A new army of robots is coming… but don’t worry, they’re not trying to take over the world. They’re just here to deliver your McDonald’s. 

What happened: Starting next month, some Tokyo residents will have their Uber Eats orders delivered by an adorable autonomous robot. Japan is already known as the home to many restaurant robot servers, but it’s the first international market to adopt robot delivery on Uber. 

Tech companies that want to catch an investor’s eye need to think less about flashy moonshots and more about old-fashioned returns on investment.

It turns out Reddit threads aren’t just a valuable way to crowdsource advice from strangers, they’re also worth tens of millions of dollars to at least one AI company.

What happened: Reddit has cut a ~US$60 million licensing deal to sell access to the user-generated content from its platform to an unnamed AI company, per Bloomberg. 

Less than two months after hitting the ice, North America’s new pro women’s hockey league is already breaking records.

What happened: A Professional Women’s Hockey League (PWHL) match between Toronto and Montreal last week drew 19,285 fans to a sold-out Scotiabank Arena, breaking the attendance record for any women’s hockey game. 

The Loblaw corporation has previously beefed with Frito-Lay and other smaller suppliers. Now, it’s in a spat with a guy making novelty T-shirts.   

Driving the news: Toronto-based artist Christopher Lambe was forced to remove products from his Etsy store that lambasted grocery store chain Loblaw and its high prices after the company filed a copyright infringement complaint through Etsy. Lambe is disputing the case.

If you tuned into the Super Bowl on Sunday, you were bombarded with no fewer than three ads (plus more before and after the game) urging you to “shop like a billionaire.” That was part of a hyper-aggressive marketing campaign by Chinese e-commerce retailer Temu to conquer the North American market.

Why it matters: Temu’s big spending marketing blitz — one 30-second Super Bowl ad spot was selling for US$7 million, and Temu had six — is unprecedented, and its sheer scale is disrupting both retail and ad markets in North America.

The competition might’ve been tough for the King of Pop’s music library, but Sony and its big chequebook told the other investors to beat it. 

What happened: Sony is acquiring half of Michael Jackson’s music catalogue for around US$600 million, a deal that will make it the most valuable catalogue ever sold, per Axios.

As they did with shirtless hippies in the ’60s, psychedelic drugs are having a moment—but this time around, it’s investors (with their shirts very much on) swooning over ‘shrooms.

Driving the news: Start-ups developing psychedelic drug treatments had a milestone January, bringing in US$163 million in investments, marking the second-biggest month of fundraising ever recorded for the sector, per the Financial Times. 

Think twice before sending that disparaging Slack message about your manager. Someone—or rather, something—could be watching. 

What happened: A growing number of large employers are using AI tools to monitor the messages employees send on company systems.

Months after a consumer boycott that lost Bud Light the status as America’s top-selling beer to Modelo, the beer brand has chosen the Super Bowl as the next stop of its comeback tour. 

Driving the news: Per The Wall Street Journal, Bud Light is banking on a 60-second Super Bowl ad slot to get back in with the guys. The brand is attempting to recover from backlash for its campaign with transgender influencer Dylan Mulvaney, which led to a slump in sales.