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When Coca-Cola CEO Henrique Braun announced his company’s first-quarter results late last month, nobody in marketing seemed to notice. Net revenue grew 12% to $12.5 billion. Organic revenue rose 10%. Global unit case volume grew 3%, led by the United States, China and India. Earnings per share grew 18%. Operating margin expanded from 32.9% to 35.0%. Free cash flow came in at $1.8 billion. The company raised its full-year guidance. The dividend, raised again, is now in its 64th consecutive year of annual increases. Braun, four months into the job after stepping up from chief operating officer when James Quincey moved to chairman,…
Early-stage venture firm A* Capital on Tuesday announced a $450 million Fund III. The firm takes a generalist approach, backing companies across categories including AI applications, fintech, healthcare, and security.The average check size for this fund will be between $3 million and $5 million, with the aim to back at least 30 startups. The capital will be deployed over the next two to three years, as with the firm’s previous funds. Limited partners include nonprofits, foundations, and endowments; Carnegie Mellon University is among the publicly named backers. A* Capital, founded in 2020 and run by Kevin Hartz and Bennet Siegel,…
“Our goal is to be able to have it as customizable as possible, pulling from all sorts of data sources that you ask it to be able to create a custom widget for you,” Brooks says. Maybe that means creating a weather widget that shows Celsius and Fahrenheit for when you’re traveling abroad. Or a countdown to your next marathon. Or a widget that shows three new high-protein meal prep recipes every week.What does this mean for the future of the home screen? Will we still have app grids? Or will every person’s phone have its own look and feel,…
The promise of personalization has been in marketing conversations for years. What changes now is the infrastructure to actually deliver on it. Adobe helps enterprise brands move from fragmented customer data to connected experiences that feel individual. In this episode of The Speed of Culture podcast, Matt Britton sits down with Rachel Thornton, CMO of Adobe Enterprise, live from CES 2026 in Las Vegas. Rachel unpacks how Adobe helps brands move from raw customer data to genuine personalization at scale, why she believes everyone is a creator, and how agentic AI is used in a marketing team. The conversation also covers Adobe’s…
As investors scramble to get their hands on shares of AI companies of all stripes, Anthropic this week updated its website to warn investors that a slew of private and secondary investment platforms that offer access to shares in the AI company are not, in fact, allowed to do so. The company named Open Doors Partners, Unicorns Exchange, Pachamama Capital, Lionheart Ventures, Hiive, Forge Global, Sydecar and Upmarket as companies that are not authorized to provide access to buy or sell its shares. “Any sale or transfer of Anthropic stock, or any interest in Anthropic stock, offered by these firms…
Almost exactly 15 years since Google introduced Chromebooks and ChromeOS—which ushered a wave of cheap, functional, web-based laptops that would come to dominate the US education market—the company has announced a new laptop platform called Googlebook. It’s built around artificial intelligence and Android, and while it isn’t replacing Chromebooks, it could give the company a more meaningful foothold in the premium computer market.Google announced the platform on The Android Show on YouTube, where it also detailed new features coming in Android 17 and Gemini Intelligence (you can read more about that here). Google is purposefully not sharing the operating system’s…
When it first launched in 2006, BuzzFeed was a trailblazer, creating from scratch a playbook for sparking virality in the early days of the social internet.Now, following its Monday acquisition by media executive Byron Allen, the brand and its sister property, HuffPost, have trained their focus on the newest battleground in the attention wars: the living room.“As of this moment, BuzzFeed is officially chasing YouTube and the other big tech platforms,” Allen told The New York Times.BuzzFeed is hardly alone in this pivot. Structural forces are threatening the durability of the open internet, with answer engines siphoning traffic away from…
Trying to get off billionaire-owned social media, but don’t know where to start? A new app called Indigo is launching today to let users explore the open social web across multiple services, all under one roof. Decentralized social media is having a moment, as more people realize they want control over their algorithms, feeds, moderation choices, and other aspects of participating in online communities. However, there are multiple paths to choose from. Users can opt for decentralized servers that make up the social network Mastodon, built on the older ActivityPub protocol (also now used by Meta’s Threads), or they can…
