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• Nvidia stock has plunged 17.5% in 5 days. A new lawsuit adds to the chaos

  Shareholders cry and lawsuits fly over Jensen Huang’s spy ties!

  On Tuesday, a shareholder filed a lawsuit against Nvidia and its CEO Jensen Huang in the fallout of the Chinese spy scandal that has engulfed Silicon Valley and more recently, Washington D.C. in recent days. The lawsuit accuses the company and Huang of misleading and deceiving investors about the scandal, which may have been an act of corporate espionage and an attempt by China to access Nvidia’s technology.

  As more has come to light, the lawsuit says that Huang was “directly or indirectly involved in drafting, producing, reviewing and/or disseminating her false and misleading statements and information” regarding Huang’s relationship with Alice Huang, “a Megaspeed executive and suspected Chinese spy, who is suspected of seeking to help smuggle NVIDIA products into China.”

  The lawsuit was filed by Mark Kistenmacher, who, in the filing, says that “As a result of Defendants’ wrongful acts and omissions, and the precipitous decline in the market value of the Company’s securities, Plaintiff and other Class members have suffered significant losses and damages,” and that Kristenmacher and others bought Nvidia shares at “artificially inflated” prices — which they may not have done, had they known the full story.

  In effect, shareholders believe that they were misled by the company, which knew there was something damaging waiting in the wings, and didn’t disclose it. Kistenmacher is seeking unspecified damages as a result of the lawsuit, and a jury trial. 

  Fast Company has reached out to Nvidia for comment.

  Nvidia shares were down around 6% on Tuesday as of 11 am ET, and are down 17.5% over the past five days. In all, almost $700 billion, though it remains above $4 trillion overall. 

  On November 8, Huang published an open letter on Nvidia’s website, offering an apology to his family and the company and admitting to the affair, while also noting that the company’s board of directors was also investigating the matter. 

  “I support the investigation and will cooperate fully. I love our country and our company. I am committed to protecting NVIDIA and supporting America’s national security,” he wrote. “I am proud and grateful to be an American.”

• Stocks, bonds, and cash: How to strike the right balance with your assets

  With cash and bond yields at their highest levels in over 15 years, many investors wonder if they should favor these higher-yielding options over stocks.
  
  Here are answers to some questions investors might have about how to approach asset allocation in an era of 5% CD yields.

  What’s the problem with holding extra cash?

  The yields on cash products are compelling today, and cash investors do not have the potential for principal volatility. That’s particularly appealing because we’ve seen losses for some bond investors over the past few years and so far in 2026. Additionally, our annual diversification research has shown that cash is a solid diversifier for equities, on par with bonds.
  
  But cash yields are fleeting: Cash investments are short-term loans to various entities. If interest rates drift down, the high yields may disappear as higher interest rate loans are retired. If you lock in a longer-term CD, you can benefit from that high yield longer. But if you’re in a money market mutual fund or high-yield savings account, your yield will fluctuate based on the prevailing interest rate environment.
  
  Another consideration is inflation risk. Over very long periods, cash yields sometimes beat inflation, but not always. That risk is top of mind for investors as we’ve had above-average inflation recently. Because your long-term yield and return from cash typically will be lower than it is from bonds, inflation will take a bigger bite out of your payout.

  I can get a 5% yield on a cash account, and I’m not risking any principal. Why would I bother buying bonds?

  Bonds have some key advantages over cash for intermediate time horizons. First, you lock in the interest rate for longer. If you buy an individual bond with a 10-year maturity, that interest rate prevails over your holding period. Second, you have appreciation potential with fixed-income investments, unlike cash. If yields drop in the future from where they are today, bond investors can benefit from appreciation in bond prices. Bonds might also gain value in an equity-market shock, whereas cash investors wouldn’t benefit from any price appreciation.
  
  Bonds are not risk-free. If interest rates continue to rise, that could hurt bond prices, especially long-term bonds. And as with cash, bond investors are vulnerable to inflation: Higher prices mean that any interest you earn won’t go as far.

  Cash, bonds, stocks: How should investors divide their assets?

  Morningstar’s Role in Portfolio framework is helpful for matching investment types to your time horizon. Cash investments are appropriate for a spending horizon of two years or less, or if you need ongoing liquidity—for example, if you’re retired. Retirees should earmark one to two years of anticipated portfolio spending in cash. If your spending horizon is two to 10 years, holding bonds is appropriate. For 10 years or beyond, equities are a reasonable bet.
  
  Also consider your attitude toward risks and fluctuations in your portfolio. If your portfolio is too risky, is there a chance you might have to sell stocks in a downturn? If you have a tighter plan, that argues for taking a little more risk with your portfolio because you need the growth potential. If you have a plan with more assets than you need, there may be room for allocating a little more to safer investments like cash and bonds.

  What type of retiree might want to stick with a heavier allocation to stocks?

  One would be the retiree who is willing to make course corrections in their spending. In that case, a more equity-heavy portfolio mix might be appropriate. Retirees with sizable portfolios and modest spending can also reasonably maintain more in equities than those with smaller portfolios that they’re spending more from. The more equity-heavy portfolio mixes also tend to have higher residual balances. If your goal is to have leftovers at the end of your retirement life cycle, having a little more in equities can make that more likely.

  ---

  This article was provided to The Associated Press by Morningstar. For more personal finance content, go to https://www.morningstar.com/personal-finance.
  Christine Benz is director of personal finance and retirement planning for Morningstar and co-host of The Long View podcast. Subscribe to her free newsletter, Improving Your Finances.
  
