In the early 2000s, fashion brands had a realization: They could throw their inventory up on a website and ask customers to sift through it to find what they were looking for. Two decades later, the fundamental structure of e-commerce hasn’t changed much. Shopping is a drag that involves endlessly scrolling for merchandise.
[Image: Ralph Lauren]
But change is in the air. AI is about to transform everything about online shopping. Consumers are already turning to chatbots to find and compare products, and to platforms like Daydream that are designed specifically for shopping for clothes. Now, we’re about to see how fashion labels themselves can use AI to make shopping on their sites less laborious and more delightful.
Today, Ralph Lauren launches Ask Ralph, an AI stylist in the brand’s mobile app. The 58-year-old fashion brand has partnered with Microsoft to create an AI agent that mimics the experience of speaking with an stylist. You begin by expressing exactly what you’re looking for. Depending on the day, it might be specific like, “I’m looking for a black cardigan for the fall,” or open-ended like, “I’m moderating a panel at a big conference and I have no idea what to wear.”
[Image: Ralph Lauren]
Then, rather than sifting through rows of products, the app does the searching for you. It delivers fully styled looks from the current Ralph Lauren collection that you can shop immediately. And through the process, as you figure out what you’re looking for (say, cropped cardigans made of cashmere), the AI adapts to your preferences. “We’re trying to recreate the experience of working with a well-trained Ralph Lauren salesperson,” says David Lauren, chief branding and innovation officer at Ralph Lauren, and son of the founder. “We’ve taken all of our own best practices and built them into the AI.”
[Image: Ralph Lauren]
An Early Adopter
This isn’t Ralph Lauren’s first partnership with Microsoft. Twenty-five years ago, David appeared on stage with Bill Gates to unveil Polo.com, the very first Ralph Lauren website. This was a time when few other fashion brands had any online presence at all.
David has always been interested in adopting new technologies early. Shortly after the new website debuted, David partnered with NBC to build an online magazine full of videos and articles to blend content with commerce; in the following years, it would become common for brands to launch blogs on their website. And Ralph Lauren was among the first fashion brand to place QR codes in billboard and print ads to send consumers to its website. “We did this before most phones were able to read QR codes,” says David. “But people quickly caught up.”
Ralph Lauren has been toying with the idea of a digital stylist for a long time. In the early 2000s, that early version of the e-commerce website had an “Ask Ralph” feature, where you could read content about how to put a Ralph Lauren look together, and even a video streaming service where you could talk to a salesperson in a showroom. “What we didn’t have at the time was AI,” David says. “We realized that AI could help us realize many of the concepts we had dreamt about back then.”
To train the Ask Ralph model, Microsoft used data from Ralph Lauren’s archives and current collections to help identify the brand’s distinct aesthetic. Ralph Lauren’s creative team, from designers to in-store stylists, participated in the process to make sure that the app would create highly curated looks that reflect the brand’s take on styling.
Then, members of the in-store team were asked to contribute insights about how they work with a customer to help them find pieces. Once they had created a beta version of the app, they asked employees to use it and offer feedback.
The final version of the app uses conversational AI and natural language processing to understand open-ended prompts from the user. It also incorporates the customer’s shopping history, so that it can understand their preferences and pick pieces that match what they already have in their closet.
The app can interpret context: It can identify whether the customer is trying to quickly buy a shirt to match an existing blazer, or whether they are just playing around to find new ideas for outfits. It also only shows pieces of clothing that are currently available for purchase, and over time, the app will adapt to the user.
[Photo: Ralph Lauren]
The Industry Shift
While Ralph Lauren is an early adopter of AI technology, many fashion brands are building their own apps, says Shelley Bransten, corporate VP of global industry solutions at Microsoft. She says that the fashion industry is now shifting from “scroll-based” shopping, which involves looking through rows of thumbnails, to “goal-based” shopping, which deploys AI to surface results based on the customer’s specific needs at that moment. “The shopping experience is going to be more personalized, relevant, and more tied to the customer’s intent,” she says.
