Shares of Intel slumped Thursday after President Donald Trump said in a social media post that the chipmaker’s CEO needs to resign.

“The CEO of Intel is highly CONFLICTED and must resign, immediately,” Trump posted on Truth Social. “There is no other solution to this problem. Thank you for your attention to this problem!”

Trump made the post after Sen. Tom Cotton sent a letter to Intel Chairman Frank Yeary expressing concern over CEO Lip-Bu Tan’s investments and ties to semiconductor firms that are reportedly linked to the Chinese Communist Party and the People’s Liberation Army, and asked the board whether Tan had divested his interests in these companies to eliminate any conflicts of interest.

Intel did not immediately respond to a request for comment, so it is not immediately clear if Tan has divested his interests in the companies.

“In March 2025, Intel appointed Lip-Bu Tan as its new CEO,” Cotton wrote in the letter. “Mr. Tan reportedly controls dozens of Chinese companies and has a stake in hundreds of Chinese advanced-manufacturing and chip firms. At least eight of these companies reportedly have ties to the Chinese People’s Liberation Army.”

Tan, who took over as CEO in March, previously launched the venture capital firm Walden International in 1987 to focus on funding tech start-ups, including chip makers. China’s state media has described Tan as “actively” devoted to Chinese and Asian markets, having invested not only in the Taiwan Semiconductor Manufacturing Company but also China’s state-owned enterprise SMIC, which seeks to advance China’s chipmaking capabilities.

The demands made by Trump and Cotton come as economic and political rivalries between the U.S. and China increasingly focus on the competition over chips, AI and other digital technologies that experts say will shape future economies and military conflicts.

Cotton, the chairman of the Senate Intelligence Committee, has raised concerns that Chinese spies could be working at tech companies and defense contractors, using their positions to steal secrets or plant digital backdoors that give China access to classified systems and networks.

On Thursday the Arkansas Republican wrote to the Department of Defense urging Defense Secrectary Pete Hegseth to ban all non-U.S. citizens from jobs allowing them to access DoD networks. He has also demanded an investigation into Chinese citizens working for defense contractors.

“The U.S. government recognizes that China’s cyber capabilities pose one of the most aggressive and dangerous threats to the United States, as evidenced by infiltration of our critical infrastructure, telecommunications networks, and supply chains,” Cotton wrote in an earlier letter calling on the Pentagon to conduct the investigation.

National security officials have linked China’s government to hacking campaigns targeting prominent Americans and critical U.S. systems.

“U.S. companies who receive government grants should be responsible stewards of taxpayer dollars and adhere to strict security regulations,” Cotton wrote on the social platform X.

Intel had been a beneficiary of the Biden administration’s CHIPS Act, receiving more than $8 billion in federal funding to build computer chip plants around the country.

Shares of the California company slid 3.5%, while markets, particularly the tech-heavy Nasdaq, gained ground.

Founded in 1968 at the start of the PC revolution, Intel missed the technological shift to mobile computing triggered by Apple’s 2007 release of the iPhone, and it’s lagged more nimble chipmakers. Intel’s troubles have been magnified since the advent of artificial intelligence — a booming field where the chips made by once-smaller rival Nvidia have become tech’s hottest commodity.

Intel is shedding thousands of workers and cutting expenses — including some domestic semiconductor manufacturing capabilities — as Tan tries to revive the fortunes of the struggling chipmaker.

This story was originally featured on Fortune.com

Krispy Kreme has officially terminated its much-hyped national partnership with McDonald’s, as CEO Josh Charlesworth said it created “unsustainable operating costs” and led to lease impairment and termination costs of $28.9 million. In other words, not enough donuts made enough dough. The fallout from the failed partnership was laid bare in Krispy Kreme’s latest earnings report, a sharp contrast from McDonald’s own resilient financial showing amid sector headwinds.

Krispy Kreme and McDonald’s mutually agreed to end their partnership, effective July 2, 2025, after an attempt to distribute Krispy Kreme doughnuts in approximately 2,400 McDonald’s U.S. locations. Initially hailed as a major growth opportunity, the collaboration floundered under operational pressure and insufficient returns.

“Our two companies partnered very closely, each supporting execution, marketing, and training, delivering a great consumer experience,” Charlesworth said in a public statement. “Ultimately, efforts to bring our costs in line with unit demand were unsuccessful, making the partnership unsustainable for us.”

Krispy Kreme’s Q2 2025 earnings statement details $28.9 million in lease impairment and termination costs directly attributed to the McDonald’s tie-up, on top of $22.1 million in asset charges. The company’s leadership made clear these losses forced a strategic retrenchment, ending what was once projected to be a coast-to-coast doughnut blitz by the end of 2026.

Krispy Kreme’s cringey earnings

The financial repercussions were a contributor to Krispy Kreme’s disappointing second-quarter earnings, which detailed a revenue decline and significant net loss for the period ending June 29, 2025. Revenue came in at $379.8 million, down 13.5% year-over-year and missing analyst projections. Adjusted earnings per share were -$0.15, below the estimated -$0.03. Organic revenue saw a slight dip of 0.8%, while the company took non-cash charges totaling $406.9 million, the overwhelming portion of a $441 million net loss.

Charlesworth said the poor results primarily reflect McDonald’s deal. “We are quickly removing our costs related to the McDonald’s partnership and growing fresh delivery through profitable, high-volume doors with major customers,” he added, saying the company expects to begin recouping profitability in the third quarter.

Krispy Kreme is now accelerating plans to exit unprofitable partnerships, refocus on profitable channels (including supermarket and convenience partnerships), and pursue international franchise expansion. It’s also selling its remaining stake in Insomnia Cookies and refranchising further markets, including in Australia, New Zealand, Mexico, and the U.K., with the aim of lightening its balance sheet and unlocking cash for future investments.

McDonald’s sees stability and growth

For McDonald’s, the Krispy Kreme partnership was a small experiment compared to the size of its regular business. The donut sales represented only a minor part of the breakfast menu, and their removal has not dented McDonald’s financial performance.

According to McDonald’s second-quarter earnings, the company has weathered economic uncertainty and changed consumer habits with surprising strength. Global comparable sales rose 3.8%, with U.S. same-store sales up 2.5%. Consolidated revenues came to $6.84 billion, up 5% year-over-year and beating analyst expectations. Net income increased 11% to $2.25 billion and adjusted earnings per share came in at $3.19.

CEO Chris Kempczinski emphasized that McDonald’s remains committed to delivering “delicious, affordable, and convenient options” and will continue to drive growth through digital investment and menu innovation, recently announcing the return of popular items and new promotions.

McDonald’s referred Fortune to a joint announcement with Krispy Kreme about the canceled partnership. Charlesworth said that the two companies “partnered very closely” on the venture in roughly 2,400 McDonald’s restaurants, but that it was unsustainable. The announcement also said that Krispy Kreme represented a small, non-material part of McDonald’s breakfast business, and breakfast remains a core pillar of McDonald’s business strategy. Krispy Kreme declined to comment.

The road ahead for Krispy Kreme

With the McDonald’s arrangement behind it, Krispy Kreme’s turnaround blueprint involves shifting focus toward higher-margin retail channels, franchise growth, and operational cost reduction. The company’s leadership suspended dividends and renegotiated credit agreements, raising fresh capital to stabilize operations.

Charlesworth acknowledged the hit but remains optimistic: “We are now moving decisively to eliminate costs tied to this partnership and expect to return to profitability by the third quarter, focusing on sustainable, profitable growth going forward”.

Krispy Kreme’s market reaction, however, was muted: the stock has fallen nearly 70% since January—benchmarking profound investor skepticism regarding the path to recovery. McDonald’s has gained slightly more than 5% over the same period.

This failed partnership highlights the risk and complexity of scaling niche products into the hyper-competitive world of fast food, especially as American consumers remain price- and convenience-driven. For McDonald’s, meanwhile, it’s business as usual—the golden arches shine on, donuts or not.

For this story, Fortune used generative AI to help with an initial draft. An editor verified the accuracy of the information before publishing. 

This story was originally featured on Fortune.com

OpenAI has released its new LLM model GPT-5. The new generative AI model, which will be available to consumers for free and power the newest version of the popular ChatGPT bot, represents “our smartest, fastest, most useful model yet, with built-in thinking that puts expert-level intelligence in everyone’s hands,” OpenAI said on Thursday.

If you’re wondering what all the hoopla is about, and what makes GPT-5 better, or different, than the company’s previous GPT models (or from rival AI models like Claude, Gemini, or Llama), here’s a quick rundown of some of the most important new features and functions available in GPT-5:

Easier to use

Recent versions of OpenAI products have forced users to choose the type of model they wanted to use for different tasks – OpenAI’s o family of “reasoning” model for complicated research, or the standard GPT for speedy results. GPT-5 uses a “real time router” that automates the process, picking the right tool for the right job so you don’t have to. 

Special personalities

ChatGPT will now let users choose from four different pre-set “personalities” when they interact with it: “cynic,” “robot,” “listener,” and “nerd.” These personalities are intended to make using the chatbot feel more natural and context-appropriate. If you want a bit more sarcasm, choose cynic, whereas if you’re using it for work, the “efficient and blunt” robot persona might be better.

Fewer hallucinations

OpenAI claims that GPT-5 is less prone to inventing information, or hallucinating. According to OpenAI, GPT-5 was 45% less likely to contain a factual error than GPT-4o in tests in which it had web search enabled and used anonymized prompts; when “thinking”, GPT-5 was 80% less likely to contain an error than OpenAI o3. But that still doesn’t eradicate hallucinations, and as Mashable explains, it means that GPT-5 will still hallucinate one out of every ten times on common tasks.

A better writer

According to OpenAI, GPT-5 is a much better writer than its predecessors, producing more “compelling, resonant writing with literary depth and rhythm.” The company provided side-by-side comparisons of GPT-5’s penmanship versus GPT-4o for things like wedding toasts and poems. 

A better coder

While previous versions of GPT had software coding capabilities, OpenAI says GPT-5 brings improved ease and sophistication to its “vibe coding” functionality, allowing users to “create beautiful and responsive websites, apps, and games” in a single prompt.

Agentic capabilities

GPT-5 integrates with Gmail and Google Calendar to assist with scheduling, reminders, email follow‑ups, and other productivity tasks. (This capability will be initially limited to users of the company’s paid “pro” membership.)

Health

LLMs have become a popular way for people to get medical information and health advice. OpenAI says GPT-5 scores higher than any of its previous models on the HealthBench test, and that it acts more like “an active thought partner, proactively flagging potential concerns and asking questions to give more helpful answers.” Of course, OpenAI also points out that it does not replace a medical professional.