  Related Links:
  Morningstar: 4 Dangerous Assumptions That Could Hurt Your Retirement Plan
  https://www.morningstar.com/personal-finance/4-dangerous-assumptions-that-could-hurt-your-retirement-plan
  
  Morningstar: What High Inflation Means for Stocks, Bonds, and Your Portfolio
  https://www.morningstar.com/portfolios/what-high-inflation-means-stocks-bonds-your-portfolio
  
  Morningstar: Why Cash Is Still King for Short-Term Goals
  https://www.morningstar.com/bonds/why-cash-is-still-king-short-term-goals

  —Christine Benz of Morningstar

• The Children’s Place is closing stores, joins list of struggling retailers to file for bankruptcy in 2026

  The Children’s Place (Nasdaq: PLCE), a popular children’s clothing retailer with around 500 locations, has announced it is filing for bankruptcy.

  The news comes as the company has struggled for years with declining sales and higher costs—not to mention a falling stock price. Yet, for now at least, the company says it plans to keep operating if possible, while also noting that some of its stores will close. Here’s what you need to know.

  What’s happened?

  This week, The Children’s Place Inc. filed for Chapter 11 bankruptcy protection in the United States Bankruptcy Court for the District of New Jersey.

  In the filing, the company listed assets of approximately $742.3 million and debts of approximately $881.3 million on the books.

  The filing comes just months after the company reported its Q2 2026 financial results in mid-September. Those results, which covered the period up to August 1, showed significant sales declines. 

  In Q2, The Children’s Place posted revenue of $241.8 million, an 18.9% decline from the same quarter a year earlier. Gross profits fell to $83.3 million from $101.3 million for the same quarter a year earlier. 

  The company reported it had 514 stores open at the end of the quarter, an increase of 19 stores from the previous quarter. It also operates an online storefront.

  At the time, the company said comparables weighed on the results, particularly because “last year’s [2025] strong back-to-school demand was uniquely elevated by customer demand ahead of anticipated tariff price increases, which skewed those financial results compared to this year’s.”

  Announcing the bankruptcy this week, The Children’s Place says it intends to “pursue a value-maximizing sale transaction” with the goal of selling “substantially all of its assets.”

  The retailer is now seeking bids from interested parties by December 9, and if it receives any, expects to sell to a new buyer by the end of December.

  Are The Children’s Place stores closing?

  Unfortunately, some of them will. Though The Children’s Place is putting on its best face and insisting it wants to see the retail chain continue operating under new ownership, it also says that, even if that happens, some stores will be closing.

  The company states that it “has been evaluating its operational footprint to invest its resources in its strongest locations moving forward” and “has determined that certain store closures will be necessary during the chapter 11 process.”

  However, as of the time of this writing, all The Children’s Place locations and its online store are still open. Currently, the company’s website displays a large banner advertising a “total inventory blowout” on all in-store and online items. It adds that all sales are final.

  Where does The Children’s Place have stores?

  As of the end of Q2, The Children’s Place said it had 514 locations. Those locations include stores in the United States, Canada, Bahrain, Israel, Mexico, Oman, Qatar, Saudi Arabia, UAE, and Venezuela.

  The company so far has not disclosed which locations will close as part of the bankruptcy process.

  In the United States, the largest number of The Children’s Place stores are located in California, with 50 locations. It also has a significant number of stores in Florida and New York.

  PLCE stock craters in 2026

  The Children’s Place was founded in 1969 and went public in 1997. In 2018, the company’s stock price hit an all-time high of more than $161 per share. But since about 2021, the company’s stock price has steadily declined, and in 2026 it has cratered.

  In January, the company’s stock price hit a 2026 high of around $5.09 per share. But since the beginning of the year, its stock price has now declined more than 95%. 

  As of the time of this writing, PLCE stock price is just 18 cents. 

• Do this crucial thing to thrive during unemployment

  A job search, whatever the length, is demoralizing.

  After losing a job, you’ll start asking yourself challenging questions about finances, childcare and more. You may also feel the pang of an identity crisis—particularly if you’re a longtime employee whose daily life has become tied up with work.

  On top of that, there’s the hours of applying, networking, interviewing, and dealing with modern-day job hunt maladies, from AI and ghost jobs. Lack of communication and recruiter bait-and-switch make the process feel useless. 

  The mental battle can be a monster. But experts suggest a possible sanity-saving sword to slay that monster: the power of having a routine. That can be key, especially when navigating a process that may drag on past six months or more.
  
  Melissa Dorman, an organizational psychologist and executive coach, shares that in today’s anonymous market, “no matter how much you get done, you can feel behind or get sucked into the vortex of applying for one job after another.”

  Crafting (and sticking) to a routine during this period is not only a way to stay positive during a job search—but it could also be a means to open up job seekers to new opportunities.

  Routines and productivity

  The salve to some of this strangeness may come down to how seekers control what is within their power. A routine can serve as that support and stability that can put a period of uncontrollable unpredictability into perspective. 

  “Stability is everything when your world feels like the bottom has fallen out, especially when losing a job and searching for a job in a volatile market,” says Dorman.
  
  By setting routines, what matters is, “you can know how your day will start tomorrow morning.”

  As Dorman recommends, try to set specific times for job applications. Outside of that time, focus on developing new skills, conducting networking outreach, or simply giving yourself some grace to reconnect with what brings you joy. These new activities can not only bring you joy—but serve as anchors throughout your day. Over time, you may see that your routine gives you purpose.