Bransten says that many consumers have gotten so used to using AI agents like ChatGPT that they no longer remember how to use search boxes on websites. Instead, they type out full queries into search boxes, only to confuse the system. But companies that have made the leap to using AI on their e-commerce sites are already seeing more success. “They’re seeing higher conversion rates, units per transaction, and consumer happiness scores,” she says.
[Photo: Ralph Lauren]
At the same time, we should expect more general AI agents to improve. I recently wrote about Daydream, a shopping platform that allows you to describe what it is you’re looking for, then searches for pieces from hundreds of brands. It will tailor the results to your size, personal preferences, and budget. Soon, platforms like this are likely to replace searching for clothes on Google, but David believes that some customers will still want to search directly on brand websites. “We have loyal, long-term customers who trust us,” he says. “Ask Ralph is another way to deepen this relationship.”
Ask Ralph is designed to make shopping less time-consuming for the customer, but David also believes it is an opportunity for Ralph Lauren to stand out by emphasizing the brand’s unique point of view. The app will curate looks that are very carefully aligned with the distinct Ralph Lauren aesthetic, and in doing so, will allow customers to enter the brand’s universe. “Our customers come to us because they like our point of view,” David says. “We can help them create the look that they want more directly.”
The app could also be a way to bring new customers in. While it is designed to make the purchasing process easier, David hopes that it is also a useful free tool for anyone looking for help to get dressed in the morning. If you already have a blue blazer and turn to the Ask Ralph app for interesting ways to style it, the app will curate looks drawn from Ralph Lauren’s archives and style guide.
“People still read fashion magazines and blogs to look for tips about how to dress,” David says. “I think of the Ask Ralph app as a kind of style book. It helps you figure out how to put a look together in the morning.”
Weve had branded entertainment since Proctor and Gamble invented soap operas back in the 1930s. But as media fragmentation has gone into hyperdrive over the past two decades, brands have been forced to diversify the ways in which they gain and hold our attention. Its no longer viable or effective to overly depend on traditional paid media tools.
Marketers can create content and experiences that attract and engage audiences rather than interrupt and annoy themand drive results. Some of the best examples of this is what we call brand entertainment. Brands of all stripes talk about it, but it is the exceptions that truly invest in making actual entertainment.
Of course, theres box office hits like Barbie, The Lego Movie, and Super Mario Bros, but theres also classics like BMWs The Hire (2002), Red Bull “Stratos” from 2012, and the 2014 Patagonia doc DamNation.
Dicks Sporting Goods has been funding and producing award-winning content for years. Over the past decade, the retailer has built an impressive catalog of five feature-length films and 10 short-form or episodic documentaries. Its 2014 doc We Could Be King premiered at the Tribeca Film Festival, streamed on Netflix, and won the 2015 Sports Emmy Award for Outstanding Sports Documentary. It won its second Sports Emmy for a doc called The Turnaround last year.
In August, it premiered its newest documentary, Big Dreams: The Little League World Series 2024, produced in partnership with Imagine Entertainment and MLB Studios. Soon after, it officially announced an in-house studio division called Cookie Jar & A Dream Studios, to formalize its commitment to entertainment as a pillar of its brand.
On this months episode of Brand New World, Im talking to Dicks chief marketing officer Emily Silver about why now is the perfect time for an in-house studio, how they measure success on projects, and where it all goes from here.
How the new in-house studio will impact how it invests in entertainment: First, you’ll see us take a more aggressive stance in the number of films and pieces of content we put out. Two, it helps us brand the studio so that we start to build more of a name for ourselves in the [entertainment] industry and attract different writers and different projects, which is already happening. And three, it gives us the opportunity to put a little more structure and framework around what content we want to produce and where we want to lean in to help build for the long term. It really just helps formalize the process in a way that we can be a little more choice-ful about what we want to do in the future.
How the brand evaluates potential entertainment projects:
For us, it’s really making sure that the story that we’re going to tell, or whoever we’re partnering with is going to tell, really fits with our values and our point of view on sports, which is the power to change lives and build community. It really has to click those two boxes, and we want to tell transformative stories that highlight grit and raw humanity and heartbreak in the lessons learned behind sports.Advice for marketers curious about entertainment:
There’s a lot of money out there and you can see how this can go very wrong and very commercial very quickly. My advice would be to hold to your creative standards, and find people who think similarly to you about creative excellence. It really is about finding that match of people that you’d want to write with, and want to produce, and direct with. Making sure that your vision, and the mission of the company and the team align. Because there’s endless content out there. As we all know, the trick is getting people to care and to watch it.
