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Shares in Alphabet Inc (Nasdaq: GOOG), the company better known as Google, are rising again in premarket trading today. The stock is currently up by more than 4% following yesterday’s rise of 6.2%. If those gains hold, Google could be set to become the worlds next company with a $4 trillion market cap today. Heres what you need to know. Why are GOOG shares rising? Shares in Alphabet have had a stellar run as of late. Yesterday, they rose more than 6.2%. Over the past five days, they have been up more than 11.5%. Over the past month, they have jumped more than 22%. And over the past six months, they have been up more than 87%. And thats before todays further 4% gain in premarket trading. So why is Alphabet’s share price jumping recently, particularly over the past week? Theres one big reason: artificial intelligence. But the companys boost from AI is the result of two different factors. The first: Last week, Google released Gemini 3, its proprietary AI chatbot and LLM. Industry watchers and consumers have widely praised the model for its speed, performance, and capabilities, which, in many tests, have outperformed OpenAIs ChatGPT-5. Gemini 3s capabilities and Googles decision to quickly integrate it into Search helped spur the stock higher last week. But that isnt the only AI boost Google that has gotten recently. On Monday, the Information reported that Facebook owner Meta is considering using Googles AI chips in its data centers in 2027a deal that could be worth billions to Google. Googles AI chips are the companys tensor processing units (TPUs). Googles TPUs have been around for nearly eight years now, but, as CNBC noted, the company has recently begun designing them to handle AI tasks with efficiency in mind. Meta is one of the largest buyers of components that go into AI infrastructure, and Nvidia is the leading provider in supplying AI chips. If Meta is considering opting for Googles TPUs over Nvidias AI chips, it suggests the company has confidence that Googles chips are more than suitable for powering its data centers. If thats the case, Google could be set to become a serious competitor to Nvidia in the AI hardware race. Indeed, Google investors seem to be celebrating that this morning. Fast Company reached out to Google and Meta for comment. Google could become the next $4 trillion company As of yesterdays market close, Alphabet had a market cap of roughly $3.84 trillion, making it the third-most valuable company after Nvidia and Apple, both of which are currently valued at more than $4 trillion. But already in premarket trading this morning, GOOG shares have risen by more than 4%. The companys share price needs to rise by just under 5% over yesterdays close to reach a market cap of $4 trillion. If it does that, Google would become just the fourth company to ever reach that milestone, following Nvidia, Microsoft, and Apple. (Microsofts valuation has currently sunk back below $4 trillion). Given that Googles stock price is already up around 4% in premarket this morning, it’s possible, but not guaranteed, that the search giant could cross the $4 trillion market cap before markets close today. Google is the best-performing Magnificent 7 stock of the year so far Google hasnt had just a great run as of late. When you look back at the companys stock price performance since 2025 began and compare it to the other companies in the Magnificent 7, Google is far and away the best-performing stock in the group so far this year. As of yesterdays closing price of $318.47 per share, GOOG shares were up over 87% since the year began. Heres how that compares to the other Magnificent 7 stocks: Alphabet Inc. (Nasdaq: GOOG): up 87.79% year to date (YTD) NVIDIA Corporation (Nasdaq: NVDA): up 35.94% YTD Microsoft Corporation (Nasdaq: MSFT): up 12.46% YTD Apple Inc. (Nasdaq: AAPL): up 10.18% YTD Meta Platforms, Inc. (Nasdaq: META): up 4.70% YTD Tesla, Inc. (Nasdaq: TSLA): up 3.45% YTD Amazon.com, Inc. (Nasdaq: AMZN): up 3.14% YTD Investors will be keenly watching where Googles stock price goes from here. Its impossible to predict which direction that will be, but as of this writing, GOOG is so far the clear winner as far as stock price gains go among the Magnificent 7 in 2025.