  “One sanity-protecting exercise is to implement an ‘office hours’ approach for apps,” adds Dorman, who frequently coaches managers on keeping their skills sharp. 

  With these kinds of consistent routines, you can free up mental space so you are able to meet the perfect opportunity when it presents itself: “You can’t be productive or maintain motivation long-term if [only] completing job applications is your full-time job.”

  Benefits of consistency

  Routines can be tricky to make stick, though—the human brain is wired to feel lit up by novel experiences.
  
  “Our brains love new things. When we start a routine, we get a bit of a dopamine hit, or a burst of the motivational chemical that craves rewards. But when the routine becomes familiar, what once felt exciting starts to feel like work,” says Dorman.
  
  That’s why being intentionally consistent is key: blocking off time on your calendar for that 4:30 p.m. jog, or booking a hot desk at your favorite coworking space, where you specifically research interesting companies or dig into building new skills.

  With repetition, not only does the craving for novelty become less pronounced, but the routine itself starts to reinforce itself from positive associations. Your weekly workout may suddenly be the most significant time to relax and refresh yourself, for example.
  
  Make time in the first few weeks to feel a little uncomfortable when cementing your new routine—but stick to a regular schedule. And if you’re comfortable sharing your new routine, recruit a close friend to keep you accountable through regular check-ins.

  “The more often you do something, the less you have to think about it,” says Dorman.

  Being consistent also makes us feel more productive. According to long-cited research by Teresa Amabile, a psychologist and professor emerita at Harvard Business School, the act of making progress on a project of any size involving personal investment leads to feelings of productivity. Her team dubbed this concept the “progress principle.” Amabile’s research shows this ability to make even a small dent on a project improves workers’ motivation, emotional health, and sense of personal performance. The frequency of these feelings also affected the duration subjects remained productive.
  
  In essence, building up wins throughout the day equaled a feeling of motivation for people over the long-term.

  Crafting your successful routine

  • 1. Make it a habit

  
  Habits are borne from planning ahead. One place to start when you’re still looking for work? Take an audit of your sleep schedule. Laura Vanderkam, a Fast Company contributor who has written about productive scheduling, stresses the importance of a consistent sleep schedule in her 2022 book, Tranquility by Tuesday.
  
  Unorganized sleep schedules are hidden saboteurs, causing people to crash out and squander productivity in order to make up for rest. It’s too easy to get into a cycle of stretching yourself thin during the work week—only to oversleep on weekends and throw off your rhythm on weekdays. With a consistent sleep and wake-up time, you not only regulate your flow of energy for the day, but you’re setting yourself up for success tomorrow on your terms.

  • 2. Place rewards alongside hard work

  Harvard behavioral scientists Katy Milkman, Julia Minson, and Kevin Volpp point to the practice of bundling temptations alongside tedious or daunting work to fuel motivation. Pair activities that are a chore or bore you with a motivational pick-me-up—like your favorite coffee or a few minutes of vinyasa flow.
  
  And Thomas Davies, a previous director at Google for Work and Fast Company contributor, writes that engaging in activities that genuinely light you up will make an onerous or soulless job search feel more fruitful or at least seem like one step to something better.
  
  MIT researchers also draw a connection between the importance of mental hints when developing habits. They claim habits are often associated with a physical cue that triggers a habit response—so go ahead and reach for your noise-cancelling headphones or shift over to your standing desk when hard work calls.

  • 3. Don’t ignore the paths of least resistance

  Finally, keeping a routine doesn’t mean being inflexible.

  According to a 2026 study carried out by Columbia researchers, people often get stuck in inertia (fixed mindsets, anyone?), which can cause them to disregard new pathways to their goal. Sometimes, the more interesting route can be more fun and lead you to the same result. So stay open to changing your set routines when it feels right. Maybe this means changing the ratio of your networking efforts to application efforts. Maybe this means searching for skills over strict job titles. 

  Whatever the shift looks like, the idea applies to before you get the job… and when you land it.

  Keep these tips to make your routine a steady one—and to make your unemployment period a productive one.

• The best strategy to protect against getting hacked is surprisingly old-school

  The recent reports of artificial intelligence agents gone rogue—hacking into corporate systems without being told to by the humans who manage them—are enough to make any systems administrator’s hair stand on end.

  The increasingly powerful abilities of frontier and other advanced AI models, combined with the apparent inabilities of their creators to keep them caged, have only added to the worries of companies already wrestling with how to protect themselves against AI-armed attackers.

  Cybercriminals of all kinds are using AI tools in much the same way legitimate organizations do, boosting their productivity and moving their operations from human to machine speed.

  Meanwhile, businesses have understandably embraced AI themselves. But every new AI tool or application a company chooses to roll out comes with its own security risks. 

  When it comes to AI, many companies feel like they have to take an “adopt or die” business perspective, says Leslie Nielsen, executive vice president and chief information security officer at Mimecast. “They think everybody’s going to pass them by,” Nielsen says. “But then the other side is, if you adopt too fast, it’s adopt and die, right?”

  While AI threats may be rapidly advancing, so are AI-powered defenses. And experts say following old-school best practices can go a long way toward protecting against even the most advanced attackers.

  Make sure you’ve got the basics covered

  The tactics used by AI attackers aren’t a whole lot different from those of human-powered adversaries, they’re just faster and more efficient, Nielsen says. As a result, the fundamentals of defense don’t need to be much different either.

  “It’s all the basic stuff you should be doing anyway,” he says. “It just becomes more important because the attacks are faster and the attacks are cleaner and more successful sometimes.”