Nebius Group said on Monday it will provide Microsoft with GPU infrastructure capacity, in a deal worth $17.4 billion, over a five-year term, sending its shares soaring over 47% after the bell.
The deal underscores the surging demand for high-performance AI computers, as companies invest heavily to bolster their AI infrastructure.
Microsoft may also acquire additional services capacity under the deal, bringing the total contract value to about $19.4 billion.
Nebius’ core business involves providing Nvidia graphic processing units and AI cloud as services. Nebius offers AI developers the computing, storage, managed services and tools they need to build, tune and run their AI models, with the help of its cloud software architecture and in-house designed hardware.
Nebius will provide Microsoft access to dedicated GPU infrastructure capacity from its new data center in Vineland, New Jersey, starting later this year.
“The economics of the deal are attractive in their own right, but, significantly, the deal will also help us to accelerate the growth of our AI cloud business even further in 2026 and beyond,” Nebius CEO Arkady Volozh said.
Microsoft is the largest customer of CoreWeave one of Nebius’ competitors which earlier this year denied media reports that said it had seen contract cancellations from the hyperscaler.
Amsterdam-based Nebius Group emerged from a deal to split the assets of Russian tech giant Yandex.
Juby Babu, Reuters
A space that once held 5,000 tons of corn, grains, and wheat has just undergone a surgical transformation that’s turned it from an industrial complex into a new hotel. Now open in Bremen, Germany, the John & Will Silo Hotel is a unique repurposing of the silos of a former Kellogg’s cereal factory. Hulking concrete structures that enabled decades of breakfast cereal production are now luxe, if quirky, accommodations for travelers.
It’s a strange second life for a former cereal factory, but its also part of a 600-acre urban redevelopment project in the industrial area of Bremen, located along the Weser river. The former Kellogg’s factory, with a silo-topping sign that’s become a local landmark, is the project’s visual centerpiece.
[Photo: Piet Niemann/courtesy DMAA]
The design comes from Vienna-based Delugan Meissl Associated Architects (DMAA), who worked with the project’s developer to preserve and reuse the factory as part of a new commercial and residential district known as Überseestadt.
[Photo: courtesy DMAA]
“The possibility of demolishing the building was never up for discussion,” says Eva Schrade, senior project manager at DMAA. She says the idea of converting the structure into a hotel came during an evening brainstorming session with the client, which was considering turning the silos into some kind of sports center, like a climbing gym. The architects offered a more challenging alternative. “The structure of the round rooms is unusual for a hotel, but the task was all the more exciting,” Schrade says.
[Photo: Piet Niemann/courtesy DMAA]
The 130-foot silo shells now contain 117 circular and semicircular hotel rooms. Winding interior hallways run along their curves inside the structure, and the round walls of the silos frame bedrooms, seating areas, and even showers. Horizontal bands of windows have been cut through the silo walls to give hotel guests wide views of the river and city beyond. The raw concrete of the silo structure lent itself to the minimalist interior design of the hotel, with spare furnishings and steel-framed fixtures.
It’s not the first time grain silos have found new purpose. Grain silos in Cape Town, South Africa, have been used for a contemporary art museum. Some DIY designers have even turned smaller-scale grain silos into boutique hotel suites.
[Photo: Piet Niemann/courtesy DMAA]
[Photo: Piet Niemann/courtesy DMAA]
The Bremen project is on a much larger scale, and therefore involved a bigger lift. Physically carving up the building was labor-intensive. The concrete walls of the silos are more than 6 inches thick. To keep the building structurally sound, the architects had to preserve a significant amount of the structure of the silos themselves, both their exterior shells and the partition walls between them. Bracing wall had to be added inside smaller rooms, as well as the insulation that the silos previous life holding corn and grain did not require.