Category:
E-Commerce
After entrepreneur Brynn Putnam sold her smart fitness company, Mirror, to Lululemon for $500 million in 2020, she was looking for her next big idea. It was the middle of the pandemic, and Putnam was living with five kids ranging in age from 2 to 21. She says she often found herself dreaming of an activity that would get her whole family to sit down and connect with each other. Brynn Putnam [Photo: Board] When we played games, we were either playing board games like Candyland, so that the littlest ones could participate, or we would try to play video games, but the teenagers who’ve logged a lot of hours on sort of modern controllers would always smoke us, Putnam says. There was a missing product: one that could give you the tactile feel of physical pieces and the face-to-face interaction of sitting around a shared experience, but with the interactivity of video games. Enter Board, Putnams newest venture. Board is a 24-inch game console that looks a bit like a gigantic iPad. Its function, though, is unlike pretty much any other device on the market: Board combines the setup and feel of a traditional board game with the digital screen of a video game, allowing players to use physical pieces on top of an interactive screen. [Image: Board] The console comes with 12 exclusive games and can accommodate up to 10 players in a team setting. It debuted on October 28 for a holiday price of $499, though its standard cost is $699. While the Board team wouldn’t share sales data, they did note that the product already surpassed initial forecasts. To make Boards premise work, Putnams team designed its own custom hardware and software that can identify different kinds of touch, withstand rough play and spills, and react in real time to players movements. For Putnam, Board represents an entirely new way to use tech; rather than isolating its users, Board is built to provide a social experience. [Photo: Board] How Board built a brand-new kind of game Creating Board started with one major hurdle, says Ryan Measel, the companys chief technology officer: Most touchscreens are only built to recognize 10 fingersand theyre certainly not designed to recognize objects. Board needed to identify not only an unlimited number of fingers, but also the consoles 49 unique game pieces. Measel explains that, with commercial platforms like Android and iOS, theres a programming layer that limits how many touch pointslike taps and swipesa developer can build into an application. With Board, Measels team built a custom driver that gave them full access to the consoles sensor array, opening up essentially endless possibilities for different interactions with the screen. [Photo: Board] Specifically, the Board screen is able to determine whats touching it (and how) through an embedded AI model thats been trained on the systems sensory outputs. It knows, for instance, how to distinguish between a hand accidentally brushing the board, a finger tapping the screen, and an arm passing over the board. It can also tell the difference between all 49 of the consoles game pieces using conductive traces, or unique patterns made out of a conductive material, that are etched onto the bottom of every piece. 30 fingers on the Board during the testing process. [Image: Board] Alongside the Boards unique ability to distinguish touch, Putnam says, a top concern was the consoles durabilityespecially given that some of its games are designed to be enjoyed by players as young as six. The device comes with a spill-resistant gasket around the display and a tight internal structure to keep it safe from liquids and bumps. My littlest one is 2, so she tends to use everything as a weapon, Putnam says. We have some great photos and videos from the testing process at the factory of te Board being submerged underwater, dropped from very high heights, and scratched multiple times. [Image: Board] How Board works When users receive their Board, the device comes with 12 games made specifically for the console, as well as unique pieces tailored to each game. Seth Sivak, Boards chief creative officer and former CEO of the game studio Proletariat, led game development. He says the consoles portfolio of games was carefully crafted specifically to offer something for all different kinds of players. [Photo: Board] The options run the gamut from 60-second-long arcade-inspired games to an escape room-themed experience that can take up to 90 minutes to complete. Even within the games themselves, players of different ages and skill levels can find roles appropriate to themlike in the chef-inspired game Chop Chop, where the kind of utensil game piece chosen by each participant determines their role in the kitchen. [Image: Board] The 2 year old can be the sponge and feel a lot of joy cleaning the kitchen, but it’s very simple and intuitive for them to do, Putnam says. The grown-up can be in charge of managing the order tickets as they come in and strategizing about how to navigate the changing kitchen layout, recipes, and tickets. I think thats really hard to dothere’s not a ton of experiences that really make sure everyone has a seat at the table. Right now, Sivak and his team are working to build out Boards IP into additional games. At the same time, Putnam says the company is working on making its software development kit available to external developers in order to bring existing games into the Board universe. [Photo: Board] Board is combining the old-school nostalgia of game night with all the advantages of digital gamingand it might just be a hit for everyone in the family. I think for a lot of parents, myself included, you don’t want to pretend like technology doesn’t exist, because technology makes things betterBoard does the rule maintenance for you, it does the score keeping, it does all these things, Putnam says. But you don’t want technology to remove social interaction. It’s important that the screen brings people together. It doesn’t replace your friends or your family, it doesn’t replace your teacher, but it helps make those experiences more rich.
