BUSINESS

As Nike’s turnaround shows some positive signs, rivals like On and Hoka continue to nip at its market share. Swiss-based On believes its new innovation will up the pace.

Square is launching a new ChatGPT app and Claude plugin, enabling consumers to discover restaurants and seamlessly place orders directly within these AI platforms — and allowing restaurants, in turn, to accept orders from users and their AI agents without any technical capabilities. Even more helpfully for businesses, Square is processing these AI-driven transactions without charging the traditional marketplace commission fees that have historically squeezed the food and beverage sector.However, Square is still charging its typical online ordering fees of 3.3% plus $0.30 or 2.9% plus $0.30 per transaction for merchants subscribed to the Square Plus and Square Premium plans. The system pulls straight from the live Square catalog, dynamically mapping items, pricing, complex modifiers, and stock availability so autonomous agents never display out-of-stock inventory.For enterprise testing and deployment verification, operators can manually audit their digital footprint by using the “@” symbol to invoke the Order by Cash App plugin directly within ChatGPT or connecting it via the Claude extension directory. Depending on the specific AI tool configuration, customers can either finalize checkout completely inside the chat window via Order by Cash App, or they will be seamlessly redirected to the merchant’s standard online ordering landing page with their chosen items and modifiers already fully populated in the basket.A more affordable online order system for restaurantsTo understand the significance of Square’s move, you have to look at the math that restaurant owners face in 2026. Third-party delivery and ordering apps have fundamentally altered the economics of the restaurant industry.Currently, the major players—DoorDash, Uber Eats, and Grubhub—charge restaurants a hefty premium for visibility and fulfillment. These exorbitant rates exist primarily because delivery aggregators bundle the logistical costs of gig-worker delivery fleets, platform marketing, and search placement into a single revenue-sharing model.According to recent pricing structures, DoorDash charges restaurants a 15% commission on its “Basic” delivery tier, which climbs to 25% for “Plus” and 30% for its top-tier “Premier” visibility plan. Even pickup orders carry a 6% marketplace fee. Uber Eats similarly exacts standard delivery marketplace fees ranging from 20% on its “Lite” tier up to 30% for premium placement, with pickup orders costing up to 10% if in-store pricing isn’t strictly validated. Grubhub echoes these rates, taking between 5% and 20% of the total order value depending on the marketing and delivery package chosen.On top of these marketplace commissions, platforms still tack on their own payment processing fees—typically around 2.5% to 3.05% plus a fixed cent amount per order. For an independent restaurant that might only clear a 3% to 9% net profit on a good day, handing over a 25% or 30% commission on a $40 digital order essentially means preparing food at a loss.Square’s new integration specifically targets this pain point. By tapping into Square’s ChatGPT and Claude integrations, eligible sellers are opted in automatically with no additional setup, no new APIs to build, and, crucially, zero added marketplace fees.Instead of surrendering a 30% cut to a delivery aggregator, a restaurant discovered through an AI agent only pays Square’s standard online transaction processing fee (which typically sits around 2.9% + 30¢ per transaction on a standard plan, with no monthly marketplace commission attached).Unlike the delivery aggregators, Square’s fee model does not natively subsidize a driver network. Instead, if an AI-generated order requires delivery, Square utilizes a white-label dispatch network that charges a flat courier fee—often around $7 to $10 depending on distance—rather than taxing a percentage of the total basket size. Restaurants can choose to absorb this flat delivery cost or pass it directly to the customer, completely protecting their food margins.The result is an AI-powered discovery channel that functions like direct, first-party ordering.How the tech worksSquare’s new integration is currently live for U.S.-based Food & Beverage sellers who have an activated Square Online Ordering profile. The system operates entirely in the background. Sellers manage their discoverability and business information—menus, operating hours, stock levels, and pricing—directly through their existing Square Dashboard.When a consumer prompts ChatGPT or Claude with a query like, “Find me a specialty coffee shop nearby with a great pour-over and order me a bag of their house roast,” the AI parses the real-time data provided by Square.Customers can browse the results, make their selections, and finalize the purchase using Order by Cash App, all without leaving the chat interface.The transaction is then routed instantly into the seller’s existing operational flow, popping up on their Square Point of Sale (POS) and Kitchen Display System just like an in-store or direct-website order. To help operators track the return on this new channel, the origin of the order is clearly tagged as an AI integration within Square’s backend reporting.“Consumer behaviors and preferences are constantly evolving, and business owners can easily find themselves playing an impossible game of catch-up,” said Morgan Kuntze, Global Partnerships Lead at Block, Square’s parent company. “Our investment into agentic commerce aims to offload that responsibility by giving operators time back, helping connect them with customers in their communities, and keeping them at the industry’s cutting edge. Modern commerce is moving at a sprint, and we’re building Square to help sellers appear everywhere customers are going.”Focusing on tech to let restaurants focus on foodDuring its pilot phase, Square collaborated with Partners Coffee, a Brooklyn-based specialty coffee brand, to refine how AI-driven discovery translates into the real world. For operators like Partners Coffee, the goal isn’t necessarily to become a hyper-digitized storefront, but rather to use digital efficiency to protect the physical experience of the cafe.”We don’t see coffee as transactional. To us, it’s an opportunity to pause and reflect, a chance to unwind, and a catalyst for connection,” noted Andrew Costaris, Digital VP at Partners Coffee, in a statement provided by Square to VentureBeat. “The last thing we want is for our technology solutions to work against this mission or complicate the customer experience. With agentic commerce and AI tools working in the background, we’re confident knowing that our business is being digitally discovered and is consistently growing in efficiency, while our customers can continue to enjoy a lo-fi, specialty coffee-first environment.”An AI-driven e-commerce ecosystemThe integration with ChatGPT and Claude is only the first step in Square’s broader agentic commerce strategy. The stakes are high: industry data cited by the company indicates that more than 42% of consumers now use AI tools to assist with shopping tasks like product discovery and comparison. By 2030, analysts project that agentic shoppers could drive nearly $385 billion in U.S. ecommerce spending.Most small and mid-size businesses simply do not have the developer teams or budgets required to build custom integrations for every new chatbot, voice assistant, or AI hardware device that hits the market. Square wants to serve as that universal connective tissue.To that end, the company announced it is actively working with Amazon to bring sellers into Alexa+ voice commerce experiences. Furthermore, Square is participating in major regulatory and standards groups—including the AAIF Agentic Commerce Working Group and the W3C Web Payments Working Group—to shape how AI agents and commerce platforms interact at scale.Particularly notable is Square’s ongoing partnership with Google to co-develop the Universal Commerce Protocol (UCP) spec for local food ordering. This open standard is designed to allow agents and systems to seamlessly communicate across the entire commerce journey. On Google’s end, UCP enables discovery and checkout across AI Overviews in Search and the Gemini app. As the UCP protocol expands globally, Square plans to roll out these capabilities so that its sellers remain front and center.For the more than 4.5 million sellers currently using Square, the promise of agentic commerce is clear: a way to capture the next generation of internet traffic without sacrificing the profit margins required to keep their doors open. If Square can successfully route AI orders directly to local business’s POS systems—sidestepping the 30% toll of the delivery aggregators—it could mark a massive shift in how the restaurant industry navigates the modern digital economy.

