Spotify has a knack for mining your listening data into something fun and sharable rather than weird and creepy for its annual “Wrapped” feature. This year, it outdid itself.
The 2025 edition of Spotify Wrapped goes beyond just summarizing what you listened to with charts and infographics. This year, Spotify is also assigning each user a “Listening Age,” which is based on the release years of their favorite tracks compared to others in the same age group. The feature quickly went rival, as users recoiled at their seemingly geriatric (or juvenile) musical tastes.
At the risk of reading too much into something that’s ultimately good fun, Wrapped’s expanding purview is a reminder of how the things you listen to can speak to who you are as person, which could end up being valuable data. Your Listening Age is mostly a silly diversion, but it could also be a kind of flex as Spotify expands its targeted advertising ambitions.
Heading into 2026, Spotify is under pressure from shareholders to boost ad revenue. While 63% of monthly active users are on Spotify’s free, ad-supported plan, they only made up about 10% of revenues last quarter. Analysts such as Rich Greenfield have criticized the Spotify for disappointing ad revenue growth, and the company launched a programmatic ad exchange earlier this year to scale up its ad placements.
The shift toward programmatic advertising, in which ads are bought and sold through automated systems, will entail granular targeting of users based on what Spotify knows about them. Spotify has long boasted to advertisers about being able to target ads based on users’ listening behaviors and interests, and says its programmatic ads will let advertisers “reach users based on moods, mindsets and moments.”
This doesn’t exactly come across in Spotify’s user-level data. If you download a copy of it, you’ll find an “Inferences” section in which Spotify tries to guess some things about you, based on both your usage of the service and on data from advertisers, but some users have puzzled over how wildly inaccurate this data can be. For instance, it categorized one user as both Democrat and Republican, and another as simultaneously getting engaged and divorced.
But this year’s Spotify Wrapped shows that there’s another level of analysis going on, one that might be a little more nuanced than just your likes and interests. As Spotify notes, your Listening Age is based not simply on when your most-played songs came out, but how those tastes compare to other people who are your actual age. It’s reminiscent of Wrapped 2023’s “Sound Town” feature, in which each user was given a city with which their musical tastes lined up.
Users are starting to realize that this kind of analysis has value outside of Spotify. In February, a small group of them formed a collective called “Unwrapped” to pool and monetize their data. As reported by Ars Technica, roughly 10,000 users voted to sell aggregate artist preference data to an AI company for cryptocurrency worth about $5 per user. The group also hoped to tap into their data in other ways, for instance to identify emotional patterns in their listening habits.
Spotify objected to users selling their own data via its APIs and warned Unwrapped’s developers to knock it off. The site now shows a message saying “This Service is No Longer Available.” Users who want to run their own analyses on Spotify’s data must manually download a copy of it instead.
Should Spotify’s power of inference bother you at all? In the grand scheme of things, probably not. People are already pouring their hearts out to generative AI assistants that are likely to switch on their own hyper-targeted advertising businesses in the years ahead. The upshot is that the ads you see could be as much tied to your psychological state as they are to your interests or demographics. Spotify’s ability to target ads based on your mood might soon seem quaint by comparison.
But don’t be surprised if future Wrapped features push things just a little further, beyond just how old you seem or what city you vibe with, but how excited, annoyed, anxious, carefree, or spontaneous you’ve been. As long as Spotify can package that psychology in a fun way, it’ll surely go viral again.
In the English countryside, a new project has emerged from the landscapequite literally. Rammed Earth House, a residential estate by London-based Tuckey Design Studio, combines renovated brick buildings with new rammed earth structures, harnessing the clay soil of the very land it sits on. The material is already under your feet, and it doesnt come with all the carbon baggage that other [building] materials come with, says studio founder Jonathan Tuckey.
As a building technique, rammed earthwhich combines clay soil with aggregate such as gravel into tightly compressed layerstraces back thousands of years. It was widely used in ancient China, but appears globally throughout history, including in the U.S. After the industrial revolution, and the innovations of steel, concrete, glass, and mass-produced bricks, the traditional method fell out of favor. Now, however, an increasing number of architects are looking to the material as a sustainable, place-rooted way to build amid a climate crisis that calls for dramatically reduced carbon emissions.
Rammed Earth House [Photo: Jim Stephenson/courtesy Tuckey DesignStudio]
It has this carbon credit locked into itthats a major head start against any other material, says Tuckey. Because rammed earth doesnt require high-temperature firing processes like bricks or concrete, and can use material from the building site itself (without need for transportation), its associated carbon emissions tend to be much lower.
It can also harness material that might otherwise go to waste. At Rammed Earth House, the client wanted some run-down buildings on site to be demolishedbut rather than this rubble being wasted, Tuckey Design Studio used it as the aggregate for the rammed earth, recycling the old buildings into the new.
Rammed Earth House [Photo: Jim Stephenson/courtesy Tuckey DesignStudio]
Its an entirely circular material, says Tuckey of rammed earth. If you ever wanted to demolish it, it would just go back into the ground. If you wanted to repair it, you can just pick up the clay from the ground and bash it in simplyit will be restored immediately.