The odds that the Trump family will launch a full-fledged prediction market product this year just plummeted.Last year, the Trump Media and Technology Group announced Truth Predict, a partnership with the cryptocurrency company Crypto.com. The initial announcement touted Truth Predict as a “new product” that would allow Truth Social users to make trades on sports, inflation, elections, and more through an “embedded” prediction market service. “For too long, global elites have closely controlled these markets—with Truth Predict, we’re democratizing information and empowering everyday Americans to harness the wisdom of the crowd, turning free speech into actionable foresight,” then-CEO Devin Nunes…
In this episode of Adspeak by ADWEEK, chief brand and community officer Jenny Rooney sits down with Josh Dean, founder of brand consultancy Dean and Daughters and former global VP of Johnnie Walker at Diageo, to unpack how Johnnie Walker has remained culturally relevant for more than two centuries while attracting a new generation of consumers. Josh explains how the iconic “Keep Walking” platform serves as a creative north star, enabling authentic collaborations across music, fashion, entertainment, and sports without diluting brand equity. From partnerships with Squid Game and Olivier Rousteing to campaigns featuring Sabrina Carpenter, the conversation explores culture-first marketing, selective…
As bad actors weaponize AI to exploit software vulnerabilities at unprecedented speed, companies are increasingly recognizing the need to bolster their cybersecurity defenses. Fortunately, those very AI tools are also helping businesses fight back. The need for such capabilities has helped Exaforce, an AI startup that detects and thwarts attacks in real time, secure a $125 million Series B. The round valued the three-year-old startup at $725 million, and saw participation from HarbourVest, Peak XV, Mayfield, Khosla Ventures, and Seligman Ventures. The massive funding round comes just a year after Exaforce raised a $75 million Series A, bringing its total…
Conspiracy theorists, wellness influencers, and grifters have already started promoting wild claims about the hantavirus outbreak that began aboard the MV Hondius, a cruise ship on the Atlantic.Some conspiracy theorists compared the outbreak to the Covid-19 pandemic, claiming it was another effort to control the global population, while others pushed a false narrative that the Covid-19 vaccine caused hantavirus. Many others promoted ivermectin as a treatment, using the incident as a way to sell emergency medical kits featuring the antiparasitic drug typically used as a horse dewormer.In more recent days, many of these same people spreading conspiracy theories have promoted…
Instructure, the maker of the popular school information portal Canvas, said on Tuesday it has “reached an agreement” with the hackers who breached its systems twice, stole a huge amount of student and staff data, and disrupted thousands of schools that rely on the company’s software. ShinyHunters, a financially motivated cybercrime group, took credit for the April 29 data breach, claiming to have stolen student and staff data, including the personal information, of a total 275 million people. The hackers said they had compromised Canvas, which nearly 9,000 schools use to manage their students’ data and coursework. The hackers last…
Ultrashort-throw (UST) projectors offer more flexibility than traditional (long-throw) models. No one can ever step in front of one and block the projection, since the unit doesn’t require distance and can sit up close to the screen rather than at the back of the room. This also lets all your streaming gear, a soundbar, and a game console connect close to the screen.At $3,800, the Epson Lifestudio Grand Plus (LS970) short-throw projector has a higher price tag than the Epson Lifestudio Grand released last year. The Grand Plus specs are a big leap forward over that model as well: a…
Liquid I.V. wants to make this the summer of “yes” and remind people that life’s best moments are better when you’re properly hydrated.The Unilever-owned brand has launched its summer campaign, “Say Yes,” in partnership with British R&B group FLO.A new 30-second spot finds FLO at an outdoor wedding but unable to dance—or even get up from their table—due to heat and dehydration. The narrator informs them that “water might not be enough.” FLO member Stella Quaresma grabs a few packets of Liquid I.V. and passes them around, and soon the trio is back on the dance floor.“Say Yes” debuts alongside the…
Potholes are a pesky problem — just ask scooter company Lime, which listed them as an official risk to its business in its IPO filing last week. History is littered with claims that technology can help solve or blunt the problem of potholes, and still they persist. But as cars become increasingly laden with advanced sensors, they are becoming a tool that can quickly alert cities to potholes and other municipal problems. Last month, Waymo and Waze announced a pilot program to share pothole data with local governments. Now, fleet management company Samsara says it’s one-upping that idea with its…