Wedbush analysts are taking a bullish view of the space sector, initiating coverage of SpaceX and other stocks.

The bank said in a note bitcoin’s cycle points to a market bottom in the coming months, urging investors to focus on networks with durable value accrual.

Christopher Delgado allegedly used investor funds for a lavish lifestyle, including luxury properties and vehicles, while running a fraudulent scheme from 2023 to 2026.

SK Hynix builds the memory chips wired into Nvidia’s most advanced AI processors, supplying a component so scarce that customers now reserve production years in advance.This week the South Korean company asked U.S. regulators for permission to list its shares on the Nasdaq for the first time in company history.The timing looks strange on its face: A company that cannot make memory fast enough to meet demand is still asking Wall Street for billions in fresh capital.SK Hynix booked $85.8 billion in revenue in the twelve months through March, according to Renaissance Capital, and the company now holds roughly 57% of the global HBM market and 32% of the DRAM market, according to Tom’s Hardware.That scale helps explain the contradiction: A famously profitable company is still asking investors for $29 billion because it is chasing demand it cannot yet fill, not propping up a balance sheet.That filing was not even the biggest news SK Hynix made this month. A few days earlier, the company had already rewritten the hierarchy of corporate South Korea, and Wall Street had nothing to do with it.SK Hynix overtook Samsung days before Nasdaq filingSK Hynix passed Samsung Electronics to become South Korea’s most valuable listed company, ending a 26-year run at the top, according to Reuters.The shift happened just two days before SK Hynix filed its Nasdaq paperwork, a sequence that looks less like coincidence and more like a company moving while it has leverage.Related: Palantir’s 2 deals answer a question investors keep askingThe stock move behind that milestone has been dramatic. SK Hynix shares have climbed more than 280% this year, pushing its market value above $1 trillion, according to CNBC, as investors bet on the company’s grip on AI memory.That run has reshaped the entire Korean stock market.Samsung and SK Hynix together now make up more than 40% of the Kospi index, according to CNBC, meaning a slowdown at either company can drag down a benchmark that most Korean retirement funds track closely.

