Nearly six months since McDonald’s opened its first CosMc’s location, the hours-long drive-thru lines have died down, but the chain is just getting started. The burger giant created the spinoff using one of its lesser-known McDonaldland mascots, CosMc, an alien who loves McDonald’s cheeseburgers. While unveiling CosMc’s at an investor event in December, McDonald’s CEO Chris Kempczinski said the company set out to create ...

The world is mired in $315 trillion of debt, according to a report from the Institute of International Finance. This global debt wave has been the biggest, fastest and most wide-ranging rise in debt since World War II, coinciding with the Covid-19 pandemic. “This increase marks the second consecutive quarterly rise and was primarily driven by emerging markets, where debt surged to an ...

Stellantis plans to offer a $25,000 all-electric Jeep vehicle in the U.S. “very soon” to better attract mainstream consumers amid slower-than-expected electric vehicle adoption, CEO Carlos Tavares said Wednesday. Tavares disclosed few details about the upcoming vehicle, saying it will be priced around $25,000 in the U.S. to emulate Stellantis’ pricing of the Citroen e-C3 SUV, a low-cost model starting at 23,300 ...

In George Miller’s new Mad Max film “Furiosa,” a red paint flare explodes and casts the theater screen in a saturated crimson cloud. Feet away, among the rows of gyroscopic 4DX chairs, plumes of fog roll in, catching the red hue from the screen as if the flare somehow transcended the fourth wall and infiltrated the cinema. The fog parts, Chris ...

­­­Lots of people will be getting their sea legs this summer. Ports have been packed with cruise ships over the last few years, as vacationers flock to ever larger vessels and operators race to accommodate a surge in post-pandemic bookings — many of them from first-time passengers. The industry expects even more this year. Benjamin Xiang, a San Francisco-based flight ...

Elon Musk’s AI startup xAI raised $6 billion in series B funding, reaching a post-money valuation of $24 billion as investors bet big on challengers to companies like OpenAI in the intensifying AI race. The funding round was backed by investors including Andreessen Horowitz and Sequoia Capital, the company said in a blog post on Sunday. The company’s pre-money valuation ...

Could college athletes really start getting paid directly by their schools, ending decades of acrimony over the issue? The NCAA, along with the five largest college athletic conferences, announced Thursday an agreement to settle three antitrust suits brought by college athletes over having been deprived of financial gain by only receiving scholarships in exchange for their play. Here’s how it ...

Angry that your favorite Red Lobster closed down? Wall Street wizardry had a lot to do with it. Red Lobster was America’s largest casual dining operation, serving 64 million customers a year in almost 600 locations across 44 states and Canada. Its May 19 bankruptcy filing and closing of almost 100 locations across the country has devastated its legion of ...

Crude oil futures fell to three-month lows on Friday and are heading to a weekly loss as the summer driving season gets underway with the Memorial Day holiday. U.S. crude oil hit an intraday low of $76.15, the lowest level since Feb. 26. Global benchmark Brent fell to $80.65, the lowest level since Feb. 8. The two benchmarks are on ...

Five years ago, Nvidia CEO Jensen Huang owned a stake in his chipmaker worth roughly $3 billion. After Thursday’s rally, which pushed the stock to a record, his holdings now stand at more than $90 billion. Nvidia late Wednesday reported first-quarter earnings that topped estimates, with sales jumping more than 200% for a third straight quarter, driven by demand for artificial intelligence processors. Huang ...