital. That explains why some high-income nations punch below their weight in wealth terms, while others show surprising levels of private wealth relative to earnings.

How women will benefit from the 'Great Wealth Transfer'

Looking ahead, UBS argues that the so-called “Great Wealth Transfer,” in which $83 trillion is expected to pass from older generations to their heirs over the next 20 years, may already be underway.

Women are expected to benefit disproportionately, especially in the U.S. Because women tend to outlive men, and stand to benefit from two significant transfers (from parents to children, and from one spouse to another), it's likely that, over the next few decades, women may come to control a greater and greater portion of U.S. and global wealth.