[Photo: Piet Niemann/courtesy DMAA]
Despite the significant changes to the structure, the architects sought to ensure the silos still presented as silos. “Inside, all interventions were to remain visible as far as possible. The raw concrete floors were only cleaned and the cuts were left visible,” Schrade says.
[Photo: Piet Niemann/courtesy DMAA]
Beyond the hotel rooms, many of the building’s original details were kept intact, including steel bracing inside a penthouse bar and the original funnel-shaped outlets of the silos, which hang overhead in the hotel lobby. Another original feature no one wanted to lose is the building’s towering Kellogg’s sign on the roof. “Many Bremen residents have a long-standing connection with the company,” Schrade says. The hope is the hotel conversion will give Bremen a new kind of connection with this building.
Spreadsheet apps like Microsoft Excel and Google Sheets are used worldwide to organize and analyze data, but getting the right information into them isnt always straightforward.
Businesses often need engineers to write code that pulls information from cloud systems and databases, then clean and process it before its ready for Excel.
AI spreadsheet company Sourcetable is trying to simplify that process with what it calls Superagents: AI tools that connect to different systems across the internet, fetch relevant data, and make it ready for analysis. Technically, Superagents manage a collection of AI agents that link to databases and cloud services like Google Analytics, Shopify, and Stripe.
Once connected, Sourcetables agents can answer questions directly, such as analyzing customer spending data from Stripe or website traffic from Google Analytics. They can insert raw or processed data into a Sourcetable spreadsheet, which users can work with just like Excel. To do this, the system can run Python number-crunching libraries on a virtual machine, avoiding the math errors that generative AI often produces.
“There’s a full Python ecosystem under the hood,” says Sourcetable cofounder and CEO Eoin McMillan. “Basically every data science library you could possibly want or ask for is just embedded in the product, just rolled in for free.”
McMillan says the idea came from his experience at startups, where accessing and analyzing data was always a heavy lift.
“The conclusion that I came to was that everybody was trying to patch a broken ecosystem for data, and the reason for this was because Microsoft Excel and Google Sheets were not built correctly for the modern information environment,” he says.
Despite its advanced features, Sourcetable still looks like a traditional spreadsheet and supports hundreds of familiar formula functions. It can import and export Excel files, too. Earlier this year, the company launched an autopilot mode that lets users ask the AI to answer questions, generate graphs, or build visualizations. McMillan says this helps spreadsheet users who’ve struggled with more complex features, like those pesky pivot table operations and VLOOKUP, or vertical lookup, functions.
“Most people in the world use spreadsheets, but they don’t know how to use VLOOKUP or pivots, and having a spreadsheet that can combine data, and summarize data, and analyze data for them is a huge unlock in terms of this new capability they have,” he says.
For power users, the built-in Python libraries can replace hours of manual spreadsheet work or external coding, producing results in seconds. While the product is most popular with operations and analysis teams, McMillan says its also used for everything from scientific research to fantasy football, where Sourcetable even built specialized tools.
In a demo for Fast Company, McMillan showed how Sourcetable could pull data from the web, downloading and processing a sitemap file listing each of the Sourcetable website’s individual pages, then visiting each page and cataloging page titles and descriptions in a spreadsheet. While the platform includes prebuilt connectors for popular cloud services and databases, the AI can also fetch data from other systems using standard API documentation.
Generally, connections to outside services cost $100 each per month, though one per organization is included with Sourcetable’s $20-per-user-per-month “Pro” plan and five per organization with a $200-per-user-per-month “Max” plan. A promotion celebrating the launch of Superagents makes connectors added the week of September 8 free forever.
Currently, users can edit the SQL code Sourcetable generates but can only viewnot rewritethe Python scripts. McMillan says that will likely change in the future. For now, if Python doesnt produce the desired results, users must re-prompt the AI.
The AI also asks permission before overwriting spreadsheet contents. It can, in some cases, push data back to cloud systems, but McMillan stresses thats still a beta feature. In the future, Sourcetable will likely allow outside systemsincluding other AI agentsto connect proactively as well.
Sourcetable, which has raised $5.5 million in funding, isn’t the only company trying to use AI to modernize the spreadsheet (Excel and Google Sheets each offer their own AI features). But McMillan says Sourcetable has an advantage in being created with AI and integration with online data in mind, rather than having such features added on well into the product’s life.
