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Dos Equis’ Most Interesting Man in the World is back from retirement, and he’s thirsty for adventure. Meanwhile, Taco Bell is serving Baja Blast in champagne flutes, because who says you can’t feel luxurious in a drive-thru? And in perhaps the most delightfully twisted campaign of the week, Jet-Puffed tortures adorable marshmallow characters. Elsewhere, Babybel leans into its small status with miniature vinyl records, Panda Express tugs heartstrings with a Lunar New Year animation, and Hershey’s returns to the spotlight just in time for Olympic gold.Plus, our Most Effective Ad of the Week, in partnership with EDO, shows how AI can improve…
An ongoing Microsoft outage is preventing enterprise customers from accessing email inboxes, files, meetings, and other Microsoft cloud services. The technology giant said in a post on X around 2:30 p.m. ET that the outage was caused by a “portion of service infrastructure in North America that is not processing traffic as expected.” Microsoft didn’t provide specific details of the cause of the outage, but said it was “working to restore the infrastructure to a healthy state to achieve recovery.” Microsoft said on its status page that the outage affects its Exchange Online email service, searching files within SharePoint Online…
I first encountered the Freecash app after clicking on a sponsored TikTok video with dubious claims. The advertisement didn’t promote this app by name, rather it showed a young woman expressing her excitement about seemingly getting hired by TikTok at $35 an hour to watch videos on her “For You” page.When I tapped the link to “order now,” it sent me to a website with TikTok and Freecash logos, featuring a download link for the Freecash app. “Get paid to scroll,” read the site. “Join thousands earning daily by watching TikTok videos and cashing out instantly.”In the first month of…
The creators of the open source project vLLM have announced that they transitioned the popular tool into a VC-backed startup, Inferact, raising $150 million in seed funding at an $800 million valuation. The round was co-led by Andreessen Horowitz and Lightspeed Venture Partners, confirming TechCrunch’s earlier reporting that vLLM has raised capital from a16z. Inferact’s debut mirrors the recent commercialization of the SGLang project as RadixArk, which sources told us secured capital at a $400 million valuation led by Accel, as we reported on Wednesday. As the focus in AI shifts from training models to deploying them in applications, a…
On the hunt for new smart plugs to upgrade your home automation? One of our favorite picks, the Meross MSS110 Smart Plug Mini, is currently marked down on Amazon. The 2-pack is discounted from $34 to $27, and the 4-pack is down to $34 from its usual price of $52. These plugs help add smart functionality to otherwise dumb devices around your home, like lamps or fans, so they can be included in your routines.MerossMSS110 Smart Wi-Fi Plug MiniThe biggest advantage these smart plugs have over other options in our roundup is compatibility. They’re primarily designed for use with Apple…
There’s a feeling of schadenfreude in Silicon Valley when a unicorn stumbles. So when the WSJ broke the news Thursday afternoon that Capital One will acquire Brex for $5.15 billion in cash and stock (Capital One issued an official release confirming the details 30 minutes later), you could practically hear the collective snickering from Sand Hill Road to San Francisco’s South Park. That figure represents less than half of Brex’s last private-market valuation of $12.3 billion from its 2022 Series D-2 round. Before everyone sharpens their knives, consider that for the VCs who backed Brex at its outset, the sale…
Florida-based pet food and product online retailer Chewy has been around for less than 15 years but has quickly become a popular source for everything pet-related. Chewy even has supplies for farm animals, reptiles, fish, and more, carrying over 3,500 brands, including everything from food to medicine to toys. My cat is constantly throwing up (same) and requires Hill’s Sensitive Skin and Stomach, which costs roughly as much as my car insurance every month. I use WIRED’s Chewy promo codes to save money so I can spring for the 50-cent instant ramen while she can remain vomit-free. Browse our roundup…
General Motors is shuffling where its vehicles are made in a move that will shift production away from China and Mexico and to a U.S. factory in Kansas. That change will also mean the end of its rebooted Chevrolet Bolt EV, the only vehicle currently built at the Fairfax Assembly Plant in Kansas. The factory musical chairs reflect an economic and political environment, shaped by the Trump administration’s tariff policy and its decision to end the federal EV tax credit, which provided up to $7,500 off qualifying electric vehicles. These changes have made it more expensive to build vehicles in…