Category:
E-Commerce
In his new book Ding Dong: How Ring Went from Shark Tank Reject to Everyones Front Door, Ring founder Jamie Siminoff pulls back the curtain on the chaotic, often absurd reality of building one of the most recognizable consumer tech brands of the last decade. The following excerpt captures one of the books most pivotal moments: the high-stakes, borderline-reckless gamble to secure the name Ring.com, a decision that nearly emptied the companys bank account, tested the patience of his investors, and set the stage for a brand that would soon reshape home security. eBay.com. Half.com. Cars.com. Shop.com. Toys.com. And yes, Nest.com. So many great four-letter domain names. And I wanted one: Ring.com. The owner of the URL was willing to part with it for 2 million bucks. That represented a massive chunk of the money my VCs were about to give me. Neither they, nor a couple of my seasoned tech friends who had experience with overpriced domain names, thought it was a great use of my new capital. Nor did the fellow who ran the mezcal company on the other side of the wall of our Santa Monica office. Youre going out of business! Your doorbell doesnt work! Its just a name! he yelled at me in the parking lot as I walked to my car one evening. On one hand, I wanted to yell back that he didnt know what he was talking about; on the other, I wondered if he was right and I was making a huge mistake. I also wondered where his anger at me was coming from, but realized hed probably heard some of my own raging through the walls. Youre going to spend all that money on a stupid name?! he barked.Another doubter wondered, Jamie, does it really have to be four letters? Whats so special about four letters? Yes, it had to be Ring. When Id come up with my voice message-to-email transcription service, I first called it Simulscribe, and it stagnated. When I changed the name to PhoneTag.com, we got a burst of interest. Names matter. I had once thought they shouldntall that mattered was having a quality product with an easy-to-understand benefit, a great customer experience, and a fair price. Turns out, the name matters. I would not make that mistake again with the doorbell. Soon enough, there would be lots of video-doorbell competitors whose products might be almost as good as ours when we launched F5. So the way to separate ourselves from the competition was brand. A mission as big as reducing crime in neighborhoods deserved a brand. That brand deserved a great name. For some totally unfathomable and fortunate reason, this URL owner showed zero curiosity about the individual or company that was trying to buy his name. In our exchanges, it seemed almost as if he was unfamiliar with the internet, which was particularly weird for someone who harvested domain names. I got the sense that for some time he had overplayed his hand, consistently valuing the URL higher than the market did. Which happens. Maybe he had tried to sell it during the dot-com boom for $10 million and it was worth only five then. Or maybe I was the one being played, and he knew exactly how much a perfect four-letter domain name could fetch, certainly way more than Id paid to own SlowDownAsshole.com ($15). My friend Diego Berdakina brilliant entrepreneur, USC professor, and the single smartest person I knowurged me, explicitly, to not pay a cent more than $100k for Ring.com. I explicitly did not tell him the owners starting price. First, I got the owner to knock the price down from $2 million to $1 million, but that was still an insane amount of up-front cash for a struggling startup to just light on fire, a full third of what I was getting from True Ventures. I had to figure a way to own the name without bankrupting our companywould the owner be interested in equity instead of cash? No. Wow. Clearly he hadnt read about Googles recent multibillion-dollar acquisition of Nest. I made one last offer for slightly under $1 million. Nope. One mill. We set a closing date. I forgot one thing, though. I didnt have the money. The morning of the closing, I called the owner. Listen, Im in the parking lot of my company and Im so embarrassed. The bad news is my board wont let me buy the name, full price today, for what I previously offered you. It was not a lie. I had a board. The only detail I left out was that the board was just me. Wow, said the owner. Thats a dirty thing your board did. Tell me about it. Worse than dirty. Disgusting. Im very upset. I hear you, brother. Me, too. I went on a bit. I doubled down about what a bunch of assholes my board were being. But the good news is Im authorized to deposit one hundred seventy-five thousand dollars in your account, todayI had $187,000 in the bank; the VC investments had not yet closedand the additional eight hundred twenty-five thousand paid in installments over two years, for a total of one million dollars. He lost his shit. He unleashed a string of four-letter words very different from Ring and eBay and Half. Effing this, mother-effing that. The connection dropped. Hed hung up. Damn, I thought. Had I overplayed my hand? Fifteen minutes later, I got an email from him. Wire the money. He included his bank information. He never asked who was on the board. Never asked what we did. I hope I would have, in his shoes. Maybe when youre offered a million bucks overall, with $175k coming that day, you just want to get it over with as quickly as possible. I called my friend Adam dAugellithe young VC at True who had been my biggest championto boast what a great deal I had cut, that Id essentially just saved us so much money. He wasnt quite ready for high-fives; their investment was about to close, and already a significant chunk of it was gone because I had a jones for a great four-letter domain name. Adam was fully Team Siminoff but, as Id done with others, I was not making it easy for him. Ring.com. What a great sound. As sweet as the three-toned jingle the doorbell made.