Rammed Earth House [Photo: Jim Stephenson/courtesy Tuckey DesignStudio]
Architects also praise rammed earths high thermal massinsulative properties that regulate a buildings indoor temperature. For U.S practice Lake Flato Architects, this was particularly helpful for a home in west Texas, Marfa Ranch.
In the desert environment, temperatures vary greatly; using rammed earth meant the dwelling could be comfortable on the hottest days of the year, and also on the coldest, says practice partner Bob Harris. The material also connected the building to its landscape, using locally sourced earth. It felt really natural for us to build of that material, says Harris.
Marfa Ranch [Photo: Casey Dunn/courtesy Lake Flato]
The same was true for global practice Snhetta, which is using rammed earth for the upcoming Theodore Roosevelt Presidential Library in North Dakotas Badlands, integrating large internal walls made from the material. We were looking to create a building that is of the place, explains Aaron Dorf, director and architect at Snhetta. The surrounding landscape is defined by layers and layers of earth that you seeits profoundly beautiful.
The material has a natural, textured and warm-hued appearance that can enhance an interior. Its a much more tactile public-facing material, says Dorf. Tuckey describes it as looking like some precious travertine stone.
[Photo: Chad Ziemendorf/courtesy Snhetta]
The expertise problem
The material does come with challenges, howeverand resilience, labor, time, and location are primary issues.
When you decide to use rammed earth, you come quite quickly to a fork in the road as to which route youre going to go down, and they are fundamentally different materials, says Tckey. These two versions, stabilized and unstabilized rammed earth, demand different features and have variable ecological credentials.
[Photo: Chad Ziemendorf/courtesy Snhetta]
Stabilized rammed earth has cement in the mix to make the material more robust and resilient, especially to water. Some sustainability experts have criticized this as having a similar negative ecological impact to concrete, which also uses cement (the carbon emissions from cement come during the heating of limestone to high temperatures).
[Photo: Chad Ziemendorf/courtesy Snhetta]
Lake Flato and Snhetta used stabilized rammed earth for durability, but the architects insist the proportion of cement used is very low. At Marfa Ranch, cement makes up approximately 6% of the material, explains Harris, which can be compared to an average of 10% to 15% in concrete.
Unstabilized rammed earth does not include any cement, thus eliminating those associated carbon emissions and becoming a circular material, but it subsequently requires techniques to prevent erosion when exposed to the elements.
Marfa Ranch [Photo: Casey Dunn/courtesy Lake Flato]
Tuckey explains that using a base and topper of more waterproof materialin the case of Rammed Earth House, he used bricksprotects the rammed earth walls from water damage. Meanwhile, to protect from rain, he placed slim horizontal lines of trass lime rock that project away from the external surface, allowing rainwater to fall off.
As long as you understand how the material is used, the challenges fall away, Tuckey says. But it is this in-depth knowledge of building with rammed earth that can be hard to find. It has become a lost form of construction, says Tuckey, who collaborated with Martin Rauch, a rammed earth expert from Austria.
Expertise is a challenge, agrees Lake Flato partner Andrew Herdeg, who oversaw the practices Horizon House project in Nevada, which also used rammed earth. There, the architects brought in a consultant from northern California.
The process can be a slow one, tooespecially for those new to the technique. The earth is compressed down within tightly confined formwork (wooden supporting structures that are removed at the end of the process); ramming it by hand is a grueling process, says Herdegthough it is possible to use pneumatic tampers.
Its very labour intensive, agrees Harris. It takes quite a long time to construct [the] walls. Because of that labour, he adds, it can be costly. The architects estimate that compared to concrete, there is a roughly 12% cost uplift when building with rammed earth.
Marfa Ranch [Photo: Casey Dunn/courtesy Lake Flato]
Built for the right climate
Perhaps most important is to use rammed earth in the locations and climates that make most sense. We wouldnt want to drive earth around the country, just to use it for the sake of it, says Tuckey, explaining that its best if the clay soil needed is found locally.
Lake Flato advocates it as a dry climate response, says Herdeg; best in a context where theres low humidity and high diurnal swings. It really excels in those environments.
Snhettas Dorf echoes the sentiment: You have to build it in the right location. And I think forcing it into the wrong climate isn’t going to work very well.
Still, the architects seem to believe that when those right conditions align and the challenges are navigated, rammed earth has a positive impact across multiple aspects. We think of our work as a tool to connect people to place, to context, to the natural environment, says Herdeg. For him, rammed earth can reflect a literal mission of building responsibly, but also a philosophical mission, encouraging others to care about that responsibility.
Lake Flato is currently planning an extension to Horizon House, and though contractors advocate poured concrete, Herdeg is keen to continue using rammed earth. The reality is you can do just a coloured concrete wall and it looks quite similar to rammed earth and costs significantly less, he says. But at the end of the day, the carbon footprint of the concrete is significantly higherand you don’t get that real material texture.
Marfa Ranch [Photo: Casey Dunn/courtesy Lake Flato]
Meanwhile, many are looking to intersect new technologies and engineering with the ancient building method to make it more practical or affordable to use. Tuckey cites one company that produces prefabricated timber frames infilled with rammed earth, and engineers in Australia recently developed modular blocks of rammed earth in cardboard cylinders.
