When Apple launched the App Store in 2008, it was impossibly influential to the future of the internet. The all-powerful world wide web was sliced and diced into bite-sized apps oft-dubbed Web 2.0. What followed was not just software that fit in your pocket. From TikTok to Uber, these camera-wielding, GPS-integrated, cloud-connected platforms changed the way we lived.
Now, in the wake of AI, the app store is arising anew. But instead of being built as tappable icons inside a mobile OS, they are plugging directly into the conversations of LLMs like Microsoft CoPilot and Anthropics Claude.
Today, OpenAIthe largest AI platform with 800 million weekly usersis opening ChatGPT for any developer to integrate their app right into the flow of conversation (pending review and approval). Following a pilot earlier this year, now any developer can plug in their own apps to be suggested contextually during any chat, or summoned by a user by @ing their specific name.
[Image: Adobe]
Early partners like Adobe will let you edit images right in the flow of conversation (complete with sliders to tweak them), while Target will pull up any manner of product to buy. No matter your feelings on AI, the tools seemed destined to change the way we think about apps and even multitasking, by shifting us from software based upon nouns (Canva, Figma) to verbs (build a slide deck).
Its not going to feel like you’re entering through a front door anymore. You’re kind of meeting these [users] at a very specific moment in time, says Bryant Jow, a designer at OpenAI overseeing app integration. I really think one of the most important things is that it should not feel like there’s a learning curve or that you have to re-anchor yourself. It should just kind of feel like immediately and instantly intuitive.
[Image: Canva]
Indeed, the promise from all the partner companies I spoke to is to fulfill what LLMs generally only tease. We brainstorm all sorts of ideas inside AI chats, but when its time to bring them to life, we can hit a wall. This is where integrated apps can show up, offering their finer tuned services. But the devil is in the details. And very few of the details have been fully worked out.
If you remember the first apps that people made on the App Store, like the beer drinking app [iBeer], they were like, whatever, right? A lot of people took a moment to figure out how do we behave in this ecosystem? What do we build? How do we provide utility? And how do we optimize for that? says Gui Seiz, who leads product design on the AI team at Figma. I think we’re still at that stage.
[Image: Figma]
What ChatGPT apps can actually do, and how they do it
To be entirely frank, the AI model providers are creating something of an ouroboros with connected apps. You talk to ChatGPT. It recommends you connect with an app. That app, however, is likely powered by AI models that could be from OpenAI. And so its part-OpenAI-powered agent, filled with specialized knowledge, then shows back up on OpenAIs platform ChatGPT. Its our agents-talking-to-agents future, happening now.
However, the secret sauce to these connections isnt merely your typical pile of APIs that have been used to connect apps for years. Its a rapidly growing new standard called MCP (Model Context Protocol). Originally developed by Anthropic in 2024, its now open source under Linux.
When a company runs an MCP server, its essentially opening a door to make everything it wants grockable by AIsharing data, tools, and memoryall in one consolidated, automated process. While model companies originally brute forced their way across the internet, smashing and grabbing the data sets needed to build their systems, MCP is the equivalent of a butler asking them to wipe their feet and welcoming the AI in.
For Target, MCP meant that its initial launch on ChatGPT happened fasta mere four weeks from when discussions with OpenAI kicked off and Target was selling on its platform.
[Image: Target]
But whats it like to shop Target on an LLM? At the moment, you can type @target, and ask to shop, in my case, lego deals for xmas. It generates a thumbnail grid of options, all with prices. Tap one, and youre ushered to a new page with more info, just like youre on its website. There, you can add it to your cart. Target, like all of the partners I spoke to, promised more features will arrive fastmore at the scale of weeks than months.
Canva and Figma have both offered tools to create slide decks, turning a brainstorm or pretty much anything you want to paste into ChatGPT into a presentation. Both services are dipping into their own templates to build visual assets previewed as thumbnails. From there, you can tap into any preview to see the whole slideshow. The catch is that, in either case, you cant really edit these slides further through conversationthe app integration kind of kicks you back to stock ChatGPT following the query. Instead, the preview, like Target, refers you back to their respective apps.
[Image: Figma]
Its why the most ambitious integration seems to be that of Adobe, which integrated tools from Adobe Express, Photoshop, and Acrobat. Adobe actually built out its own, lightweight front end experience into ChatGPT, so if you ask it to brighten a photo, a few sliders will appear on the screen that only control exposure and black and white levels. That way you can get the image xactly as bright as you like, rather then telling the AI, “a little brighter, wait, no, a little darker.”
This UI is intentionally granular, built to surface only what you need for a task and nothing more.
Thats what makes this incredibly exciting, argues Govind Balakrishan, SVP and GM on Adobe Express. You’re no longer dealing with the the entirety of the Photoshop interface. You’re just dealing with those sliders that give you what you’re trying to do.
Discovering new apps will be the new SEO
App discoverability could still use work, though. And this represents both a short term and long term challenge for the company.
In the short term, conversational discovery just stinks.
To be honest, summoning these apps can be frustrating and buggy. OpenAI needs to do some clean up work on their front end, too, adding the creature comforts we expect. For instance, when you @ any available app, it autofills that app like an Instagram handlebut only after you paired the app successfully once already. In the case of Adobe, this gets extra tricky, as you summon specific functions via their separate apps like @Photoshop and @AdobeAcrobat (and don’t ask to build a PDF in Photoshop). Thats unnecessarily messy and should be sorted by the LLM, not the user.
[Image: Adobe]
Meanwhile, you arent even supposed to be forced to call out apps all the time, as they are supposed to be suggested casually by the LLM in what the company calls indirect invocation. Im not seeing much, if any, of that working yet.
When Im too casual, saying Id like to shop at Target instead of @target find me X, it listed nearby Target stores and then offered me shopping advice. When I said I was hoping to work with the Target app on ChatGPT right now, it explained I could do that, along with everything I could do in Target. But it was always up to me to invoke the aforementioned secret code@Target in this caseto make my query.
