business

Max Knoblauch4/15/25

American Airlines ends its holdout, becomes the last major airline to offer free Wi-Fi

As the US aviation industry grips the armrest through trade war turbulence, American Airlines has decided at last to join the free Wi-Fi club.

The airline said free in-flight internet will be available to its loyalty members on 90% of its flights beginning in January 2026 through a partnership with AT&T. American began testing the service early last month.

American had been holding out on free Wi-Fi and even free messaging on its flights and falling behind rivals. Delta Air Lines started the service in 2023, while United Airlines last year announced plans to outfit its airplanes with Starlink beginning in May. Southwest Airlines offers free messaging and entertainment — something American in 2017 said it was planning to add but never did.

American currently sells a connection plan for $35 on cross-country routes, one of the industry’s priciest scrolling fees. It made an estimated $8.4 billion in ancillary revenue (bags, Wi-Fi, in-flight food, etc.) in 2023.

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Paramount is doing everything except the one thing that could give its Warner Bros. bid a chance of success

Warner Bros. says “more than 93%” of its shareholders have rejected Paramount. That’s probably not going to change substantially unless Paramount boosts its offer.

Tom Cruise In 'Jerry Maguire'

Television Set

Streamers continued retreating from original shows in 2025

The death of “peak TV” has not been exaggerated, per a new report from Luminate.

Max Knoblauch1/21/26

Retail display of Takis snack food in various spicy flavors in Target store, Queens, New York

America’s love for spicy food and mouth-tingling sauces has surged, but are we approaching “peak heat”?

Takis doesn’t think so, as it searches for a “Chief Intensity Officer.”

Claire Yubin Oh1/21/26

reduced to tiers

Netflix made $1.5 billion from advertising last year, about 3% of its total revenue

The figure rose more than 2.5x last year, per the company.

Netflix Ads x CES 2026

business

Tom Jones1/20/26

OpenAI’s ARR reached over $20 billion in 2025, CFO says

Sam Altman’s $500 billion artificial intelligence behemoth hit a major financial milestone last year, according to a new blog post over the weekend from OpenAI CFO Sarah Friar, as the company confirmed it had hit a more than $20 billion annual revenue run rate at the end of 2025.

Elsewhere in the blog post, Friar spent time addressing the company’s shifting goals, referencing plans to “close the distance between where intelligence is advancing and how individuals, companies, and countries actually adopt and use it.” As has become customary in the AI company press release genre, the CFO was also keen to tout the unending growth of the business, writing:

“Both our Weekly Active User (WAU) and Daily Active User (DAU) figures continue to produce all-time highs. This growth is driven by a flywheel across compute, frontier research, products, and monetization.”
“Compute grew 3X year over year or 9.5X from 2023 to 2025: 0.2 GW in 2023, 0.6 GW in 2024, and ~1.9 GW in 2025.”

And, perhaps most importantly for current backers and those keeping an eye on the private company before its rumored mega IPO:

“Revenue followed the same curve growing 3X year over year, or 10X from 2023 to 2025: $2B ARR in 2023, $6B in 2024, and $20B+ in 2025. This is never-before-seen growth at such scale.”

That latest figure has certainly set tongues in the tech world wagging, just as the company announced it would begin rolling out ads to free and ChatGPT Go users. It also puts the chatbot giant a fair way ahead of competitors like Anthropic, the company behind Claude.

OpenAI Anthropic ARR race — Sherwood News

A business that scales with the value of intelligence

A business that scales with the value of intelligence

Elsewhere in the blog post, Friar spent time addressing the company’s shifting goals, referencing plans to “close the distance between where intelligence is advancing and how individuals, companies, and countries actually adopt and use it.” As has become customary in the AI company press release genre, the CFO was also keen to tout the unending growth of the business, writing:

“Both our Weekly Active User (WAU) and Daily Active User (DAU) figures continue to produce all-time highs. This growth is driven by a flywheel across compute, frontier research, products, and monetization.”
“Compute grew 3X year over year or 9.5X from 2023 to 2025: 0.2 GW in 2023, 0.6 GW in 2024, and ~1.9 GW in 2025.”

And, perhaps most importantly for current backers and those keeping an eye on the private company before its rumored mega IPO:

“Revenue followed the same curve growing 3X year over year, or 10X from 2023 to 2025: $2B ARR in 2023, $6B in 2024, and $20B+ in 2025. This is never-before-seen growth at such scale.”

That latest figure has certainly set tongues in the tech world wagging, just as the company announced it would begin rolling out ads to free and ChatGPT Go users. It also puts the chatbot giant a fair way ahead of competitors like Anthropic, the company behind Claude.

OpenAI Anthropic ARR race — Sherwood News

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