Inspired by using the material for Rammed Earth House, Tuckeys studio is now working on a project of terraced houses using prefabricated rammed earth blocks. The aim is to establish a factory near to the site in Gloucestershire, in southwest England, to make the prefabricated elements, using local construction waste as the aggregate in the rammed earth mixture.
I think its about a reawakening, Tuckey says of the new era of rammed earth architecture, and of moving away from more carbon-intensive building materials. His hope is that when you look at a pile of brand-new bricks, you look at them not just with dollar signs in your mind, but also carbon signs.
After Joey Zwillinger stepped down as CEO of Allbirds in March 2024, he took three months offmainly because his wife Liz said shed divorce him if he jumped into another venture. He had run the sustainable shoe company for 10 years while the couple raised their three young children. It took a real toll on the family, Liz says.
(I would say it developed character in our family, Zwillinger counters.)
Before long, he was itching to start a new project, an ambition he shyly expressed to his wife. It was really hard to want to sign up for something like that all over again, Liz says. But this time, he cofounded the venture with Liz.
Joey & Liz Zwillinger [Photo: Biologica]
Its also a bold pivot from a sustainable shoe company to an entirely different industry: womens hormone health supplements.
At a time when health and wellness is big business, it might also be a smart pivot. But its an undeniably different world, navigating health regulations and making bold investment choices when such bets didnt go so well at Allbirds. Revenue and share prices dipped drastically starting in 2022, and have hardly recovered.
Launching December 9, Biologica is a set of new supplements for womens health, naturally flavored and powdered to fizz into water. Each single sachet, or separately sealed daily dose to be mixed with eight ounces of water, targets different body functions with ingredients including electrolytes, multivitamins, botanicals, and probiotics.
Crucially to the value proposition, there are three products for different life stages: younger reproductive years, perimenopause, and post-menopause. While some share ingredients like Vitamin C and potassium, for different stages you may have dosages of broccoli extract (for detoxification and liver function), pomegranate extract (for skin hydration), or saffron (for mood balance and sleep quality).
The idea came from Lizs own struggles; she would take different supplements daily for various issues, leading to seven separate pills plus extra vitamins, which became a super onerous supplement routine that didn’t feel like it was sustainable, she says.
That was a common issue the couple found in their initial focus groups. Women could only find a one-size-fits-all pill or gummy that promised to do everything. Or, as in Lizs case, various targeted supplements, which became unsustainable as the cost of living rose. They also found that women of different ages had different concerns. So they set out to create a company with only one product per customerbut narrowed to their hormonal age.
They believe thats their major selling point.
[Photo: Biologica]
MAHA movement and ‘changing winds’
The health and wellness sector is absolutely an attractive space for founders now, says Matthew Oster, head of health, beauty, and hygiene insights at Euromonitor International.
He says lines are now blurrier than ever between pharma and food and beverage. A trend toward natural and food-based remedies has been churning in the background culturally over the last 10 or 15 years, he says, and increasingly linked with medical distrustand has now become branded as RFK Jr.s Make America Healthy Again movement. So at the same time that these companies are recognizing that consumers want healthier products, he says, there’s this whole movement codifying that.
Supplements, whether fortified fibers, proteins, or biotics, are no longer just a hippie, natural, crunchy thing, Oster says. It’s a dead-right-in-the-middle mainstream proposition.
But in the age of TikTokification, this wellness market is rife with changing winds, on a dime, Oster says. Some of these ingredients trends last months as opposed to years. Longevity is often hard to forecast: CBD was an example of a fleeting fad, but other trends, like protein, are only getting bigger.
Womens health might be a better bet, especially around life stages. No one really even talked about perimenopause a few years ago from a product formulation perspective, Oster says. In a short amount of time, we had a proliferation of products in that space.
There are others on the market, but not a tremendous amount, Oster says. Perelel is a supplements company that has seen strong growth since August 2024, where you can shop by stage, from trying to conceive, through perimenopause. Health & Her is a British company with capsule products for different life stages, which launched in the U.S. this summer with CVS. Now, he says, its just about seeing which products will stick, and which will fizzle out.
The failure rate may be high, but at least its a relatively short lead time to get to market versus digital health or pharma products (the Zwillingers have gone from ideation to rollout in a year and a half), and a relatively minimal financial commitment (they raised a $7 million seed round). This is a low bet from an investment cost, Oster says, that if you lose your shirt, you lose your shirt.
[Photo: Biologica]
Learning lessons from Allbirds fall
But its still a risk to navigate a new industry when Zwillingers previous venture took an unexpected plunge after its initial success.
In the late 2010s, Allbirds was a phenomenon. Its minimalist running sneakers, made from merino wool and a foam sole of sugar cane, were named the worlds most comfortable shoes by Time in 2017. They became almost the official dress code of Silicon Valley, part of the tech bro starter pack meme (along with the Patagonia zipper vest, Yeti bottle, and Lime scooter). They were like a cultural snapshot of the era; even Obama was spotted wearing them.
But in March 2024, Zwillinger resigned and handed over the CEO reins after repeated cycles of declining revenue. Even by 2022, The Wall Street Journal assessed, the tech bros had moved on. The medias Allbirds postmortems blamed overly ambitious expansion beyond their core bestsellers, and too rashly opening numerous brick-and-mortar stores. Today, revenue is still declining, and half its stores are closed.
