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Automated fast food restaurant CaliExpress by Flippy, in Pasadena, Calif., opened in January to considerable hype due to its robot burger makers, but the restaurant launched with another, less heralded innovation: the ability to pay for your meal with your face.

CaliExpress uses a payment system from facial ID tech company PopID. To activate it, users register with a selfie. Then they can opt to be recognized and then PopID’s facial verification confirms the transaction.

It’s not the only fast-food chain to employ the technology. In January, Steak ‘N Shake, a fast-casual restaurant in the Midwest, started installing facial recognition kiosks in its 300 locations for patron check-in. The chain says that using PopID takes two to three seconds compared with a check-in with a QR code or mobile app, which can take up to 20 seconds.

Biometric payment options are becoming more common. Amazon introduced pay-by-palm technology in 2020, and while its cashier-less store experiment has faltered, it installed the tech in 500 of its Whole Foods stores last year. Mastercard, which is working with PopID,  launched a pilot for face-based payments in Brazil back in 2022, and it was deemed a success — 76% of pilot participants said they would recommend the technology to a friend. Late last year, Mastercard said it was teaming with NEC to bring its Biometric Checkout Program to the Asia-Pacific region.

“Our focus on biometrics as a secure way to verify identity, replacing the password with the person, is at the heart of our efforts in this area,” said Dennis Gamiello, executive vice president of identity products and innovation at Mastercard. He added that based on positive feedback from the pilot and its research, the checkout technology will come to more new markets later this year.

As stores implement biometric technology for a variety of purposes, from payments to broader anti-theft systems, consumer blowback, and lawsuits, are rising. In March, an Illinois woman sued retailer Target for allegedly illegally collecting and storing her and other customers’ biometric data via facial recognition technology without their consent. Amazon and T-Mobile are also facing legal actions related to biometric technology.

In other countries, most notably China, biometric payment systems are comparatively mature, from visitors to McDonald’s in China being able to use facial recognition technology to pay for their orders, to systems offered by AliPay, which launched biometric payment as far back as 2015 and began testing the technology at KFC locations in China in 2018.

A deal that PopID recently signed with JPMorgan is a sign of things to come in the U.S., said John Miller, PopID CEO, and what he thinks will be a “breakthrough” year for pay-by-face technology.

The consumer case is tied to the growing importance of loyalty programs. Most quick-service restaurants require consumers to provide their loyalty information to earn rewards — which means pulling out a phone, opening an app, finding the link to the loyalty QR code, and then presenting the QR code to the cashier or reader. For payment, consumers are typically choosing between pulling out their wallet, selecting a credit card, and then dipping or tapping the card or pulling out their phone, opening it with Face ID, and then presenting it to the reader. Miller says PopID simplifies this process by requiring just tapping an on-screen button, and then looking briefly at a camera for both loyalty check-in and payment.

“We believe our partnership with JPMorgan is a watershed moment for biometric payments as it represents the first time a leading merchant acquirer has agreed to push biometric payments to its merchant customers,” Miller said. “JPMorgan brings the kind of credibility and assurance that both merchants and consumers need to adopt biometric payments.”

Consumers are getting more comfortable with biometric technology. The majority still prefer fingerprint scans to facial recognition, according to a 2023 survey from PYMENTS, but age is a factor. Gen Z consumers are more open to facial recognition than to fingerprint scans or entering a password.

Juniper Research forecasts over 100% market growth for global biometric payments between 2024 and 2028, and by 2025, $3 trillion in mobile, biometric-secured payments.

To be sure, security concerns and the hacking of biometric data as a consequence of sharing it, will remain important to the evolving usage and conversation.

Sheldon Jacobson, a professor in computer science at the University of Illinois, Urbana-Champaign, said he sees biometric identification as part of a technology continuum that has evolved from payment with a credit card to smartphones. “The next natural step is to simply use facial recognition,” he said.

Concerns about privacy and facial recognition, he says, are overblown. “We voluntarily give up our privacy all the time,” Jacobson said. “We post on Facebook, we use social media and we are basically giving up our privacy. I tell people constantly that everything about you is already out there.” 

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S&P 500 win streak, Berkshire’s leadership changes, Netflix’s regulatory path and more in Morning Squawk

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December 8, 2025

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S&P 500 win streak, Berkshire's leadership changes, Netflix's regulatory path and more in Morning Squawk

A Wall Street sign is viewed in front of the New York Stock Exchange.

Eduardo Munoz | AFP | Getty Images

This is CNBC’s Morning Squawk newsletter. Subscribe here to receive future editions in your inbox.

Here are five key things investors need to know to start the trading day:

1. Secret Santa

The three major indexes are coming off back-to-back winning weeks, with the S&P 500 on Friday rising closer to records it set earlier this year. Stocks’ advances came as investors geared up for the last Federal Reserve policy meeting of the year, which is set to kick off tomorrow.

