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Physical AI sounds like a contradiction in terms. A computer, but a body?But for the marketing architects, it’s the latest term of art, a buzzword meant to point us citizens toward a bright and promising technological future.Back here on earth, the term is maybe most useful as a way to understand how automotive companies are thinking about themselves right now: as tech pioneers. It’s also a handy shortcut to understanding how appetizing the automotive industry is for the companies that make chips—what could be a $123 billion opportunity by 2032, up some 85 percent from 2023. The giant CES consumer…
Brands Spent More than $1B on Celebrities in Ads Last Year Getty Images Celebrities are playing a bigger role in advertising than ever before.Brands are significantly increasing their investment in celebrity talent in ads even as they consolidate their number of commercial productions, according to a new report from XR (Extreme Reach), an ad operations and talent payment platform.The XR State of Pay report analyzed thousands of U.S. commercial productions and talent payments worth $8 billion between 2019 and 2025. It found that total spending on paid guarantees (contractually committed compensation) for celebrities including actors, musicians, athletes, and other high-profile talent…
You might think it’s pretty weird to hear the founders of a VR company and a social media platform publicly complaining about how things used to be better back in the dial-up days. Nevertheless, that is what happened at CES on Wednesday, when Oculus creator Palmer Luckey and Reddit co-founder Alexis Ohanian gave a joint talk about the joys of “tech nostalgia.” Luckey, who initially made his fortune in VR and now runs the defense contractor Anduril, and Ohanian both seemed to agree: Stuff was better in the old days. The catch, however, is that Luckey and Ohanian weren’t really…
Skullcandy headphones aren’t always the sharpest tools in the proverbial shed, but they do have cool looks and have affordable price tags, and that gets even better with these Skullcandy promo codes on a few of the brand’s top products. If you’re after a pair of in-ear, open-ear, or over-ear headphones, Skullcandy has cut prices on several of its headphones, making now a decent time to buy. Plus, make sure you check out our Skullcandy coupons above for even more savings.Experience Immersive Sound With 47% Off Skullcandy Crusher Evo HeadphonesRight now, you can get nearly half off (47% off) Skullcandy…
AI research lab Anthropic continues to land sizable enterprise deals. Its latest entails bringing its large language models to a legacy German insurance giant. Anthropic on Friday announced a deal with Munich, Germany-based global insurance conglomerate Allianz to bring “responsible AI” to the insurance industry. The parties declined to share financial terms of the deal. The partnership is made up of three specific initiatives. The first is making Claude Code, Anthropic’s AI-powered coding tool, available to all of Allianz’s employees. Anthropic and Allianz will also build custom AI agents for Allianz employees that can execute multi-step workflows with a human…
Since 2018, a group of researchers from around the world have crunched the numbers on how much heat the world’s oceans are absorbing each year. In 2025, their measurements broke records once again, making this the eighth year in a row that the world’s oceans have absorbed more heat than the years before.The study, which was published Friday in the journal Advances in Atmospheric Science, found that the world’s oceans absorbed an additional 23 zettajoules’ worth of heat in 2025, the most in any year since modern measurements began in the 1960s. That’s significantly higher than the 16 additional zettajoules…
OpenAI is kicking off the new year with yet another acqui-hire. The AI giant is acquiring the team behind Convogo, a business software platform that helps executive coaches, consultants, talent leaders, and HR teams automate and improve leadership assessments and feedback reporting. An OpenAI spokesperson said the company is not acquiring Convogo’s IP or technology, but rather hiring the team to work on its “AI cloud efforts.” The three co-founders — Matt Cooper, Evan Cater, and Mike Gillett — will join OpenAI as part of what a source familiar with the matter called an all-stock deal. Convogo’s product will be…
Major wireless carriers: A necessary evil if you travel a lot, have a family, or are just interested in coverage that’s reliably consistent and widespread. AT&T is the third-largest provider in the US (first for 5G), with the largest coverage map. I’ve had various AT&T plans for more than a decade, first for just myself and now for my whole family, even though I only get one cell bar at my house and have to stand in one 5-square-foot patch of yard to make a phone call. And have lost entire days of my life to fighting unexpected random charges…