Zwillinger, still an active board member, says when COVID-19 hit during the companys peakeclipsing $200 million in revenuehe and his cofounder, Tim Brown, responded too dramatically to shifting consumer trends, including pivoting too hard from lifestyle to running and hiking. We were too immature of a company to parse out what was signal and what was noise, he says, and we made some really big bets based on that. They were forced to discount the product to move the inventory.
Allbirds was also known for its eco-friendliness: its a certified B Corp, with a core polymer material thats carbon-negative. Zwillinger says hes learned you cant build a business around sustainability alone. [Consumers] want to make sure that the innovation actually does something that meets their needs, he says.
In a way, navigating health in the new business is similar to navigating sustainability. Once competing with some rivals that were greenwashing, they now face some wellness brands that make unsubstantiated claims. Companies feel free to say whatever to make a sale, Zwillinger says. It’s a little scary starting a business in a space like that.
Theres enough leniency from the FDA for some bold claims, and a lack of budget for the agency to do much even when theres blatant overstepping. You cant say a supplement cures or prevents a disease, but you can make a claim about the role of an ingredient, like calcium builds strong bones. But some of the gray areas can lead to a freewheeling, cowboy approach to what they claim, Zwillinger says.
Thats concerning to many medical experts, who have publicly noted their skepticism around supplements, some recommending not to spend money on something that most people can obtain from a healthy diet alone. An independent panel of national experts in 2022 reviewed 84 supplements studies and concluded there was insufficient evidence of their efficacy.
The Zwillingers say they have tried to do things right via focus groups, clinical research, and a 1,000-woman study; they have a medical advisory board with two ob-gyns and a breast cancer surgeon specialist (as well as a more Eastern-focused herbalist).
Oster says its good to get everything right with the science. But in this social media era, it might not even be science that drives sales for some consumers. Vibes and feelings are pretty influential, he says.
[Photo: Biologica]
DTC as the initial test
Still, from a business strategy perspective, the reliance on data has been helpful, allowing them to be less subjective, and not cater to their own tastes, as Zwillinger and Brown did at Allbirds. In this situation, I have zero lived experience and no subjectivity, he says. Looking back, everyone should do that with every business they runtake themselves out of it.
Consumer trends have also changed dramatically, as pandemic patterns faded and social media proliferated. Allbirds, along with fellow unicorns Warby Parker and Casper, was a direct-to-consumer (DTC) pioneer. Though assessments that DTC is dead are highly exaggerated, Oster says, companies have to get social media marketing right, as people now just buy directly from those platforms. TikTok Shop has really taken over from a supplements perspective, Oster says.
Zwillinger knows they will ultimately have to be predominantly retail-oriented to be successful, but they have to start with DTC, probably for a year or two (products will be ready to ship to consumers December 9). I have learned deeply and with some scars, he says, that you need a robust and popular product before entering wholesale relationships. The DTC launch will be a way to test the product, and iron out issues.
Those could be things like flavors, which theyve formulated without sugar. Or the price, which is $59 a month, for 30 sachets in a tin, to finance some expensive ingredients like saffron. Or, the branding of the product, which theyve tried to give a premium feel, with elegant-looking tins to be displayed on a counter or desk, not shoved away in the pantry, and to speak to a sophisticated customer base.
But of course, all remains to be seen as it rolls out. We think we’re brilliant, [that] we’ve done everything right, Zwillinger says. But when we start selling, we’re going to find out we were idiots about lots of things.
If you’re searching for a new snack that’s heavy on flavor but manages to skip the unhealthy additives, you’re in luck. There’s a new one called Ragerz from Good Eat’n, NBA star Chris Paul’s snack brand, in partnership with the WNBA’s Paige Bueckers.
And it sounds like a slam dunk.
For starters, the snackwhich is a bit like a healthier take on Takisis focused on delivering a fierce flavor without the junk. It comes in Chili Lime and Sweet Chili Crunch flavors that, Bueckers tells Fast Company, do not miss the mark (hoop?).
The snack “isn’t asking people to give up flavor to feel better about what they’re eating,” she says, adding that with Ragerz, “you can have both.”
Chris Paul agrees, and says that now is the right time for better snacking options.
“Families want snacks that taste amazing but dont come with all the artificial colors and additives,” he tells Fast Company. “Youre seeing that shift in retail data: U.S. snacking is a $46 billion industry, most of it controlled by one big company thats now experiencing decline.”
[Photo: Bobby Metelus]
According to Paul, Good Eat’n snacks have only organic ingredients and no artificial flavors, or dyes like Red 40.
“People want bold flavors, but they also want to feel good about whats in the bag,” Paul says. “Ragerz hits that sweet spot: big flavor, organic corn, no artificial colors, and ingredient integrity.”
The taste certainly sounds epic. However, the brand is shooting for more than a new crunchy and delicious snack.
Good Eat’n’s mission, fighting childhood hunger, is what seems to matter most to the brand.
Good Eat’n says it is donating a portion of all Ragerz sales to charity, as well as partnering with the Paige Bueckers Foundation, which works to create opportunities and promote justice in sports and elsewhere, to donate Ragerz and other Good Eatn snacks to Feed the Children.
