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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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TikTok signs agreement to create new U.S. joint venture, memo says

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TikTok signs agreement to create new U.S. joint venture, memo says

Samuel Boivin | Nurphoto | Getty Images

TikTok CEO Shou Zi Chew told employees on Thursday that the company’s U.S. operations will be housed in a new joint venture.

The entity is named TikTok USDS Joint Venture LLC, according to a memo sent by Chew and obtained by CNBC. As part of the joint venture, Chew said the company has signed agreements with the three managing investors: Oracle, Silver Lake, and Abu Dhabi-based MGX. He said that the deal’s “closing date” is Jan. 22.

Under a national security law, which the Supreme Court upheld in January, China-based ByteDance was required to divest TikTok’s U.S. operations or face an effective ban in the country. In September, President Donald Trump signed an executive order approving a proposed deal that would keep TikTok operational in the U.S. by meeting the requirements of a law originally signed by former President Joe Biden.

Chew noted that the new TikTok joint venture would be “majority owned by American investors, governed by a new seven-member majority-American board of directors, and subject to terms that protect Americans’ data and U.S. national security.”

The U.S. joint venture will be 50% held by a consortium of new investors, including Oracle, Silver Lake and MGX with 15% each. Just over 30% will be held by affiliates of certain existing investors of ByteDance, and 19.9% will be retained by ByteDance, the memo said.

The TikTok chief said the entity will be responsible for protecting U.S. data, ensuring the security of its prized algorithm, content moderation and “software assurance.” He added that the joint venture will “have the exclusive right and authority to provide assurances that content, software, and data for American users is secure.”

In addition to being an investor, Oracle will serve as the “trusted security partner” in charge of auditing and validating that it complies with “agreed upon National Security Terms,” the memo said. Sensitive U.S. data will be stored in Oracle’s U.S.-based cloud computing data centers, Chew wrote.

The new TikTok entity will also be tasked with retraining the video app’s core content recommendation algorithm “on U.S. user data to ensure the content feed is free from outside manipulation,” the memo said.

Chew noted that TikTok global U.S. entities “will manage global product interoperability and certain commercial activities, including e-commerce, advertising, and marketing.”

Under Trump’s executive order in September, the attorney general was blocked from enforcing the national security law for a 120-day period in order to “permit the contemplated divestiture to be completed,” allowing the deal to finalize by Jan 23.

WATCH: TikTok signs deal for sale of U.S. unit to joint venture

TikTok signs deal for sale of its U.S. unit to joint venture

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Google and Nvidia VC arms back vibe coding startup Lovable at $6.6 billion valuation

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Google and Nvidia VC arms back vibe coding startup Lovable at .6 billion valuation

The VC arms of Google and Nvidia have invested in Swedish vibe coding startup Lovable’s $330 million Series B at a $6.6 billion valuation, the company announced on Thursday.

The news confirms an earlier story from CNBC, which reported on Tuesday that Lovable had raised at that valuation, trebling its valuation from its previous round in July, and that the investors included U.S. VC firms Accel and Khosla Ventures.

CapitalG, one of Google’s VC divisions, and Menlo Ventures led the round. Alongside Accel and Khosla, Nvidia venture arm NVentures, actor Gwyneth Paltrow’s VC firm Kinship Ventures, Salesforce Ventures, Databricks Ventures, Atlassian Ventures, T.Capital, Hubspot Ventures, DST Global, EQT Global, Creandum and Evantic also participated.

The fresh funds take Lovable’s total raised in 2025 to over $500 million.

"Everyone can be a developer of software," says Lovable CEO

“Lovable has done something rare: built a product that enterprises and founders both love,” said Laela Sturdy, managing partner at CapitalG in a statement accompanying the announcement.

“The demand we’re seeing from Fortune 500 companies signals a fundamental shift in how software gets built.”

Lovable’s platform uses AI models from providers like OpenAI and Anthropic to help users build apps and websites using text prompts, without technical knowledge of coding.

The startup reported $200 million in annual recurring revenue (ARR) in November, just under a year after achieving $1 million in ARR for the first time. It was founded in 2023 by Anton Osika and Fabian Hedin.

Vibe coding startups have seen big interest from VCs in recent times, as investors bet on their promise of drastically reducing the time it takes to create software and apps.

In the U.S., Anysphere, which created coding tool Cursor, raised $2.3 billion at a $29.3 billion valuation in November. In September, Replit hit a $3 billion price tag after picking up $250 million and Vercel closed a $300 million round at a $9.3 billion valuation.

The rise of AI 'vibe coding'

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Micron stock pops 15% as AI memory demand soars: ‘We are more than sold out’

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Micron stock pops 15% as AI memory demand soars: 'We are more than sold out'

The Micron logo is seen displayed at the 8th China International Import Expo.

Sheldon Cooper | Lightrocket | Getty Images

Micron Technology‘s stock jumped 15% after the company signaled robust demand for its memory chips and blew away fiscal first-quarter estimates.

During an earnings call with analysts, Micron, which makes memory storage used for computers and artificial intelligence servers, said data center needs have fueled greater demand for its products.

Micron said it expects the total addressable market for high-bandwidth memory to hit $100 billion by 2028, growing at a 40% compounded annual growth rate. Management also upped its capital expenditures guidance to $20 billion from $18 billion.

“We are more than sold out,” said business chief Sumit Sadana. “We have a significant amount of unmet demand in our models and this is just consistent with an environment where the demand is substantially higher than supply for the foreseeable future.

Micron topped Wall Street estimates for the fiscal first quarter and issued blowout guidance.

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The company reported adjusted earnings of $4.78 per share on $13.64 billion in revenue, surpassing LSEG estimates for earnings of $3.95 per share and $12.84 billion in sales.

Revenues in the current quarter are expected to hit about $18.70 billion, blowing past the $14.20 billion expected by LSEG. Adjusted earnings are forecast to reach $8.42, versus expectations of $4.78 per share.

JPMorgan upped its price target on the stock following the results, citing the favorable pricing setup, while Bank of America upgraded shares to a buy rating.

Morgan Stanley called the results the best revenue and net income upside in the “history of the U.S. semis industry” outside of Nvidia.

“If AI keeps growing as we expect, we believe that the next 12 months are going to have broader coat tails to the AI trade than just the processor names and memory would be the biggest beneficiary,” analysts wrote.

WATCH: Micron shares spike on better-than-expected quarterly results

Micron shares spike on better-than-expected quarterly results
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Micron year-to-date stock chart.

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