  That means making sure that access to sensitive data is limited to those who actually need it; immediately patching security vulnerabilities when they become known; and making sure that all critical data is backed up and accessible if needed. And of course, follow the absolute basics, like making sure your cybersecurity defenses require strong passwords and multifactor authentication, and that you’re screening for phishing emails.

  Just like the attackers, defenders need to bolster themselves with AI tools to speed up their responses, Nielsen says. He added that this is especially true for small- and medium-size businesses that are probably working with smaller security teams.

  Complicating this already hefty task is the ability of advanced AI models to chain together low-level vulnerabilities into previously undiscovered exploits that could be used to breach a system, says Simon Jelley, vice president of product management at Dell Technologies. 

  “But those risks have always been there,” Jelley says. “It’s just accelerating those exposures and also making AI ultimately smarter.”

  Lock down your own AI

  The AI tools used by companies can end up being the insider threats that no one thinks about, experts say. In the case of the AI models gone rogue, it appears they weren’t trying to do anything malicious, just accomplish the objectives set out by their human creators at all costs.

  “The difference between AI and a person is AI is the eager intern that’s going to do what you ask, but it’s going to keep working 24-seven to get it done, and it’s going to do everything it needs to do,” Nielsen says.

  That could include doing things like digging up login credentials and accessing data it shouldn’t, potentially putting that data at risk of exposure.

  That’s why it’s important that there are guardrails in place to keep AI agents on task and to limit their access to sensitive data. But sometimes companies prioritize productivity over safety, Darktrace president and CEO Ed Jennings says.

  “You want AI to do all those things that you want employees to do,” Jennings says. “The problem is, a lot of times those agents are given unfettered access. You have to start to watch their behavior.”

  Companies should also create acceptable use policies for their AI tools, just like they do for other kinds of technology. Jennings notes that employee use of AI agents for personal reasons isn’t just a security risk, it can also get expensive if humans start burning through tokens. 

  Accept that you will be breached

  While traditional perimeter defenses can help keep attackers out, they don’t do anything to spot or stop them if they do get in. And given the increasing volume and sophistication of AI-powered attacks, experts say it’s more of a question of when, rather than if, companies will be breached.

  Jennings says that’s one of the reasons his company has focused on behavioral detection for more than a decade. Darktrace’s products were originally designed to spot attackers inside systems by looking for anomalies in human user behavior. Now they’re being used to flag the same kind of signs in AI activity.

  “AI doesn’t think in terms of boundaries,” Jennings says. “These agents don’t stop at the email layer. They don’t stop at the network layer. They just move laterally. They move freely. They do whatever is necessary and figure out how to do that very quickly.”

  Jelley, of Dell, says companies have come to realize that they can’t just say that they want to protect everything, because that’s not realistic. Instead, they’re better off identifying their core operations and data and creating a plan for getting them back up and running should an incident occur.

  “Ultimately, it’s about whether you have a mitigation plan in place to fall back on, a resilient infrastructure that you put in place to recover should the attack happen,” he says.

  —Bree Fowler

  ---

  This article originally appeared on Fast Company’s sister website, Inc.com. 

  Inc. is the voice of the American entrepreneur. We inspire, inform, and document the most fascinating people in business: the risk-takers, the innovators, and the ultra-driven go-getters that represent the most dynamic force in the American economy.

• Florida’s new Republican governor wants to bring NASA headquarters to the Sunshine State. Could it happen?

  Republican Congressman Byron Donalds, Florida’s first Black governor-elect, wants space and tech at the forefront of job creation in Florida. He also wants NASA to move its headquarters there. 

  The Kennedy Space Center in Brevard County, Florida, was central to the Apollo missions, including the first human moon landing in 1969. NASA’s rockets were assembled in Florida, and launched from the center.

  NASA’s headquarters have been stationed in Washington, D.C., since President Dwight D. Eisenhower signed the National Aeronautics and Space Act on July 29, 1958.

  Nearly 68 years later, Donalds hopes to recenter Florida in the aerospace ecosystem and generate jobs through launches. 

  Flying south?

  NASA’s forthcoming move follows an executive order signed by President Trump in February 2025, launching his administration’s federal workforce optimization initiative. In March of that year, NASA considered closing its headquarters and distributing workers to its other field locations.

  NASA’s lease on its current headquarters in D.C. expires August 2028, and the administration announced that it is looking for a new headquarters in a 2024 press release.

  “NASA Headquarters issued a solicitation for the sale or lease of commercial property in Washington, D.C., earlier this year. Responses were due in September, and our evaluation is ongoing,” NASA news chief Cheryl Warner told Fast Company.

  The push toward Florida is not random

  Donalds first made space a big part of his campaign when he and other representatives co-led bipartisan legislation called the Consolidating Aerospace Programs Efficiently at Canaveral Act (or the CAPE Canaveral Act) in March 2025, alongside members of Florida’s congressional delegation.

  It requires NASA to relocate to Brevard County, and was referred to the House Science, Space, and Technology Committee, but has not become a law. 

  Donalds positioned himself even closer to the idea of space in September during his campaign for governor.

  He introduced the STARS Act, proposing that Florida’s Space Coast become the permanent home of the United States Space Academy, a proposed, NASA-led federal academy established by President Donald Trump via an executive order signed in August.

  The academy would train future military, civilian, and commercial space professionals, and the order suggests that the location be within reasonable distance to the Kennedy Space Center and Cape Canaveral.