“[Being] able to support Feed the Children and their resources centers inside of schools in the Dallas School District means a lot,” Bueckers explains. “I’m trying to find ways to engage and support the Dallas community, which has shown me so much love in my first season there.”
For the Dallas Wings point guard, the partnership is a big responsibility, and it’s one she takes seriously, calling it an opportunity to learn “how to be a leader from Chris.”
Bueckers says that, in addition to Paul’s success on the court, he has been able to “break barriers and do amazing things off the court,” adding that “for him to want to invest in me and in womens sport makes it a special moment.”
The partnership marks the first time that a WNBA star has taken an equity stake in a food brand founded by an NBA player, which isn’t lost on Bueckers, who says that “being the first at something means there will be a second and a third.”
According to the company, Good Eatn snacks are available nationwide at Walmart, and Ragerz are now available for pre-order at GoodEatn.com.
The snack will be available at H-E-B stores across Texas, as well as via DoorDash in Texas and Gopuff nationwide.
Its a historic day for both Walmart and the Nasdaq. Today, Americas largest brick-and-mortar retailer begins trading on the Nasdaq after its shares spent over half a century on the New York Stock Exchange (NYSE). Heres what you need to know about Walmarts move to the Nasdaq.
Whats happened?
A week before Thanksgiving, Walmart announced that it would transfer its common stock listing from the New York Stock Exchange (NYSE) to the Nasdaq Global Select Market.
The move is historic for a few reasons.
The first is that Walmart (Nasdaq: WMT) shares have traded on the NYSE since 1972the last 53 years. Walmart went public in 1970, but traded on over-the-counter markets for the first two years before joining the NYSE. That ends today.
And Walmarts time on the NYSE was a good one. Over the last 53 years, Walmarts stock on the NYSE has grown more than 536,000% as of yesterdays market close. By moving to the Nasdaq, Walmart is beginning a new chapter of its financial life.
But the second reason Walmarts move to the Nasdaq is historic is because of Walmarts current valuation.
As of its last trading day on the NYSE yesterday, Walmart had a market cap of more than $905 billion. Its transfer from the NYSE to the Nasdaq represents the largest stock exchange transfer in history.
Other companies have moved stock exchanges in the past, but the total value of their shares was nowhere near Walmarts.
Why is Walmart moving to the Nasdaq?
Walmart cited several reasons for its decision to move from the NYSE to the Nasdaq. But a lot of it has to do with image.
Over the past few decades, the Nasdaq has become home for the most technologically progressive, forward-thinking companies on the planet.
The Nasdaq is where all of the so-called Magnificent 7 tech companies are traded:
Apple (Nasdaq: AAPL)
Amazon (Nasdaq: AMZN)
Nvidia (Nasdaq: NVDA)
Microsoft (Nasdaq: MSFT)
Meta (Nasdaq: META)
Alphabet (Nasdaq: GOOG)
Tesla (Nasdaq: TSLA)
All those companies have experienced tremendous growth on the Nasdaq, and they are seen as engines of Americas economic innovation.
On the other hand, the New York Stock Exchange, while a respected institution and storied marketplace, is sometimes seen as the exchange for legacy companies, such as big banks in the financial sector and other industrial stocks like automakers and agricultural companies, not to mention brick-and-mortar retailers like Target (NYSE: TGT) and Gap (NYSE: GAP).
It seems that Walmart no longer wants to be grouped with those legacy companies (and, in some cases, competitors) and instead wants to be seen as being in the same league with the country’s innovative tech giants.
(To be sure, NYSE still gets its share of high-profile tech listings, including companies like Figma and Circle Internet Group, which went public just this year.)
Moving to Nasdaq aligns with the people-led, tech-powered approach to our long-term strategy,” Walmarts chief financial officer, John David Rainey, said when announcing the move last month. “Walmart is setting a new standard for omnichannel retail by integrating automation and AI to build smarter, faster, and more connected experiences for customers, while enabling our associates to deliver even greater value at scale.
In other words, the move underscores Walmarts desire to be seen more as a tech-focused, AI-first company rather than the worlds largest legacy retailer.
As the company said in its announcement: The move to Nasdaq underscores the strong alignment between Walmart and Nasdaq’s shared values: a technology-forward approach, delivering exceptional client value, and redefining their respective industries through innovation.
When is Walmart moving to the Nasdaq?
Walmart moves to the Nasdaq today, Tuesday, December 9.
Walmarts last trading day on the New York Stock Exchange was yesterday. As of the time of this writing, its shares are already trading in premarket trading on the Nasdaq Global Select Market
Is Walmart getting a new ticker symbol?
No. Walmart will continue to retain its historic ticker symbol of WMT.
Are stock exchange transfers common?
They arent frequent events, but they arent uncommon. As Reuters notes, earlier this year, Shopify (Nasdaq: SHOP) and Kimberly-Clark (Nasdaq: KMB) transferred to the Nasdaq. Other companies, including CSW Industrials (NYSE: CSW) and Virtu Financial (NYSE: VIRT) transferred to the NYSE.
But what is uncommon about Walmarts move to the Nasdaq is the sheer size of the company doing so. As The Motley Fool points out, Walmarts current market cap makes it the largest company to ever transfer stock exchanges.