Engineers in Silicon Valley have been raving about Anthropic’s AI coding tool, Claude Code, for months. But recently, the buzz feels as if it’s reached a fever pitch.Earlier this week, I sat down with Boris Cherny, head of Claude Code, to try to understand how the company is meeting this moment.“We built the simplest possible thing,” said Cherny. “The craziest thing was learning three months ago that half of the sales team at Anthropic uses Claude Code every week.”AI-powered coding has evolved quickly. From 2021 to 2024, most tools functioned as little more than autocomplete, suggesting a few lines of…
Wix will air a national ad in Super Bowl 60, breaking a seven-year hiatus from the broadcast. The company confirmed the news to ADWEEK, but did not share the length or creative direction of the spot.Throughout the 2010s, the website-building platform was a Super Bowl regular. Its last Big Game commercial, a two-minute film called “Disruptive World,” aired in 2019, starring Gal Gadot and Jason Statham. The brand’s return to the NBC broadcast, which is set to be watched by around 136 million people, follows the January launch of its AI website building tool and a corresponding new brand platform,…
OpenAI has reorganized some of its leadership and picked a familiar face to lead its push into selling AI to business customers as the company looks to catch up to its rivals in 2026. The company appointed Barret Zoph to lead its efforts to sell its AI to enterprises, according to reporting from The Information, citing an internal OpenAI memo. TechCrunch reached out to OpenAI for confirmation and more information. Zoph returned to OpenAI last week after leaving Thinking Machine Labs, former OpenAI CTO Mira Murati’s AI startup where Zoph had served as a co-founder and CTO since October 2024.…
“We are moving into a new phase of informational warfare on social media platforms where technological advancements have made the classic bot approach outdated,” says Jonas Kunst, a professor of communication at BI Norwegian Business School and one of the coauthors of the report.For experts who have spent years tracking and combating disinformation campaigns, the paper presents a terrifying future.”What if AI wasn’t just hallucinating information, but thousands of AI chatbots were working together to give the guise of grassroots support where there was none? That’s the future this paper imagines—Russian troll farms on steroids,” says Nina Jankowicz, the former…
Taco Bell is turning the drive-thru into haute cuisine.The fast-food chain’s new “Laps of Luxury” activation, created by agency Deutsch, celebrates the launch of its 10-item Luxe Value Menu by offering an immersive, multi-course tasting experience that transforms the mundane drive-thru into an event worthy of a Michelin star (or at least a very enthusiastic review).The tasting experience is a chauffeured, 10-course journey through the drive-thru that reimagines fast food as fine-dining theater. Each menu item, from the beefy potato loaded griller to the salted caramel churro, will be unveiled beneath a silver cloche as a string quartet serenades through…
Kais Khimji has spent most of his professional career as a venture investor, including six years as a partner at the prominent VC firm Sequoia Capital. But just like several other former Sequoia partners — including David Vélez, who founded the Brazilian digital bank Nubank — Khimji (pictured left) has always wanted to be a startup founder. On Thursday, he announced that he has revived an idea he began working on as a student at Harvard about 10 years ago, turning it into the AI calendar-scheduling company Blockit. In a major vote of confidence, Khimji’s former employer, Sequoia, led the…
When it comes to originals, Netflix and Amazon have the deepest libraries of prestige movies. But ever since CODA won the Best Picture Oscar, it’s become clear that some of the best movies are on Apple TV.As with any streaming service, not every film on the roster is a winner, but from the Billie Eilish documentary to Sundance darlings, Apple’s streaming service is building up a strong catalog to run alongside its growing slate of beloved TV shows.Below are WIRED’s picks for flicks you should prioritize in your queue. Once you’re done, hop over to our list of the best movies on Netflix and the best movies on…
WPP is consolidating its global production talent and operations under a new entity called WPP Production, the holding company told ADWEEK. The move brings together production powerhouse Hogarth Worldwide with production teams embedded across WPP agencies including Ogilvy and VML. The new unit, which will officially launch on Feb. 23, will employ roughly 10,000 people globally.Richard Glasson, formerly global CEO of Hogarth, will lead WPP Production as global CEO. As part of the reorg, WPP will formally retire the Hogarth brand.There are no layoffs as a result of the shift, and Glasson said the transition is not a cost-cutting exercise.