  It is unclear how many jobs Florida has to offer for a NASA headquarters and hosting the United States Space Academy, beyond the state’s historical significance. But space exploration and national security have become prominent priorities within the Republican Party in recent years, particularly under President Donald Trump.

  In March 2025, Florida Governor Ron DeSantis said he had discussed moving NASA headquarters with Elon Musk, CEO of SpaceX, and believed that Musk supported relocating it to Cape Canaveral, according to DeSantis.

  While Musk has not publicly supported this proposed relocation, he congratulated and endorsed Donalds in 2025 when he announced his campaign for governor. 

  The move has support from Floridians

  In a survey of 1,000 Florida voters and 500 Americans, Sachs Media found that 82% of Florida voters preferred Florida for the headquarters move, compared to 40% of U.S. adults with the same opinion.

  Additionally, 75% of Florida voters thought the Space Coast/Cape Canaveral is the ideal location for the headquarters, if moved to Florida.

  “To ensure American space superiority in an increasingly competitive domain, our future leaders must be educated at the very nexus of global space operations,” Donalds said when he introduced the STARS Act.

  The NASA headquarters workforce, an estimated 1,841 people last year, is much smaller than the national NASA workforce of over 17,000. Relocating NASA’s headquarters would not necessarily mean relocating the majority of its employees or its scientific operations.

  However, Donalds wants to generate jobs in Florida, beyond those transferred from Washington.

• Yahoo is betting the house on its new AI, from search to all its services

  Since August 2010, typing into Yahoo Search has meant getting a list of purple links yodeled by Microsoft Bing. That changes today. The Sunnyvale, California, company has rebuilt its engine powering its search using Scout, its AI answer engine launched as a beta in January. Eric Feng, senior vice president and general manager of the Yahoo Research Group, calls it “truly the biggest update that we’ve made to Yahoo search in years.” Scout is also colonizing all of Yahoo’s properties.

  Feng showed me Scout over a video demo, and the redesign makes sense. Everything starts with a single input field and a choice right under it: Search or Scout. Pick Search, and Yahoo builds a results page around your query, mixing quick facts, links, and short AI summaries of news and different bits of information. Pick Scout, and you get a conversation with the AI, which cites its sources with inline links. The two views of the same query sit side by side. 

  Whatever you pick, you can quickly flip between the two views by clicking on a Search/Scout switch that is placed at the top of the window. Yahoo calls this Pivot Search. You can also “pivot” to Scout by clicking on a follow-up question or any other thing that shows the Scout icon. According to Feng, it’s AI and search fused into one experience, letting you “move seamlessly between those two types of experiences.”

  

  Scout started as a standalone answer engine built on Yahoo’s knowledge graph, a giant database of people, places, and things, powered by Bing and Anthropic’s Claude. Since it was introduced, Feng tells me, Yahoo has cut Scout’s response time in half and swapped that single Claude model for several third-party models, including Google’s Gemini. Each of these models gets assigned to the job they do best depending on the information you are looking for.

  Having a free AI that gives nice answers is cool, but the models are all rented, so someone has to pay the bill. That’s ads, for now. Jim Lanzone, Yahoo’s CEO, says the goal is to use advertising to keep Scout free for everyone. “Maybe one day we’ll also have a paid tier,” he pointed out, “but free search is extremely important.”

  Smart looks, smart answers

  Yahoo’s redesign takes a swing at the question every search company is fumbling with. When a model can write you an answer, when do you still want links?

  Yahoo’s solution—distilled from its nearly 10-month beta and about 3 billion Scout responses—is that whatever you type should decide what the page looks like. Cards, links, an AI explanation, or a mix of everything in the right quantities. Weather, sports, finances, life and entertainment, celebrities, news . . . all of them get a special layout treatment that, to my eye, looks nicer than Google’s templates.

  Search for the Chicago Bears, and the top of the page fills with glanceable facts. The last game, the next one, the coach, and different useful bits of information that Yahoo—depending on the subject and its memory of you (more on this later)—thinks is what you will want to look at. Below come news stories, each with short “AI takeaways,” shopping links, plus common follow-up questions. 

  Search for Netflix, and Yahoo assumes you’re trying to get to Netflix. “I don’t want to read an explanation like, oh, how does Netflix’s recommendation system work?” Feng says. The AI answer is still on the page, “but look how far down we’ve slotted it.” Ask how to calculate compound interest, though, and the explanation leads. “Right now the users often need to understand the answer before they ask the question, which is strange,” he says.

  Google is inching toward the same conclusion. In the U.S., since November 2, according to Search Engine Roundtable, its AI Overviews for brand searches have moved to the right-hand column on desktop, out of the way of the links. And for some queries, the summary now opens to full length on its own, with a chat box waiting underneath. But Google keeps shuffling AI pieces around a page built for blue links.

  Yahoo’s new search results page, by contrast, feels like a clean, well-lighted place. The organization of the information in the search is clearer. And the Pivot Search feature is more intuitive to use than Google’s approach, which mostly puts its AI Mode at the same level as its other search types.

  Scout leaves the search box

  Outside of Pivot Search, Scout is showing up just about everywhere across Yahoo’s services. On Yahoo News and Yahoo Sports, a floating button opens a Scout chat window with questions tailored to the story you’re reading. You can talk to it and it will talk back to you—literally, with voice as well as text. In Sports, it knows which teams you follow. Yahoo Finance docks Scout on the right side of the page and lets it take actions for you there, agent-ish things like adding Nvidia’s earnings date to your calendar. Or dropping Shopify into your stocks watchlist. 