Walmart is currently worth around $905 billion. That value dwarfs the value of the next-largest company ever to switch exchanges: chemicals and gas giant Linde (Nasdaq: LIN), which moved to the Nasdaq in 2023 with a then-market value of $180 billion.
Before Lindes move, soda maker PepsiCo (Nasdaq: PEP) was the previous largest company to switch exchanges, moving to the Nasdaq in 2017 when it had a market value of around $166 billion.
So while stock exchange transfers aren’t rare, Walmarts stock exchange transfer is notable given the size of the company.
Could this boost Walmart’s stock price?
Thats hard to say. The most significant factor in Walmarts future share performance will continue to be the companys fundamentals. If Walmart continues to perform well, its stock is likely to keep rising. If it starts performing badly, the stock is likely to fall.
However, Walmarts move to the Nasdaq could have a psychological effect on some investors, who may see the company now more as a tech-focused growth stock than a legacy retailer. That type of psychological impact could lead to greater interest in the stock, which could push up its share price.
Walmart shares could also get a boost if they are included in index funds that are compiled with stocks that mimic the makeup of the largest companies on the Nasdaq. As of today, Walmart is the ninth largest company by market cap on the Nasdaq.
How have WMT shares performed in 2025?
Walmart shares have performed well so far this year. As of yesterdays close, WMT shares were up more than 25% for the year. At around $113.50 per share, they are near an all-time high.
And another potential milestone is also within reach. As of yesterdays close, Walmarts market cap was just over $905 billion. That means the company is only about $95 billion away from becoming a trillion-dollar giant.
The companys stock price now needs to rise only about 10.5% more to cross that milestone. Walmart is clearly hoping it can do that on the Nasdaq.
Rare earth minerals are so ubiquitous and critical to much of todays technology, that tonights dinner might not have made it to the table without them. And according to USA Rare Earth CEO Barbara Humpton, for decades, the world has sat back and let China become the sole supplier of these minerals, even as the country has used its dominance in this market as a geopolitical game piece.
We believe its time to take the game piece off the board,” Humpton said at last months World Changing Ideas Summit, cohosted by Fast Company and Johns Hopkins University in Washington, D.C.
USA Rare Earth is wholly dedicated to bringing rare earth metals mining to the U.S., and changing this dynamic is humanly possible, says Humptonthough it will require the support of governments, academia, and private industry.
“We’re gonna have to use some real strategy to actually turn the tide,” she says.
It may be difficult, but there are already some early signs of progress, as governments that include the U.S., Japan, and the European Union have collaborated to agree on supporting a rare earth supply chain beyond China.
Getting academia involved to educate students in magnet-making and rare earth processing is also a priority, Humpton says, along with securing the support of major industries that rely on these minerals, like the automotive sector.
A good chance to turn this around
According to Humpton, many countriesthe U.S. includedwere perfectly happy to let China dominate this market, because it was cheaper and less messy for them. But Chinas behavior in recent years has led to this moment, she says, adding that there are many benefits to bringing this type of mining to the U.S., including the potential for economic development, and addressing some environmental concerns to mitigate consequences and utilize cleaner extraction techniques.
Because we are in an area where it’s a relatively small market, a relatively small number of companies, we have a good chance to turn this around, she says. If we don’t get started, we’ll never get done.
Like many American cities, the streetscape in downtown Brooklyn was for a long time very heavy on the street: a great place to park a car or drive through. But over the past 20 years, the area itself has gone from being a 9-to-5 shopping and business district to one where a growing number of people live 24-7. Since 2004, more than 22,000 housing units have been added to the neighborhood, changing its character so much that its old streetscape just wasn’t cutting it.
“There was a real evolution of the neighborhood,” says Regina Myer, president of the Downtown Brooklyn Partnership (DBP), a business improvement district representing the area’s business owners, shopkeepers, and, increasingly, residential developers. “Frankly, the construction fences were down, and it was really time to look at the public realm afresh.”
So in late 2018, DBP hired the urban design and architecture firms WXY and Bjarke Ingels Group (BIG) to come up with some new ideas for Downtown Brooklyn’s streetscape. Myer says her organization wanted “infrastructure that really focused in on the pedestrian and mobility, shared streets, increased biodiversity, and also really making sure this was a bold plan for Brooklyn, that it didn’t look like something generic.”
[Photos: courtesy Downtown Brooklyn Partnership]
Now, after seven years of planning and prototypes, the designs have been fully installed. As these before-and-after images show, the transformation has been dramatic.
The formerly congested streets of downtown Brooklyn have been augmented with planters, bollards, street bistro seating, and other traffic calming measures, as well as increased greenery and public open space. Redesigned tree pits add a larger and more refined space for street trees to grow, and curving benches follow cobblestone paving that hugs the edge of the sidewalk. Compare to the preexisting street furniture, which Myer calls “mean,” the new spaces invite pedestrians to sit and experience the city around them.
[Photo: Hai Zhang/Downtown Brooklyn Partnership]
Prototyping public space
This work came about incrementally at first. WXY and BIG’s design guidance was first tested on the streetscape outside a Studio Gang-designed residential tower that was completed in 2021. Working with the city’s Department of Transportation during the project’s mid-pandemic construction, DBP convinced the city to allow sidewalks on two sides of the building to be widened to make space for these new streetscape amenities as an experimental pilot project. The resulting streetscape sparked a desire for other, more officially sanctioned improvements.