Its an easy enough affordance people will learn thats no different than using X or Threads, but the whole point of a friendly conversational interface is that it isnt a speakeasy. I was continuously surprised by the lack of contextual understanding (and OpenAI says they are not currently live for all users).
But this feels rapidly fixable.
[Image: Canva]
The greater existential question for OpenAI is how and why it would recommend one app over another app that offers similar features with similar quality.
Make no mistake, each company wants to be the app thats summoned on command. I myself wondered why some companies would even bother to plug into ChatGPT. As soon as they hand over their capabilities to a generalized AI, arent they diluting their own value? Target makes money with every sale, sure, and Canva still carefully offers its free items for free and its paid items for subscription. But Adobe, for instance, is offering all of its ChatGPT tools for free rather than upselling you to a subscription.
At some level, we believe that the more users we haveleveraging the breadth and strength of our applications, the better off we will be over time, says Balakrishan. Monetization will sort of work in its way out.
For now, it helps that all of these media generation services link you back to their respective apps, with full interfaces, to finish work you may only start on ChatGPT. Indeed, Canva shared early data from running its own MCP servers to field Claude, CoPilot, and ChatGPT requests since July. Theyve served 2.6 million users whove created more than 11 million designs, and its been working as a tool to attract attention. Canva notes that referral traffic from LLMs is rising at a faster rate than any other source.
But bigger picture, everyone seems to agree that baking apps into LLMs should be about more than just porting an app to a chat interface. It should unlock new workflows, functions, and UIs we haven’t imagined yet.
There’s some stuff that, for whatever reason, the modality that Figma offers isnt ideal to do that specific thing, says Seiz. “I wonder what kind of new use cases or new things people are going to be trying to do.
[Image: Figma]
Finding AIs next big modality
For Target, which launched just in time for Black Friday, one of its biggest surprises was a new shopping behavior. People uploaded handwritten lists instead of typing things in. That was interesting, and Target doesnt know whats possible from that, yet, but its one of many data points that could inform their future thinking.
We wanted to be early and have a role in how that path evolves, says Purvi Shah, VP of UX Design, Research and Accessibility at Target.
[Image: Target]
The greater concern for companies I talked to was not if they would be commoditized by plugging into a vast AI platform, but how they would be discovered in all that noise. Its no secret that Adobe, Canva, and Figma are each competitors, much like Target and Walmart (which was als was early to integrate shopping with ChatGPT]. Suggesting any of them contextually, in conversation, means that OpenAI needs to make a decision of which competing service is right for any given moment. Naturally, they all want to own that moment.
When I ask OpenAI how they will manage this issue, Jow admits, its definitely one of the hardest challenges facing the team. When I ask if well see paid placement, like the search ads that have driven Googles business for years, he says, Well see.
In the meantime, app developers shared their own nervousness about how this will develop, and agree we are likely to see a era of AI platform optimizationmuch like sites classically optimized themselves to be discovered by Googlein order to rise to the top of ChatGPT and other LLMs. For now, all developers can do is serve quality and relevant responses to any prompt, according to Seiz, so that OpenAI is incentivized to keep recommending ones service.
It’s certainly inevitable that there will be multiple adjacent experiences that offer a really great tool for that use case, says Jow. And I do think that what we want to really ensure is that those options are displayed to the user in a very transparent way, so the user can decide which tool is best suited for them.
In a seismic shift for one of televisions marquee events, the Academy Awards will depart ABC and begin streaming on YouTube beginning in 2029, the Academy of Motion Picture Arts and Sciences announced Wednesday.
ABC will continue to broadcast the annual ceremony through 2028. That year will mark the 100th Oscars.
But starting in 2029, YouTube will retain global rights to streaming the Oscars through 2033. YouTube will effectively be the home to all things Oscars, including red-carpet coverage, the Governors Awards, and the Oscar nominations announcement.
We are thrilled to enter into a multifaceted global partnership with YouTube to be the future home of the Oscars and our year-round Academy programming, said academy chief executive Bill Kramer and academy president Lynette Howell Taylor. The Academy is an international organization, and this partnership will allow us to expand access to the work of the Academy to the largest worldwide audience possible which will be beneficial for our Academy members and the film community.
While major award shows have added streaming partnerships, the YouTube deal marks the first of the big four the Oscars, Grammys, Emmys, and Tonys to completely jettison broadcast television. It puts one of the most watched non-NFL broadcasts in the hands of Google. YouTube boasts some 2 billion viewers.
The Academy Awards will stream for free worldwide on YouTube, in addition to YouTube TV subscribers. It will be available with audio tracks in many languages, in addition to closed captioning.
Financial terms were not disclosed.
The Oscars are one of our essential cultural institutions, honoring excellence in storytelling and artistry, said Neal Mohan, chief executive of YouTube. Partnering with the academy to bring this celebration of art and entertainment to viewers all over the world will inspire a new generation of creativity and film lovers while staying true to the Oscars storied legacy.
The Walt Disney Co.-owned ABC has been the broadcast home to the Oscars for almost its entire history. NBC first televised the Oscars in 1953, but ABC picked up the rights in 1961. Aside from a period between 1971 and 1975, when NBC again aired the show, the Oscars have been on ABC.
ABC has been the proud home to The Oscars for more than half a century,” the network said in a statement. “We look forward to the next three telecasts, including the shows centennial celebration in 2028, and wish the Academy of Motion Picture Arts and Sciences continued success.
The 2025 Academy Awards were watched by 19.7 million viewers on ABC, a slight increase from the year before. That remains one of the biggest TV broadcasts of the year, though less than half of Oscar ratings at their peak. In 1999, more than 55 million watched James Cameron’s Titanic win best picture.
The film academy, in choosing YouTube over other options such as Netflix or NBC Universal/Peacock, selected a platform with a wide-ranging and massive audience but one without as much of an established production infrastructure.
Still, more people especially young people watch YouTube than any other streaming platform. According to Nielsen, YouTube accounted for 12.9% of all television and streaming content consumed in November. Netflix ranked second with an 8.3% market share.
