Good morning, Quartz readers!
HERE’S WHAT YOU NEED TO KNOW
Jamie Dimon says bankers are feeling pretty good about President Trump 2.0. The JPMorgan Chase CEO says his industry peers are “dancing in the street.”
Pharmaceutical companies might be a little less cheery. Trump’s health secretary pick, Robert F. Kennedy Jr., is an anti-vaxxer and hostile to the sector.
The CEO of Airbus was talking trash about SpaceX. Guillaume Faury says Elon Musk’s rocket company is lucky it gets to play by different rules than its French rival.
TSMC is getting $1 billion of its Chips Act funding a little early. The company is among many rushing to get their ducks in a row before Donald Trump brings his skepticism of the bill to the Oval Office.
Warren Buffett really likes pizza. His Berkshire Hathaway investment company acquired a $550 million stake in Domino’s.
Can Starbucks re-heat a cup of its old mo-joe?
Starbucks has a new leadership and identity crisis; its CEO wants to walk backwards into the future. Brian Niccol wants to lean on a nostalgic vision of re-establishing the chain as a go-to cup-of-joe third place.
It’s a pivot easier said than done. Not only is the coffee shop market more saturated than it was when Starbucks became a household name, but the popularity of the chain’s refresher drinks suggests that coffee might not even be what people are looking for anymore.
How will Niccol walk the line between legacy and innovation? Quartz’s Francisco Velasquez gives a preview of the new-old strategy at Starbucks.
There’s one product Amazon thinks is too cheap
Believe it or not, making money off a free product can be a difficult proposition. Although unpaid streamers like Tubi and Pluto TV are seeing lots of success drawing in viewers, Amazon has taken the opposite tack and shuttered its Freevee service.
Some content will still be available at no cost to subscribers and non-subscribers alike through Amazon’s Prime Video platform, but the Freevee stuff is going behind a paywall. The key to its rivals’ good fortunes is granularly targeted advertising, something surprisingly elusive for an online retail giant of Amazon’s ilk.
Why did Amazon decide not to invest in what has become such a lucrative market for other media companies? Quartz’s Bruce Gil explains the company’s outlook on entertainment.
TODAY AT QUARTZ
Look for stories about:
🚍 The longest commutes in the U.S. (by Ben Kesslen)
🤝 What the second Trump Administration might mean for mergers (by Rocio Fabbro)
💉 Novo Nordisk’s more-powerful follow-up to Ozempic (by Bruce Gil)
🧑💻 What Wall Street expects from Nvidia’s latest earnings report (by Britney Nguyen)
🤖 The tech industry’s rush to load up its devices with AI (by Rocio Fabbro)
✈️ America’s most popular airline routes (by Melvin Backman)
SURPRISING DISCOVERIES
Fifty years ago this weekend, scientists radioed a distant cluster of stars a pictogram using binary code. The message still has a few dozen thousand years to go before it arrives at its destination.
Your favorite Substack writer might be an AI figment. An analysis of the platform’s 100 most popular newsletters found that 10% of them likely use the technology — some outright admitted it. (paywall)
There’s a hotel in the Philippines that’s a big clucking deal. The Campuestohan Highland Resort in Talisay City features a world-record 114-foot-tall building shaped like a chicken.
Setting up movie sex scenes is now union work. Hollywood’s intimacy coordinators have organized under SAG-AFTRA.
Online retail behemoth Shein is getting an IRL boost in Mexico. Door-to-door saleswomen are finding the company new customers among the internet-disconnected.
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Our best wishes on a safe start to the day. Send any news, comments, fond memories of old Starbucks, and large buildings shaped like barnyard animals to talk@qz.com. Today’s Daily Brief was brought to you by Melvin Backman and Audrey McNamara.