A second pilot project was then built outside the city’s first all-electric skyscraper, and officials were fully on board. “They liked it so much that they actually asked us to go through the [Public Design Commission] process for a plan for the entire neighborhood,” Myer says, referring to the path for making improvements to public and civic spaces in the city.
[Photos: courtesy Downtown Brooklyn Partnership]
This work led to the 2021 release of a Public Realm Action Plan covering more than 40 blocks in the area. In 2023, the mayor’s office dedicated $40 million in funding to put the plan into action. “The prototyping process really worked for us,” Myer says.
And in the four years since the plan was releasedrelative light speed in the realm of public space projectsit has materialized on sidewalks and shared streets across downtown Brooklyn. Bright yellow planters now sit in the spaces where cars once parked, carving out niches for outdoor seating and dining. Teardrop-shaped tree planters add flourish to the edges of sidewalks where trash once gathered. Swooping benches teem with life along streets packed with an increasing mix of uses.
[Photos: courtesy Downtown Brooklyn Partnership]
This could be just the start of a broader transformation in the area. WXY and BIG’s design has now become a system that developers can use to improve the streetscape of future projects. Myer says the plan was strategically minimal in its proposed interventions. The redesign requires little large-scale construction, utilizing existing street poles, for example, and making the most of the existing width of the sidewalk. Aside from the two pilot projects, no other sidewalks were extended, “because you know how gnarly that can get,” Myer says.
The plan has sailed through approvals and construction, and downtown Brooklyn’s streetscapes are almost unrecognizable from what they looked like just a few years ago. Myer calls it an effort that appeals across the spectrum, from business owners to building tenants to the growing residential population to visitors and tourists. “What we really were seeking here was to use our existing space better for people,” she says.
[Photos: courtesy Downtown Brooklyn Partnership]
For budding influencers, class is now in session.
Jessica Henig, founder of Unlocked Branding, is rolling out Social Media University, a new platform launching today that promises to decode the influencer industry for the next wave of creators and industry professionals.
The platform is free to join. We wanted it to be accessible for anyone who is interested in building a career in media and their network, Henig tells Fast Company. This community was built on after years of successfully building talent into top tier brands themselves, and weve seen such high demand from others who want to know where to start.
Henig knows the formula, after helping shape some of the internets It-talent, including Alicia Breuer, Millie Leer, Pia Mia, and Montana Brown among them.
Those who sign up can expect a mix of online and in-person interactive masterclasses with leading industry voices, seminars, trips, and community events, as well as mentorship and behind-the-scenes access to Unlocked Brandings global network of creators and partners.
The missing link from young people, over the past few years especially, has been that they are missing in person community, says Henig. Working for yourself can be isolating sometimes and we want to get everyone in the same room to foster connections and creativity.
With rising unemployment and a college degree no longer guaranteeing a career path, the creator economy has become a bright spot for young people navigating a bleak job market. The number of creators globally is expected to grow at a compound annual rate between 10 and 20% and the total addressable market is expected to increase to a projected $500 billion by 2027, according to Goldman Sachs.
Gen Z and Gen Alpha are fully bought in. Over half of Gen Z wants to become influencers, according to a Morning Consult survey. A 2024 Whop survey found that the top two career aspirations among Gen Alpha are YouTuber and TikTok creator.
With the influencer industry being so new in comparison to more ‘traditional’ career and education paths, theres a huge education context gap when it comes to breaking into the industry, says Henig.
Ive built talent up from the start of their careers, many of which started as early as 16 years old, and found that the intense experiential nature of the social media industry set them up for incredible success and long term career paths in the real worldwithout having to go to a traditional university route.
For those after a traditional education experience, Syracuse University recently announced its new Center for the Creator Economy, looking to train the new class of influencers, streamers, podcasters, and YouTubers. Still, one of the biggest selling points of a career in content creation is precisely the fact it doesnt require a degree or hundreds of thousands of dollars of student debt that come with one. Starting out as a content creator has never been easier, you mostly need a phone and a dream. Yet, because of the low barrier to entry, the industry is saturated and some expert guidance could be that all-important leg up.
People should sign up if they want valuable insight, to understand the economics of the industry and how it affects strategy and work, says Henig. And a community of people that share similar values to want to stay at the forefront of what is moving the needle.
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Earlier in the spring, the Federal Housing Administration (FHA) announced that, starting in late May 2025, H-1B visa holders and other non-permanent residents would be banned from taking out new FHA mortgages.
The result?
Non-permanent residentsincluding H-1B visa holderssaw their share of FHA mortgage locks crater from 3.8% in September 2024 to 0.2% in September 2025, according to Optimal Blue. This sharp pullback comes after their share of FHA mortgage locks had spiked between 2020 and 2024.
Keep in mind that FHA mortgages make up a much smaller share of overall borrowers than, say, GSE conventional borrowers. Indeed, Optimal Blue data reviewed by ResiClub shows that FHA mortgages accounted for 22.0% of total U.S. mortgage-purchase locks in September 2025. Meanwhile, according to the New York Fed, as of June 2025, FHA mortgages represent just 12% of the nations $12.94 trillion in mortgage debt.