However, he says, the AI chat interface alone is unlikely to replace the tabular spreadsheet format that people have been using for thousands of years.
“The reason why Sourcetable is powerful, McMillan says, is because you have this Excel-like spreadsheet interface, which is the data tool that everyone knows how to use.
Aven, a fintech startup known for its home-equity-backed credit cards, has raised $110 million in Series E financing at a $2.2 billion post-money valuation. The San Francisco-based company is one of a growing number of startups focused on helping U.S. consumers take advantage of the estimated $35 trillion in wealth tied up in their homes.
The latest round was led by Khosla Ventures, with participation from existing backers General Catalyst, Caffeinated Capital, GIC, Electric Capital, and Founders Fund. In July 2024, Aven raised $142 million in Series D financing at a $1 billion valuation.
Avens primary product is a secured credit card designed for prime and super-prime homeowners. The card offers consumers interest rates in line with that of a home-equity line of credit, or HELOC, with the ease of a credit card experience. Aven says it has issued $3 billion in aggregate credit lines and has saved consumers more than $215 million in interest costs.
Our core product is really working, says CEO Sadi Khan, who cofounded the company in 2019. His team plans to use the financing round to hit the gas pedal hard, he says.
We have the ability to be cash-flow positive, Khan says, citing Avens unit economics. But we decided that investing in our growth and investing in more products is the right decision.
Aven delivers lower rates by streamlining the HELOC application and administration processes. The company has even gone so far as to develop a patented robotic arm that it uses as part of its digital notary workflow. A traditional HELOC application process can take 42 days; Avens process can take as little as 15 minutes.
Shortening the timelines and lowering the costs associated with home-equity-secured credit make the model more attractive to consumers, who are using Aven for debt consolidation, home improvement, summer camp, and more. Over the past 12 months, Avens customer base has tripled in size.
Other companies are chasing homeowners, too. In just the past week, my own household received HELOC offers in the mail from Figure, Alliant, and Rate. (Direct mail is also an important marketing channel for Aven.) Overall, HELOC balances today stand at around $400 billion, an increase of 27% above pandemic-level borrowing.
As with any kind of secured debt, borrowers risk losing the underlying asset. Khan says that Avens delinquency and default rates are in line with that of traditional HELOCs. Just 0.87% of HELOC balances were more than 90 days delinquent in Q1 2025, versus over 10% of credit cards, according to the Federal Reserve.
This financing round will also position Aven to expand its product portfolio. Up first is a move into mortgage refinancing.
Our goal is very simple, Khan says. Its to be able to build a mortgage product that [could] do a cash-out refinance in as fast as 10 days.
Aven is running live tests on mortgage refinancing and expects to roll out the product over the next six months.
Wall Street inched higher early Tuesday ahead of a government data revision that economists expect will reveal that the U.S. labor market was sputtering well before President Donald Trump rolled out tariffs on the nation’s trading partners this spring.Futures for the Dow Jones Industrial Average and the Nasdaq each ticked up 0.1% before the bell, while futures for the S&P 500 were unchanged.Later Tuesday, the U.S. government will release preliminary revisions for job growth numbers reported for the 12 months through March of this year. Analysts are forecasting that the Bureau of Labor Statistics will revise job gains for that period down by as much as 900,000. If the figures are revised sharply lower, it could halve the job growth that had been thought to have occurred.