Here’s what to know:

  • The delayed release of September’s personal consumption expenditures price index showed core PCE — a key inflation measure — was lighter than economists anticipated on a 12-month basis.
  • The report gave stocks a boost on Friday, as traders bet the data would encourage Fed officials to cut interest rates this week.
  • The Fed is set to announce its decision on Wednesday. Traders are pricing in about a 90% likelihood that the central bank cuts interest rates again, according to CME’s FedWatch tool.
  • Meanwhile, Treasury Secretary Scott Bessent said Sunday that he expects the U.S. economy to finish the year with 3% real GDP growth, even after the hit from the federal government shutdown.
  • Following its four-day win streak last week, the S&P 500 is now roughly 0.7% away from its intraday record and about a quarter-percent off its closing high.
  • Follow live markets updates here.

2. Changing of the guard

Todd Combs, portfolio manager at Berkshire Hathaway Inc., waits for the start of the “Berkshire Hathaway Invest In Yourself 5K” race presented by Brooks Sports, a Berkshire Hathaway Inc. company, on the sidelines of the Berkshire Hathaway shareholders meeting in Omaha, Nebraska, U.S., on Sunday, May 4, 2014.

Daniel Acker / Bloomberg / Getty Images

Berkshire Hathaway announced this morning that Todd Combs, investment officer and Geico CEO, will leave the conglomerate to join JPMorgan Chase as head of its new Security and Resiliency Initiative.

Berkshire CEO Warren Buffett, who will step down as CEO at the end of the year, said in a press release that Combs “made many great hires” for Geico and “broadened its horizons.”

Nancy Pierce, operations chief at Geico, will replace Combs as the business’ CEO. Berkshire also announced that its CFO Marc Hamburg will retire in June 2027 and be replaced by Charles Chang, current CFO of Berkshire Hathaway Energy.

3. L.A. confidential

Dado Ruvic | Reuters

Both Wall Street and Hollywood were left reeling after the announcement of the Netflix–Warner Bros. deal on Friday. Now, the question is if the agreement can get over regulatory hurdles.

President Donald Trump’s administration views the deal with “heavy skepticism,” a senior administration official told CNBC’s Eamon Javers on Friday. Sen. Elizabeth Warren, D-Mass., has already asked for an antitrust review, calling the deal an “anti-monopoly nightmare.”

Believing it has a better chance of securing regulatory approval, Paramount Skydance is weighing whether to bring a bid straight to WBD shareholders in a last-ditch effort to beat Netflix, sources told CNBC’s Alex Sherman. Meanwhile, movie theater operators are wondering whether they can survive if the Netflix deal makes the world’s largest streaming service the owner of a major film studio.

4. Google’s answer

Silas Stein | Picture Alliance | Getty Images

After losing its search antitrust case last year, Alphabet on Friday got more details about the consequences it will face.

U.S. District Judge Amit Mehta said Google can’t enter into an agreement like it has with Apple, which it pays for search browser usage, unless the deal has termination date of a year or less. Mehta also listed requirements for the makeup of a committee that will decide who Google has to share its data with.

But as CNBC’s Jennifer Elias notes, these weren’t the most drastic punishments on the table. Mehta in September ruled against harsher penalties proposed by the Department of Justice, which could have included the forced sale of Google’s Chrome browser.

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5. Unfading endurance

How often should jeans really be washed?

Catherine Mcqueen | Moment | Getty Images

The global denim market is now a more than $100 billion industry, driven by major retailers such as Levi Strauss and American Eagle. But as CNBC’s Gabrielle Fonrouge reports, its origins are far more humble.

Blue jeans were born out of a woman’s frustration with the frequent rips in her gold miner husband’s denim pants. Her tailor’s solution — adding copper rivets to the garment’s key points of strain — signified the birth of what we know today as the blue jean. In the approximately century and a half since, the pant has become a staple of American fashion that transcends income class and trend cycles.

The Daily Dividend

Here’s what we’re keeping an eye on this week:

CNBC Pro subscribers can see a calendar and rundown for the week here.

— CNBC’s Sean Conlon, Ryan Ermey, Alex Sherman, Lillian Rizzo, Dan Mangan, Sarah Whitten, John Melloy, Jennifer Elias and Gabrielle Fonrouge contributed to this report. Josephine Rozzelle edited this edition.

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Confluent stock soars 29% as IBM announces $11 billion acquisition deal

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December 8, 2025

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Confluent stock soars 29% as IBM announces billion acquisition deal

IBM CEO Arvind Krishna speaks at the SXSW conference in Austin, Texas, on March 11, 2025.