  That’s probably Scout’s biggest strength, since some of Yahoo’s services—like Finance or Sports—are very popular.

  Feng tells me that Scout keeps memories to better serve you on any page you’re on. If you show interest in Nvidia news on Yahoo Finance, it will clock that. Right now, what you ask in Finance stays in Finance. Yahoo is looking at letting those memories carry over to other services too, which could be very helpful, though it means giving away some of your privacy. Feng points out that the memories can be controlled by the user and turned off. “We want to give users complete control over their data,” he says.

  Yahoo also worked with ElevenLabs on a voice you can interrupt mid-answer, and one option is a clone of Yahoo’s cofounder, Jerry Yang. Talk to it long enough, Feng says, and it yodels. No, that’s not an obscure pun. It literally starts to yodel.

  Scout’s biggest escape out of the search box, however, is that it now lives in Mozilla’s Firefox, too, just like Gemini lives in Chrome and Copilot lives in Edge. The company says it’s the first deal of this kind for its AI chat.

  Whether this new search makes a dent in Google or Microsoft’s market share is yet to be seen. Yahoo is third after Microsoft, with both light-years behind Google. Feng hopes it does, as he points out that moving the needle just a point means billions in revenue and shareholder value. But the Scout integration across all Yahoo’s properties goes beyond the pure search. For its 700 million users, a free AI built built into their favorite services will be really useful. This new revamped Yahoo may actually have a fighting chance.

• Blockbuster video game ‘Grand Theft Auto VI’ is almost here. What makes this latest chapter different

  Grand Theft Auto has never been much for following the rules.
  
  Nearly three decades after a video game built around stealing cars, outrunning police and embracing criminal mayhem first arrived, the franchise has survived controversy, transformed open-world gaming and become one of the biggest sellers in entertainment.
  
  Now, after a 13-year wait since its last main installment, Grand Theft Auto VI is preparing for another big score. The latest chapter arrives Nov. 19 with a return to the neon-soaked streets of Vice City with two protagonists.
  
  For longtime fans, GTA VI is a highly anticipated return. For everyone else, here’s what to know about the blockbuster video game, its characters and the enormous businessriding on its release:

  Why is Grand Theft Auto such a big deal?

  The franchise began in 1997 as a relatively simple, top-down game that allowed players to roam fictional cities, steal vehicles, evade police and commit crimes.
  
  The release of Grand Theft Auto III in 2001 helped redefine open-world gaming. It gave players greater freedom to explore a sprawling three-dimensional city, pursue missions and interact with their surroundings.
  
  Later installments expanded that freedom with larger environments, cinematic storytelling, social satire and detailed worlds. The influence reached far beyond games about stealing cars.
  
  Ubisoft’s Assassin’s Creed series brought open-world exploration to historical settings, while Bethesda’s The Elder Scrolls games expanded their own longstanding tradition of open-ended fantasy role-playing. Nintendo’s The Legend of Zelda: Breath of the Wild later emphasized experimentation and discovery, allowing players to use the environment itself to solve problems.
  
  For Grand Theft Auto: San Andreas and Grand Theft Auto V, Rockstar Games recruited real-life gang members to help bring authenticity to background characters and dialogue. Former writer and audio director Lazlow Jones has said some performers challenged scripted lines, prompting developers to let them use language drawn from their own experiences.
  
  That attention to detail helped create the sense of a living world that became a hallmark of the franchise, even as the series drew criticism for its depictions of violence, crime and women.
  
  But controversy did not stop the franchise’s commercial rise.
  
  According to publisher Take-Two Interactive, the franchise has sold more than 470 million units worldwide. Grand Theft Auto V, released in 2013, accounts for more than 230 million of those units and reached $1 billion in retail sales in just three days.
  
  Its online multiplayer component, Grand Theft Auto Online, has helped keep players engaged through years of updates, new activities and in-game purchases.

  What is the story behind Grand Theft Auto VI?

  This time, the action returns to Vice City, Rockstar’s fictional version of Miami, and expands across the surrounding state of Leonida, a Florida-inspired setting filled with beaches, highways, nightlife and criminal enterprises.
  
  At the center are Lucia Caminos and Jason Duval, a couple trying to improve their circumstances through a life of crime. Lucia has recently been released from prison while Jason, a former soldier who became involved with drug runners in the Leonida Keys, is looking for a different path.
  
  Their plans become more complicated when a seemingly straightforward criminal job goes wrong, drawing them into a conspiracy that stretches across Leonida.
  
  The trailers suggest a story mixing romance, robberies, betrayals and the series’ familiar satirical take on American culture.
  
  Rockstar has revealed several supporting characters, including bank robber Raul Bautista, aspiring music executive Dre’Quan Priest and nightclub owner Boobie Ike.

  Who is in the cast?

  Rockstar has kept much of the voice cast under wraps, including the performers behind Lucia and Jason.
  
  One familiar actor has confirmed his involvement: Stephen Root, known for his work in “Office Space,” “King of the Hill” and “Barry.” He told The Associated Press in September that he appears in the game, adding that fans had already recognized his distinctive voice in promotional footage.
  
  Root has been identified in reports as the voice of Brian Heder, an aging drug runner operating out of the Leonida Keys. Rockstar has introduced the character but has not publicly confirmed Root’s casting in that specific role.

  What makes this installment different?

  Beyond the return to Vice City, one of the biggest changes is the focus on two protagonists whose relationship drives the story.
  
  Grand Theft Auto V featured three playable main characters. The new installment centers on Lucia and Jason as partners navigating the criminal underworld together.
  