CES is always chock-full of robots, and this year electronics giant LG announced a new bot, dubbed CLOid, that it claims will revolutionize household chores (as in, you won’t have to do them anymore). CLOid is described as an AI-powered home robot, designed to assist its user with a wide variety of domestic tasks — from folding laundry to making breakfast to patrolling a home for signs of trouble. The company says that, eventually, it envisions the device “evolving into an ambient-care agent that supports everyday life.” The bot was announced during LG’s keynote earlier this week, but it was also available…
In the game known as the streaming wars, Disney+ came out swinging, bringing with it a massive library of movies and TV shows—with new ones being added all the time. Watched everything on Netflix? Disney+ has a seemingly endless selection of Marvel movies and plenty of Star Wars and Pixar fare too. Problem is, there’s so much stuff that it’s hard to know where to begin. WIRED is here to help. Below are our picks for the best films on Disney+ right now.For more viewing ideas, try our guides to the best films on Netflix, the best films on Amazon…
Creative scrappiness can take brands where no one else has ever gone before — that’s BodyArmor’s story, and we’re diving deep into it on the latest episode of the Marketing Vanguard podcast. Tune in as the brand’s CMO, Tom Gargiulo, opens up his playbook on succeeding as a challenger brand, from how to build winning athlete partnerships and leverage unconventional media channels for outsized ROI to executing a brand rebirth that resonates with both consumers and retail partners. What you’ll learn: How to build a disruptor/ challenger brand positioning in a saturated category Why athlete-first partnerships outperform big-budget league deals if you’re…
Data security startup Cyera continues on a growth tear. On Thursday, it announced a $400 million Series F funding round at a $9 billion valuation. The New York-based outfit has now raised over $1.7 billion. This funding comes just six months after the previous $540 million round at a $6 billion valuation. The new round was led by funds managed by Blackstone with participation from existing investors including Accel, Coatue, Lightspeed, Redpoint, Sapphire, Sequoia, and others. Cyera offers what it calls data security posture management, a service that helps companies map out where all their sensitive data lives across cloud…
Jonathan Ross, the Immigration and Customs Enforcement officer identified by multiple news outlets as the federal agent who shot 37-year-old Renee Good in Minneapolis on Wednesday, is a veteran deportation officer in ICE’s Enforcement and Removal Operations division, according to sworn testimony from the federal district court in Minnesota obtained by WIRED. A member of a Special Response Team, ICE’s version of a SWAT team, he’s had duties as a firearms trainer and led teams drawn from multiple federal agencies including the FBI, Ross testified.The testimony stems from a December 2025 trial related to a June incident with parallels to…
5 Things the Ad Industry Can’t Stop Talking About at CES 2026 Thousands gathered in Las Vegas this week for the industry’s buzziest tech conference.CES This story was originally published in AI, Tech & Money, a free, weekly newsletter covering the key themes shaping Big Tech, adtech, and artificial intelligence. You can sign up for it here.Most people at CES profess to hate Las Vegas (myself included) but then proceed to indulge in many of the city’s vices and delights (myself included). Which makes sense that the altogether resounding feeling of the event this week has been overarching uncertainty. There are more…
Digital teams today have more tools than ever before. There is a platform for every channel, a system for every workflow, and a service for every new idea. At first, this feels like progress. Each tool promises speed, efficiency, or autonomy. Over time, though, these decisions begin to add up. What once felt empowering can slowly turn into a complex web of disconnected systems that drain time and energy from the teams meant to be driving growth. This quiet accumulation of platforms and providers is what we call digital fragmentation. It often happens unintentionally, but the consequences are hard to…
CES 2026 is in full swing in Las Vegas, with the show floor open to the public after a packed couple of days occupied by press conferences from the likes of Nvidia, Sony, and AMD and previews from Sunday’s Unveiled event. As has been the case for the past two years at CES, AI is at the forefront of many companies’ messaging, though the hardware upgrades and oddities that have long defined the annual event still have their place on the show floor and in adjacent announcements. We’ll be collecting the biggest reveals and surprises here, though you can still catch the spur-of-the-moment reactions and thoughts from…