Jake Coyle, AP film writer
Gen Z is never beating the unemployable allegations.
For Gen Z, a growing confidence crisis means common workplace interactions are now a major source of anxiety. Working with unfamiliar colleagues, making small talk, using the phone, and waking up early were among the biggest anxieties for young workers, according to new research from Trinity College London.
These fears have also been echoed online.
Can we talk about the fear of having to make a phone call in a dead silent office of cubicles, one TikTok creator recently posted.
When you finally finish sending that email thats been giving you anxiety and they respond with are you free for a quick call? another viral post reads. The trick is to send this email a few minutes before you go home and then you have valid excuse for “not seeing” the response, one commenter suggested.
In two national surveys of 1,538 people aged 16 to 29 across the U.K., 42% said they feel anxious about working with others, 38% find small talk anxiety-inducing, and 30% report phone anxiety. Notably, respondents were more worried about everyday office interactions than about their jobs becoming redundant because of AI.
Presenting work (25%) and accepting criticism (22%) were also major concerns. POV: youre presenting on a work call, but your anxiety thinks youre being hunted for sport, one TikTok creator summed it up.
More than half of respondents (59%) said they find it difficult collaborating with older colleagues. That may be tied to changing office culture and norms. Over half felt that traditional workplace banter can be inappropriate or offensive, while 42% said theyd had a negative interaction with a colleague or boss.
One TikTok creator claimed, Youve never really experienced jealousy until youve worked at a corporation where theres some old coworker who hates you for just being young, skinny and hot. A sentiment echoed by others online.
The poll also found 21% had or were dreading entering the workplace for the first time, while 33% of those already in employment said it was challenging. Starting out at work has never been an easy transition, but shifting workplace norms seem to be dialling up the anxiety for the youngest workers.
(And honestly, many of the things on the list stress out workers of all ages, too.)
So what can employers do to help mitigate the anxiety? Asked what they would change about the workplace, 32% said mental health days should be standard, while 28% would scrap the 9-to-5 in favor of flexible hours.
Early mornings and strict start times, many said, filled them with dread. Am I the only one who contemplates quitting their job when I keep having to wake up early and am really tired one TikTok post read. Or as one creator summed up the general mood: The concept of waking up early (which I hate) to go to work (which I hate) to be there ALL day (which I hate) to get off and go home (which I love) and to have to rinse & repeat literally everyday for the rest of ur life (which I hate).
Concerns about an AI bubble and increased competition are weighing on Nvidia as the stock fell to a three-month low on Wednesday.
Shares of the Santa Clara, California-based company tumbled more than 3% amid a broader decline for those chipmakers that are key to the artificial intelligence boom. Shares of Advanced Micro Devices and Broadcom were also down 4% and 5%, respectively.
In recent weeks, a slew of companies have made moves that could chip away at Nvidias domination as the go-to maker of chips for the AI industry. One such company, MetaX Integrated Circuits of China, debuted an initial public offering on Wednesday and surged nearly 700%.
BEHIND NVIDIAS DECLINE
Once a darling among stock market investors, the hits keep coming for Nvidia lately. Some of its chips are effectively banned in China, while the company has also become a poster child for concerns of a bubble in the AI industry that some investors worry is reminiscent of the dot-com bubble about 25 years ago. In late October, Nvidia became the first stock to be valued at more than $5 trillion.
Even though enthusiasm has cooled since then, some investors still worry that the stock prices of AI-related companies are completely disconnected from reality. And the constant rumblings of skepticism don’t show any sign of letting up as Nvidia has become a popular target for short-sellers.
Some prominent investors who have successful track records of calling other market declines have become vocal critics of the AI boom. Michael Burry and Jim Chanos are both shorting Nvidia stock, meaning they will make money if the price goes down further.
ANALYSTS SIGNAL OPTIMISM
Even so, UBS strategists this week put out a report projecting that global capital expenditure on AI could surge nearly 35% next year to $571 billion. And the bank is projecting further gains through the end of the decade.
We do not see evidence of an investment bubble, Mark Haefele, chief investment officer at UBS Global Wealth Management, wrote in a research note Tuesday, as reported by Barron’s..
As AI adoption expands from consumer chatbots to broader enterprise and industry use cases, we estimate that the required compute capacity could be orders of magnitude greater than todays installed base, Haefele wrote.
What’s more, Bank of America analysts similarly say that the AI boom is still in its early days and has more runway for growth. Nvidia even tops the bank’s recommended list of AI stocks to buy in 2026, according to The Street.
But such positive reports did little to counter the negative sentiment surrounding Nvidia. The stock has tumbled more than 16% in the span of about two months.
In the months following 2023s Writers Guild of America (WGA) and Screen Actors GuildAmerican Federation of Television and Radio Artists (SAG-AFTRA) strikes, film-industry workers adopted a refrain: Survive til 25 — a meager goal reflecting industry reality. The strikes came shortly after the Covid-19 pandemic ground production to a halt. The dream factory had become a nightmare.
The pandemic-inflicted production pause bled workers savings, forcing many to seek income outside the industry. Once work restarted, those who wanted to return to work — grips, camera operators, writers, directors, administrative staff, the Teamsters who ferry cast and crew to film sets — found some of those jobs never came back — the new normal of smaller, leaner Hollywood, had arrived. While union members voted almost unanimously in favor of the twin writers and actors strike, it dragged on, and the industry contraction continued. Two years after the end of those strikes, production is still down.
When news broke that Netflix sought to purchase Warner Bros. Discovery for $83 billion, a deal that includes its sprawling Burbank studio lots, and HBO Max (WBDs cable channels would be spun off into a separate entity), the industrys workers were quick to voice their opposition.
The worlds largest streaming company swallowing one of its biggest competitors is what antitrust laws were designed to prevent, the WGA-West and WGA-East said in a statement urging the deal be blocked. The outcome would eliminate jobs, push down wages, worsen conditions for all entertainment workers, raise prices for consumers, and reduce the volume and diversity of content for all viewers.