Your mileage may vary

Those are just a few of the new features and improvements, which will provide plenty of opportunity for consumers and businesses to experiment with the latest model and compare it to their current go-to models. Whether it represents a major leap forward, or more of an iterative improvement will become clear in the days and weeks ahead as outside experts test the model and real world users play around with it. Early testers interviewed by Reuters said the improvement from GPT-4 to GPT-5 is “not as large” as the one from GPT-3 to GPT-4. AI expert and often-skeptic Gary Marcus says: “Fans will still find something to rejoice in, but GPT-5 is not the huge leap forward people long expected.”

This story was originally featured on Fortune.com

In 2021 when Allbirds’ stock went public, the shoemaker could do no wrong. Riding on the popularity of its eco-friendly wool sneakers among Silicon Valley venture capitalists and other tech bros, it had been a sensation since its founding six years earlier. Its shares nearly doubled on their debut.

Allbirds’ fast growth up until then helped Wall Street brush aside concerns about deep losses—at first. Since then, Allbirds’ shares have lost more than 95% of their value. And after hitting a peak of $297.8 million in 2022, revenue fell by more than a third through 2024, despite a healthy broader market for comfortable shoes. The company on Thursday reported that sales fell 23% in its second fiscal quarter, showing just how daunting a task Allbirds faces in making a comeback.

Now, Allbirds cofounder Tim Brown and its CEO, Joe Vernachio, say the company has a strategy to regain customers’ favor: zeroing in on what it did best in the first place. That means making versatile lifestyle shoes with a unique look, using innovative, sustainable materials to maintain the environmental cred so central to its identity. The company has closed stores and abandoned some of its ill-fated attempts to expand into other categories to spur growth: leggings made of merino wool, for example, or performance-oriented running shoes.

Courtesy of Allbirds

Quick growth, and some missteps

It was a classic tale of a hot brand growing too quickly and making hasty mistakes in its ascendance. In Allbirds’ case, those included building out too wide a product assortment and opening too many store locations. By late 2023, Allbirds had 45 U.S. stores; now it is back down to 21 locations.

The brand also was overly optimistic about its ability to sell directly to consumers. It took too long to line up wholesale partnerships with national department store chains like Nordstrom, betting incorrectly that its own stores and website were enough to attract new customers and serve its tech-savvy fans.

Meanwhile, imitators of Allbirds’ natural-fiber shoes proliferated, and the compelling brand story that was such at hit at first was in jeopardy. “The time we had to evolve and grow that story was compressed in such an intense way,” Brown tells Fortune in an exclusive interview ahead of Allbirds’ 10-year anniversary. “With the rapid success that came our way, we lost some of our DNA.”

Like many brands in growth mode, Allbirds tried to cast a wider net for customers. Case in point was the Tree Flyer, a model launched in 2022 and aimed at younger customers, rather than the brand’s sweet spot of people in their thirties and forties. The shoe did not catch on and has been discontinued. Other product flops: those wool leggings, and an expansion into items far from its expertise, like puffer jackets.

And Allbirds wasn’t just opening way too many stores given its sales volume; those stores were also too large for its need, not allowing for an enticing display of its shoes.

Less can be more when it comes to a store

All these misfires strained the company’s finances: In the five fiscal years that ended in December 2024, Allbirds lost $419 million on sales of $1.24 billion. It recently announced an expended credit facility to give itself more financial breathing room.

It has closed many of its stores, and the 21 stores the brand still operates are smaller—about half the size of stores opened in that blitz a few years ago. “We now have books and plants and couches to relax on, and we just get people spending a lot more time in the store, giving us a better opportunity to engage with them,” says Vernachio.

Courtesy of Allbirds

The company is also listening to concerns expressed by some analysts that the brand’s messaging has focused too much on environmental virtues, highlighting the carbon emissions footprint of each item and the company’s efforts to reduce it. Some have urged Allbirds to focus more on the look and comfort of the shoes. Vernachio dismisses some of that criticism: Focusing on sustainable materials makes Allbirds more innovative in its looks and designs, he says.

But he does note that Allbirds now uses the word “nature” in its marketing much more than “sustainability.”

“We think the word ‘sustainability’ sounds like a chore, like sorting your garbage,” he jokes.

Taking flight again?

Brown and Vernachio, who took the reins last year, replacing Brown’s cofounder Joey Zwillinger, insist that the brand’s appeal was not merely a fad. They are focused on tapping into what made Allbirds a sensation in the first place: cool, innovative shoes that are comfortable.

Brown, a New Zealander, likes to quote a Maori proverb: “Ka mua, ka muri,” or walking backwards into the future. “This moment is about going back to the beginning and back to those core principles that had been lost as we had so much growth and expansion,” he said.

Just as he did in 2015, Brown sees a white space in the market for shoes that offer simplicity. Sneakers are often “over designed,” he said, and tend to rely too much on plastic.

But the fact remains that many of the biggest hits of recent years in footwear are bulbous, flashy in design, and heavy on synthetic materials. Brands like Hoka and On Running have seen major success, and technical brands like New Balance and Brooks Running have successfully forayed into lifestyle shoes, taking up some of the space once occupied by Allbirds.

Allbirds has relaunched its original bestseller, the Wool Runner NZ (a nod to Brown’s New Zealand roots), with some design tweaks and features like a dual-density insole that uses cushioned memory foam.

There is also a plant-based-leather shoe coming out early next year called the Terralux, with a look Vernachio called “more elevated.”

“What we’re leaning into is that people want to have sneaker-level comfort in every use occasion,” he said.

Another promising product is the Tree Cruiser. It is made with tree fibers—a nod to the early adopters who chose Allbirds for its green virtues. (A version made of recycled polyester and recycled Italian wool will be launched next month.) The Cruiser line has been marketed as “court-inspired,” meaning it was intended for people playing tennis and other court-based sports. But it has found its niche as a versatile, everyday shoe with clean lines and features like its low-profile rubber sole that can be worn in a number of different situations. “We were long overdue in getting a shoe like that in the customer’s closet,” says Vernachio.

Ten years after its founding, the sneaker market and the world look very different. But getting back to Allbirds’ original values and aesthetics is the way forward, Brown said: “This is a brand worth fighting for, with principles that have never felt more full of potential and important in this moment.”

This story was originally featured on Fortune.com

Welcome to Eye on AI! In this edition...OpenAI releases GPT-5 and strikes a $1 government deal. AI homework helpers duke it out. Zoox gets a special exemption.

One of the defining truths about the world of generative AI is that even when you’re on top, the lead doesn’t last for long.

And so, the two key questions coming out of OpenAI’s long-awaited launch of GPT-5 today are whether the new LLM can help the company reclaim the mantle of undisputed AI leader—and if so, how long can OpenAI keep the lead?

OpenAI says GPT-5 delivers “more accurate answers than any previous reasoning model,” and is “much smarter across the board,” reflected by strong performance on academic and human-evaluated benchmarks. Its research blog boasts of new state-of-the-art performance across math, coding, and health questions, and found that GPT-5 outperformed other OpenAI models across tasks spanning over 40 occupations, including law, logistics, sales, and engineering. 

“GPT-5 really feels like talking to a PhD level expert in any topic,” OpenAI CEO Sam Altman told journalists in a pre-briefing on Wednesday. “Something like GPT-5 would be pretty much unimaginable in any other time in history.” 

Altman described GPT-5 as a “significant step” along the path to artificial general intelligence (AGI), which, according to OpenAI’s mission statement, is defined as “highly autonomous systems that outperform humans at most economically valuable work.” 

It’s unclear whether this combination of speed, power and features will be enough, however. Some two years in the making (GPT-4 was launched in March 2023), GPT-5’s launch has taken longer than many industry insiders expected, as OpenAI has adjusted its approach in response to industry changes. And while ChatGPT now boasts an impressive 700 million weekly users, OpenAI has faced growing pressure over the past year as rivals poach its talent and race ahead on emerging AI techniques like long-context reasoning and autonomous tool use. In addition to Big Tech competitors like Meta and Google, there’s a wave of startups founded by OpenAI’s own former researchers, including Anthropic, Thinking Machines, and Safe Superintelligence. And of course, there’s the new crop of powerful Chinese models, like DeepSeek, vying for global influence.

Whether GPT-5 propels OpenAI back to the top of the AI hill will become clear in the days and weeks ahead, as researchers put the model through its paces, testing it against the likes of other elite models, including Anthropic’s latest Claude model and Google’s Gemini. 

OpenAI pushes to stay in the lead

With GPT-5 now finally out, OpenAI CEO Sam Altman acknowledged that staying at the frontier means one thing: relentless scaling. 

In AI, scaling refers to the idea that models get more powerful as you increase the amount of data, computing power, and model components used during training. It’s the underlying principle that drove progress from GPT-2 to GPT-3 to GPT-4—and now GPT-5. The catch is that each leap requires exponentially more investment, particularly in AI infrastructure—for OpenAI, that includes its Stargate Project, a joint venture it announced in January with Softbank, Oracle and investment firm MGX with a goal to to invest up to $500 billion by 2029 in AI-specific data centers across the U.S.

When asked whether scaling laws still hold, Altman said they “absolutely” do. He pointed to better models, smarter architectures, higher-quality data, and significantly more computing power as the path to “order-of-magnitude” improvements still ahead.

But that kind of progress comes at a cost. “It’s going to take an eyewatering amount of compute,” he admitted. “But we intend to continue doing it.”

That of course, requires massive amount of money and partnerships.

On the bright side, OpenAI has roughly doubled its revenue in the first seven months of 2025, hitting an annualized run rate of $12 billion—up from about $6 billion at the start of the year, according to a recent report by The Information. That translates to $1 billion in monthly revenue, fueled by surging demand for its ChatGPT products across both consumer and enterprise markets. Weekly active users for ChatGPT have jumped to around 700 million, up from 500 million across all OpenAI products as of late March. And earlier this week OpenAI released a free, open-source model—an unusual move for a company often criticized for its closed approach over the past half-decade—suggesting confidence that its premium offering, which is now GPT-5, will continue to dominate.

But there are some big challenges ahead, however. For one thing, the partnership between Microsoft and OpenAI—that began with a $1 billion investment in 2019—is entering a more fraught and complex phase. While Microsoft has invested more than $13 billion and retains exclusive rights to OpenAI’s models through Azure, tensions have emerged over revenue sharing, AGI control clauses, and overlapping product strategies. And the Stargate project is reliant on partnerships with companies like SoftBank, whose investment stipulations are tied to OpenAI’s still unresolved efforts to overhaul its corporate structure.