  Rockstar has promoted a larger, more detailed setting that stretches beyond the city into the wider state of Leonida. The game also arrives in a vastly different technological landscape from its predecessor, with newer consoles capable of supporting more elaborate environments and character interactions.
  
  But not every detail is known. Rockstar has offered trailers and promotional previews, while questions remain about the full range of activities, how the game’s systems will work and the future of its online multiplayer experience.

  What about the music?

  Music has long been part of Grand Theft Auto’s identity. It has included everything from fictional radio stations to the songs accompanying players as they cruise through the game’s cities.
  
  Grand Theft Auto VI is expanding that tradition with an original score by Justice, the Grammy-winning French electronic duo of Gaspard Augé and Xavier de Rosnay.
  
  Rockstar says the score adapts to players’ actions and experiences throughout the game, shifting with the environments and situations they encounter.
  
  A 30-track score album is scheduled for Dec. 11, featuring collaborations with artists including Tame Impala, SZA, King Gizzard & The Lizard Wizard and Gesaffelstein.
  
  The game also features in-game radio stations and a separate collection of original songs, continuing the franchise’s connection to popular music.

  —Jonathan Landrum Jr., AP Entertainment Writer

• Anthropic stock listing: Target price range hints at valuation lower than rumored reports as IPO date nears

  Rumors have spread for months that Anthropic’s IPO valuation could reach the head-spinning sum of $2 trillion. 

  In reality, the creator of Claude is looking at a valuation range of $1 trillion to $1.4 trillion, according to a range of analyses. 

  On Tuesday, Anthropic’s updated Securities and Exchange Commission (SEC) filing provided the clearest look yet at what its IPO will look like. 

  The AI company plans to offer 825 million shares of Class A common stock at an estimated price of $70 to $78 each. Anthropic is selling more than 801 million shares, while its selling stockholders are offering another 23.6 million shares.

  Anthropic is also offering up Class N common stock in a private placement to Google, Nvidia, Advanced Micro Devices (AMD), Broadcom, Micron Technology, Microsoft, and TSMC Partners.

  Google and Nvidia will purchase the largest amount at 135,135,135 shares each, worth about $10 million. 

  Anthropic predicts the private placement deal will be worth about $26 billion. In total, Anthropic could raise up to $64.35 billion through the IPO. 

  The exact date of the Anthropic IPO is still up in the air but likely to be mid-November. The company has applied for listing on Nasdaq under the ticker “ANT.” 

  How is Anthropic doing? 

  It’s no secret that investors are continuing to fear an AI bubble—with the midterm election results offering more uncertainty about the future of data center buildouts.

  Anthropic has seen its growth slow this year. In October, the company reported a 45% increase in revenue for quarter three, down from 60% between quarters one and two.

  Following these results, investors had started leaning toward an IPO valuation closer to $1.5 trillion, rather than $2 trillion.

  Of course, an IPO valuation over $1 trillion is still remarkable. If accurate, Anthropic will have one of the biggest IPOs of all time—though falling short of SpaceX’s record $1.77 trillion listing earlier this year. 

• Adobe is fully in its agent era

  I am a big fan of artificial intelligence taking on the miserable tasks of creative work. Renaming and tagging footage, syncing multiple camera angles, reformatting an ad for 50 different aspect ratios? Let the computer do that, thanks. Adobe showed me how its AI agent can do all that, right inside its apps, back in June. But actual creative work? Pass.

  Today, at its Max conference, Adobe is announcing something far more radical than anything it showed me just a few months ago. The company is previewing what it calls local MCP integrations with Creative Cloud tools. MCP is the Model Context Protocol, an open standard Anthropic created in late 2024 that acts as a universal adapter, letting any AI agent plug into any software tool.

  The integrations would let third-party agents like ChatGPT, Claude, or Gemini work directly inside your local Photoshop, Illustrator, Premiere, and After Effects projects. On your machine. With access to your layers, vector paths, footage bins, and sequences. The projects stay editable by hand, and users will be able to, in Adobe’s words, “step in at any moment.” The apps themselves need to be installed and licensed on your computer, Adobe tells me, because the agent works locally in your project files with the full depth of the desktop tools.

  Adobe’s tools already work with third-party AIs—just the other way around. Since December 2025, ChatGPT users have been able to call on Photoshop, Express, and Acrobat to do design work right in OpenAI’s service. And back in April 2026, Adobe launched a connector for Claude to allow it to use more than 50 tools from Photoshop, Illustrator, or Premiere within the Anthropic AI’s cloud-based service. In September, the same ability came to Google.

  In all those cases, you drop a file—a PDF, an image, whatever—into a conversation with the AI, ask it to do things to it, and Adobe’s tools will take care of it. The integration allowed users to continue work later in Adobe’s apps.

  The new local MCP integrations flip that around, changing who is in control.

  

  In theory, with Adobe’s own AI agent—now rebranded as Adobe Creative Agent—you know that there’s some degree of control and accountability. Until now, Adobe decided how much its agent could do on its own. With MCP, an outside agent gets the same tools, and Adobe can’t vouch for what it does with them. I don’t know about you, but I feel vertigo. Can we trust these agents with our files? And do we really want to?

  It seems that plenty of creators are willing to go further in their use of AI. In the Creators’ Toolkit Report that Adobe released alongside these announcements, a survey of more than 2,000 U.S. creators, 77% say the final creative decision should always remain with the human, even when using agents. They want the help. They want to drive the wheel, too.

