Hi! Well, with the first two games kicking off yesterday, the World Cup 2026 is officially underway. For the 45% of Americans who have “no interest at all” in the international tournament, don’t worry — there’s only 102 matches left! Today we’re exploring:
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- Token gestures: AI companies are cutting prices.
- Peanut butter jelly’s time: Uncrustables is officially a $1 billion business.
- In the dust: Solar energy outshone coal for the first time in the US last month.
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Welcome to the OpenAI, Anthropic, and Google price wars
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In a matter of days, the narrative surrounding the artificial intelligence boom has violently shifted from performance breakthroughs to a brutal, margin-crushing price war.
This week, Google slashed its entry-level consumer AI Plus subscription from $7.99 to just $4.99 a month. Now, the Wall Street Journal is reporting that soon-to-be-public OpenAI is exploring drastically cutting its token pricing to defend its enterprise turf against soon-to-be-public Anthropic, which is poised to do the same.
As the ongoing battle to secure cash from individual chatbot users and big corporate customers heats up at the top, we’re perhaps seeing some of the clearest signals yet that the foundational models powering the AI revolution are becoming a commodity.
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According to a new report from Ramp, a fintech provider of corporate cards and expense management software for businesses, America’s most “AI-pilled” companies are spending almost $7,500 on AI for each employee every month.
That’s clearly huge news for the major players in the industry, not least Anthropic, whose platforms, models, and tools some 41% of American firms held a paid subscription for in May — marking the first month on record that the Claude maker’s penetration has bested OpenAI’s. Cheapening tokens is certainly one surefire way to ensure the competition stays heated.
However, given the staggering costs to keep the servers humming, so to speak, and the amount of cash that the market leaders are already burning through, how much lower can the companies involved (perhaps besides Google) actually afford to go?
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JM Smucker says it sold $1 billion worth of Uncrustables in FY2026
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After years of booming sandwich sales, snacks and pantry staple giant JM Smucker has finally earned a billion-dollar crust.
On Tuesday, the company reported results for its 2026 fiscal year ended April 30, highlighting better-than-expected profits driven by higher prices for coffee and sweet baked goods. However, at another point on the earnings call, CEO Mark Smucker pointed to one particularly jammy figure: in line with previous forecasts, the company sold $1 billion worth of its — almost always — crustless sandwiches, Uncrustables, in the last year alone.
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From filling lunchboxes and gym bags to fueling NFL teams and NASA crews, the (contentiously?) iconic PB&Js have gone beyond the playgrounds of America to become a snacking phenomenon among protein-maxxing adults. Over the last two decades, annual sales of Uncrustables have skyrocketed, rising 162% from a reported ~$76 million in 2006 to ~$199 million in 2016... then jumping another 403% across the next 10 years to hit a whopping $1 billion in the last fiscal year.
Since the crimped discs have attracted support from the likes of Travis Kelce and Lil Yachty — and Smucker completed its 900,000-square-foot megafactory, dedicated solely to manufacturing Uncrustables, in November 2024 — one might wonder if the company’s star sandwich has much higher to climb.
Well, in good news for fans and investors alike, that might be the case: on the call, CFO Tucker Marshall affirmed a “mid single-digit growth” outlook for Smucker’s FY2027, in part due to the projected popularity of updating the typically frozen Uncrustables product range to a “fridge-friendly format.”
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Solar generated more power than coal for the first time in US history
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At the same time that the Trump administration is pushing further toward coal power, announcing plans only last week to invest almost $700 million into reviving the industry, a key renewable energy source has just hit a major milestone in the US.
New data from energy think tank Ember, released Wednesday, shows that solar supplied 12.8% of US energy generation in May — marking not only the highest share ever recorded for the clean energy source, but also the first time that solar has generated more monthly energy than coal in the US, which supplied 12.2%.
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The figure for May denotes the fourth-lowest monthly share that coal has ever seen, only slightly greater than the all-time low of 11.7% observed for April. From 1984 until 2010, coal was America’s largest source of energy. However, as the fossil fuel continues to fall out of favor, that share has been almost cut in half in the last five years alone.
Meanwhile, demand for renewables like solar has boomed as America’s energy use keeps surging to new highs. On top of surpassing coal last month, solar became the third-largest source of electricity overall in the US, behind natural gas and nuclear, and remains the nation’s fastest-growing power source, per Climate Central.
Even after the Trump administration terminated $7 billion in solar project funding last August, it seems the energy source remains a clear bright spot. Another report released this week from the Solar Energy Industries Association found that the US added 7.8 gigawatts of new solar capacity in the first quarter of 2026 across more than 6 million solar installations nationwide.
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- Twelve big zeroes: Elon Musk is now the world’s first trillionaire — to contextualize that figure, while it would take someone 32 years to count to one billion, it would take 31,500 years to count to one trillion.
- Following its recent price tumble, about 50% of all circulating bitcoin supply is now trading at a loss for the first time since 2022.
- As the star celebrates 20 years in the music business, Taylor Swift just became the youngest woman inducted into the Songwriters Hall of Fame at the age of 36.
- Check out a (questionable) ESPN ranking of the 105 jerseys you may see on display at the 2026 World Cup… if you’re in the 13% of Americans who say they’re definitely tuning in.
- Unblocked: The FDA approved its first new sunscreen ingredient in more than 20 years earlier this week — though the UV-filtering compound has been available in Europe since 1999.
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- To mark President Trump’s 80th birthday this weekend, Pew Research maps out the age range of current world leaders.
- One down, two to go… A look into the trilogy of opening ceremonies for the World Cup 2026.
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Off the charts: Two weeks ago, we asked which name topped the most popular US girls’ name ranking seven years in a row — but which male name has dominated for an even wilder nine? [Answer below].
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