The DGA released a similar statement; Director James Cameron frankly warned that the buyout would be a disaster. SAG-AFTRA was slightly more measured. A deal that is in the interest of SAG-AFTRA members and all other workers in the entertainment industry must result in more creation and more production, not less, the union said in a statement.
Netflix CEO Ted Sarandos sees only upside, describing the merger as pro-consumer, pro-innovation, pro-worker as well as pro-creator and pro-growth. Prospects for the streaming giant appear rosy: On Tuesday, Bloomberg reported that WBD is rejecting Paramount Skydances attempt at a hostile takeover, stemming in part from concerns over the deals financing. Netflixs bid, the board believes, still offers greater shareholder value. David Ellison, the CEO of Paramount-Skydance, has tried to assuage criticism of his proposed takeover by stating that a combined Paramount-WBD would have more than 30 theatrical releases per year, a slight increase over the current output of the two studios.
But skepticism among the industrys workers comes from precedent. When companies merge, it means job losses and fewer projects. IATSE, the union of below the line film workerscamera operators and technicians, makeup and costume artists, grips, electricians, and the likenoted the deleterious consequences that follow from such deals in a recent issue of its bulletin.
Unfortunately, when large entities merge, they dont continue producing the same amount of content as when they were two separate companies, the union wrote. (IATSE has not yet commented on the Netflix-WBD deal.)
Bleeding jobs
In April 2020, the Bureau of Labor Statistics recorded a loss of 217,000 jobs in the motion-picture and sound-recording industry — its biggest single-month drop ever. Even as the pandemic receded, production didnt return. FilmLA, a nonprofit set up by the City and County of Los Angeles, found the LA metro area lost nearly 19.7 percent of its share of first-run scripted television projects between 2022 and 2023, one of the largest drops since the organization began tracking the data. The number translates to thousands of lost jobs.
In 2023, workers struck to secure more sustainable wages and benefits and protections against the threats posed by artificial intelligence. But strikes are an economic disruption (indeed, therein lies their power) and studios decision to downsize following the recent ones may prove permanent. A 2025 report from Otis College of Art and Design found that Californias film, television, and sound sector is roughly one-quarter smaller than in 2022. FilmLAs 2025 Q2 report logged 5,394 on-location shoot days, down 6.2 percent from the previous year and more than 30 percent below the five-year average. Productions continue chasing tax incentives abroad (you might be surprised how much unscripted television is shot in Ireland for this reason), further cratering domestic production.
By the end of 2024, the BLS recorded 100,000 jobs in the industry in the greater Los Angeles area, down from 142,000 two years earlier. When one considers freelancers and adjacent industriesthe citys service sector, for instance, is inextricably tied to cinemathe losses are even higher.
There is plenty of evidence to support that contention. When Disney merged with 21st Century Fox in 2021, 3,000 people lost their jobs amid downsizing, delayed or permanently shelved projects. Disney shuttered Blue Sky Studios (best known for the Ice Age franchise) the same year, eliminating 450 animation jobs. WBDs merger with Cartoon Network Studios eliminated axed departments. NBCUniversal, Lionsgate, and Netflix have all carried out company-wide layoffs in recent years.
Ellison, son of billionaire Larry Ellison, laid off 1,000 people at Paramount after purchasing the company earlier this year. The CEO has stated that he plans to reduce the workforce by a further 2,000 — numbers that are sure to weigh on WBD employees minds should Ellisons attempted hostile takeover of WBD succeed.
Uncertain future
The Netflix-WBD deal is expected to face regulatory scrutiny over its potential consequencs for consumers: Netflix is already the leading streaming-video-on-demand (SVOD) company, with 300 million subscribers; adding HBO Max to its base would make that 430 million. Antitrust regulations require investigation for any deal that would allow a single entity to control more than 30 percent of a market; this one would give Netflix a 43 percent share of the SVOD market.
But its not only the potential for subscription price hikes and the continued decimation of the moviegoing experience that are at issue. Worker opposition can also cause the Department of Justice to block the merger, as it did with Penguin Random Houses $2 billion bid to purchase Simon & Schuster. Authors, including Stephen King, testified that the merged super-publisher would mean lower advances for their books, with dire consequences.
A combined Netflix-WBD poses the same risks. A writer or director hoping to get a project greenlit by a studio will have one fewer potential buyer. The megacorporation may ultimately constitute a monopsony employer, able to dictate the standards of employment across the industry by dint of its size. The imperious studio executive declaring Youll never work in this town again! to an underling is a familiar trope in Hollywood; Netflix-WBD executives will hold such power. Fewer companies means fewer people deciding what art you can see, what options the viewer has. It means greater sidelining of visionary work, the type that executives dismiss as too weird, not marketable, or politically inconvenient.Its too soon to say how this will all shake out. Netflix and WBD believe it will take eighteen months to complete the deal and clear all regulatory hurdles. WBD’s rejection of Ellisons counter-bid may not put an end to hish campaign to turn the public and regulators against Netflixs purchase. Yet Ellisons proposed purchase of WBD has its own problems, from its conglomeration of financial backers whose ties to the Trump administration will alarm many in the industry, to its own possible antitrust obstacles.
For Sarandos, Ellison, and WBD CEO David Zaslav, making quality films that pay workers enough to keep them in the industry, is of course, not the goal. Maximizing shareholder value remains the priority. No matter what the executives say, neither potential merger is likely to be good for the worker. And so its up to them to look out for their own — and by extension, film itself. Even in the most unfavorable labor market, there is a power in such clarity of vision.
Last month, Believer Meats was basking in acclaim.
The startup had just secured final U.S. government approval for what it billed as Earths largest cultivated-meat facility, a $125 million complex near Raleigh, North Carolina.
Boosters hailed the plants role in strengthening U.S. competitiveness in the race to grow meat from cellsa sector long dominated by Israel. (Senator Thom Tillis called it a major economic win for the state and region.) Believer Meats CEO Gustavo Burger said he was thrilled about the facilitys opening, calling it a major milestone that would redefine the future of food. Boom, he wrote on LinkedIn, announcing that the company was set to begin commercial production of its flagship lab-grown chicken. Heres to the next chapter!
