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A Build-A-Bear Workshop in Herald Square, New York on Sept. 16, 2025. Laya Neelakandan | CNBCFor 26-year-old Cammie Craycroft’s friends, the perfect birthday activity this summer was a group trip to Build-A-Bear Workshop.Craycroft said she and her friends grew up going to the retailer, which is known for its experiential shopping product where customers can choose their stuffed animal and then pick its outfits, accessories and more.”Build-A-Bear means a lot to me. I had so many birthday parties at Build-A-Bear,” Craycroft told CNBC. “It really is a nostalgic place, and I have so many happy memories there.”The company has recently…

Goway Travel concluded its first Micro Film Festival on September 18, celebrating short-form storytelling through travel. The festival, launched in honor of Goway’s 55th anniversary, invited travelers, travel advisors and professional creators to share their journeys in compelling 55-second films. The competition received hundreds of submissions from participants vying for $55,000 in prizes. Films were judged by industry experts including Annie Greenberg, Executive Creative Director at Lonely Planet; Paul Telner, Head of Programming at Viral Nation; and Alisia Palczewski, Producer at GoPro. The festival featured two events. The Audience Choice event during the Toronto International Film Festival on September 11…

U.K.-based fintech Tide has entered the unicorn club with a fresh funding of $120 million led by TPG, as the startup now serves over 1.6 million micro and small enterprises globally — with more than half of them based in India, the company’s largest and fastest-growing market. The new round — a mix of primary and secondary investment, though the startup declined to confirm the exact split — values the eight-year-old startup at $1.5 billion. It includes share sales by employees, early angels, and a few minority investors. TPG backed the round through its multi-sector impact vehicle, The Rise Fund,…

Doja Cat’s 15-track album “Vie” and James Gunn’s “Superman” flying to HBO Max are some of the new television, films, music and games headed to a device near you.Also among the streaming offerings worth your time this week, as selected by The Associated Press’ entertainment journalists: The fifth season of the misfit espionage drama “Slow Horses,” a sequel to the 2020 indie megahit video game Hades and Mariah Carey will release her first new album in seven years. New movies to stream from Sept. 22-28— After notching one of the summer’s biggest box-office hauls, James Gunn’s “Superman” has flown to…

The MBA-to-VC pipeline remains a very real thing. But that path is a little shakier than it once was, according to PitchBook reporting and new academic research. Harvard placed 50 of its 1,004 MBA graduates into VC roles in 2024, with a median starting salary of $177,500. Stanford placed around 30 from its smaller class. More than 10,000 Harvard, Stanford, and Wharton MBA alumni currently hold senior positions at U.S. VC firms, PitchBook data shows. The MBA’s grip on venture capital is loosening, however, according to Stanford professor Ilya Strebulaev, who found that 44% of mid-career venture professionals held MBAs…

Nancy Ott (Source: Nancy Ott)Travel Advisor Success Stories focus on veteran advisors and how they achieved success. Here’s a look at Nancy Ott, owner of Tinker Travel, LLC, and an independent agency in the Avoya Network. How did you get your start as a travel advisor?I actually came into this career because of a personal experience as a traveler. Years ago, I had booked a cruise through another travel advisor. Just before sailing, the ship’s galley caught fire and the trip was canceled. Within 24 hours, she had secured a full refund for me and helped me rebook a new…

For years, Big Tech CEOs have touted visions of AI agents that can autonomously use software applications to complete tasks for people. But take today’s consumer AI agents out for a spin, whether it’s OpenAI’s ChatGPT Agent or Perplexity’s Comet, and you’ll quickly realize how limited the technology still is. Making AI agents more robust may take a new set of techniques that the industry is still discovering. One of those techniques is carefully simulating workspaces where agents can be trained on multi-step tasks — known as reinforcement learning (RL) environments. Similarly to how labeled datasets powered the last wave…

The Trump administration has been talking up a potential TikTok deal this weekend, with President Donald Trump telling Fox News on Sunday that Rupert Murdoch and his son Lachlan are “probably” going to be involved. “A man named Lachlan is involved,” Trump said. “Lachlan Murdoch … Rupert [Murdoch] is probably gonna be in the group, I think they’re going to be in the group.” The president also said that Oracle executive chairman Larry Ellison and Dell Technologies CEO Michael Dell are likely to be involved. While Trump did not specify whether he was talking about personal or company investments, following…

by Lacey Pfalz Last updated: 1:50 PM ET, Fri September 19, 2025 The Federal Aviation Administration (FAA) is telling airlines to readjust emergency evacuation procedures to drive home that they cannot bring carry-on items with them during an emergency evacuation. The rules for an airplane emergency evacuation never permitted travelers to bring their carry-on items during evacuation; yet recent emergency evacuations in February, April and July apparently showed people with their carry-on items, which slows the evacuation. Video clearly shows travelers with their carry-ons deplaning during the emergency evacuation in July, which occurred when an American Airlines plane had a tire…

Travelers at major European airports including Heathrow, Brussels, and Berlin faced significant delays this weekend following what Collins Aerospace described as a “cyber-related incident.” Collins Aerospace makes technology for airline check-in desks, so after the apparent cyberattack, airlines were forced to revert to manual check-ins, according to the Guardian. According to data from Flightradar24, more than 130 Heathrow flights had been delayed by 20 minutes or more as of 11am on Sunday morning, with 13 flights canceled on Saturday. A post on the Heathrow social media account said, “Work continues to resolve and recover from Friday’s outage of a Collins…