There’s much more to say about GPT-5. Journalists received the full set of materials from OpenAI, including a research blog, system card, and safety card, a mere 90 minutes before releasing the model, so I still have much more to go through. Stay tuned for more!

Also: In less than a month, I will be headed to Park City, Utah, to participate in our annual Brainstorm Tech conference at the Montage Deer Valley! Space is limited, so if you’re interested in joining, register here. I highly recommend: There’s a fantastic lineup of speakers, including Ashley Kramer, chief revenue officer of OpenAI; John Furner, president and CEO of Walmart U.S.; Tony Xu, founder and CEO of DoorDash; and many, many more!

With that, here’s the rest of the AI news.

Sharon Goldman
[email protected]
@sharongoldman

This story was originally featured on Fortune.com

The jobs market is kind of going through it right now. The July jobs report stunned Wall Street with a massive downward revision of payrolls in May and June, prompting President Donald Trump’s controversial firing of Erika McEntarfer, the public servant responsible for the data.

Not only did payrolls grow by just 73,000 in July, below Wall Street estimates, but the revisions also showed that the spring had two consecutive months of growth below 20,000. The unemployment rate edged up to 4.2% from 4.1%, as the labor force shrank. Added to this sluggish cocktail is new data showing a remarkable surge in layoffs in July as well.

Employment consultancy Challenger, Gray & Christmas publishes a monthly “job cut” report and the July edition makes for some reading. According to the data, employers across the U.S. announced 62,075 job cuts last month—a 29% increase from June but a stunning 140% surge over July 2024 and a decisive end to the typical midsummer lull in workforce reductions. And nearly half of these cuts—49%—were related to artificial intelligence (AI) and “technological updates.”

The report says these cuts are “well above average for this month since the pandemic,” and one of the highest July pullbacks in the past decade, evidence that deep, technology-driven changes are rippling through the labor market. For perspective, the average number of job cuts announced in July from 2021 to 2024 was just 23,584. Even against the broader decade’s average of 60,398, this year’s total is notably higher.

Headlines, including in Fortune, have linked surging layoffs to increasing adoption of artificial intelligence (AI) in the enterprise, and Challenger Gray agrees, partially. A bigger impact is cutbacks in government employment as a result of the Department of Government Efficiency (DOGE), previously with Elon Musk in an ambiguous advisory role. A big part of the DOGE cuts, of course, is to encourage increasing AI adoption within the government. “We are seeing the Federal budget cuts implemented by DOGE impact non-profits and healthcare in addition to the government,” said Andrew Challenger, Senior Vice President and labor expert for Challenger, Gray & Christmas. “AI was cited for over 10,000 cuts last month, and tariff concerns have impacted nearly 6,000 jobs this year.”

The AI effect

Beyond the more than 10,000 jobs in July that were eliminated specifically due to AI adoption, an additional 20,219 cuts were attributed to “technological updates” including automation and new software workflows. Challenger Gray said this suggests “a significant acceleration in AI-related restructuring.”

While AI’s influence dominates headlines, federal budget cuts—known as the “DOGE Impact”—are another pillar driving this year’s wave of layoffs. The government sector has announced 292,294 job cuts this year, most at the federal level, as courts greenlight sweeping reductions. These have affected not just direct government roles, but also non-profits and healthcare through downstream funding losses, totaling an additional 13,056 layoffs.

Other economic stressors remain ever-present: Market and economic conditions have accounted for 171,083 cuts year-to-date, inflation and weaker demand have shuttered stores and plants (120,226 layoffs), while restructurings and bankruptcies contributed 66,879 and 35,641 cuts, respectively.

Where the layoff storm is hitting

Job cuts are distributed unevenly across the U.S. The East Coast has seen the most dramatic year-over-year increase, rising 219%, spurred by federal agency reductions in Washington, D.C., as well as steep jumps in states like New Jersey (+362%) and New York (+43%). Out West, California has also been roiled by 114,676 layoffs (+50%). In the South, job cuts climbed 34% overall, with Georgia and Florida seeing spikes of over 70%.

The tech sector tops private-sector losses, with 89,251 cuts year-to-date—a 36% jump from last year—reflecting AI’s disruptive role and ongoing work visa uncertainty. Retail has announced 80,487 layoffs so far in 2025, up 249% from a year ago, as inflation and tariffs push more stores to downsize or close their doors. Non-profit job cuts are up 413%, with mounting operational costs compounded by lost federal support. While the automotive sector’s year-to-date layoffs fell 31% from 2024, July alone saw nearly 5,000 jobs lost due to new tariffs, its most affected month since late last year.

Announced hiring plans provide little relief: just 86,132 new jobs have been planned by U.S. employers through July; this has consistently remained well below pre-pandemic levels. Technology hiring continues to slump, down 58% year-over-year with only 5,510 tech positions announced so far in 2025.

For this story, Fortune used generative AI to help with an initial draft. An editor verified the accuracy of the information before publishing. 

This story was originally featured on Fortune.com

• CEO Tim Cook is giving President Donald Trump more than just a $600 billion promise to accelerate U.S. manufacturing of Apple products. Following the announcement of a $100 billion investment in domestic production, Cook gave Trump a customized glass plaque mounted on a 24-karat gold stand. Cook has been dubbed the “Trump Whisperer” for his ability to strike deals and maintain a good rapport with the president.

As if a $100 billion promise to invest in U.S. manufacturing wasn’t enough, Apple CEO Tim Cook gave President Donald Trump another token of commitment: a customized glass plaque mounted on a 24-karat gold stand.

“It’s a unique unit of one,” Cook said. After Cook pointed out during his Oval Office visit that the gift box was made in California, that the engraved glass was designed by a former Marine Corps corporal who works at Apple, and that the gold base came from Utah, Trump responded, “Thank you very much, it’s fantastic.” The price of gold is $3,383 per ounce as of Thursday. 

At the Oval Office on Wednesday, Cook announced Apple’s plans to accelerate domestic manufacturing, pouring $100 billion into the “American Manufacturing Program”, which will expand Apple’s 18-year-old partnership with Corning, a New York-based company that produces the glass for iPhone and iWatch screens. The massive cash infusion brings the tech giant’s total commitment to domestic production to $600 billion over the next four years, following Apple’s $500 billion investment announcement in February. 

Apple’s announcement comes as Trump plans to impose a 100% tariff on semiconductor chips, hiking prices for electronics, cars, appliances, and other technology using the chips. With its renewed vigor for U.S. manufacturing, Apple effectively dodges the tax.

“If you’re building in the United States of America, there’s no charge,” Trump said in the meeting with the press and Cook, where he also announced the chips tariff.

Trump has heaped pressure on U.S. tech companies to shift production domestically—despite analysts’ warnings that it’s neither cost-efficient nor logistically practical to do so. Even U.S. manufacturing darling Corning has a Chinese subsidiary providing optical fiber for the regional market. In May, Trump threatened a 25% tariff on Apple if it didn’t cut ties with overseas manufacturers in India and elsewhere. Last month, Cook forecasted a $1.1 billion hit from the tariffs in the coming quarter as it continues to lean on its production in China and India.

Apple did not respond to Fortune’s request for comment.

Cook and Trump’s courtship

Cook has a long history of working with Trump, gaining the title of “Trump Whisperer” for his ability to make compromises around tax cuts and manufacturing commitments.

According to Joseph Badaracco, John Shad Professor of Business Ethics at the Harvard School of Business, Cook’s gift to Trump not only aligns with his ethos of keeping things copacetic with the president, but also continuing to set Apple apart from its tech rivals.

“The president has now gotten a long series of these giant commitments to manufacturing in the U.S. from a lot of other countries and a lot of companies,” Badaracco told Fortune. “So this is the way of making the Apple commitment stand out a little more.”

“Nobody would describe it as ethically noble, but it was just a small gesture underscoring the Apple commitment,” he added.

In April, Nvidia pledged $500 billion to manufacture AI gear in the U.S., following pharmaceutical giant Eli Lilly, which announced plans to double its U.S. manufacturing investment to $50 billion. While Cook’s gift to Trump will likely be quickly forgotten, Badaracco posited, other executives may look at Apple as the precedent to navigating policy uncertainty.

“If you’re running a company dealing with the Trump administration, you’ve got sort of a collapse of the old checks and balances: Congress has the courts moving slowly, and in the interim, you’ve got a president who’s acting, by many accounts, arbitrarily,” Badaracco said. “So you’ve got to do what you can in circumstances like that.” 

This story was originally featured on Fortune.com

Museums throughout New York City were just reopening in the wake of the COVID pandemic when Jane August launched what seemed like a straightforward plan: She would travel to every single museum in the city, producing a short video log of each one. She figured it would take three years at most.

But with 136 museums documented since 2021, she still has about 64 to go by her estimation. And with new museums opening and some old ones changing so dramatically that they deserve a revisit, the 26-year-old now says she’s realistically aiming to complete the project before she’s 30.

“At first, I started the project for myself to safely get out of my house and experience culture in the city again,” said August, who grew up in Arizona and has lived in New York for nine years. She said she wasn’t a big museum person before starting the project, and had only been to around seven at the time.

But as she began, the plan quickly evolved.

“I decided TikTok would be a cool way to document this so my friends could keep up with my journey and maybe discover something new,” August said. Her audience has since far expanded with about 40,000 followers across social platforms.

Museums big and small, Manhattan and beyond

Visiting its museums has sparked a new appreciation for New York City, she said, as well as for the sheer breadth of what’s on offer, particularly for those willing to explore smaller museums and those in the boroughs beyond Manhattan.

And yes, she has favorites.

“I love Poster House. It’s the first poster museum in the country, has great programming and is free on Fridays,” she says of the largely unsung museum at 23rd Street and Sixth Avenue, which features graphic design and advertising posters ranging from Art Nouveau to political propaganda.

Others on her list of favorites include the Tenement Museum in lower Manhattan and the Museum of the Moving Image in Queens, as well as three Brooklyn museums: the Brooklyn Seltzer Museum, the New York Sign Museum and the Red Hook Pinball Museum. She also has a soft spot for The Paley Center for Media NYC in midtown Manhattan.

“They have archives with every TV show you could possibly think of. It’s amazing,” she said of The Paley Center.

Staten Island offerings are worth the ferry ride

As for the city’s smallest borough, the ferry ride to Staten Island (free, with views of the Statue of Liberty along the way) is well worth the trip for museum-goers, she said.

The borough features the Newhouse Center of Contemporary Art, as well as the Alice Austen House, a Victorian Gothic house important to LGBTQ+ history. It was the home of one of the country’s earliest and most prolific female photographers, famous for documenting the city’s immigrant communities.

“You wouldn’t imagine that Staten Island had one of the gayest museums in New York, dedicated to a queer photographer, but it does,” August said.