“That would mean that private-sector employment actually shrank, on average, in the past three months and that job creation earlier in the year was weaker than currently reported,” said Fed Gov. Christopher Waller, two weeks ago at the Economic Club of Miami.Waller, a candidate to replace Fed Chair Jerome Powell, said then that he expected a downward revision of 60,000 per month.There has been mounting evidence that uncertainty over Trump’s tariffs has kept business from hiring as actively as they had been when the U.S. rapidly rebounded from the COVID-19 recession. The U.S. economy is creating fewer than 75,000 jobs a month so far this year, less than half the 2024 average of 168,000 and not even a quarter of the 400,000 jobs added monthly in the hiring boom of 2021-2023.When the Labor Department put out a disappointing July jobs report that also included downward revisions for previous months, an enraged Trump responded by firing the BLS economist in charge of compiling the numbers and nominating a loyalist to replace her.While inflation still remains above the Fed’s 2% target, most economists think the central bank will cut its benchmark lending rate at its meeting next week to help support the flagging U.S. labor market.Reports on inflation will follow on Wednesday and Thursday.Also Tuesday, Apple will unveil the next line-up of iPhones amid a global trade war that’s added a potential price increase to the company’s marquee product. Apple shares were unchanged before the opening bell Tuesday.Shares of Fox Corp. tumbled 4.7% in premarket after Rupert Murdoch’s family said they’ve reached a deal on control of the 94-year-old mogul’s media empire after his death. The agreement ensures that there will be no change in direction at Fox News, the most popular network for President Donald Trump and conservatives.The deal creates a trust establishing control of the Fox Corp. for Lachlan Murdoch, Rupert’s chosen heir who has been running Fox in recent years, along with his younger sisters, Grace and Chloe.Elsewhere, in Europe at midday France’s CAC 40 rose 0.3%, the German DAX fell 0.5% and Britain’s FTSE 100 gained 0.2%.In Asia, Japan’s benchmark Nikkei 225 erased earlier gains to finish 0.4% lower at 43,459.29, as political uncertainty continued after Prime Minister Shigeru Ishiba said over the weekend that he planned to step down. Who will replace him is still uncertain and may take weeks to decide. The benchmark had momentarily surpassed the 44,000 mark.Anticipation over one of the likely candidates, Sanae Takaichi, a hawkish legislator, sent defense issues higher in Tokyo trading. Mitsubishi Heavy Industries rose 0.3%, IHI added 1.0% and Kawasaki Heavy 0.4%. Veteran ruling party legislator Toshimitsu Motegi has indicated he wants to run, and other expected contenders include Farm Minister Shinjiro Koizumi and Chief Cabinet Secretary Yoshimasa Hayashi. All are members of the ruling Liberal Democratic Party, which will need coalition partners to stay in power.Australia’s S&P/ASX 200 declined 0.6% to 8,793.60. South Korea’s Kospi climbed 1.3% to 3,260.05. Hong Kong’s Hang Seng surged 1.2% to 25,938.13, while the Shanghai Composite fell 0.5% to 3,807.29. The mixed trading followed a stronger opening in Asia.“Asian markets opened Tuesday with momentum, riding Wall Street’s conviction that Fed cuts are no longer a question of if but how many. Nearly three reductions are now being priced before year-end. That expectation is washing through global markets like a spring tide,” said Stephen Innes, managing partner at SPI Asset Management.
Yuri Kageyama and Matt Ott, AP Business Writers
Cheese lovers are being urged to check their fridges after multiple cheese products were recalled due to fears of contamination with Listeria monocytogenes, a bacterium that can cause potentially deadly infections. Heres what you need to know about the cheese recall affecting multiple states.
Whats happened?
The U.S. Food and Drug Administration (FDA) has published a recall notice on its website warning of potential Listeria monocytogenes in several cheese products.
The FDAs warning was published on September 8, three days after the Ohio-based company behind the cheese announced the recall.
That company is Middlefield Original Cheese Co-op, which produces multiple cheese products. Middlefield initiated the recall after detecting Listeria monocytogenes in some of its finished products as well as on cutting equipment surfaces.
Cheese products covered under this recall were sold under two brand names:
Middlefield Original Cheese Co-op
Sunrise Creamery
The recalled products were produced on two dates: May 30, and August 13 and sold in multiple states between July 7 and August 14.
However, some of the recalled products have sell-by dates that extend into 2026, so they may still be sitting in customers refrigerators.
What cheese products are being recalled?
