November 4, 2025
- Yum! Brands is reportedly eying the sale of its struggling Pizza Hut division. “[Pizza Hut has] a unique opportunity to reclaim the leading position in the highly fragmented pizza market,” Chris Turner, the chief executive of Yum, said on a call related to the potential sale of the business (via The New York Times).
- Pinterest is currently beta testing what it calls a first-of-its-kind AI shopping assistant, one which uses visual cues to aid product discovery and online shopping. “With Pinterest Assistant, we’re supercharging that magic by leveraging AI to help our users discover and shop like they would with that person who knows them best,” said Bill Ready, CEO (via Chain Store Age).
- Amazon has landed a seven-year, ~$38 billion deal to provide cloud services to AI company OpenAI, responsible for the popular ChatGPT and Sora models. OpenAI will gain access to hundreds of thousands of Nvidia graphics processors as part of the agreement (via Reuters).
- Instacart is also hopping aboard the AI bandwagon, launching its own suite of AI tools, titled AI Solutions. “It’s taking everything that we’ve been building for retailers over the last decade, and it’s bringing it into the AI era. It’s really about putting enterprise-grade AI tech in every grocer’s hands, whether it’s a small, local independent or a national chain,” Instacart CEO Chris Rogers said (via CNBC).
- Publix saw slight improvements to its net earnings and EPS during Q3 2025, improving over last year’s results. Net earnings came in at $1.2 billion (versus $1.1 billion in 2024) while EPS improved to 30 cents per share (versus 28 cents per share last year) (via Chain Store Age).
- Starbucks is slated to sell control of its China operations to investment firm Boyu Capital in a deal estimated to be worth ~$4 billion. The coffee chain is divesting as its market share in the region wanes, largely due to competition and an inability to compete on price (via CNN Business).