While FHA has pulled back on lending to H-1B visa holders, as far as ResiClub can tell there hasnt been a similar changeat least not yetin the conventional mortgage space (Fannie Mae/Freddie Mac).
This squeezes entry-level homebuying in some key housing markets already dealing with weak sales and too much supply, writes Eric Finnigan, president of Demographics Research at John Burns Research and Consulting. (JBREC published a report in October on the topic for its clients.)
As an example of a potentially affected housing market, Finnigan points to Fayetteville, ARwhich is where Walmart is headquartered. Walmart HQ has reportedly paused new H-1B hiring in late 2025 after the Trump administration announced itd impose a $100,000 fee for certain new H-1B applications.
Walmart HQ stops new H-1B hiring due to $100K fee. Lines up with research we sent to clients last week calling out Walmart HQ’s metro [Fayetteville] as 1 of ~15 local housing markets most exposed to H-1B changes, based on analysis of loan-level data by citizenship status, wrote Finnigan in October.
While growth markets in the Southparticularly those with the higher levels of homebuilding, such as Dallas, TX; Fayetteville, AR; and Durham, NCmight feel a sharper housing-demand contraction from this specific FHA policy change, they arent necessarily the markets that would see the greatest softening if there were a broader pullback in H-1B activity.
To run an apples-to-apples comparison that accounts for market size, ResiClub calculated H-1B visa petitions per 1,000 residents.
The states with the highest exposure to high-salary H-1B workersand the housing and rental demand they generateinclude Washington, California, New York, New Jersey, Texas, and the District of Columbia.
Click here for an interactive of the chart below
Zooming out to the big picture, we are in something of an international migration bust following a boom in 2021-2024.
Between summer 2021 and summer 2024, the U.S. sa a substantial upswing in net international migrationmuch of it coming through the Southern Border. As of July 2024, the U.S. population stood at 340.1 million, up 3.3 million from 336.8 million in July 2023. Of that population increase, 2.8 million (or 85%) came from net international migration.
That international migration burst, of course, is behind us now. Recently, border crossings have plummeted. A July forecast by researchers at AEI expects that net international migration in 2025 will be somewhere between +115,000 and -525,000.
What does this international migration slump mean for the U.S. housing market?
All else being equal, an immediate and direct housing impact of fewer immigrants coming through the Southern Border, in my view, is lower aggregate rental demandspecifically at the lower end of the marketthan if that burst had continued. Rental markets likely to see the biggest impact are in metro areas that have experienced the most international immigration in recent years. In particular, major markets such as New York City, Miami, Dallas, and Houston could feel the greatest effects.
President Donald Trump has always been a master marketer. He is particularly adept at lending his name to products and buildings, which has proven to be a lucrative business. Now in office, he’s bringing that same licensing mindset to the very act of governing.
Last week, the State Department said it renamed the U.S. Institute of Peace (USIP) after Trump and put his name on its building in Washington, D.C. This comes after Trump fired the board members and nearly all U.S. employees of the USIP.
The USIP’s open, natural-light-drenched headquarters was designed by Safdie Architects to symbolize conflict resolution. But it has ironically become the flashpoint of what former board members have described as a hostile takeover of the federally funded independent nonprofit in Trump’s second term. DOGE staff and police entered the building in March, but USIP took control two months later after a judge ruled the firings were illegal. Then a federal appeals court stayed the ruling in June.
The building’s switched hands several times, and with it back in the Trump administration’s hands, they’re looking to make it formal with signage.
The US Institute of Peace (USIP) in Washington, D.C., on Friday, December 5. [Photo: Alex Kent/Bloomberg/Getty Images]
The politics of unearned credit
The building’s new “Donald J. Trump” signage is just the latest example of a larger trend where Trump has assigned his name to policies and initiatives that he once opposed. For example, Trump campaigned against the infrastructure bill signed into law by then-President Joe Biden in 2021, and yet Trump’s name went up earlier this year on new signage in Seattle for an Amtrak rain project funded by Biden’s bipartisan law.
“President Donald J. Trump, Rebuilding America’s Infrastructure,” the bright “Make America Great Again” hat-red sign says. The words, “Funded by the Infrastructure Investment & Jobs Act,” are written in smaller type below.
Then there’s the Nation Park Service (NPS), which Trump has taken an axe to, cutting staff 16.5% and the budget by more than a third. Still, Trump’s image is going on two designs for next year’s annual NPS passes. The Interior Department is also making Trump’s birthday, which falls on Flag Day, one of several “resident-only patriotic fee-free days” to parks next year while dropping it for MLK Day and Juneteenth.
When Trump put his name on stimulus checks funded through the CARES ACT, passed in response to the COVID-19 pandemic in 2020, it was unprecedented, the first time a president’s name had appeared on an IRS disbursement. Now, it seems, it’s just politics as usual.
The man who once gave us Trump Steaks now seeks to gives us a Trump peace institute, and some might say its good politics. Biden called it “stupid” that he didn’t put his own name on stimulus checks funded through the 2021 American Rescue Plan. But with Trump’s approval at a second-term low of 36%, according to Gallup, these branding efforts don’t exactly seem to be working.
