Hey Snackers,
The announcements for the winners of this year’s Nobel Prize awards got underway yesterday, as US psychiatrist Karl Deisseroth and two German colleagues received this year’s prize in Physiology or Medicine for their research on the inner workings of the human brain.Â
The three scientists, who will share the ~$1.2 million prize money, can only hope that their work stands the test of time a little longer than the recipient of the same award 100 years ago.Â
Danish pathologist Johannes Fibiger picked up the Nobel Prize for Physiology or Medicine in 1926 for his work identifying a parasitic worm as a cause of stomach cancer in rats, but his research was proved wrong only a few years later, and the award has gone down as one of the rare cases of a mistakenly awarded Nobel Prize.
Stocks rose on Monday.
Amazon is still trying to make its fall Prime Day a thing. Its efforts might be starting to pay off.
Seemingly unperturbed by the fact that no one has ever referred to its latter-year promotional period by its official (and overlong) title, Amazon is pushing its “Prime Big Deal Days” again, with ads and somehow-not-sponsored editorials for various offers inevitably cluttering news feeds and inboxes today and tomorrow.
This two-day discount window is the younger and smaller sibling of Amazon’s original summertime Prime Day, having first been introduced four years ago and lasting for just 48 hours, compared to the four-day stretch of the June 2026 event. The promotions are big business for Amazon, as investors who keep a keen eye on the company’s quarterly reports will be aware, after it shifted the summer event to see the sales uptick in Q2 rather than Q3 this year.
Luckily for Amazon, it seems that the secondary event is gathering a little more steam this year in comparison to previous editions.Â
While summer searches for the main event have dwindled a little in the years since their peak eight years ago, US interest in the October Prime Day has reached a new high this year, according to partially complete data from Google. Despite ongoing questions around whether Amazon’s promotional events actually offer customers value for money, the figures suggest that shoppers are still eager to find out for themselves.
The Takeaway
Even as parts of Amazon’s business that aren’t selling-you-things-online-for-cheap — such as its burgeoning AI and custom chip businesses — continue to grow, online retail sales still account for the lion’s share of its top-line revenue figures, making shifting products at lower prices around Prime Days a bit of a no-brainer for the company.Â
Bezos’ company also has more paying users to target with discounts and deals than ever before. When the company hosted its first Prime Day in July 2015 to celebrate its 20th anniversary, just 54 million US shoppers used Prime; last year, that figure had ballooned to a staggering 201 million.Â
— Thomas Jones
That’s how much “Digger,” the Tom Cruise-led satire that marks Warner Bros’ last release before its $111 billion merger with Paramount is expected to close today, made across North American theaters in its opening weekend.Â
The disappointing haul (down, even, from the $12 million to $15 million that Warner execs had pessimistically penciled in) is Cruise’s lowest domestic debut since “Lions for Lambs” in 2007, per The Hollywood Reporter. With a reported budget of around $160 million, the underwhelming first weekend box office figure could set “Digger” up as one of the biggest commercial flops in recent history.
In sad news for Cruise heads around the world, it’s also looking like yet another setback on the megastar’s decades-long quest to get his hands on a competitive Oscar, with his latest departure from the action roles he’s become known for currently sitting at a lowly 51% critics’ rating on review aggregator Rotten Tomatoes.
What else we’re Snackin’
Chips and dip: Intel dropped yesterday after Elon Musk confirmed talks between TSMC and his Terafab chip venture around potential collaboration.Â
EV sales in the EU hit a new record for January to August this year, according to a study from a Brussels environmental advocacy agency, with new research showing that deliveries may rose 45% from 2025 to 1.64 million.Â
OpenAI announced that it will test new visual ad format to ChatGPT, which it noted reaches 1.2 billion people per week, debuting the new style with people generating images on the platform.Â
Meta and Microsoft are working to get their own employees to use Anthropic’s Claude less, The Information reports.Â
Snack Fact of the Day
Since the first ceremony in December 1901, there have been 634 Nobel Prizes awarded to some 1,029 people and organizations across the world. The US currently reigns supreme, counting 432 prizes, compared to the UK which sits in a distant second place with a tally of 148, per World Population Review.Â
Tuesday
Constellation Brands slated to release quarterly results after the close.
The Fed’s Williams and Logan are slated to moderate panels.