According to the notice published on the FDA website, the following cheese products are being recalled:
Middlefield Original Cheese Co-Op Organic Gouda,8 ounce packages, Sell by date of February 13, 2026
Middlefield Original Cheese Co-Op Mozzarella/Provolone Cheese5 pound bags (shredded cheese), Sell by date of September 3, 2025
Middlefield Original Cheese Co-Op Colored (Yellow) Cheddar Cheese,5 pound loaves (labeled as Smoked Cheddar and All Natural Mild Cheddar),Sell by date of February 13, 20265 pound bags (shredded cheese) (labeled as Shredded Cheddar Cheese),Sell by date of September 3, 2025
Middlefield Original Cheese Co-Op Swiss Cheese5 pound loaves, Sell by date of February 13, 2026
Middlefield Original Cheese Co-Op Pepper Jack Cheese5 pound loaves (labeled as All Natural Pepper Jack), Sell by date of February 13, 20265 pound bags (shredded cheese), Sell by date of September 3, 2025
Middlefield Original Cheese Co-Op Monterey Jack Cheese,5 pound loaves, Sell by date of February 13, 20265 pound bags (shredded cheese), Sell by date of September 3, 2025
Sunrise Creamery Dilly Pickle Monterey Jack with Pickles Cheese6 ounce package (labeled as Dilly Pickle) with lot code 253054,Sell by date of January 7, 2026, January 11, 2026, or February 16, 20261.25 pound package (labeled as Dilly Pickle Jack) with lot code 253054,Sell by date of December 30, 2025
Where were the recalled cheese products sold?
The recalled products above were reportedly sold in four states, including:
Minnesota
Ohio
Texas
Wisconsin
The recall notice does not list the exact establishments where the recalled cheese was sold, but says the cheese was sold through distributors, dining halls, and retail stores between July 7 and August 14.
What is Listeria Monocytogenes?
According to the U.S. Centers for Disease Control and Prevention (CDC), Listeria monocytogenes is a bacterium that can cause severe illness and even death in those who consume it.
Listeria monocytogenes can make anyone sick; however, some groups are more susceptible to worse outcomesincluding deaththan others. The CDC says individuals particularly at risk from a Listeria monocytogenes infection include:
Pregnant women and their unborn baby
Newborn babies
Adults over the age of 65
Individuals with weakened immune systems
In pregnant people, Listeria monocytogenes infections can lead to miscarriages and stillbirths.
Thankfully, as of the time of this writing, there have been no reports of illnesses related to the recalled products.
What should I do if I have the recalled cheese products?
If you have any of the recalled products, the recall notice says you should not consume them. Instead, dispose of them or return them to their place of purchase for a refund. You can read the full recall notice on the FDA’s website.
Today is the day that many of Apples legions of iPhone fans look forward to most. Its Apples annual iPhone event, in which the company unveils its new lineup of its iconic smartphone for the year ahead.
Apple will begin its 2025 iPhone Awe Dropping event at 10 a.m. PT today, (Tuesday, September 9). But iPhones arent the only product Apple is expected to unveil.
Heres what you need to know about todays Apple event, including when and where you can watch the keynote in time zones around the world.
Apple iPhone 17 event: New iPhones
Fast Company has previously detailed what iPhones to expect at todays Apple event, but the short answer is to expect Apple to unveil four new iPhone modelsand kill off one existing one.
The current iPhone model that Apple has eliminated from its lineup is the iPhone Plus model. It will be replaced with an all-new super-thin iPhone, many have dubbed the iPhone Air. (The actual name remains unconfirmed at this time.)
Apple will also introduce a new regular iPhone 17, a new iPhone 17 Pro, and a new iPhone 17 Pro Max. It is unknown at this time if those phones will have the 17 numbering scheme, or if Apple will change the model number to 26 like it has done with its operating systems this year.
Apple iPhone 17 event: New Apple Watches
As the Apple Watch isnt a true standalone device (it needs to be paired with an iPhone), Apple usually chooses to debut new models when it debuts new iPhones. Thats expected to be no different this year.
Rumors say that Apple will refresh all three models of its Apple Watch this year, debuting the Apple Watch Series 11, the Apple Watch Ultra 3, and the Apple Watch SE 3. Expect slightly larger displays on some as well as new health features.
Apple iPhone 17 event: New AirPods
Apple also usually chooses to update its AirPod wireless earbuds at the same time it launches new iPhonesthough it doesnt release new AirPods every year. This year, Apple is expected only to update one of its AirPods modelsthe AirPods Pro 3.