That chapter lasted roughly two weeks.
Today, the 200,000-square-foot facilitys fancy bioreactors and centrifuges sit quiet. In an all-hands meeting over Microsoft Teams on December 1, a tearful Burger informed staff that Believer was ceasing operations and laying everybody off. The worst day of my career, he told employees, according to people on the call who spoke with me under anonymity so as not to harm their future work prospects.
A major financial backer had pulled out, leaving management scurrying to secure a last-ditch loan, which was also denied. The startup, valued at $600 million in 2021, would be closing shop before putting a single lab-grown chicken strip into a consumers hand. It had just posted an ad for a new plant manager.
[Image: Believer Meats]
It is a stunning collapse for one of the sectors most promising players. Founded by Hebrew University biomedical engineer Yaakov Nahmias, Believer rose on the promise of being the first company to turn cell-based meat into a low-cost commodity. By 2021, it had raised $347 million from giants like Archer Daniels Midland and Tyson Foods.
After opening what it called the worlds first commercial cultured-meat factory in Rehovot, close to Tel Aviv, the company began scouting U.S. sites for a far larger facility. Additional money came from the prominent food investment firm S2G Ventures; Neto Group, one of Israels largest food conglomerates; and Bits x Bites, a Chinese foodtech accelerator. In 2024, Jeff Bezos donated $30 million to help Believer create the North Carolina State University Bezos Center for Sustainable Protein.
This past summer, Believer became the fifth cultured-meat startup to secure a no questions safety letter from the U.S. Food and Drug Administration, putting it alongside Upside Foods, cell-based salmon maker Wildtype, Mission Barns (whose pork meatballs just became the first cultured meat sold in U.S. grocery stores), and Eat Just (which five years ago sold the worlds first cultured chicken, in Singapore).
In September, Believer announced that it had completed the plants construction. The facility boasted a bioreactor that it said would revolutionize animal biomass in the same way Fords assembly line revolutionized automobiles. For phase one of operations, the plant would be able to produce 21 million pounds of chicken per year, at a cost of $8.50 to $10 a pound.
Hundreds of thousands of people could potentially try it, Believers chief product and growth officer Heather Hudson said, making it more accessible not just for a certain demographic, but for most people. Capacity was designed to double, eventually, to 42 million pounds, and Believer claimed that a price point of under $7 per pound was in view.
[Photo: Believer Meats]
Believer Meats comes to an end
The alternative meat protein industry has long operated in a Silicon Valleystyle reality distortion field, one that ignores the stubborn physics of the real world. Eat Just founder Josh Tetrick, who built the eggless mayonnaise brand Just Mayo, told Better Meat Co. founder Paul Shapiro, for his 2018 bestselling book Clean Meat, that Eat JustJust Mayos parent companywould be the worlds largest meat company by the year 2030. A think tank predicted that demand for cow products would fall by 70% by that same year.
Believer had made bold statements of its own, particularly about its own success with reducing costs, the biggest hurdle standing in lab-made meats way. In 2021, Nahmias noted that Believer was cultivating chicken breast for $7.70 per pound, down from $18 six months earliera price decrease that seemed to validate the sectors meteoric hype. It was a massive improvement from 2013, when a team of scientists led by Mark Post, founder of Leonardo DiCaprio-backed Mosa Meat, served the first cultured burger through the help of an eye-popping $330,000 investment from Googles Sergey Brin. At the time, Nahmias called Brins $330,000 hamburger probably the silliest idea Ive ever heard.
Last month, Nahmiass lab published astudy in Nature Food outlining a new method for dividing cow cells that doesnt require gene-editing. Estimating that beef produced this way would cost in the range of $7 to $10 per pound, Nahmias declared it a true eureka moment, overturning decades of assumptions about bovine cell biology.
Believer ran out of cash two weeks later. According to insiders, the company is currently seeking a buyer or some alternative structure that would allow the business to continue in some form. Its unclear if any top level executives remain. But some people in senior management, like chief product and growth officer Heather Hudson, reportedly left Believer just weeks before the layoffs.
Believer employees were not offered severance. Worse, the final pay period passed without them receiving paychecks. By law, employers laying off their workforce with a headcount of at least 100 must either warn employees 60 days in advance, or pay them for 60 additional days.
Interview requests I sent in early December to the Believer communications department and to CEO Gustavo Burger have gone unreturned, including queries about the companys actual headcount at the time of its collapse. Believer had said that the North Carolina facility would employ 100 people, and additional team members worked from its Chicago headquarters. The companys LinkedIn page listed the workforce as being between 50 and 200.
[Photo: Believer Meats]
Big tours and taste tests
Built by Gray Constructiona firm that has handled warehouses for Mercedes-Benz, Caterpillar, and WalmartBelievers North Carolina facility had been in its windup phase, called commissioning in industry-speak. Former employees tell me that the target date for shipping the first finished chicken products to Believers co-packer had been tentatively set for early spring. The initial customers were going to be wholesale restaurant partners.
But the plant reportedly ran into operational issues. Former employees describe glycol leaks, improperly welded pipes, and cooling problems that delayed the timeline by weeks at a time. Believer reportedly hired an outside contractor to fix issues more quickly. Two sources told me that construction delays were a significant obstacle to progress.
In November, Believer held a town hall meeting during which attendees say executives hinted at financial trouble. A funding round deemed mission-critical was underway, they explained; much suddenly seemed to hinge on its success. Former workers say that in recent months, big tours and taste tests had been organized for well-dressed groups of prospective financial suitors.
On December 1, Burger told the staff via Teams that the company was kaput. The evening, an outsider whod been rooting for the companys success reached out to me to share that Believer had closed the plant. A few days later, Gray filed a legal complaint demanding $34 million for the outstanding debt that Believer owes for the facility.
