It’s Thursday, January 29.

On this day, Oprah Winfrey was born.. Media mogul. Philanthropist. Human exclamation point. Built an empire out of empathy, hard questions, and telling people to look under their chairs. “The Oprah Winfrey Show” ran for 25 years, broke ratings records, launched careers, and basically taught America how to talk about feelings on TV. 

Outside, it’s still aggressively cold. The kind of cold that hurts your face and makes you question every life choice that led you outdoors. 

Stay warm. Be kind to yourself. Wishing you a smooth day and a very deserved good weekend ahead. Let’s get into it.

Today’s stories:

• Amazon abandons cashierless grocery experiment

• McConaughey trademarks his voice against AI

• Tesla profits halved as growth narrative shifts

• TikTok users rage-delete after privacy panic

• Lego and Crocs release brick-shaped shoes

• Billionaire funds team USA’s Olympic future

• Google turns Chrome into AI super-browser

• Strava prepares IPO after pandemic boom

• Khaby Lame turned silence into $900M

• AI finds 1,400 hidden objects in space

  and more…

Stock futures hovered near flat late Wednesday after a barrage of Big Tech earnings and the Federal Reserve’s latest rate decision gave traders plenty to digest.

S&P 500 futures were little changed. Nasdaq 100 futures ticked up 0.2%, while Dow futures slipped about 92 points, or 0.2%.

After the bell, tech moved fast. Meta jumped 8% after issuing a stronger-than-expected first-quarter sales forecast, while Tesla climbed 2% on a Q4 earnings beat. Microsoft went the other way, sliding nearly 7% as cloud growth slowed and capital spending came in higher than Wall Street was ready for.

Markets now shift from the Fed’s decision to whether Big Tech’s AI spending is still confidence-building — or starting to look expensive.

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Amazon Pulls The Plug On Its Grocery Experiment

Amazon is shutting down most Amazon Go and Amazon Fresh stores. And fast. The company says the closures will happen within days as it refocuses on food delivery and Whole Foods. Translation: this experiment is over. Some locations will turn into Whole Foods. The rest will just… disappear. The announcement landed right before Amazon cut about 16,000 corporate jobs. Second layoff wave in three months. Rough timing, but very Amazon. CEO Andy Jassy says this isn’t about money or AI. It’s about priorities. The cashierless stores never quite worked at scale. Cool tech. Bad economics.

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From factory job to $900 million without saying a word. Khaby Lame went from factory work to a nearly $1 billion deal. No speeches. No podcasts. No captions. In 2020, he was laid off in Italy and living with his parents. Instead of job hunting, he opened TikTok and quietly judged people for overcomplicating life. It worked. Khaby built a global audience by saying nothing. Just simple fixes, one look at the camera, and the hand gesture that says “this didn’t need to be that hard.” No language barrier. No explanation. Internet understood. Fast forward to now. A deal valued around $900+ million for his company. He keeps creative control, stays a shareholder, and even gets an AI version of himself to work while he doesn’t. Efficiency, on brand. It’s a reminder that attention is the product. And sometimes silence pays better than words.

A $100 million fix for team USA. The U.S. doesn’t pay its Olympic athletes. At all. No bonuses. No government checks. Medals come with pride, not rent money. So one man stepped in. Financier Ross Stevens is giving every U.S. Olympic and Paralympic athlete $200,000. No podium required. Just making the team is enough. Half of the money shows up later in life, basically a forced retirement plan. The rest is a guaranteed benefit for their family after they’re gone. Very unsexy. Very responsible. The total gift is $100 million, the largest ever to the U.S. Olympic & Paralympic Committee. Because Team USA runs on sponsorships, TV deals, and vibes, not federal funding. Bonus side effect: athletes might stick around longer. You get paid every time you compete. Turns out stability is motivating. Other countries figured this out decades ago. America is catching up. With one rich guy.

The fitness app is running to the stock market. Strava is getting ready to go public. The fitness app quietly filed for an IPO, aiming for a stock market debut as early as spring 2026. Yes, the app that tracks your “easy run” is now tracking Wall Street. Strava blew up during the pandemic and never really cooled off. Cyclists, runners, weekend athletes, and people who just like collecting Kudos all showed up. The company was last valued at $2.2 billion, backed by big-name investors like Sequoia and TCV. The timing isn’t random. IPOs are warming up again, and tech investors are feeling brave. Strava wants to use the moment to grow features, flex its massive global community, and officially turn workouts into shareholder value.