Category:
E-Commerce
You’re probably winding down from work and getting ready for a few days at home with your family. But anybody with caregiving responsibility knows that the Thanksgiving and Christmas breaks will not be relaxing. Since the United States does not have a federal policy that gives workers paid time off after giving birth, having a medical procedure, or to care for a loved one, many will cram this labor into their precious holiday time. Many of us have a colleague who will come back to work exhausted after spending time with a dying parent, having taken advantage of the time off from work to figure out hospice and funeral arrangements. Or one who will be caring for a sibling or spouse who is recovering from surgery or managing a terminal illness. And then there are parents who will spend the week taking care of infants and toddlers while daycare is closed. Many women, who bear the brunt of this caregiving, have found it impossible to balance work and taking care of loved ones. From January to August 2025, an estimated 455,000 women left the workforce, often because they had to care for children and aging parents. This isnt just bad for those who are giving up their income; its bad for the U.S. economy, which is losing productive workers. [Image: Paid Leave for All] Starting today, Paid Leave for All, a nonprofit fighting for the government to pass paid family and medical leave for all working people, is drawing attention to the way the lack of paid leave hurts American workers. Its encouraging people to post out-of-office messages that reflect how theyre using their holidays to care for family members since theyre not granted any other time to do so. The organization will be displaying these real out-of-office messages in prominent places. There will be a scrolling mosaic of messages in the New York and Washington, D.C., airports throughout this week, which happens to be the busiest travel week of the year. These messages will also be posted on a billboard in Times Square. On social media, the organization is encouraging everyday people to post their out-of-office messages publicly. After the break, when Congress returns from their recess, Paid Leave for All will deliver these messages to lawmakers and argue for the importance of passing paid leave. Out-of-office messages tend to be generic and polite. Some companies even mandate what employees post. Dawn Huckelbridge, founding director of Paid Leave for All, says that in many ways, these messages obscure the real story of workers’ lives. “The messages are designed to sound like people are getting a break from work,” she says. “But in fact, there is a lot of labor going on during these periods out of the office.” With this campaign, Paid Leave for All invites everybody to post out-of-office messages that more accurately reflect what theyre doing when away from their desk. They may say things like: “Thanks for your message! I’m OOO because my mom is having surgery. But like so many Americans, I don’t have any paid leave so I will be back on Monday.” Or: “Thanks for your note! I’m OOO because my parents are getting older and I can’t manage their Rx and 500 unread emails at once. In-home care is $60K and I have limited PTO. Will get back to you ASAP!” Most workers feel like they cant publicly share how overwhelmed they are by their caregiving responsibilities, because it might suggest that they’re not competent. But Huckelbridge hopes that by encouraging people to openly discuss these issues through their out-of-office messages, it will reveal that there is actually a systemic problem in the U.S., which is the only developed country with no national paid family and medical leave policy. “There’s a crisis in the workplace that people are not talking about,” she says. “We’ve had one of the steepest declines in women’s participation in the workplace, partly because these women are burnt out from working full-time jobs while bearing the brunt of caregiving.” After the Thanksgiving holiday weekend, Huckelbridge will deliver the messages to Congress. “It is unlikely that a Republican Congress will pass these laws,” she says. “But we’re playing the long game here. And it’s encouraging to see that more and more Republicans are recognizing how valuable paid leave is for workers and the economy.”