[Image: Believer Meats]
The brutal efficiency of the bird
In the meantime, the faucet that practically gushed money has slowed to a drip. According to the alt-protein trade group Good Food Institute, funding to cultivated-meat companies has shrunk from $1.38 billion in 2021 to just $139 million in 2024. Upside Foods suffered two rounds of layoffs in 2024, and a third major restructuring in March. A decade after also encountering labeling disputes, regulatory setbacks, and other problems with Just Mayo, Eat Just switched the chicken its selling in Singapore to a 3% cultivated chicken, 97% plant-based protein hybrid product, and meanwhile got sued for more than $100 million by bioreactor partner ABEC for unpaid bills. ABEC alleges that Eat Just was woefully undercapitalized from the beginning. Even cultured meats most vocal cheerleader, Paul Shapiro, has staked his company Better Meat Co.s future not on lab-grown cells, but on a complete protein made from mycelium.
Then there is Meati, which by 2025 had secured $400 million in funding and was selling its alt-steaks in 7,000 stores nationwide. It was reportedly headed toward bankruptcy by last spring (after a protracted IP dispute, incidentally, with Better Meat Co.). Yasir Abdulan infomercial entrepreneur who made his fortune selling belts, car dash cams, shoe insoles, and Drain Buddy hair catchers on late-night TVtook control of the company in a fire sale. In a press release, he asserted that when startups and founders bild a brand, they have tunnel vision, but Meati would tap into new growth by harnessing the power of direct-to-consumer sales: As Seen On TV products are available in all major retailers across the world.
And yet cultured-animal players are hardly the only names struggling in alt-meat. Beyond Meat once traded at $230 a share after its 2019 IPO, with a market cap of $14 billion. This summer, CEO Ethan Brown told me that the company was reorienting the brand to highlight vegetables as pure, clean ingredients instead of existing as a sort of not-meatto the point of dropping Meat from the name. But after reporting a $100 million loss for the third quarter of 2025, Beyonds stock price slid to less than $1 a share. In June, Impossible Foods CEO Peter McGuinness warned his company was mulling a burger that was half real beef.
For the past decade, the percentage of Americans identifying as vegetarian and vegan largely hasnt changed. Yet during this same period, spending on plant-based foods doubled, from less than $4 billion in the mid-2010s to more than $8 billion today. The gap is explained by meat eaters behaving like vegans part-time. But this group is less ethically bound to the diet. Externalities like taste, price, and cultural trends can push these consumers back to more conventional meat options. In fact, amid continued inflation, sales of plant-based foods fell in 2024.
Cultured meat, in particular, is crashing into the brutal efficiency of the bird. Chicken is the most common meat to try to cultivate, and the modern broiler chicken is the cheapest form of animal muscle meat. Disruptors like Believer are asking consumers to pay $8 per pound for a product that tastes and looks different, while a rotisserie chicken at Costco costs $4.99.
Meanwhile, mainstream consumers are pursuing natural products more than ever. Food has landed in the crosshairs of a growing cultural pushback against artificial slop. Products that veer into an Uncanny Valley of food are therefore at a special risk.
Impossible Foods CEO McGuinness captured this well at the recent World Economy Summit in October. He acknowledged that the industrys high-concept pitch was becoming a losing proposition and recast the sectors origins as a tactical error. People dont want to eat tech food or climate foodthey just want to eat delicious, nutritious food, he said. Thats what were trying to get back to.
Welcome to exhausted America 2025: Most adults are more than a little fine with doling out cash as gifts, and many plan to be asleep before midnight on New Year’s Eve, according to a new AP-NORC poll.
About 6 in 10 Americans say cash or gift cards are very acceptable as holiday presents, but theyre much less likely to say that about a gift that was purchased secondhand or re-gifted, according to a new poll from The Associated Press-NORC Center for Public Affairs Research.
Cash is OK for the grandkids I guess, said Nancy Wyant, 73, in rural central Iowa. But Im a gift giver.
Come New Year’s Eve, she’ll be fast asleep before 2026 rolls around. At our age, we don’t do anything, the retired bus driver said with a laugh of herself and her live-in partner. Hes set in his ways.
They’ll be joined by the 44% of Americans who say they wont stay up to greet 2026, according to the poll. About half of U.S. adults age 45 or older wont make it to midnight, compared with around one-third of adults under age 45.
Consider 23-year-old Otis Phillips in Seattle, an outlier for his age. He, too, will turn in early. Its one of the holidays that doesnt really feel special to me, said the master’s student.
Most say cash makes an acceptable holiday gift
Cash is a safer gift for younger adults. The poll found about two-thirds of Americans under 45 say cash is a very acceptable holiday gift, compared with 55% of adults age 45 or older.
Everythings too expensive nowadays. And I dont want to go buy a gift for somebody and then it turns out they dont like it. So cash, said Gabriel Antonucci, 26, a ski resort cook in Alaska, about an hour outside of Anchorage.
Most people at least grudgingly accept various gift types, with about 9 in 10 saying cash or gift cards are at least somewhat acceptable and about 6 in 10 saying the same for secondhand gifts and re-gifted items.
Teresa Pedroza, a 55-year-old mom of two adult sons in central Florida, is mostly not on board.
I don’t like it when kids say they want cash, or I should get teenagers gift cards, she said. It kind of takes some of the charm away from gift giving. But she acknowledged reaching for cards a time or two out of convenience.
About three-quarters of adults under age 45 say secondhand gifts are at least somewhat acceptable, compared with about 6 in 10 adults age 45 or older. About 4 in 10 adults age 45 or older say secondhand gifts are somewhat or very unacceptable.
Many keep holiday decor up beyond the new year
It’s not just your pesky neighbors who leave their holiday decorations up into January. About one-third of U.S. adults say theyll leave them up after New Years Day.
Its more common for people to leave their decorations up after the holiday season than to put them up early, according to the poll. About 2 in 10 Americans say they put up holiday decorations before Thanksgiving.
I just had my husband bring down the bins. If we werent expecting company, I wouldnt even bother to decorate, honestly. Im tired of doing that, said Pedroza, the Florida mom of two.
