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We still don’t have flying cars or teleportation, but Waymo is making sci-fi fantasies a reality with its growing fleet of driverless taxis. The company doubled its operating zone in Phoenix in 2023, creating what it claims is the world’s largest fully autonomous service area. In 2024, it expanded beyond Phoenix and San Francisco to the metropolis maybe most associated with driving: Los Angeles.

High fashion has long been dominated by European conglomerates: LVMH, Kering, Richemont. With a major acquisition in August 2023, Tapestry set itself up to be the U. S.’s first real contender in the space. Home to Coach, Kate Spade New York, and Stuart Weitzman, it bought Capri Holdings, bringing in powerhouse brands Versace, Jimmy Choo, and Michael Kors.

With its virtual pinboards providing inspiration for cooking, fashion, home renovations, and other projects, Pinterest has become a refuge from rage-baiting social media cesspools. Young people and the brands trying to reach them have taken notice. The “visual search and discovery” platform now boasts over half a billion monthly users, 42% of whom are Gen Z, the company’s fastest-growing demographic.

As AI systems proliferate, the demand for computing power to crunch large data sets has become monstrous. Cerebras, founded in 2015, has responded with the largest computer chip ever. Its Wafer-Scale Engine 3 is 8 sq. in., with 4 trillion transistors. Putting everything on one wafer rather than networking many chips reduces data-transfer times and energy use for the most compute-intense AI jobs, says CEO Andrew Feldman.

Since Lisa Su became CEO of Advanced Micro Devices (AMD) a decade ago, the chipmaker’s market value has risen more than a hundredfold, surpassing that of onetime king-of-the-hill Intel. But Su’s biggest brag might have been in December, when AMD bested archrival Nvidia by releasing the fastest “AI accelerator” chip yet designed at that time to train and operate large language models like ChatGPT.

The fashion brand Tory Burch’s transformation from sensible, preppy classics to edgy designs burning up ready-to-wear runways has the fashion press marveling. Its eponymous former CEO Tory Burch herself spurred the “Toryssance” by stepping down from her position in 2019 to focus on designing. Her new styles reflect “how I see women today,” she says.