SK Hynix is seeking up to $29.4 billion in a Nasdaq listing, days after passing Samsung as Korea’s most valuable public company.hapabapa / Getty Images

SK Hynix’s Nasdaq filing seeks up to $29BHere is the number the headline promised: SK Hynix is seeking to raise as much as $29.4 billion through American depositary shares on the Nasdaq, a sum that would rank among the largest stock offerings on record, according to the SEC filing.The company plans to debut under the ticker SKHY as soon as July 10, with ten ADSs representing one common share.A Seeking Alpha report confirms the offering covers newly issued shares rather than existing ones, meaning every dollar raised goes to the company, not to existing shareholders cashing out.More Tech:Microsoft CEO sends a blunt warning on AI and the tech ecosystemAmazon CEO just made things uncomfortable for AnthropicMicrosoft has bad news for a key AI partnerGoldman Sachs, JPMorgan, Citigroup and Bank of America are managing the sale, according to CNBC.None of that money is earmarked for buybacks or dividends. According to Tom’s Hardware’s reporting on the SEC filing, the $29.43 billion raised from American investors will serve as the heavy anhor for a massive, multi-year $37.2 billion semiconductor buildout. The capital spending breaks into three commitments:$21.5 billion is going to the first fab at the Yongin Semiconductor Cluster, due for completion around February 2027.$12.9 billion funds a packaging plant in Cheongju dedicated to assembling and testing HBM chips, on track to finish by late 2027.$7.9 billion was already committed to ASML in March for roughly 30 EUV lithography scanners needed to equip both sites.Because these aggressive infrastructure plans outpace the explicit size of the Nasdaq capital raise, SK Hynix noted in the filing that any remaining funding gaps will be bridged using its surging operating cash flows and existing credit facilities.This is not rescue capital for a struggling company. It is an advance purchase on capacity SK Hynix has already promised customers it does not yet have.The Nasdaq listing isn’t SK Hynix’s only expansion into the U.S. The company is also building its first American production site, a $4 billion packaging plant in Indiana, according to CNBC, putting manufacturing on the ground in the same market it is now tapping for capital.The IPO bets that AI’s memory shortage won’t end soonNone of the projects this raise funds will be finished in time to ease the shortage driving today’s prices, according to Tom’s Hardware.SK Hynix chairman Chey Tae-won has told investors that AI demand will likely keep the memory market tight through the end of the decade, even as the company pledges to double its wafer capacity within five years.That gap matters because of how memory itself is changing. HBM consumes roughly three times the silicon needed for a gigabyte of standard DDR5 memory, according to Tom’s Hardware, which helps explain why DRAM contract prices have kept climbing through 2026 even outside the AI chip market.SK Hynix is asking American investors to fund a multiyear buildout for a shortage its own chairman expects to outlast the construction schedule.Whether that bet pays off will depend on whether AI infrastructure spending holds its current pace through 2027 and beyond, a question that will outlive this IPO long after it prices on July 10.Related: Chipmaker’s biggest-ever deal triggers brutal sell-off