Tesla profit drops 46% in 2025. Tesla’s profit fell 46% in 2025. That’s not a typo. The company made $3.8 billion for the year, its lowest profit in years. Car revenue dropped 11%. Sales declined for the second year in a row. So much for the promised 50% annual growth. A few things happened. Elon Musk joined the Trump administration. Congress killed federal EV subsidies. Demand cooled. Cars stopped flying off the lot. Tesla is now trying to redirect attention. Less “car company,” more “AI future.” In its shareholder letter, Tesla described itself as a “physical AI company” and casually mentioned a $2 billion investment in Musk’s AI startup, xAI. Very subtle. Not everything was red. Energy storage and solar revenue grew 25%. Services like Full Self-Driving, insurance, and Supercharging grew 18%. Margins improved. So not collapsing. Just… shifting the narrative. Meanwhile, long-promised projects are still “coming soon.” The Tesla Semi. The Cybercab. A lithium refinery in Texas. New AI chips. And a third-gen Optimus robot reveal. Again.

Users Are Rage-Deleting TikTok

People are deleting TikTok. A lot. Since TikTok announced its new U.S. joint venture, app deletions are up nearly 150%, according to Sensor Tower. TikTok says the new setup keeps the app running in the U.S. with American leadership. New CEO. New structure. Same app. Users were asked to accept an updated privacy policy. That’s where things got spicy. Social media noticed language about collecting sensitive data. People panicked. Posts went viral. Delete buttons were pressed. Plot twist: that language isn’t new. It’s been in the policy since at least August 2024. Still, perception matters. Once trust wobbles, people bounce. Even if nothing actually changed.

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Google turns chrome into an AI assistant. Chrome is done watching AI browsers get all the attention. Google is upgrading Chrome with deeper Gemini integration and agent-style features that actually do things, not just chat. Gemini now lives in a permanent sidebar. It understands the page you’re on, your open tabs, and even groups tabs together when you’re comparing stuff. Prices, products, decisions you don’t want to make. Chrome’s on it. Soon, Gemini will also tap into your Gmail, Search, YouTube, and Photos. You’ll be able to ask about your schedule, draft emails, and send them without opening Gmail. One browser. All your data. Cozy. There’s image editing too. Drop in an image, swap things out, remix products. Casual. The big flex is auto-browse. Chrome can go to a site, find an item, hunt for coupons, and prep the purchase for you. It still asks before doing anything sensitive. For now. Chrome isn’t being replaced. It’s absorbing the competition.

AI spotted hundreds of never-seen space objects. Astronomers used AI to dig through Hubble’s archives and found 1,400 weird space objects. Not over years. In two and a half days. Because machines don’t blink. The AI scanned nearly 100 million images from Hubble’s 35-year archive and flagged things that looked… off. Colliding galaxies. Gravitational lenses. Jellyfish galaxies. Space doing space things, just louder. More than 800 of the objects had never been documented before. Not missed because they were invisible. Missed because there’s simply too much data for humans to scroll through manually. Even scientists have limits. The tool, called AnomalyMatch, was trained to spot rare cosmic shapes and patterns. Humans still double-checked the results, but the heavy lifting was all AI. Turns out the universe hides a lot of weird stuff when no one’s looking closely enough. AI didn’t find aliens. But it did clean out the attic.

Lego And Crocs Drop Giant Brick Shoes

Lego and Crocs just teamed up. The result: shoes shaped like giant Lego bricks. They’re bright red. Rectangular. Loud. Bascically a 2x4 brick, but for your feet. The Lego Brick Clog is built to match real Lego proportions, complete with four studs on top. Crocs added an angular heel strap to keep it on your foot. Just don’t plan on walking far. Crocs says they’re “not intended for all-day wear.” Which feels obvious.

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Matthew McConaughey copyrighting the vibe. Matthew McConaughey is officially trademarking “alright, alright, alright.” Yes, that one.
The Oscar winner locked down eight trademarks to protect his voice, smile, and signature drawl from being stolen by AI. Because robots doing a McConaughey impression without permission is where we are now. The filing gets very specific. Pitch, tone, syllables. Basically: you can’t just say it. You have to say it like him. AI can take many jobs, but not this one. Not today.

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TikTok of the day: watch here

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