Many will celebrate Christmas Day with sports
About one-quarter of U.S. adults say theyre planning to watch sports on Christmas Day, while only 5% will head for a movie theater.
Men are much likelier than women to say theyll watch sports on Christmas, and older Americans are much more likely than younger Americans to tune in. About 2 in 10 adults under age 45 say they plan to watch sports on Christmas, compared with about 3 in 10 adults age 45 or older.
Phillips does plan to break out his red sweater with the green Christmas tree that one of his grandmothers knitted for him a couple of years ago.
She made all kinds of things for me growing up, he said. This is by far my favorite. Phillips has it in rotation for his part-time job as a grocery checkout clerk.
He’s the outlier once again. Women are much likelier than men to say theyll wear a holiday sweater or accessories.
Gifts for pets and Elf on the Shelf
About 3 in 10 U.S. adults say they will give a gift to their pet this year.
In Iowa, Wyant’s nearly 3-year-old boxer-Great Dane mix named Indy is among them.
She’s a very spoiled dog, Wyant said. Shes got too many toys, so she’s getting treats this year. She loves her treats.
And the red felt elf that parents move around the house every night as a Santa spy to see which kids have been naughty or nice? Only about 1 in 10 U.S. adults say theyll do Elf on the Shelf.
Noooo, Pedroza said when asked if she’d ever done the elf for her kids. My younger son was very well-behaved. I didn’t have to use any kind of tactics.
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The AP-NORC poll of 1,146 adults was conducted Dec. 4-8 using a sample drawn from NORCs probability-based AmeriSpeak Panel, which is designed to be representative of the U.S. population. The margin of sampling error for adults overall is plus or minus 4 percentage points.
By Leanne Italie and Amelia Thomson-Deveaux, Associated Press
Warner Bros. is telling shareholders of the company that it believes a $72 billion buyout offer from Netflix is superior, and to reject a hostile takeover bid from Paramount Skydance.
Paramount went hostile with its bid last week, asking shareholders to reject the deal with Netflix favored by the board of Warner Bros.
Paramount is offering $30 per Warner share, or $77.9 billion, to Netflixs $27.75 per share.
A Warner Bros. merger with either company would alter the landscape in Hollywood and will face intense scrutiny from U.S. regulators as it would impact movie making, consumer streaming platforms, and, in Paramounts case, a major source of news for millions of people.
The competing offers set the stage for combining some of the most beloved entertainment properties. Netflixs vast library includes Stranger Things and Squid Game,” while the much smaller Paramount owns its Hollywood studio and major TV networks like CBS and MTV. Both covet Warner, which owns Warner Bros. Pictures, HBO, and the Harry Potter franchise.
“Whichever media company, if any, ultimately secures (Warner), controls the calculus of the streaming wars and so much more, said Mike Proulx, vice president and research director at research firm Forrester.
Both offers will face regulatory scrutiny, an issue President Donald Trump has already weighed in on.
Here’s what to know about the three players and what the bids mean for the entertainment industry.
A look at the offers
CEO David Zaslav has been seeking offers for Warner Bros. Discovery since at least October, when he said the company might be open to selling all or parts of its business.
Paramount said Monday it had submitted six proposals to Warner over a 12 week period before its offer was rejected in favor of Netflix.
So Paramount decided to go straight to Warner shareholders with a bid it says is worth about $79.9 billion, or $30 per share in cash. Paramount, unlike Netflix, is also offering to buy the cable assets of Warner, and asking shareholders of the company to reject the Netflix bid.
Paramount CEO Larry Ellison said the offer is worth about $18 billion more in cash than the competing cash-and-stock bid from Netflix.
The Paramount deal includes help from investors such as Trumps son-in-law Jared Kushner and funds controlled by the governments of Saudi Arabia and Qatar, according to a regulatory filing.
Netflix is offering a combination of cash and stock valued at $27.75 per Warner share. Its offer values Warner at $72 billion, excluding debt, but it is not bidding on Warner-owned networks such as CNN and Discovery.
Before Paramount’s bid, the Netflix deal was expected to close in the next 12 to 18 months, after Warner completes its previously announced separation of its cable operations.
Competing bids make an eventual deal more likely
Matthew Dolgin, senior equity analyst at research firm Morningstar, said there are still many unknowns, including whether Netflix will now sweeten its bid.
But, he said, a competing offer makes it more likely that Warner will eventually be acquired.
With Paramount now also being involved formally with an offer to shareholders, its even more likely to us that Warner gets acquired, because its no longer a single decision that may or may not hinge on regulatory approval, he said.
Shareholders have until Jan. 8, 2026, to vote on Paramounts tender offer.
Donald Trump weighed in earlier
Another wild card could be President Trump. He already weighed in on the deal, saying that the Netflix offer to buy Warner could be a problem because of the size of the potential size of the audience.
The Republican president said he will be involved in the decision about whether the federal government should approve the deal.
Paramount’s CEO is the son of Oracle founder Larry Ellison, an ally of Trump. Federal regulators under Trump approved Paramounts $8 billion merger with Skydance in July.
Regulatory scrutiny awaits either deal
On the Netflix offer, state or federal regulators could be most concerned about the massive size of a combined Netflix and Warner subscription service, said Morningstar’s Dolgin. Netflix is already the worlds largest streaming service.
That’s less of a concern with the Paramount deal, because its streaming service is smaller and has as smaller international footprint than Netflix. But regulators may raise red flags over the combination of the Paramount and Warner film and television studios, because relatively few of those remain, Dolgin said.
A pattern of media acquisitions
As streaming platforms have matured, more media companies are seeking growth through acquisitions.
Warner Bros. Discovery itself was created in 2022 when U.S. telecom giant AT&T Inc. spun off and then combined its WarnerMedia operations with Discovery Inc.
In 2021, Amazon said it would buy MGM, the movie and TV studio behind James Bond, Legally Blonde and Shark Tank.” Disney bought Fox’s entertainment service in 2019.