Rumors are conflicting about what upgrades the new AirPods Pro 3 will have. Earlier rumors pointed to sound and performance upgrades, but later rumors have said the only major upgrades the AirPods Pro 3 will receive are new health featuresincluding the ability to detect the wearers heart rate.
Apple iPhone 17 event: New Software
Apple will also preview the final versions of its suite of operating systems that run on its devices. The company has already revealed the major new feature, along with a new numbering scheme based on the year rather than the iteration of the OS.
When Apple mentions iOS 26, iPadOS 26, macOS 26, watchOS 26, and visionOS 26 at todays event, it’s possible some of the operating systems could have newly announced features that are limited to some of the new hardware Apple is announcing.
As for the release date of iOS 26 and the other new operating systems, expect Apple to announce their availability to the public as a free download either this week or next week. Release dates may include Friday, September 12, or Monday, September 15.
Apple iPhone 17 event: time zones
Apples 2025 iPhone event kicks off today, Tuesday, September 9, at 10 a.m. PT. But if youre not in the Pacific time zone, here is what time the event starts in time zones around the world.
Athens: 8 p.m.
Auckland: 5 a.m. September 10
Beijing: 1 a.m. September 10
Berlin: 7 p.m.
Brisbane: 3 a.m. September 10
Cairo: 7 p.m.
Cape Town: 7 p.m.
Chicago: 12 p.m.
Denver: 11 a.m.
Dubai: 9 p.m.
Hong Kong: 1 a.m. September 10
Honolulu: 7 a.m.
Houston: 12 p.m.
London: 6 p.m.
Melbourne: 3 a.m. September 10
Mexico City: 12 p.m.
New York: 1 p.m.
Paris: 7 p.m.
Phoenix: 10 a.m.
Sao Paulo: 2 p.m.
Singapore: 1 a.m. September 10
Sydney: 3 a.m. September 10
Tel Aviv: 8 p.m.
Toronto: 1 p.m.
Vancouver: 10 a.m.
Apple iPhone 17 event: How to watch
There are plenty of ways you can watch todays Apple iPhone event:
On Apple.com: Apple will stream the event on its official Apple Events website and homepage. You can access this stream from web browsers on your computer or mobile device.
On YouTube: Apple also streams its iPhone event on its official YouTube channel. You can watch on YouTubes website or in the YouTube app on any supported device.
In Apples TV app: Apple also streams the iPhone event in its TV app, which is available on all its devices. Just open the TV app to find the livestream.
Finally, you can watch the iPhone 17 Apple event right here on FastCompany.com. Weve embedded the YouTube stream below.
The Innovative Leader of the Year category of Best Workplaces for Innovators honors individuals at any level, from CEO to department head, who have enhanced the innovation culture of their workplace.
Winner: Sarah Russell, Director, Bellwether, X, the Moonshot Factory
Mountain View, CA
In 2019, as an entrepreneur in residence at Alphabets X, the Moonshot Factory, Sarah Russell created Bellwether, which harnesses AI and data to assess natural disaster risk and mitigate impact on communities. Bellwether forecasts probabilities for severe weather, provides aerial images to first responders, and helps insurers understand disaster risk. When Hurricane Helene struck last September, the tool processed 75,000 images from Civil Air Patrol in a matter of minutes rather than days. Russell is also a practicing emergency room physician and an assistant professor at Stanfords School of Medicine, and she was captain of the 1998 Harvard womens basketball team that upset Stanford to become the first March Madness 16 seed to topple a 1 seed.
Finalists:
Andrew Heifetz, CEO, Ampsight (acquired in May 2025 by Vibrint, where Heifetz is now chief strategy officer), Sterling, VA
As CEO of Ampsight, Heifetz launched AmpArena innovation competitions so that cross-functional teams can test emerging technologies, stress-test internal tools, and propose new solutions outside of their daily responsibilities.
Ely Greenfield, chief technology officer, digital media, Adobe, San Jose
Greenfield has overseen the development of Firefly, Adobe’s generative AI model that has been used to generate more than 20 billion assets around the globe. He champions an iterative, experimentation-driven mindset within Adobe like Adobe’s Sneaks program, which previews early-stage innovations born from employee ideas and passion projects.