Parents weighing tax-advantaged savings vehicles for their children are increasingly comparing newly launched Trump Accounts against custodial Roth IRAs, a vehicle that has been available for decades.Charles Schwab published a modeling exercise showing how a custodial Roth IRA, funded with a teenager’s summer earnings, can generate a six-figure retirement advantage over an adult who waits until age 30 to start saving.With Trump Accounts set to begin accepting private contributions on July 4, 2026, families are re-evaluating every option for building a child’s financial foundation, and Schwab’s analysis arrives at a moment when the comparison is impossible to ignore.Schwab’s Roth IRA model turns $115,000 into more than $707,000In a hypothetical scenario published on its education platform, Schwab modeled a teenager who begins contributing $2,300 per year to a custodial Roth IRA at age 15 and continues through age 65.Assuming a 6% average annual return over those 50 years, the account grows to more than $707,000 on just $115,000 in total contributions. The Schwab Center for Financial Research laid out the scenario in a Schwab education article.More Personal Finance:Bank of America offers critical debt elimination planFidelity challenges long-standing retirement savings ruleGallup data expose record financial anxiety in the U.S.An adult who delays saving until age 30 faces a sharply different equation under the same 6% growth assumption over the remaining 35 years to retirement.That late starter would need to set aside approximately $6,000 annually and contribute $210,000 in total to match the same ending balance, the firm calculated. The gap is $95,000 in additional out-of-pocket savings, driven entirely by 15 lost years of compounding.How custodial Roth IRAs work and who qualifiesA custodial Roth IRA is an account that a parent or guardian opens on behalf of a minor who earns income, and the child remains the beneficial owner of the assets.The contribution limit for 2025 is $7,000, or the child’s total earned income for the year, whichever is less, according to the IRS, and that ceiling rises to $7,500 for the 2026 tax year.Eligible income includes wages reported on a W-2 and self-employment earnings from jobs like babysitting or lawn care, Fidelity Investments noted in its Roth IRA for Kids guide.The parent manages the account until the child reaches the age of majority, typically 18 or 21, depending on the state. A parent or grandparent can fund the full contribution on the child’s behalf, provided the child has earned at least that amount.

A custodial Roth IRA lets working children build tax-free retirement savings early, with parents managing the account until adulthood.Diem.ph/Getty Images

The tax advantage teenagers hold over adult saversThe tax math behind a teenager’s Roth IRA contributions rarely works this favorably at any other stage of life, Schwab noted.Roth IRA contributions are made with after-tax dollars, but a teenager earning summer income will almost certainly fall below the standard deduction threshold of $15,750 for single filers in the 2025 tax year, Schwab noted. That means the teen may owe zero federal income tax on those earnings.Timothy McGrath, a certified financial planner and managing partner at Riverpoint Wealth Management, told CNN that the first question parents should answer is what the money is actually for.My concern is people are going to be so excited about (the) $1,000, they might use that when it might not be the best vehicle for them or their children on a long-term basisThat means the teen may owe zero federal income tax on those earnings, and every dollar deposited grows tax-free in the account for decades.Custodial Roth IRAs carry a hidden financial aid advantageFamilies concerned about the potential impact on college financial aid may want to understand how custodial Roth IRAs are treated differently.Retirement accounts are not reported on the Free Application for Federal Student Aid, which means balances in a custodial Roth IRA do not count against eligibility for need-based grants, Schwab confirmed.That sets the custodial Roth IRA apart from custodial brokerage accounts opened under the Uniform Gifts to Minors Act, which are assessed at a rate of up to 20% in federal aid formulas, Fidelity noted.A distribution taken from the account before retirement, however, would need to be reported as income on a future FAFSA filing and could reduce aid eligibility, the firm warned.Custodial Roth IRAs in the era of Trump AccountsThe launch of Trump Accounts has prompted families to compare every tax-advantaged vehicle available to minors, and financial planners are urging parents to clarify their goals before making a choice.”Compounding growth is a miracle in and of itself. But you’ve got to start early,” Howard Davidoff, a professor at the Murray Koppelman School of Business at Brooklyn College, told CNN. He added that a custodial Roth IRA can offer greater long-term benefits than a Trump Account for children with earned income, because it delivers tax-free income growth for life.Schwab’s modeling exercise illustrates one of the structural differences between custodial Roth IRAs and other children’s savings vehicles: tax-free growth and no required minimum distributions on the original owner, compounded over a horizon that begins in a teenager’s working years.Related: Charles Schwab, Vanguard: A costly cash choice on 401(k)s, IRAs

In a decade Ethiopia’s economy has transformed from openly constructing a Chinese “party state” in emulation to sweeping liberalization. This portends Africa’s future.

The upcoming John Deere Classic is the latest event on the PGA Tour. Finding the best picks and predictions is key, along with all the details for the upcoming event.

The Fed chair reiterated the central bank’s commitment to its 2% inflation target while signaling artificial intelligence could reshape the economy and monetary policy.