Technology always faces this pattern of startups, lots of different players, legacy companies getting in on the action, and then ultimately lots of consolidation, said Forrester’s Proulx. And this is the state that were in right now in the streamng wars saga, and in 2026 well see continued consolidation.
Mae Anderson, AP business writer
China is exploiting partnerships with U.S. researchers funded by the Department of Energy to provide the Chinese military with access to sensitive nuclear technology and other innovations with economic and national security applications, according to a congressional report published Wednesday.
The authors of the report say the U.S. must do more to protect high-tech research and ensure that the results of taxpayer-funded work don’t end up benefiting Beijing. They recommended several changes to better protect scientific research in the U.S., including new policies for the Department of Energy to use when deciding whether to fund work that involves Chinese partnerships.
The investigation is part of a congressional push to raise a firewall blocking U.S. research from boosting China’s military buildup when the two countries are locked in a tech and arms rivalry that will shape the future global order.
Investigators from the House Select Committee on the Chinese Communist Party and the House Committee on Education and the Workforce identified more than 4,300 academic papers published between June 2023 and June of this year that involved collaborations between DOE-funded scientists and Chinese researchers. About half of the papers involved Chinese researchers affiliated with China’s military or industrial base.
Particularly concerning, investigators found that federal funds went to research collaborations with Chinese state-owned laboratories and universities that work directly for Chinas military, including some listed in a Pentagon database of Chinese military companies with operations in the U.S. The report also detailed collaborations between U.S. researchers and groups blamed for cyberattacks as well as human rights abuses in China.
The Energy Department routinely funds advanced research into nuclear energy and the development and disposal of nuclear weaponry, along with a long list of other high-tech fields like quantum computing, materials science and physics. It doles out hundreds of millions of dollars each year for research. The department oversees 17 national laboratories that have led the development in many technologies.
The report followed a number of congressional investigations into federally funded research involving Chinese scientists and researchers. Last year, a report released by Republicans found that partnerships between U.S. and Chinese universities over the past decade had allowed hundreds of millions of dollars in federal funding to help Beijing develop critical technology that could help strengthen its military. Another investigation this year revealed that the Pentagon in a recent two-year period funded hundreds of projects in collaboration with Chinese entities linked to China’s defense industry.
The Energy Department has failed for decades to take steps to ensure the research it funds doesn’t benefit China, the report’s authors found. They made several recommendations to tighten the rules, including a new standardized approach to assessing the national security risks of research, as well as requirements that the department share information about research ties with China with other U.S. government agencies to make it easier to spot problems.
These longstanding policy failures and inaction have left taxpayer-funded research vulnerable to exploitation by Chinas defense research and industrial base and state-directed technology transfer activities, the authors concluded.
The Department of Energy did not immediately respond to questions about the report and its recommendations. A message seeking comment was left with the Chinese Embassy in Washington.
Rep. John Moolenaar, a Michigan Republican who chairs the select committee, said in a statement that the investigation reveals a deeply alarming problem: The Department of Energy failed to ensure the security of its research and it put American taxpayers on the hook for funding the military rise of our nations foremost adversary.
Moolenaar this year introduced legislation aimed at preventing research funding in science and technology and defense from going to collaborations or partnerships with foreign adversary-controlled entities that pose a national security risk.
The legislation cleared the House but failed to advance to become part of the annual sweeping defense policy bill. It was met with strong opposition from scientists and researchers, who argued that the measures were too broad and could chill collaboration and undermine America’s competitive edge in science and technology.
In an October letter, a group of more than 750 faculty members and senior staffers from American universities told congressional leaders overseeing the armed services that the U.S. is in a global competition for talent. They called for very careful and targeted measures for risk management” to address security concerns.
David Klepper and Didi Tang, Associated Press
A private equity firm owned by President Donald Trump’s son-in-law, Jared Kushner, is no longer backing Paramount’s hostile acquisition bid for Warner Bros. Discovery, the firm confirmed Tuesday.Days after Warner agreed to be bought by Netflix in early December, Paramount launched a rival bid that seeks to bypass Warner’s management and appeal directly to its shareholders with more money. Paramount is offering $30 per Warner share to Netflix’s $27.75.Warner, one of the “big five” Hollywood studios, owns Warner Bros. Pictures, HBO, the DC Comics universe and the Harry Potter franchise. Experts say its acquisition could supercharge the winning company and reshape the streaming wars, either by catapulting Netflix further ahead of top competitors or by cementing a new power player in Paramount.Paramount, which is significantly smaller than Netflix, said its decision to circumvent Warner’s top managers came after they “never engaged meaningfully” with several earlier offers by the company.Paramount made the details of its new offer public and gave Warner shareholders an option to tender their shares selling them directly at a set price in support of its bid. The company is offering to buy Warner’s entire portfolio, including cable networks like CNN that Netflix excluded from its bid.In its appeal to shareholders, Paramount argued its offer may be more likely to pass regulatory scrutiny from the Trump administration.The president has said the Warner and Netflix deal “could be a problem” due to the size of the combined market share.Kushner’s decision to pull his firm’s financial backing takes away a possible Paramount advantage to win over Trump. The amount Kushner’s Affinity Partners was contributing to the offer was not disclosed in Paramount’s latest SEC filings.“With two strong competitors vying to secure the future of this unique American asset, Affinity has decided no longer to pursue the opportunity,” the firm said in a statement. “The dynamics of the investment have changed significantly since we initially became involved in October. We continue to believe there is a strong strategic rationale for Paramount’s offer.”Paramount’s bid is still backed by wealth funds run by three governments in the Persian Gulf, widely reported as Saudi Arabia, Abu Dhabi and Qatar.Paramount, which owns which owns CBS, MTV and the streaming service Paramount+, is newly headed by David Ellison, the son of a major Trump donor. But Trump has recently criticized the Ellisons for his treatment by CBS News’ “60 Minutes.”“If they are friends, I’d hate to see my enemies!” Trump said Tuesday on Truth Social.Warner is reviewing Paramount’s offer and is expected to tell shareholders soon whether it’s a better deal than selling to Netflix.
Hannah Schoenbaum, Associated Press