Staten Island is also home to the Jacques Marchais Museum of Tibetan Art and the Chinese Scholar’s Garden, which claims to be one of only two authentic classical outdoor Chinese gardens in the United States.

“It’s so peaceful and quiet, and I love riding the ferry,” August said.

Taking advantage of free days and slow hours

While museums can be expensive, she said she makes good use of museum passes at her local library, and that many museums have days or times when they are free.

And because her “day jobs” tend to be at night — she works at different venues in ticketing and production, and also bartends — she’s able to visit museums in the middle of weekdays, when they tend to be less crowded.

August recently became a licensed New York City tour guide, and she says it’s given her a renewed appreciation both of the city and its visitors.

She’s also seen a few trends take hold, like the rise in museum programming aimed at younger audiences and the trend away from chronological exhibits, which she says make return visits less enticing.

“So many of us are desperate for third spaces,” she said, referring to a place distinct from both home and work where people can relax or socialize. “For a lot of us, we have a hunger to come back and visit again, especially when it’s free.”

Although big museums like the Metropolitan Museum of Art and the Museum of Modern Art can certainly be crowded, August says New York isn’t facing nearly the level of overcrowding as in European cities like Paris.

And at peak times and seasons, like summer, it’s nice to know there are plenty of smaller museums to visit.

Seeing the whole city

“I think this is especially important for the lesser-known museums that don’t often get press or social media features,” she said. “There are some small museums that get a huge bump in attendance and press after I have posted my videos so it’s exciting to be able to play a small role in that success.”

As for her motivation to continue the project, she said “it boils down to the people. I get to connect with fascinating and passionate people who are making these museums what they are and I get to connect with enthusiasts who want to find something fun to do with their weekend.”

For anyone interested in giving something like this a go for themselves, she says it takes a lot of endurance.

“Be prepared to go to corners of the city you never considered — I’m talking edges of the Bronx and middle of Staten Island,” she said. “But if you’re up for the challenge, you’ll probably gain a lot of insight on not just the museums and their content, but also the communities they serve.”

This story was originally featured on Fortune.com

The Giving Pledge is a charitable campaign, launched in 2010 by Bill and Melinda French Gates and Warren Buffett, that invites the world’s wealthiest individuals and families to publicly commit to giving away at least 50% of their wealth to philanthropy, either during their lifetimes or in their wills.

The Institute for Policy Studies’ report “The Giving Pledge at 15” finds that the initiative—where billionaires publicly pledge to give at least half their wealth to charity—remains mostly unfulfilled, with most signatories far wealthier now than when they joined, and a majority of charitable giving funneled into private foundations and donor-advised funds rather than directly supporting operational charities. The IPS team, led by Chuck Collins, Bella DeVaan, Helen Flannery, and Dan Petergorsky, invites the public to examine its data and methodology. Collins is himself an Oscar Mayer heir who gave away his fortune and has dedicated his career to researching wealth inequality.

Few have fulfilled the pledge, according to the IPS calculations. Only one set of living 2010 Pledgers (Laura and John Arnold) have actually given away half their wealth. Among the 22 deceased U.S. Pledgers, only eight met their pledge before death—just one, Chuck Feeney, gave away his entire fortune while alive.

The pledge is a public, moral commitment rather than a legally binding contract; participants sign an open letter explaining their reasons for giving and can choose which causes and charities to support. The initiative was designed to inspire generosity, set new norms for billionaire philanthropy, and shift how major wealth is used to address pressing social challenges

Key findings:

• 256 individuals, couples, or families have signed the Giving Pledge, including 194 from the U.S. and 62 from other countries. Of the U.S. signers, 110 remain billionaires, with combined wealth of $1.7 trillion—about 13% of all U.S. billionaires.
• Among the original 57 U.S. signers in 2010, 32 are still billionaires. Their collective net worth has increased by 283% since signing (166% adjusted for inflation). Only 11 of the original group are no longer billionaires, mainly because their wealth fell below the threshold, not due to giving.
• Giving is mostly to intermediaries: Of an estimated $206 billion donated by the original 2010 Pledgers, roughly 80% ($164 billion) has gone into private foundations—with only a small fraction moved into donor-advised funds. In 2023, 44 foundations tied to these billionaires held $120 billion in assets and paid out a median of 9.2%, often far below the appreciated value of those assets.
• Wealth is outpacing giving: For most, the speed of wealth accumulation exceeds charitable donations, making the pledge functionally impossible to fully realize at current trajectories.
• Tax and public impact: If all living original Pledgers gave enough to meet the promise today, nearly $367 billion would flow to charity. However, such gifts would lead to as much as $272 billion in forgone federal tax revenue, reducing support for public programs, since wealthy donors can claim up to 74% in charitable tax deductions.
• Concentration of philanthropic power: The report warns of a coming “Great Wealth Transfer” that, combined with favorable tax law and slow charitable payout rates, will further entrench billionaire family foundations, concentrate power, and undermine democratic accountability.

Policy recommendations from the report include:

• Raising minimum payout requirements and ensuring funds flow swiftly from foundations and DAFs to working charities, not parked for years.
• Increasing transparency, public accountability, and enforcement to curb abuses of charitable vehicles for personal or political gain.
• Taxing large fortunes more fairly in order to slow excessive accumulation and reduce dependence on private philanthropy.

The report advocates returning to the “giving while living” ethos exemplified by Chuck Feeney, and calls for systemic reforms to ensure charitable donations serve the public interest—not just the tax and legacy interests of the ultra-rich.

The report “raises important questions, but excludes “significant forms of charitable giving,” The Giving Pledge said in a statement to Fortune.

“For fifteen years, the Giving Pledge has helped create new norms of generosity and grown into a connected and active global learning community. The recent IPS report raises important questions that aim to encourage greater giving,” the organization said. “Unfortunately, the report’s reliance on incomplete data, and its exclusion of significant forms of charitable giving—such as gifts made to foundations and other intermediaries—paints a misleading picture of the impact and intent of Giving Pledge signatories and the spirit and intent of the Giving Pledge.”

For this story, Fortune used generative AI to help with an initial draft. An editor verified the accuracy of the information before publishing. 

This story was originally featured on Fortune.com

Less than three years ago, OpenAI kicked off the generative AI boom with the launch of ChatGPT, catching tech giants like Google and Meta off guard—and rapidly mushrooming into one of the most powerful startups in Silicon Valley, now valued at $300 billion and reportedly in talks for a new potential sale of stock for current and former employees at a $500 billion valuation. 

But 2025 has sparked a ruthless race for AI dominance, and OpenAI has struggled to remain the undisputed pacesetter amid a growing field of rivals developing advanced LLM models. On Thursday, OpenAI took a major step in its effort to reassert its leadership with the launch of GPT-5, the long-awaited update to its flagship AI product and its most powerful and fastest model yet.

The company said the model delivers “more accurate answers than any previous reasoning model,” and is “much smarter across the board,” reflected by strong performance on academic and human-evaluated benchmarks. Its research blog noted new state-of-the-art performance across math, coding, and health questions, and found that GPT-5 outperformed other OpenAI models across tasks spanning over 40 occupations including law, logistics, sales, and engineering. In addition, it is being billed as “one unified system” that provides “the best answer, every time,” with no need to choose from what was becoming a laundry list of different OpenAI models.

“GPT-5 really feels like talking to a PhD-level expert in any topic,” OpenAI CEO Sam Altman told journalists in a pre-briefing on Wednesday. “Something like GPT-5 would be pretty much unimaginable in any other time in history.” 

Altman described GPT-5 as a “significant step” along the path to artificial general intelligence (AGI), which according to OpenAI’s mission statement is defined as “highly autonomous systems that outperform humans at most economically valuable work.” 

OpenAI is making its latest AI model free to all ChatGPT users—the first time free users will have access to one of its reasoning models—as well as through an API that lets developers and businesses build on top of it. OpenAI is also rolling out some new ChatGPT features: Users can choose from four preset personalities—Cynic, Robot, Listener, and Nerd—to customize how the AI responds, while Pro users will soon be able to connect Gmail, Google Calendar, and Google Contacts, allowing ChatGPT to reference that information automatically during chats. Voice mode is also getting an upgrade, with more adaptive and expressive responses.

It’s unclear whether this combination of speed, power, and features will be enough, however. Some two years in the making (GPT-4 was launched in March 2023), GPT-5’s launch has taken longer than many industry insiders expected, as OpenAI has adjusted its approach in response to industry changes. And while ChatGPT now boasts an impressive 700 million weekly users, OpenAI has faced growing pressure over the past year as rivals poach its talent and race ahead on emerging AI techniques like long-context reasoning and autonomous tool use. In addition to Big Tech competitors like Meta and Google, OpenAI must contend with a wave of startups founded by its own former researchers, including Anthropic, Thinking Machines, and Safe Superintelligence. Mark Zuckerberg’s Meta has emerged as a particularly aggressive rival, forming a new superintelligence team that has lured away several top OpenAI scientists. And in January, Chinese upstart DeepSeek briefly knocked OpenAI back on its heels—part of a growing flood of powerful Chinese models now vying for global influence.

Whether GPT-5 propels OpenAI back to the top of the AI hill will become clear in the days and weeks ahead, as researchers put the model through its paces, testing it against the likes of other elite models, including Anthropic’s latest version of Claude and Google’s Gemini. 

OpenAI pushes to stay in the lead

One of the defining truths about the world of generative AI is that even when you’re on top, the lead doesn’t last for long. Now that GPT-5 is out, OpenAI CEO Sam Altman acknowledged that staying at the frontier means one thing: relentless scaling. 

In AI, scaling refers to the idea that models get more powerful as you increase the amount of data, computing power, and model components used during training. It’s the underlying principle that drove progress from GPT-2 to GPT-3 to GPT-4—and now GPT-5. The catch is that each leap requires exponentially more investment, particularly in AI infrastructure, for OpenAI, that includes its Stargate Project, a joint venture it announced in January with SoftBank, Oracle, and investment firm MGX with a goal to invest up to $500 billion by 2029 in AI-specific data centers across the U.S.

When asked whether scaling laws still hold, Altman said they “absolutely” do. He pointed to better models, smarter architectures, higher-quality data, and significantly more computing power as the path to “order-of-magnitude” improvements still ahead.

But that kind of progress comes at a cost. “It’s going to take an eyewatering amount of compute,” he admitted. “But we intend to continue doing it.”