Category:
E-Commerce
Chris was frustrated. Hed used Artificial Intelligence (AI) extensively in college. Now at his first job, he saw very few of his colleagues ever experimenting with it. At first, Chris tried bringing up AI conversationally. He mentioned creating a meal schedule, as well as planning a cool weekend trip itinerary. But when he suggested to his manager how they might want to incorporate AI into their workflow, he felt rebuffed. Chris isnt alone. As the first group of highly experienced AI users is starting work, they have experience with AI. However, they lack the credibility and subject matter expertise to transform workflows. Championing change management initiatives (especially those involving new technology) can be an uphill battle, but the following can help you enter the AI-conversation with your colleagues. 1. Understand the cultural reticence about AI in your organization A lot of experienced experts have real, valid concerns that AI will replace their expertise. Recent stats suggest that almost a quarter of workers feel AI could make their job obsolete, while almost half see that it will change their job significantly over the next few years. So its important to first take some time to have conversations with your team, to ask them about their experiences and concerns when it comes to. Heres a starting list of curious questions you can ask to get a better sense of where your group is currently: What have you heard about others using AI at work? Have you used AI yet (personally or professionally)? If so, what has most impressed you about AIs abilities? Was there anything you found particularly frustrating in your AI experiments? What most worries you about AI at work? Once you understand your manager and colleagues overall stance on AI, the next step is to talk to them about potential small next steps they could take using AI. Ask them what frustrates them at work, then zero in on one part of one workflow that feels most wasteful to people in your group. Offer an AI workaround for that part. Once you have an AI-inspired project, the next step is to help increase your groups own comfort with using AI. 2. Host an AI lunch and learn at work It can be hard for many at work to admit they dont understand some of the newer technologies. Also, the less people experiment with AI, the less likely they are to see its true potential. Consider offering a fun learning activity where you can demo the potential of AI. As a bonus, reach out to some of your AI-savvy colleagues to design and launch the training. This demonstrates to management youre willing to design and lead projects. It also shows that you can collaborate with your peers in a productive way, and that youre committed to adding value to your workplace with new technology. Here are a few things you can incorporate into your AI session: Bring a list of prompts that people can use to get started on how to interact with the AI interface. One of the hardest barriers for new users to overcome with AI can be how to start the conversation with this blank screen. Split the group into smaller working groups to use AI to design a logo for a company product or service. You might want to think about prizes for originality and the groups top-rated logo. You can provide key objectives for a real or imagined team off-site and have small groups work together with AI to design an agenda that people in the group agree would be helpful. These outputs can also be useful for your next team meeting. 3. Bring your manager into some of your AI-aided problem-solving sessions You might need to get your managers full buy-in before they are open to inviting others to an AI training. As noted earlier, the more people experience AI, the more they can picture it in their workstreams. To do this, when there is a piece of your work that requires brainstorming with your manager, ask if you can bring your laptop and connect it to a visible screen to incorporate AI into your brainstorming session while giving your manager a sense of how AI contributes. AI brings some great out-of-the-box thinking and endless ideas that can often help teams generate more innovative answers as a result. Another easy-to-try strength of AI is as a meeting notetaker. See if your manager would agree to a pilot test of AI team meeting summaries for a few months. That could give your whole team a sense of AIs capacity to summarize the main points and generate key next steps that help all attendees. It can even offer key insights to those who were absent. A move towards an AI-enabled workplace In the end, Chris decided to cautiously bring ChatGPT to his meetings. First, he used it as a notetaker and distributed the notes afterwards, which the team found beneficial. Then, whenever his teammates engaged in a brainstorm, he enlisted AIs help and shared AI-generated suggestions with his group. Within a few months, more of his colleagues were experimenting with AI, and his manager would regularly enlist Chriss help to figure out how the company could use AI to lighten the teams administrative load. Whether you decide to try one of these three steps, its important to recognize that moving to an AI-enabled workplace can be a cultural shift. And of course, AI is still evolving. It can hallucinate and it can lie. Thats why its better to go slow when approaching these types of transitions. You dont want to force change on someone, or a team, whos just not there yet. For AI to provide the benefits that it can bring, you need your whole teams buy-in. Your team might be the tortoise, not the hare, in this AI race, but you can still powerfully influence their journey and build momentum in your organization to take advantage of whats ahead.
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E-Commerce