  But there’s an obvious contradiction between the want and what they get. Some 68% of those using creative AI say they at least sometimes settle for results that don’t fully match their vision. Why? Maybe the answer is that 59% say agents save them time. Or that 36% say agents helped them finish projects that were previously too complex. 

  Three altitudes of AI

  It’s also happening faster than I could have imagined. Forest Key, Adobe’s VP of Firefly and Agentic AI, told me back in June about what he described as three altitudes of AI. The first is the assistant that strips away drudgery. In an example from that launch we saw an agent in Premiere doing its work: taking a pile of randomly named files, sorting them into bins, renaming and tagging clips using computer vision, syncing footage from three cameras with a separate audio track, and dropping a marker on the timeline wherever an interviewer asked a question.

  The second altitude is an AI thought partner, while you keep adding your taste and editorial voice. The third is agents that run full automations while you only check in periodically.

  Today, Adobe is also previewing always-on agents, coming first to the Firefly AI Assistant, that take on recurring work in the background—organizing incoming assets, checking quality, preparing content for different channels—while creators set the goal, review the plan, and approve the results. That’s a first step toward altitude three. MCP means agents Adobe didn’t build can climb the same ladder. The local MCP integrations won’t enter beta until early 2027.

  

  Agent as partner

  Adobe started its agentic push back in April, when it deployed the Adobe Creative Agent in Firefly, in beta mode. This agent could do the work for you, not just vomit generative AI bitmaps. In June, other Adobe programs also got agentic AI capabilities in beta testing: Premiere, Photoshop, Illustrator, InDesign, and Frame.io. That’s when Adobe’s agent started working on your actual projects from inside its apps. After Effects joined the agentic party in September. 

  At Adobe Max, the company is adding new capabilities to the Adobe Creative Agent. In Firefly, the assistant can now remember formats, colors, brand guidelines, and characters to apply across projects. A new Plan Mode lets you review, edit, and approve the agent’s plan before it starts, and a model selector lets you pick which AI model does the work. 

  The agent is also coming to Premiere mobile in private beta, where it can turn footage into editable first cuts and make edits with plain-language instructions. In desktop Premiere, it can do really complex things, like apply effects across every clip in a sequence, track masked subjects through a frame, and adjust color and exposure across an entire sequence at once.

  Until now, there was no official way for outside AI agents to work inside your local projects like Adobe’s agent can. Whenever it becomes available next year, MCP access to Adobe’s apps for agents like Claude or ChatGPT will truly change things. You won’t bring your work to the third-party agent’s home anymore. The third-party agent will come into your home, get its own bedroom, and half of your fridge.

  

  Lingering questions

  Having your own ghost artist is a very tempting yet dangerous proposition. What happens if a third-party agent corrupts a sequence, generates something licensing-toxic inside your project, or quietly burns through generative credits? The accountability chain gets blurry fast. 

  Anyone could ask Claude to pull reference imagery from the web, then composite it into your project using Photoshop’s own tools to make a document to open and refine yourself. I doubt Adobe’s own assistant will ever do that. First, many of Adobe’s own customers would hate it. And then, imagine the copyright hell that could ensue.

  Asked where liability sits between Adobe, the agent provider, and the creator in that scenario, Adobe only pointed back to its answer that MCP is still a preview. When I asked whether third-party agent actions will carry Content Credentials—the provenance standard the company champions—Adobe also told me that it is “working through how provenance will be supported.” As for credit usage, creators will be able to set parameters and review plans before always-on agents run, but on cost Adobe says it is “exploring ways to provide an upfront estimate.”

  Those cost questions aren’t only about outside agents, either. Logically, Adobe’s own assistants already burn credits: The After Effects beta started charging them for its AI Assistant on November 6, 2026.

  It just feels to me that, for all the good stuff we get from AI helping with work, there’s still a divide when it comes to actual creative work, one that is full of contradictions at many levels. For now, the open questions seem to outnumber the guardrails.

  The strategy question

  Then there is the matter about what Adobe gains from opening its walled garden to the AI startup hordes. Why give up the last workflow chokepoint it fully owned? 

  Maybe they don’t have any options here. Perhaps this is all about the AI agent craze and MCP becoming the standard. Fighting this wave may be seen as worse—especially by greedy stockholders—than riding it. 

  What is clear is that the signs of a company-wide pivot to agents are everywhere. A single Adobe Creative Agent now powers the Firefly assistant, the Creative Cloud assistants, and a new private beta in Premiere mobile, while another service called CX Enterprise Coworker in GenStudio orchestrates agents across brands’ content supply chains, according to the company.

  “Many creative professionals already use third-party agents that connect to MCP-enabled apps for parts of their production workflow, and they’ve told us they want those agents to work with the tools they trust to finish the job,” Adobe told me in an email. Translation: The customers were already halfway out the door. Let’s keep them in before they find an alternative, integrate it into their workflow, and start canceling subscriptions.

  If MCP works as billed, the change will be profound. Your creative software would become a workshop where you hire whichever AI subcontractor you trust—while Adobe repositions itself not as the brain, but as the bench where everyone works. That is either a masterclass in platform strategy or the beginning of Creative Cloud as someone else’s commodity front-end.

  Whatever their business strategy is, this new world feels built on shaky grounds. We are climbing the ladder that Key, Adobe’s agentic AI VP, drew for me in June a lot faster than we can build safety checkpoints and best practices rules. As for me, I’m still happy to let a robot rename my footage. But hand Claude the keys to my Premiere timeline? Not yet.