Current confidence, but challenges ahead

OpenAI has roughly doubled its revenue in the first seven months of 2025, hitting an annualized run rate of $12 billion—up from about $6 billion at the start of the year, according to a recent report by The Information. That translates to $1 billion in monthly revenue, fueled by surging demand for its ChatGPT products across both consumer and enterprise markets. Weekly active users for ChatGPT have jumped to around 700 million, up from 500 million across all OpenAI products as of late March. And earlier this week OpenAI released a free, open-source model—an unusual move for a company often criticized for its closed approach over the past half-decade—suggesting confidence that its premium offering, which is now GPT-5, will continue to dominate.

There are plenty of challenges ahead, however. For one thing, the partnership between Microsoft and OpenAI—that began with a $1 billion investment in 2019—is entering a more fraught and complex phase. While Microsoft has invested more than $13 billion and retains exclusive rights to OpenAI’s models through Azure, tensions have emerged over revenue sharing, AGI control clauses, and overlapping product strategies. 

OpenAI is also navigating an effort to turn its commercial arm into a public benefit corporation (PBC) while ensuring its original nonprofit maintains control. There has been significant legal and public backlash to its efforts, including a lawsuit from cofounder Elon Musk and scrutiny from state attorneys general in California and Delaware. In addition, OpenAI faces broader regulatory attention as it rethinks its governance structure—raising questions about charitable asset protection, public benefit accountability, and compliance with state nonprofit laws. 

This story was originally featured on Fortune.com

• Sam Altman says OpenAI's GPT-5 is its most advanced model yet.
• It doesn't quite meet what he defines as true AGI, however.
• AGI is broadly defined as AI that can reason like humans. It's OpenAI's ultimate goal.

Sam Altman says OpenAI has yet to crack AGI.

The OpenAI CEO said that while the highly anticipated GPT-5, which launched Thursday, is a major advancement, it isn't what he considers artificial general intelligence, a still theoretical threshold where AI can reason like humans.

Developing AGI that benefits all of humanity is OpenAI's core mission.

"This is clearly a model that is generally intelligent, although I think in the way that most of us define AGI, we're still missing something quite important, or many things quite important," Altman told reporters during a press call on Wednesday before the release of GPT-5.

One of those missing elements, Altman said, is the model's ability to learn on its own.

"One big one is, you know, this is not a model that continuously learns as it's deployed from the new things it finds, which is something that to me feels like AGI. But the level of intelligence here, the level of capability, it feels like a huge improvement," he said.

The exact definition of AGI and how far away the world-changing technology might be are topics of much debate in the AI industry.

Some AI leaders, like Meta's chief AI scientist, Yann LeCun, have said we may still be "decades" away.

Altman said that looking back at OpenAI's previous releases, GPT-5 is still a step in the right direction.

"If I could go back five years before GPT-3, and you told me we have this now, I'd be like, that's a significant fraction of the way to something very AGI-like," he said on Wednesday's call.

In an earlier blog post, Altman wrote that he and OpenAI's cofounders "started OpenAI almost nine years ago because we believed that AGI was possible, and that it could be the most impactful technology in human history."

While AGI remains the company's mission, Altman says OpenAI is already looking beyond it to superintelligence, a still theoretical advancement in which artificial intelligence can reason far beyond human capability.

"Superintelligent tools could massively accelerate scientific discovery and innovation well beyond what we are capable of doing on our own, and in turn massively increase abundance and prosperity," Altman wrote in January.

• I spent two nights at the Sheraton Fallsview Hotel on the Canadian side of Niagara Falls.
• Upgraded guest rooms with views of the falls come with floor-to-ceiling windows.
• For $500 a night, I had some of the best views of Niagara Falls of my entire trip — right from bed.

I'll never forget stepping into Canada. In August 2022, I walked over the Rainbow Bridge, stopping briefly in the middle to watch and listen to the roaring Niagara Falls on my left.

Just 10 minutes later, I was standing in front of the Sheraton Fallsview Hotel, stoked to see the epic force of nature flow from my bedroom for the next two nights.

For $500 a night, I had prime views of the falls from the moment I woke up to the second I fell asleep. It was definitely worth the price.

The Sheraton Fallsview is a popular hotel that faces Niagara Falls on the Canadian side, making it an exceptional place to stay if you want to enjoy front-row views at every turn.

According to Tripadvisor, Niagara Falls, Ontario, has more than 200 hotels ranging from one to four stars.

The Sheraton Fallsview, part of the Marriott Bonvoy hotel collection, is a four-star hotel. Rooms range from an interior view starting at $150 to guest rooms and suites with views of the falls, which cost between about $190 and $425, according to a recent search for bookings a month in advance.

My room was more expensive since I visited in the summer during the high tourism season.

I chose the Sheraton Fallsview because of its reputation as the best hotel for prime views of all three falls.

Since my entire trip was about seeing Niagara Falls, I decided to upgrade to a premium 258-square-foot Fallsview room with a direct view for my two-night stay.

From my room, I saw the American Falls on the left, Bridal Veil Falls in the middle, and Horseshoe Falls, the U-shaped falls on the right.

The lobby was similar to other hotels I've been in. There was plenty of seating for guests waiting to check in or out.

Although I didn't get a chance to use them, the hotel had some great amenities, such as a spa, gym, and rooftop pool.

My room came with floor-to-ceiling windows and a door — though there was no actual balcony to go out on. It just offered a better glimpse of Niagara Falls.

When I opened the door, I could hear the water crashing down.

It was relaxing to watch the falls from my comfortable queen-sized bed.

There were nightstands with lamps on either side of the bed. Between the bed and the window was a sitting area with a couch, chair, and coffee table.

Each morning, I hopped out of bed and opened the door to get ready to the sounds of the falls. I thought it was a peaceful way to start the day.

To the left of the main room, the bathroom had a rainfall shower head.

The bathroom also had a lit vanity and a second shower head.

After the sun went down, I enjoyed spectacular views that I didn't expect.

At night, the Niagara Falls Illumination board projected color-changing lights onto the water from the Illumination Tower and the Table Rock Centre rooftop, according to Niagara Parks.

At 10 p.m., the lights were coupled with a fireworks display.

The fireworks show runs every night at 10 p.m. from late May to early October, according to Niagara Falls Live.

Seeing the fireworks show from my bed was a happy surprise, and I thought it made the nightly $500 price worth it. I would book it again, as long as it's fireworks season. If not, I'd try another hotel with a different view of the falls.

Sharon Stone spoke to Business Insider about working with Robert De Niro on the set of "Casino." She reflected on his uncanny ability to challenge and provoke her as an actor.

• Spain said it will not buy the US-designed F-35 and is looking at European-made options.
• Some US allies have expressed doubt over the jet as a result of Trump.
• Europe's defense industry is growing and has seen opportunities to capitalize on the moment.

NATO ally Spain has decided against buying the US-designed F-35 Lightning II Joint Strike Fighter, opting instead to invest in European-made aircraft for its air force.

Spain's decision comes after several NATO members publicly questioned their commitment to the jet, made by Lockheed Martin, amid concerns about President Donald Trump's attitude toward the alliance. Antagonism from the White House has rattled several American allies, though there were no firm decisions made concerning the F-35.

"This makes those thoughts or ideas concrete," said Mark Cancian, a retired Marine Corps colonel and senior advisor at the Center for Strategic and International Studies. "Here's a country that really has changed its view about a future procurement."

Asked about Spain's decision, a Lockheed Martin spokesperson told Business Insider: "Foreign military sales are government-to-government transactions, and this matter is best addressed by the US or Spanish government."

A spokesperson for the Spanish defense ministry said on Wednesday that the country was no longer considering the F-35 for its new fighter jet acquisitions. The official did not give a reason but told Politico that "the Spanish option involves the current Eurofighter and the FCAS in the future."

The ministry directed Business Insider to the Spanish air force, which did not respond when reached for comment.

The reported ministry statements, however, confirmed an earlier report from Spain's El País newspaper, citing government sources that said any plans to pursue the F-35 had been shelved and preliminary contacts that had been started were suspended indefinitely.

Richard Aboulafia, an aviation expert and the managing director of US consulting firm AeroDynamic Advisory, told Business Insider that Spain's decision fits with "the broader European objective of sovereignty and self-sufficiency."

The Eurofighter Typhoon under consideration is a fourth-generation, multi-role combat aircraft made by a consortium of European companies: Airbus, BAE Systems, and Leonardo. And the Future Combat Air System (FCAS) is an initiative from France, Germany, and Spain to create a sixth-generation jet, with an operational rollout planned for 2040.

Aboulafia noted that Spain has a personal interest, including in job creation, with the FCAS.

Spain has wavered on the F-35 in recent years, sometimes leaning more toward other fighter types or extending the life of older aircraft. Its recent decision speaks to its new focus on European-made military technologies and comes at a time of anxiety among allies, including Madrid, over their relationship with the US.

A focus on European jets

Spain's government said this year that 87% of the more than $12 billion it was increasing its defense spending by would go to Spanish companies. El País reported that this commitment was incompatible with any plans to buy fighter jets that were made in the US.

Interest has been growing in building out Europe's defense industrial base and buying more homegrown gear. Ursula von der Leyen, the president of the European Commission, said in March, "We must buy more" European weapons.

Part of this drive is Trump, whose rhetoric has created new tensions between the US and its longtime allies. He excluded European allies from peace talks over Russia's invasion of Ukraine, criticized the NATO alliance, and has threatened to annex a European territory. He also said last year that he would "encourage" Russia to attack any NATO member that doesn't spend enough on defense. And the tariffs have been another source of tension.

There's a growing wariness among US allies and partners when it comes to weapons technology.

Canada's defense minister said that his country was reviewing its contract for F-35s and looking at "other alternatives," the chairman of Denmark's parliamentary defense committee said he regrets choosing the F-35 for his country, and Portugal's defense minister said his country was unsure about plans to move to the F-35, pointing to uncertainties in US reliability as an ally.

And politicians across all of Switzerland's political parties also said this week that the country should withdraw or reconsider the planned purchase of 36 F-35As due to the tariffs Trump put on the country.

European fighter jet makers have pounced at the opportunity: Eric Trappier, CEO of France's Dassault Aviation, which makes the Mirage and Rafale aircraft, said in March that the company was ready for countries concerned about the F-35 to adopt its Rafale fighter.

But despite some of the remarks on the F-35, a widespread shift might not happen. Pivoting to a new type of aircraft would be a huge undertaking for countries that are already committed, and the F-35 is considered a particularly good jet.

Aboulafia described the Eurofighter as "equal or better" to the F-35 as an air vehicle, but said the F-35 "has the better mission equipment package by a wide margin." The F-35 is an advanced fifth-generation fighter aircraft. Furthermore, production levels may be a factor. Far fewer Eurofighters are made each year, and FCAS production has not yet begun.