Andy Wenstrand | Sxsw Conference & Festivals | Getty Images

IBM announced Monday that it is acquiring data streaming platform Confluent in a deal worth $11 billion.

Shares of Confluent soared 29%. IBM stock climbed about 1%.

IBM will pay $31 per share in cash for all of the issued and outstanding common shares of Confluent, according to a release. The transaction is expected to close by the middle of 2026. Shares of Confluent closed at $23.14 on Friday.

Tune in at 10:10 a.m. ET as IBM CEO Arvind Krishna joins CNBC TV to discuss the deal. Watch in real time on CNBC+ or the CNBC Pro stream.

“With the acquisition of Confluent, IBM will provide the smart data platform for enterprise IT, purpose-built for AI,” IBM CEO Arvind Krishna said in a release.

IBM said the deal will bolster its artificial intelligence offerings as it expects global data growth to more than double by 2028.

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Wedbush called it a “strong move” from IBM that adds more data processing capabilities to its hybrid cloud ecosystem and is a natural fit to help eliminate data silos for powering AI.

“We loudly applaud this deal as Arvind takes IBM further into the AI Revolution with more acquisitions likely ahead,” the analysts said in a note.

Wedbush maintained its overweight rating on IBM and $325 price target. IBM closed at $307.94 on Friday.

The addition of Confluent fits with IBM’s deal last year to land cloud software maker HashiCorp for $6.4 billion and the 2023 move to acquire Apptio in a deal worth $4.6 billion. Both of those acquisitions were all-cash deals.

Confluent has more than 6,500 clients across major industries and works with Anthropic, Amazon‘s AWS, Google Cloud Platform, Microsoft, Snowflake and others.

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BlackRock bets on ‘pick and shovel’ trade, singling out clear winners in AI spending spree

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December 8, 2025

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BlackRock bets on ‘pick and shovel’ trade, singling out clear winners in AI spending spree

Ben Powell, chief strategist for Middle East and Asia Pacific at BlackRock Investment Institute, during a Bloomberg Television interview at the Abu Dhabi Finance Week (ADFW) conference in Abu Dhabi, AD, United Arab Emirates, on Monday, Dec. 9, 2024.

Bloomberg | Getty Images

The wave of capital pouring into artificial intelligence infrastructure is far from peaking, said Ben Powell, chief investment strategist for APAC at BlackRock, arguing the sector’s “picks and shovels” suppliers — from chipmakers to energy producers and copper-wire manufacturers — remain the clearest winners as hyperscalers race to outspend one another.

The surge in AI-related capital expenditure shows no sign of slowing as tech giants push aggressively to secure an edge in what they see as a winner-takes-all contest, Powell told CNBC Monday on the sidelines of the Abu Dhabi Finance Week.

“The capex deluge continues. The money is very, very clear,” he said, adding that BlackRock is focused on what he called a “traditional picks and shovels capex super boom, which still feels like it’s got more to go.”

AI infrastructure has been one of the biggest drivers of global investment this year, fueling a broader market rally, even as some investors question how long the boom can last.

Nvidia, whose GPU chips are the backbone of the AI revolution, became the first company to briefly surpass $5 trillion in market capitalization amid a dizzying AI-fueled market rally that sparked talk of an AI bubble.

Microsoft and OpenAI also reached a restructuring deal in October to support the ChatGPT developer’s fundraising efforts. OpenAI has reportedly been preparing for an initial public offering that could value the company at $1 trillion, according to Reuters.

The build-out has set off long-term procurement efforts across the tech sector, from chip supply agreements to power commitments. Grid operators from the U.S. to the Middle East are racing to meet soaring electricity demand from new data centers. Companies, including Amazon and Meta, have budgeted tens of billions of dollars annually for AI-related investments.

S&P Global estimates data-center power demand could nearly double by 2030, mostly driven by hyperscale, enterprise and leased facilities, along with crypto-mining sites.

‘Dipping toes into credit market’

Powell also noted that leading tech firms have only begun to tap capital markets to fund the next phase of AI expansion, suggesting additional capital is on the way.

“The big companies have only just started dipping their toes into the credit markets… feels like there’s a lot more they can do there,” he said.

The “hyperscalers” are behaving as if coming second would effectively leave them out of the market, Powell said. That mindset, he added, has pushed firms to accelerate spending even at the risk of overshooting.

Much of that capital, Powell noted, is likely to flow to the companies powering the AI build-out rather than model developers, reinforcing a growing view among global investors that the most durable gains from the AI boom may lie in the hardware, energy and infrastructure ecosystems behind the technology.

“If we’re the recipients of that cash flow, I guess that’s a pretty good place to be, whether you’re making chips, whether you’re making energy all the way down to the copper wiring,” Powell noted, expecting “positive surprises driving those stocks in the year ahead.”

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