Aboulafia said that he believes Europe could build enough fighter jets to cover the demand if it brought all its available models, from Gripens to Rafales, to the table.

There are limitations, though. Relying solely on European capabilities means that countries would have to make decisions and potential changes to their force structure.

Spain's navy, for example, has an aircraft carrier that is currently equipped with an air wing of aging Harrier jump jets set to retire. The F-35B could serve in that role, but the Eurofighters and other European jets can't. So there would need to be a change.

Cancian said that he expects "more reliance on European suppliers, both because of concerns that the United States might not be reliable and the fact that the Europeans are now investing a lot in their defense industrial base, so there's more to choose from and it's maybe more competitive — or will be more."

The downside, however, is that if US allies don't pick the F-35, the interoperability with other countries will take a hit. "Since the F-35 is used by so many, including the United States, that makes it easier for other countries to operate with countries that have the same equipment."

For now, many NATO members are committed to the F-35: The defense ministries of the UK, Australia, Denmark, and the Netherlands told BI earlier this year that they were unwavering.

And Trump hardening his stance against Russia in recent weeks may dull some countries' worries about the relationship, Aboulafia speculated, but there continue to be rifts.

Spain is experiencing a very particular tension with the US. Spain is the lowest defense spender in NATO as a proportion of its GDP, at 1.28% in 2024 per NATO estimates. It also requested an exemption to NATO members' proposal to bring defense spending to 5% of GDP. The alliance leaders agreed to the 5% in June, but Spain maintains that increasing its spending to 2.1% is sufficient.

Trump called Spain's position "very unfair" to other members and threatened trade ramifications, without giving any details.

Spanish Prime Minister Pedro Sanchez earlier this year said it had become obvious "only Europe will know how to protect Europe" from now on.

• OpenAI released GPT-5 on Thursday, the latest AI model powering ChatGPT.
• OpenAI CEO Sam Altman called it a "significant step" on the path to AGI.
• OpenAI said GPT-5 is faster and multimodal, and will be free for all users.

After weeks of relentless hype, GPT-5 is finally here.

OpenAI officially released the highly anticipated new model on Thursday. It's the latest version of ChatGPT, the company's flagship chatbot, and the most widely used AI model on the market.

OpenAI CEO Sam Altman called it a "major upgrade" and "a significant step along the path of AGI" in a conference call with journalists on Wednesday. He said that after using GPT-5, going back to GPT-4 was "miserable."

OpenAI says the model will be available for free for everyone and that users will no longer need to switch between previous models for different tasks. GPT-5 will switch automatically, the company said, depending on the kind of request and its complexity. GPT-5 will be available in standard, mini, and nano versions. Paid users will have higher usage limits.

Altman said GPT-5 was also the company's fastest model yet.

"One of the things I had been pushing the team on was like, 'Hey, we need to make it way, way faster,'" Altman said. "And I now have this experience of like, 'Are you sure you thought enough?'"

The team said GPT-5 will have improved capabilities for vibe coding, the latest craze in Silicon Valley.

OpenAI has been teasing this next iteration of ChatGPT for over a year, but has ramped up the chatter in the last few days and weeks. On Sunday, Altman shared a screenshot of GPT-5 on X, asking the model to recommend the "most thought-provoking" TV show about AI.

In July, Altman said that "GPT-5 is smarter than us in almost every way." Speaking to podcaster Theo Von, Altman said he asked GPT-5 a question he "didn't quite understand" and it "answered it perfectly," making him feel "useless relative to the AI."

The OpenAI CEO also likened GPT-5's development to the Manhattan Project, the US government's effort to build the atomic bomb during World War II, and said that it made him feel nervous.

"There are moments in the history of science, where you have a group of scientists look at their creation and just say, you know: 'What have we done?'" Altman said.

OpenAI's last notable model launch was GPT-4.5 in February, which Altman described at the time as "the first model that feels like talking to a thoughtful person."

The release of GPT-5 has faced several delays, with the timeline shifting from mid-2024 to mid-2025, to August.

During that time, the number of ChatGPT users has continued to grow. In April, Altman said ChatGPT had 500 million weekly active users. OpenAI said on Thursday that ChatGPT is now on track to hit 700 million weekly active users "this week."

• Uber and Tesla are offering ride-hailing trips in self-driving cars in some cities.
• Getting dinner delivered in an autonomous vehicle is a little harder, DoorDash CEO Tony Xu said.
• Robotaxis need an "end-to-end" system to make deliveries feasible, Xu said.

Don't expect a robotaxi to deliver your DoorDash order anytime soon.

Autonomous cars are already shuttling riders around some US cities thanks to a partnership between Uber and Waymo, as well as Tesla's own robotaxi offering. They function much like traditional ride-hailing trips: You request a ride through an app and then get in the car once it arrives.

Using AVs to deliver restaurant food and other goods, though, "is actually very different from doing autonomous passenger driving or robotaxis," DoorDash CEO Tony Xu said on the company's earnings call on Wednesday.

"The passenger can walk in and walk out of the car, even if the drop-off or pickup locations aren't perfect," Xu said. Deliveries, by contrast, require a more precise hand-off between the restaurant and the vehicle, requiring companies like DoorDash "to solve for the end-to-end system," he said.

"That's probably the single biggest learning we've had," Xu said on Wednesday.

In April, DoorDash said that it had started making some deliveries in Chicago and Los Angeles with wheeled robots that can navigate sidewalks designed by startup Coco Robotics. DoorDash and Coco previously worked on a pilot program using the robots to make deliveries in Finland through Wolt, DoorDash's international arm.

Xu added that DoorDash's experiments with autonomous delivery "have gone great" and that autonomous delivery is "something we're very excited about."

Riding in an autonomous vehicle is already an option for some ride-hailing users. In June, Tesla launched a limited version of its robotaxi service in Austin with Tesla safety employees in the passenger seat, and has since expanded to San Francisco with safety employees in the driver's seat.

Uber offers fully autonomous rides in Waymos in Atlanta and Austin and has plans to add more self-driving vehicles to its network next year through a partnership with EV-maker Lucid and self-driving technology startup Nuro.

For DoorDash, the challenge is moving burgers, groceries, and other stuff from stores to customers' homes. Many of those items can be delivered in smaller, autonomous vehicles, Xu has said.

"You don't need a 4,000-pound vehicle to deliver a one- or two-pound item or package," Xu said on an earnings call in May.

Do you have a story to share about gig work? Contact this reporter at [email protected] or 808-854-4501.

• Madeline Sideras and Greg Johnston got married in Los Angeles in July 2023.
• They pulled off a 125-guest wedding for $25,000.
• Thrift stores, Facebook Marketplace, and skipping some expected wedding moves made it happen.

Anyone who has gotten married or even just been to a wedding recently will tell you it's expensive.

Some couples are trying to cut costs for their weddings wherever they can, eloping or forgoing elaborate bachelorette parties.

When Madeline Sideras and Greg Johnston tied the knot in 2023, they had to be creative to stay within their $25,000 budget.

Madeline Sideras knew she didn't want a long engagement when Greg Johnston proposed in January 2023.

Sideras, 31, is a model and content creator based in Los Angeles. She set her wedding date to Johnston, a 28-year-old tech recruiter, for July 13, 2023, just six months after he popped the question.

Sideras had always wanted a summer wedding and didn't want to wait a year and a half to get married.

"The engagement process can be very stressful, and I just wanted to do it as quickly as possible," she said. "Six months felt like enough time for me."

The couple had their hearts set on a backyard wedding with a budget of $25,000.

"I love the movie 'Father of the Bride,'" Sideras told Business Insider of her vision for her "casual and celebratory" wedding. "I think that's such a sweet movie, and I love that aesthetic. I just wanted a backyard wedding."

Sideras and Johnston planned to invite between 125 and 150 people to the wedding, but they wanted to keep their budget at $25,000, to which Sideras' parents contributed.

According to The Knot, the average cost of a wedding in California is over $39,000, but Sideras didn't want to go into debt paying for their event.

"You have to cut it off somewhere," Sideras said.

Finding an affordable venue was step one for the couple.

Although she wanted a backyard wedding, Sideras didn't have a backyard in Los Angeles for the event, as she lives in an apartment.

She first searched Vrbo and Airbnb for homes she could rent for the weekend of the wedding, but she couldn't find a rental property that allowed for large events.

Then, she stumbled upon the Bissell House in Pasadena after hours of searching online. The venue has since closed, but it had the spacious backyard Sideras was looking for, as well as a beautiful interior.

"As soon as we got there, I could tell, 'This is it,'" Sideras said. "The Bissell House had so many antiques and beautiful furniture, and the wallpaper and everything inside. It was like the perfect grandma shabby chic house."

Sideras rented the house for $10,000 for three days and two nights, using it as lodging for her and Johnston's families over the weekend. The couple also hosted their rehearsal dinner at the Bissell House, so they didn't have to pay for an additional venue.

Sideras wanted the decor to feel effortless.

As she focused on the backyard wedding aesthetic, Sideras hopped on Pinterest to make a vision board for her wedding.

"I knew I wanted long tables with dinner party vibes. That was one of the first photos I pinned," she said. "And then I saw mismatched plates and linens. I love anything in life that can be mismatched."

She decided she wanted mismatched dishware, linens, and vases, but she quickly discovered that renting from an event company would be out of her budget when the first vendor she contacted told her it would cost $5,000 for dishware alone.

Sideras decided to thrift mismatching dishware for the wedding instead of renting it.

Sideras, her mom, and her aunt all love thrifting. They frequently text each other photos of their bargain finds. When she realized thrifted dishware would be the most economical choice for her wedding, Sideras recruited the pair to help.

They scoured thrift stores and buy nothing groups, using a mood board Sideras made as guidance for what to find. They ended up sourcing around 130 dinner, dessert plates, and wine glasses, sticking to a maximum budget of $1 per item.

"It was so fun for my mom, my aunt, and me to constantly be texting each other like, 'I just got these five plates' or 'just got this set of 10 plates from my buy nothing group,'" Sideras said.

Sideras' mom brought many of the plates from her home in Indiana to the wedding, and the others lived at the bride's apartment until the event.

Sideras found cloth napkins on a secondhand website.

For her napkins, Sideras turned to Maxsold, which allows users to bid for items online that they can go pick up in person.

She bought pink cloth napkins through the site and found some additional napkins at thrift stores. At the wedding, they were arranged to look like flowers atop mismatched gingham tablecloths, which Sedaris bought from a wholesale site.

Thrift shopping saved Sideras thousands on place settings.

"We spent under $500 for every single place setting that we got," she said. "I ended up keeping 12 plates or so, and I sold some or gave some away."

She also saved money by arranging her own flowers.

"I feel like everyone knows flowers are an insane cost for weddings," Sideras said. "I would have loved to spend thousands of dollars on florals because they're beautiful, but unfortunately, it was just not in the budget."

Sideras said one of her bridesmaids, who was also getting married in 2023, used the Los Angeles Flower Market for her wedding flowers, which inspired Sideras to do the same.

"We just went the day before, and I didn't really have a vision, to be honest," she said. "Since it was a backyard wedding, I felt like it didn't need to be fancy white roses or anything like that."

She got advice from her friends on how many flowers she would need to make floral arrangements for the tables and her bridesmaids' bouquets, as well as guidance on which flowers would best withstand the July heat. She spent around $400.

"Three or four of us went to the flower market to pick them up, and then we brought them back to the apartment and arranged them all," she said. "It probably took an afternoon."

She paid someone to arrange her own bouquet, though.

Kelly Jean Ross arranged Sideras' $250 bouquet, which featured an array of pink and white flowers.

"I paid someone to make my own bouquet because I knew that would be in a majority of the photos, and she did amazing," Sideras said. "I was so happy that I spent money on that."

She also rented tables and chairs from Facebook Marketplace instead of an event company.

"Table and chair rentals — that's another insanely expensive cost," Sideras said, telling Business Insider that she was quoted a minimum of $5,000 for table and chair rentals from an event company in town.

"I ended up going on Facebook Marketplace," she said.

Sideras rented folding tables and wooden chairs from two small businesses she found on the site. It cost a few dollars per table and $1 per chair, so they didn't add much to the budget.

They got their dance floor from Facebook Marketplace as well.

Sideras found a black-and-white checked dance floor on Facebook Marketplace for the event. She and Johnston didn't invest in a formal DJ, either.

"My husband has a few friends who work in the music industry, so he just had one friend who was manning the speakers," she said. They also used an app that seamlessly transitions from song to song for the dancing portion of the evening.

"It was awesome, and we were able to play Justin Bieber and all the songs that DJs never play," she said.

They also borrowed some decor from friends of friends.

From helping her source decor to setting up the wedding on the day of the event, Sideras' community was integral in making the wedding come together without breaking the bank.

For instance, Sideras' friend Ashlyn Rudy served as her wedding coordinator. During the rehearsal dinner, Rudy noticed the reception area getting dark as the night went on, and she immediately sprang into action.

"She had a friend who was a lighting person, so she's like, 'I'm going to get some lights,'" Sideras said.

By the wedding day, they had plenty of string lights to keep the reception space bright, and Sideras didn't have to do any extra work.

Sideras and Johnston also saved money by forgoing things, like ceremony decor.

The couple didn't add flowers or an archway to the ceremony space, and they reused the same chairs they used for dinner for guests.

They also didn't have much signage for the wedding. They just had a welcome sign made by a friend at the front entrance.

Stationery costs can add up, and keeping it as simple as possible helped the couple save money.

A thrifted wedding dress helped Sideras cut costs, too.

Sideras wanted different wedding dresses for her ceremony and reception, setting a budget of $1,000 for both. She pictured herself in a vintage gown with puff sleeves and a tea-length skirt for the ceremony.

"My mom and I went to so many places, and no one really had one," she said.

Eventually, she contacted a now-closed vintage store called The Gorky, asking if they had anything like what she was imagining. By chance, the store had a $400 dress in the back of its stockroom that fit the bill.

"A staffer sent me a photo, and I was like, 'Oh my gosh, I think this is it,'" Sedaris said. "It didn't have puff sleeves yet, but it had sleeves that could become puff sleeves."

She went with her mom to the store to try it on, and the gown fit perfectly. It was meant to be.

A poofy veil completed the look.

The Gorky recommended a seamstress to Sideras, who created the puffy sleeves of her dreams.

Sideras was also a fan of a voluminous veil she had seen photos of, but she didn't want to spend $600 on the accessory.

She asked her tailor if she could make a similar veil, and she was able to for just $100.

Sideras got her second dress from Anthropologie, allowing her to stick to her budget.

Skipping a traditional caterer helped the couple save money.

Catering is often the most expensive aspect of a wedding, as feeding over 100 people a three-course meal can be costly.

Sideras and Johnston found a workaround, having pizza from La Pizzeria Co. at the nuptials instead of a more formal meal.

"It was between tacos and pizza because we love both of those," Sideras said. "I just emailed a whole bunch of different pizza places that did catering, and I went with the cheapest one."

"They were amazing, and it was just a flat fee for the amount of people," she said of La Pizzeria Co. "There was also salad and other little things included."

They also just served wine and beer from coolers, so they didn't have to pay for a bartender. Not every wedding venue allows that, but it's a great way to save if you have the option.

Sideras' sister-in-law made the couple a small wedding cake for photos.

Wedding cakes can cost hundreds — if not thousands — of dollars, which was also out of budget for Sideras and Johnston.

"I knew I wanted just a simple strawberry shortcake-style cake for us to cut into," Sideras said, adding that she didn't "want it to look overly professional." Her sister-in-law ended up making the cake for them.

"I think she just made a box cake and decorated it cute, and that was perfect," she said.

They turned to Costco for cake for the rest of their guests.

Because she didn't want to pay for an expensive wedding cake, Sideras bought a few sheet cakes from Costco instead.

Her aunt picked them up, decorated them with strawberries, and displayed pieces on some of the thrifted plates Sedaris bought.

"That was really sweet, and no one even knew that it was Costco cake because it was already cut up," she said. "It turns out Costco cake is a hit."

Sideras and Johnston's biggest "splurge" was their photographer.

Sideras tapped photographer Bliss Katherine, whom she had previously worked with as a model.

"I always just kind of knew that I wanted her to be our photographer," Sideras said. "I've worked with so many photographers, so that was really, really important to me."

"The photos are insane, so that was the best use of our money," she added.

Sideras said setting expectations with yourself about the wedding is key to sticking to a budget.

"You have to pick one or two things that are important to you, and then the rest you just have to let go," she said. "I would have loved to have a live band, but that would have been very expensive."

Likewise, she thinks it can be helpful to approach the wedding as just an event when searching for rentals, as some retailers can charge a premium for wedding items.

"Don't be afraid to ask for discounts for things, too," she said. "What's the worst they're going to say? No?"

She also recommends using the resources you have in your community, especially if you live in a pricier market like Los Angeles, and trying not to put too much pressure on the event.

"I think I'm a pretty chill person, so I was never really that stressed," she said.

Looking back, Sideras said her wedding day feels like "a dream."

"It felt incredible," Sideras said of her wedding day. "We have so many people tell us to this day, 'Oh my gosh, that was my favorite wedding I've been to.'"

"It was so calm and relaxed and just felt so us," she added. "It was so special, and I will love it forever."

• Critic aggregation site Rotten Tomatoes rates movie reviews from 0% to 100% and averages the scores.
• These are all the movies that have received a 0% score.
• They include movies like the mob biopic "Gotti" and Ice Cube's "War of the Worlds."

Filmmakers often hope their movies will have such an impact that they're talked about for years to come. But sometimes that's accomplished for all the wrong reasons. 

The "Tomatometer" on review aggregation site Rotten Tomatoes gives films and TV shows an average score from 0% to 100% based on critic reviews. While a rare few films with only glowing reviews can maintain a 100% on Rotten Tomatoes, there are a few titles that have a 0%.

Those that earned that unfortunate distinction include films from legends like John Travolta ("Gotti") and Eddie Murphy ("A Thousand Words"), while others star Oscar winners like Halle Berry ("Dark Tide"). And then there are the movies that no one should be surprised have a 0% score, like the Dennis Rodman action movie "Simon Sez" and, most recently, Ice Cube's 2025 version of "War of the Worlds."

Here are the 39 movies on Rotten Tomatoes with a 0% score.

Scores below are at time of publication and subject to change.

"Bolero" (1984)

What it's about: Directed by her husband, John, Bo Derek plays a 23-year-old who wants to lose her virginity, which leads her to Morocco. Critics didn't just hate this movie, it has since been regarded as one of the worst movies ever made.

What a critic thought: "The real future of 'Bolero' is in home cassette rentals, where your fast forward and instant replay controls will supply the editing job the movie so desperately needs." — Roger Ebert, Chicago Sun-Times

"Police Academy 4: Citizens on Patrol" (1987)

What it's about: In this chapter of the iconic comedy franchise, the misfit Police Academy graduates are tasked with training civilian volunteers.

What a critic thought: "'4' isn't even a film; it's more like a long trailer, a collection of scenes without sense." — Richard Harrington, The Washington Post

"Problem Child" (1990)

What it's about: An adopted child makes life a living hell for his good-natured father (played by John Ritter).

What a critic thought: "Sound funny? The filmmakers here think so. They've jacked this loud, lame shrieker of a movie up to the highest decibels, both aural and visual, and rammed it in our faces with almost numbing aplomb." — Michael Wilmington, Los Angeles Times

"Highlander 2: The Quickening" (1991)

What it's about: In the sequel to the popular fantasy movie, Christopher Lambert returns as Highlander Connor MacLeod who tries to save the world by solving its ozone layer problem. Yes, that's the plot.

What a critic thought: "'Highlander 2: The Quickening' is the most hilariously incomprehensible movie I've seen in many a long day — a movie almost awesome in its badness." — Roger Ebert, Chicago Sun-Times

"Return to the Blue Lagoon" (1991)

What it's about: It's pretty much the same plot as the 1980 original starring Brooke Shields and Christopher Atkins. But instead of those two attractive people stranded on an island and falling in love, it's another pair of attractive people: Milla Jovovich and Brian Krause.

What a critic thought: "A textbook example of a disaster that amazingly manages not only to contain bad acting and an appalling script, but also some of the most unconvincing love scenes ever committed to film. " — Joanna Berry, RadioTimes

"Folks!" (1992)

What it's about: Tom Selleck (with no mustache) plays a self-absorbed guy who takes in his parents after their home burns down.

What a critic thought: "The film's appeal will depend largely on whether you feel like laughing at senile dementia and automobile accidents." — Michael Upchurch, The Seattle Times

"Look Who's Talking Now!" (1993)

What it's about: In the final movie in the "Look Who's Talking" franchise we now follow the inner thoughts of the family's dogs, voiced by Danny DeVito and Diane Keaton.

What a critic thought: "A crude and mawkish film in which dogs attempt to communicate with Kirstie Alley and John Travolta." — Rita Kempley, The Washington Post

"Wagons East!" (1994)

What it's about: This comedy set in the 1860s follows a group of settlers who are fed up with the West and hire a cowboy (John Candy) to lead them back East.

What a critic thought: "Although a comedy rife in lively characters, 'Wagons East!' affords star John Candy one of the poorest, drabbest, and thoroughly unfunniest roles of his career." — Roger Hurlburt, South Florida Sun-Sentinel

"Simon Sez" (1999)

What it's about: Former basketball great Dennis Rodman was so big back in the late 1990s he got his own movie. He plays a spy who tries to save the world.

What a critic thought: "Dennis Rodman may be a great rebounder, but as a pop-culture icon, he's a one-trick pony." — Nathan Rabin, AV Club

"3 Strikes" (2000)

What it's about: In this comedy, Rob (Brian Hooks) tries to change his life — with two strikes against him, he's one away from going back to prison.

What a critic thought: "Relies much too heavily on multiple repetitions of gags that aren't especially funny the first time around." — Joe Leydon, Variety

"Ballistic: Ecks vs. Sever" (2002)

What it's about: Antonio Banderas and Lucy Liu play agents at different agencies who are to take out one another but instead learn they have to team up to defeat a bigger enemy. With 118 reviews of the movie in Rotten Tomatoes, it has the distinction of being the 0% movie with the most reviews filed.

What a critic thought: "'Ballistic: Ecks Vs. Sever' looks like a video-game promo, has a story that plays like the fifth episode of a struggling syndicated action show, and feels like a headache waiting to happen." Keith Phipps, AV Club

"Derailed" (2002)

What it's about: Jean-Claude Van Damme plays a NATO operative who is the only one who can stop an out-of-control train that's carrying hostages and bio-weapons.

What a critic thought: "An overblown annoyance." — David Nusair, Reel Film Reviews

"Killing Me Softly" (2002)

What it's about: Heather Graham plays a woman who throws away a loving relationship to run off with a mountain climber (Joseph Fiennes).

What a critic thought: "With miscast leads, banal dialogue and an absurdly overblown climax, 'Killing Me Softly' belongs firmly in the so-bad-it's-good camp." — Neil Smith, BBC

"Merci Docteur Rey" (2002)

What it's about: A comedy that revolves around a guy who witnessed a murder.

What a critic thought: "A limp, smirky lark." — Jessica Winter, Time Out

"Pinocchio" (2002)

What it's about: Five years after winning the best actor Oscar for "Life Is Beautiful," Roberto Benigni writes, directs, and plays the lead in this live-action retelling of the classic fairy tale.

What a critic thought: "What can one say about a balding 50-year-old actor playing an innocent boy carved from a log?" — Edward Guthmann, San Francisco Chronicle

"National Lampoon's Gold Diggers" (2003)

What it's about: Two buddies marry elderly sisters thinking they will inherit their family fortune.

What a critic thought: "So stupefyingly hideous that after watching it, you'll need to bathe in 10 gallons of disinfectant, get a full-body scrub and shampoo with vinegar to remove the scummy residue that remains." — Jen Chaney, The Washington Post

"Superbabies: Baby Geniuses 2" (2004)

What it's about: A group of talking babies, who are also geniuses, stop a media mogul trying to cash in on baby talk.

What a critic thought: "Why? Seriously, why? Why would anyone make a sequel to Baby Geniuses, a 1999 film whose existence, from its title on down, appeared to be a cruel joke about the gullibility of the lowest common denominator?" — Nathan Rabin, AV Club

"Constellation" (2005)

What it's about: An estranged family must confront their past when coming together to celebrate the life of a loved one who has recently passed away.

What a critic thought: "Neither the camera nor the script can focus." — Scott Brown, Entertainment Weekly

"Redline" (2007)

What it's about: A mechanic, who also moonlights as the lead singer of a hot unsigned band, gets sucked into the world of illegal drag racing.

What a critic thought: "It's hard to say whether gleaming automobiles or women's bodies are given the more fetishlike treatment in this vanity production." — Frank Scheck, The Hollywood Reporter

"Scar" (2007)

What it's about: A girl who thought the serial killer who tormented her years ago was dead finds out he's still around and is looking for her.

What a critic thought: "To make a 3-D 'torture porn' movie is at best opportunist; to make one with flat, boring torture scenes is unforgivable." — Nigel Floyd, Time Out

"One Missed Call" (2008)

What it's about: In this horror, people start receiving voicemails from their future selves with details of their upcoming deaths.

What a critic thought: "The direction is uninspired, acting is lifeless, and the script borders on the inept. A PG-13 rating means that it's short on shocks, too." Richard James Havis, The Hollywood Reporter

"Homecoming" (2009)

What it's about: Mischa Barton plays a scorned ex-girlfriend who seeks revenge when her former boyfriend shows up with a new girlfriend at their school's homecoming.

What a critic thought: "Neither trashy nor self-consciously funny enough to make its genre-trapped ludicrousness sing." — Robert Abele, Los Angeles Times

"Stolen" (2009)

What it's about: Jon Hamm plays a detective who is dealing with the loss of his son while trying to solve a case.

What a critic thought: "Plays like a middling episode of 'Law & Order: SVU,' drawn out an extra half-hour and embellished with pretentious literary and cinematic flourishes." — Stephen Holden, The New York Times

"Transylmania" (2009)

What it's about: Comedy about a group of college kids who while doing a semester abroad in Romania find themselves encountering hard parties and vampires.

What a critic thought: "If your idea of a good time is laughing with repulsion at a humpbacked Romanian n----- with a torture-loving midget dad, or tittering every time a bong appears, a darkened theater awaits you." — Robert Abele, Los Angeles Times

"The Nutcracker in 3D" (2010)

What it's about: Set in 1920s Vienna, a young girl (Elle Fanning) receives a doll on Christmas Eve that leads to a night of magic.

What a critic thought: "This non-balletic adaptation by the Russian director Andrei Konchalovsky is something gnarled and stunted and wrong, something that should never have been allowed to see the light of day." Dana Stevens, Slate

"Dark Tide" (2012)

What it's about: Halle Berry plays a shark expert who, after one of her divers is killed by a shark, finds her business hurting and struggles to get back in the water.

What a critic thought: "The sharks themselves are the only ones to emerge with credit from this." — Peter Bradshaw, The Guardian

"A Thousand Words" (2012)

What it's about: Eddie Murphy stars as Jack McCall, a literary agent who after hustling a spiritual guru finds a Bodhi tree in his yard and learns when all the leaves fall off the tree will die, as well as himself.

What a critic thought: "Does Eddie Murphy actually have any range, or is it just an illusion created by a few early edgy roles and, later, a lot of CGI makeup and fat suits?" — Bilge Ebiri, Vulture

"The Ridiculous 6" (2015)

What it's about: Marking Adam Sandler's first Netflix movie, he plays a Western outlaw who discovers he has five half brothers.

What a critic thought: "It's a lazy pastiche of westerns and western spoofs, replete with lazy, racist jokes that can't just be waved away with a waft of the irony card. Woeful." — Brad Newsome, Sydney Morning Herald

"Cabin Fever" (2016)

What it's about: This remake of Eli Roth's 2002 horror movie follows a group of friends who embark on a cabin in the woods and encounter a flesh-eating disease.

What a critic thought: "This dud sets a new standard for the term 'pointless remake.'" — Geoff Berkshire, Variety

"Dark Crimes" (2016)

What it's about: Jim Carrey stars in this thriller about how a crime novel could be the clues needed to solve a recent murder.

What a critic thought: "It's very rare for a film to pretty much have no redeeming features about it, but 'Dark Crimes' is essentially impossible to recommend beyond those who have a morbid curiosity." — Andrew Gaudion, The Hollywood News

"The Disappointments Room" (2016)

What it's about: Kate Beckinsale stars in this thriller in which she plays a mother who unwittingly releases unspeakable horrors when opening the door to a room in the house she just moved into.

What a critic thought: "There simply isn't enough freshness in the script to warrant another journey inside a dark old house." — Stephen Faber, The Hollywood Reporter

"Max Steel" (2016)

What it's about: A teenager named Max teams with his alien friend, named Steel, to create — you guessed it — Max Steel.

What a critic thought: "A spectacle without the spectacle, an autumnal, amorphous blockbuster that just sits there, suspended in mid-air, as you soak in its ceaseless banality." — Sam Fragoso, The Wrap

"Precious Cargo" (2016)

What it's about: Bruce Willis and Mark-Paul Gosselaar star in this caper about a crime boss who double-crosses a thief.

What a critic thought: "The stupid plot, dismal dialogue, moral turpitude and dispiriting torpor of this movie makes watching it utterly pointless." — Bruce Kirkland, Toronto Sun

"Stratton" (2017)

What it's about: Dominic Cooper plays a British commando who takes out a deadly terrorist cell.

What a critic thought: "A pretty unremarkable caper: a by-the-numbers movie about a macho-maverick-man doing macho-maverick-man things." — Charlotte Harrison, Den of Geek

"Gotti" (2018)

What it's about: John Travolta plays John Gotti in his biopic about the infamous New York City crime boss.

What a critic thought: "Starring in this mobster biopic that deserves to get whacked is an offer Travolta should have refused. Insane testimonials from Gotti supporters at the end are as close as this s---show will ever get to good reviews." — Peter Travers, Rolling Stone

"London Fields" (2018)

What it's about: Amber Heard stars in this thriller in which she has an affair with three men, one of whom she knows will be her murderer.

What a critic thought: "Quite simply, horrendous — a trashy, tortured misfire from beginning to end." — Jeannette Catsoulis, The New York Times

"John Henry" (2020)

What it's about: Terry Crews stars as the title character who must reconcile with his past to help two immigrant kids trying to escape the gang life of Los Angeles.

What a critic thought: "Flashes of craft can't make up for the director's easy default to gore over story." — Lisa Kennedy, Variety

"The Last Days of American Crime" (2020)

What it's about: This Netflix crime thriller is set in a future where the government has come up with a signal that makes it impossible for anyone to knowingly commit unlawful acts.

What a critic thought: "Don't care about story, characters or words, but love violence? Even you will be disappointed." — Johnny Oleksinski, The New York Post

"The War of the Worlds" (2025)

What it's about: The latest movie adaptation of the H.G. Wells classic went straight to Amazon Prime, and when you see it, you'll understand why.

Ice Cube plays a Homeland Security officer who, while searching for a hacker, suddenly has to deal with a sudden alien invasion.

What's different from the other "War of the Worlds" movies is this is told in "screenlife," a storytelling method made popular with the 2018 movie "Searching," in which the entire story is told visually through a computer, tablet, or smartphone screen. (And yes, there are plenty of Amazon product placements.)

What a critic thought: "Even with a Prime subscription, you have to sit through two minutes of ads to watch 90 more of what amounts to a feature-length commercial for all things Amazon." — Peter Debruge, Variety